‘Hang on, M-Mr B, just, just hang on; I’ll—’
Orange light flared then, shattering the darkness like an instant dawn. Pen gaped at it as it stormed up over the broken bridge, coalescing into human shape as it came close. She scrambled out of the way as the figure jumped from the bridge and landed lightly on the concrete. It was another woman, like the first, but not identical – a sister, maybe – and she was burning with a far stronger inner fire. The woman extended one hand towards Mr Bradley and flexed her glowing fingers in a peremptory motion.
With a sickening, adhesive sound, the wire’s barbs began to come free, glinting in the woman’s light. The wire strands wavered, as if they were fighting some invisible magnetism.
The glass woman crooked her fingers into claws and bent her back in effort. Tendrils of barbed wire snaked grudgingly out of the storm drain: yard after yard, the inch-long thorns gleaming. The wirething thrashed, apparently trapped by whatever force the glass woman was projecting.
Her head was bowed and her hand extended as though in prayer. She sagged, her glass knees shaking with the effort.
A single skein of the barbed-wire thing reached for the ground. It wound and snapped in frustration, labouring through the heavy air.
The shining woman dropped to one knee. The glass rang on the pavement like a bell.
The barbed wire touched earth—
Suddenly, the monster was free from the glass woman’s
power. It accelerated instantly, lashing out at her. Barbs bit into glass with a sickening crunch and she staggered back, her light flickering. The wire blurred and coiled in the air, like a metal cloud anchored to the earth. Tendrils curved like hooks and struck with venomous speed, not towards the glass woman, but towards
Pen.
She had no time to get out of its way.
Metal whirled around her, whipping her hair. Pen gasped for breath, trapped in a vortex of wire. The whirling strands tightened around her, enclosing her in a spinning cocoon. The gaps closed up, extinguishing the light from the glass woman. Pen sucked in her stomach and screwed up her eyes, waiting for the barbs to touch her.
Silence. She heard nothing now, saw nothing, but she felt the needle-tips of the barbs on her eyelids. They were gentle, like a blind person learning a new face. They tickled her. Then pinpricks erupted all over her body, probing: under her arms, along the back of her neck, between her thighs, between her fingers. She felt the thorns sink in.
She wanted to scream, but she couldn’t expand her chest.
A second passed. Then another. Pen still didn’t dare open her eyes, but a spark of a thought filled her head:
I’m alive.
It was only now she realised she hadn’t expected to be. Warmth trickled over her body – wet, sticky warmth.
I’m bleeding
, she told herself, trying to be clinical,
but there’s not that much blood. I’m alive.
The wire thorns were in her, staunching the very wounds they’d made.
Pain rippled like fire over her skin, but it felt insignificant next to being alive.
Something like cold thin fingers prodded at her eyes, teasing her eyelashes; as a reflex they opened.
Mr Bradley was staring at her, his face slack with horror. She could see him because the glass woman was still there, kneeling on the ground, glowing.
I’m – I’m okay. It hurts, but …
But she realised she wasn’t speaking. Barbs held her throat tight and she could feel the fine metal thorns grip her lips when she tried to move them. There was a bead of blood under her nose; it tickled madly and she tried to brush it away, but she couldn’t. Her hand wouldn’t move either. She rolled her eyes as far as she could, trying to see her arm. It was wrapped in wire – her whole body was bound in a barbed-wire exoskeleton, and it was paralysed.
She
was paralysed.
‘Parva?’ Mr Bradley said uncertainly. ‘Parva, can you hear me?’
Pen couldn’t speak or make any sort of sign, but before she could follow that thought she felt her arm rise, dragged upwards by the wire around it. Her finger extended into a point—
—and suddenly the wires around her lips yanked them open and something lashed into her mouth. Pain stabbed through her tongue as the wire seized it.
Droplets of blood hit the floor of her mouth.
‘
Where is he?
’ The voice that came from her throat was grotesque, twisted, as if it was being
squeezed
out of her chest.
Mr Bradley looked ready to faint, but he straightened. ‘W-w-where’s who?’ he stammered.
‘
Where is he?
’ The wire jerked Pen’s hand.
Mr Bradley looked after the pointing finger, and so did she. Lying on the concrete were the photos that’d spilled from his pocket. Pen was pointing straight at the picture of the skinny bare-chested boy Beth had sketched.
