The City's son

CHAPTER 23

Fil ran forward, unnaturally fast, his hands darting into the rain of rubbish as it fell. He caught some — a chunk of plaster in the vague shape of a brain, a mouldy carrot — and let the rest bounce off the cobbles. He crooked his ankle under the eggshells, braking their momentum so they tumbled whole onto the ground.

Beth raced over to help, but the rubbish and insects flooded out in a puddle under her feet, the stench of rotting things washed up at her and her stomach flipped over. Disgruntled flies batted her cheeks.

‘Mind his eye!’ Fil barked and she jerked her foot instinctively, just missing crushing the fallen eggshell. ‘What you trying to do, blind him?’ he snapped, his grey skin pale. ‘Give it here.’

She bent and passed it over. Rodents and beetles scurried through the debris. One moment they looked like they were pulling the stuff back into some semblance of a body; the next, they had forgotten themselves and turned on each other, hissing. A body-like heat radiated out from the pile.

Fil began to rearrange the rubbish, helping the vermin. For a moment Beth watched, perplexed, then she got it. It was like a game of make-believe surgery, building Gutterglass from the rubbish, placing drinking straws that could be ribs over the bicycle-pump heart. She joined in. The droplets of sour-milk sweat on the patient made it feel real.

‘Is wounded?’ Victor stumped over. ‘Can help; was medic in the Spetsnaz-’ He tailed off when he saw what they were doing, and then he rummaged around in the scattered trash and yanked out a roll of discarded wrapping paper.

‘Here, is good for forearm.’

Fil took it with a curt nod; they had a torso, a head and one arm now, and the deflated-football lungs were stuttering, starting to breath again. Rubbish-juice sprayed like saliva over them as he placed a hand atop the chest, counting under his breath. He swore.

‘He needs energy. Victor, go through the bins, grab any food you can find — the rottener the better.’

‘The rottener the better?’ Beth asked as the old man hurried off.

‘Easier to break down,’ he muttered tersely. ‘He needs all the help he can get right now.’

Victor returned with a double-handful of slimy vegetables and a half-jar of mouldy mayonnaise. Fil fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a small glass vial and sprinkled a few drops of liquid on each, then poured the food directly into the black-sack belly. Noses twitched, antennae wavered and the vermin seethed in around it. Once they’d eaten, they returned with renewed purpose to the task of pulling the rubbish spirit back together. His shape emerged from the little pile of landfill as suddenly as a Magic Eye picture.

Gradually his breathing began to ease and some of the tension left Fil’s face. He slipped a hand under his teacher’s filthy hair and gently tilted his head up. ‘Glas, what happened?’ he murmured.

For a while it was all Gutterglass could do to breathe. His paper lips opened and shut on nothing. Finally he uttered one word in a dry whisper: ‘ Reach.’

Fil’s knuckles paled slightly where they gripped the old man’s hair. ‘Reach?’

Gutterglass whispered, ‘He knows about-’ With tremendous effort, he sat up and looked at the Blankleits, who were glowing back at him sullenly, uncertain.

‘He knows what you’re doing,’ Gutterglass concluded. Bugs shifted subtly under cardboard and suddenly the pride shone out through the patchwork skin. ‘Filius, look what you’re doing: you’re finally growing up,’ he croaked happily. ‘I’m so proud of you.’

Beth could have sworn Fil actually blushed. ‘Well,’ he mumbled, ‘they’re only a start. I can really see us rocking up at the Demolition Fields with a hundred Whities and a few reflections. “Oi, Crane Face, quake in the face of my awesome army!” I just hope it doesn’t rain.’ He shook his head ruefully. ‘They’re not even trained yet, but-’

Gutterglass was staring up at him, an oil-like film stretching between his eggshells. He seemed to be looking past his shoulder. Or not looking at all.

‘Glas!’ Fil yelled. Fear made him warble. ‘Glas, stay with us!’

Gutterglass’ head snapped around, eggshell-eyes stretched wide. ‘They’ll have to do, child,’ he whispered. ‘They’ll have to learn fast.’

