The Glass Republic: The Skyscraper Throne: Book II

by Pollock, Tom

  ‘They have, Madam Senator.’

  Pen heard the edge of a smile in Case’s voice, rather than seeing it on the old woman’s face.

  ‘Then perhaps we should hear what the people we serve have to say about this.’

  The prosecutor ducked his head and gestured to a woman sitting at the desk by the cameras. She slid one of the controls upwards, and voices began to crackle over the courtroom’s PA system.

  ‘… ought to be killed …’

  ‘… disgusting …’

  ‘… take his face away. And that’d be too good for him – wanting to devisify a mere girl …’

  ‘… away from this with his life – it’s more than he deserves …’

  ‘… Faceless scum. Animal. Ought to be slaughtered like an …’

  The voices swirled in the air around Pen, making her head swim. In the dock below, Harry Blight didn’t sag, he didn’t protest; he just kept looking up at her. He gave no sign he’d even heard the voices.

  Please. His lips shaped the word.

  ‘That’s enough,’ Case said. The speakers in the corners of the room whispered into silence.

  ‘Mr Blight, our fellow citizens don’t seem to be inclined towards clemency. I can’t say I blame them. You repel me.’ She snarled the word, and Pen saw the fury erupting from the senator, like a crocodile out of calm water. Even in her panic, Pen felt the warmth from the galleries grow towards the politician’s sudden display of emotion.

  Case paused and bent for Senator Prism to murmur in her ear, nodded and straightened again.

  ‘My colleagues in the Silver Senate are agreed that the only just punishment is the most severe our laws allow for those’ – she paused as she looked at him – ‘like you.’

  Pen was almost certain she saw an excited flush creep over her schoolmarmish features before she said, ‘Harry Blight, you are sentenced to the excitation of your prosthetic side, with immediate effect.’ She gestured to the guards below. ‘Wake his id.’

  Around the chamber a couple of people snatched at breath and murmured.

  ‘Excitation?’

  ‘A little harsh– I mean, whatever he intended, the countess isn’t really harmed …’

  She cast around herself, looking for the sources of the dissenting voices, hoping they might prevail, but whoever had spoken was quickly shamed into silence by dirty looks from their neighbours. More than one mirrorstocratic face was flushed and eager as they craned over the barriers.

  ‘In your name,’ Senator Case leaned over and murmured in Pen’s ear. She squeezed her thigh fondly. ‘We’re doing this for you.’

  In the courtroom below, the black-clad guards seized Harry Blight. They manhandled him from the dock and onto his knees on the floor in front of the TV camera. They twisted his arm behind him and one of them held a gun to his temple, but Blight wasn’t struggling. He was slack as an old corpse. His lips moved, but no sound came out.

  It was only when the doctor stepped forward and opened her silver box that he started to scream. His shrieks filled the chamber and Pen could feel them inside her chest in the place of air, trying to claw their way out.

  The doctor took a syringe of clear liquid from the case. She carefully flicked the bubbles from it as the guard pushed Blight’s head to one side, exposing skin as pale as apple-flesh on his neck.

  ‘Stop!’

  Blight stopped screaming. It was only when every face in the courtroom turned to Pen that she realised the outburst had come from her. Her thoughts eddied like stirred-up water. She groped desperately for something to say. ‘I— You’re doing for this for me – and – I’m grateful.’ She straightened and fought not to gabble. ‘But I don’t want it. Please.’ She looked out across the assembled faces, and past them towards the cameras which had already turned towards her.

  She exhaled. ‘Not in my name.’ The words came slow and clear. ‘I couldn’t live with it.’

  There was a moment’s silence, then Senator Case, of all people, started to clap. The rest of the chamber followed her lead. Pen stood bemused in the centre of a storm of applauding hands. When the adulation subsided, Case cleared her throat. ‘The Face of the Looking-Glass Lottery,’ she said. ‘Is she not remarkable? The kindest, the most generous – in every way, she is the best of us.’

  Every eye turned to Pen shone with her reflection.

  ‘I wish kindness and generosity could always win the day. I really do.’ She seemed to mean it. She raised her voice. ‘Mr Malachite, what does the law of Synecdoche say about this situation?’

