The Glass Republic: The Skyscraper Throne: Book II (10 page)

The synod’s vials clinked in her bag as she played with the zip. The winter sun etched her reflection starkly into the windows she passed, but there were too many people, even at this hour.

Where then?

An idea struck her, and she hurried down the slippery stone steps next to Blackfriars Bridge.

Her breath fogged the air in front of her face. Close to, the river looked almost cold enough to freeze. It surged sluggishly, a vast silver snake on the edge of hibernation. Pen watched the ripples in her murky reflection, the shadows cast by her raised scars. Riverside tower blocks rose behind her, warping and flexing slowly with the tide.

It was a mirror of sorts, and out of the way – and if this didn’t work, at least she wouldn’t be pulling fragments of broken glass out from between her fingers.

Before her nerve could fail, she unscrewed the cap on one of the vials and tilted her wrist, letting the clear fluid it contained splash onto the Thames. It spread like oil, stilling and clarifying the surface until the water beneath it was utterly invisible. The reflected buildings ceased their slow surging; their images were frozen in place, distorted, like in funhouse mirrors.

And
Pen’s
reflection …

Her breath caught. Her reflection had vanished.

She craned forward, but where her reflected face ought to have been she saw only the steps and the railings above her. It was as if she was invisible. A couple walked arm in arm along the embankment behind her. Pen heard them chatting, but she didn’t see them reflected either.

A wry smile touched her lips as she realised what had happened.

Tentatively, she reached down towards where the water’s surface ought to have been. Her fingers brushed nothing but air.

There was a hole in the river.

It was the shape of the puddle she’d poured from the vial. The wavy, distorted buildings she was looking at weren’t reflections, she realised, but real: solid mortar and masonry beneath her. It was as though she’d smashed a hole in what she’d thought was a mirror and found it was a window instead. The Thames lapped at the edges of the hole. Droplets splashed over and fell upwards into the reflected sky like inverse rain until they were lost to sight.

Pen’s stomach clenched as she tiptoed to the river’s edge. Down or up, whichever, it was a long, long way to fall.

A sudden burst of synth and bass from her phone made her jump, almost tipping her in.

The text was from Beth:
I need to see you
.

Pen hesitated, her thumb poised over the keys to send the automatic response. With her other hand she reached into her bag and touched the other thing she’d brought with her: an eggshell made of stippled brick, with a few slate feathers inside.

No messages
, she told herself,
no clues, no cryptic comments
. She would leave no broken picture for Beth to piece together, no ‘Fractured Harmony’. Beth was too smart. She’d work it out and come after her, and then it would be
her
in the synod’s factory, paying the same awful price that that Pen had – or a worse one, because who knew what sacrifice Johnny Naphtha would extract from the new Daughter of the Streets if she put herself in his debt.

With a whispering sigh the hole in the river started to contract. The window was closing.

She put the phone back into her bag without answering it, braced herself and willed herself to jump. For a dreadful instant her legs wouldn’t obey her. She watched the hole diminishing. In just a few more seconds the gap would be too narrow to fit through. She had a brief vision of getting stuck – her head and torso sticking up out of the Thames, while her legs waved up from the surface of its mirror river like some mad synchronised swimmer’s.

The hole was shrinking more quickly now. She could see her own reflection returning in its wake. She concentrated and her knees bent agonisingly slowly under her.

‘
Pen!
’ she snapped at herself, and jumped. For a split second she kicked at empty air, and then she plummeted down through the hole in the river. The water at its edge splashed over her face.

What felt like a half-ton of paratha surged up into her throat as she gagged. The distance to the reflected buildings stretched away beneath her flailing legs. She fell, faster and faster, until the wind pummelling at her face snapped her head back. She stared upwards: she was plummeting through a tunnel in the water like some kind of aquatic rabbit. For a moment she glimpsed the towers of her home city gleaming in the bright winter light, an impossible distance above.

