The Glass Republic: The Skyscraper Throne: Book II

by Pollock, Tom

  Pen snatched a look up. Dark shapes moved on top of the walls above them. Hooded figures picked their way over the bricks with ease, occasionally silhouetted against the city night’s dull burnish. It was too dark to see their eyes, but Pen could feel their gazes on her, accusing her.

  Espel looked back at them once and nodded, but didn’t say anything. The figures tailed them in silence, like too many shadows.

  Espel zigzagged. She took turn after turn after turn, stopping at last in a blank-faced cul-de-sac. She gave a tremulous little exhalation, and, behind them, Pen heard the figures drop into the alley. The crunch of their boots on the gravel was like breaking bones.

  ‘Espel?’ she said uncertainly.

  ‘Don’t fight it, Parva,’ Espel said, still facing the wall. ‘It has to be this way.

  Sudden, eager hands reached around from behind Pen and grabbed her wrists and she bit back a cry as her arms were twisted into the small of her back and lashed with slippery-feeling cord. A sour-smelling cloth was pushed over her face, shutting out the world. Hands grabbed her under her arms and under her knees. Her pulse began to slam as she was lifted into the air.

  Control, Pen, she thought furiously. Stay in control.

  Through the cloth, she heard Espel’s voice harden into a tone of command. ‘Bring her.’

  The figures holding Pen began to run.

  Pen had no idea how long she was carried, but the acrobatics of her stomach acid told her there were plenty of sharp corners. Panic welled up in her at being powerless, at her lack of control, at the mob of hands that gripped her. She shut her eyes, a redundant gesture under the hood, and told herself, You chose this, Pen. They’re taking you where you wanted to go. It’s no different to a car …

  It’s all you.

  At last their jolting progress stopped and Pen was dumped unceremoniously onto dusty-smelling ground. Her hood was dragged clear and she blinked to clear her eyes.

  A familiar shudder passed through her. It was a demolition site.

  A topography of slain architecture surrounded her. A clutch of houses had been torn down, leaving a wide courtyard, bounded on all sides by the labyrinth. Foundations poked through the ground like the stubs of burned crops and Pen was ambushed by memory – the screams of machinery, brick bodies torn under digger-jaws. The cords seemed to crawl up her wrists as though they were alive.

  She shook herself and cast around. This rubble was just rubble: cold, inanimate clay.

  Everywhere, perched on the masonry like flocks of carrion birds, were black-clad figures, rank upon rank of them. The light was better in this open place and Pen could see them more clearly. They were all wearing hoodies, with bandanas drawn up over their mouths. They reminded her of the crowd of local estate kids who sometimes clustered around the corner shop on her street, except that she couldn’t imagine those kids waiting like this, in disciplined, patient quiet. Only their eyes were visible in their illicitly hidden faces.

  One of them sprawled indolently on a pile of rubble like a prince on his father’s throne. He shifted and sat forward, staring at her from under his hood. Pen could make out a powerful frame under the jumper. His hands were thick and rough as though from manual labour. Some of the others’ gazes flickered towards him for direction. This must be Garrison Cray. She felt a prickle on the back of her neck. This was the man who’d ordered her killed.

  Well, might as well stand up, then.

  That was easier said than done, with her hands bound, but no one tried to stop her and she managed to lurch to her feet. Cray stood too, keeping pace with her, as though in this place without mirrors he was playing at being her reflection. It felt strangely intimate.

  When he spoke, his voice was surprisingly youthful. ‘What do you want?’

  It was a simple question. The answer was simple too. ‘I want you to help me find Parva Khan,’ she said.

  The atmosphere in the yard shifted. There were confused mutterings and a snatch of laughter. The fabric of Cray’s bandana shifted in a way that might have suggested a smile underneath.

  And then he moved. He crossed the space between them with sinuous speed. His arm moved and Pen’s left eye was suddenly blinded, chilly metal pressing against the socket. It took a second for her to refocus her right eye and see the gun barrel receding from her blind spot, Cray’s pale fingers curling around the grip.

  ‘Garrison!’ Espel’s voice was shrill with alarm. Even wrapped up in her hoodie and scarf, Pen recognised her as she started forward, hand outstretched. ‘What are you—?’

