The Glass Republic: The Skyscraper Throne: Book II (19 page)

Espel looked at her. ‘Impressive.’

‘Thank you.’

‘No, I mean impressively tactless use of “only” there, Countess.’

‘Oh.’ Pen looked down. ‘Sorry.’

Espel snorted. ‘I’ve heard worse. In answer to your question, “Where” is easy – the weather takes care of the “Where”.’

‘The weather?’ Pen was nonplussed.

‘Sure – you didn’t think brick and slate were the only cloud-cargo, did you?’ She wrinkled her forehead. ‘
Everything
the river reflects in the Old City gets caught up in the cycle.’ She spoke with enthusiasm, and also slight impatience, as though this was a kindergarten digest of her pet topic.

‘Architecture mostly, sure, ’cause that’s what the river mostly reflects anyway, but also boat hulls, motorbikes, post-boxes, stray cats, starlight – always spectacular, when that rains.’ She smiled at the memory. ‘And faces. The facerains freak you out the first time you see them – the individual drops are too small and quick to notice, but then whole expressions come together in the puddles, or try and talk to you from the gutters before they run down the drain.’ She shivered.

‘There are more than enough little broken-up features in the water, in the river or in puddles and sinks around the city, to complete any aesthetic. The tricky part is
how –
how to find the right ones, the ones that match. And that is where
that
little miracle comes in.’

Pen followed Espel’s pointing finger. Suspended in a tiny steel cage in the very centre of the apparatus, right over the padded leather headrest of the bench, was what looked like an ordinary glass marble, a dark swirl like a storm cloud occluding its heart.

‘Goutierre’s Eye.’ Espel breathed the word reverently. ‘Our one and only mirrormap. Folded into that ball are facets in sympathy with every reflective surface in the city, from the river itself to a bathroom window. It sees what they see, reflects what they reflect: a perfect map of London-Under-Glass, in miniature, in real time.’

Pen stepped a little hesitantly up to the marble, and when no one yelled at her to stop, stepped again. She peered into the marble’s depths. Seen close-to, the tiny storm-cloud heart was a dense churn and rush of tiny images, each too small and fleeting to properly make out. It was hypnotic.

‘Without that little wonder,’ Espel was saying, ‘they could have everyone in the city panning the river and still they wouldn’t find a match. The device just scans the winner, then scans the eye. It’s done in seconds.’

The steeplejill’s enthusiasm for the machine was infectious, like when Beth spoke about the city.

Pen felt her own lips twitching up at the corners with borrowed awe. ‘You’re properly into this, aren’t you?’ she said.

Espel’s grin grew wider. She performed a shrug-cum-head-bob of pleased acknowledgment. ‘All precipitecture is basically mirror meteorology, and this is by
miles
the coolest thing that’s ever been done with our science. Best of all, it’s one of a kind. Goutierre disappeared without leaving any notes on how it was made. Watt-Stevens tried to reverse-engineer it back in the thirties and literally went mad – he threw himself off the top of St Paul’s—’ She whispered the macabre legend of Goutierre’s Eye with ghoulish relish.

‘THERE SHE IS!’

The words boomed off the metal rafters and rattled the windowpanes. Startled, Pen and Espel turned as one.

The figure in the doorway was built like a praying mantis. He wore pointed shoes of identical shape, but while one was
black patent leather, the other was bright red suede. His suit looked like he’d donned it while it was still half made: the left-hand side was an immaculate grey pinstripe, but the right, despite fitting his narrow form perfectly, was cobbled together from scraps of different materials – velvet, leather, even something that looked like tinfoil. His kipper tie glinted at his throat like it was actual fish-scales.

Pen looked at the face above that tie, and started.

‘Told you he stuck out in a crowd,’ Espel whispered.

Beau Driyard, superstar photographer to the mirrorstocracy, was a dexter – he must have been, because on the right side of his silver seam were the features of an ordinary, middle-aged white man. Unlike Espel though, his prosthetic face didn’t mirror his real one at all: it was a patchwork, a stitched-together-quilt of light and dark skin. The lips – which Pen was quite certain had started out life on a woman, even before they’d been coated in glossy red lipstick – parted as he beamed at Pen from across the room.

‘
There’s
my muse,’ he boomed, and crossed the floor in a series of graceful, stick-insecty paces, took Pen’s hand, bowed and kissed it.

‘My Lady,’ he said, ‘an honour, as always.’

