The Glass Republic: The Skyscraper Throne: Book II (22 page)

‘You look like you could use a drink, Countess.’

Pen waved the suggestion away; she was in no mood to fake alcoholism right now.

‘In that case do you mind if I do? I mean …
Mother mirror
,’ Espel swore. ‘An
excitation
?’ Her voice was blank with disbelief. ‘
Live on air?
They’ve never …’

The bottle-neck clinked against the glass in Espel’s unsteady hand. She slurped at the drink and the ice cubes rattled together.

‘Anyone ever tell you, you drink too much?’ Pen asked her.

Espel lowered the glass. ‘A couple of people,’ she said warily. ‘From time to time. Why, is My Lady about to join them?’

Pen pinched the bridge of her nose, managed a smile. ‘Your Lady isn’t,’ she said. ‘But your friend? She might be.’

Espel swallowed. ‘Are we friends, ma’am?’

‘Must be,’ Pen said. ‘I wouldn’t let anyone else do my makeup.’

Espel barked, a short flat laugh, but Pen hadn’t been joking. She leaned back into the plush white upholstery and closed her eyes. She needed to think, to work out what to do, but Harry Blight’s wide, disjointed eyes kept flashing in her mind, shattering any attempt at coherent thought. There was nothing, she told herself, that she could have done to save him.

Nothing, aside from confessing who she was on the spot.

There was a thud that must have been Espel putting the heavy-based glass down on the table, then a sliding sound, something hard moving over wood. Pen didn’t open her eyes as she listened to the soft shush of feet across the carpet as the lady-in-waiting came towards her.

‘Well then,’ Espel’s voice came softly from the space above her head, ‘friend to friend, I’ve got to say, Countess, you look terrible.’

‘Really?’

‘Well no, not really: you look stunning – but by your standards, stunning is pretty damn rough.’

‘Like you said,’ Pen murmured, ‘it’s been a pretty damn rough day.’

‘Why don’t we see what we can do about that?’

Pen felt fingertips slip down the back of her head. She tensed slightly, and then relaxed again as Espel’s thumb began to circle the knot of muscle at the base of her neck.

‘Espel?’

‘Yes, Countess?’

‘Harry Blight’s id – why did it attack him?’

She heard the parched sound of Espel swallowing before she answered, ‘Because it hated him, Countess. It was his inverse, his opposite. His
Intimate Devil
—’ She snorted the last as though it was an ancient and unfunny joke. ‘Everything about him was its enemy. It was lying in wait, squatting in the dreams it shared with him, envious of his control of his body. When they woke it, it took its chance. He fought it, but … it was too strong.’

‘And they
sew
these things onto you? Into your mind, your body?’ Pen said incredulously. She squeezed her fist until the nails bit her palm. A flesh-memory of barbs. ‘How do you stand it?’

‘It’s the price we pay …’ Espel tailed off.

‘To be beautiful?’ Pen asked, remembering Driyard’s words.

‘No.’ One of Espel’s hands moved away and Pen imagined her touching her symmetrical face. ‘Just to get by.’ Her voice hardened slightly, and her fingers tightened on the back of Pen’s neck.

Pen opened her eyes and looked up.

Espel was standing behind her, her spare hand holding her steeplejill’s knife high. The blade wavered for a tiny fraction of an instant, then flashed down.

Pen didn’t think, didn’t speak, didn’t waste time trying to block the blow. Her arm shot upwards, as fast as if barbed wire propelled it –
shortest distance to target
– her palm crunched into Espel’s jaw.

The blonde girl reeled backwards. She knocked a sideboard, and pottery splinters tinkled like shrill wind-chimes as a vase shattered on the ground. Pen tried to rise, but Espel lurched over the back of the sofa and pinned her down. The blade flickered towards Pen’s face. Her hands came up instinctively, her palms finding her attacker’s wrist. She gripped, tried to twist, but Espel was too strong.

The knife pricked Pen’s throat. Instinctively, she swallowed her scream.

Something black nestled against the white upholstery: the panic button Edward had given her was stuck between two of the cushions next to her knee. Pen wanted to reach for it, but both her hands were busy keeping the knife out of her neck. Gritting her teeth, she bent her legs up, twisted her hips towards the sofa back and dropped her left kneecap down hard on the black button.

Espel was oblivious. All her attention was focused on Pen’s throat, on the flickering of the pulse she was striving to extinguish. She didn’t even flinch when booted feet hammered up the corridor.