  ‘It’s all right, Espel,’ Pen called to her. ‘If your boss thinks that his gun is the scariest thing I’ve ever had against my eye, he’s got another think coming.’

  The words coming out of her mouth didn’t sound like her, Pen realised. They sounded like Beth, cornered and wounded and brave: another not-quite-her to hide behind.

  Cray peered at her. His eyes were the same pale blue as Espel’s, Pen realised, but on him the colour reminded her of ice rather than sky. ‘This will go a lot faster if you don’t try to be funny,’ he advised.

  ‘It’d go even faster than that if you didn’t try to look hard,’ Pen countered.

  Cray snorted, rippling his bandana. There was something wrong with that bandana, Pen realised. The fabric sat too close to the skin.

  ‘Got quite the mouth on you, don’t you?’

  Pen sucked her reconstructed lip between her teeth, and then she did smile around it. ‘Do you like it?’ she said. ‘It’s new.’

  Cray’s thumb curled up behind the hammer of the pistol and cocked it: an elegant expression of thinning patience.

  ‘You don’t want to do that.’ Pen forced bravado in past the increasing tightness in her chest. She was dimly aware that her confidence was all she had going for her. She’d delivered herself to him when she knew he wanted her dead and he wanted to know why.

  What do you want? he’d asked her. As long as he was curious, she was breathing.

  ‘Shooting me in the face,’ she went on. ‘Won’t that dent my resale value?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s what you do to mirrorstocrats, isn’t it?’ Pen said. The fear made her so giddy it almost felt like courage. ‘Strip their faces off them?’

  For an awful split second she thought she’d miscalculated. She saw Cray’s knuckles pale and every muscle in her locked at the thought of the bullet chewing through her eye and into her brain.

  But it never came. Instead Cray lowered his gun and stepped back. ‘You’ve been spending too much time online, Countess,’ he said drily. ‘It’s warping your perception of reality. Jack!’ He called back over his shoulder. ‘Come and introduce yourself to your fellow uppercruster.’

  A lanky figure in green combat trousers stood uncertainly from his rubble perch. s‘You sure, Garrison?’

  ‘At present, I can’t see any way I’m going to let her Prettiness here leave this place alive, so sure. Go for your life.’

  The lanky figure stumbled a little as he made his way towards them. His hand shook as he pulled his hood and bandana away.

  Pen started hard. The young man’s angular face was seamless, and asymmetric in a way that would’ve seemed normal to Pen only a couple of days earlier. He had sandy hair and a nervous smile.

  ‘Jack Wingborough,’ he said. ‘Third Earl of Tufnell Park.’ He half extended a hand, which then wilted between them when Pen looked back pointedly over her shoulder at her own bound wrists.

  ‘Or at least I was,’ he concluded.

  Pen remembered the video Case had shown her, the nightmare basement and the blank face, the ragged, lipless mouth. Her throat dried.

  ‘Then – then who—?’ she managed.

  ‘My little brother, Simon.’ His mouth tightened into a hard line. ‘Auntie Maggie is ever so efficient.’

  Pen shivered. ‘I’m sorry – I don’t—’

  ‘The mirrorstocracy could hardly announce that I’d run off to join the revolution, could they? T
hey needed to do two things.’ Jack smiled one of those smiles that is only really teeth and tension. ‘Explain my absence, and punish me for it. Having Si in their little film accomplished both – not to mention the fact that with both of us out of the way, the Case family stands to inherit. Oh, I snuck as much as I could out, but I’m sure Dad’s money is coming in very handy in this election year.’

  Little brother, Pen thought, and something curdled in her stomach. Jack Wingborough was a gangly teenager, all angles and acne. How young had Simon been?

  ‘That’s the system the Lottery underpins,’ Espel said quietly, ‘a system that mutilates kids to punish their families.’

  ‘The system you’re the face of,’ Cray’s said. ‘So tell me again why I shouldn’t kill you.’

  ‘Simple.’ Pen forced a calm she didn’t feel into her voice. ‘I’m not her.’

  Cray barked derisively. ‘Really? ’Cause you look a hell of a lot like her.’

  ‘Actually,’ Pen replied, ‘it’s her who looks like me.’

  The cold eyes narrowed slightly. He didn’t understand. He was starting to raise his gun again when Espel whispered, barely audible in the night.

  ‘Mother Mirror merciful be – that’s it.’

