The City's son

CHAPTER 52

Noise exploded over her as Beth burst from the labyrinth. She weaved right and then left, ducking iron jaws and fallen bodies. A stone sword slipped from a Pavement Priest’s hand and whistled past her, grazing her knee. She raced between the legs of a metal giant, deep into the very heart of the battle.

‘ Delenda Reach,’ the ragged choir croaked. The Pavement Priests were pitifully few now, but still they tore at the earth with their stone hands. Beth ignored their horrified stares as she dumped the limp body of their prince into their midst. There was no time — no time for grief; no time for fear; no time for anything resembling a human emotion, or else this would all to be for nothing.

‘Here he is,’ she shouted into the din. ‘Here’s your price!’

She cast around desperately, but all she could see were bodies and carnage. Despair scratched deep in her chest — and then a petrol smell stung her nostrils.

Six black figures walked unhurriedly through the chaos of battle. Their movements were perfectly synchronised; their oil-soaked suits were untouched by the flying muck.

‘Over here!’ Beth’s scream tore her throat. ‘Over here! Here’s what you’re owed.’

The Chemical Synod always collected on their debts. Deals were sacred.

As they strode over the rubble two priests moved to confront them, but Petris’ command boomed out. ‘Let them come.’

Reach issued no such instruction. As these fresh, powerful interlopers stalked over his scarred face, towards his very throat, amid the noise and stink of the attack against him, Reach panicked. Beth could feel it. The whole of the building site seemed to tense around her.

‘ I will be! ’ Reach shrieked, and a crane-born hook shot through the air to impale the rightmost black-slicked man.

The synod’s expressions became grim. They didn’t break step, but the five remaining men spread out to repair their symmetry. As one, each produced a cigarette lighter, flipped the lid and ran the spark-wheel up the leg of their trousers.

Heat punched into Beth’s face as the synod caught fire. She shielded her eyes. They kept on at the same calm pace, burning like Guys on Bonfire Night. Where their feet fell, the ground — Reach’s body — bubbled, hissed and melted.

‘ I will be! ’ Reach shrieked.

Two of the fiery men peeled off from either side and strolled over to the cranes. A Scaffwolf snapped at one, but he didn’t even break stride. The corona of heat around him melted through the beast’s jaw and hot slag ran into the contours of the rubble.

Johnny Naphtha approached one crane and extended a burning hand towards its cab, almost as though in greeting. The metal glowed and warped and buckled as he touched it, and as she looked around she saw the other members of the synod, stationed all around the building site, doing exactly the same thing, in precise time, with other cranes.

Beth expected Reach to cry out, but no cry came: the engines which produced his voice were silenced. The child-king of the cranes died not with a scream, but with a slow hiss of metal like an exhausted breath.

The Scaffwolves creaked on their hinges, the iron giants groaned. Jaws slid sideways over one another. Knees bent the wrong way and the monsters subsided into the dust.

Beth sat down hard in the rubble. She gazed vacantly at Fil’s body. The wound in her shoulder had reopened, and her hoodie was clammy with fresh blood.

Johnny Naphtha approached. His flames, the flames that had ignited the Great Fire of London, guttered out. His suit and skin were now the crisp grey-black of charcoal. ‘How pleasant of you to prepare him for us.’ He looked down at the grey body, lying sprawled across Reach’s throat. A touch of sarcasm entered his voice. ‘And how precisely placed.’

He crouched, picked up the body and without ceremony slung it over his shoulder. Gracefully, he rose to his feet, turned on his heel and walked away. The rest of his coven converged on him. One of them had their fallen brother in a fireman’s lift, dripping oil down his burnt back.

Beth sagged sideways. She felt voided, utterly empty. She’d forgotten how to feel, forgotten how to stand up. The boy The boy with the city in his skin was dead.

Pavement Priests clustered around her. Their stone faces looked grim, accusing.

‘I had to kill him,’ she croaked. ‘I had to bring the Chemical Synod.’

‘We know.’ The voice belonged to Petris. ‘We know better than most the prices of their services.’ His stone mask contorted painfully into a smile.

Beth stared up at him. That expression looked so out of place in this bloody tangle that she didn’t trust it.

‘Beth, there’s someone here who wants to see you.’

‘Beth? Beth!’ The clay-caked figure she’d seen in the battle shouldered his way between the statues. He was limping. Up close, she could see patches of pale skin showing where the crust of ceramic had been chipped away. Bright red blood — human blood — ran from a gash on the man’s forehead, dripping down a face she knew.

‘Beth.’ Her father dropped to his knees beside her. ‘Come on, Beth. We’ll get you to a hospital. You’ll be okay.’

Beth gazed in wonder into his brown eyes, suddenly sharply aware that hers were no longer that colour, but the mottled grey of London skies. ‘ Dad? ’ She studied his cuts, stupefied by his presence. Her gaze fell on the girder he was still carrying.

‘You fought?’ she murmured incredulously. ‘Weak and slow and bloody human — and you fought-?’

He nodded, almost shyly. ‘Because it was your fight,’ he said quietly. ‘Because I thought you’d want me to.’

She held out a hand to him, and he grasped it gratefully and pulled her to her feet. Her fingers stayed tight around his for a few moments.

‘We’re not done,’ she said. ‘There’s someone we need to get.’

Pen was lying where Beth had left her, staring at the ceiling of the pyramidal chamber. She showed no sign that she was alive, until she heard Beth coming, then she blinked and a smile spread across her face. ‘I did it, B,’ she whispered.

‘Yeah, you did it Pen,’ Beth agreed, not understanding what she was talking about.

‘I did it — I beat it. It held me, but I held it back.’

‘Uh-huh,’ Beth said, crouching down beside her.

‘I was afraid, but I held it down. I beat it. I chose.’ There was a glassy cast to Pen’s brown eyes. She was rambling, delirious. ‘I’m not afraid any more,’ she whispered. ‘I chose.’

Beth put her hands under Pen’s shoulders and tensed her legs, ready to lift. She was afraid that Pen would cry out in pain, but there was just a whimper, quickly stifled.

‘Come on,’ Beth muttered. ‘We have to get you better. There’s a woman — or a man, or a- I don’t know what it is. Its name’s Gutterglass — if anyone will know how to fix you it will.’

‘No!’ Pen’s cry was shockingly loud in the dark. Her face snapped around, almost scandalised.

Beth swallowed, quailing slightly at the ferocity in her friend’s gaze. ‘No further down the rabbit hole, B,’ Pen said. ‘No more. If you want to take me somewhere, take me home.’ For a second she stared at her, her face mottled in fury and relief and blame, then, to Beth’s shock and utter gratitude, Pen threw her arms around her neck. ‘God, I’ve missed you, B. I could never let you go.’

Beth nodded. There was nothing more to say.