The Senator’s clearing of the throat was delicately audible. ‘I am sure we
will
have discussed them, you are right, of course – but just to be certain, might I enquire, Highness,
what
reasons?’
He smiled like an adder and ticked them off on his fingers. ‘First, there’s the fact that Reach is a psychotic monster, so only someone with a really
cavernously
empty skull would rely on him to do anything.
‘Second, Mater Viae
is
coming back, stomping up the warpath like she does, and she’ll be
bloodlettingly
unhappy
that you didn’t come when her favourite little boy called.’ He shrugged. ‘But if you’re okay with that …’
The Senators in the mirror looked at each other in consternation as he put his foot on the fire-escape ladder.
‘Um, Fil?’ Beth started. Somehow she felt this was her cue. ‘You said three reasons?’
The grey boy folded his skinny arms on the top rung and set his chin on them. ‘So I did.’ His smile vanished, his cheeks darkened and for a second he looked furiously, frighteningly angry. ‘The other reason you should think again, your Excellencies, is this: if you don’t, I’ll stick up pairs of giant mirrors facing each other across Trafalgar Square, Bishopsgate and Oxford bloody Circus.’
Senator Maggie paled, but there were confused laughs from some of the others, and one old man said defiantly, ‘So what?’
He sucked his teeth. ‘So I reckon that’s at least a couple of hundred thousand people being caught between them every day. Say only five per cent of them cross over; that’s ten
thousand
new Mirrorstocrats.
Daily.
I’ll flood London-Under-Glass with sodding aristos until the mirrorsquitos can’t suck a drop of blood that’s not blue.’ He licked his lips as if savouring the prospect.
‘I’ll tip your bottom-heavy society right on its face.’ He waved at them. ‘Bye! Enjoy cleaning your own palaces and breaking your own backs on the sun farms, because you can kiss goodbye to your fat-arsed privilege when there’s only one of your poor-bugger Plebeians to every hundred of you.’
He hawked and then spat, very deliberately, on the roof. ‘Think about it,’ he said, and turned away.
Beth looked back at the faces of the Mirrorstocracy. They were all white with impotent fury, except for Senator Maggie, who kept that sour smile on her face.
‘Fat-arsed privilege?’ she said mildly. ‘Spoken like a true prince.’
They hit the ground, jumped over the fence and ran down the alley back towards the main road, laughing wildly. Beth felt immense, euphoria surging in her, like when she and Pen pulled off some beautiful mural.
At that thought, Pen’s brown eyes flashed into Beth’s mind and she stopped short and swallowed, but the grey-skinned boy was still grinning at her and she felt her own smile burst back.
‘Got ’em!’ Fil shouted jubilantly. ‘
Now
I’m having fun.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Definitely. There’s no way they can face down a threat like that.’ He embraced her impulsively, squeezing the air from her, then let her go.
‘What was that for?’
‘For your big mouth. You were so river-bleeding rude to ’em, and they took it, so I figured I could take the high hand too.’
His skin was shiny with city-grease and when Beth looked down she saw her hoodie was smeared with it. ‘Wow,’ she
said, ‘that’s pretty gross, you know that? Do you
sweat
motor oil or something?’
‘Get used to it,‘ he said with a grin. ‘Stay with me, you’ll get a good coat of it yourself in no time. It’s handy – keeps out the chill.’
‘So sign me up – I’m freezing.’
‘Right you are.‘ He reached around her and smeared her face and her clothes with it and she squealed and struggled and laughed and he laughed too as he wrestled her to the ground. They struggled in the dirt for a few seconds, struggling to fight, breathe and giggle all at once, until Beth slid out from underneath him and got on top, bending his arm back and pinning him down.
For a fraction of a second her mouth hovered over his. He stopped laughing. Beth was suddenly, shockingly, aware of the strength of his thin arms, of the fact that he was
letting
her pin him. She felt the heat of his breath against her lips and she panicked.
Heat flooded into her face and to cover her embarrassment she stuck her tongue out at him and jumped away.
Then he cracked up again and she felt hysterical laughter boil up out of her.
When the echoes of their laughter had finally faded they were both lying on their backs, panting for breath. Hesitantly, she slid her hand over the asphalt and took his. Her sleeve had hitched up and their bare arms touched, their tower-block-crown tattoos resting side by side.
‘Thank you,’ he whispered to her.
