The Glass Republic: The Skyscraper Throne: Book II (7 page)

‘We ssseldom ssee that sside of the glasss. The cossst will be sssignificant.’

Pen drew a deep breath. ‘I’ll pay.’

A thin smirk spread over five pairs of lips. ‘What makess you think you can afford usss?’ Johnny’s eyes were black on black, but there was a circular rainbow shimmer in the centre like an iris.

Pen focused on that patch of colour and straightened up. ‘You trade in anything, right?’ she said. ‘So there must be something I’ve got that you want – something about me that’s valuable, even if I don’t know it. You can have it, but get me through that mirror.’

Five heads tilted in interest, and Pen felt herself shrink a little. ‘Only I won’t hurt anyone,’ she added.

There was nothing cruel in Johnny Naphtha’s voice as he said, ‘Of courssse you will.’

The five men stood and buttoned their jackets. ‘Thiss way, Ssteel Insssurgent.’ Johnny reached out to Pen. ‘We have a propossition.’

Pen swallowed, hesitated and took his hand.

She felt the wrongness instantly. The pads of his fingers squeezed between hers and the oil spread over her skin, chill and viscous. She tried to jerk her hand back, but his arm just stretched, strung out like chewed gum.

‘What are—?’ she started, but her voice died in her throat. Johnny Naphtha’s face was melting, his features running in an oil slick off his neck. The others were doing likewise, their feet blending into an oily pool. Rivulets raced off the side of it and ran over the edge of the floor.

‘Wai—’ Pen tried to say, but her teeth felt as soft as candlewax against her tongue, and in front of her she could see her hand blending, emulsifying into what was left of Johnny’s.

She felt a drunken kind of falling and all the colours in the world ran together into black.

*

She gasped, and her lungs drew in dust and she choked and coughed. She couldn’t see, but there was brick, rough and solid under her knees and palms. She blinked and brought her free hand up to rub her eyes, but the blindness clung on.

There was a snap-click-hiss and five flames appeared, bobbing alarmingly over lighters in oil-soaked hands. The synod smiled down at her.

‘I—’ she managed at last. ‘I thought you’d …’ There was only one word that fitted the memory of the creep of oil over her skin. ‘I thought you’d
eaten
me.’

‘Why? When did we sssay we’d require payment in advance?’

The smiles remained the same; she couldn’t tell if he was joking.

‘Well then, next time d’you mind asking before you melt me?’ Pen demanded.

‘Excussse usss, Sssteel Inssurgent,’ Johnny whispered courteously, ‘we undersssstood you to be in hassste. It iss a sseven-hour desscent through the dark to where we sssstand by bipedal means. And ssome of the ssspaces you would need to traversssse would be,
disssquieting
.’

He offered her his hand, but Pen ignored it and pushed herself up. Vaulted brick tunnels stretched off in five directions. The walls were riddled with roughly shaped alcoves that gave off a sickly, variegated light, like the weird deep-ocean creatures she’d seen on the BBC nature documentaries her dad loved. She figured they must be in a sewer, but there was no dripping of leaking pipes, no scuttle of rodents. Instead, the tunnels were like the halls of a brick palace, long buried and forgotten. Their footsteps echoed as Johnny led down one of the halls, but that was the only sound. The whole place felt weirdly hermetic.

Johnny began to murmur, reciting nonsense in a terse, concentrated tone. He gestured vaguely to alcoves, as if naming them: ‘Horssefly, wanderlussst, ssweat and ssusspicion, loathesssome allegory, Pylon Venom, charge, charm, charred bisscuit, an old noble-lamp’ss tearsss …’

They swung left, then right, then right again. Pen thought she could hear tension creeping into his voice – or maybe it was excitement?

‘Pet’ss tooth, an old puzzle, comfortable bread …’ He hesitated where the tunnel branched.

Claustrophobia clung to Pen, heavy as an oil-soaked blanket. She wondered how far this warren must reach if it could confuse even its master. She’d completely lost track of the turns.

‘Falsssehood, falsssehood and hope – come on now, Naphtha, think, you ssubsssist on your recollectionsss – Falsssehood and hope, and …
time
, hah!’ He put one hand on the wall and swung himself with gusto down the right fork.

‘Falsssehood and hope and time leadss to memory.’

