The granite monk was in the front rank. When he spoke, his voice was as merciless as winter homelessness. ‘
Delenda Reach
.’ The command boomed over the shattered wasteland. The Pavement Priest battalion stirred. ‘
Sic Gloria Via. Delenda Reach
.’
‘
Delenda Reach
.’ They took up the chant, singing it like a hymn, their voices deep, liquid. ‘
Delenda Reach
.’
The warrior priests stepped forward as one, the thud of their feet the percussion to their chant. They were the guardians of the old faith, wearing skins in the shapes of London’s heroes from other times. They sang their eulogy for their fallen city.
Metal wolves and metal men and other, stranger shapes clambered from the faces of the tower blocks and stalked over the rubble to meet them. Steel paws clanged on masonry as they picked up speed.
The first rank of Pavement Priests flickered and Beth
shrank back, involuntarily, every muscle tensing as the armies of London charged.
Stone and steel crashed together. Beth felt their impact like concussion. The wolves screamed, their rusting fangs rending granite skin like paper, but the Pavement Hymn didn’t waver. Though the song diminished when one of the priesthood fell, it never stopped.
‘They’re—’ Beth began, and then a wide grin broke over her face as she understood. ‘They’re
digging
.’
One battalion of priests, screened by their fellows, had fallen to their knees and were tearing double handfuls of rock from the earth, great gouges, straight out of Reach’s face.
I am Reach
, the diggers screamed in pain.
A wolf tore the head from Winston Churchill. Three other statues pulled the animal down, but then collapsed from exhaustion.
Under Petris’ boomed orders, Mater Viae’s priesthood knelt and prayed, ‘
Delenda Reach … Delenda Reach—
’, worshipping through fighting, as their steady hands chewed through the bedrock and cement Reach had carved himself from.
One priest looked different from the others. He moved more slowly, and his punishment skin looked more like hardened clay than stone. As he gouged at Reach with a fragment of steel girder, Beth thought there was something familiar about him, although in that moment she didn’t know what.
‘That’s good, lads,’ Petris shouted, knee-deep in the silt of Reach’s throat. ‘Dig the bastard’s heart out, A-bloody-men!’ But around him stone-covered bodies were slumping from exhaustion. The Scaffwolves continued to harry and hamstring them, until they were all oozing their slow, sticky blood. As they fell, they became indistinguishable from the murderous landscape around them.
‘
Delenda Reach
,’ they called, but their song was waning.
Fil heard the weakness in it. ‘It’s not working,’ he muttered feverishly. ‘We need Mater Viae. We need my
Mother
. We need the Fire – we need the Great Fire, Oh Thames …’
Beth tried to hold him, but he shook her off wildly. His face was crumpled, and white as waste-paper. ‘I was such an
idiot
. It was impossible! It was always
impossible –
how could we ever cleanse the city without the Great Fire?’ He sounded despairing.
Cleanse the city …
Beth went very still. Something in his words hooked a memory and dragged it to the surface of her mind. She tried to concentrate past the fury of the battle. She remembered the crackle of flames on a polluted pool, and a viscous, oily voice: ‘
This is a special conflagration, purchased at great expense. It cleanses and coruscates, maims and makes-anew …
’
‘Oh God,’ she whispered, ‘what if
that’s
why she didn’t come?’
Fil looked at her sharply. ‘What is?’
‘The Fire.’ The idea was so simple, so horribly mundane,
that Beth hesitated to give voice to it. ‘The Great Fire. Your mum’s greatest power,’ she whispered. ‘What if the reason she’s not here fighting is she doesn’t have it any more? What if, without it, she’s
scared
?’
‘What are you talking about?’ Bewilderment and fear and outrage were plain on his face.
‘You never knew what the synod charged her, did you? What if The Great Fire was their price?
A special conflagration, purchased at great expense
. What if she gave it up in payment?’ Beth asked, levelling a finger to point at the crippled young God. ‘Payment for you.’
He shut his eyes and the last of the colour drained from his face. He looked more than scared. He looked
dead
. But when the ground shuddered again, his eyes opened, and now there was an air of tense, concentrated discipline about him. ‘Beth,’ he said quietly, ‘I need you to do something for me.’
