The Glass Republic: The Skyscraper Throne: Book II (32 page)

‘I believe I’m the only person ever to make that particular journey – at least I was, until a few days ago. On it, I met
her
… or perhaps’ – a rip in the papier-mâché curled like a smile – ‘perhaps I mean
you.
’ The eggshell gaze took in her cable-hair and her architectural skin.

Beth shook her head firmly. Gutterglass didn’t contradict her, but the papier-mâché smile remained.

It curled tighter when Beth popped the cap off her marker and wrote on the mirror.

‘What was … a scientist doing under … the thumb of a god?’ Glas read the message good-humouredly, head tilted to one side. ‘Oh, Miss Bradley, what do you think I was doing? Who better than a scientist – an explorer? I’d spent my entire life looking for the thing just beyond the edge of my understanding, and I found it in her: an infinity of it. I fell in love.’
Glas’ voice was as wistful as the makeshift materials would allow. ‘How could I not? But’ – split-pen fingers tossed the phial and caught it – ‘you didn’t come here for a personal history, did you?’

Beth smeared away the writing from the mirror-surface. She curled her other hand tightly around Pen’s picture.
Please have an answer
, she thought.
Any answer.

Steeling herself, she turned the mirror around.

‘What do I want for it?’ Glas sounded genuinely surprised. Then the hidden lungs wheezed out a laugh. ‘Oh, My Lady, you’ve been spending too much time with Johnny Naphtha. Is that what’s got you so wound up? I’m genuinely curious. What did you think I’d ask you to give me? Or did you stalk up here with Filius’ railing in your fist because you thought you’d have to
fight
me for it?’

The binbags stretched like black wings as Glas spread arms made of unwound coat-hangers. The trash-spirit accreted towards Beth on a tide of insects, and Beth stiffened in shock as Gutterglass embraced her.

‘You poor, naïve goddess,’ the reedy voice wheezed into her ear. ‘What could I possibly ask you for? You’re already doing everything I could ever want you to do –
becoming
everything I could ever want you to be.’ Glas stood back and looked at Beth fondly.

‘You look so much like her. So much.’ An old sponge tongue wetted the lips to keep them from crumbling as they flexed. ‘And even if there were something’ – another shrug, this time sadder – ‘one does not
bargain
with one’s gods.’

Glas offered Beth the phial with the shy smile of a child giving its mum something it’d made for her. ‘You can take it. All you need to do is
command
it of me.’

Beth stiffened at the word. There was something triumphant in the eggshell eyes. Glas had seen her flinch, and knew she understood.

‘After all, I’ve made much bigger sacrifices for my religion.’

‘Can’t sleep, Countess?’

The elder of the two guards in the Hall of Beauty sounded concerned, but there was no suspicion in his voice. He clearly had no idea Pen had been out of the palace tonight.

‘Nerves,’ she said, as if admitting a secret.

The man’s seam-split face creased indulgently. He looked in his sixties, and his grey stubble peppered his chin perfectly symmetrically.

Pen smiled back at him. She was more comfortable playing up to his paternal smile than to his younger colleague’s gawking admiration. ‘It’s my first year.’

‘You’ll be golden,’ he assured her. ‘How could you not be? You’ve got everything you need right there.’

Pen ducked her head. ‘I just hope I don’t forget what I’m supposed to say, or swear in front of the camera, you know? All those
people …
I was wondering—’ She looked up at him from under the edge of her hijab, shy but hopeful. ‘Could I get in, to practise? Just to get the feel of the place – I won’t touch anything.’ She jerked her head over her shoulder at
Espel with what she hoped was the right amount of imperiousness. ‘That way my lady-in-waiting could go over my speech with me.’

The guard hesitated, but then he winked at her. There it was again, that trust; that sense that a face so familiar couldn’t be anything but a friend. ‘Can’t see any problem with that,’ he said. ‘Long as you don’t tell anyone.’

*

In the dark, the Goutierre Device was a sleeping monster. Its panes of glass glinted in the moonlight that shone through the chamber’s vast windows, hanging in the air like fangs, ready to fall on any unsuspecting sacrifice. Tiered seating had been erected around the machine like benches in a Roman circus, from which the privileged few would be invited to watch the beast feed.

The second the doors closed behind them, Pen saw Espel’s posture shift; the slight deferential hunch she’d maintained slid off her like water. Pen wondered whether her own shape had changed too. Had her deception inhabited her muscles as well as her voice? Had she been standing more and more like her mirror-sister?

