The Glass Republic: The Skyscraper Throne: Book II

by Pollock, Tom

  ‘Can you operate it?’ Pen asked. The steeplejill nodded hesitantly, and then with more certainty.

  ‘They show it close up on TV every Draw Night – I’ve watched them do it every year.’

  Anticipation was a layer of thin ice just below Pen’s skin. ‘Then we know how to find her,’ she said. ‘The girl who shares my face.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Beth’s efforts at being inconspicuous were a little hampered by the cats.

  They’d started following her just after she passed Finsbury Park tube, hopping over garden fences and slinking out from behind bins. So far as she could tell, they were just ordinary London strays, not Fleet or Wandle or any other member of Mater Viae’s feline honour guard, but they trailed in her wake in Hamelinesque procession, single file with their tails held daintily high. By the time she passed a Turkish bakery on Green Lanes and cut through a business park, she couldn’t see the end of the line.

  Luckily, it was the middle of the night and there was just a handful of people on the street, a reasonable percentage of whom were drunk and wearing T-shirts and so would be most likely to put the sight of her feline entourage down to hallucinations caused by alcohol or hypothermia or both. She still drew some stares and pointed fingers, but she kept her hood up and her head down and hustled onwards. The insulated cable of her hair felt slick on the back of her neck.

  The synod’s photo was still curled in her fist. She didn’t know why she’d taken it from their stores; it wasn’t like she needed a reminder. The image was branded on her mind.

  Pen, she said to herself, over and over, filling the space between her other conscious thoughts: Pen.

  She’d heard rumours, but she only knew she was close when she noticed the backstreet she was walking down was better lit than its neighbours. The streetlamps sprouted more densely from these pavements. Close to, she could see the cement caking the bases of many of them was fresh. She peered into the bulbs, and in the midst of the orange glow she saw oscillations of light and shadow that might have been fingers.

  She smiled and pressed on, her retinue of cats padding silently after her. Soon they began to pass statues standing incongruously outside newsagents and next to flyer-plastered phone boxes. They were all facing the same way, and she followed their stone gazes with her own.

  Rising beside the railway was a squat concrete tower. Its architecture was rough, a brutality of cheapness rather than design, but two things set it apart from the other tower blocks that rose above the skyline. First, every single one of its windows was dark, and second, the concrete yard that surrounded it was dotted with stone bodies. A surrounding army hemmed in the tower.

  A change in the wind brought the rich, sour scent of garbage to Beth’s nostrils. Gutterglass was under siege.

  She hefted her spear in one hand, curled Pen’s photo in the other and set off at a run. Shouts of alarm and anger followed her across the yard. Some of the stone bodies blurred towards her, but none of them could touch her. Her bare feet slapped on the concrete, growing faster as she drew the essence of London into her body. The synod’s divine toxins continued to work in her; she could feel her physiology changing moment by moment.

  Ahead of her, a Pavement Priest in a pitted iron punishment skin launched himself at one of the tower’s ground-floor windows. The glass exploded as a giant fist made of rusting radiators burst outwards. The metal statue took the punch full in the chest and stopped cold. The clang as he hit the concrete echoed over the city.

  The fist retreated back into the tower.

  Beth altered her trajectory, sprinting for the empty window frame. Have to hope that I’m harder than a Pavement Priest, she thought. Or that Glas is happy to see me …

  Given how she’d left things with Mater Viae’s former sene-schal, she didn’t think that was very likely.

  She leapt, and sailed through the window like a circus performer. She landed inside with much less of a bump than she’d expected, the ground releasing a rich stink of decay as it shifted and squashed under her.

  She rose to her feet. The room was waist-high in rubbish: orange peel, bits of white plastic, smashed furniture, circuit boards, stacks of mouldering paper, shoes decayed to the point where only the soles were left. Beth crouched, her spear high, waiting for the attack: any of these rubbish-dunes might be hiding a blade made from a broken car door, or reshape itself into an eggshell-eyed face that would spit rusting nails at her with bullet-like velocity.

  Minutes came and went, and there was no attack. The sea of garbage remained quiescent. Beth drew in a shuddering breath and waded towards the door.

