by Tom Pollock
Voices reached her ears as they scrambled into the cathedral square.
‘Holy shit, it’s you!’
‘Are you okay?’
‘What’s going on?
‘Did you win? Are we safe now? Did you win?’
They all sounded worried, and relieved to see her: the girl they’d trusted. They sounded like friends, but Pen snarled at them to get back. The doors to the cathedral yawned open as they spilled out towards her, shouting greetings and questions Pen didn’t dare stop to deal with. Three steel tentacles fired into the façade above the doorway and three more latched onto the roof. She crawled up the side of the building like a spider, Johnny bobbing behind her like her bound prey. The climb slowed them, and as the roar of the air died in Pen’s ears, it was replaced by another: the roar of water.
The architecture under her blurred from white stone to grey. She was level with the crane jibs now, reaching over nearby rooftops. A wire tendril stroked them and Pen felt their fear.
As she crested the dome, she saw the Thames.
She stopped stock-still, throwing her arms around the cupola on instinct. Every cell in her jarred at the sight: a sheer cliff-face of water a thousand feet high, trampling the city as it stampeded onwards. Its shadow swamped everything she could see. It surged towards her, undulating like a vast inchworm. The wave front must have been half a mile across. It was too late to flee.
They made you a mind, she thought. Her thoughts flicked back to the brick warrens beneath the synod’s factory and the price they’d exacted for her trip through the mirror – and the purpose they’d put it to. A sibilant whisper welled up from her memory: A mind … to patch the perceptionss of a prissoner … It had been missing only one thing:
A complete set of memoriesss of a child, rendered from the memoriesss of her parents.’
Please, she thought, please let me be right. Deep inside the consciousness that drove that flowing edifice, she prayed, was every thought her mum and dad had ever had about her.
Pen sucked in her breath and screamed, ‘STOP!’ She screamed her throat raw, throwing her arms wide.
But the River Thames didn’t stop; it came on. It levelled the building in front of her.
Wires struck at it, coiling and snapping, but throwing up only spray. The memory of Beth’s city-voice flashed into Pen’s head.
… they misjudged how it would react.
And so had she. Her arms dropped to her sides. She wasn’t afraid, just regretful. She could have stayed with Beth.
The wave arched over her like the end of the world, chilling the air. Its foam licked at her face and she hissed in sudden pain: the wires were dragging at her skin, scrabbling through the air, clutching at the crane jibs, desperate to somehow protect Reach from the vengeful force of the River. The water fell towards her and she felt a twitch at the base of her neck. Underneath the shattering noise of the water, she heard the wire whisper something, but in that moment, she didn’t understand it.
This steel guise blocks watery eyes.
Needles of pain rippled through her face, her arms, her chest like acid rain. The wire ripped itself free of her skin and tumbled from the rooftop like a sloughed skin. Johnny’s skeleton rattled and bounced over the tiles towards the gutter. Pen closed her eyes; her pulse, in her ears, was indistinguishable from the tide.
Heartbeats thudded in her ears, measuring out one second, two seconds, three. Pen dragged in a breath and tasted cold river spray. Droplets tickled her eyes and they flickered back open.
The River had stopped. It held itself poised over her, still as a photograph. She could feel its awareness, its attention. The air between her and it thrummed with it.
You just didn’t recognise me with the wire, Pen realised. She looked down, but there was no sign of the Mistress. The wire had sacrificed herself, not for her, but for the cranes – for Reach.
She tilted her head up towards the liquid cliff-face. The way the light hit it, she could just make out a reflection, a vaguely human shape in a headscarf. If she squinted, it looked as much like her mum as herself.
‘You remember me, don’t you?’ she said.
The Thames made no move to show it understood, but then, she didn’t know how it would if it wanted to. The wave was close enough to touch, and on impulse she put her hand out to it. Water bubbled out to meet her palm, sluicing between her fingers. She let it recognise the touch of her hand, the way it had recognised her face. It would remember that, she knew.
She turned her hand over, shivering as the water ran down her arm and soaked her sleeve.