‘Glas, what are you talking about?’

Beth felt the silence before he answered. ‘It followed me — it hid on the buildings, Filius.’ His tone was beseeching. Rich garbage air gusted from his mouth. ‘I tried,’ Glas said again, ‘I tried but it — it mauled me.’

‘Glas, what are you saying?’

The white inside of Glas’ eggshell eyes glowed in the Blankleit glare. ‘ Scaffwolf,’ he breathed.

A tiny tremor of shock ran through Fil; Beth was sure no one else had noticed it. Then the muscles in his shoulders and his arms relaxed, became visibly supple, and his grip on his spear tightened. His face took on the same cocky tension it had when Beth had first met him. Her heart tightened in her chest.

He was gearing up for a fight.

‘Victor, mate?’

‘Da.’

‘Be a champion and get our Christmas tree cousins ready for a scrap.’

Victor flashed his torch imperiously. The Blankleits milled around, their faces uncertain. A couple flashed questions back.

‘They want to know what comes.’

As if in answer, a sound carried over the city: a clattering, ringing sound like an iron landslide.

‘Tell them it’s worse than an Amberglow scalping party.’

The Blankleits fanned out with Fil at the centre of their rough semi-circle, crouching over Gutterglass. Beth stood behind him, her knees sagging. She was sweating despite the chill of the night, alternately feeling very hot and very cold.

‘Um, Fil?’ she said. Her voice was shrill. ‘What should I, you know? What do you want me to-?’ She tailed off as the sound of tumbling metal drew closer. It concentrated itself into a rhythm, focused knots of ringing. She caught sight of a flicker of motion above the slates to the right: something vast and fast and grey.

He lifted his spear from the ground and swept it around in a smooth arc, as if following the path of something hidden behind the buildings.

The hollow ringing was deafening now, enough to smash glass and burst eardrums. How? Beth wondered: how could it be that loud and not be on them? She twisted left and right, but she couldn’t see it.

Suddenly, chillingly close, came a low metallic howl.

Scaffwolf.

Steel screamed around the corner. Beth hurled herself to the ground, feeling the wind of its passing. Metal pipes whirled over her at decapitation-height, catching a Blankleit and shattering him into phosphorescent powder. A sooty man-shape burnt on her retinas for an instant and then was gone.

The world was spinning metal and broken glass and sickening howling. Something grabbed Beth by the hood and yanked her back. A steel paw clanged off the cobbles where her head had been.

The Scaffwolf bayed. She saw it and heard it and felt it in her gut. A blunt muzzle formed by a skeleton of pipes emerged from an unformed body, a cloud of scaffolding whirling in constant, chaotic motion. Jaws creaked on hinges as they snapped, and clouds of blood-red rust sprayed from flaring nostrils. As Beth watched, rods spun and locked into place and a paw the size of her head lashed out, shattering the life from another lightbulb man.

‘Victor!’ Fil yelled over the screeching metal, ‘we have to fall back!’

The old man was dancing a strange jig, trying to dodge the rain of metal. ‘Da, you think?’

The Scaffwolf snapped at them with jagged teeth and sharpened screws and Fil hauled Beth backwards. Her entire body rang with the impact as the jaws slammed shut on empty air. She shoved herself upright and together they ran for a narrow lane. Gutterglass crawled and spilled and swarmed under her feet.

They wormed their way into the narrow gap in the bricks, Blankleits scrambling after them. Mannequins watched dully from a shop window and it took Beth a second to realise that the shop was set into a wall at the back of the lane. Panic rose in her throat.

The lane was a cul-de-sac.

Everything shuddered as the wolf pounced. Its toes gouged the cobbles at the mouth of the lane. It was huge, its shoulders wider than the alley. The Scaffwolf rammed against the buildings, baying and snapping. Brick-dust flowed like snow from the scarred walls. Its head extended nine feet into the alley, but it could come no further. It snarled in frustration; the sound was like a braking truck.