‘Countess?’ There was the thud of a meaty fist on the door. Edward called again, ‘Countess Khan?’

Pen’s teeth ground horribly. She felt the muscles in her arms vibrating like guitar strings, felt her eyes popping wide. Espel’s symmetrical face reddened above her.

‘Countess!’ The doorknob was rattling now. Espel had locked it and Edward’s pounding shook the door in its frame.

Pen’s arms burned up and down their length. She imagined how easy it would be to let them slip, to let the blade in.

She looked at Espel. The blonde girl’s face was screwed up in concentration, and something that looked like misery, but the knife didn’t waver.

I should be dead by now
, Pen thought. The steeplejill was strong, her muscles climb-and-scramble-hardened. And Espel had gravity on her side, all she had to do was lean in and the job would have been done. But she hadn’t.

Why am I not dead?

Another, louder thud, followed by a shudder, and the sound of splintering wood.

They were both about to die: Pen at the point of the knife and Espel a few seconds later when the door buckled and the bodyguard raged in. The steeplejill must know she had bare fractions of a second to deliver the coup de grâce before they took her, and yet still the killing blow didn’t come. Her symmetrical face was crumpled, red and tearful.

Before they take her
, Pen thought. In her mind’s eye she saw Harry Blight straining against himself, against the murderous parasite they’d awakened in his body.

Thud
.
Splinter
.
Crack
. The shriek of a door turning on abused hinges. Espel jumped in reflex, the pressure on Pen’s throat slackened fractionally and in that frantic heartbeat Pen made a choice.

She dragged Espel’s knife-hand sideways and down behind the couch, grabbed the hem of her tunic and pulled. There was a flash of tightly screwed-up eyes – Espel wincing in anticipation of a head-butt – then Pen pressed her lips to hers.

She held her there: steeplejill, lady-in-waiting, friend, assassin. Her pulse thundered through her. The floorboards creaked. She could feel Edward watching them from the doorway.

‘Oh – um – I see. I’ll—’

Pen could almost hear the blood pouring into the bodyguard’s cheeks as he blushed, but she didn’t look, clinging instead to the desperate, farcical kiss. Seven more endless,
echoing heartbeats passed, and she pointedly didn’t look, ignoring Edward’s looming presence. She considered making some enamoured noise, then decided against it. Everything was playing out in her ears: the floorboards creaking, more squealing hinges as the door closed, then sheepish splinter-on-splinter scuffles as the bodyguard did his best to make the ruined door latch behind him. Then at last, like oxygen to a drowning girl, came the fading sound of retreating footsteps.

Pen eased her lips back from her would-be killer’s, but she didn’t release her grip on Espel’s wrist. After a moment, the knife thudded onto the floor.

Hesitantly, the blonde girl straightened from the back of the sofa. Her yellow fringe clung to her forehead in sweat-sticky tendrils. She blinked at Pen. She was trembling, her eyes so wide Pen almost felt she could read her thoughts through them.

I’m alive. Mother-fragging-Mirror, I’m alive – what the hell do I do now?

Pen stood, carefully picked up the knife and sat down again. Part of her was braced for another attack, but the aggression seemed to have leaked out of Espel. She slumped down next to Pen on the sofa, elbows on her knees. Head bowed like a condemned woman who’s been waiting too long for the axe to fall.

‘Well.’ Pen’s mouth was dry. ‘That was …’

‘Awkward?’ Espel volunteered.

‘A little understated, but sure. We’ll go with that.’

They sat in silence for long moments. Then—

‘Why?’

They’d both said the word at once.

Pen gave Espel a long look. ‘I think,’ she said, turning the knife over her in her hands, ‘given the circumstances, I’ll let you explain yourself first.’

The blonde girl looked at her, and then searched the ceiling as though looking for a place to begin. ‘Well … see, I’m a fan—’

Abruptly, Pen began to laugh, bubbling out of her chest like hiccoughs.

‘A fan?’ she said at last. ‘Isn’t there usually some kind of ramp-up to this? You know, flowers, chocolates, threatening letters in the evening and dead pets at breakfast,
before
we get to the dagger-in-the-ribs bit?’

‘No— I mean, I didn’t come here to kill you,’ Espel insisted. ‘Not at first. I came because I …’ She threw up her hands as if she knew how absurd it sounded. ‘I
believed
in you: the first-ever mirrorborn face of the Lottery. You didn’t grow up here. You weren’t indoctrinated. I thought that if I could get to know you, if I could show you how things really were here, you’d side with us.’