  ‘What’s it?’ Cray snapped.

  ‘Parva Khan was left-handed.’ Espel sounded badly shaken. ‘When I was getting ready to go into the palace I watched every video of her I could find. Every autograph was signed with her left hand – but you’ – she pointed accusingly at Pen – ‘you used your right.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Look at her, Garrison.’ Espel said. ‘Really look at her—’

  ‘Oh, I’m looking,’ Cray said bitterly. ‘All I ever do is look at her: on the TV, online, on the train on my way to fragging work in the morning – every minute of every damn day.’

  ‘I know, me too – that’s how I missed it. She’s so familiar you don’t even see her any more. You just assume – you get lost in the scars. But look now – look at her asymmetry.’

  From under his hood Cray’s eyes stared unblinkingly at Pen, and for long seconds she willed him to see.

  ‘Mago,’ he whispered at last, ‘you’re the wrong way round.’

  Surprise eddied around the demolition site. Those Faceless figures further back craned in to see, muttering to themselves in shock.

  ‘You’re her, aren’t you?’ Espel came right up to Pen. Her blue eyes were huge. ‘Her mirror-sister – the original. You came through the mirror, not reflected through, but actually physically here. How did you—?’ She faltered, unable even to frame the question. ‘Just, how?’

  Pen said ruefully, ‘It doesn’t matter—’

  ‘Like hell it doesn’t – it’s impossible. No one’s ever—’

  ‘If “never has” was the same as “never could”, Es,’ Pen said, ‘all of history wouldn’t have happened.’

  ‘Just ’cause it’s real now, doesn’t mean it has to be for ever?’ There was a kind of wonder in Espel’s voice, and Pen smiled at her.

  Cray was eyeing his gun like it was the last thing in the world he understood. He exhaled heavily.

  ‘Let me be sure I’ve got this,’ he said. ‘Parva Khan goes missing and you, her mirror-sister, somehow come through the reflection to find her. You deliver yourself to us, and rather than thank Mago for the stupidity of my enemies, put a pair of bullets in you and take everyone to the pub to celebrate, you want me to help you find the Face of the Looking-Glass Lottery, an institution, lest we forget, that I’ve spent every waking moment since I was thirteen trying to tear down.

  ‘You’re right,’ he added, ‘“how” doesn’t matter. What I want to know is why? Why in the splintered mirror would I ever do that?’

  Pen licked her uneven lips. This was it, her pitch. Behind her back, she clenched her bound hands. ‘To tear down the Lottery,’ she said, ‘you don’t need to destroy its face, only its eye.’ She held his pale gaze until she was sure he understood.

  ‘Kill me – kill Parva,’ she said, ‘they’ll just find another girl – scar her up, if they’re feeling nostalgic – and the whole bloody circus carries on. But I’ve got access to Goutierre’s Eye, the one irreplaceable part of the machine that makes the whole system work.’ She jerked her head at Espel. ‘She’s seen it. She knows I can steal it. Help me find my sister and I promise you, they’ll never see it again. No Eye, no Engine. No Engine, and the promise of the Lottery crumbles like a stale cake.’

  She watched him struggle with the idea. It was a stretch, she realised. To him – to everyone here, the image of a thing was the thing itself. Parva was the Lottery. It was incredibly hard for him to see it any other way.

  At last he spoke. ‘Your counterfeit countess is quite a find, Sis,’ he said to Espel. He nodded over Pen’s shoulder and she felt cold metal slide between her wrists. Pins and needles exploded in her fingertips as the bindings fell away.

  ‘Welcome to the Revolution.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The meeting dissolved efficiently and without fuss. The Faceless pulled off their hoodies and bandanas. Shorn of their disguises, they were revealed to be a broad mix of half-faces with various degrees of patching, and even a few mirrorstocrats. Pen watched them in puzzlement, wondering why people apparently so keen to hide their identities should so willingly ditch their disguises while still in full view of one another.

  But they used their real names, she realised. They already know who each other are. They don’t need to hide from each other.

  She caught strange, silent exchanges between them as they hurried away into the labyrinth: narrowed eyes, blushes, sudden embarrassed looks away, and then she understood.

