‘Then I want to fight,’ Paul said to his mica-threaded back.
The monk released a startled laugh. ‘With what? You’ll be butchered like a ten-week calf.’
‘Do you care?’ Paul asked bluntly.
‘You know what?
Now
I can hear the family resemblance.’ Petris sounded amused for a moment, then the humour dropped out of his gravel voice. ‘Who am I, of all men, to stand between a man and his suicide?’ he muttered. He sounded deadly serious. ‘Obadiah!’ he called.
Paul shuddered as the bronze nobleman slapped a handful of red clay onto his neck.
‘No soldier of mine goes into battle without a uniform,’ the monk said. ‘We march in thirty minutes. Keep up.’
He paused as a thought occurred to him. ‘One question, Mr Soon-to-be-dead.’ Paul couldn’t mistake the note of envy in the monk’s voice. ‘
Why
are you so determined to fight?’
Paul reached into the basin of clay and slicked a double handful of the cool, heavy mud over his cheeks.
When this bakes
, he thought,
it will preserve my face forever
. He tried not to look as afraid as he felt. ‘Because this is Beth’s fight, and that’s what fathers do for their little girls,’ he said.
Nothing to see but darkness, nothing to breathe but dust. Nothing to be but patient as the iron-eating rust.
Huh, I should remember that. It’s the kind of thing Pen might like.
Stone grazed Beth’s skin as she crawled through the tunnel. She kept colliding with the walls in the pitch-darkness, even though she was groping ahead with her fingertips. She’d insisted on being in the lead. Victor had grumbled but eventually deferred with a muttered ‘Ladies first’.
In some places the walls were tight on her, tighter than a coffin, tight as a birth canal, and she had to thrust her arms ahead of her, wedge her elbows and
undulate
forward. The spear was strapped to her back, the metal so cold against her neck it almost blistered.
Beth hated the close quarters, but more than that, the sheer
deadness
of the place troubled her: there was no
energy
, no life flowing where her bare skin touched the masonry. This neighbourhood had been broken, its vitality leached
out. Cold fingers of panic crept up Beth’s throat, and she fought to keep calm. After so long immersed in the living city, being trapped in here felt like suffocating.
In places the walls of the tunnel felt smooth, like glass, or – the idea came to her suddenly – burnt skin.
Without the Great Fire
, Gutterglass had said,
we must improvise
.
She was touching Reach’s wounds from that first great immolation, ripped up and buried beneath later incarnations. These scars were more permanent than rock. She shivered at the intimacy.
The darkness made everything closer, louder and sharper. The engines clattered on the surface above and Beth jumped as gravel sifted down from the ceiling. She swore at herself to keep calm.
Judging by the constant stream of inventive obscenity floating up the tunnel from behind her, though, she was doing better than Victor. ‘By Virgin’s first missed period,’ he muttered, ‘is been seven years since I even
sleep
under
roof
. What in
hell
I am doing here?’ He fell silent for a moment, and then said, ‘Tsarina not judge me too harshly,
niet
? I am not normally so cowardish.’
Beth reached behind her and felt a worn, gnarly hand grasp hers. ‘I know, Victor. I know. If it makes you feel any better, I have a friend who hates little spaces too.’ Beth swallowed hard and looked ahead into the darkness. ‘And she’s as brave as they come.’
The minutes faded away. The only way Beth could mark
the time was her heartbeat, and that was too quick to be much use. She felt an urgent desire to talk, to blabber,
What if we’re lost? What if we miss a turning in the dark? What if we’re trapped down here?
She bit her lip so hard she tasted petrol and blood, determined not to speak, Giving voice to her own fears would only make Victor’s worse—
—but then she reached forward, and this time she couldn’t stop herself crying out.
‘Tsarina?’ Victor said uncertainly.
‘It’s okay,’ she whispered. She’d felt something in the rubble, a warmth and a thrum, like a pulse. It was alive. Now as she wormed her way forward, she could feel the kiss of the living concrete on her arms and neck and her belly, charging her skin with the city again. She laughed, shockingly loud in the dark: the pulse coming through the ground was faint, but to her it was like fresh air after drowning. She laid her head on the ground. She heard something, and froze.
Was that
crying
?
