The Glass Republic: The Skyscraper Throne: Book II

by Pollock, Tom

  They drove past a narrow alley and Pen did a double take, feeling her throat constrict. Cuttner’s Close, EC1, the enamel sign read. The name wasn’t familiar and neither was the street itself.

  It should have been.

  In her own London, Pen had wandered up and down these pavements a million times on her way to and from her dad’s practice; they were an extension of her rat-runs, her neighbourhood. A chill spread through her, and she turned from side to side, peering urgently out of the car windows. More and more unfamiliar details struck her, more and more that was wrong: a missing shop, or a building razed to the ground where its equivalent in London still stood; a row of frontages continued unbroken where Godliman Street ought to have been. This reflection of London wasn’t just distorted; it had been rebuilt in places, its topography altered.

  It doesn’t match, she realised, her stomach sinking. She’d assumed that the London she knew would be a map for London-Under-Glass, but it wasn’t. But without a map, Pen had no idea how to find Frostfield High – or if the school even existed here.

  A city of eight million people, covering more than six hundred square miles, and the room with the bloody handprint on the floor could be anywhere.

  Twenty-one days and nights. Johnny Naphtha’s silk-and-oil voice whispered through her mind. Twenty-one.

  Her driver kept shooting illicit looks back at her and then snatching his gaze away again. He cleared his throat and opened his mouth like he was going to say something, then he bottled it. He scratched the back of his head and sighed loudly, then he tilted the rear-view mirror until it caught her. It never showed her him.

  ‘Look, are you all right?’ Pen asked.

  ‘Oh, frag me!’ he started. ‘I was staring, wasn’t I? Oh, Mirror of God, excuse me – I’m sorry, ma’am, I was just—’ He groped for the words, and then sagged slightly in his seat.

  ‘Forgive me?’ he asked sheepishly.

  Pen blinked. ‘What for?’

  ‘Well, my language, Lady Khan, for one thing – I shouldn’t be talking to a Mirror Countess like that, I know that – it’s just …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, I’m just so relieved, ma’am.’ His grin was furtive, as though smiling at her was a liberty he could scarcely afford to take. ‘Everyone is, of course, but especially the wife and me. Thank Mago those Faceless scum didn’t do … well, what everyone said they’d done.’

  ‘Um … thanks?’ Pen said.

  ‘Oh, no problem, ma’am. We’re such big fans. Not that I know anyone who isn’t a fan of yours, of course.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure there must be someone.’ Pen’s laugh was perplexed.

  ‘’Course not,’ said the driver, beaming, ‘Face like that? – If you don’t mind me saying, ma’am, who wouldn’t love you? It’s not just the looks – though obviously they’re important, and so refreshing, if you don’t mind me saying. With all the stitch-cheeks and suturing that’s been in vogue recently, it’s grand to have someone looking a bit classier, but—’ He hesitated.

  ‘But—?’

  ‘Well, we all feel like we know you.’

  ‘You do, do you?’ Pen had a sinking feeling that the driver did know the girl he thought she was, better than she did.

  ‘Oh yes, ma’am,’ he said. ‘The Face of the Looking-Glass Lottery? Especially now, on the run up to Draw Night, with the amount you’re on TV and such, I reckon I see more of you than I do my own kids! Not that we don’t all love it, of course,’ he added hurriedly. ‘I mean, look at them.’

  He jerked his thumb at the window and Pen looked out. Teenagers stood in a ragged queue that must have stretched a hundred yards back from a nondescript doorway. Neon tubes looped above the lintel spelled out the words . An A4 printed photo of a smiling Lady Parva Khan was taped to the bricks beside the door.

  ‘Been queuing overnight, some of ’em, to get the new look,’ the driver said amiably. ‘I saw ’em on the way out. And that’s only a cheap place too, doesn’t do the fine scarring, but they queue up for it anyway. My own little girl’s been bugging me about it for weeks, but we can’t really afford it, and anyway, maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I reckon nine’s just a little young to have your face cut. I keep telling her, next year …’

  Pen watched the knife parlour recede behind them. A long-haired girl in a puffa jacket emerged from the doorway. The girl was facing away from Pen, but Pen could hear the cheer that went up through the glass. The other teenagers in the queue high-fived her and slapped her on the back. A tall black boy stood straight from where he’d been leaning against the wall and hugged her so fiercely and joyfully that he lifted her off her feet and spun her around.