You remember me, don’t you? she thought. You remember your daughter.
A ripple like a sigh ran through the front of the wave and a stream of water came out from it and curled around behind Pen like a protective hand. She was suddenly, painfully aware of how tired she was, and it barely felt like a decision to let go of the cupola. The slates went from under her feet and she fell backwards, not caring. Water cushioned her, and she rested against it. Drops of blood fell from the wounds the wire had left and dissipated in the current. The sun, refracting through the water, was warm; its whispering soothed her. Pen let her eyes close and for a while she just lay there, cradled by the River.
She heard a clacking, like sticks smacking into one another, and she opened her eyes again. A few feet away, half immersed in the main wave-front, his bony knees knocking together in the current, was Johnny Naphtha. Pen could see the dark streaks running into the water where it was wearing him away.
‘You want out of there?’ she asked him. The skeleton grinned, the skull tilting forward and back in the current in a way that Pen decided to take as a nod.
‘Then we need to talk.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Beth lay on the rooftop, staring up at the rhino. The rhino glowered back from the side of the next-door tower block. Footsteps rang on the metal fire escape and she heard Fil’s delighted laughter.
‘Where did you go?’ she asked, not taking her eyes from the rhino.
‘Racing Railwraiths,’ he gasped, out of breath. ‘Did you know you had Bahngeists in here?’
‘I never really thought about it,’ Beth replied. ‘Glad to see you’re making yourself useful.’
He dropped to sit cross-legged onto the gravel beside her, close enough that she could hear the heave of his lungs. ‘Why? What have you been doing?
‘Having a staring match with Ricky here.’ She gazed into the blank aerosol pools of the rhino’s eyes. Her own eyes ached to blink.
‘You call it Ricky?’ Fil didn’t sound impressed.
‘Phyllis was taken.’
Fil made a tsking sound with his teeth. ‘Who’s winning?’
‘So far? The rhino.’
‘Well, it is painted on the wall, Beth. I reckon – as far as patience goes – that might give it the edge.’
‘Yeah, but I’ve got an ace in the hole.’
‘Which is?’
‘It’s only painted on the wall,’ Beth replied. She sighed and blinked away the itch in her eyes. ‘So it won’t know if I chea—’
She broke off, wrinkling her nose.
‘What is it?’ Fil asked in sudden concern. ‘I don’t smell anything.’
‘It’s not that. Something’s tickling my nose. I feel like I’m going to …’
But she couldn’t finish the sentence, because the sneeze packing itself into her sinuses had seized control of every muscle in her face. On reflex, she inhaled sharply—
—and opened her eyes as the sneeze cannoned out of her. Something dark and fuzzy sprang away from her face. She sniffed back what felt like a ton of mucus and shifted. Her back grazed over thin shale, spread over the pavement. She was still by the factory. Her throat felt like it had been tarmacked. Her broken rib burned in her side.
She sneezed again, and flailed as the pain in her chest kicked. She struggled up onto her elbows, and something furry brushed the back of her arms. A plaintive meow sounded behind her.
A tabby cat bounded onto her chest and started to purr, kneading its paws into the front of her hoodie. A slender black shape raced past the soles of her feet. She heard a chorus of purrs behind her and twisted her head around to look: sinuous, furry bodies slinked past one another: tabbies, gingers, Siamese, calicoes. The riverbank was swarming with cats.
Beth turned back to the one on her chest. It met her green gaze with a green gaze of its own.
Fleet? she thought. She massaged the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger, trying to clear the fog from her head. What are you—?
Something sharp slammed into her side, right into her fractured rib, and she spasmed hard, gasping. Fleet sprang away and a fraction of second later a bare grey foot stamped down on her chest. She doubled up, coughing uselessly. Pain rippled outwards from the blow in shivering, fiery waves, into her stomach, her groin, her throat. She crossed her arms desperately over her torso, but that only earned her three more savage strikes to the ribs. She couldn’t tell if what was hitting her was a foot or a fist or a steam piston. Thick, phlegmy liquid boiled into her mouth and she didn’t even have time to spit it out before another blow crashed into her temple and the pain made the world go white
… flat on a rooftop, a grey sky flickering behind her eyelids …
and she collapsed flat to the ground. Oscar wheeled and snapped overhead, but there were two other Sewermanders keeping him at bay. Water gurgled beside Beth’s ear and she felt the chill of it as it puddled against the side of her head. Slowly, the bleach drained out of her vision. A tall woman stood over her. The architecture of Her skin was clotted with river silt and weeds. Tower blocks rose from Her forehead like the spokes of a crown. Two of them were broken, ending in rubble-capped stubs.
