The City's son

CHAPTER 16

‘So, where to now, guv?’ Beth perched on a bollard and ripped open the greaseproof paper on her bacon sandwich. The smell of bacon and hot melting butter drifted into the chilly air.

A few hours after leaving the Demolition Fields Beth found that she could no longer remember exactly how it had felt to be there. In fact, she couldn’t feel anything much at all: it was as though her emotions had blown a fuse and shut down, leaving just a basic awareness of her own body, the cold, the pressure of urine in her bladder, the ache of tired muscles…

Beth took a big bite. Suddenly she was ravenously hungry.

‘You want a bit of this?’ she mumbled around the mouthful of bread and bacon.

Fil declined with a smirk. ‘Don’t need it.’

Beth swallowed. ‘Oh yeah, your weird synthesis thing. Don’t you ever just eat? You know, ’cause it tastes good?’

‘Sure, a good bit of tarmac-cake or a few petrolberries, when I get time. Nothing like that. ’ He eyed Beth’s sandwich with a mix of curiosity and intense distrust. ‘Speakin’ of which, what time is it?’ he asked.

She glanced at her G-Shock. ‘Six twenty-three in the a.m.’

‘Then we can relax; the people we’re going to see won’t be up for a bit.’

Darkness still covered the street behind Waterloo Station where they sat, but besuited office workers bustled to and fro. The news kiosks were manned and the headlines fresh. Cars and buses hissed over the asphalt.

‘What I don’t get,’ Beth said, ‘is why you think we’re going to have trouble getting people on our side. I mean, Reach is blatantly dangerous, so why aren’t your mum’s worshippers queuing round the block to have him got rid of?’

He looked at her like she was a prize-winning idiot. ‘You’re kidding, right? Because he’s blatantly dangerous. We’ve never had do anything like this before. Mater Viae always gathered the army, and she always led it herself, before Reach grew too strong to kill.’ He looked grim. ‘My mother’s left us right in the lurch. With her around, people got scared, and so they acted. Without her, they get scared and pretend it’s not their problem. They draw boundaries: “Let Reach stay in the Square Mile,” they say, “and we’ll live and let live.” And when he breaks those borders, they give him new ones: north of the river, east of the park, stuff like that.’

He picked dirt from under his fingernails and flicked it absentmindedly at a nearby pigeon. ‘And the longer they leave it, the stronger Reach gets, and the stronger he gets, the scareder they get, and so they leave it even longer. It’s a vicious cycle: stupid, but that’s how it works.’

Well, this is a carnival of bloody optimism, Beth thought. ‘But those people,’ she insisted, ‘those people, from last night — the men and Women in the Walls. Don’t they have friends, families?’

‘Sure they do,’ Fil sighed, ‘but for every man or woman demanding vengeance for their murdered brother, there’re three more who’ll curl up in a corner and beg you not to hurt them too.’

He squirmed under Beth’s appalled gaze. ‘Don’t look at me like that,’ he said. ‘I don’t know which way I’d go myself yet. And despite what you’re thinking, I bet you don’t either.’

Beth wondered what had happened to the brash kid who’d declared: I’m the most dangerous thing on the street. He was sloughing off layers of bravado at a rate that frightened her.

When sunlight began to spear from behind the horizon’s taller buildings, he stretched and slung his spear over his shoulder. ‘Come on, finish your munching. We need to get moving.’

They threaded through the early morning crowds. A few people looked askance at the pavement-skinned teenager, shirtless in the cold, but only a few — after all, if you didn’t inspect him too closely there were dozens of weirder performers working London’s streets.

They ducked off the main drag and hopped a fence with a diamond-shaped yellow sign warning: High Voltage: Danger of Death. Fil climbed up a fire escape onto a roof and walked towards a pair of towering pipes that were belching out air-con vapour. He leaned on the nearest pipe and paused, pursing his lips in thought. ‘Okay, Beth,’ he said, ‘the people we’re about to meet are uppity, arrogant and excruciatingly bloody irritating, i.e. they’re nobility. I’m warning you in advance, because we have to be polite to ’em, and because-’

‘Because I have a big mouth?’

