‘We know.’ The voice belonged to Petris. ‘We know better than most the prices of their services.’ His stone mask contorted painfully into a smile.
Beth stared up at him. That expression looked so out of place in this bloody tangle that she didn’t trust it.
‘Beth, there’s someone here who wants to see you.’
‘Beth? Beth!’ The clay-caked figure she’d seen in the battle shouldered his way between the statues. He was limping. Up close, she could see patches of pale skin showing where the crust of ceramic had been chipped away. Bright red blood –
human
blood – ran from a gash on the man’s forehead, dripping down a face she knew.
‘Beth.’ Her father dropped to his knees beside her. ‘Come on, Beth. We’ll get you to a hospital. You’ll be okay.’
Beth gazed in wonder into his brown eyes, suddenly sharply aware that hers were no longer that colour, but the mottled grey of London skies. ‘
Dad?
’ She studied his cuts, stupefied by his presence. Her gaze fell on the girder he was still carrying.
‘You
fought
?’ she murmured incredulously. ‘Weak and slow and bloody human – and you fought—?’
He nodded, almost shyly. ‘Because it was your fight,’ he said quietly. ‘Because I thought you’d want me to.’
She held out a hand to him, and he grasped it gratefully and pulled her to her feet. Her fingers stayed tight around his for a few moments.
‘We’re not done,’ she said. ‘There’s someone we need to get.’
Pen was lying where Beth had left her, staring at the ceiling of the pyramidal chamber. She showed no sign that she was alive, until she heard Beth coming, then she blinked and a smile spread across her face. ‘I did it, B,’ she whispered.
‘Yeah, you did it Pen,’ Beth agreed, not understanding what she was talking about.
‘I did it – I beat it. It held me, but I held it back.’
‘Uh-huh,’ Beth said, crouching down beside her.
‘I was afraid, but I held it down. I beat it. I
chose
.’ There was a glassy cast to Pen’s brown eyes. She was rambling, delirious. ‘I’m not afraid any more,’ she whispered. ‘I
chose
.’
Beth put her hands under Pen’s shoulders and tensed her legs, ready to lift. She was afraid that Pen would cry out in pain, but there was just a whimper, quickly stifled.
‘Come on,’ Beth muttered. ‘We have to get you better. There’s a woman – or a man, or a— I don’t know what it
is. Its name’s Gutterglass – if anyone will know how to fix you it will.’
‘No!’ Pen’s cry was shockingly loud in the dark. Her face snapped around, almost scandalised.
Beth swallowed, quailing slightly at the ferocity in her friend’s gaze. ‘No further down the rabbit hole, B,’ Pen said. ‘No more. If you want to take me somewhere, take me home.’ For a second she stared at her, her face mottled in fury and relief and blame, then, to Beth’s shock and utter gratitude, Pen threw her arms around her neck. ‘God, I’ve missed you, B. I could never let you go.’
Beth nodded. There was nothing more to say.
IV
VITAE VIAE
Beth’s overriding impression of the hospital (it was only the second time she’d ever been in one) was that it was
squeaky
. The wards were filled with high-pitched noises: rubber wheels scraping over lino; children squealing for their parents; machines bleeping all over the place, announcing vital signs at different stages of degradation. It was a little like listening to the birds at sunrise, except the electronic edge made everything threatening.
She paced up and down beside Pen’s bed and then slumped into the vinyl chair and looked at her friend, who resembled a sixth-form art project: a collage of gauze, bandage and plastic wrap. The harsh stink of antiseptic filled the room.
‘They got through to your folks,’ Beth told her. ‘They’re on their way. Apparently your mum’s bringing lamb samosas. I thought they knew you’re a vegetarian?’
A gap in the bandages revealed the brown ovals of two closed eyes. Pen was awake, but she didn’t want to talk.
Beth set her jaw. She wished she’d never left Pen’s side, that they’d discovered the Railwraiths and the streetlamp dancers and the Crane King
together
: a secret they could have talked about in hushed tones whenever the rest of the world came battering too hard at their door.
Secrets like those were threads that could stitch a friendship back together.
Beth slumped a little lower in her chair, then yanked out a pencil and grabbed an empty sheet from the medical chart hanging beside the bed. Smoothing it out over the back of a dinner tray, she began to sketch.
She’d had no plans to draw anything in particular – she was just scratching an itch – so it was with a faint thrill of shock that she watched Fil’s cocky face emerge from under her pencil. For a second she couldn’t breathe, but she forced the pencil over the page. She felt compelled.
