by Pollock, Tom
For a moment Pen thought they’d covered his head in some kind of skin-coloured fabric, but then the camera was dragged in close and she realised she could see sweat beading from the tiny pores.
The only feature in that nightmarish expanse of skin was where the man’s mouth should have been: a dark lipless hole, rough-edged as though made with too blunt a knife. It was no larger than a child’s mouth, and somehow its tininess was the worst thing in that massive adult unface. Its edges worked and stretched clumsily, and through it, the earl began to keen.
‘We are the Faceless,’ the hooded man said somewhere off-screen. ‘And now, so is he.’
The screen went dark.
Pen felt the phone eased from her unresisting fingers. Slowly she became aware of the sunlight, the glass-housed garden around her, the fresh smell of the leaves. Senator Case’s voice was tight. ‘The poor man disappeared three days ago and this showed up online twelve hours later. When you vanished too, we …’ Her voice sank for a moment, and then she recovered herself. ‘We feared the worst. I showed it you, only because you could have found it yourself online in about four seconds.’
‘Who was he?’ Pen croaked, when she finally managed to find her voice.
‘John Wingborough, Earl of Tufnell Park.’ Her voice caught on the name. ‘Jack. My nephew. Very handsome man. Or at least he was – Mago knows how many more bombs and guns his face will have bought them when they fenced it. ‘Her voice turned grim. ‘I hope they’ve killed him. It would be kinder.’
Pen didn’t bother stating the obvious: that kindness didn’t appear to sit very high on the Faceless’ list of priorities.
Senator Case lifted Pen’s chin. ‘Listen to me now,’ she said. ‘You are the face of the Looking-Glass Lottery. Nothing and no one in London-Under-Glass will be better protected, and that includes me and the other six sleepless old farts who run the place.’ She leaned in and kissed Pen’s forehead, and Pen just about managed not to tense up.
‘I promise you,’ the old woman told her, ‘what happened to John Wingborough won’t happen to Parva Khan.’
Pen nodded, but she felt chilly claws grasping at her stomach, because Parva Khan wasn’t standing there. And in reality, the senator could promise nothing of the sort.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Senator Case’s private lift serviced only her office and gardens on the top floor of the building, so Pen had to ride all the way back to ground level to go anywhere. When she stepped out into the cool granite expanse of the lobby, there was a third black-clad, chisel-chinned column of muscle standing next to Bruno and Max.
‘Countess.’ He inclined his head respectfully. ‘My name is Edward. I’ll be your bodyguard from now on.’
Pen took him in. He was like a cliff with a head on it. He had two small scars patched to one side of his perfectly symmetrical chin, just to the right of the silver seam that bisected his face. She blew out her cheeks. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Why not?’
*
Actually, Pen was rather grateful for Edward. For one thing, he had the soldiers’ habit of staring straight ahead when talking to anyone he believed to be his superior, which meant that he never actually looked at Pen’s face, which was a relief because all the gawping by everyone else was making her want to hide in a cupboard.
More importantly, following her new bodyguard around let Pen hide the fact that she had no idea at all where she was going.
In a small sterile room in the basement, a mirrorstocratic doctor in round wire-framed spectacles gave her a clean bill of health and, to her embarrassed bemusement, a lollipop. Afterwards Edward took her up to the sixty-second floor. Pen looked left and right down the corridor. There were only two doors: polished dark wood, one at either end. If these were apartments, you didn’t get many to a floor.
‘I’m afraid the palace reassigned your lady-in-waiting to the Duchess of Deptford, ma’am,’ Edward said as he led the way to the right-hand door and opened it for her. ‘You know what her ladyship’s like – she does go through them a little fast. We’ll arrange a replacement for you as soon as we can, but getting security clearance for new staff takes time. In the meantime, do let me know if I can help you with anything.’
‘Thanks,’ Pen said. An unpleasant prickle ran over her skin. Was there something possessive in his tone, or was she just imagining it? Salt’s face flickered briefly in front of her eyes. ‘I’m sure I’ll be fine.’
