The Glass Republic: The Skyscraper Throne: Book II

by Pollock, Tom

  A spotlight dazzled her. She squinted through the glare.

  In the temporary stands, the spectators were on their feet, howling and whistling gleefully. Lamplight refracted through the hanging panes of the Goutierre Device, crowding the room so much so that it took a moment for Pen to realise how few people were actually there – perhaps three hundred at the most. Every face in the crowd was either mirrorstocratic or heavily patched. The Lottery’s contestants might be London-Under-Glass’ poor, but that didn’t mean they got to see it live. Case sat towards the middle of the fifth row, dressed in a demure midnight-blue gown, her face lit by the same passion as everyone else’s in the hall. Guards in full dress uniform stood in the wings, Edward amongst them. Cameras crouched like avian predators on their dollies to the side of the stands, their red lights staring out at Pen, transmitting her to the reflected city’s electorate, cut, framed and controlled.

  Leaning on the lectern in the centre of the chamber, Driyard grinned at her and extended a hand. His silver seams glittered as if they’d been polished for the occasion; maybe they had. When she leaned in, he gave her a kiss on the cheek she didn’t even feel and then left the stage.

  The cheering showed no sign of stopping.

  ‘Smile for them, Countess.’ In the stands, Case’s lips barely twitched around her own rapturous smile as she delivered the instruction. Her hand rested on her breastbone as though out of emotion, cupping the tiny mic. ‘Surely they deserve it, even if I don’t.’

  Pen placed the phone on the lectern. Espel’s eyes pleaded at her. Her lips parted and she cleared her throat to speak, but Case’s voice buzzed sharply in her ear. ‘Not just yet. Let us make our venerations.’

  So Pen just stood, stiff and smiling as a mannequin, drenched in their adulation. In spite of everything, she felt it lift her. The power of their attention tugged at her like a current in water. She could feel the gaze of the millions of viewers watching her on TV; all of their trust in her, all their hopes to win flowed through her. She could feel the muscles around her mouth twitch to pull her smile wider. It was as though her face was trying to shape itself more closely to their expectation. She clamped her lips tightly together, asserting control.

  She heard Case’s voice, and she wasn’t sure if it came from her earpiece or her memory.

  ‘We can control how you are seen.’

  Control, Pen, she told herself. Stay in control.

  But she wasn’t in control, panic whispered to her: Case was.

  ‘That’s enough,’ the voice buzzed in her ear.

  Pen raised her hands, scarred palms outwards, and the crowd quietened. She swallowed against an arid throat and began to speak.

  ‘My Lords, Ladies and—’

  She hesitated. On the phone screen, Espel’s mouth moved. It was a subtle motion, if it hadn’t been for months of practise watching Beth mouth things, Pen might not have been able to read it:

  What have I done? the steeplejill mouthed. With the tiny freedom allowed her by Corbin’s grin, she was shaking her head.

  What have I done?

  Pen stared at the screen. What have you done? she wondered. What do you mean? What have you done to get here? What have you done to deserve this?

  And then, quite clearly in her mind, she saw Espel perched on the edge of the kitchen rubbish chute, her mouth still stained with stolen brownie, grinning at her.

  ‘What have I done today to give you the idea that hanging onto my life is a big priority for me?’

  Pen stared out at the sea of eyes and cameras. She looked back at the Looking-Glass Lottery, at everything Espel despised.

  On the phone screen, Espel and Corbin were both transfixed by Pen’s hesitation. She thought she saw the arm that held the syringe tense. Espel’s blue eyes, the same eyes as her insurgent brother’s, flickered towards the camera.

  Do it for me, Espel mouthed.

  Pen was plunged into confusion. She clutched at the lectern for support.

  Doubt whipped her mind Do it for me? Do what for me? What did Espel mean? Pen snatched at her breath. She could feel the dress crawling on her skin. She looked back at the phone, but Espel’s gaze had returned to the dressing-room TV.

  The red lights burned on the cameras. Hundreds of intent faces watched. They were all waiting for her.

  We’re doing this for you, Parva.

  Pen straightened slowly and cleared her throat. ‘My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen,’ she said. ‘Senators, honoured guests—’

  In the fifth row, she saw Case relax slightly.