‘I— I don’t know where he is, Parva. You
know
I don’t. We don’t know
who
he is. We don’t know where Beth—’
He was right: she
did
know that. It was the thing coiled around her that didn’t. The tendrils lashed out of her mouth and resealed it, leaving her tongue swollen in their wake.
To Pen’s utter terror, her feet began to move. The wires pulled and their barbs chided and her right foot stepped forward, and then her left. After a moment, her arms began to swing too, as though the creature that gripped her had needed a few steps to get the hang of it. The last thing she saw, before it turned her around, was Beth’s dad, reaching out to her.
But she’d already gone. The wires were moving her legs far faster than she ever could. As she began to pant for breath they relaxed their grip on her lungs and finally, as
she ran out on the path past the tower blocks, she could scream.
Paul Bradley ran after her, as fast as he could, but his leg was still bleeding and he couldn’t keep up. He stumbled to a halt, hands on his knees, panting.
Too fat and too slow, old man
, he cursed himself.
Warmth touched his back for an instant, then the glass woman burst past him, her feet ringing off the tarmac as she pursued Pen. He glimpsed her face, fixed in a snarl of agony. She was holding shards of the shattered bodies in her hands.
‘Wait!’ he gasped, ‘take me, help me— I have to—’
But she didn’t look back. He crumpled onto the ground as he watched her, the only light, disappearing into the distance.
Another one.
It was a chill, venomous needle of a thought, but it was true.
You lost another one.
He scrambled around in the darkness, groping for the fallen photos. He strained his eyes to make out the shapes in the photos, tracing a finger around the sketch of the boy with the spear.
Then he staggered towards the lit-up estates in the distance. A new wilderness had unfolded around him. There was a new logic. He didn’t know what was real, what was alive. He didn’t know the rules.
Where is he?
The rasp the metal thing had forced from Parva’s throat grated through his mind.
Where is he?
Certainty crystallised in him. All the people out there driving cars, tossing burgers, having sex, watching late-night TV: they all faded into irrelevance.
Beth was not in
that
city. She was with this boy’s city.
With him.
Steel yourself, Petris. Or, given the circumstances, should that be stone yourself? No, definitely steel. Stoning would be completely different. And painful. And tough to accomplish single-handed.
Of course, Petris reflected, if any of his flock caught him at what he was about to do, there would be no shortage of volunteers to chuck the first rock.
He was standing in a children’s playground in the middle of Victoria Park: a typically decayed seat of London infancy, with heavily graffiti’d slides, a climbing frame and four carved horses wobbling on rusty springs, grinning like they’d had too much ketamine.
He began to shiver, which, he told himself, was because the autumn chill had seeped into his punishment skin and
definitely
not because he was afraid.
After all, what did he have to be scared of? He was encased in granite armour two inches thick. His grip could tear steel-plate. He’d led warrior priests against scaffolding monsters and crushed them with his bare hands. What did
he
have to fear?
Well
, a treacherous inner voice supplied,
there’re the two thousand
other
bronze and stone-clad soldiers who can
also
tear steel. Let’s not dwell on what bits of you
they
might crush with their bare hands if they catch you, shall we?
Petris swigged down a pint of sewerspirit, wincing as the fermenting faecal taste filled his mouth. It was vile, but it was the strongest drink he could brew and the warmth of it was already drizzling into his muscles, its fug washing over his brain. He relaxed.
Cromwell had stumbled in on him as he’d been setting up the distilling apparatus. The bronze Roundhead had eyed the booze in the belljar and asked, ‘What’s the occasion, old man?’
Petris had given an unconvincing laugh. ‘Oh, I’m celebrating, you know:
finally
telling that jumped-up street-rat to swivel on his own railing.’
Cromwell had laughed himself, and even made the effort to tip his bronze helm to his high priest. Behind his stone mask Petris’ eyes had tracked the tip of Cromwell’s sword as he’d left the room.
What do I have to be afraid of?
As if in answer, one of the swings started to move back and forth.
Cr-eak, cr-eak.