‘Ah, Countess? One more thing.’ Edward offered her something in the palm of his meaty hand. It was a black leather fob with a silver button about the size of a five-pence coin sticking out of it. ‘A replacement panic button. I trust you don’t need a refresher in how it works?’
‘I panic, I push it?’ Pen hazarded.
He nodded approvingly. ‘Then stand well back and let me remove the cause of your panic from your life.’
‘Via extreme blood-curdling violence?’ Pen eyed the man’s hefty build.
‘Countess, please,’ he tutted. ‘Via wholly proportionate blood-curdling violence.’ He smiled briefly, the smile of a man secure in his own lethality. ‘Rest well, Countess. I’ll be just down the hall if you need me.’
*
‘Wow, Parv,’ Pen muttered as Edward closed the front door behind her. ‘Quite some gig you had going on, didn’t you?’
The sitting room was as big as a stage in a West End theatre. The wall on the far side of it was all one vast window, and through it Pen saw London-Under-Glass, spread out before her.
Crest after crest of gables and rooftops rose like breakers on a slate ocean. Uncannily shaped tower blocks reached up to surreal heights, and the early-setting winter sun limned the clouds in orange. It was an Impressionist dream of a city realised in brick and stone and concrete and glass, rather than paint, and it was beautiful.
It took a long time for Pen to drag her eyes away. She blinked and shook herself, and explored the rest of the apartment.
Pen reckoned she could have fitted the total floor space of her Dalston home into half of one room. The dark floorboards were liberally covered in thick white rugs and there were several comfy-looking sofas, but the living space still felt cavernous, and the yawning fireplace didn’t help. A brushed-steel staircase spiralled up to a mezzanine level, which turned out to be Parva’s bedroom. Both bedroom and living room came complete with fully stocked bars. Apparently, Parva hadn’t needed a fake ID to satisfy her newfound thirst.
Best of all, neatly tucked into a corner, was a desk with a keyboard and a flat-screen monitor.
Pen tossed the panic button onto one of the sofas, crossed to the desk and sat down. She hit a key and as the screen brightened she felt a little catch in her throat: Parva was looking out of the glass at her.
It was a video, paused. Judging by the angle, it had been recorded on the webcam set into the frame of the monitor Pen was now looking at. She moved the mouse and clicked ‘play’.
‘My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen,’ video-Parva said. The crackle of the speakers made her voice spectral. She looked focused, like she was practising a speech. ‘Welcome to the Draw for the two-hundred-and-fourth Looking-Glass Lottery. I am Parva Khan, Countess of Dalston, and I am delighted …’ She faltered, frowning. ‘Damn, it’s honoured, isn’t it, not delighted … Bet this looks rubbish too.’ Video-Parva sighed. ‘Okay, let’s start again.’ Her face froze as the video hit the end of its playback.
‘Countess of Dalston, huh?’ Pen murmured. ‘Check you out.’
She clicked out of the player and toured through the various folders on the computer’s desktop, but there weren’t any other files saved.
She sat back, drumming her fingers on the desk, watching the dim reflection in the polished surface. Then Senator Case’s voice came back to her: You could have found it online yourself in about four seconds.
None of the icons looked familiar, so Pen just clicked through them at random until she found something that looked like a web browser.
—two-hundred-and-four
th Looking-Glass Lottery—
—you are the Face of the Looking-Glass Lottery—
—the tyranny of the Looking-Glass Lottery must end—
Pen looked down at the keyboard. The letters on the keys were reversed, of course. She pursed her lips and typed.
‘gl.yrettolssalggnikool’ appeared, right to left in the browser’s bar, and she hit enter.
Parva’s face materialised onto the screen. There was no header with the Lottery’s name on it, no fancy banner. Apparently Pen’s smiling, scarred mirror-sister was all the branding the event needed. Above it were three links in a graceful, backwards calligraphic font:
It took her a moment to get her head around the mirror-font, then she clicked the ‘history’ link and read under her breath, ‘Inaugurated one hundred and four years ago by Senator Howard Bramble, the Looking-Glass Lottery has become one of London-Under-Glass’ most cherished institutions: more than more than a century of philanthropic tradition that makes the Simularchy such a beloved part of the city’s heritage.