‘Mr Driyard,’ Pen managed. ‘Likewise. I—’ She floundered.

‘I know, I know: I’ve had a make-over. You must barely recognise me!’ He grinned like a delighted child and turned his head from side to side for her to see.

‘Do you like it? It’s not a patch on yours,
obviously
. Patch, get it?’ He chuckled. ‘But those of us without your natural
advantages must make do. Cost me a bloody fortune, especially the ear – apparently they’re hard to source at the moment. Still, people are good enough to tell me it was worth it.’

‘It’s … breathtaking,’ Pen managed to say. She felt dizzy, queasy. She was sure they’d be able to hear it in her voice, but Beau Driyard seemed not to notice.

‘Too kind, too kind, far too kind.’ Where the skin was light enough to show it, a blush crept into his cheeks at the compliment. ‘Now, we really must get going, so much to do, what with your abduction and return. The drama! I promise you, ma’am, the art you and I will make together today will be extraordinary. The people of London-Under-Glass will love you as never before when they see it.’

He grew briefly sombre and took her face in both his gloved hands. ‘I was so relieved to hear you had been returned to us,’ he said. ‘I had feared that this face, one of our greatest treasures, had been vandalised.’

Pen did her best not to squirm under his gaze. ‘Um … thanks?’ she said. ‘The rest of me is fine too, by the way.’

‘Fine? Oh no. No no, that won’t do at all. Brave is good. Brave works, but
nonchalant
is too far. I’m sure it must have been dreadfully traumatic: ugly symmetrical eyes peering out from hidden faces, hands grasping you in the night—’ He shuddered theatrically. ‘
Terrible.
’

‘To be honest, I don’t remember too much—’

‘Amnesia,’ Driyard mused, as though weighing the merits of the idea. ‘A trauma so dreadful that it has ripped the memory from your mind. Your very consciousness voids
itself and curls inwards like terrified a child. Hmmm. It has potential. It’s abstract, but perhaps I can structure a shot that hints at it.’ He brightened. ‘A challenge! Very well, we shall attempt it.’

He shook her hand warmly. ‘You see why I love working with you. Right, now, where’s Juliet with that confounded dress? Ah!’

He clapped his mismatched gloved hands and a young half-faced woman appeared at Pen’s elbow. She had hair done up in a bun with pins sticking out of it. She proffered a bulging garment-bag with a curtsey.

Pen gave the girl the smile she was starting to think of as the ‘Parva Khan special number two’ and pulled down the zip on the bag—

—and froze as something familiar glinted at her from the darkness inside. The dress was beautifully, intricately and asymmetrically woven from polished strands of barbed wire.

Pen’s heart lurched. Instinctively she jerked her hands away, as if away from handcuffs.

Someone had found her out; this dress was their sick way of telling her they knew that she wasn’t who she said she was.

Senator Case’s words echoed through her mind:
I’ve seen the dress they want to put you in. Stunning.

Was it
Case?
Did Case know? Had she known all this time?

She looked around, certain she’d see black-armoured figures coming for her with machine-guns ready, but there was only Driyard and his assistant looking at her with expectant expressions.

‘Well? What do you think?’ The patchwork photographer seemed almost breathless. ‘It’s Sterling and Goddard,
naturellement
. We’d never use anyone else for you, but they’ve excelled themselves this time. I don’t know why we never thought of it before! After all, the story you told, when you were first asked how you received your scars – well, it is almost as famous as the scars themselves …’

‘It is?’

He knuckled her shoulder fondly. ‘Oh, you know it is. “The barbed wire?” – inspired mythmaking, ma’am. Obviously no one believes it
literally
, but it’s a lesson, and a fine one: the pain we must endure to be beautiful. It’s the best kind of fable, frankly. You’re a genuine inspiration!’

Under his mismatched, expectant gaze, Pen reached into the garment bag and lifted the wire dress out. Her fingers felt lumpen, clumsy. She flinched at the touch of the metal.

‘Don’t worry,’ Driyard reassured her, ‘all the barbs are fake.’ He reached over and pushed one. It had the same colour and shine as the metal around it, but it bent under his fingertip with the pliancy of soft plastic.

‘We wouldn’t want any accidents. We mustn’t tamper with a classic, must we?’