Espel crossed to the control panel, her feet silent on the thick carpet, raised her voice and said, ‘That’s good, Countess, almost there, but it’s “My Lords, Ladies and
Gentlemen
”. You mustn’t forget the gentlemen, else they get terribly upset.’

While she was speaking, she snapped her fingers at Pen and pointed to the leather-clad bench at the centre of the device.

‘Ah … “My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen”,’ Pen said, trying to remember the speech she’d watched Parva practising on film. She matched Espel’s volume, eyeing the narrow crack between the double doors as she hopped up onto the bench. Goutierre’s Eye hung over her, the tiny sun around which the manifold glass lenses turned in their orbits.

‘Welcome to the Draw for the – uh … two hundred and fifth?’

‘Two hundred and fourth,’ Espel corrected her

‘Two hundred and
fourth
Looking-Glass Lottery. We are joined by … Uh, no, sorry. Can we go from the top?’

‘That’s okay, Countess,’ Espel announced encouragingly. ‘In your own time.’

Pen dropped her voice. ‘Well?’ she murmured. ‘Can you work it?’

‘I think so.’ Espel’s answering whisper fizzed with excitement. From where she was lying, all Pen could see was a crowd of backlit silhouettes caught in the overlapping panes of glass.

‘The interface for calibrating the Eye is more complicated than it looks on TV,’ Espel whispered. ‘I’m going to need a little time.’ She raised her voice again. ‘Oh, Countess, really now, there’s no need to cry.’

‘
Cry?
’ Pen hissed dangerously.

The manifold silhouettes shrugged. Pen ground her teeth together and then twisted her throat to choke out the closest sound she could make to a sob.

‘Hey,
hey
,’ Espel said soothingly. ‘It’s okay. Remember,
everyone’s rooting for you. Let’s just pause for a second. Take as much time as you need, ma’am’

‘You’re having way too much fun with this,’ Pen muttered.

The half-dozen shadow-Espels stuck out half a dozen shadow-tongues. There was a faint tapping of computer keys as the steeplejill programmed the device.

‘So tell me,’ Espel whispered, ‘what did Old Lady Case want you to give me a raise for?’ She sounded almost casual, like she was just making conversation, but there was a very slight edge in her voice.

‘Gratitude, mostly,’ Pen replied. ‘For keeping me out of the weather.’

Espel hissed a suppressed laugh. ‘And what else? I can’t see gratitude moving Maggie Case to much.’

You’re wrong
, Pen thought. Being grateful for who and where she was moved the old mirrorstocrat to the most terrible things. Pen was very,
very
afraid of Senator Case’s gratitude.

‘What else?’ Espel repeated.

‘She’d heard the rumours about you and me being … um … together,’ Pen said. ‘She wanted you to buy some more features – “make it respectable”. Her words,’ Pen added hurriedly, ‘not mine.’

The tapping of the keys faltered for a heartbeat, then resumed. ‘Huh,’ Espel said softly, and then a few keystrokes later, ‘too ugly to date the Face of the Looking-Glass Lottery, hey?’ She snorted in a way that was almost a laugh.
Almost
. ‘Well, I suppose that’s not news to anyone.’

‘You’re not ugly.’

‘Oh no, I
am
ugly, Countess,’ Espel corrected her flatly. ‘If ugly means anything, it means me. Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but all the beholders are agreed, and I ain’t got it. And, you know what?’ she said. Her whisper took on a hard, angry edge. ‘That’s fine. I don’t
want
them to think I’m beautiful. What I want is for it not to matter that they don’t.’

There was silence, filled only with keystrokes.

Pen looked up. Above her, the ultimate beholding eye glittered in its shaft of moonlight. Her throat was tight.
Say it
, she scolded herself.

‘I get that,’ she whispered. ‘I really do. But … just a point of fact, one small detail … and this can matter as much or as little as you like—’ She paused to steady her voice, though it wasn’t insincerity that made it tremble. ‘As far as beauty goes, there’s at least one beholder who thinks you have very much got it.’

The silhouettes in the glass went very still. Pen could hear her heart slamming in her ears.

At last Espel spoke. ‘Don’t move. It’s ready.’

A switch was flicked, and over her head Goutierre’s Eye began to rotate in its cage. A beam of white light tracked slowly from Pen’s right ear to her nose and back again. The device was scanning her,
seeing
her. It was a strange relief, to be seen like that, unfiltered by envy or pity or revilement or lust or expectation, just to be
seen
as she was.