Read Senator Bramble’s inaugural speech here.
Pen clicked. Under a painting of a man in a wig and a frock coat with a moustache that would do a yeti proud was a mass of inverse text. Pen had to concentrate hard at first, but reading in reverse began to feel natural surprisingly quickly.
‘Fellow citizens, I come before you today burdened with a conviction that I know many of you share. I speak to articulate that feeling, but I wish to do more than give it a voice; I wish to give it form and flesh. I wish to give it a face.
The conviction I speak of is this: that those less fortunate in our fair city should not be doomed without hope by the circumstances of their reflection, nor their father’s reflection before them. Mirrorborn or naturalborn, none of us chose how we came into this world, but we have taken this strange, miraculous city into our hearts and hands and made of it what we chose. Now we must do the same with ourselves.
‘On behalf of the Silver Senate of London-Under-Glass, and with the full authority of the Simularchy, I hereby inaugurate a citywide lottery. On the anniversary of this day, one person from amongst the city’s Plebeian class shall be raised to the Mirrorstocracy. One fortunate unfortunate – one lucky lesser-reflected man or woman – will have their aesthetics perfected by the State.
From that point on, they will be granted deed and title according to their newly attained beauty, and that beauty shall be theirs to pass on to their naturalborn children and from them to their children, for all time until the mirrors crack and the cloud-wrought towers crumble into dust.
This is London-Under-Glass, where we have always made our own choices. Now we shall make our own chances as well. I urge you, make yours well.
Good night, my friends.
May Mago bless you and bring you beauty.’
Pen finished reading and clicked back. She was just about to see what the ‘Ceremony’ link would reveal when an immense concussion rolled through the room.
Pen jumped to her feet, imagining the tower crumpling under the force of some powerful explosive, burning and crumbling beneath her.
Fourth attack in two months. No survivors.
The cold blue eyes of Faceless stared out from her memory.
The tyranny of the Looking-Glass Lottery will end.
The sound boomed again, Pen’s teeth clattered together. A crystal paperweight was shaken off the desk and a tiny starburst fractured across its surface. The tremors subsided, and she tested the floor nervously. It still felt solid.
At the third echoing roar, Pen finally managed to place the sound: not explosives, but thunder, deafeningly near.
‘Weatherturn!’ the cry was outside, but it came clearly through the glass.
A myriad other voices took up the cry: Weatherturn!’
‘Weatherturn!’
‘Weatherturn!’
Pen went to the window. This high up, the clouds were impossibly close, looming taller and fatter than she’d ever seen them on her side of the Mirror, and they looked jagged somehow, pixelated like a digital photo in ultra-close up. As she stared at them, she realised the redness she’d seen on them wasn’t reflected sunlight – it was the colour of the cloud vapour itself.
A scar of lightning flashed in the sky. With a final savage roar, the weird clouds opened.
Swollen drops began to streak past the windowpane in strange colours, red and black and silvery-grey. The water here must be filthy, Pen thought.
A dull reddish fragment of something thunked into the window and skittered away. Pen stared at the trail of dusty mortar it left, and then realised it wasn’t raining water …
It was raining masonry.
Tiny chunks of brick and stone and concrete and glittering slivers of glass rattled down from the sky like a convocation of meteorites. They hammered the window relentlessly. Pen flinched, but the pane didn’t take so much as a scratch. Marvelling, she straightened from her cowering and pressed her face to the glass, peering between the stone raindrops. The finer-ground bits of architecture clung to the roofs, piling up like epic dust. Thick dunes suddenly scores of feet high coated the gables.
Gradually the storm slackened. The drops grew finer, drifting on the breeze like brick snowflakes. The air cleared, leaving the roofscape covered in rubble. It looked like pictures she’d seen of London in the Blitz.
‘Abatement!’ a voice called from somewhere hidden.
‘Abatement!’ another voice cried.
‘Abatement.’