Pen held the dress between finger and thumb, as if it were poisoned. Sweat pricked her skin, and she hoped those around her would put that down to the heat of the lights. She concentrated on the last time she’d seen the Wire Mistress, slashed into ragged lengths in the dust below St Pauls, her sentience fleeing the metal coils, defeated, broken.

She felt a flicker of movement in the wire between her fingers and stifled a yelp.

Driyard and his assistant were looking at her strangely.

The thing’s dead
, she told herself firmly.
Get a grip, Pen.
‘I think,’ she managed to stammer, ‘I think I’m going to need a hand with this.’

Driyard wrinkled his nose. He gestured impatiently at Espel, who was back gawping at the Goutierre Device.

‘Half-girl!’ He snapped his fingers. ‘You’re supposed to be the countess’ lady-in-waiting, yes? Then damn well wait on!’

Pen recoiled at his tone; she wanted to defend Espel, but she was too shaken by the wire dress and she couldn’t summon the words. And then the moment had passed and she was shuffling down the short corridor off the hall Driyard’s assistant had indicated. She pushed through a door with a cardboard sign on it marked
Dressing Room.
Espel followed.

Pen turned her back and began to struggle out of her clothes. As she reached for her bra clasp her hands grazed the barb-scars on her back and she hesitated. She could feel Espel’s eyes on her, two fiery points on her skin that seemed to spread until every inch of her was burning with the steeplejill’s attention.

Pen was abruptly and vividly aware that she’d never taken her clothes off in front of anyone before. She swallowed hard.

Really, Pen?
Really?
After everything that’s happened in the last four months you’re going to get hung up on
this?

Still blushing furiously, she snapped the clasp open, dropped the bra and held her arms up over her head.

And waited.

And waited. ‘Espel!’

‘What? Oh – yes … sorry!’

‘Were you staring?’

‘No! I was … I was … just …’ But Espel didn’t finish the sentence and Pen could almost feel the heat of the girl’s blush behind her. Pen felt she ought to have been mortified, but instead she felt a completely inappropriate smile tug at her lips. She bit her lip to hide it and coughed.

‘Getting kinda cold here, Es,’ she said.

There was a rustling like snake scales as Espel gathered up the dress and then lowered it slowly over Pen’s upraised fingers. The metal felt almost oily. Pen gritted her teeth as it slithered past her headscarf and over her skin.

Given that it was made mostly of steel, the dress was surprisingly light. It left Pen’s arms bare and she was vividly aware of the cool air on her scar-rippled shoulders. Every nerve was shouting at her to cover up, to find a shawl from somewhere.

It’s all part of the disguise
, she told herself, willing herself to crest the panic, willing the calm to come.

‘How do I look?’ she said eventually.

‘Um … I think the word people use is
wow
, Countess.’

Pen’s blush deepened. She glanced back over her shoulder and Espel gave her a reassuring, conspiratorial smile.

She swallowed hard.

When she emerged back into the hall everyone fell silent.

Pen looked from face to face, mostly symmetrical, some mirrorstocratic and they all stared openly back. A couple of jaws were actually loose. Pen felt the hot rush of their attention go through her.

Driyard clapped his hands together. Delight was written across his face. ‘Let’s get cracking.’

‘I’m afraid that’ll have to wait.’ The voice was familiar. When Pen looked around, the hall’s sentries were standing to attention. The symmetrically faced, shaven-headed figure of Captain Corbin stood between them, black helmet in his hands.

Driyard was apoplectic. ‘Captain, this interruption is quite unforgivable. Senator Case herself arranged this—’

He tailed off as Corbin raised a gauntlet. ‘It’s on the senator’s business that I’m here. And on yours, Countess.’ He inclined his head towards Pen. ‘You’re needed in court.’

‘In
court
?’ Pen spluttered. ‘In court? What for?’

‘For quite a show, in all probability.’ His voice was tense, but resigned: the particular tone that was reserved for experts the world over who’ve had their advice ignored by their superiors. ‘The Senate, in their wisdom, have chosen to broadcast the trial.’

There was a hollow, cold space in Pen’s chest as she asked, ‘Whose trial?’

‘Why, your kidnapper’s, Countess,’ Corbin replied. ‘We have a confession.’

Rain – ordinary, liquid rain. Drops slapped against the car window like a million clamouring hands. The Chevalier outriders bent their heads against it, while the coverings of their strange mummified horses spotted and darkened. Rearing into the weather, the surreal towers of London-Under-Glass were hazed out.