‘Us?’ Pen broke in. ‘Who’s
us?
’

Espel’s blue eyes appraised her coolly. ‘Who do you think?’

Pen studied the steeplejill. A memory sparked – Espel looking up at her, drunkenness falling away, intense pride lighting her features as she’d said, ‘
Like you said, Countess, it’s
my
face.
’

‘You’re Faceless, aren’t you?’ Pen breathed the name like she was afraid for it to touch her lips.

Espel tongued the inside of her mouth where Pen had hit her. ‘You say that like we’re a bad thing.’

‘You attack immigrants in train stations; I think “bad” is pretty mild.’

‘Oh get a grip. We do
not.
’ Pen was startled by the contempt in Espel’s voice. ‘What in Mago’s name would be the point?’

‘Case said you strip the faces off them and sell them on the black market.’

‘Case,’ Espel countered, ‘is a lying scumbag who has an election in six months and needs someone to blame. What’s your excuse?’

‘My excuse for what?’

‘For not thinking it through,’ Espel said. ‘I mean, come on, the immigrants caught in those attacks were all half-faces. Offhand, I can’t think of a better way to alienate our own fragging constituency – besides, stealing from the city’s poorest at the
only
time in their lives they’re under heavy guard? Oh yeah, that’s every successful terrorist leader’s idea of sustainable fucking financing.’ She sneered in disgust.

‘If anyone in the mirrorstocracy paid any damn attention to what’s happening on the street, they’d know that half-faced immigrants have been going missing for years. And we’ve got sod-all to do with it.’

Some of the heat left her voice. ‘The Faceless aren’t ghouls
who come in the night to rip people’s faces off, Countess. Convincing you of that’s what I was sent here for.’

‘Wait—’ Pen hesitated, appalled as her brain finally caught up with her ears. ‘—
sent?
You weren’t sent – I rescued you … the slatestorm … the rope—’

Espel at least had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘Like I said, I believed in you,’ she said. ‘That pretty much had to include believing you wouldn’t let me be cut into some very symmetrical confetti by falling tile.’ She shook her head at her luck. ‘I just hoped for a connection, the start of a conversation. I had no idea you’d put me on staff.’

The hot-coals sensation of lost control burned in the pit of Pen’s stomach. She felt humiliatingly stupid. She eyed Espel, and lifted the knife. ‘So if your plan was to win me over,’ she said coldly, ‘how exactly does the “gut me like a fish in the market” bit fit into
that
strategy?’

‘That was Harry Blight,’ Espel said.

‘Was it?’ Pen looked sarcastically around the apartment, as though there was somewhere the dead man could be hiding. ‘That’s funny, it looked a lot like you.’

‘I
mean
,’ Espel said with exaggerated patience, ‘Blight was what changed my mission. After that—’ She hesitated, her voice still filled with disbelief. ‘After that little
demonstration,
Garrison said we had to strike back, and I was the girl on the spot. You’re the Face of the Lottery. It wasn’t personal.’

Pen snorted. ‘Ever heard the saying. “The personal is political”?’

‘No. Why, you believe that?’

She tested the edge of the blade on her thumb. It was sharp, almost insinuating itself into her skin with the slightest pressure. She remembered it hovering over her throat.

‘When the political is a knife severing
my
windpipe, I really do.’

Espel eyed the blade, but when she spoke again she sounded neither scared nor especially apologetic. ‘London-Under-Glass doesn’t even have a death penalty, did you know that?’ she said. ‘Legally, they can’t kill you. They have to make you kill yourself, and only half-faces have ids to wake. What they did to Harry Blight,’ she said bitterly, ‘is a punishment they keep just for the poor.’

‘That was the first time they’ve
ever
broadcast an Excitation. Before that they were always done behind closed doors, but the fact that the supposed crime was against
you
–that made them brazen. That minute of film was their way of telling every single half-faced man and woman in London-Under-Glass, “You don’t
matter.
You don’t
count.
” That’s how their power works, by convincing people they can’t do anything about it.’

Pen glared at her, ‘And killing me helps how, exactly?’

‘Killing you would have proven them wrong,’ Espel replied simply. ‘Symbols matter, Countess; you’re proof of it. There are good reasons you ought to be dead.’