  The corridors were equally filled with trash. Beth couldn’t force her way through it and instead had to clamber over it. She was painfully aware that every second out of contact with the masonry weakened her, but Pen’s name just kept spinning round her mind, goading her onwards. She reached the emergency stairwell and began to scale the trashslide that covered it like a mountaineer.

  She was impressed; she’d heard the rumours that Gutterglass, under attack on all sides, had found the landfill fastness north of Euston too vast to defend and had relocated south, towards the city’s centre – but she hadn’t realised the trash-spirit had brought the dump with it.

  Beth guessed that for Glas, this was the equivalent of some aristocrat moving out of their stately home and trying to fit all their old posh furniture in a one-bedroom flat.

  Must feel cramped, she thought.

  She rose through storey after storey, reaching down through the chaotic mulch of rotting meat and crushed lightbulbs and Thames knew what else to brush the concrete floor with her fingertips. She could sense a spark of consciousness through her outstretched fingertips, but it was diffuse: Glas was obviously here – and equally obviously in no hurry to manifest. One other thing was certain too: the old spirit knew she was here.

  She kept climbing.

  The top floor was a little less choked with rubbish, and Beth was able to walk upright. Wide windows opened onto a million sparks of the city night.

  Perched on the stripped casing of an old washing machine, knees tucked under chin, apparently admiring the view, was a figure cowled in black plastic. Beth heard the cheep and chitter of rats.

  ‘Here comes the source of all my joy, who brought me all my woe.’ The voice, reedy and sing-song, was squeezed from washing-up-bottle lungs and rubber-band vocal chords, belying the power of its owner. ‘But what she doth intend with me, only the seas and the streets do know.

  ‘Well’ – the voice became wry – ‘perhaps the seas, the streets and the occasional attentive trash-spirit …’

  Gutterglass turned and regarded Beth with eggshell eyes set in an almost featureless papier-mâché head. Fingers made of empty cigarette lighters held up a phial of transparent liquid. ‘Looking for this? No need to look so surprised, My Lady. The synod’s pigeons may be soaked in their chemicals, but they are still pigeons.’ The seneschal nodded towards the roof, and somewhere in the shadows something cooed. ‘They still talk. Unlike some people I could mention.’ There was a bitter twist to the trash-spirit’s tone. ‘I’ve been waiting for you.’

  Beth eyed Glas uneasily. My Lady? she thought. She scanned the rubbish until she found a discarded door from a bathroom cabinet. She turned its mirrored front towards Glas and raised her eyebrows questioningly.

  Gutterglass snorted. ‘Yes, that used to be home.’ The eggshell eyes peered into the glass and stubby fingers smoothed nonexistent eyebrows. ‘I was a doctor, and then a scientist. I wanted to know what lay under the surface of things.’ There was a chittering commotion under the black plastic sack. ‘So I did what scientists do: I theorised and I conducted experiments, and one of them brought me here.’ Glas looked at the phial. ‘This one, to be precise. It’s a compound of three common, overlooked waste chemicals. I’ve always been good at making things from what other people throw away.

  ‘I believe I’m the only person ever to make that particular journey �
� at least I was, until a few days ago. On it, I met her … or perhaps’ – a rip in the papier-mâché curled like a smile – ‘perhaps I mean you.’ The eggshell gaze took in her cable-hair and her architectural skin.

  Beth shook her head firmly. Gutterglass didn’t contradict her, but the papier-mâché smile remained.

  It curled tighter when Beth popped the cap off her marker and wrote on the mirror.

  ‘What was … a scientist doing under … the thumb of a god?’ Glas read the message good-humouredly, head tilted to one side. ‘Oh, Miss Bradley, what do you think I was doing? Who better than a scientist – an explorer? I’d spent my entire life looking for the thing just beyond the edge of my understanding, and I found it in her: an infinity of it. I fell in love.’ Glas’ voice was as wistful as the makeshift materials would allow. ‘How could I not? But’ – split-pen fingers tossed the phial and caught it – ‘you didn’t come here for a personal history, did you?’

  Beth smeared away the writing from the mirror-surface. She curled her other hand tightly around Pen’s picture. Please have an answer, she thought. Any answer.

