Beth took a big bite. Suddenly she was ravenously hungry.
‘You want a bit of this?’ she mumbled around the mouthful of bread and bacon.
Fil declined with a smirk. ‘Don’t need it.’
Beth swallowed. ‘Oh yeah, your weird synthesis thing. Don’t you ever just
eat
? You know, ’cause it tastes good?’
‘Sure, a good bit of tarmac-cake or a few petrolberries,
when I get time. Nothing like
that.
’ He eyed Beth’s sandwich with a mix of curiosity and intense distrust. ‘Speakin’ of which, what time is it?’ he asked.
She glanced at her G-Shock. ‘Six twenty-three in the a.m.’
‘Then we can relax; the people we’re going to see won’t be up for a bit.’
Darkness still covered the street behind Waterloo Station where they sat, but besuited office workers bustled to and fro. The news kiosks were manned and the headlines fresh. Cars and buses hissed over the asphalt.
‘What I don’t get,’ Beth said, ‘is why you think we’re going to have trouble getting people on our side. I mean, Reach is blatantly dangerous, so why aren’t your mum’s worshippers queuing round the block to have him got rid of?’
He looked at her like she was a prize-winning idiot. ‘You’re kidding, right?
Because
he’s blatantly dangerous. We’ve never had do anything like this before. Mater Viae always gathered the army, and she always led it herself, before Reach grew too strong to kill.’ He looked grim. ‘My mother’s left us right in the lurch.
With
her around, people got scared, and so they acted.
Without
her, they get scared and pretend it’s not their problem. They draw boundaries: “Let Reach stay in the Square Mile,” they say, “and we’ll live and let live.” And when he breaks those borders, they give him new ones: north of the river, east of the park, stuff like that.’
He picked dirt from under his fingernails and flicked it
absentmindedly at a nearby pigeon. ‘And the longer they leave it, the stronger Reach gets, and the stronger he gets, the scareder
they
get, and so they leave it even longer. It’s a vicious cycle: stupid, but that’s how it works.’
Well, this is a carnival of bloody optimism
, Beth thought. ‘But those people,’ she insisted, ‘those people, from last night – the men and Women in the Walls. Don’t they have friends, families?’
‘Sure they do,’ Fil sighed, ‘but for every man or woman demanding vengeance for their murdered brother, there’re three more who’ll curl up in a corner and beg you not to hurt them too.’
He squirmed under Beth’s appalled gaze. ‘Don’t look at me like that,’ he said. ‘I don’t know which way I’d go myself yet. And despite what you’re thinking, I bet you don’t either.’
Beth wondered what had happened to the brash kid who’d declared:
I’m the most dangerous thing on the street.
He was sloughing off layers of bravado at a rate that frightened her.
When sunlight began to spear from behind the horizon’s taller buildings, he stretched and slung his spear over his shoulder. ‘Come on, finish your munching. We need to get moving.’
They threaded through the early morning crowds. A few people looked askance at the pavement-skinned teenager, shirtless in the cold, but only a few – after all, if you didn’t inspect him too closely there were dozens of weirder performers working London’s streets.
They ducked off the main drag and hopped a fence with a diamond-shaped yellow sign warning:
High Voltage: Danger of Death
. Fil climbed up a fire escape onto a roof and walked towards a pair of towering pipes that were belching out air-con vapour. He leaned on the nearest pipe and paused, pursing his lips in thought. ‘Okay, Beth,’ he said, ‘the people we’re about to meet are uppity, arrogant and excruciatingly bloody irritating, i.e. they’re
nobility
. I’m warning you in advance, because we have to be polite to ’em, and because—’
‘Because I have a big mouth?’
He nodded emphatically.
‘Okay,’ Beth said, ‘but I don’t know what you’re worried about. I
can
control myself, you know. Just now, when you said “arrogant, uppity and irritating”, I didn’t say a
word
about pots, kettles and being bla—’
He gave her a playful shove. ‘
Walk.
And take off your watch, I don’t want the glass reflecting somebody’s eyeball and causing a diplomatic incident.’
Beth considered asking him what on earth he was talking about, but she was rapidly giving that particular question up as a waste of breath. She slipped the G-shock into her pocket.
When they rounded the pipes they were confronted by a rectangular shape draped in black fabric, about the height and width of a shipping container. He yanked away the cloth to reveal a frameless slab of mirrored glass.
