The City's son

CHAPTER 51

Beth hung uselessly from the crane arm. Her warning curdled in the air, souring to a horrified, useless cry. Far below, Fil crumpled to his knees, then forward onto his elbows. The point of the hook emerged from the small of his back for an instant and then flashed out as Reach withdrew it. Blood welled at the base of his spine, gleaming wetly in the morning sun.

‘Fil,’ she echoed herself softly. ‘ Filius.’

As if answering her call, he began to pull himself arm over arm through the rubble, his legs dragging clumsily behind him, like an anchor. His spine must be severed, Beth thought. Nausea and pity welled up in her. All his nimbleness and city grace was gone. He looked as frail as a broken bird.

The Scaffwolves pawed at the masonry around him. but they didn’t attack. They snuffled at his spear for a few seconds, and then loped away.

I am Reach…

With a screech of gears and a growl of engines, the machines in the site returned to work, spewing clods of earth and rock. The motors on the crane holding Beth kicked in and her stomach plunged as she shot towards the ground.

As she dropped, she saw Reach’s expression had changed. That childish curiosity was gone; now the Crane King looked bored with her.

Her bare feet touched earth and the hook ripped itself free from her shoulder. The pain drenched her, but she gritted her teeth against it and staggered over the broken world to Fil’s side.

‘It didn’t work,’ he gasped as she knelt beside him. He sounded perplexed. His eyes lolled dangerously in his head.

‘Glas said — his throat- But it didn’t work.’ He pawed at his spear, still stuck into the ground like an empty flagpole, marking the spot where he’d failed.

‘I know,’ Beth said, ‘I know. It’s okay.’ It was nowhere close to okay, but she didn’t know what else to say to him. She pulled the railing-spear free, wormed her good arm behind his shoulders and hoisted him into an almost-standing position. She felt horribly exposed, just standing here in the heart of the site, and she didn’t trust Reach’s sudden indifference to them. The skinny boy was frighteningly light, and his legs hung lifeless under him, like a doll’s. With his arms clasped around her neck, Beth dragged him back the way they’d come. His toes etched tracks over the dusty rubble.

The wolves prowled, their hollow eyes following the fragile boy and girl, but uninterested in them.

I am Reach.

The cacophony of the diggers battered Beth like storm winds. Her arm hung prickling and cold at her side. The sleeve of her hoodie was so saturated that it drizzled blood onto the ground.

Just inside the entrance to the labyrinth she stopped, dizzy and exhausted from blood-loss. She could go no further. She propped Fil against the wall and gripped the spear in her good hand.

Why did you let us go?

She eyed the doorway mistrustfully. Almost the instant that Fil had driven the spear in, Reach had lost interest. She had seen the bored expression on that huge, infantile face, the way the wolves had snuffled at the spear shoved into their God’s throat and just left it there — because it hadn’t hurt, she realised suddenly: the spear had done nothing at all to Reach. All the Urchin Prince had done was to prove he wasn’t a threat.

Beth found herself laughing out loud, caught somewhere on the wrong side of hysteria. Reach was a baby, with a baby’s attention span. They had shown themselves to be neither novel nor dangerous, and so they weren’t of any interest.

‘Where is she?’ Fil muttered, slumped over like an empty glove puppet, his hands gripping his knees. ‘ Where is she? ’ He drew down a shuddering breath. ‘Where is she, Beth?’

‘Where’s who, mate?’ she asked. She forced lightness she didn’t feel into her voice. She didn’t know what she’d do if he gave in to despair now.

‘Where’s my mother?’ His eyes flickered and he stared at the wall, but Beth knew he was really staring east, towards Docklands and the pits of the Chemical Synod where Mater Viae was last seen.

‘She should have been here… by now… I thought-’ He was rambling. ‘I was so stupid — I thought I could be her.’ He tried to laugh, but it sputtered out after a few breaths. ‘Where is she?’

Where’s my mum? The question caught in Beth’s chest. She remembered all the desolate months she’d asked the same question. Now she smothered the question instantly whenever it arose in her mind. Awkwardly, she tried to embrace him. ‘I don’t know — I’m sorry, I really am. I don’t know.’

He laid the hot weight of his head against her shoulder and she smelled the petrol tang of his blood.

‘I wish-’ he began.

The world shook and a haze of cement dust washed down from the roof. Beth felt him tense against her.

‘ What in Thames’ name was that?’ he whispered.

Beth gently released him and propped him against the wall before sidling to the doorway. Her stomach clenched. She was half-expecting to see some new beast of Reach’s clattering towards her. Gripping the spear tight in her good hand, she ducked her head out of cover and looked — and gasped.

