The City's son

CHAPTER 25

‘You know what?’ Beth snapped. She folded her arms and glared at him. ‘Piss off!’

Gutterglass turned and inspected her reflection delicately in a window-pane.

Beth had only been slightly surprised when the old man made of rubbish had slowly rebuilt itself as a woman this time.

‘What?’ Fil asked.

‘Piss off,’ she repeated.

‘Well… that’s pretty much what we were going to do.’

‘I know — piss off with your pissing off. You can’t just piss off. You need me-’

‘What for?’ Gutterglass enquired mildly. ‘Your extensive vocabulary?’

Beth glared at her. ‘You want to hear my extensive vocabulary? You patronising cu-’

‘ Lizbet! ’ Victor cut her off, sounding so scandalised that she actually blushed. ‘Not ladylike!’ The Russian on the pavement beside his huddled glass-skinned soldiers, who’d all promptly yawned and stretched and fallen asleep the moment the sun had come up. He swigged from his vodka bottle and looked mournfully from one to the other, muttering, ‘Not ladylike at all.’

Fil took a step towards Beth. The edges of his eyes were red-raw, a shockingly human colour on him. ‘Beth, I don’t think you’re listening to me.’

‘No? I reckon I heard you tell me to get lost loud and clear.’

‘Beth!’

‘ Fil! ’ she snapped, ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

His jaw set, he sniffed hard and turned back towards Gutterglass. ‘Well, we are. Come nightfall you can have this place all to yourself.’

Beth grabbed her backpack. ‘I’ll follow you.’

He whirled, his face taut and furious. ‘You couldn’t keep up — that’s the whole point: you need protecting all the time.’

Beth shoved herself towards him, jutting her chin pugnaciously. ‘Why? Because I’m a girl?’

‘No! Because you’re slow and weak and bloody…’ He tailed off, grasping the air in frustration. ‘You’re bloody human! And I’ve not got the eyes — and she’s not got the eggshells — and neither of us have the spare arms to keep dragging your skinny arse out of trouble every time we meet one of them.’ He pointed to the twisted remnants of the Scaffwolf.

He breathed in deeply, then let it out slowly, regaining control of himself. ‘I’m sorry, Beth,’ he said. ‘I thought I could cover you, but I can’t. You were this close to getting bitten in half. I won’t have it.’

Beth stood eye to eye with him. ‘Oh, you won’t?’ Her throat was tight and dry, and her voice came out in a growl. ‘You’re the one gave me this, remember?’ She tugged her sleeve up to show her tower-block-crown scar. ‘“Give up home”, you said. “Give up safety, forever.” Forever. Not “until we get into a scrape and Beth gets a bit knocked about.” Well, I gave it up, willingly. You can’t make me go back now.’

He looked away, shamefaced, so she swept her mutinous gaze round to Gutterglass. ‘You put him up to this, didn’t you?’ she accused, her voice climbing shrilly. ‘He was fine with me getting my arse kicked bloody before you turned up. He’d’ve been perfectly happy to have my guts hanging from the nearest one of those!’ She pointed at a crane arching over the Gherkin in the distance.

‘Oh dear,’ Gutterglass murmured softly with a wince, as though Beth just had displayed a painful level of naivete. ‘No, he most certainly would not — quite the opposite in fact.’

Beth gaped at the wretched-looking boy who was blushing almost black. Her thoughts flashed back to the day before, after they’d delivered their ultimatum to the Mirrorstocracy, that moment their lips had hovered over each other. She felt a twinge in her chest, like someone had tapped her heart with a tiny hammer.

Gutterglass cleared her throat primly. ‘Indeed, the Prince is so concerned for your wellbeing that in view of your fragility he is reluctant to enter combat for a second time while you are with him. Were you to come to harm, I expect he’d be beside himself, weeping, wailing, beating of breast, et cetera-’

The Prince fixed his tutor with a glare.