  The lawyer’s response was instantaneous. ‘An attack on the image of a thing is an attack on the thing itself.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Case said softly. ‘And you, Countess, Parva, you are the image of us – all of us. All of those people you just heard speak. We were all victims when this scum attacked you. You wouldn’t deny the people of London-Under-Glass, your people, their right to closure, would you? Their right to see justice done?’

  Pen’s lips moved, but no words came out. Her throat was empty.

  We were all victims. She felt her body rebel at the hideous intimacy of that sentence.

  Senator Case looked back down at the condemned man. ‘Continue,’ she said. Harry Blight started to keen. The doctor looked up for approval, and when the senator nodded, she slipped the needle in behind the condemned man’s left ear.

  Abruptly, Blight’s voice cut out. The guards released him, and he crashed face-first onto the floor.

  Pen craned over the balustrade. Was he dead? Was excitation the same as execution?

  But no. The scrawny, wild-bearded man raised himself onto his good elbow and flopped onto his back. His chest rose and fell. He stirred and groaned.

  Then he stiffened, sharply. His back arched. Tendons corded in his neck. Suddenly, he slammed his head back hard into the floor, leaving a vague smudge of blood on the marble.

  Pen looked into his symmetrical, seam-split face. His eyes were open. At first, she thought they were just unfocused by the impact, but then she saw one of them close in a half-blink where the other did not. They were moving independently, focusing on opposite walls. His mouth twisted into a mean line as the muscles on either side of it pulled in different directions. He was suddenly disunited, as though the two halves of his sewn-together face were in the grip of separate minds.

  Realisation jolted Pen hard. She remembered Espel’s words the previous night: Mirrorskin, grafted on when I was a baby – and then her own voice: It’s a reflection.

  The id was a reflection, but then so was its wearer. London-Under-Glass was a city where reflections lived.

  The ids were alive. Every half-face was sutured at birth to another consciousness.

  Wake his id.

  Harry Blight’s left arm shook, pattering his knuckles against the floor. Gradually it bent. Blight’s left hand began to move, jerkily at first and then more smoothly, more purposeful. It crept, spiderlike, up over his chest. Pen could see him flopping his right arm in its sling, but his shoulder had been ruined by a Chevalier bullet, and it could not intercept. Blight’s face was hideously distorted now, the left side set in dreadful concentration, the right side stretched in fright.

  The left hand reached his neck, fingers spread wide. The part of that conjoined thing that was still Harry Blight tried to scream, but his vocal chords were contested, and only a laboured hiss came out as those fingers closed around his throat.

  From the galleries, the great and good of London-Under-Glass watched in silence as the body of Harry Blight strangled both the lives from it, his legs struggling weakly, like a newborn child’s.

  It took an age until he was still. Pen stared down at the body. A snatch of verse flashed into her head like a poisoned knife: What immortal hand or eye, could frame thy fearful symmetry.

  She sagged slowly into her seat.

  ‘—you, Parva. We’re doing this for you.’

  The red light on the camera blinked.

  *

 
Back downstairs in the lobby, Pen peered around the heavy wooden door, watching as the Chevaliers outside herded her fans back. Raindrops splashed off their helmets and shoulder plates as they tried to clear a path from the doorway to the kerb. There was a festive air despite the weather; young girls and boys posed for pictures with the armoured men, holding up magazines on adverts featuring Parva Khan.

  Pen set her teeth and tried very hard not to be sick. ‘How can they do that?’ she murmured. ‘How can they act like nothing just happened?’

  Espel spread her hands. Her face was clayish. She looked as sick as Pen felt.

  ‘They don’t know yet,’ she said quietly. She hadn’t met Pen’s eye since leaving the courtroom. ‘They’ve not been anywhere near a TV. They’ve been waiting for you.’

  The black Chevalier SUV pulled out up front and hooted once.

  ‘Here we go,’ Pen muttered as Espel pulled the door back and they both pressed out into the clamour.

  ‘PARVACOUNTESSPARVAWILLYOUPARVAPLEASEOVERHERESIGNFORMYBABYPARVAMA’AMPARVAPLEASEPARVAWILLYOULOV ELOVELOVEPARVAPLEASEPLEASEPARVAOVERHERE!—’

  Through the curtain of noise, Pen’s ears randomly filtered individual voices. She staggered, unbalanced by noise, her legs jellied by shock.

