Authors: Kate Griffin
“We’re not here for a sightseeing trip!” wailed Sharon. “Fate of the city, glass gods, missing Midnight Mayor, scary odd worshipping people, can we stay focused, please?” Gretel hung her massive grey head, and Sharon relented. “Which isn’t to say,” she added, “that we can’t take something positive from this experience.”
“I think it’s disgusting,” offered Kevin. “Working inside a sealed tower like this? Breathing other people’s recycled air day in, day out? I mean, even with a proper air-conditioning system it’s just foul. Air-conditioning units are breeding grounds for all sorts of vile pathogens.”
“Are they?” exclaimed Kelly. “What kind?”
“Babes! Legionella, TB, aspergillus… A vamp’s gotta think about all the stuff floating about in a bleeder’s veins, you know? I won’t touch the red stuff of anyone who works in an office tower unless the windows open, even if they eat organic.”
The door wheezed. One day it would probably ping beatifically; but for now, without access to its full operating systems, it wheezed, and a voice with a cold that bordered on the terminal proclaimed, “Sthandth cler. Drths opnin.”
The doors opened.
Sharon looked out on a small, unpainted corridor. A single mop in a bucket stood on the floor. A small pile of newspaper had been laid out beneath a stepladder, where someone had left an unplugged working light and a screwdriver. A few panels were still missing from the ceiling, revealing cables and pipes tangled above. At the end of the corridor was a glass wall, through which they could see the city. Not just the City, not the locale of offices and streetlights that made up the commercial district of London; but
the city
, from the Thames below to the darkest borders of north London where the lights clung to the edge of Highgate Hill and Hampstead Heath, where the streets became wide and the trees tall, the pavements clean and the houses spacious –
the city –
spread before them like an upside-down galaxy across the world. Sharon heard Gretel draw in a breath, felt a pre-emptive quiver on the air as Rhys swallowed a sneeze.
She edged forward, scanning the corridor: a place of doors not yet attached, of nooks where some day potted plants might flourish. The very top of the Shard was narrow to the point of bare functionality, a floor squeezed in where society ended and pure architecture began. Sharon led the way past toilets whose seats were still covered in plastic; beneath light fittings waiting for a bulb; and round a corner to another place where floor met wall, and the wall was pure glass, beautiful and cold, the vein-clenching chill of it a testimony to how cold the wind was that raged inaudibly on the other side. She looked out and saw all the places she’d known from below, their dimensions tiny, even great monuments small enough to be pinched out between her finger and thumb.
The lights in the Shard itself were out, or not yet fully installed, but the glow of the city below was bright enough to see by. And as Sharon looked, she realised that not
every
light was off. A passage ran along the window’s base, and, at its far end, a door stood ajar; a piece of paper attached to it proclaimed, “Caution – Wet Paint”. Through the gap in the door, a light glowed, scarcely daring to spill into the corridor, as if embarrassed to be caught blazing at this time, in this place. Sharon walked towards it, fighting the urge to slip into invisibility. Behind her, Kelly gestured to the Aldermen: two to guard the lift, another to keep watch at the end of the passage. Two more were on what Sharon guessed a commando would have called “on your six” and which everyone else probably called “at the back”. As she neared the door she felt a chill in the air beside her as Sammy slipped silently into the shadow walk. She couldn’t hear any voices, but the air was warmer here, and as she pushed the door back she saw people.
There were maybe two dozen of them, kneeling. Their faces were lit by two large yellow floodlights, but their eyes were turned towards the city. Breathless and motionless, they were bent forward like supplicants in prayer, their gaze all locked on the one same thing.
And there he was. Body of glass, a crystal glow rippling beneath his perfect, smooth skin, but faint now, far less than when he had killed three scylla sisters and breathed out jagged glass. The glass god, or dude, or whatever description was least politically incorrect, now stood before his congregation, arms at his side, head bowed, body loose – or as loose as a construct of glass could be – light playing round and over and through him, and his people worshipped.
For a moment, no one moved, no one spoke. No one seemed to have noticed that Sharon was there.