The Eye spun faster, silent and frictionless in its cage. The
stormy ribbon at its heart shifted, spreading as though by centripetal force. Its flurry of images scattered across the inside of the little orb, millions of fragmented faces pressed up against the glass like eager children. Even though she knew it was impossible – they were all far too small – Pen could swear she could make out their features, their piecemeal eyes and noses and smiles, crow’s-feet and laughter lines. Her heart began to trip. She refused to blink, desperately scanning for that one familiar face. A droplet of sweat ran past her reconstructed ear.

The Eye spun faster still, galaxies of reflected faces whirled and rushed inside it. Pen felt her own eye stretch, striving hopelessly to see them all. Her eyeball dried out, started to itch, but she
would not
blink. She saw reflections caught in taps and windows and puddles and raindrops and hubcaps and corneas and spoons and the impossible churn of the Thames and—

—it was infinitesimally brief: a flicker of recognition, felt rather than actually seen: an after-image of a girl in a green hijab was burned onto her eye.

The hum of the machine died. Above her, the glass orb slowed to a halt.

‘Did we get it?’ Pen demanded. ‘Did it work?’

Espel was hoarse. ‘We got it.’

Pen scrambled from the bench. There were three screens set up above the control podium where Espel stood. Two of them showed scrolling white text against a black background, but the third held an image of a face. It was distorted,
rippling as though cast onto water, only the left side had been captured – and that was grainy where it had been blown up to fit the screen.

Even so, the face was unmistakable – and unmistakably alive. It even looked like Parva was smiling.

‘Hello, Sis,’ Pen whispered. Her throat was tight and full. It was only when she tasted salt on her rebuilt lip that she realised she was crying. ‘Where are you?’

Espel answered her. ‘The Kennels.’ The steeplejill sounded rueful. ‘We were less than four streets from there a few hours ago.’

‘Can you find the place?’

Espel nodded. Pen let out a slow breath and smudged away the tears with the heel of her hand. ‘Good.’ She slipped back between the glass panes and took hold of the cage where Goutierre’s Eye was still swinging. She slipped the catch and the glass sphere tumbled into her hand. She slid the replica marble in its place.

When she turned, Espel’s gaze was quizzical.

‘I made a promise,’ she whispered with a smile. ‘A member of the Faceless did find my sister for me, after all.’

She looked at the precious, unique thing nestling in her palm, then slipped it into her pocket. ‘Come on. What are we waiting for?’

Espel paused. She looked frightened and Pen wondered what could possibly scare this lean, hungry girl who built towers from falling masonry and went suicidally undercover in the palaces of her enemies. Then she remembered the
way Espel had talked about the Masonry Men; that shudder when she’d called them
those things
. Tears shivered in her eyes, waiting to fall.

‘Listen,’ Pen said, ‘you don’t have to come. I know what happened last night was—’

‘Shut up,’ Espel whispered. She laid her fingers gently against Pen’s mouth. ‘Shut up with that right now,
Milady.
Of course I’m fragging coming. You won’t even get out of the building without me. We’ll go and hand-deliver our arses to a bunch of concrete-skinned kidnappers who can walk through walls and snap our necks like stale biscuits and that’s …
fine
.
That’s
not what’s bothering me …

‘It’s just, before we do—’ She stepped forward. Pen felt a jolt of anticipation below her breastbone. Espel was close enough for Pen to breathe in her exhalation. ‘I need to know if you really
meant
…’ She faltered.

Pen took a chance.

She put her hand on top of Espel’s and slid it from her lips down onto her neck. The fingers fluttered as her pulse hammered under them. Pen put her hand over Espel’s temple and wound her fingers into her hair. She hesitated for a fraction of a second and kissed her.

Espel inhaled sharply. There was a terrifying, paralysed moment, when Pen was certain that Espel was going to push herself away, and then that breath came out again and the steeplejill’s lips gave way under hers. They held the kiss for long moments, Pen’s heart loud in her ears, and then Espel stepped into her.

Her body was close and warm. Her fingers stroked along Pen’s collarbone, then rose and gently traced her scars, leaving sparks in their wake. Pen came up on the balls of her feet, pushing herself deeper into the kiss, tasting the salt on Espel’s lips, smelling the soap on her skin and the dye in her hair, seizing onto every detail.