Beth studied her own reflection in the mirror. She’d lost
weight in the days she’d been on the streets. Her cheekbones jutted out now, and her skin was dirty. She looked rough, sleep-deprived.
‘Did you put this here?’
‘It had to be out of the way so they wouldn’t hurt anybody.’
‘
Who
wouldn’t?’ Beth tried not to sound exasperated, but she did wish, just once, he’d give her a plain answer.
‘You’ll see.’ He stood a little straighter and tapped on the glass three times with the butt of his railing. ‘His Highness Filius Viae, Son of the Streets, Prince Ascendant of London, Heir and Protector to all her colonies,’ he intoned formally, ‘requests and requires an audience with the Seven Senators of the Most Noble Order of the Silvered Glass.’
Beth leaned into him. ‘Nice title,’ she whispered.
‘Yeah, the Mirrorstocracy
love
all that pomp and circumstance stuff.’
‘What, and you don’t?’
They exchanged a long look, and he blushed.
‘I believe that’s what they call “busted”, your Highness,’ Beth murmured.
‘Hush.’
They waited. Birds cawed overhead, but nothing else happened. Fil rapped on the mirror again. ‘His Highness, Filius—’ he began again, but this time he was interrupted by a stuffy voice that sounded like its owner had spent about a century gargling dust.
‘Very well, very well – no need to hurry. How very uncouth.’
In the mirror Beth saw a stooped old man walk onto the roof. He appeared from the reflection’s edge, as though he’d been lurking behind them, just out of sight. He approached until he stood right between mirror-Beth and mirror-Fil.
A shiver went up Beth’s spine. A glance sideways confirmed what she already knew: there
was
no old man beside her. He existed only in the reflection.
‘
Harrumph
,’ said the old man. He was dressed in a purple uniform with gold piping and a beret and looked like a cross between a brigadier and an incredibly ancient bellboy.
He peered doubtfully out of the mirror at them. ‘You don’t
look
much like a Prince Ascendant,’ he said. He plucked distastefully at the jeans of Fil’s reflection and Beth was faintly appalled to see his
real
jeans ripple, just as if they’d been pinched by invisible fingers.
Fil cocked an eyebrow. ‘You don’t look much like the Seven Senators of the Silvered Glass, so I reckon that makes us even.’
‘How very uncouth. I am the Senate’s
agent-de-porte.
Anything you wish to say to them, you may say to me,’ the reflection of the old man declared haughtily. ‘I shall raise your petition with them at their earliest convenience.’
‘We need to see them now.’
Wispy grey hairs jutted from the reflected man’s chin
as he stuck it out. ‘No,’ he said. And then harrumphed again, and repeated, ‘How
very
uncouth.’
While Fil hesitated, trying to think of some way to claw back the initiative, Beth stepped forward, trying to calculate the consequences of pissing off the gnarled bellboy before deciding she didn’t care anyway.
She cleared her throat noisily. ‘Right you are, Doorkeep,’ she said, in the most offensively chirpy tone she could manage. ‘Then when you’ve got a minute, you can tell the Senators that their Goddess’ son is outside – tell them he looks like he sleeps in a storm drain; they’ll know it’s him – and that he would very much appreciate it if they would get off their stuck-up, inbred backsides and come to the door so he can get on with the serious business of waging war against a maniac crane-toting God.’
She waited until the reflected face of the
agent-de-porte
had gone milky-pale before adding, ‘Do you think their earliest convenience might be
soon
?’
The Doorkeep hustled back out of the side of the reflection.
Fil let out his breath explosively. ‘
Beth!
’
‘Fil.’
‘What happened to
polite
?’
Beth shrugged. ‘He was pissing me off. Besides, uppity bouncers are the same everywhere, Puffa jacket or tux, makes no odds. Give ’em a problem above their pay grade, they always kick it up the chain.’
He stared at her and she smirked;
All right
, she admitted
to herself,
maybe I am showing off a bit
. ‘I can see you’ve never tried to blag your way into an over-twenty-ones night in Camden.’ She jerked her head at the mirror. ‘Who are they anyway? He looked – well, I don’t want to sound to crazy here, but he looked human.’
‘The Mirrorstocracy, lords-under-glass,’ he replied, still looking at her like she was utterly mad. ‘They’re sometimes born when a person gets caught between two mirrors.’