Beth managed to stop herself from saying the first thing that came into her head. Unfortunately she blurted out the second thing instead: ‘That’s not my fault! That’s him being a pussy-!’

‘Oh, for Thames’ sake!’ Fil’s spear clanged off the cobbles as he threw it to the ground.

Beth rounded on him. ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she snapped, ‘did the weak, slow, helpless little girl hurt your feelings?’

He slumped onto the ground beside Victor, dragged the bottle from his grasp and swigged off a hefty measure.

‘ Beth,’ he said. Or at least he tried to say, but the booze had apparently scoured his throat and he only managed a lame rasp.

‘Beth,’ he tried again. ‘I can’t ask you to- You can’t ask me toLook, you can’t come, all right? I’ll break both your legs before I let you follow me somewhere Reach could hurt you.’

Beth could feel herself starting to tremble: a nine-pointnine on the dear-Christ-please-don’t-let-me-cry-now scale.

‘I’ll tell the world about you.’ She unslung her backpack from her shoulder and shook it, rattling the paint cans. ‘I’ll tell everyone. If you don’t take me with you, I’ll paint your face forty feet high on the side of every building east of Big Ben. You won’t get any peace. Everyone who sees you’ll harass you. People will come looking for you, searching for the freaks. ’

The word was cruel but she was ready for cruelty now, rejection was sharp in her chest. They couldn’t chuck her out; she’d make it too damned painful for them. ‘Armies of ’em,’ she promised nastily, ‘scientists and tourists and sodding zoos — they’ll hunt you down.’

Gutterglass was looking at her gravely. Fil’s lip twisted and he thrust his hands in his pockets. ‘They really won’t, Beth,’ he said. He sighed. ‘Go to the asylum in Brixton Road; ask if anyone there’s seen a walking lightbulb, or overheard a statue talking — I guarantee there’ll be one, maybe even a few. Noggin-wranglers’ notebooks all over London are stuffed with the kind of stories you could tell.’

‘Some of them even have illustrations,’ Gutterglass interjected. ‘There are already paintings of me, Miss Bradley, forty feet high, and four inches high, and everything between. And yet no matter how loudly a few benighted wretches scream and point at me, no one else takes a blind bit of notice.’

Beth faltered. She looked from one to the other, suddenly feeling as helpless as a child. ‘How?’ she whispered.

Gutterglass spread the hands Beth had given her as though to plead ignorance. ‘It’s none of our doing that no one listens to the few people who let themselves notice us. People believe stories, not facts, and we don’t fit into theirs, so they don’t tend to believe in us. We’re easy enough to miss after all.’

‘What did you think,’ Fil said sympathetically, ‘we were some kind of secret? We live in your streets Beth; you live in ours — you have done your whole life.’

Beth felt a pinch in the hollow of her throat. You live in our streets. She remembered him, that night under the streetlights, arms outstretched as if to embrace the whole city’s glow. ‘Home?’ he’d said, ‘I could bed down in any square inch of London town. Welcome to my parlour.’

That’s what she wanted: not safety, home. To be able to curl into the warmth of that word. To call the city home — to be home, with him, on these streets. She pulled herself up tall, held herself rigid against the tremor that threatened to run through her. ‘Fine,’ she said coldly. ‘Go your own way. But the first place I’m going when you do is St Paul’s. I’ll take on Reach by myself, even if I have to headbutt the bloody cranes to death.’

Fil snorted. ‘You don’t mean that.’

‘YOU DON’T THINK SO?’ Beth yelled at him.

He stepped back, alarmed, and fury boiled up in her throat like hot tar, the rage at being left behind, at there being nothing she could do about it — and she realised she did mean it. She really would take on Reach alone, just to prove a point. She didn’t know where it came from, this urge to spite the street-urchin, so strong that she would contemplate Suicide-by-Crane-God, but it was there.