  ‘Countess!’

  ‘Parva!’

  ‘Will you take a picture with me?’

  ‘Will you sign my scars?’

  This last came from behind her. She turned, drawn by the oddity of the request. All she could see was an arm sticking out from behind a restraining Chevalier, its pink-varnished fingers gripping a ballpoint. As Pen rounded her guard’s broad back she saw the girl and faltered slightly.

  She was maybe – maybe – fourteen, but if so, she was small for her age. She was white as paper, with bright blue eyes. She was wearing a pink T-shirt with Khannible scrawled across it in a looping calligraphic font made to look like barbed wire. There was a Parva Khan Official Calendar under her arm, and her cheeks …

  The cuts were new, angry and red, the pale skin still puffy around them. She was a half-face, so the scars were completely symmetrical, and Pen guessed she was a sinistress, because they were an exact copy of those that Pen knew so well marked the left side of her own face.

  Pen remembered the long queue stretching from the doorway of the knife parlour as the girl beamed at her, her eyes goggling out.

  ‘Oh Mago!’ she squeaked quietly. ‘Oh Mago!’

  ‘Your … scars?’ Pen said. To her ears, she sounded even more stunned than the girl did.

  It seemed to take the girl a moment to remember how to speak. ‘I had to use up all my Mirrormass and Reflectionday presents for, like, years, but my Dad said I could. And … and … and …’ she stammered. The question was obviously dreadfully important. ‘Do you like them?’

  ‘They’re … amazing,’ Pen managed.

  The girl’s symmetrical smile stretched even wider and she raised the pen hopefully.

  Pen took the ballpoint. It wrote unevenly on the girl’s pale skin, and she had to go over it twice. She signed with the same squiggly autograph that was in her passport, and added a couple of scratchy xs. The girl squeaked again with delight, and then bolted.

  ‘Wait,’ Pen started, ‘you forgot your—’

  ‘Countess?’ Espel was holding open the door to the SUV. Rain was dripping off her chin. She looked oddly at Pen and at the ballpoint still gripped in her numb fingers as though it troubled her, then shook it off. Pen dived into the car and she slammed the door shut.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  ‘Countess, welcome back.’ Edward loomed by the doors to her apartment like a friendly iceberg. He started forward when he saw Pen’s exhausted expression. ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘It’s been a draining afternoon for the countess, Ed.’ Espel had recovered herself enough to be brisk. ‘You watch the trial?’

  ‘I … uh …’ He paled and nodded.

  ‘Then you’ll understand why. Give Her Ladyship some space, would you?’

  The bodyguard flushed and stepped back.

  ‘Can you call downstairs and tell them not to expect Lady Khan for dinner? They can send something up instead. The countess needs to rest.’

  Pen hadn’t issued any such instruction, but she nodded her approval. She’d been so strung out with hope and fright, desperate for a confession that might lead her to Parva, and so appalled at what that could mean for her, that now she felt as limp as a popped balloon. She slid bonelessly down onto one of the white sofas, barely hearing the click as Espel closed the door behind them.

  ‘You look like you could use a drink, Countess.’

  Pen waved the suggestion away; she was in no mood to fake alcoholism right now.

  ‘In that case do you mind if I do? I mean … Mother mirror,’ Espel swore. ‘An excitation?’ Her voice was blank with disbelief. ‘Live on air? They’ve never …’

  The bottle-neck clinked against the glass in Espel’s unsteady hand. She slurped at the drink and the ice cubes rattled together.

  ‘Anyone ever tell you, you drink too much?’ Pen asked her.

  Espel lowered the glass. ‘A couple of people,’ she said warily. ‘From time to time. Why, is My Lady about to join them?’

  Pen pinched the bridge of her nose, managed a smile. ‘Your Lady isn’t,’ she said. ‘But your friend? She might be.’

  Espel swallowed. ‘Are we friends, ma’am?’

  ‘Must be,’ Pen said. ‘I wouldn’t let anyone else do my makeup.’