He nodded emphatically.

‘Okay,’ Beth said, ‘but I don’t know what you’re worried about. I can control myself, you know. Just now, when you said “arrogant, uppity and irritating”, I didn’t say a word about pots, kettles and being bla-’

He gave her a playful shove. ‘ Walk. And take off your watch, I don’t want the glass reflecting somebody’s eyeball and causing a diplomatic incident.’

Beth considered asking him what on earth he was talking about, but she was rapidly giving that particular question up as a waste of breath. She slipped the G-shock into her pocket.

When they rounded the pipes they were confronted by a rectangular shape draped in black fabric, about the height and width of a shipping container. He yanked away the cloth to reveal a frameless slab of mirrored glass.

Beth studied her own reflection in the mirror. She’d lost weight in the days she’d been on the streets. Her cheekbones jutted out now, and her skin was dirty. She looked rough, sleep-deprived.

‘Did you put this here?’

‘It had to be out of the way so they wouldn’t hurt anybody.’

‘ Who wouldn’t?’ Beth tried not to sound exasperated, but she did wish, just once, he’d give her a plain answer.

‘You’ll see.’ He stood a little straighter and tapped on the glass three times with the butt of his railing. ‘His Highness Filius Viae, Son of the Streets, Prince Ascendant of London, Heir and Protector to all her colonies,’ he intoned formally, ‘requests and requires an audience with the Seven Senators of the Most Noble Order of the Silvered Glass.’

Beth leaned into him. ‘Nice title,’ she whispered.

‘Yeah, the Mirrorstocracy love all that pomp and circumstance stuff.’

‘What, and you don’t?’

They exchanged a long look, and he blushed.

‘I believe that’s what they call “busted”, your Highness,’ Beth murmured.

‘Hush.’

They waited. Birds cawed overhead, but nothing else happened. Fil rapped on the mirror again. ‘His Highness, Filius-’ he began again, but this time he was interrupted by a stuffy voice that sounded like its owner had spent about a century gargling dust.

‘Very well, very well — no need to hurry. How very uncouth.’

In the mirror Beth saw a stooped old man walk onto the roof. He appeared from the reflection’s edge, as though he’d been lurking behind them, just out of sight. He approached until he stood right between mirror-Beth and mirror-Fil.

A shiver went up Beth’s spine. A glance sideways confirmed what she already knew: there was no old man beside her. He existed only in the reflection.

‘ Harrumph,’ said the old man. He was dressed in a purple uniform with gold piping and a beret and looked like a cross between a brigadier and an incredibly ancient bellboy.

He peered doubtfully out of the mirror at them. ‘You don’t look much like a Prince Ascendant,’ he said. He plucked distastefully at the jeans of Fil’s reflection and Beth was faintly appalled to see his real jeans ripple, just as if they’d been pinched by invisible fingers.

Fil cocked an eyebrow. ‘You don’t look much like the Seven Senators of the Silvered Glass, so I reckon that makes us even.’

‘How very uncouth. I am the Senate’s agent-de-porte. Anything you wish to say to them, you may say to me,’ the reflection of the old man declared haughtily. ‘I shall raise your petition with them at their earliest convenience.’

‘We need to see them now.’

Wispy grey hairs jutted from the reflected man’s chin as he stuck it out. ‘No,’ he said. And then harrumphed again, and repeated, ‘How very uncouth.’

While Fil hesitated, trying to think of some way to claw back the initiative, Beth stepped forward, trying to calculate the consequences of pissing off the gnarled bellboy before deciding she didn’t care anyway.

She cleared her throat noisily. ‘Right you are, Doorkeep,’ she said, in the most offensively chirpy tone she could manage. ‘Then when you’ve got a minute, you can tell the Senators that their Goddess’ son is outside — tell them he looks like he sleeps in a storm drain; they’ll know it’s him — and that he would very much appreciate it if they would get off their stuck-up, inbred backsides and come to the door so he can get on with the serious business of waging war against a maniac crane-toting God.’