  Seen over his shoulder, the girl’s face was just a blank white space. It took Pen a moment to realise it was wrapped in bandages.

  Her driver glanced around and beamed at her. ‘Mago!’ He murmured the name like it was a commonplace blasphemy. ‘And all to look like you – what it must be to be a trendsetter!’

  They drove over London Bridge and took a left in behind the station, under another billboard of Parva’s face. The Shard reared over them as they pulled up to the sidewalk. In this distorted city it was a rippling glass stalagmite, its tip lost in the clouds.

  ‘Back to palace life, eh, Countess?’ Her driver turned and gave her a wink. Pen shrank instinctively back into the leather seat as Captain Corbin dismounted and opened the door.

  Remember, she told herself, you’re an aristocrat. Walk like you own the place.

  She fixed on what she hoped was an appropriately condescending smile, feeling her scars tug at her mouth as she got out of the car.

  The Shard’s lobby echoed with the click of footsteps and the burble of elegant water features. Immaculately suited bureaucrats hurried this way and that clutching files, but when Pen looked down at the polished granite floor, hers was the only reflection. The place was like a weapons-grade library; no one spoke above a whisper.

  Corbin escorted her to a bank of lifts. The last on the right was guarded by two bulky men, bareheaded but clad in the same black armour; they held machine-guns against their chests. The door was already open.

  Corbin gestured, and Pen stepped inside. There was a single, unlabelled button on the panel by the door. It was only when Pen looked up that she realised he hadn’t followed her in.

  ‘You aren’t coming?’ she asked.

  Corbin frowned, his brow wrinkling symmetrically. ‘You have lost your memory, haven’t you? No one goes up to the ninetieth without an invitation from a senator. That’s what Max and Bruno are here to ensure.’ He gestured at the lift’s guards, who blushed and beamed to have her august attention drawn to them.

  ‘Don’t worry, you’re perfectly safe. She knows you’re coming. Besides, I need to go and sweat the miserable scum who kidnapped you.’

  ‘He didn’t kidnap me!’ Pen insisted.

  Corbin eyed her sympathetically. ‘With respect, ma’am, if you can’t remember, how do you know?’ He leaned into the lift, pushed the button and gave her a reassuring smile. ‘Your ordeal is over, Lady Khan. Welcome home.’

  The steel doors slid silently shut, leaving Pen alone.

  Her ears popped as the lift began to accelerate. A sickly swirl stared in her belly. She exhaled. Her heart was fluttering like an insect’s wing. They’ve got no reason to doubt you, she told herself.

  It had been a spur-of-the-moment decision to pretend to be Parva. People here had assumed and she hadn’t contradicted them. She realised now what that pretence might cost her, just as she also realised she had little choice but to keep it up.

  Take stock, she told herself, fighting down her panic. It can’t be as bad as it seems.

  It was exactly as bad as it seemed.

  Pen was in a metal box with no controls, heading for a private appointment with a woman who, given what the word senator usually meant, was probably one of the most important people in London-Under-Glass. No one goes up to the ninetieth without an invitation. Sh
e thought of Max and Bruno in all their muscular, gun-toting menace waiting at the bottom of the shaft. Now didn’t feel like quite the right moment to mention she was there under false pretences.

  But there was more than simple fear stopping her from owning up. Parva’s voice drifted into her head: They’re always smiling at me, but sometimes I see the smile, and sometimes I see the teeth. I think they mean me harm.

  What if someone in the palace knew something about Parva’s disappearance? What if they were involved somehow? These were obviously the people she’d worked with. Until she knew more, there were only two people she could trust behind the glass, and both wore her face.

  Pen might be alone, half-drowned and sickeningly out of her depth, but ‘Countess Parva Khan’ had power here: her face decorated tower blocks and her name opened doors. To have any hope of finding her mirror-sister, Pen was going to need that power.

  You’re Countess Parva Khan, she told herself. You’re Countess Parva Khan.