  Espel barked, a short flat laugh, but Pen hadn’t been joking. She leaned back into the plush white upholstery and closed her eyes. She needed to think, to work out what to do, but Harry Blight’s wide, disjointed eyes kept flashing in her mind, shattering any attempt at coherent thought. There was nothing, she told herself, that she could have done to save him.

  Nothing, aside from confessing who she was on the spot.

  There was a thud that must have been Espel putting the heavy-based glass down on the table, then a sliding sound, something hard moving over wood. Pen didn’t open her eyes as she listened to the soft shush of feet across the carpet as the lady-in-waiting came towards her.

  ‘Well then,’ Espel’s voice came softly from the space above her head, ‘friend to friend, I’ve got to say, Countess, you look terrible.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Well no, not really: you look stunning – but by your standards, stunning is pretty damn rough.’

  ‘Like you said,’ Pen murmured, ‘it’s been a pretty damn rough day.’

  ‘Why don’t we see what we can do about that?’

  Pen felt fingertips slip down the back of her head. She tensed slightly, and then relaxed again as Espel’s thumb began to circle the knot of muscle at the base of her neck.

  ‘Espel?’

  ‘Yes, Countess?’

  ‘Harry Blight’s id – why did it attack him?’

  She heard the parched sound of Espel swallowing before she answered, ‘Because it hated him, Countess. It was his inverse, his opposite. His Intimate Devil—’ She snorted the last as though it was an ancient and unfunny joke. ‘Everything about him was its enemy. It was lying in wait, squatting in the dreams it shared with him, envious of his control of his body. When they woke it, it took its chance. He fought it, but … it was too strong.’

  ‘And they sew these things onto you? Into your mind, your body?’ Pen said incredulously. She squeezed her fist until the nails bit her palm. A flesh-memory of barbs. ‘How do you stand it?’

  ‘It’s the price we pay …’ Espel tailed off.

  ‘To be beautiful?’ Pen asked, remembering Driyard’s words.

  ‘No.’ One of Espel’s hands moved away and Pen imagined her touching her symmetrical face. ‘Just to get by.’ Her voice hardened slightly, and her fingers tightened on the back of Pen’s neck.

  Pen opened her eyes and looked up.

  Espel was standing behind her, her spare hand holding her steeplejill’s knife hig
h. The blade wavered for a tiny fraction of an instant, then flashed down.

  Pen didn’t think, didn’t speak, didn’t waste time trying to block the blow. Her arm shot upwards, as fast as if barbed wire propelled it – shortest distance to target – her palm crunched into Espel’s jaw.

  The blonde girl reeled backwards. She knocked a sideboard, and pottery splinters tinkled like shrill wind-chimes as a vase shattered on the ground. Pen tried to rise, but Espel lurched over the back of the sofa and pinned her down. The blade flickered towards Pen’s face. Her hands came up instinctively, her palms finding her attacker’s wrist. She gripped, tried to twist, but Espel was too strong.

  The knife pricked Pen’s throat. Instinctively, she swallowed her scream.

  Something black nestled against the white upholstery: the panic button Edward had given her was stuck between two of the cushions next to her knee. Pen wanted to reach for it, but both her hands were busy keeping the knife out of her neck. Gritting her teeth, she bent her legs up, twisted her hips towards the sofa back and dropped her left kneecap down hard on the black button.

  Espel was oblivious. All her attention was focused on Pen’s throat, on the flickering of the pulse she was striving to extinguish. She didn’t even flinch when booted feet hammered up the corridor.

  ‘Countess?’ There was the thud of a meaty fist on the door. Edward called again, ‘Countess Khan?’

  Pen’s teeth ground horribly. She felt the muscles in her arms vibrating like guitar strings, felt her eyes popping wide. Espel’s symmetrical face reddened above her.

  ‘Countess!’ The doorknob was rattling now. Espel had locked it and Edward’s pounding shook the door in its frame.

  Pen’s arms burned up and down their length. She imagined how easy it would be to let them slip, to let the blade in.

  She looked at Espel. The blonde girl’s face was screwed up in concentration, and something that looked like misery, but the knife didn’t waver.

  I should be dead by now, Pen thought. The steeplejill was strong, her muscles climb-and-scramble-hardened. And Espel had gravity on her side, all she had to do was lean in and the job would have been done. But she hadn’t.