She waited until the reflected face of the agent-de-porte had gone milky-pale before adding, ‘Do you think their earliest convenience might be soon?’

The Doorkeep hustled back out of the side of the reflection.

Fil let out his breath explosively. ‘ Beth! ’

‘Fil.’

‘What happened to polite?’

Beth shrugged. ‘He was pissing me off. Besides, uppity bouncers are the same everywhere, Puffa jacket or tux, makes no odds. Give ’em a problem above their pay grade, they always kick it up the chain.’

He stared at her and she smirked; All right, she admitted to herself, maybe I am showing off a bit. ‘I can see you’ve never tried to blag your way into an over-twenty-ones night in Camden.’ She jerked her head at the mirror. ‘Who are they anyway? He looked — well, I don’t want to sound to crazy here, but he looked human.’

‘The Mirrorstocracy, lords-under-glass,’ he replied, still looking at her like she was utterly mad. ‘They’re sometimes born when a person gets caught between two mirrors.’

‘You what now?’

‘Two mirrors,’ he repeated testily. ‘You know all those infinitely receding reflections you get? Well every reflection has a little bit of reality in it, and every now and then they add up to someone like Doorkeep there: a living, breathing copy on the other side of the glass. The Mirrorstocracy are really, really prickly — I can’t believe you-’

‘Shhh, they’re coming back,’ Beth said, fixing on a smile. If this Mirrorstocracy were anything like the posh kids she occasionally sold paintings to, then you could bitch your heart out, as long as you pretended to be nice while you did it. She was going to enjoy this.

Seven figures — three men in grey suits, four women in grey skirts and white blouses — swept into view on the reflected rooftop. They walked like they had the deeds to the world in their back pockets. They stopped exactly level with Beth and Fil’s reflections, not a fraction of an inch forward or back. They were marking their status.

One of the mirror-women directed a minute curtsey at Fil. She had walnutty skin and a sour mouth. ‘Highness,’ she said.

Fil bowed his head at the mirror.

‘Excellency.’

‘Your friend gave our agent-de-porte quite a turn. What can we do for you, Son of the Streets?’

He smiled. ‘I’m here to invoke your vassalage. Load your glass guns and unwind your garrottes.’ He frowned, as though something was only just occurring to him. ‘Have a dig around for any welding-torches that might have been caught in-mirror as well, will you? The scrap we’re heading into, I think we’ll be needing them.’

If this bizarre request startled the woman, she didn’t show it. ‘You’re recruiting.’

He nodded. ‘It’s a man’s life in the army, but don’t let that put you off.’

The lines on the woman’s brown skin contorted as if she was struggling gamely for a smile, but not quite getting there. ‘And I assume the target of this expedition is Reach?’

He grinned.

‘So the Urchin Prince is finally stepping into his Mother’s footprints. How do they feel, Highness?’

‘A little on the large side,’ he admitted. ‘But I’ll grow into them.’

‘I’m sure you will.’ The Senator pursed her lips, then said, ‘I’m afraid we can’t help you, Filius Viae, as much as we would like to.’

His smiled hardened. ‘Really? Why not?’

‘If you consult Imago Seventy-three of the Treaty of Palindromes, it specifies that only Mater Viae herself is empowered to enforce our vassalage. Well, it actually states: egalassav s’ycarcotsrorriM eht ecrofne yam sseddoG eht ylno, but it’s polite to translate.’ The Senator’s voice dripped with phony diplomatic regret. ‘Obviously, we would gladly release the legions to her, but as everyone knows, she has been missing this last decade, and in her absence, the treaty must remain in abeyance. Even in the face of such an august figure as yourself, our hands are tied.’

You could have napped flint with Fil’s smile now. ‘What’s this about, Maggie?’

The Senator sighed as if to say, Well, if you’re going to be so ill-mannered as to insist on me being honest… ‘We suspected that such a request might soon be made. It doesn’t take a mathematician to count the cranes on the horizon. The appropriate response to this delicate question was debated in Senate. I can assure your Highness that there were full-throated opinions on both sides-’

‘I’m sure.’