  In the back of her mind, a voice whispered back, It’s still you, Pen.

  Pen shut that voice away.

  She felt it in the pit of her stomach as the lift slowed. The doors opened and Pen gasped as she stepped out.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Birds chirruped and insects chittered. Leaves glowed vividly, green edged with white where the sun broke through the canopy. Pen gaped around herself, wrong-footed by the change of scenery. Had she just come outside? Was this a roof garden? She turned as she heard the doors close. The little building which housed the lift was so shrouded in ivy as to be almost invisible.

  Peering through the foliage, she saw light gleam on something metallic and made her way towards it. Her feet shushed through damp grass. She pressed through the bracken and the carefully manicured bushes until a beam of light touched the back of her neck, warm and intense, focused through a glass window-pane, and when she looked up, she saw through the tree canopy a glazed wall sloping above her, shrinking to a point at the apex of the ceiling. The pinnacle of the skyscraper was a massive glass pyramid – the perfect greenhouse – and someone had filled this side of it with a English country garden.

  The manicured lawns were surrounded by carefully trimmed rose bushes and beds full of all sorts of flowers Pen couldn’t even begin to name. An old lichen-covered statue stood beside a gravelled path that wound between the roses. Overhead the branches were in full leaf; she guessed they must hide some sort of sprinkler-system to keep the place hydrated. Pen inhaled, and felt the scents of blossom and grass lift her.

  A pair of wooden doors screened behind a row of bushes opened and a woman stepped onto the path. Pen stood awkwardly, examining the newcomer just as the woman was taking her in. Her suit and her hair were the same winter-sky grey, the latter pinned in an austere bun. Her face was lined and creased as a lantern-fruit skin. It took Pen a moment to realise that there were no silver stitches on her face, and the wrinkles on the left side didn’t mirror those on the right. For some reason, that sent a little shiver down her spine. This woman wasn’t symmetrical. She was an exact copy of someone in Pen’s London, composed of an infinity of reflections caught between two mirrors, with all the differences and variations that original woman had. She was a mirror-image of someone, just like Parva was of Pen. A member of the Mirrorstocracy.

  So, thought Pen, this must be Senator Case.

  The woman took a single step forward. Her gaze roved over Pen’s face, as if itemising every detail. Her hand went slowly to her mouth, as though frightened her next breath might unmake the moment. She took another hesitant step, and another, and then with a crunch crunch crunch on the gravel, she ran the remaining distance and wrapped Pen in a fierce hug.

  ‘Oh Mago,’ she murmured in an awed voice. ‘Oh, thank Mago, you’re safe. You’re safe.’

  She fell silent then, and they stood like that for a long time. Eventually she straightened and moved her hands tentatively to Pen’s shoulders, as though holding her was an addiction it took a multi-step process to break. Pen struggled for something to say. ‘The garden’s beautiful, Senator Case,’ she managed at last. Wow, Pen. Incisive.

  ‘Senator?’ The older woman gave her a quizzical frown. ‘When did we become so formal, Countess?’ She laughed. ‘You can call me Maggie when we’re alone, Parva, you know that. And you can come up to the garden any time if you like it.’

  ‘Thank you. It’s … very peaceful.’ Pen said, managing a thin smile. Amazing. Brilliantly inane. Keep it up.

  Senator Case laughed again, a light, infectious sound.

  ‘Peaceful? Yes, that’s exactly the word. It helps keep me sane on days like today.’

  Pen felt herself warming to the older woman; she had a sort of sternness edged in warmth, like a schoolteacher you really want to look after you.

  ‘Why,’ she asked. ‘What happened today?’

  The senator’s smile twisted. ‘Another attack: the Faceless raided Waterloo Station last night, just after the mirrorgration train came in. Fifty-two new immigrants were kidnapped – snatched right from the border checkpoint. They’ll be dead now, I expect, their faces stripped and sold off on the black market.’ She sighed wearily. ‘That’s the fourth raid in two months – the terrorists grow bolder every day. Corbin’s an excellent officer, and I know he’s doing his utmost, but still …’

  She shook her head as if to dispel the images and smiled at Pen. ‘You being found was the best news he’s brought me in a long time.’ Then concern touched her features. ‘I’m told you don’t remember much.’