At the front of the group of people – men and women, all ages, no uniformity in their clothes – a man finally looked up. He saw Sharon and his eyes narrowed. He stood, thereby causing a ripple of activity through the worshippers; a few of the bolder risked a furtive glance, then an outright look, then a hostile stare towards Sharon and her crew as the room realised its meditations were being interrupted. The glass man didn’t move. There seemed to be no animation in his body, no life in his limbs, just the slow, steady pulsing of light, like a computer switched to standby.
As more worshippers noticed Sharon, at length the whole congregation looked up and round. A barely audible gasp went through them as Gretel peered over Sharon’s head to get a better view; then surprise converted to suspicion as Kevin, fangs politely tucked away, and Mr Roding, who at least wasn’t decaying at that moment, shuffled into the room. Suspicion, however, became animosity as Kelly stepped round the necromancer and, looking at the room, exclaimed, “My God! A secret religious order! A real secret religious order! I’m so excited!”
“Who the hell are you?” demanded one man, the first who’d looked round. By his proximity to the feet of the glass god, Sharon guessed he had to be a figure of authority. If so, he was something of a disappointment, lacking any flowing robes, or exciting face paint, or even ceremonial knives. Instead he wore a white cotton shirt, with the sleeves rolled up to reveal an expensive chrome watch, and black cotton trousers ending in bare pale feet. Sharon’s eyes roamed over the congregation, and, yes, there wasn’t a single shoe to be seen on any one of the worshippers.
“Well, I’m Sharon…” she began, and then paused, waiting for the ‘hello, Sharon’ which traditionally greeted such a statement. “… Well, yes, I’m Sharon, I’m the head of Magicals Anonymous, a discreet and courteous service for the mystically inclined. This is Rhys…”
Rhys waved.
“… my IT manager, and Gretel, who’s very excited about the view, and Mr Roding, who isn’t, and this is Kevin…”
“Hi guys!” Kevin tried to infuse his voice with a cheery sense of friends-yet-to-come, and failed.
“… and somewhere in the nether realms is Sammy, my teacher, and this is Kelly who––”
“What?” the man with the expensive watch interrupted. “What the
fuck
…?” he tried again, struggling with every aspect of the conversation. “What the mother-fuck,” he concluded, “are you fucking doing here?”
He was met with silence. This was not the attitude or language which Magicals Anonymous traditionally condoned.
“Well,” Sharon ventured, “I was gonna try and interest you in joining our bingo night, but I guess we’re already a bit past that? But I wanna keep this civil, so how about you tell me your name?”
The man stared at her, speechless from a great range of emotions, none of which seemed pleased to see her.
“Okay,” she went on. “How about I make a stab in the dark – sorry, not in a scary knives way – but just, you know, language and that. Your name is Hacq, and I think you’ve walked barefoot over glass in honour of your god.”
There was a stir in the room which was all the confirmation Sharon needed. “That’s great!” she exclaimed. “I mean, a bit wacko, all things considered, but, still, great. Um, I don’t suppose we can talk privately?”
Hacq glanced across the congregation, sampling the mood. The mood, which hadn’t been good to begin with, was beginning to be tempered with something else – a dangerous hint of fear. “What the fuck do you want?” he hissed.
“Excuse me?” Gretel rumbled, easing forward into the room. “I don’t think you’re being very polite to Ms Li.”
Hacq, to his credit, or perhaps as a man with not much evolutionary potential, squared up to the troll and did his best to stare her down. “Don’t think I’m scared of you,” he hissed. “Of any of you!” he added, shooting a glare towards Kelly. “Our lord will protect us, our lord is come, our lord is…”
“Inert, by the looks of it,” offered Mr Roding. “Now that I actually
see
your glass god, I think…”
“Elemental construct!” sang out Sammy’s voice from the empty air.
“… indeed, fed by the looks of it with a…”
“Direct point-to-point blood bond inscribed in…”
“The silicate level of the core, yes, I was saying all that…”
“You were saying it frickin’ slow, necromancer!” offered the goblin.
“Blasphemy!” interrupted Hacq. “You stand in the presence of a god, of the new god, of the…”
“Shall I hit him?” asked Gretel, staring down at the man. “I know it’s not polite, but I’m afraid I’m not aware of the socially acceptable alternative options.”
“Lay a finger on me,” breathed Hacq, “and our lord shall rip you apart.”
Rhys leant over to Sharon, and whispered, “It
could
rip us apart, Ms Li. You saw what it did to Miles.”