It was difficult to see, but the space above the swing’s seat looked more solid than it had a few seconds ago. A vague human shape had appeared on it, black against the darkness, and now it kicked its legs and rocked the swing like a child. Slim fingers gripped the chains and viscous liquid oozed from under the
fingernails and down the metal. A strong acrid smell pierced Petris’ nostrils.
Cr-eak, Cr-eak. Cr—
The oil spread to the swing’s hinges and they stopped squeaking.
The black figure continued to swish back and forth, the silence now broken only by the
drip-drip
of the oil off his bare feet.
His teeth wanted to chatter but Petris grimly swigged from his belljar, swamping any circumstantial evidence of his fear in seventy-six per cent proof alcohol.
The swing came to a stop. ‘Petrisss.’ The name came on a hiss of chemical breath. Viscous liquids were drawn into threads between the dark figure’s lips as they parted.
‘Johnny. Always a pleasure.’
‘Iss that why you asssked my attendance?’ The sibilants ghosted on the air. ‘
Pleassure?
You are notoriousss for itss purssuit – ssstrange then if our pressence iss ssuch a pleasure, how sseldom you sseek it out. One might ssuspect we of the sssynod … unssettle you.’
‘Oh, you always unsettle me, Johnny.’ Petris’ good humour was cinder-brittle.
‘I ssee.’ The black figure sighed. ‘Sspecify the sservice you would ssolicit, stonesskin,’ Johnny Naphtha said, inspecting his black fingernails where they held the swing. ‘And hassten – I hate to hurry you, but my pressence here isn’t helping the health of the herbsss, you undersstand.’ He pointed over Petris’ shoulder, and even in the dark, the priest could see the nearest tree sagging as the poisons
dripping from Johnny Naphtha’s feet leached into the soil.
Petris gazed at that richness of death like a parched man at water fountain. ‘Who said I was looking for service?’ he croaked. He was hoarse with thirst.
‘Why elsse would you be sstanding here, ssqueezing your sstone into that abssurd vissage, and trying not to sspit your intesstines out in fear?’ Johnny Naphtha’s voice remained a quiet, courteous hiss. ‘
Of coursse
you need ssomething. Everyone needss ssomething, that’ss why they come to usss.’
Petris tried for a smile. ‘Perceptive as ever, Johnny. Yes, I’d like to strike a deal, for a fair price.’
‘Alwayss fair, Petriss,’ Johnny Naphtha chided him. ‘We are the Chemical Ssynod. Our equationss
alwayss
balance. Ssymmetry iss in our blood.’
Petris drew a deep breath. ‘All right. There’s someone I want you to protect. The little twerp’s going to get in over his head with a nasty character and I think he’ll need guarding.’
Johnny sat back in his swing, considering the request. As he thought, he produced a cigarette lighter from the pocket of his oil-soaked jacket and began snapping the lid open and shut. ‘“There’ss ssomeone I want you to protect”,’ the acid hiss echoed. ‘
I
, not
we.
Well, I ssuppose that answerss my firsst question: vizz, why the oh-sso-fearssome Pavement Priestss cannot protect their own people. Leaving only my ssecond, vizz, what causse is sso critical you would rissk
being caught by your compatriotss courting
me
? I am intrigued now, Petriss; who is this persson? Who is sso
contentiouss
that you cannot even command your own Priessthood to guard him?’
Petris swallowed, and felt his Adam’s apple graze granite. ‘Filius Viae,’ he said.
‘Filiuss Viae,’ Johnny Naphtha echoed. ‘Ah. Sso I take it this “nassty character” is Reach?’
There was a long silence, broken only by the click of the lighter. Petris couldn’t take his eyes off it.
Just one spark … all that oil.
The very thought made him sweat into his armour.
‘A “
little deal
”,’ Johnny Naphtha said eventually. ‘Hmmph. Your sskillss in undersstatement are unparallelled.’ He sighed and straightened his oil-soaked tie. ‘I’m ssorry, old sstonesskin, I ssincerely am, but to battle
Reach
? You ssimply couldn’t afford our price.’
Petris started to argue, but Johnny Naphtha held up a hand. ‘The rissks in ssiding against the Crane King are conssiderable, as you are cognissant, and to be ssuccint, your ssuppliess of what interestss uss are already ssapped-’
‘What
interests
you?’ Petris interrupted desperately. ‘Johnny, you’ll commodify
anything.
Surely—’