The whole back wall of the building site had collapsed, as though punched through with a vast fist, but that concrete barrier had been replaced by another made of stone: stone bodies. Rank upon rank of war heroes, scientists, suffragettes, leaders, even abstract geometrical shapes, hundreds of them: the Pavement Priests had come. More stoneskins than Beth had ever seen stretched back up the narrow brick alley and out of sight.

She breathed in sharply and a wild hope swelled her chest. ‘It’s Petris,’ she whispered.

The granite monk was in the front rank. When he spoke, his voice was as merciless as winter homelessness. ‘ Delenda Reach.’ The command boomed over the shattered wasteland. The Pavement Priest battalion stirred. ‘ Sic Gloria Via. Delenda Reach.’

‘ Delenda Reach.’ They took up the chant, singing it like a hymn, their voices deep, liquid. ‘ Delenda Reach.’

The warrior priests stepped forward as one, the thud of their feet the percussion to their chant. They were the guardians of the old faith, wearing skins in the shapes of London’s heroes from other times. They sang their eulogy for their fallen city.

Metal wolves and metal men and other, stranger shapes clambered from the faces of the tower blocks and stalked over the rubble to meet them. Steel paws clanged on masonry as they picked up speed.

The first rank of Pavement Priests flickered and Beth shrank back, involuntarily, every muscle tensing as the armies of London charged.

Stone and steel crashed together. Beth felt their impact like concussion. The wolves screamed, their rusting fangs rending granite skin like paper, but the Pavement Hymn didn’t waver. Though the song diminished when one of the priesthood fell, it never stopped.

‘They’re-’ Beth began, and then a wide grin broke over her face as she understood. ‘They’re digging.’

One battalion of priests, screened by their fellows, had fallen to their knees and were tearing double handfuls of rock from the earth, great gouges, straight out of Reach’s face.

I am Reach, the diggers screamed in pain.

A wolf tore the head from Winston Churchill. Three other statues pulled the animal down, but then collapsed from exhaustion.

Under Petris’ boomed orders, Mater Viae’s priesthood knelt and prayed, ‘ Delenda Reach… Delenda Reach- ’, worshipping through fighting, as their steady hands chewed through the bedrock and cement Reach had carved himself from.

One priest looked different from the others. He moved more slowly, and his punishment skin looked more like hardened clay than stone. As he gouged at Reach with a fragment of steel girder, Beth thought there was something familiar about him, although in that moment she didn’t know what.

‘That’s good, lads,’ Petris shouted, knee-deep in the silt of Reach’s throat. ‘Dig the bastard’s heart out, A-bloody-men!’ But around him stone-covered bodies were slumping from exhaustion. The Scaffwolves continued to harry and hamstring them, until they were all oozing their slow, sticky blood. As they fell, they became indistinguishable from the murderous landscape around them.

‘ Delenda Reach,’ they called, but their song was waning.

Fil heard the weakness in it. ‘It’s not working,’ he muttered feverishly. ‘We need Mater Viae. We need my Mother. We need the Fire — we need the Great Fire, Oh Thames…’

Beth tried to hold him, but he shook her off wildly. His face was crumpled, and white as waste-paper. ‘I was such an idiot. It was impossible! It was always impossible — how could we ever cleanse the city without the Great Fire?’ He sounded despairing.

Cleanse the city…

Beth went very still. Something in his words hooked a memory and dragged it to the surface of her mind. She tried to concentrate past the fury of the battle. She remembered the crackle of flames on a polluted pool, and a viscous, oily voice: ‘ This is a special conflagration, purchased at great expense. It cleanses and coruscates, maims and makes-anew… ’

‘Oh God,’ she whispered, ‘what if that’s why she didn’t come?’

Fil looked at her sharply. ‘What is?’

‘The Fire.’ The idea was so simple, so horribly mundane, that Beth hesitated to give voice to it. ‘The Great Fire. Your mum’s greatest power,’ she whispered. ‘What if the reason she’s not here fighting is she doesn’t have it any more? What if, without it, she’s scared?’

‘What are you talking about?’ Bewilderment and fear and outrage were plain on his face.

‘You never knew what the synod charged her, did you? What if The Great Fire was their price? A special conflagration, purchased at great expense. What if she gave it up in payment?’ Beth asked, levelling a finger to point at the crippled young God. ‘Payment for you.’