‘-but, after due reflection, it was felt that given Reach’s current proclivity for building glass towers, he might make a better ally than a foe.’

Fil’s jaw dropped so far you could have shoved a football down his throat. ‘ What? ’

‘Well, the more reflective surfaces there are in your city, the more opportunity we have to redomicile conventional singly-reflected persons to our city as Plebeians.’

He said in disgust, ‘You mean slaves.’

‘Serfs, technically.’ The Senator, like all politicians, was clearly sweet on semantics.

Fil stared at her in silence for a long moment. Then his expression changed from furious to thoughtful and he rocked back on his heels. He shoved his spare hand in his pocket and his smile returned. ‘Okay,’ he said, and he turned back towards the fire escape.

Beth started. ‘ Okay? Fil, that’s it?’

He spread his hands. ‘You heard Her Excellency. They’ve made up what passes for their minds; nothing we can do to change them now-’ He paused. ‘Of course, there are three obvious reasons why that decision’ll result in their republic collapsing into raging bloody anarchy. But I’m sure they’ll have covered those in their “full-throated debate”.’ He shrugged, as though to say some you win…

The Senator’s clearing of the throat was delicately audible. ‘I am sure we will have discussed them, you are right, of course — but just to be certain, might I enquire, Highness, what reasons?’

He smiled like an adder and ticked them off on his fingers. ‘First, there’s the fact that Reach is a psychotic monster, so only someone with a really cavernously empty skull would rely on him to do anything.

‘Second, Mater Viae is coming back, stomping up the warpath like she does, and she’ll be bloodlettingly unhappy that you didn’t come when her favourite little boy called.’ He shrugged. ‘But if you’re okay with that…’

The Senators in the mirror looked at each other in consternation as he put his foot on the fire-escape ladder.

‘Um, Fil?’ Beth started. Somehow she felt this was her cue. ‘You said three reasons?’

The grey boy folded his skinny arms on the top rung and set his chin on them. ‘So I did.’ His smile vanished, his cheeks darkened and for a second he looked furiously, frighteningly angry. ‘The other reason you should think again, your Excellencies, is this: if you don’t, I’ll stick up pairs of giant mirrors facing each other across Trafalgar Square, Bishopsgate and Oxford bloody Circus.’

Senator Maggie paled, but there were confused laughs from some of the others, and one old man said defiantly, ‘So what?’

He sucked his teeth. ‘So I reckon that’s at least a couple of hundred thousand people being caught between them every day. Say only five per cent of them cross over; that’s ten thousand new Mirrorstocrats. Daily. I’ll flood London-Under-Glass with sodding aristos until the mirrorsquitos can’t suck a drop of blood that’s not blue.’ He licked his lips as if savouring the prospect.

‘I’ll tip your bottom-heavy society right on its face.’ He waved at them. ‘Bye! Enjoy cleaning your own palaces and breaking your own backs on the sun farms, because you can kiss goodbye to your fat-arsed privilege when there’s only one of your poor-bugger Plebeians to every hundred of you.’

He hawked and then spat, very deliberately, on the roof. ‘Think about it,’ he said, and turned away.

Beth looked back at the faces of the Mirrorstocracy. They were all white with impotent fury, except for Senator Maggie, who kept that sour smile on her face.

‘Fat-arsed privilege?’ she said mildly. ‘Spoken like a true prince.’

They hit the ground, jumped over the fence and ran down the alley back towards the main road, laughing wildly. Beth felt immense, euphoria surging in her, like when she and Pen pulled off some beautiful mural.

At that thought, Pen’s brown eyes flashed into Beth’s mind and she stopped short and swallowed, but the grey-skinned boy was still grinning at her and she felt her own smile burst back.

‘Got ’em!’ Fil shouted jubilantly. ‘ Now I’m having fun.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Definitely. There’s no way they can face down a threat like that.’ He embraced her impulsively, squeezing the air from her, then let her go.

‘What was that for?’

‘For your big mouth. You were so river-bleeding rude to ’em, and they took it, so I figured I could take the high hand too.’