‘Okay, sure. Anything. What?’
‘Pick up my spear.’
Beth bent and grasped the weapon. The black iron was tacky where she’d bled on it. ‘Okay,’ she said, uncertainly.
‘I’m going to count to three,’ he said, and swallowed. His grey eyes looked directly into hers. ‘Then I need you to stab me in the heart.’
Beth almost dropped the spear. ‘What!’ she shouted. ‘Are you
mental
? Did your brains bleed out of your guts?’
But his grey eyes were as clear and sane and sad as she’d ever seen them. She knew he meant it. ‘
Why
?’ she whispered.
His smile was frail. ‘’cause making bad deals with the Chemical Synod runs in the family.’
For a second Beth stared at him, wondering if the pain and disappointment and blood-loss had finally driven him mad. ‘What are you talk—?’
Then understanding slammed into her like an avalanche. ‘You
lied
,’ she snarled at him. ‘I asked you straight up what you promised them: “
Some poxy ingredient, Long as I liv
e,
not something I’m goin’ to use
.” That’s what you told me.’
‘Technically that was true.’ Fil tried to shrug. ‘Since I promised them my death.’
Beth gazed at him, horrified by her complicity, by her willing
gullibility
. She looked at her pavement-grey skin. How could she possibly have believed that
some poxy little ingredient
had bought her that speed, that strength?
Fil spoke urgently. ‘We need Johnny Naphtha’s boys
here
, Beth, now, Thames knows we do. If they have the Fire—’ He jerked his head towards the battlefield. ‘While that bedlam’s still raging, there’s a chance. They’ll come for me, to collect their debt. Get ’em right in, right in the heart of it understand? Reach won’t tolerate ’em, just like he wouldn’t tolerate me. Make them get
involved
.’
‘
If
,’ Beth snapped back, ‘
if
they come –
if
they even have the Fire.
If. If. If
. It’s all bloody guesses. Christ, Fil, what if you’re wrong? What if
I’m
wrong?’ She prayed she was – she desperately wanted to be. She wanted to grab the treacherous words she’d spoken from the air and shove them back into her mouth.
The grey-skinned boy looked at her. ‘Then we’re wrong,’ he said, ‘but that’s our city, dying out there, and I’m all out of ideas.’
Beth raised the spear. She tensed her shoulder and gritted her teeth, but she couldn’t drive the weapon home. Tears blurred her sight as all her half-formed, desperate, unspoken love for this boy flooded through her. She turned away, unable to bear his gaze.
‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘It’s too much.’
His voice hardened. ‘It’s not your call, Beth.’
His eyes, the colour of the city she was refusing to try and save, bore into her, but she couldn’t do this. It was too high a price.
When he spoke again, his voice was a whisper. ‘Remember what Petris said: “The outlines, the very definition of a life.”? This is my definition, Beth. I’m choosing it now – I’m choosing the chance that you’re right. If you take that away from me, you’re no better than my mother.’
Beth swallowed hard, a choking mix of salty tears and air, and tried frantically to think of something else, some other explanation, something they had missed.
Think, Bradley, think
, she swore at herself, but nothing came.
In that moment, she hated Filius Viae more than she’d ever hated anyone. She wanted to throw away his vile spear and walk back down the tunnel, to leave him paralysed in the darkness. She wanted to abandon him the way he was about to abandon her. But she couldn’t, because she knew that years from now she’d still see Masonry Men and brick-born
babies lying murdered. She couldn’t, because however child-like Reach was, he wasn’t
innocent
. Her people were dying on his claws.
And she couldn’t, because although she hated him, she could never walk away from that skinny, wretched kid.
She set the spear between his ribs. He smiled encouragingly. The spear scratched a lopsided red-black star against his flesh as she shook.
‘Christ, Fil— I—’
‘It’s okay, Beth.’ He held her gaze. ‘Do I scare you witless enough to make you brave?’ he asked her.
‘Yes,’ she whispered.
‘One,’ he said. ‘Two …’
Beth rammed the spear forward.
He gasped and his eyes stretched. She felt a crunch as his ribs gave way. She gritted her teeth and twisted the shaft. His bare heels drummed the ground for an awful moment, and then stopped.