‘Oh.’ Pen said it in a small voice, but it echoed. A soft breeze fluttered a stray hair against her cheek. In front of her, the tunnel fed out into empty space. Opposite was a wall, perhaps only twenty feet from where the floor ended, but the
depth
of that gulf seemed immeasurable. The wall opposite was speckled unevenly with coloured lights. Pen nervously toed the edge of the precipice and craned her neck, but she could see no end to this ocean of bricks and
gently glowing alcoves. It extended to vertical horizons on either side. It was like being up-close to the night sky. The sounds of wings echoed in the emptiness. Little flitting shapes crossed the wall, oil-soaked pigeons cooing as they tended the synod’s stores.

‘It’s beautiful,’ she murmured, in a stunned voice.

‘It … hass itsss momentsss,’ Johnny Naphtha admitted.

‘What is it?’

He raised his lighter as he answered, ‘Ssselfishnesss, greed, sssyrupy sssentiment, commemorationss of a few fumbling firsst romancess, an irrational love of peanut butter and an equally inssane loathing of arachnidss’ – he pointed at individual lights as he spoke, naming constellations on the wall. ‘Courage, compossure, a confection of courtesssy. Ssentiensse, or ass passsable a ssubbsstitute as we have thusss far ssuccceded in compossing. You are looking at our besst current sssynthessiss of a mind.’

‘A mind?’ Pen breathed. ‘What’s it for?’

‘To patch the perceptionss of a prissoner – a client whose cognition iss sso corroded by hisss long languisshing, he doess not yet know that he needss it.’ Johnny Naphtha grinned wickedly. ‘Bussinessss development. It iss almosst complete.
Almossst
.’ He looked at Pen with predatory appraisal. ‘But not quite.’

Pen felt her hands flinch upwards instinctively, as if she could protect herself from that look, that possessive intent, with her fists.

Johnny’s smile became almost pitying. ‘Sspare yourssself your anxiety,’ he said. ‘The ssupplementary ssubstancess we
need are not in your psssyche. Ssstill, for what you asssk, we will accept nothing lesss.’

‘I won’t hurt anyone else,’ Pen insisted again.

Johnny inclined his head as if to say,
You said that already.

Four other heads mirrored his.

‘We would not asssk you to. A long way behind ussss, at the intersssection of the sstoress of electromagnetissm and ephemerality there iss a ssubsstansse that might ssserve you, a compound fit to change
sseeing
into
doing
, a tincture to transsform a window to a door: a portal primer, if you will, or a doorway drug. It might even get you sssomewhere ass issolated as the mirrorsstocracy’s republic. Our price for ssuch a prize is sssimple—’

He flourished his empty oil-soaked hand. ‘A complete ssset of memoriess of a child, rendered from the mindss of her parentsss – not copiesss, you undersstand, but originalss.’ He snorted. ‘Even true memoriess degrade, copiess of them wassste like they’re diseassssed.’

For a long moment Pen didn’t understand, then something hot and painful sank slowly towards the bottom of her stomach as she realised what he was asking her for.

‘You want my folks’ memories … of me?’ she whispered. ‘You want them to forget me.’

‘Mosst assssuredly no.’ Johnny’s tone didn’t change. ‘We do not
want
them to forget you. That iss an irrelevant ssside effect.’

Pen gave a little tight shake of head. ‘Something else,’ she said. ‘Not them – not my parents. Something of mine—’

‘Nothing you posssesss iss sso potent ass a parent’ss memoriess of thosse they have born. Ssuch thingsss kindle conflictss and are the ssseeds of sscience. They are the well-springss of hope and obssesssions of even the sssanest of men,’ Johnny said gently. ‘We want nothing of yourss.’

‘I told you I wouldn’t hurt anyone!’ Pen’s cry echoed off the bricks. She stared back down the tunnel, but all she saw was a maze.

The flame from Johnny’s lighter danced in his liquid eyes, and his voice was sonorous in her ears. ‘Sssilly little pilgrim, that’sss precissely why we asssk thiss. We know your ssstory. You musst know, ass we know, that your mother and father blame themsselves for your pressent, parodic appearance. “If we’d only watched her better, or taught her better, or loved her better or fed her better”.’ He spoke with a calm viciousness, eyeing the sharp jut of her cheeks. ‘“If only we” – that’ss the ssentiment that sstrangless your parentss’ sssleep. Would you like to know how poorly they sssleep now? How tenuousssly they are ssstitched to their happinesss? If you are sserious about not hurting them, your choice iss ssimple. Either sstay by their sside and ssacrifice whatever urgent quesst hass made you sseek uss out, or accept our price, and make ssure they won’t missss you when you’re gone.’