‘You were going to run,’ she said, swallowing against the humiliating advance of tears, ‘remember that? You were going to run and I made you stay. Maybe I can’t run as fast as you or climb as high as you can, but fuck you, Filius Viae, I helped. ’

Her eyes were treacherously wet, but she wasn’t about to blink; she wouldn’t give him that satisfaction. He stared back at her for long, long seconds, then he turned and walked away…

… and then, just when it felt like her heart had fallen down a well and there was no way to get it back, he paused, as if he’d just thought of something. He muttered to himself.

‘What was that, Filius?’ Gutterglass asked.

‘I said, she’s right.’

Beth blinked some of her tears back in. ‘What?’ she said.

The rubbish-woman’s tone was glacial. ‘A good question, Filius. What? ’

‘Thames, Glas, don’t make me say it again.’ He sighed. ‘She’s right: I was going to run. She was the only reason I didn’t.’

Gutterglass’ face creased into a nervous smile. ‘But that was then; that was before-’

‘ That was five days ago — before what? Before her, Glas, that’s the only “before”. We owe her.’ The look he shot at Beth was guilty.

A thrill prickled her scalp. Whatever his protestations, he wasn’t doing this out of any sense of debt to her — in spite of himself, in spite of his fear, he wanted her there.

‘But you said it yourself,’ Gutterglass protested. ‘She isn’t strong enough — she isn’t fast enough-’

‘But we can make her faster, can’t we?’ he said. ‘We can make her stronger.’

Gutterglass’ eyes stretched open, their enamel-white insides turning almost outwards as whatever had just occurred to her ward had touched her mind as well.

‘ Blood-flowing-Thames,’ she swore.

‘Can you make me braver?’ he asked quietly, ‘because given the suicidal bloody nature of the enterprise I’m on, it looks like she can.’

There was silence then, broken only by a pigeon making a nose-dive for the bit of bun that formed Gutterglass’ left ear.

‘Would the two of you please stop talking about me like I’m not here!’ Beth yelled.

Gutterglass’ eggshell-eyes didn’t stray from her prince’s face. ‘You had better tell her, then,’ she said. ‘Tell her what you’re asking her to do.’

She turned away and crouched over the Blankleits, muttering and petting them, checking none of their hairline cracks had opened up.

Fil looked pale, elated and scared all at once. ‘Come on then.’ He took Beth by the arm.

‘Where are we going?’

‘I’ll explain on the way, but we need to get going now. I really don’t want to meet them in the dark. Glas, Victor,’ he called back over his shoulder, ‘look after the Lampies for us while we’re gone.’

Victor grunted and swigged from his bottle, but Gutterglass answered acidly, ‘Oh, absolutely your Highness! And should I wash your jeans for you too? Maybe you’ve got time for a foot-rub before you go? What with having only your babysitting to do I can’t think what I’ll do with all my spare time!’

He glared at her, but though worms writhed through the eggshells, she didn’t blink. The street prince caved first. ‘All right,’ he said at last, ‘what are you going to do, then?’

‘What you should be doing instead of running off on a wild wraith-chase. I’m going to put together an army. I’ll start with our Mistress’ priesthood.’

‘Our first port of call,’ he said. ‘They wouldn’t listen.’

A beetle tugged a thin smile across Gutterglass’ lips. An unmistakable new confidence infused her shape. ‘They will listen to me.’

Beth dragged her arm from his grip. ‘Fil, please, tell me where we’re going.’

The smile, when it finally made it onto his face, was the very opposite of reassuring. ‘We’re going to get you what you want.’

Paul Bradley paced the streets of Hackney in a kind of aggravated daze. The light from the streetlamps made his hands look jaundiced. Early evening frost crunched under his feet. He spoke to himself in an angry mumble, sometimes rising to a frightened shout. Tramps eyed him from their sleeping-bags. He knew the couples hustling past him, huddled into each other, were assuming he was drunk, but though he’d been tempted, he hadn’t had anything stronger than coffee. He knew he wasn’t mad — madness would be to stop talking to himself, to stop urging himself on. Madness would be to succumb to the almost irresistible urge spreading from the pit of his stomach to curl up in a doorway and shut his eyes until the world went away.