She drew the Son of the Streets exactly as he had been, no portrait-flattery. When it was done, she bit her lip in frustration. What a staggeringly inadequate way bring him back.
‘Beth?’
Beth looked up sharply. Pen didn’t open her eyes. Her voice was dry but surprisingly strong. ‘Will you do me a favour?’
‘Sure, Pen, what do you need?’
‘My compact’s in my jeans – in the back pocket. Can you bring it to me please?’
Beth pulled Pen’s barb-shredded clothes from the bedside
unit and dug around for the compact, a slim square of hinged plastic. She held it out to Pen.
‘Open it.’ Her voice remained calm, sterile as the hospital floors. Still she didn’t open her eyes.
Beth felt her heart begin to beat a little quicker. She swallowed hard. ‘Pen – don’t you think you should wait—?’
‘Open it,’ Pen said again, firmly. ‘I’m ready.’
The compact opened with a tiny click, revealing a palette of foundation and a small round mirror.
‘Hold it up for me to see.’
Wordlessly, Beth lifted the mirror. Pen opened her eyes.
For a second, Beth thought, it was as though someone had slipped a knife in between her best friend’s ribs. She could see the slight widening of the eyes, the tension that twisted her face. Pen hissed and gritted her teeth to keep from swearing.
For long seconds, Pen’s gaze roved over the mirror. She lifted her chin, stroking the lines of the bandages, probing the raw wounds underneath with tentative fingers. You could see her tracing the lines of future scars. Her expression, frightened at first, took on a kind of sadness. She looked like she was saying goodbye.
At last, she shut her eyes again. She leaned back onto the bed. ‘Okay,’ she said, a soft whisper. ‘Okay.’
Beth snapped the compact shut with trembling fingers.
‘Pen,’ she began. ‘I’m so, so sorr—’
Pen’s voice was like a whipcrack. ‘Tell me you’re sorry, Elizabeth Bradley, and I will kill you
dead
.’
Beth blinked in confusion. ‘I never meant to—’
‘I know you didn’t, B, but these cuts are
mine
. Not yours, not ours,
mine
, understand?’ Pen’s eyes opened again, revealing a mix of pain and fierce survivor’s pride.
‘I own them. The barbs bit
me
. You weren’t there and you’ll never understand what it was like, so don’t try, okay?’
Beth pursed her lips and nodded, burning from the rebuke.
‘They’re my scars,’ Pen said, her tone softening a little. ‘I’ll deal.’
As Beth stood, a rich smell of curried lamb and spices drifted into her nostrils.
‘
You
. Get away from my daughter.’ A short, angular man with teak-coloured skin parted the curtains around Pen’s bed. A tiny woman in a shawl and hijab followed him, clutching a Tupperware box.
Beth drew sharply away from them. ‘Mr and Mrs Khan.’
Pen’s parent’s actually collided in their haste to reach their daughter’s bedside. Her mother almost collapsed in relief. Her father kissed her forehead and stroked her hair, murmuring something in Urdu that might have been a prayer.
‘It’s all right, child.’ Mr Khan spoke in English now. His voice was tightly controlled, but every second he looked at Pen’s injuries aged his lean face. ‘We can fix this.’
Pen’s mother said nothing as she held her daughter, just wept the tears Beth felt that Pen should be shedding.
Pen, who simply stared at the wall.
‘I know plastic surgeons. There – there is money. We can get you back to—’
‘Shhh.’ To Beth’s astonishment, Pen shushed her father. She continued to stroke her mother’s hijab with light strokes of her fingers, murmuring, ‘It’s all right Mum. I’m all right. I’m alive—’ There was no missing the exultant shimmer in her brown eyes.
‘And I’m
free
.’
Back in A&E, two burly male nurses were wrestling a drunkard into a wheelchair. An irascible old woman was barking incomprehensible hostilities at an unoffending triage nurse, and then repeatedly stealing her fob-watch and giggling as she dropped it on the floor.
Over the ranks of the sick, beer-soaked and disturbed that occupied the orange plastic chairs, the bandaged head of her father reared like a snowcapped mountaintop. He looked up from the tatty paperback he was reading as Beth approached. The sight of Pen’s facial injuries had scared Paul. He’d looked on with a haunted gaze as they’d wheeled her into the theatre, and accosted everyone in scrubs who emerged with questions and fervent thanks.