  Steeling herself, she turned the mirror around.

  ‘What do I want for it?’ Glas sounded genuinely surprised. Then the hidden lungs wheezed out a laugh. ‘Oh, My Lady, you’ve been spending too much time with Johnny Naphtha. Is that what’s got you so wound up? I’m genuinely curious. What did you think I’d ask you to give me? Or did you stalk up here with Filius’ railing in your fist because you thought you’d have to fight me for it?’

  The binbags stretched like black wings as Glas spread arms made of unwound coat-hangers. The trash-spirit accreted towards Beth on a tide of insects, and Beth stiffened in shock as Gutterglass embraced her.

  ‘You poor, naïve goddess,’ the reedy voice wheezed into her ear. ‘What could I possibly ask you for? You’re already doing everything I could ever want you to do – becoming everything I could ever want you to be.’ Glas stood back and looked at Beth fondly.

  ‘You look so much like her. So much.’ An old sponge tongue wetted the lips to keep them from crumbling as they flexed. ‘And even if there were something’ – another shrug, this time sadder – ‘one does not bargain with one’s gods.’

  Glas offered Beth the phial with the shy smile of a child giving its mum something it’d made for her. ‘You can take it. All you need to do is command it of me.’

  Beth stiffened at the word. There was something triumphant in the eggshell eyes. Glas had seen her flinch, and knew she understood.

  ‘After all, I’ve made much bigger sacrifices for my religion.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  ‘Can’t sleep, Countess?’

  The elder of the two guards in the Hall of Beauty sounded concerned, but there was no suspicion in his voice. He clearly had no idea Pen had been out of the palace tonight.

  ‘Nerves,’ she said, as if admitting a secret.

  The man’s seam-split face creased indulgently. He looked in his sixties, and his grey stubble peppered his chin perfectly symmetrically.

  Pen smiled back at him. She was more comfortable playing up to his paternal smile than to his younger colleague’s gawking admiration. ‘It’s my first year.’

  ‘You’ll be golden,’ he assured her. ‘How could you not be? You’ve got everything you need right there.’

  Pen ducked her head. ‘I just hope I don’t forget what I’m supposed to say, or swear in front of the camera, you know? All those people … I was wondering—’ She looked up at him from under the edge of her hijab, shy but hopeful. ‘Could I get in, to practise? Just to get the feel of the place – I won’t touch anything.’ She jerked her head over her shoulder at Espel with what she hoped was the right amount of imperiousness. ‘That way my lady-in-waiting could go over my speech with me.’

  The guard hesitated, but then he winked at her. There it was again, that trust; that sense that a face so familiar couldn’t be anything but a friend. ‘Can’t see any problem with that,’ he said. ‘Long as you don’t tell anyone.’

  *

  In the dark, the Goutierre Device was a sleeping monster. Its panes of glass glinted in the moonlight that shone through the chamber’s vast windows, hanging in the air like fangs, ready to fall on any unsuspecting sacrifice. Tiered seating had been erected around the machine like benches in a Roman circus, from which the privileged few would be invited to watch the beast feed.

  The second the doors closed behind them, Pen saw Espel’s posture shift; the slight deferential hunch she’d maintained slid off her like water. Pen wondered whether her own shape had changed too. Had her deception inhabited her muscles as well as her voice? Had she been standing more and more like her mirror-sister?

  Espel crossed to the control panel, her feet silent on the thick carpet, raised her voice and said, ‘That’s good, Countess, almost there, but it’s “My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen”. You mustn’t forget the gentlemen, else they get terribly upset.’

  While she was speaking, she snapped her fingers at Pen and pointed to the leather-clad bench at the centre of the device.

  ‘Ah … “My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen”,’ Pen said, trying to remember the speech she’d watched Parva practising on film. She matched Espel’s volume, eyeing the narrow crack between the double doors as she hopped up onto the bench. Goutierre’s Eye hung over her, the tiny sun around which the manifold glass lenses turned in their orbits.

  ‘Welcome to the Draw for the – uh … two hundred and fifth?’

  ‘Two hundred and fourth,’ Espel corrected her

  ‘Two hundred and fourth Looking-Glass Lottery. We are joined by … Uh, no, sorry. Can we go from the top?’