  ‘—and most of all, every single one of you watching this live across the city: welcome to the Draw for the two hundred and fourth Looking-Glass Lottery.’ She smiled. ‘I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced. My name’s Parva Khan—’

  Laughter and cheers exploded out from the audience. Pen felt her breath come quicker as they hit her. She waited for them to subside.

  We’re doing this for you, Parva.

  Do it for me.

  She looked directly into the camera.

  ‘—but I am not the Countess of Dalston.’

  Case stiffened like she’d been electrocuted. Pen’s eyes flickered to the phone screen, but neither Corbin nor Espel had moved. They were both staring open-mouthed at their TV. Was that a smile at the corner of Espel’s mouth? Pen couldn’t be certain.

  ‘I’m not the girl you know by my name’ – she looked back up at the crowd – ‘although I loved her as dearly as you do. Find a picture, any picture of her, now. Look at it and look at me. See the difference. She’s my inverse, my opposite – my mirror-sister. I’m afraid I’ve lied to you,’ she said. ‘And I am not the only one.’

  Case’s face was as white as a snake’s underbelly. Her lips were moving furiously, her voice was buzzing in Pen’s ear, deadly desperate threats.

  Pen didn’t listen.

  ‘They were lying when they told you the Faceless had been kidnapping the new mirrorborn from train stations. They were lying when they told you the Faceless kidnapped Parva Khan. Harry Blight was an innocent man.’ She let that sink in.

  ‘Parva and the people from the train station and every other immigrant snatched off your pavements have all been taken for the same reason: they, like your grandprofiles, like your parents and like a lot of you too, came here from another place. Before this city there was somewhere else they called home, somewhere that they loved.

  ‘They were taken by an enemy who needed that love, who drank them dry of it, and left them as good as dead. And that enemy is not Garrison Cray.’

  Case was on her feet, screaming at the technicians behind the cameras to cut the transmission, but those same technicians were just staring at Pen and the red lights kept burning.

  Pen raised her chin, ‘Senator Margaret Case’ – she spoke the name clearly – ‘made a deal with that enemy.’

  She felt a grim satisfaction as hundreds of accusing eyes turned towards the wizened mirrorstocrat.

  Case pleaded with them, begging them not to believe the words coming from the very face she’d worked so hard to get them to love, to trust. Pen could see their expressions; she could see them trying to reconcile that trust with her confession: I’ve lied to you. Their faces were contorted, as if that paradox was causing them physical pain.

  ‘She sacrificed Parva Khan, and thousands like her, to that enemy. She’ll tell you she did it to protect you.’ Pen looked down at the phone on the lectern, at Espel’s unreadable face. ‘But I don’t think that’s what you would have wanted.’

  Someone in the audience screamed and Pen looked back up sharply. Case wasn’t pleading any more; she was standing tall and sighting Pen down the length of Corbin’s service pistol.

  ‘Shut up!’ she was screaming. ‘Just SHUT UP!’

  There was a crack that made every bone in Pen shudder. Her hands moved instinctively to her forehead. The fabric of her headscarf was wet. She waited for the pain to come.

  Then she saw that Case had rocked b
ack on her heels, the gun falling slack to her side. The old mirrorstocrat stared in astonishment at a spreading patch of darkness on her shoulder. The men and women in the rows behind her were cowering, hiding their heads beneath their arms. Their expensive sleeves were patterned with glistening red.

  Pen looked around in slow disbelief. Behind her, Edward was lowering his pistol. His eyes were wide at what his bodyguard reflexes had made him do. The gun barrel started to shake in front of him.

  Five more shots split the air – Pen heard them; they were almost surreally distinct. A Goutierre lens shivered into splinters. Edward spasmed as if being electrocuted and then collapsed. The Hall of Beauty dissolved into screams.

  Pen ducked her head and ran without thinking. Her heels slipped on the floor and she kicked them off. She stumbled and fell to her knees next to her former bodyguard. His head was turned away from her and Pen’s heart lurched as she saw the symmetrical red crater that blossomed from the back of it.

  Behind her, soldiers in ceremonial dress were shooting and shouting at one another as the great and good of London-Under-Glass scattered like startled livestock.