Beth pushed out breath as hysterical relief washed through her. She looked at Fil for reassurance, but she found none. His knuckles were pale around his railing and his face taut with fear.

Cogs whirred and nuts loosened. There was a shinking sound and oiled struts slid closer together as she watched. The muzzle at the mouth of the lane grew narrower, the neck and shoulders collapsing towards one another. The wolf shrank just enough to slide into the alley and sprang right at them.

Fil yelled, ‘ Victor! ’ and the old tramp barked something in Russian. His light flashed and the Blankleits flared in response. Their light, springing back off the belly of the wolf, nearly blinded her. The Scaffwolf slowed down in midair. It sank sluggishly and landed just short of them, growling and shaking its head from side to side.

Beth’s back was pressed to the glass shop front. Around her the Blankleits’ hands were extended towards the beast: a forest of glass arms with incandescent veins. The fine hairs were standing up on Beth’s skin. The Blankleits were pushing out some kind of force at the wolf.

Beth’s head whirled. She felt giddy. How? She couldn’t breathe. How?

The glass men had slowed the beast, but they hadn’t stopped it. Slowly, inexorably, it placed one paw in front of the other, its metal neck bent against the invisible power they projected.

A glass man stood transfixed in its path: the round one, the first one to sign up. Beth wished suddenly that she knew his name. The wolf loomed over him, jaws hanging open, slavering rust. Other Lampmen stepped forward. She could see every filament straining, but they couldn’t stop it.

Every light flashed, but Beth’s scream was the only sound as the wolf’s jaws crunched shut.

It turned to face her, a tiny bit quicker now with one of its enemies dead. Its feet rang off the street as it loped towards her with casual malice. The whistling of its breath echoed all around, filling the alley. As she cast around for some sort of weapon she saw a Blankleit collapse, exhausted.

Something grey blurred past her. Faster than a hummingbird’s wing, Fil launched himself at the beast.

His spear stopped before he did, torn from his grasp by the same magnetism that had slowed the wolf, and he caught the lower jaw and swung up like an acrobat, landing precariously on the beast’s nose. The Scaffwolf lashed its head furiously but he windmilled his arms and somehow kept his balance.

Beth gasped and breathed again.

‘ Filius — ’ The voice was a wet hiss of air. Gutterglass sounded horrified. He tried to accrete towards his ward, the wrapping paper arm outstretched.

‘Beth!’ Fil snapped, his concentration fierce, ‘hold him there!’

Beth threw herself down hard, clawing at the rubbish. Rats hissed wildly and bit her and the beetles scurried through her hair, but she clung onto the garbage body and Gutterglass could not escape her.

‘Hold it!’ he cried, crouched down like a surfer. His head was bent over as though he was listening for something. A look of incredulous hope emerged onto his face. ‘Hold it, that’s good, lads,’ he cried. ‘Hold it now!’

The Blankleits had gathered around the sides of the wolf. They stood now, palms out, hemming it in with their force. The animal was torn between smashing them and shaking loose the boy who hung from its neck, taunting it. The spear rotated slowly in the air in front of the Scaffwolf, like bait. The animal’s breath whistled through its pipes, echoing off the narrow alley walls.

Another whistle sounded as if in answer, higher-pitched, a sound that seemed to come from inside the bricks of the buildings themselves. A heavy, churning rhythm started shaking the ground. An electric fear paralysed Beth. Don’t wolves hunt in packs?

‘Hold it!’ Fil was screaming now. ‘Hold it there!’

The whistling from the buildings grew louder, and the ground shuddered in a syncopated rhythm: Thrum-clatter-clatter.

Beth had heard that sound before. Maybe it blames you for its mauling, she thought suddenly. Maybe what it wants is payback ‘Hold it!’ Fil was hanging by one hand from the wolf’s shoulder and as it turned and snapped at him its teeth sliced the air inches from his face. His fingers slipped on the metal. He was going to fall Beth couldn’t watch; she turned her head away and gazed sightlessly into the shop window. The dead gaze of the mannequins met hers, and behind them…

Behind the glass, two tiny pinpricks of light were growing.