‘What for?’
‘For being here.’
That night they drank to celebrate what Fil assured her was their first successful recruitment. He’d boiled up clear green liquor over a fire he’d set in a metal dustbin. Beth felt her head swim as the heat of it trickled through her, turning her limbs to warm mud. The skinny boy drank twice as much as she did, and sang stupid Latin songs horribly off-key. He would have fallen flat on his face if she hadn’t caught him. They folded together into a comfortable heap and with her head resting on his shoulder and him already snoring, Beth, contented, drifted off to sleep.
She woke in the pale silver dawn, bleary-eyed and stiff, her cheek glued to the concrete by early morning frost. Fil sat opposite, winding fresh strips of torn poster around his burns. A train sounded in the distance. Its whistle was wrong somehow. Beth couldn’t quite say why, but it sounded thin … wounded.
He cocked his head, listening, then he noticed she was awake and gave her a tired smile. ‘Recognise that sound?’ he asked her.
‘The train?’
‘Not just any train: that’s your Railwraith, the one you were riding the night we met. She’s been following us for two days now, keeping as close as she can on the tracks. Any idea what she wants?’
Beth shook her head. ‘I don’t even know why she picked me up in the first place.’
A broad smile split his face. ‘Seriously? You don’t even know that? But that’s obvious – you were a passenger. You wanted to go somewhere –
anywhere
– and she sensed it. Wraiths
get
passengers: passengers are what they remember, what they do. Passengers make ’em happy.’
He stretched and settled against the wall next to her. ‘Mind you, what she wants with you now you’re with me is anyone’s guess. Maybe she blames you for getting her mauled by that freight train; maybe she’s looking for payback. Then again, p’raps she’s lonely and just wants a friend. Railwraiths are pretty unstable at the best of times, and after what that one went through she’s bound to be a little barking.’
Beth winced. The clash and churn of the immense ghostengines was burned into the memory of her body. She huddled up and pulled her hoodie down over her knees.
‘Cold?’
‘No,’ Beth said flatly, ‘practising for my future career as a contortionist.’
He threw an arm around her. His bony hip jabbed her uncomfortably, but he gave off a surprising amount of heat. ‘S’all right. She can’t survive away from the tracks for more than a few minutes. We stay off the rails, we’ll be fine. Besides, you’re with me now.’
Beth snorted. ‘Given everything, I have a hard time believing that makes me safer, Fil. But thanks.’
‘Fair point, but tell what you what: I’ll do my best to make sure I get killed before you do. Can’t say fairer than that, can I?’
A little shiver went through Beth as he spoke at the thought of him dying. That’d been the first thing he’d told her about himself:
Someone’s trying to kill me.
‘Nah,’ she said, forcing herself to smile. ‘Very kind.’
‘You’re sure this is the place?’
‘Positive.’
Mr Bradley’s fingers drummed on the small stack of photos they’d run off on his home printer. Pen knew them pretty well as they’d been taken from her mobile. She wished she’d been surprised that he didn’t have a recent shot of his daughter.
On the off-chance, she’d also printed a couple of copies of the sketch of the scrawny boy; it was just possible they’d find someone who might recognise him.
He hesitated and then said, ‘Parva, you’re Beth’s best friend. I want you to know that if she isn’t— Well, if we don’t—’ He muttered, ‘Well, then I’m sorry.’
Pen flinched but didn’t reply.
His words spilled on into the silence. ‘Beth was always Marianne’s little girl more than mine. When Marianne died, I … I went inside myself, it was like I was trapped there.’ He swallowed. ‘I couldn’t get out to Beth. I
tried
,
inside I tried to find a way to make myself, but I couldn’t reach her.’
She wouldn’t let you
, Pen thought.
If it had been me, I wouldn’t have let you either.
‘I just,’ he went on, ‘I didn’t know how to go about
caring
. There wasn’t anything to
grip.
I don’t do well with all that stuff, emotional stuff, I mean. It doesn’t come naturally. What else was I supposed to do?’
Pen couldn’t bring herself to deliver some platitude. She bit her lip and then said quietly, ‘Try harder.’ She let herself out of the car and stamped up the rickety wooden steps.
She heard Mr Bradley’s car door slam as he climbed out and followed her, wheezing, up the steps behind her.