‘Think, Bradley, think,’ he hissed to himself, over and over, ‘ think: you can find her.’ Walk, Bradley, walk, echoed the unspoken instruction to his legs, and obediently he shoved one foot in front of the other.

When the glowing woman’s last light had faded he’d stumbled away from the shattered place behind the railway, walking until his knees gave way. He sat on the pavement outside a closed internet cafe on a ganja-scented high street, clutching the picture of the boy with the railing. He’d not smelled the sweet dough rising in the Caribbean bakery next door, or noticed the taunts of the kids strutting past in their hoodies and baseball jackets. The sound of passing police sirens did register, and he’d felt a pang — but what could he tell them? That his missing daughter’s best friend had been kidnapped by a cloud of barbed wire? If he was banged up in a cell for wasting police time his chances of fixing this fell to zero.

When the cafe opened he scanned Beth’s sketch of the skinny boy and posted it on as many message boards as he could find, then, seized by a horror of inaction, he ran back out into the street to walk London’s endless, twisting pavements until he was as breathless as he was bewildered. But he had to keep walking, because the one time he’d stopped, just for a moment, just to ease his aching feet, he’d fallen asleep. In his dream a kindly-faced woman in a headscarf had demanded, over and over again, in his own voice: ‘Where is my daughter?’ He woke soaked in sweat, and as cold as the morning frost that webbed the tarmac.

He knew exactly how Parva’s parents would be feeling now: the way they’d be reassuring themselves, repeating, ‘I’m sure she’s fine’ over and over because although they weren’t sure she was fine at all, they had no idea what to do if she wasn’t. He knew the symptoms; he was a carrier. Having a lost child was a disease he was spreading.

But he wasn’t looking for Parva, even though the guilt for that fact sat, toxic as bleach, in his belly. His only goal was to find Beth.

When he recognised a hardware shop on a street corner he realised his feet had automatically marched him close to home. ‘Think, Bradley, think; where would she go?’ But he didn’t know; his mind was a blank. He didn’t know where she hung out, where she ate, where she shopped; apart from Parva, he didn’t even know her friends.

Marianne would have known. Oh, love, where are you? Where have you gone? He hadn’t spoken to his wife in the silence of his head like that in months. She had always known what to say. Whenever Beth had been sent home from school with a torn shirt and a bloody nose, it was always Marianne who made the long walk up to the little room in the attic and brought their daughter back to them. When he’d asked her what she’d said to Beth, she’d smiled and said, ‘I backed her up. It’s what mothers do for their little girls.’

He curled his fist around the photo of Beth’s drawing of the boy, now bent and street-soiled. To his deep shame, this was all he knew of his daughter.

He almost stumbled over a pile of concrete scraps and stopped. Tyres hissed over tarmac on the road behind him. He didn’t sit down because he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to get up again. But the darkness came over him like a suffocating blanket, and another step seemed impossible.

Walk, Bradley, walk. But he didn’t. A poisonous, paranoid voice in his mind said, There’s no point. She’s already dead. You’ll see her body. You’ll see her dead body.

The pile of broken lumps of concrete that had tripped him sat in the middle of the pavement. It looked like some kid had scribbled over it in black paint He froze. He tilted his head and slumped, trying to bring it into focus. Slowly, the sharp angles of concrete and paint materialised into a shape:

A rhino, horned and heavy-hoofed, was stampeding out at him.

He let out a tiny whimper. He recognised it instinctively, that sense of damage and violence that lurked in the everyday, waiting to ambush you. Slowly he let the picture of the street-boy uncurl from between his fingers. He barely dared to breathe. He could see it there, in the whip-lines of ink: the rhino-in-concrete was by the same hand.

You know one more thing, he thought, wherever she is, she’s painting. She was leaving a trail of ink and paint like breadcrumbs.

Walk, Bradley. But he didn’t walk. He ran.