  Constantly judging each other, Espel had said. Ranking each other. We rely on other people’s eyes. They’d been raised in the mirrorstocracy’s hierarchy and that kind of thinking was stickier than tar. They couldn’t help it. Covering their faces wasn’t just some directionless gesture of rebellion; it helped them ignore the aesthetics they’d been raised to judge each other by.

  It wasn’t about anonymity but equality.

  Garrison Cray was the last to drag his disguise off. Pen bit back a little yelp of shock.

  He had no face below his eyes, just a blank sheet of parchment-like skin. His nostrils were elliptical holes, flat to his face. Where his mouth ought to have been, the skin had been razored open and the edges of the cut stitched back on themselves, like a turned-up hem on a pair of trousers. The two sides of his makeshift lips flexed symmetrically around the silver seam as he breathed.

  He looked up at Pen, the blue eyes set hard, defiant. Pen steeled herself and met his gaze as though there was nothing unusual about him, even though all around she could feel the atmosphere chill as the other Faceless couldn’t help but look away from that blank, symmetrical absence. Even Espel was staring fixedly in the opposite direction.

  For a second she thought Cray would speak, but he just turned and stalked away.

  A few minutes was all it took for the terrorists to desert their lair, vanishing like water into the maze’s cracks. At last only Pen, Espel and Jack Wingborough remained.

  The turncoat aristocrat pulled something slippery from his back pocket that glittered in the dim light. He caught Pen watching him as he smoothed it over the right side of his face, then, with a magician’s flourish, he whispered, ‘Ta da!’

  Pen stared. Suddenly, the mirrorstocrat was a half-face. His features were precisely symmetrical – he even had a silver seam running down the centre of his face.

  ‘Did you just – is that— Is that an id?’ she whispered incredulously. Harry Blight’s jerkily kicking body flashed alarmingly into her mind.

  ‘Mago, no!’ Jack said in alarm. ‘I’m a sympathiser, but I don’t want to empathise.’ He shot a guilty look at Espel, who was leaning against the wall with her hands behind her. ‘Sorry, Es.’

  ‘S’all right, you posh tit. I don’t blame you,’ Espel said absently, not taking her ey
es off Pen.

  ‘Here, there’s no reflection – look.’ Jack leaned in towards Pen and teased at the seam on his forehead with his fingernail. It peeled back, onion-skin fine, revealing his own asymmetric features again. The seam marked the edge of a half-mask. Where it had lifted clear, Pen could see the mask was a mostly transparent film, clouding to opacity in the few places where Jack’s right side didn’t quite match his left. They were tiny changes, but it was startling how completely they reconfigured his face.

  It was like her camouflage makeup, only infinitely more subtle: a distorting lens to allow him to pass for normal.

  ‘It’s illegal as hell, obviously,’ he said, ‘since the only real market for them is mirrorstocrats on the run – usually from their own governments. Most have it bonded to their skin – it’s safer – it means it won’t peel off at an inconveniently public moment.’ His voice dried slightly. ‘But I …’

  Pen understood. He hadn’t yet given up on someday being beautiful again.

  ‘Good luck.’ The Third Earl of Tufnell Park clapped her on the shoulder and jogged away up the tunnel.

  Espel led Pen back into the labyrinth. It was only when they emerged onto a quiet side street, no more than ten minutes and three corners later, that Pen realised how convoluted the route Espel had taken her in on had been. The endless pathways of the rubble maze existed in a tiny space – an illusion of immensity.

  They sprayed clouds of silver breath into the air as they stepped back onto the ice-speckled pavement.

  ‘Espel,’ Pen asked at last.

  ‘What.’ Espel wouldn’t look at her.

  ‘What happened to Cray’s face?’

  ‘Skin taxes, just before the election ten years ago.’

  ‘They—?’ Pen found herself stammering, even though she wouldn’t have believed London-Under-Glass’ government could do anything more to shock her. ‘They taxed his face off?’

  Espel snorted. ‘Not quite. The rates went up, same as they always seem to just before elections – funny, that, since you vote according your registered features. Cray’s family couldn’t get the funds together to pay and he was thirteen and stupid and thought he could help them out.’ Pen saw the steeplejill’s jaw set in the cold streetlight. ‘He broke into the Marquess of Finsbury’s mansion looking for something to nick … His Lordship gave the Chevs leave to help themselves to whatever they wanted off him. He’s lucky he’s still got his eye.’