Sharon looked from the motionless glass figure to the man before her, who trembled with adrenalin and rage. Behind him, a woman, slightly built, painfully pale, cowered as Sharon’s gaze passed over her. There was something familiar in her face, something…
“Are you
sure
we can’t talk in private?” she asked. “I kinda feel like, talking in front of all these people… hi guys!” she added with a wave towards the congregation, “… is hyping you up and might not lead to totally rational decisions or free discussion.”
“Every person in this room has seen our lord’s majesty and is loyal to his cause.”
“Uh, babes, that’s, like, such an unfashionable attitude you’ve got there,” offered Kevin.
Hacq was visibly shaking now with emotion threatening to burst through his skin like blood through a broken eardrum. “You… you defile his temple!” He managed to keep his voice a bare squeak below a shriek. “You bring creatures of darkness into his sacred space, you abuse his name, you… you… you…”
“Mr Hacq, if you please.”
The voice came from the middle of the room, from one figure, unremarkable among the many. It was dry, old, soft, but loud enough to cut through even the vibration of Hacq’s rage, and Sharon recognised it at once. It was the voice of Arthur Huntley.
Wizard, scholar, expert in the magics of Old Man Bone, and sometime groundskeeper at Bunhill Fields, the small, stooped man, in his brown wax coat and grey woollen hat, stepped out of the crowd and laid a comforting hand on Hacq’s arm. The younger man deflated at the touch, the breath and the rage rushing out of him, leaving him almost as inert as the glass god himself. Mr Roding took a step back as Arthur approached; and all the while the ex-wizard smiled, patiently, into Sharon’s eyes.
“Ms Li,” he breathed. “A pleasure to see you again.”
Sharon waited before she answered, running through a mental checklist – mouth not hanging open, arms not flopping uselessly at her side, face not locked in a stupid expression of blind ignorance and startled revelation. To her surprise, she looked Arthur Huntley in the eye and said, “I can’t see this conversation ending well, can you?”
Arthur smiled, a slow, tolerant smile. “That, I think, is dependent on how we handle this situation. But perhaps your initial idea was correct; this may not be a conversation to have in public. May we?” He gestured towards a doorway at the far end of the room where they stood, a space which might one day be an office, the highest in Western Europe. Sharon hesitated, then followed. Glancing back she said, “If anything goes whoops, go boom.”
A mutual nod from the assembled Magicals Anonymous suggested that this tactical command was duly appreciated, as Sharon Li followed Arthur into the gloom.
Chapter 81
God is shit.
I prayed all my life to god, and what did he do?
He took everything from me.
My job.
My family.
My home.
I worked and I was good and I did everything that god fucking said I should, and I looked at the world and I saw rich fuckers get richer and poor fuckers get poorer and I thought, this isn’t god. This is just people, fucking people doing their fucking thing and no one looks out for yourself unless you do, and if you do it properly, then you’re a fucker so we’re all damned and going to hell in this life or the next no matter what we fucking do.
Then he came to me and he said, “let’s build a god”, and I thought he was out of his fucking mind but he said, “the old god is one of floods and fires, the old city is of stones and shadows, but that’s not how the world works any more. Let’s build a new god for a new world, and he will be like the new world, heart of glass, skin of glass, perfect, polished, smooth, immaculate, flawless, the flawlessness of machines, and he’ll show them. He’ll show all those fuckers just what it means to be fucked up by fucking creation. Because we made him, and he is ours.”
Chapter 82
Take a Slow Breath and Try Again
They passed through the congregation, and the congregation parted to let them by.
As they went, a girl, tiny, with a pale face, skin far too young, eyes far too old – reached out to grab at Arthur’s arm, pleading, perhaps? Or asking for advice? She was brushed off, her hand falling to her side, her eyes cast down.
Another bare room. Arthur moved to its centre, not bothering to see if Sharon followed, and waited for the door to swing shut behind him. One day this place might be a dining room or a restaurant, if the Shard catered to giant dignitaries from Brobdingnag and their hungry offspring. A glass god, if he bothered to stand up here, would be able to see the lives of eight million people moving beneath him, each spark of life smaller than the distance between the nail of his thumb and the skin of his finger, whole boroughs blotted from view with the palm of his hand.