Pen felt the bricks of the wall in her back like the supporting hand of a friend, but rather than collapse against them she stayed stiffly upright.

Ssacrifice whatever urgent quessst …

She tried to imagine it. She tried to picture herself turning around and going home and hiding under the duvet. She tried really, really hard.

But she couldn’t. She didn’t recognise the girl in that picture. She wasn’t her, and she didn’t want to be. A strange kind of calm settled over her as she realised this wasn’t really a choice after all: it looked like one, but it wasn’t. She pictured the future where her folks had forgotten her, and it came clearly: her dad reading the paper, her mum engaged in her endless second-floor ballet with the Hoover. They’d be okay, they wouldn’t miss her. They
couldn’t
miss her. It was appalling, but it was true. That was the point. She wetted her lips to accept the inevitable. There wasn’t another option here …

Unless she made one.

‘You said you didn’t go behind the mirror.’ Pen’s voice came out hoarse, a little crackly, but strong. ‘Isn’t there something better behind there than a few sentimental memories of my first steps? You’re collectors, aren’t you? There must be something. What if I could bring it to you?’

Each of the five members of the synod took a step forward, hemming her behind a wall of petrol-soaked suit. They looked even more predatory when they were intrigued.

‘Interessting. Sssomething ssingular,’ Johnny said. ‘Ssome-thing of unique sssignificance – obtain that for usss, and we will find the memoriesss we need elsssewhere.’

Pen nodded hesitantly.

‘And sssecurity?’ Johnny whispered. ‘You might run off,
after all; you might like it behind the mirror, or you might very well perissssh. How are we to be recompenssed if you do not return?’

Pen didn’t flinch as she met his rainbow-irised eye. ‘I’ll bring you what you asked for,’ she said. Johnny was right, she needed a way to spare her mum and dad, and this – this awful, gargantuan cataclysm of a way was at least
a way
. If all went well, she’d be buying her parents’ memories back with mirrored coin. If not …

You want them to forget me?

They’d be all right.

‘You will have ssseven dayss,’ he said. ‘After that we will put your pawned payment to ussse, and it will be irretrievable.’

Pen’s lip curled. The words sprang into her mouth automatically, as though she was haggling at Dalston Market. ‘A month,’ she countered.

‘Two weekss—’

‘Three.’

‘Twenty-one dayss and nightsss,’ Johnny confirmed. He didn’t sound perturbed; rather, satisfied, and a little impressed, as though some crucial ancient formality had been observed. ‘But Missss Khan? Bring uss sssomething ssspectacular, or they won’t remember you at all.’

He held out a hand and Pen shook it slowly, feeling the oil ooze from between her fingers, but this time she didn’t dissolve. ‘Thiss way,’ he whispered, and then the synod swept past her and back up the tunnel. Pen put her hand on the
bricks as she followed, and, just before the light got too weak to see by, she made out the handprint she’d left: the outline of slim black fingers, shining wetly in the dark.

Three a.m., and in the narrow lanes behind Carnaby Street, the Blankleit market was in full swing.

The bulbs sat dark in the streetlamps, but the bricks flickered with light and shadow as the glass-skinned, tungstenveined Lampmen bartered in semaphore on the pavements.

Beth moved casually from doorstep to doorstep, admiring the wares piled high on them: heaps of assorted remote controls, bales of copper and platinum wire, tiny glass birds fluttering in heatproof tungsten cages, glimmering with silent song. Along one wall, injured men queued patiently, some leaning on crutches of broken lamppost, their shoulders, elbows, wrists or knees ending in jags and powdery cracks. At the front of the queue, a heavy-shouldered Blankleit Street Surgeon worked over a brasier, delicately etching knuckles and fingernails into replacement limbs blown from white-hot glass.

Beth had been here a dozen times in the last few months, but she still felt a little fizz of awe at it, even if tonight that awe was dampened by toothache.

The pavement skin’ll probably break a needle, and the blood’ll set like cement
, she thought, tonguing the offending canine.
Explaining that to the dentist’s going to be fun.

The heat from all the Lampmen’s blazing filaments made her sweat, but still she walked with her hood up, her hands thrust into her pockets, the railing spear strapped into the little harness she’d made for it in her backpack. She paused at a doorway where a young Blankleit was lounging indolently. He was strikingly handsome, with a neon-bright smile. His cheeks and chest were patterned with rosy filter-paint to show off his crystal-clear skin. He flirted easily with the passing crowd in an easy semaphore patter, giving one or two of the more likely-looking glass gents a flirtatious tickle with his fields.