‘How is she?’ he asked.
Beth shrugged. ‘Her heart’s in better nick than her face. I think she’ll be okay.’
‘Thank God.’ He sagged with relief. ‘And you?’
Beth looked around a little conspiratorially, and then
yanked the collar of her hoodie out past her bra-strap. The fat, jagged wound in her shoulder was sealed over with new greyish skin. An ugly, rippling seam of tar ran through it like a scar.
Her father stared for a moment, swallowed hard, and then nodded.
Get used to it
, Beth thought.
Daddy’s little girl has the city in her skin
. She glanced at the book in her father’s lap.
The Iron Condor Mystery
. She barked an abrupt laugh. ‘You brought
that
with you?’
He cradled it defensively. ‘It was your mother’s favourite.’
Beth sighed. ‘Yeah, I know it was, Dad.’
He drew himself up, seeming to steel himself. Then he held the book out to Beth. ‘I’m done with it.’
Beth looked at him, startled.
‘You should read it some time,’ he said.
Beth turned the pages, feeling the paper flake, ready to disintegrate with years of constant reading. She didn’t know what to say.
He held his arms out to her then, and she embraced him, pulling herself tight into his chest. Uncertain fingertips pattered over her neck for a moment, feeling the pavement-texture of her skin. Then his hug engulfed her. ‘Beth, I know I haven’t— I want to make it up to you— I mean, I know I owe you so much—’
He fell into a surprised silence as Beth reached back and put a hand over his mouth.
Deals are sacred
. She thought of the symmetrical oil-soaked
men.
Our equations always balance
. Fil’s body, lying in the rubble, his own spear bleeding him dry.
You saved my life twice. By my reckoning that means I owe you.
She’d already lost too much to the brutal mathematical economy of debt. ‘It’s not about owing, Dad. This can’t be about
owing
.’ She pulled back to look him in the face. ‘Let’s just try again.’
The old drunk in the corner started to make high-pitched yipping noises and they let each other go. Beth sniffed back what felt like a gallon of mucus and looked at the book her father had given her. A sheet of crisply folded white paper was set inside the back cover.
‘What’s this?’
He looked embarrassed. ‘I thought you might want to know a bit more about him.’
‘About who?’
He frowned as though it were obvious. ‘The boy you were following around.’
A shiver, like a pricking of insect feet, ran down Beth’s back. With numb fingers, she unfolded the sheet. It was a printout of a page from the
Evening Standard
’s online archive. The photo showed a haggard-looking woman and man appealing to the camera with their eyes. The headline read:
Hunt For Williams Baby Called Off
Beth started to read the text to herself.
Two hundred and eighty-one days after eight-month-old Michael Williams disappeared from the home of his parents, police have admitted the active search has been wound down.
Detective Inspector Ian North, leading the case, said, ‘We are not closing the book on the search for baby Michael, but there has been no new evidence in nine months. Our hotline of course remains open …’
Beth stopped reading and her eyes returned to the photograph. The caption read:
Genevieve and Stephen Williams in public appeal for news of missing son
.
‘I recognised him when you carried his body out,’ her dad was saying. ‘It’s weird – I only printed this out because you went missing.’
A cold weight had settled in Beth’s gut. She rummaged frantically in her pocket for the sketch of Fil, unfolded it and held it next to the printout: the portrait of the prince beside the photo of the distraught parents.
Beth’s dad’s face crinkled in sympathy. ‘The poor kid looks just like his father— Beth, what’s wrong?’
Beth had sat down hard, missing the orange plastic chair and bruising her coccyx on the concrete floor. She wanted to protest; he was
wrong
– her
own eyes
were wrong. Filius Viae couldn’t be these people’s son; it was a mistake – he was the Son of the Streets, the son of Mater Viae. He had
powers
. He could outrun a Railwraith, tear scaffolding in two, scale the side of a skyscraper …
All things you can do too, since your dip in the synod’s pool
, a quiet voice inside reminded her.
Questions and doubts bloomed in her mind, but withered again as logic provided the obvious answers. Questions like,
Why did Reach try to kill Fil with a
Railwraith
anyway?
Three quick steps carried her to the broom cupboard in the far wall. She reached in and jerked the railing-spear free from where she’d hidden it amongst the pile of plastic sheets. She crashed through the door to the fire-escape and whirled up the stairs, her dad huffing despairingly behind her.