It was very faint, the vibrations carried through the stone from deeper underground. She strained to listen.
There it was again: quiet crying, as though with pain, the kind of pain that you had endured for a long time but you still couldn’t get used to. There was another sound, too, the creaking of rock under terrible strain. The sounds were synchronised, and each groan of the rock drew a gasp and a whimper from the voice, as though someone was drawing painful breath against stone.
Women in the Walls. Masonry Men.
Unbidden, the image of the mangled human shapes at the Woolwich Demolition Fields sprang into her mind and her stomach lurched. She suddenly knew where the life she was sensing was coming from.
She scrabbled at the unseen ground with her fingers, looking for a seam, slipping her nails into cracks until finally she found what she was looking for. She heaved, and a concrete slab jarred the tunnel as she cast it aside.
‘Tsarina! Stop!’ Victor shouted.
Beth ignored him. There was someone
alive
down there. She dug into the hole she’d made, until the smell of stale piss and sweat and raw spirits enveloped her and thick, muscular arms seized her own.
‘Tsarina,
stop
,’ Victor whispered in her ear.
She strained, but he wouldn’t let go. ‘There’s someone alive down there!’ She braced herself, preparing to wrench herself free, even if it meant breaking his arms.
‘
Niet
, no some
one
,’ Victor hissed, ‘some
many
.’
Beth fell still, panting for breath. She felt a gentle pressure on the side of her head and she let Victor push her to the wall.
‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I begin to hear them a way back.’
For a second Beth could hear nothing but the thud of her own pulse, then voices began to filter through the rock: women’s voices, and men’s; age-clotted voices, and shrill, unbroken ones. They echoed backwards and forwards, sometimes answering each other with a few garbled words in
bereft tones. But most of them just cried: weak, but inconsolable.
‘Wherever you dig,’ Victor said, ‘you will only bury others deeper.’
After a moment, Beth understood what he was telling her She’d only ever seen the
dead
before now; what she was listening to were the wounded, crushed under the weight of the Crane King’s court.
‘Come, Tsarina. Let’s find your friend. There is nothing else to do.’
But as Beth made to take her ear from the wall, a change infected the voices. The crying stopped, and in its place came a whisper: one word. It spread through the voices with the virulence of rumour:
Mistress
Mistress Mistress Mistress Mistress Mistress—
MistressMistressMistressMistressMistressMistressMistressMistress
And then as one, the voices fell silent.
‘Victor,’ Beth groaned as a new sound filled the tunnel: a hissing scratch like steel coils sliding over stone. ‘She’s coming.’
Beth imagined the Wire Mistress’ barbs hooking into the walls of the tunnel, dragging their human bundle along in their wake. The sound echoed around the stone walls; Beth couldn’t tell what direction it was coming from.
She gripped the spear in the dark and imagined Pen’s mutilated face.
As quick as a snake, something lashed through the air by her cheek.
Victor cried out, a cut-off gasp, and Beth whirled, the spear’s iron point catching on the roof of the tunnel. Metal scraped over stone and a bright blue spark flared.
She saw Victor, in that instant’s light, four feet behind her. A thin skein of wire was wrapped tightly around his neck. The barbs were biting into his flesh. His eyes were popping out of his head and his tongue was bleeding where he’d bitten down on it.
Then darkness fell again and Beth was knocked against the wall as Victor’s bulk was hauled past her and up the tunnel. ‘Victor!’ she yelled. She pushed herself back onto her knees, still dazed, the spear gripped tightly in her right hand. The Mistress’ hiss carried back down the tunnel and Beth followed, crawling on hands and knuckles and knees until the tunnel widened enough for her to lurch to her feet. Cramped muscles protesting, she broke into a shambling run.
She could see the next corner now. The clash and grind of Reach’s machines was growing louder. She gripped her spear tighter as she swung around the bend, and stopped cold.
Ahead, at the far end of the tunnel she saw a chamber. Four walls had collapsed inwards and were taking each other’s weight, forming a kind of pyramid. Pen stood in the centre of the space, in a cat’s-cradle of light shafts. Dust motes spun around her and her wire-skin gleamed.
‘Move,’ Beth muttered to herself, willing her muscles on. ‘
Move
.’ She drove herself forwards.