‘Come on, Mr B,’ she said, trying to get past the awkwardness of the moment, ‘the workout’s good for you. I bet she’s—’ She tailed off.
‘What?’ he asked, but then he too saw and fell silent.
Ahead of them, the bridge gave way to nothingness. The stairs on other side of it had been ripped away and the ends of the planks protruded like split, dirty fingernails into the black.
And it
was
black. Every streetlight was out, and the concrete clearing behind the estates was invisible. On the other side a light glowed weakly for an instant, barely disrupting the murk, and then it was gone.
Mr Bradley looked bemused.
‘How do we—?’ he murmured, but Pen had already jumped down.
Glass crunched under her feet as she landed. On the ground she could make out the clearing a little better. Her breath stalled.
The place had been ripped
apart
.
The streetlamps had been uprooted like metal trees, wire roots sprawling from the concrete clods at their bases. The glass bulbs were smashed, the remains strewn across the ground.
She heard a
whoomph
of breath and a muttered swearword. Mr Bradley came up behind her shoulder. ‘What happened here?’ He sounded bewildered.
Pen tried to answer, but her throat constricted and she couldn’t speak. She stared at the place where she’d thought her best friend would be waiting for her, where she’d found only the aftermath of violence.
The light on the far side of the yard flared again. Briefly illuminated, something glinted by Pen’s foot. She uttered a little cry.
Mr Bradley shouted, ‘What is it?’
Pen pointed downwards as the light pulsed again. A severed hand clutched at the pile of planks that had once been the steps of the bridge.
He collapsed to his knees and reached for it. ‘Oh God, oh God—’ His voice faltered, and then relief flooded into it. ‘Parva, it’s all right—’ He lifted the thing up. ‘Look, Parva it’s not real, it’s— Ow! It’s glass, it’s made of glass!’
It was immaculate: the bones, the muscles, even the
pores of the skin, were all sculpted in smooth glass, and fine strands of dull grey metal twisted through it in place of veins and arteries.
The glow came again from the other side of the courtyard. Mr Bradley stood marvelling at the glass hand, but Pen shouldered past him and walked towards the light source. A thin wheezing sound carried through the dark: stuttering little breaths, and Pen felt her heart flutter.
The glow came again and at last Pen saw the source clearly. She broke into a run, skidding to her knees beside it.
It was a glass woman, and she twisted her head, her eyes wide, as if she’d sensed Pen arriving but couldn’t see her. Both of her legs and one arm ended in short, ragged stumps, surrounded by glittering dust as though the limbs had been crushed to powder. Pen could see her lungs through her transparent skin. Each time she breathed, the lungs compressed and her glass heart beat, and with each heartbeat, the wires that ran through her glowed.
‘It’s okay,’ Pen found herself whispering. It blatantly
wasn’t
okay, but she didn’t know what else to say. She cooed as if to a small child, gently lifting the shattered woman’s head and grasping her one remaining hand. It was smooth and hard, and rapidly giving up its heat to the air. ‘We’re here now,’ Pen said softly, ‘we’ll help you.’ Although she had no clue how she could help at all.
Suddenly the woman sat up hard. She opened her mouth so wide Pen could see glass tonsils. Her eyes were screwed
up, as though she was screaming. She didn’t make a sound, but flared off a brilliant flash.
Pen was blinded. The world vanished into coarse-grained darkness. She groped around for the woman and something snagged her finger. She felt blood. She heard the clink of the woman falling back, and her own breath was panicked.
Then Mr Bradley cried out, ‘
Parva!
’
Pen stumbled through the darkness towards his voice, yelling, ‘Mr B! Mr B!’ over and over. Her voice sounded thin and deranged.
‘Parva!’ He was close; she could hear his panting breaths through the night. ‘Parva, my leg—’
She was close enough to make out the shape of him now, lying face-down on the tarmac. He had something wrapped around his ankle, a tourniquet of barbed wire. A taut strand led away from the prone man and disappeared into the black mouth of a nearby storm drain. Pen crouched and pulled at it, but it was tight around his leg, and her fingers came back bloody.
Mr Bradley lurched suddenly, and the wire started dragging him backwards over the pavement. He screamed in pain as he slid along the ground, twisting and flailing for purchase on the asphalt. Pen cast around for something she could use to cut him free. She clutched absurdly at her clothes, as if she carried pair of wire-cutters in her pockets.