  ‘Corbin,’ Case’s voice crackled into her ear, gritted and thick with pain, ‘wake the steeplejill’s id.’

  Pen grabbed Edward’s pistol, though it burned her fingers, and pushed herself off the floor. She hared down the corridor towards the dressing rooms, dancing her bare toes between the splinters of broken glass. She overshot the door and slammed her shoulder painfully into the end of the hallway. Screaming in fear and frustration, she hurled herself at the dressing-room door.

  The door wasn’t locked, and Pen fell into the little room. Espel was lying on the floor, kicking and jerking. Corbin knelt behind her, fumbling with the bonds that held her wrists. He looked up at Pen as she entered, and started. He reached for the holster at his belt – but his fingers groped empty air. Case had never given him his pistol back.

  He paled and lurched towards her. Pen raised Edward’s gun and yanked backwards on the trigger.

  The noise was hideous. The gun jerked itself out of her hands and clattered to the floor. The recoil felt like someone shoving a screwdriver into her wrist. Corbin’s legs slid out from him and he hit the floor hard, clutching at his ribs. His mouth stretched like he was trying to scream, but all he could manage was a liquid gurgle. Bloody saliva bubbled out over his lip.

  For a fraction of a second, Pen stared at him, frozen by the noise and the violence of what she’d done to him. Then Espel spasmed hard, and Pen dropped to her knees beside her. The silver syringe lay on the floor, its plunger depressed. The tip of the needle was red.

  Gently, Pen rolled Espel over. The blonde girl’s tattooed face twisted and contorted as the muscles in it pulled in opposite directions. The tendons in her neck corded as both of the minds in her fought against the plastic ties binding her wrists.

  ‘Did I do it right?’ Pen shouted desperately at her. ‘Was this what you wanted?’

  Espel’s lips rippled back from her teeth, but the strained noises that came from her throat could have been anything.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Pen whispered. Horror made her feel light, dizzy. She had no idea what to do. Corbin made dreadful wheezing sounds. A dark stain was spreading through his uniform, just over where his lung would be. His legs kicked weakly under him, but he couldn’t stand. He appealed to Pen with his eyes.

  She set her teeth and looked away, but she couldn’t block out the pattering little wheezes he made as he fought to manage his breath: ‘P-p-p—’

  She stood and grabbed Espel by the collar of her jacket, dragged her up until her feet were under her and propelled her towards the door. The steeplejill’s thrashing legs were forced into some semblance of coordination as she overbalanced, and she staggered in an ungainly reel in front of Pen.

  They found the Hall of Beauty abandoned. Edward’s body lay where it had fallen, but Case and all the other soldiers were gone. Pen’s gaze lighted on Goutierre’s Eye, swinging like a pendulum over the leather bench. Bullet-shattered lenses hung around it, jagged as fangs. She dragged Espel past it, tucked Edward’s gun under her arm, reached up and slipped the all seeing sphere from its cage.

  ‘Made you a promise,’ she whispered to the back of Espel’s jerking head as she barrelled her onwards out of the Hall.

  Shrieks and cries echoed up the corridor from the direction of the main lift shaft, so Pen herded Espel the opposite way. She slammed the butt of the pistol into the button for the little service lift and, gloriously, the door slid open immediately.

  Inside the lift, Espel’s legs went from under her and she started to kick and jerk. Pen could see her shoulders straining fit to tear themselves out of their sockets as her arms worked against the cuffs. She threw herself on top of the steeplejill’s body, trying to restrain the awful chaos of her limbs.

  The moment the lift reached the ground, Pen was hauling on Espel’s collar, swearing and pleading and cajoling. For a horrible moment she didn’t think she’d be able to get the steeplejill moving again, but then she threw her weight into it and felt the resistance disappear as the blonde girl and her newly awakened passenger staggered onwards.

  Got to keep her running. It was all Pen could think about, though her own legs and lungs were beginning to burn. Got to keep her moving.

  They crashed through the kitchen. Roasted poussin and ramekins of peas and tall glasses of shrimp mousse flew and shattered in their wake. The half-faced chefs and wait staff didn’t scream; they watched Pen in shocked silence. Their eyes flicked from her gun to the tiny TV hanging over the counter, still showing the silent, ruined spectacle of the hall.