Mater Viae’s green eyes blazed bright with hatred.
Her lip curled, and for a moment Beth thought the Goddess was going to speak, but then Her foot burst through the front of Her waterfall skirts and drove down, down and down again onto Beth’s solar plexus. Beth could hear the groaning inside her chest as her steel ribs sheared. Every muscle between her neck and her knees went into spasm. The pain filled her up.
Mater Viae knelt and drove a roof-knuckled fist into her pelvis with shattering force.
Beth threw her head back. Her mouth gaped and her throat burned with a scream that never emerged.
Mater Viae rose and spat, and oily film flecked Beth’s right eye. The Goddess turned away. She stalked to the edge of the dry riverbed and looked out across the city. Her cats wove indolent figure-eights around Her ankles.
Agony washed through Beth like acid. Her thoughts were a mad gabble. She fought to wrestle herself back from the pain, and one idea came strong through the fog: Not like this. Not by you.
Panic and rage flared through the dullness in her brain and she seized onto them – anything to get her up, get her moving. Anything to beat the pain back.
You killed Pen. You killed Dad. If You want to kill me too, then You’d better at least fucking look at me.
She rolled onto her front and pushed herself up into a crouch. She launched forwards, her fingers crooked like claws.
Mater Viae didn’t even look round; She just lifted one hand and curled it into a fist, and the earth under Beth trembled, shale rattling on shale. Five huge fingers burst upwards in a shower of pebbles. The hand was the height of a man, its skin the grey of river mud. Its wrist was warped and corded like a tree trunk where it fed back into the ground. It seized Beth around her chest, trapping her arms between its fingers. She was pinned, stranded and helpless as a scarecrow.
Tension entered Mater Viae’s knuckles; the tiles on them paled from terracotta to sandstone. The Goddess turned and with a snarl on Her road-lipped-mouth, drove Her fist into Beth’s temple.
… the world blurred. Beth clung to the gravel roof as the grey city shook around her …
She snapped back into wakefulness. Pain was an alarm bell ringing through her skull. Something was holding her hair. Her jaw hung horribly loose. Her vision cleared on Mater Viae’s face, an inch from her own. The Goddess eyed her with the mix of wary respect and disgust you might give a tumour on your skin.
‘Imposter.’ The voice was a snarl of steam venting through sewers. ‘Liar. Thief. What kind of Goddess are you now?’
Beth dragged her head up. The air tasted like warm clay; her bones felt like water. She fought to dredge up enough sound from her body to make a voice. ‘What kind of Goddess are You?’ she snapped back. With a tremendous effort, she managed to splay the fingers on her right hand. Tarmac was running liquid from the streets that edged her nails. ‘What kind of Goddess deliberately gives Her city a disease?’
Mater Viae’s lip twisted as if She was considering Beth’s words. Then She tipped Beth’s chin up with Her fingers and pushed Her palm forward until it touched Beth’s throat. Beth felt her pulse flickering against Mater Viae’s skin. She felt the red-hot fever racing through the Goddess’s own city’s bricks. She flinched back hard.
‘Y-You’re sick too?’ the voice, emerging from her own city, stammered in time with the jackhammers that formed it.
Mater Viae lifted Her foot and stamped forward hard. Beth’s left kneecap exploded into a million fiery needles. She sagged against the stone fingers that held her, breathless and dizzy with the pain
… she tried to stand on the rooftop but her legs went from under her and she fell. The sky above her was as dark as a bruise …
then she shook her head hard and London came back into focus. Over Mater Viae’s shoulder she saw the shattered skyline. The frozen Thames shone like a diamond over St Paul’s; it was motionless, becalmed somehow.