  Pen felt herself tense as she shook her head, but Senator Case smiled encouragingly. ‘Never mind. It’s the shock, I’m sure. It will come back to you. At least you aren’t hurt – at least we still have this, hey?’ She lifted a hand and stroked Pen’s cheek gently.

  ‘Shall I tell you something exciting? We were so busy looking for you, we never actually got around to cancelling the photoshoot tomorrow. Are you feeling up to it? Of course I’ll understand if not, but they showed me the dress you’d be wearing and it’s astonishing – I mean, I’m a cynical old bag, but even my wrinkled heart started to beat a little faster at the thought of seeing you in it.’

  ‘Photoshoot?’ Pen asked carefully.

  ‘The final promo shots for the Lottery, remember? It’s been booked for weeks, and what with Draw Night only being a week away, I thought …’

  Her enthusiasm drained away with her words and her lined face looked suddenly shrivelled. ‘I thought they’d destroyed you, Parva,’ she confessed. ‘When I saw that video and then I heard you’d disappeared … I thought they’d destroyed us.’

  Pen felt her stomach pitch and the image of the bloody handprint on the bathroom floor flashed into her mind. ‘What video?’ she asked.

  Case held her gaze for a long moment. Pen watched the wattle on her neck move as she dry-swallowed. Then without another word she reached into her jacket and pulled out a touchscreen phone. Her fingers danced over it for a second, then she handed it to Pen.

  A sound crackled from its tiny speakers, low but incessant: a human voice – groaning.

  The video was dark and grainy, filmed on a single fixed camera in what looked like a cellar, or maybe an attic. Pen could make out three figures on the small display. Two of them faced the camera; they wore black sweatshirts with the hoods pulled up and dark bandanas covered their noses and mouths. They looked the way the kids from Pen’s neighbourhood did when they were playing at being gangsters. One of them held a dark shape and Pen felt a jolt of shock as she recognised it as a gun.

  Mennett’s words when she was lying on the dock came back to her: You’d covered your face … I thought you were an insurgent.

  The third figure sat between the other two with his back to the camera. As far as Pen could see, he was naked. He was tied down with blue nylon ropes, so tightly that his skin bulged between the wooden slats of the chair back.

  Pen watched the phone’s timer ticking off seconds in the bottom right corn
er. The thin moaning that emanated from the speaker was the only sound – the only sign that the video was playing at all, so still were the figures on the screen.

  After a full minute, one of the hooded figures spoke. ‘We are the Faceless.’

  Pen could see his mouth moving beneath the thin fabric of the bandana. His voice was distorted, like someone had messed with the sound before releasing the film. ‘We are unseen, but we will be heard. We could be anyone. We could be anywhere – and we are everywhere. This is not a demand.’ The hooded figure gestured at the man in the chair. ‘It is a demonstration.’

  At the word ‘demonstration’, the man in the chair flinched, straining against the ropes. The speaker gripped his shoulder and the moaning stopped abruptly, giving way to wheezy, frightened breaths.

  ‘The earl here used to believe that beauty was his birthright. We’ve taught him to look inside himself, and he knows better now. He has contributed – generously – to our cause.’

  Pen’s skin felt too tight on her. She was suddenly acutely aware of her scars, as though they were crawling like grubs over her face.

  The hooded figure leaned in close to the camera. His eyes gleamed in the room’s dim light, and Pen could see his irises were blue, flecked with hazel and gold. The pattern of colour was exactly symmetrical.

  ‘The tyranny of the Looking-Glass Lottery will end,’ he said.

  The chair legs shrieked against the floor as he dragged the naked man around to face the camera.

  Pen wanted to scream, but the sound never quite made it out. It lodged in her throat – half-born distress – choking her.

  Sweat plastered the naked man’s hair to his forehead, gleaming in the light from the room’s single bulb. But below that hairline – where the man’s face ought to have been – was nothing.

  The earl had no face.

  Pale, bloodless skin continued unbroken, dipping shallowly over eye sockets and cresting gently where the nose ought to have been. There were no ears.