Five seconds, she counted them carefully. That was how long she looked into his vacant eyes. Then she snarled, ‘I’m not shutting your eyes for you,
liar
. You can watch what you made me do.’ She bent and picked him up. He sagged over her good shoulder, infinitely heavier in death. She ducked under the lintel and ran.
Noise exploded over her as Beth burst from the labyrinth. She weaved right and then left, ducking iron jaws and fallen bodies. A stone sword slipped from a Pavement Priest’s hand and whistled past her, grazing her knee. She raced between the legs of a metal giant, deep into the very heart of the battle.
‘
Delenda Reach
,’ the ragged choir croaked. The Pavement Priests were pitifully few now, but still they tore at the earth with their stone hands. Beth ignored their horrified stares as she dumped the limp body of their prince into their midst. There was no time – no time for grief; no time for fear; no time for anything resembling a human emotion, or else this would all to be for nothing.
‘Here he is,’ she shouted into the din. ‘Here’s your price!’
She cast around desperately, but all she could see were bodies and carnage. Despair scratched deep in her chest—
—and then a petrol smell stung her nostrils.
Six black figures walked unhurriedly through the chaos of battle. Their movements were perfectly synchronised;
their oil-soaked suits were untouched by the flying muck.
‘Over here!’ Beth’s scream tore her throat. ‘Over here!
Here’s
what you’re owed.’
The Chemical Synod always collected on their debts. Deals were sacred.
As they strode over the rubble two priests moved to confront them, but Petris’ command boomed out. ‘Let them come.’
Reach issued no such instruction. As these fresh,
powerful
interlopers stalked over his scarred face, towards his very throat, amid the noise and stink of the attack against him, Reach panicked. Beth could feel it. The whole of the building site seemed to tense around her.
‘
I will be!
’ Reach shrieked, and a crane-born hook shot through the air to impale the rightmost black-slicked man.
The synod’s expressions became grim. They didn’t break step, but the five remaining men spread out to repair their symmetry. As one, each produced a cigarette lighter, flipped the lid and ran the spark-wheel up the leg of their trousers.
Heat punched into Beth’s face as the synod caught fire. She shielded her eyes. They kept on at the same calm pace, burning like Guys on Bonfire Night. Where their feet fell, the ground – Reach’s body – bubbled, hissed and melted.
‘
I will be!
’ Reach shrieked.
Two of the fiery men peeled off from either side and strolled over to the cranes. A Scaffwolf snapped at one, but he didn’t even break stride. The corona of heat around him
melted through the beast’s jaw and hot slag ran into the contours of the rubble.
Johnny Naphtha approached one crane and extended a burning hand towards its cab, almost as though in greeting. The metal glowed and warped and buckled as he touched it, and as she looked around she saw the other members of the synod, stationed all around the building site, doing exactly the same thing, in precise time, with other cranes.
Beth expected Reach to cry out, but no cry came: the engines which produced his voice were silenced. The child-king of the cranes died not with a scream, but with a slow hiss of metal like an exhausted breath.
The Scaffwolves creaked on their hinges, the iron giants groaned. Jaws slid sideways over one another. Knees bent the wrong way and the monsters subsided into the dust.
Beth sat down hard in the rubble. She gazed vacantly at Fil’s body. The wound in her shoulder had reopened, and her hoodie was clammy with fresh blood.
Johnny Naphtha approached. His flames, the flames that had ignited the Great Fire of London, guttered out. His suit and skin were now the crisp grey-black of charcoal. ‘How pleasant of you to prepare him for us.’ He looked down at the grey body, lying sprawled across Reach’s throat. A touch of sarcasm entered his voice. ‘And how precisely placed.’
He crouched, picked up the body and without ceremony slung it over his shoulder. Gracefully, he rose to his feet, turned on his heel and walked away. The rest of his coven
converged on him. One of them had their fallen brother in a fireman’s lift, dripping oil down his burnt back.
Beth sagged sideways. She felt voided, utterly empty. She’d forgotten how to feel, forgotten how to stand up. The boy—
The boy with the city in his skin was dead.
Pavement Priests clustered around her. Their stone faces looked grim, accusing.
‘I had to kill him,’ she croaked. ‘I had to bring the Chemical Synod.’