And then the tunnel-mouth closed over her—

Water roared down and the liquid walls crashed in towards her. She snatched a single frantic breath before the restored
Thames smashed into her like a giant fist. She jerked hard upwards as the water broke her fall. She tumbled, her blood drumming in her ears. Every beat of her heart made her head throb. She thrashed and floundered, kicking upwards, desperate for air, but the water around her stayed the same dank, uniform green, with no sign of the sun. She was sinking. She could feel some invisible force dragging her downwards. She flailed her arms frantically but sluggishly, the water feeling treacle-dense as, still kicking hard, she strove to rise. Her lungs felt like they were going to burst, but no matter how hard she squinted through the silty Thames she couldn’t see the surface.

The remnants of her precious last breath puffed her cheeks out, straining to escape her mouth. She struggled to swallow it back, but a fat round bubble slipped treacherously between her lips.

It zoomed
downwards
– away past her feet.

Understanding was a white spark in her oxygen-starved brain.

Of course: it’s a
mirror!
Up is down and down is bloody up!

Little stars exploded behind her eyes, leaving tiny black holes. She stopped struggling and sculled her hands, flipping herself over. She let the invisible force seize her and drag her sharply through the water. She screwed up her eyelids and exhaled hard.

Noise crashed back into Pen’s ears as she surfaced. The air was full of shouts and the shriek of sirens, but she was too exhausted to care. She snorted water out of her burning sinuses and spread her limbs like a starfish. She floated on her back, dragging in breath after ragged breath, revelling in the miracle of buoyancy. She turned her head a little and realised she’d drifted out towards the middle of the river. She could see dark-uniformed figures hurrying agitatedly back and forth on the embankment and pointing at her. The crackle of radios whispered to her through the air.

A splashing sound disturbed the water and the sirens and uniforms clicked into place in Pen’s brain. She was being rescued. The people on the dock and the swimmer must be cops. They thought she was drowning.

‘I’m okay,’ she tried to say to the swimmer, but all that came out was a croak.

She struggled to get her feet under her, patting at the Thames’ choppy surface as she dragged her head up under her soaking hijab.

‘I’m oka—’ she tried again, but the words died on her lips. The man swimming towards her didn’t look like any paramedic Pen had ever seen. He was toothpick-thin, and the soaking clothes that clung to his shape were ragged. His pale, knobbly elbows poked through holes in his sleeves as he windmilled his arms in a frantic front crawl. His hoodie, his hair and his wild, matted beard were soaked black and crusted with silt.

And his eyes …

They bulged wide with effort, or maybe it was fear. He was dragging himself through the water with panicky, inefficient strokes. When his gaze fell on Pen his whole face went slack with shock.

Behind him on the embankment, the uniformed figures had stopped rushing around. A barked command crackled on their radios and two of them raised rifles to their shoulders.

The swimmer stretched out a hand towards Pen. His fingers were like white twigs and his nails were blue with cold.

‘
Help
…’ He choked the word as water splashed into his mouth.

A rifle shot fractured the air.

The swimmer hissed sharply. Red spray blossomed from his shoulder. Pen felt warm mist on her face. The swimmer jerked and struggled, cried out and swallowed water. Pen kicked towards him on instinct. She got her arms under his, but his legs churned the river under them, tangling with hers. He was too heavy. Freezing water closed over her and she swallowed the Thames, tasted metallic blood in it. Struggling, kicking, her legs came free and she fought for the air
only an inch from her face. Her ears popped as she broke surface, she heard the growl of a boat motor, a propeller chopping. She still couldn’t breathe. Wet fabric clogged her mouth. She’d surfaced into her floating hijab. It covered her face like a shroud. Panicking, she tried to wrestle a hand from the swimmer to claw it away.

But the motor was loud now, close, and as it cut out strong arms seized her under her armpits. Pen went limp as she was dragged clear. Still blinded by the headscarf, she slumped in the boat. The motor sputtered and roared to life again. After a moment the boat bumped against something and moments later she was dumped bodily onto dry land.

‘Down.’ The voice was muffled and distorted, its instruction rendered unnecessary by the shove that drove Pen onto her knees on the wet flagstones. On her right, someone – she thought it was the swimmer – was emitting an agonised keening noise. There was a meaty
crunch
and the noise cut off, leaving only sharp staccato breaths. The sharp ammonia tang of urine stung Pen’s nostrils. She still couldn’t see, her drenched hijab clung to the top half of her face like a demented octopus. She tried to raise her hands to move it but they were wrestled behind her. There was a zipping sound and something plastic cut into her wrists, binding them. She could hear boots scraping over flagstones.

