The City's son

CHAPTER 32

‘Do you think you could at least admit you have no idea what you’re doing?’ Ezekiel asks. He doesn’t make the effort to change his overface’s expression, but although the stone mouth is still singing a hosanna, I can see the disdainful curl of his lip beneath.

‘I’m quite serious,’ he repeats, ‘because if you persist in pretending you know how to lead an army while handing out idiotic instructions, I’m going to have to tell my boys their Goddess’ child is an imbecile. It’d be a blow to morale, but I’d take that over the risk of any of them actually listening to you.’

We’re on the Embankment, on the north side of Chelsea Bridge. Ezekiel’s got himself a plinth on the corner outside the Royal Hospital Gardens. The graceless bulk of the old Victorian infirmary looms over us; it’s under heavy repair and I watch the scaffolding surrounding its brick skin nervously, but nothing moves. It’s probably normal, lifeless steel, but all scaff makes me nervous these days.

Calm down, Filius, I urge myself, trying to give Ezekiel my full attention. ‘What’s so stupid about the idea?’ I ask in what I think is a very reasonable tone.

‘That’s a stupid question.’

My remaining patience hisses out in one exasperated breath. ‘Look,’ I snap, ‘we have to find a way to keep the element of surprise, and when you’ve got a hundred tons of ambulant bloody rock on the move, that is easier said than done. All I suggested was since we have to march at night because of the Lampfolk, you stoneskins should make like empty statues: you all shuffle up from one plinth to the next until we get where we’re going and Reach’ll be none the wiser.’

I’m actually quite proud of the idea, but I can almost hear Ezekiel’s eyebrows grazing the inside of his punishment skin as they climb his face.

The tone of his voice could wither lichen. ‘First of all, we are Pavement Priests. We are the honour guard of the Street Goddess; we do not skulk and we do not sneak and we most certainly do not shuffle.

‘Second, do you have any notion of how hard it is to move a punishment skin? That’s why they’re called punishment skins, Highness. If you want us to have any energy left to fight with, we need to go by the most direct route possible, not “shuffle” from plinth to plinth, zigzagging across the city until we can’t even lift our own limbs.

‘And thirdly, you did not “just suggest” it, you said it in front of my men, who are both soldiers and clerics: they take a “suggestion” like that from a deity — which, sadly for all of us, is what you are — as an order. An order which in effect means they are to kill themselves by the most exhausting and humiliating means possible — oh, and incidentally, to hand almost certain victory to the enemy.

‘I had to tell them you were joking, so now they think the son of their Goddess has a sick sense of humour, but that’s better than them realising that he’s either a gibbering idiot or, very possibly, insane.’

‘Look, mate-’ I start, but he cuts me off scornfully.

‘I am not your mate. I am either your mother’s obedient servant, and therefore bound, reluctantly, to serve you too, or else I am the man who will put his limestone gauntlet through your chops for being the annoying little maggot who’s interfering in the running of my order. Either way, mate doesn’t really cover it.’

I’m this close to chinning him — if he thinks he can take me, I’m more than happy to educate him. ‘Fine,’ I hiss, ‘but why are you suddenly so hostile? Gutterglass said you agreed that I could lead ’em with you-’

Ezekiel freezes. Being a statue, he was pretty still anyway, and now he’s even stiller. And that, take it from me, is pretty bloody scarily still.

‘That’s one way to put it.’ He spits the words out between clenched teeth.

‘Oh? And what’s another way?’

‘Another way would be to say that Gutterglass raised it. I laughed at it. Then I realised he was serious and I argued for two solid hours, at the end of which he threatened to give my body back to the Chemical Synod and to ensure that I spend my next incarnation inside an abstract sculpture with holes in all the most uncomfortable places. At which point, yes, I suppose you could say I “agreed” you could lead them with me.’

‘Oh.’ I had been proud of that, too, imagining myself fierce at the head of a battalion of stone warriors. Now I can feel that pride swan-diving towards my bowels.

‘Gutterglass wants you visible.’ Disgust sours the stone angel’s voice. ‘He wants us reminded who we’re fighting for. Frankly I think a stuffed cat and a scarecrow would be a better symbol for Our Lady’s terrible beauty than you, but sadly, you’re what we have.’

A creaking of stone drowns out any attempt at self-justification. His vast grey wings extend either side of him, cloaking me in shadow. ‘If she wants to us to be inspired, then she should come and inspire us herself.’ I can hear the bitter complaint in his voice. ‘I need real advantages, not symbolic ones. I need Fleet’s war party, I need the Great Fire, the only weapon our foe has ever really feared.’ He exhales wearily. ‘And I need a rest. We’re going into battle against the Crane King, for Thames’ sake ‘I need a God. And instead I have you.’ He shakes his heavy stone head and flaps laboriously away.