  ‘That’s okay, Countess,’ Espel announced encouragingly. ‘In your own time.’

  Pen dropped her voice. ‘Well?’ she murmured. ‘Can you work it?’

  ‘I think so.’ Espel’s answering whisper fizzed with excitement. From where she was lying, all Pen could see was a crowd of backlit silhouettes caught in the overlapping panes of glass.

  ‘The interface for calibrating the Eye is more complicated than it looks on TV,’ Espel whispered. ‘I’m going to need a little time.’ She raised her voice again. ‘Oh, Countess, really now, there’s no need to cry.’

  ‘Cry?’ Pen hissed dangerously.

  The manifold silhouettes shrugged. Pen ground her teeth together and then twisted her throat to choke out the closest sound she could make to a sob.

  ‘Hey, hey,’ Espel said soothingly. ‘It’s okay. Remember, everyone’s rooting for you. Let’s just pause for a second. Take as much time as you need, ma’am’

  ‘You’re having way too much fun with this,’ Pen muttered.

  The half-dozen shadow-Espels stuck out half a dozen shadow-tongues. There was a faint tapping of computer keys as the steeplejill programmed the device.

  ‘So tell me,’ Espel whispered, ‘what did Old Lady Case want you to give me a raise for?’ She sounded almost casual, like she was just making conversation, but there was a very slight edge in her voice.

  ‘Gratitude, mostly,’ Pen replied. ‘For keeping me out of the weather.’

  Espel hissed a suppressed laugh. ‘And what else? I can’t see gratitude moving Maggie Case to much.’

  You’re wrong, Pen thought. Being grateful for who and where she was moved the old mirrorstocrat to the most terrible things. Pen was very, very afraid of Senator Case’s gratitude.

  ‘What else?’ Espel repeated.

  ‘She’d heard the rumours about you and me being … um … together,’ Pen said. ‘She wanted you to buy some more features – “make it respectable”. Her words,’ Pen added hurriedly, ‘not mine.’

  The tapping of the keys faltered for a heartbeat, then resumed. ‘Huh,’ Espel said softly, and then a few keystrokes later, ‘too ugly to date the Face of the Looking-Glass Lottery, hey?’ She snorted in a way that was almost a laugh. Almost. ‘Well, I suppose that’s not news to anyone.’

  ‘You’r
e not ugly.’

  ‘Oh no, I am ugly, Countess,’ Espel corrected her flatly. ‘If ugly means anything, it means me. Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but all the beholders are agreed, and I ain’t got it. And, you know what?’ she said. Her whisper took on a hard, angry edge. ‘That’s fine. I don’t want them to think I’m beautiful. What I want is for it not to matter that they don’t.’

  There was silence, filled only with keystrokes.

  Pen looked up. Above her, the ultimate beholding eye glittered in its shaft of moonlight. Her throat was tight. Say it, she scolded herself.

  ‘I get that,’ she whispered. ‘I really do. But … just a point of fact, one small detail … and this can matter as much or as little as you like—’ She paused to steady her voice, though it wasn’t insincerity that made it tremble. ‘As far as beauty goes, there’s at least one beholder who thinks you have very much got it.’

  The silhouettes in the glass went very still. Pen could hear her heart slamming in her ears.

  At last Espel spoke. ‘Don’t move. It’s ready.’

  A switch was flicked, and over her head Goutierre’s Eye began to rotate in its cage. A beam of white light tracked slowly from Pen’s right ear to her nose and back again. The device was scanning her, seeing her. It was a strange relief, to be seen like that, unfiltered by envy or pity or revilement or lust or expectation, just to be seen as she was.

  The Eye spun faster, silent and frictionless in its cage. The stormy ribbon at its heart shifted, spreading as though by centripetal force. Its flurry of images scattered across the inside of the little orb, millions of fragmented faces pressed up against the glass like eager children. Even though she knew it was impossible – they were all far too small – Pen could swear she could make out their features, their piecemeal eyes and noses and smiles, crow’s-feet and laughter lines. Her heart began to trip. She refused to blink, desperately scanning for that one familiar face. A droplet of sweat ran past her reconstructed ear.