A cold circle of metal was pressed to Pen’s neck, and she froze. There was a ratcheting click
exactly
like the sound a gun makes being cocked in the movies, only much closer and more horribly personal.

‘Faceless filth.’ The voice buzzed in her ear; weirdly electronic. ‘I could execute you right now, you know that? I want you to know that. I want you to
know
I could blow your half-reflected scumbag head right off your shoulders and no one would say a word.’

Pen’s jaw was rigid with terror, but she fought to work it loose: ‘I … I d-d-don—’

‘Shut
up
.’ The gun barrel pressed harder into her neck, and Pen bit her lip. ‘I don’t want to hear you deny it. We caught you red-handed. Even if you weren’t concealing your endowment it’d be obvious you’re one of ’em.’

Concealing what? One of who?
But the horrible cold pressure on her neck stopped her from saying it aloud. She could feel the man behind her bend over her.

‘I bloody
loved
that girl. My bloody
kids
loved that girl. You people are
sick
—’

‘Mennett,’ another voice interrupted, ‘are the hostiles secure?’

‘Yes, Captain,’ the man behind Pen said smartly.

‘Then do you think we could get on and arrest them sometime this week?’ The captain’s voice had that same machine-like buzz, but was dry, almost bored. ‘I’d like to be indoors before the weatherturn.’

Pen felt her captor straighten up behind her.

‘Lesser reflected,’ he addressed her in his chilly voice, ‘I’m arresting you on suspicion of membership of a terrorist organisation, conspiracy to commit anti-aesthetic acts and the kidnapping of a member of the Mirrorstocracy.’ He
paused. ‘And not just any member of the mirrorstocracy neither,’ he added, his voice thick with disgust. He prodded her with a boot like she was something vile. ‘But Lady Parva bloody Khan.’

Pen’s involuntary jerk of surprise drew shouts from those around her.

‘DON’T MOVE! DON’T FUCKING MOVE!’

Something slim but solid cracked across her cheek. The world went white for a split second and she slumped sideways. She tongued a loose tooth and the taste of blood filled her mouth. She was dazed, her head throbbed and she wanted to shake it clear.

‘Pleathe—’ It was only when she tried to speak that she realised she’d bitten her tongue when they hit her. ‘Pleathe, thake off my hithjab—’

‘Shut up,’ Mennett snarled.

‘The thcarf,’ Pen mumbled, ‘pleathe, jutht look at my fathe—’

‘Go ahead, Sergeant.’ The captain sounded amused. ‘I’m not suggesting we get into the habit of taking orders from terrorists, but it is, after all, the
law
—’

‘Move and I’ll blow your head off,’ Mennett said again, presumably in case Pen had forgotten in the last eight seconds. Fingers snared the clinging fabric and swept it clear of her face.

Pen couldn’t see much beyond a circle of heavy black boots, but she could feel the atmosphere change.

There was a long silence.

‘Mother Mirror merciful be,’ Mennett whispered.

Pen turned her head to look at him. He and the four other figures around him were wearing body armour. It looked much heavier than even riot police wore at home, almost like a mediaeval knight’s, only made of black Kevlar and carbon fibre rather than steel. The visors in their helmets were black holes of matte glass. Despite their anonymous outfits, Mennett’s shape spoke of horrified embarrassment, as if he’d made a racist joke and then turned around to find Mike Tyson standing behind him. His head was turned towards his gun barrel, as though he could blame the weapon for the way he’d smacked her around the jaw with it.

Slowly and deliberately, Pen sucked her teeth and spat on the ground. Mennett flinched as the bloody mucus splattered onto the stones.

‘Sergeant.’ The commanding officer’s voice was harpwire taut. ‘Do you think you could cut the cuffs off the countess? And help her up?’

‘Of course of course,’ Mennett gabbled. ‘I’m so sorry, Milady – I didn’t— I didn’t mean to – it’s just you’d covered your
face –
I couldn’t see your endowment. I thought you were an insurgent—’ He gently lifted Pen onto her feet. He busied himself at her wrists for a second and the bindings fell away.