Pen gazed out at her from her between the wires, her eyes wide with fear. Her lips were stitched shut with barbs.
When she was just inches from the opening to the tunnel, Beth saw why Pen looked so scared. A strand of wire, so fine as to be almost invisible, was stretched across the doorway at neck-height, ready to bite hard into Beth’s throat. Arms flailing wildly, she tried desperately to check
her charge, but she skidded on loose gravel and she couldn’t stop herself. She swallowed as the barbs tickled her neck.
Pale fingers lashed out and yanked the wire away just as Beth fell into the chamber. She rolled and came up fast, spear ready, eyes twitching for a target but unwilling to throw.
Victor staggered forward and then pulled back. The tendons in his neck stood out. One hand gripped the wire he’d torn from the door, the other was at his throat, where the coils of the mistress bit deep. Beads of blood glimmered on his skin. He was white as death, but he smiled tightly.
‘Not worry, Tsarina.’ His breath escaped in snatched wheezes. He leaned back and hauled on the wire. The muscles in his neck bulged. Veins emerged through his face like cracks in glass. ‘In Moscow was seven times Tug-of-War Champ—’
The wire around his throat stretched taut. There was an organic-sounding crack.
The Wire Mistress flexed her coils and slammed him into the wall with hideous force. He crumpled to the ground, his head a crush of bone, hair and bloody wool.
Beth snarled in grief and fury. She looked at Pen and saw only the monster. She gripped the spear tighter, and charged.
The price of rage was grace, and the mistress easily sidestepped Beth’s clumsy lunge. Needle-pointed wires lashed out and hot pain ran through Beth’s cheek.
She turned fast, raising her spear high, but Pen, in the mistress’ grip, moved with demonic speed. A punch slammed into Beth’s kidney. Pen’s fist twisted as the barbs bit and ripped away the cloth and the flesh underneath.
Beth’s scream echoed up the chamber and she reflexively swung the spear. It crunched meatily into Pen’s ribs.
Unable to cry out, Pen fell in abject silence to one knee.
Blood oozed from Beth’s side. Sickened with pain, she raised the spear over her head, ready to plunge it down into her best friend’s chest. Wires uncoiled swiftly from Pen’s shoulders, lashing and binding Beth’s arms so she couldn’t bring the spear down. Panic bubbled through her, and along with it, a tiny bit of relief.
Pen climbed to her feet, eyeing Beth warily. Skeins waved in the air like floating seaweed, twisting towards her. Time slowed down. The wire tendrils stroked curiously, almost gently, over Beth’s face, as though learning it. They brushed the spearpoint, and then coiled back on themselves.
The spear
, Beth thought.
The wire’s scared of the spear
.
Drawing on all the inhuman strength in her muscles, Beth let the spear go and jumped sideways, dragging the slack out of the wire that bound her. She threw herself at the wall.
Pen’s head snapped to track her, horribly fast.
Beth’s shoulder slammed painfully into the stone, but she’d drawn the wire taut, and a fraction of second later the falling spear slashed through it.
The mistress released Pen’s lips and she screamed.
The bindings fell away from Beth’s shoulders and she snatched up the spear, but even as Pen screamed, the mistress was propelling her fist into Beth’s face.
Beth reeled. Her teeth were cracked, her lips hot and puffy.
The Wire Mistress pressed the assault, raining down punches, forcing incredible power through Pen’s wounded body. Beth gave ground, warding her off with her spear where she could, taking other blows to her forehead, eyes and face. A barb ripped a chunk of one ear away and Beth felt it fall down inside her collar.
Suddenly her right leg went from under her and as she fell onto her back the spear clattered away. Victor’s glassy eyes stared at her. She’d caught her heel in his groin.
The Wire Mistress seethed above her, Pen trapped at its heart. Beth groped for the spear, but it was three or four inches from her hand: much, much too far. She felt the last of her courage bleed out of her. Pen drew a foot back, ready to stamp down on her face.
Beth shut her eyes. ‘This isn’t you, Pen,’ she whispered to herself.
A heartbeat passed, then another, then another. Beth opened her eyes. She snatched up the spear and scrambled to her feet. Pen and the Wire Mistress were simply standing, a couple of feet away. Pen’s left foot was still in the air, not moving.