Across the skyline, top floor windows opened. Hatches hidden under slates popped upwards, cunningly spring-loaded to propel the mounds of rubble lying on them down into the street below.
Figures swarmed out onto the roofs. They looked like polar explorers, clawing their way across the newly settled masonry with pickaxes and barbed boots. Most were armoured, some in snug dark Kevlar and fibreglass, others in a cheap-looking hodgepodge: scuffed leather and battered metal, helmets that might have been hammered from saucepans. A few went barefoot in vests and shorts, obviously relying on only their muscles for grip. No one covered their faces. There were sinewy old men and women, there were kids with dust in their hair. Some frowned and swore at handheld computer screens, or tapped the dials of the barometers they wore around their necks like oversized medallions. Only a very few had tied themselves off with ropes. Shouts rose above a burble of muted conversation.
‘Voleskull Crew to me!’
‘Shovelwights rally!’
‘Clinging to a line now, Espel? When did you become such a pussy?’
Catcalls and laughter echoed from the roofs. Pen opened the window a crack and more words became distinguishable from the background hubbub. She heard bets being made.
‘Three eyelashes says we build ours taller!’
‘Chickenshit!’ A coarse voice hollered down from the roof above her. ‘Bet properly if you’re gonna, or don’t waste my time.’
‘An eyebrow then!’
‘Cocky, much?’ a braying, raucous laugh. ‘Done!
They unslung shovels and sledgehammers and trowels and went to work, shoving the rained rubble in localised avalanches to the pavements below. A boy began to sing. His voice was high enough that he could barely have been into his teens. Another voice joined in, then another, then another, until the entire city thrummed to the rough and ready choir.
‘Oh, keep the brick and clear the brack
That’s the life of a steeplejack
Work the rains and the snows that kill
That’s the life of a steeplejill
We spit on slate and laugh at sleet
Jacks and jills we can’t be beat!
A raucous cheer greeted the last line, and they started again. They scampered over the broken roof-terrain agile as squirrels. The burliest amongst them cleared rubble. The slightest and quickest figures scrambled over the moraine just before it fell, palming certain specific fragments and passing them back to the waiting chisels of their fellows, who smoothed them o
ff. Yet more stood ready with quick-setting mortar, adding them to the existing architecture. Pen began to see how the buildings here had got so tall and so strange.
Astonishingly quickly, the towers grew.
But even as the steeplejacks and steeplejills worked, the sky grew dim. Another thick band of cloud blotted out the sun and the snow of brickflakes grew denser and darker. It began to fall straight until Pen realised it was no longer brick but wickedly sharp shards of roof-tile, lashing down as fast as hail.
‘Slate!’ cried a steeplejack in dismay as the slateshower started rattling into the towers. Jacks and jills danced as best they could between the lethal precipitation. Splinters of it shrieked over windows. Cuts opened on exposed skin, suddenly and shockingly red. Blood ran over the roofs. A lithe woman leapt from the head of a gargoyle to a balcony railing, but just as her toes touched metal a slate fragment caught her in the cheek. She flinched despite herself. Pen watched, her stomach clenching, as for a dreadful second the woman’s arms windmilled, fighting vainly for balance. Then with a single choked out ‘N—’ she tumbled from sight between the buildings.
‘Steady now!’ the voice from above Pen’s head roared. ‘Show ’em what it means to be Palace Crew!’
Pen stared in horrified incredulity. They were still working.
On and on they laboured, pausing only to wipe the blood and the sweat from their brows before they heaved their hammers again. There was no singing now; they needed all their concentration to dodge the most dagger-like pieces of slate as they fell. The towers rose, slower now but still climbing. There were no cheers. By a chimneystack just across the river, a man sagged under a hail of slate as though exhausted, his cheap tin helmet cut to ribbons, blood running freely from the gashes. The slate fell harder and he bled more freely, but he didn’t move again.
Get inside, Pen thought furiously. Take cover, you idiots!
Something caught her eye: a billboard for the Lottery across the river, Parva’s beaming face plastered across it. An idea struck her. You’re Countess Parva Khan. They might listen to you.