‘You what now?’
‘Two mirrors,’ he repeated testily. ‘You know all those infinitely receding reflections you get? Well every reflection has a little bit of reality in it, and every now and then they add up to someone like Doorkeep there: a living, breathing copy on the other side of the glass. The Mirrorstocracy are really,
really
prickly – I can’t believe you—’
‘Shhh, they’re coming back,’ Beth said, fixing on a smile. If this Mirrorstocracy were anything like the posh kids she occasionally sold paintings to, then you could bitch your heart out, as long as you pretended to be nice while you did it. She was going to enjoy this.
Seven figures – three men in grey suits, four women in grey skirts and white blouses – swept into view on the reflected rooftop. They walked like they had the deeds to the world in their back pockets. They stopped
exactly
level with Beth and Fil’s reflections, not a fraction of an inch forward or back. They were marking their status.
One of the mirror-women directed a minute curtsey at Fil. She had walnutty skin and a sour mouth. ‘Highness,’ she said.
Fil bowed his head at the mirror.
‘Excellency.’
‘Your friend gave our
agent-de-porte
quite a turn. What can we do for you, Son of the Streets?’
He smiled. ‘I’m here to invoke your vassalage. Load your glass guns and unwind your garrottes.’ He frowned, as though something was only just occurring to him. ‘Have a dig around for any welding-torches that might have been caught in-mirror as well, will you? The scrap we’re heading into, I think we’ll be needing them.’
If this bizarre request startled the woman, she didn’t show it. ‘You’re
recruiting
.’
He nodded. ‘It’s a man’s life in the army, but don’t let that put you off.’
The lines on the woman’s brown skin contorted as if she was struggling gamely for a smile, but not quite getting there. ‘And I assume the target of this expedition is Reach?’
He grinned.
‘So the Urchin Prince is finally stepping into his Mother’s footprints. How do they feel, Highness?’
‘A little on the large side,’ he admitted. ‘But I’ll grow into them.’
‘I’m sure you will.’ The Senator pursed her lips, then said, ‘I’m afraid we can’t help you, Filius Viae, as much as we would like to.’
His smiled hardened. ‘Really? Why not?’
‘If you consult Imago Seventy-three of the Treaty of Palindromes, it specifies that only Mater Viae herself is empowered to enforce our vassalage. Well, it actually states:
egalassav s’ycarcotsrorriM eht ecrofne yam sseddoG eht ylno
, but it’s polite to translate.’ The Senator’s voice dripped with phony diplomatic regret. ‘Obviously, we would gladly release the legions to
her
, but as everyone knows, she has been missing this last decade, and in her absence, the treaty must remain in abeyance. Even in the face of such an august figure as yourself, our hands are tied.’
You could have napped flint with Fil’s smile now. ‘What’s this about, Maggie?’
The Senator sighed as if to say,
Well, if you’re going to be so ill-mannered as to insist on me being honest …
‘We suspected that such a request might soon be made. It doesn’t take a mathematician to count the cranes on the horizon. The appropriate response to this delicate question was debated in Senate. I can assure your Highness that there were full-throated opinions on both sides—’
‘I’m sure.’
‘—but, after due reflection, it was felt that given Reach’s current proclivity for building glass towers, he might make a better ally than a foe.’
Fil’s jaw dropped so far you could have shoved a football down his throat. ‘
What?
’
‘Well, the more reflective surfaces there are in
your
city,
the more opportunity
we
have to redomicile conventional singly-reflected persons to
our
city as Plebeians.’
He said in disgust, ‘You mean
slaves
.’
‘Serfs, technically.’ The Senator, like all politicians, was clearly sweet on semantics.
Fil stared at her in silence for a long moment. Then his expression changed from furious to thoughtful and he rocked back on his heels. He shoved his spare hand in his pocket and his smile returned. ‘Okay,’ he said, and he turned back towards the fire escape.
Beth started. ‘
Okay?
Fil, that’s it?’
He spread his hands. ‘You heard Her Excellency. They’ve made up what passes for their minds; nothing we can do to change them now—’ He paused. ‘Of course, there are three obvious reasons why that decision’ll result in their republic collapsing into raging bloody anarchy. But I’m sure they’ll have covered those in their “full-throated debate”.’ He shrugged, as though to say
some you win …