He shut his eyes and the last of the colour drained from his face. He looked more than scared. He looked dead. But when the ground shuddered again, his eyes opened, and now there was an air of tense, concentrated discipline about him. ‘Beth,’ he said quietly, ‘I need you to do something for me.’

‘Okay, sure. Anything. What?’

‘Pick up my spear.’

Beth bent and grasped the weapon. The black iron was tacky where she’d bled on it. ‘Okay,’ she said, uncertainly.

‘I’m going to count to three,’ he said, and swallowed. His grey eyes looked directly into hers. ‘Then I need you to stab me in the heart.’

Beth almost dropped the spear. ‘What!’ she shouted. ‘Are you mental? Did your brains bleed out of your guts?’

But his grey eyes were as clear and sane and sad as she’d ever seen them. She knew he meant it. ‘ Why?’ she whispered.

His smile was frail. ‘’cause making bad deals with the Chemical Synod runs in the family.’

For a second Beth stared at him, wondering if the pain and disappointment and blood-loss had finally driven him mad. ‘What are you talk-?’

Then understanding slammed into her like an avalanche. ‘You lied,’ she snarled at him. ‘I asked you straight up what you promised them: “ Some poxy ingredient, Long as I liv e, not something I’m goin’ to use.” That’s what you told me.’

‘Technically that was true.’ Fil tried to shrug. ‘Since I promised them my death.’

Beth gazed at him, horrified by her complicity, by her willing gullibility. She looked at her pavement-grey skin. How could she possibly have believed that some poxy little ingredient had bought her that speed, that strength?

Fil spoke urgently. ‘We need Johnny Naphtha’s boys here, Beth, now, Thames knows we do. If they have the Fire-’ He jerked his head towards the battlefield. ‘While that bedlam’s still raging, there’s a chance. They’ll come for me, to collect their debt. Get ’em right in, right in the heart of it understand? Reach won’t tolerate ’em, just like he wouldn’t tolerate me. Make them get involved.’

‘ If,’ Beth snapped back, ‘ if they come — if they even have the Fire. If. If. If. It’s all bloody guesses. Christ, Fil, what if you’re wrong? What if I’m wrong?’ She prayed she was — she desperately wanted to be. She wanted to grab the treacherous words she’d spoken from the air and shove them back into her mouth.

The grey-skinned boy looked at her. ‘Then we’re wrong,’ he said, ‘but that’s our city, dying out there, and I’m all out of ideas.’

Beth raised the spear. She tensed her shoulder and gritted her teeth, but she couldn’t drive the weapon home. Tears blurred her sight as all her half-formed, desperate, unspoken love for this boy flooded through her. She turned away, unable to bear his gaze.

‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘It’s too much.’

His voice hardened. ‘It’s not your call, Beth.’

His eyes, the colour of the city she was refusing to try and save, bore into her, but she couldn’t do this. It was too high a price.

When he spoke again, his voice was a whisper. ‘Remember what Petris said: “The outlines, the very definition of a life.”? This is my definition, Beth. I’m choosing it now — I’m choosing the chance that you’re right. If you take that away from me, you’re no better than my mother.’

Beth swallowed hard, a choking mix of salty tears and air, and tried frantically to think of something else, some other explanation, something they had missed. Think, Bradley, think, she swore at herself, but nothing came.

In that moment, she hated Filius Viae more than she’d ever hated anyone. She wanted to throw away his vile spear and walk back down the tunnel, to leave him paralysed in the darkness. She wanted to abandon him the way he was about to abandon her. But she couldn’t, because she knew that years from now she’d still see Masonry Men and brick-born babies lying murdered. She couldn’t, because however child-like Reach was, he wasn’t innocent. Her people were dying on his claws.

And she couldn’t, because although she hated him, she could never walk away from that skinny, wretched kid.

She set the spear between his ribs. He smiled encouragingly. The spear scratched a lopsided red-black star against his flesh as she shook.

‘Christ, Fil- I-’

‘It’s okay, Beth.’ He held her gaze. ‘Do I scare you witless enough to make you brave?’ he asked her.

‘Yes,’ she whispered.

‘One,’ he said. ‘Two…’

Beth rammed the spear forward.

He gasped and his eyes stretched. She felt a crunch as his ribs gave way. She gritted her teeth and twisted the shaft. His bare heels drummed the ground for an awful moment, and then stopped.

Five seconds, she counted them carefully. That was how long she looked into his vacant eyes. Then she snarled, ‘I’m not shutting your eyes for you, liar. You can watch what you made me do.’ She bent and picked him up. He sagged over her good shoulder, infinitely heavier in death. She ducked under the lintel and ran.