His skin was shiny with city-grease and when Beth looked down she saw her hoodie was smeared with it. ‘Wow,’ she said, ‘that’s pretty gross, you know that? Do you sweat motor oil or something?’

‘Get used to it,‘ he said with a grin. ‘Stay with me, you’ll get a good coat of it yourself in no time. It’s handy — keeps out the chill.’

‘So sign me up — I’m freezing.’

‘Right you are.‘ He reached around her and smeared her face and her clothes with it and she squealed and struggled and laughed and he laughed too as he wrestled her to the ground. They struggled in the dirt for a few seconds, struggling to fight, breathe and giggle all at once, until Beth slid out from underneath him and got on top, bending his arm back and pinning him down.

For a fraction of a second her mouth hovered over his. He stopped laughing. Beth was suddenly, shockingly, aware of the strength of his thin arms, of the fact that he was letting her pin him. She felt the heat of his breath against her lips and she panicked.

Heat flooded into her face and to cover her embarrassment she stuck her tongue out at him and jumped away.

Then he cracked up again and she felt hysterical laughter boil up out of her.

When the echoes of their laughter had finally faded they were both lying on their backs, panting for breath. Hesitantly, she slid her hand over the asphalt and took his. Her sleeve had hitched up and their bare arms touched, their tower-block-crown tattoos resting side by side.

‘Thank you,’ he whispered to her.

‘What for?’

‘For being here.’

That night they drank to celebrate what Fil assured her was their first successful recruitment. He’d boiled up clear green liquor over a fire he’d set in a metal dustbin. Beth felt her head swim as the heat of it trickled through her, turning her limbs to warm mud. The skinny boy drank twice as much as she did, and sang stupid Latin songs horribly off-key. He would have fallen flat on his face if she hadn’t caught him. They folded together into a comfortable heap and with her head resting on his shoulder and him already snoring, Beth, contented, drifted off to sleep.

She woke in the pale silver dawn, bleary-eyed and stiff, her cheek glued to the concrete by early morning frost. Fil sat opposite, winding fresh strips of torn poster around his burns. A train sounded in the distance. Its whistle was wrong somehow. Beth couldn’t quite say why, but it sounded thin… wounded.

He cocked his head, listening, then he noticed she was awake and gave her a tired smile. ‘Recognise that sound?’ he asked her.

‘The train?’

‘Not just any train: that’s your Railwraith, the one you were riding the night we met. She’s been following us for two days now, keeping as close as she can on the tracks. Any idea what she wants?’

Beth shook her head. ‘I don’t even know why she picked me up in the first place.’

A broad smile split his face. ‘Seriously? You don’t even know that? But that’s obvious — you were a passenger. You wanted to go somewhere — anywhere — and she sensed it. Wraiths get passengers: passengers are what they remember, what they do. Passengers make ’em happy.’

He stretched and settled against the wall next to her. ‘Mind you, what she wants with you now you’re with me is anyone’s guess. Maybe she blames you for getting her mauled by that freight train; maybe she’s looking for payback. Then again, p’raps she’s lonely and just wants a friend. Railwraiths are pretty unstable at the best of times, and after what that one went through she’s bound to be a little barking.’

Beth winced. The clash and churn of the immense ghostengines was burned into the memory of her body. She huddled up and pulled her hoodie down over her knees.

‘Cold?’

‘No,’ Beth said flatly, ‘practising for my future career as a contortionist.’

He threw an arm around her. His bony hip jabbed her uncomfortably, but he gave off a surprising amount of heat. ‘S’all right. She can’t survive away from the tracks for more than a few minutes. We stay off the rails, we’ll be fine. Besides, you’re with me now.’

Beth snorted. ‘Given everything, I have a hard time believing that makes me safer, Fil. But thanks.’

‘Fair point, but tell what you what: I’ll do my best to make sure I get killed before you do. Can’t say fairer than that, can I?’

A little shiver went through Beth as he spoke at the thought of him dying. That’d been the first thing he’d told her about himself: Someone’s trying to kill me.

‘Nah,’ she said, forcing herself to smile. ‘Very kind.’