  Pen crossed the last few feet towards the rubbish chute in four short steps. Grunting with effort, she hurled them both headfirst into its maw.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  For a sickening, frictionless second, Pen lost her grip on Espel’s collar. She imagined the steeplejill getting stuck and her id-consciousness smashing their collective brains to a bloody smear on the metal shaft. She scrabbled and just managed to snare a handful of Espel’s clothing as they tumbled onto their faces into filth and black plastic, but she didn’t hesitate; she staggered over the uneven binbag terrain, but she managed to keep her forward momentum, hauling Espel after her.

  Keep her moving, keep her moving. As long as she kept Espel’s body off-balance, the twin consciousnesses inside it couldn’t make it battle itself.

  They raced out of the alleyway and through the dim arches of London Bridge Station. It was deserted – everyone was home in front of the TV. Pen hesitated briefly as the entrance to the tube station yawned, but horror at the thought of being trapped underground gripped her and she barrelled them back out onto the street instead. She split left on a whim. The frost on the pavement blistered the soles of her bare feet. The winter night chilled the metal dress to freezing point on her skin. Her ears were full of her own harsh breathing and her heart leapt and stuttered in time to the disjointed footsteps of the divided girl behind her.

  Keep moving, just keep her moving.

  But when they crested the rise that led up to the bridge, she stumbled and almost stopped dead. She managed to keep her balance, even as she stared in amazement at what was crossing London Bridge.

  Marching towards her in a ragged wave, hooded and scarved and equal, gleefully flouting the law, was a huge crowd of Faceless, many brandishing bottles that spat oily orange flame. The silver painted legends on their black banners caught the streetlight: Not by your Eyes! they read, and Our Gaze and No Others! and a little less obliquely: Fuck you, I am beautiful.

  Pen gaped at their numbers. There were hundreds, no, thousands of them, many more than she’d seen in their Kensington fastness. They cheered and roared their slogans, but it was the sound of their feet that sent a shiver up the back of Pen’s neck. Their steps drummed on the tarmac as if they would shake the bridge itself into the river below.

  Hush spread across the bridge as Pen pu
lled Espel out onto it, and the Faceless stopped cold. For a moment, as she ran towards them, Pen thought they’d stopped for her, their Counterfeit Countess, but as she drew closer she made out their eyes, visible in thin strips of bare skin above their scarves. None of them were looking at her.

  She heard a crash like metal footsteps behind her, and felt something fall into the pit of her stomach as she looked back to follow their gaze.

  Less than a hundred yards from the south end of the bridge, a line of Chevaliers stretched across the street. Their opaque visors shone with reflected streetlight and they held their rifles stiffly across their chests.

  Pen had run straight into the middle of no-man’s-land.

  There were no warnings, no calls to disperse or surrender. The armoured police stood in eerie silence. Then, the crackle of a radio whispered through the air, an officer barked a one-syllable command, and with a sound like a thousand bones breaking, the Chevaliers set their guns to their shoulders.

  Pen ran on, pulling Espel after her. Her heart skittered and skipped and she could feel all the muscles in the core of her squeezing together. She was ten paces from the first of the Faceless crowd. Her feet felt like blocks of ice as they slapped on the ground. Five paces. She heard another shouted order behind her, something that sounded sickeningly like ‘Stop them.’

  The crowd in front of her began to churn like boiling liquid. Frantic black-clad bodies pressed themselves back against those behind them, trying to escape. Now she was close to them she saw they mostly weren’t wearing hoodies after all; their faces were swaddled in improvised disguises made of torn bedding, scarves, old clothes.

  They aren’t Faceless. It came to her in an instant as she ran. At least – they weren’t before tonight. These people were here because of her. What she’d said had shattered the image of the glass republic, its fragile self.

  They’re here because of me.

  A single voice shouted in alarm in the heart of the crowd; the sound echoed off the brick-laden clouds, creating bizarre acoustics. A shrouded figure erupted from the press of bodies with its arm outstretched. Its fingers closed around Pen’s wrist and jerked her forward. She overbalanced and stumbled and stomach acid bubbled harshly into her mouth as she fell, dragging Espel down behind her. The cold pavement thudded up through her bones.