The Glass Republic: The Skyscraper Throne: Book II (26 page)

‘Eyebrow.’

‘Seriously?’ Pen’s surprise almost made her laugh, but she managed to stifle it. ‘That’s all? Just an
eyebrow
and she was going to … that’d drive her to—?’ She looked up into the achingly empty distance the roof.

Espel rounded on Pen, her expression far more violent than when she’d had a knife in her hand. ‘Oh, you don’t think that’s
enough
?’ she hissed. ‘Hard as it may be for perfect little you with all your perfect little scars to understand, all that girl
had
was her half a face. She needed every bit of it. All right she was never going to be beautiful, but she could get by, she was
okay
.’

She shook her head slowly. ‘Not any more. She’s ugly now – that’s what they’ll say, those hyenas she used to call friends. She’s slipped below them, and they won’t be seen with her any more. She’ll be getting whispers and muttered comments and chickenshit anonymous messages online.’ Espel’s lip curled in disgust. ‘The system rolls into action.’

Pen blinked. ‘I – I don’t understand,’ she said.

Espel’s expression was almost pitying. ‘Why do you think they make it illegal to cover your face, Countess?’ she said. ‘They
want
us to look at each other like that, constantly judging each other, ranking each other. And we
all
do it too.’

She shrugged, angry and helpless. ‘Half-faces can’t afford reflections. We can’t see ourselves the way the mirrorstocracy do. We have to rely on other people’s eyes to tell us what we’re worth. And they’ve turned every pair of eyes in the
city into their weapon. Imagine what those eyes are telling that poor girl now.’ Espel jerked her head up at the roof. ‘That she’s
lesser.
’ She spat the words. ‘That she’s
partial.
Imagine how she’ll feel every time she sees a billboard of you and it reminds her of what she lacks.

‘Why do you think we hate the Lottery so much? Every stamped ticket is a surrender: it’s one of us holding up our hands and saying, “I’m not good enough. I’m ugly and worthless.”’ Her blue eyes were hard in the night. ‘Compared to people like you.’

People like you.
Pen recoiled hard from those three words, just like she always had. Strands of anger wound themselves around her throat like wires. She wanted to protest, to say,
Of course I know.
She burned to talk of scars and surgery and camouflage makeup.

Instead, she said, ‘In the Old City, where I came from, it’s the other way around. It’s symmetry that’s beautiful.’

‘I’ve heard,’ Espel said. ‘So?’

‘So: this thing – beauty? – it’s arbitrary. People just make it up.’

Espel snorted, unimpressed. ‘Just ’cause something’s made up, doesn’t mean it’s not real.’

‘I know,’ Pen said. ‘But just because it’s real now doesn’t mean it has to be forever.’

Espel held her gaze for a heartbeat, then her lip quirked. She unslung the bag from her shoulder and yanked down the zip. Stuffed inside were two black hoodies and a pair of black cotton bandanas.

With a little lurch Pen remembered the video Margaret Case had shown her, the two hooded figures and the screaming blank unface between them. Sweat beaded clammily between her headscarf and scalp.

‘Careful, Countess. Keep talking like that, people might mistake you for a revolutionary.

As they wound their way deeper into the reflected city, they left the roads behind. Canyons of jagged, rained-down brick rose around them, with walls dozens of feet high. They squeezed through narrow crevasses and wriggled on their bellies through tiny cracks in apparent dead ends. There was no glass or metal to reflect here; London had no answer to this place. It existed only here.

The walls around them pressed in tighter and rose higher, shutting out everything but a narrow sliver of sky, even the tallest landmarks. They arched overhead in almost organic curves, like fingers grasping fingers. The masonry was rough, but like the roadblocks, obviously worked with tools.

A shiver of realisation went down Pen’s neck.
It’s a labyrinth
, she thought.

In the heart of their slum neighbourhood, hidden in the mess of its sheer neglect, the Kennels’ steeplejacks had carved out a fastness.

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? They 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.’