‘How?’ She managed at last to form the words. ‘If you’re sick too? How can you …?’ She strained as hard as she could against the grey fingers that held her, trying to ignore the bruising pressure on her ribs. Mater Viae watched, coldly motionless, as Beth struggled. At last she sagged back, exhausted, Mater Viae unclenched Her fingers and the giant hand dropped Beth unceremoniously into the dirt. The Goddess wiped Her slate-scaled fingers through Her skirts as though they were contaminated.
‘By being better than you.’ The arrogance in the statement did nothing to change the truth of it.
Freezing Estuary water washed over Beth’s stomach as Mater Viae knelt on it.
‘You caused the fever,’ she hissed. ‘You sickened the streets. You. The City is in rejection – it’s in shock. It can’t survive with two of Us, any more than you could survive with a second heart or a second brain. You woke the cranes, you woke the River, and all you ever had to do if you wanted to cure the City was die.’
Beth gazed past Mater Viae’s shoulder at her empty, stricken city. She thought of the soldiers she’d watched drowning in the Tideways, and the kid’s scream that had rung out from the Blank Street, and all the other hundreds of thousands of people she had never known who had perished by the fever. She thought of Timon. She thought about all the times in the past three months she’d fought and scrambled and killed to stay alive. Hundreds of thousands, she thought. If she’d only been a little slower, a little weaker, a little less determined, then some of those people would be alive instead of her.
Some, but not all.
Something set in her. She rolled her thumb over her forefinger and remembered how it had felt pressing down on a wound that wouldn’t close.
‘You too,’ she hissed. The pain in her chest was a raging fire, like the fire that had killed Pen, and it devoured her. ‘That’s all You ever had to do too. You killed my dad. You killed my best friend.’
Mater Viae looked at her for a moment, Her expression inscrutable. ‘You killed My child,’ she said simply.
The hand that brushed Beth’s hair back from her temple was almost gentle. Mater Viae pressed Her palm to Beth’s cheek. Beth felt the heat in it, and the shape of the cranes that stretched under the skin like bones, and then … something else.
‘And you did it wearing my
face.’
Beth screamed: a cry of shattering windows and derailed trains and ruinous car crashes. She could feel Mater Viae’s consciousness in her.
Just as Beth had once poured herself into the city around Her, the Urban Goddess poured herself into the city that was Beth. The power of the Lady of the Streets was a physical presence in her flesh. Beth shuddered as she felt it brush the foundations of the streets that crisscrossed her cheeks. She babbled and kicked.
And then, with a horror that drew the moment out like a teardrop, she felt her own body responding to Mater Viae’s will.
The skin on her eyebrow and cheek bubbled like liquid clay and then closed over her left eye. Beth’s breath came in panicked gasps. She shuddered, and hot and cold shivers raced over her skin.
Fil, she whispered into her mind. Help.
‘I can’t.’ The grey boy sounded dreadfully ashamed. His arms were around her chest and he was half curled around her, sheltering her from the wind that shrieked over the rooftop. She was slumped in his lap, her head nestled in the hollow of his shoulder, her useless legs splayed out in front of her. ‘There’s nothing I can do.’
A storm swirled over them, as vast as the world. Towers of black cloud speared down towards them, cloud-streets and cloud-houses formed, mimicking and mocking Beth’s home. The cloud architecture shifted suddenly, towers braiding themselves together, and the wind redoubled. It scoured the city, stripping paint from lintels and ripping asphalt up from the road. Walls buckled and tore under its power. Beth’s ears throbbed.
The wind slackened as suddenly as a flicked switch and Beth climbed to her feet. She touched her ear and her finger came away tipped in bright red blood. She reeled to the edge of the roof and looked out past the dormant cranes she’d dreamed there to the tower blocks. Her stomach clenched. The buildings were warped, twisted together like crops after a tornado. They were dead hulks, their lights out. A perfect mirror of the city picked out in the clouds …