‘Hold it! Hold it!’

Thrum-clatter-clatter-thrum-clatter-clatter-thrum-clatter-clatter The points of light in the window swelled into headlamps and wind whipped Beth’s hair against her forehead. The whistling climbed to a shriek.

‘Hold it,’ His voice was frantic but triumphant: ‘ Hold it! ’

The shop window exploded.

Beth curled into a ball as shattered glass rained down. Hot pain flared where it lacerated her. Dead straight grooves like tracks ripped through the cobbles — but they swerved around her. Lights rushed past barely an inch from her head.

For an instant, she saw it, her Railwraith — but it looked vague, weaker than she remembered. It can’t survive away from the tracks; that’s what Fil had said. It was already dying. But she looked in through its windows and saw its ghostly passengers: sewing and chattering and texting: every face was fiercely determined.

Fil leapt, snatching his spear from the air, as the Railwraith rushed towards the wolf’s empty eyesockets.

Metal screamed for a long second, then silence.

Beth touched her ear and felt something wet. She was shivering, she realised. She rose to her knees, and fell straight back. Twisted scaffolding filled the alley, glowing red-hot and seething with smoke. A steam-whistle cry ghosted from the air.

Beth twitched her toes. They responded, so she tried to stand again, and this time she made less of a hash of it.

Fil lay were he’d been cast against a wall. His skin was livid with cuts, but he was sitting up before Beth reached him. His eyes were glazed and his nose had been snapped hard to the right. His grin was crooked. ‘Glas?’ he asked.

Beth groped for the eggshells in her hoodie pocket. They were whole. She set them down and after a second rats and worms and beetles started writhing out of the brickwork, building their master around them.

Gutterglass could barely stand. Fil had to support him. ‘My my,’ he murmured. ‘What a mess.’

His eggshell eyes fell on Beth and a little rill of shock went through her. ‘Nicely taken,’ he said, and pointed at his eyes. A grimace crossed his garbage face. ‘Filius,’ he murmured, ‘I need to talk to you alone.’ Leaning heavily on Fil, he lurched out of the lane.

The alley had been badly damaged: windows smashed, stone and brickwork clawed. At the mouth Beth could see Victor, semaphoring to the crowd of Blankleits with her torch. Their glow reached back into the cul-de-sac, and Beth could see that barely half of them had survived. The rest were dust and burn-marks on the ground.

Beth staggered in amongst the wreckage of the wolf. There was no sign of her train. Desperately she tried to think: where were the nearest train tracks? The Underground ran close by, that nexus of lines at Oxford Circus. Could her Railwraith have reached them in time? Please, she prayed inside her head, please have made it.

There was an electric sense in the air, like the ghost of an emotion, a residue the wraith had left behind it. It was a feeling of pride, of making amends. The Railwraith had swerved around her, she thought, awestruck. She hadn’t imagined it. She remembered how ashamed it had seemed when it fled from the freight train’s attack. You were its passenger, Fil had said. It hadn’t been stalking her, it had been looking out for her.

Anyone who’s crazy enough to ride one Railwraith and shout at another needs all the help she can get.

Apparently, her Railwraith had felt the same.

She felt grateful, and sick, and like she didn’t deserve it.

You think they can’t feel, and think and bloody love? His words rang round her head. There’s more lives at stake here than the ones that look like you.

A lump filled Beth’s throat and she found herself starting to cry.

‘Beth.’ Fil and Gutterglass had reappeared at the mouth of the alley. Ants still raced over Glas’ cheek, filling in gaps with scraps of matchbox, but he looked steadier now.

Fil’s scratched and burnt face scrunched up. His voice was gruff, as though he’d been shouting. ‘Beth,’ he tried again.

Gruffness didn’t suit his voice, Beth thought; he was just a teenager, like her.

He took a step forward, then looked back at Gutterglass as if for support. The rubbish man smiled grimly and motioned him forward.

‘Beth,’ Fil said, ‘you need to leave. Now.’