The Glass God (32 page)

There was a cautious chorus of, “Yeaahhhh…⁠”

“And the dead woman, Brid, was probably killed by the blue electric angels during this same procedure, which makes her kinda a villain of the piece, which isn’t to say that it’s not sad that she’s dead. But she’s still tangled up with the whole pinching thing, so I think we can
also
,” she was running out of breath, the world hazy with sticky, sleepy thoughts, “we can
also
say that if the last place this Brid looked before she met the angels was Scylla Workshops, then that’s probably where we should go looking to find whoever it is who zapped Swift to stop him finding the knife; everyone with me?”

There was a thoughtful silence.

Then, “I am, Ms Li,” ventured Rhys.

Sharon beamed. “See! Nothing like working the problem through.”

Chapter 54

Wish Hard Enough, and Make Your Dreams Come True

They gathered in their temple.

It was a secret temple, which was good; everyone liked that about it.

But it was also a cold, draughty temple. A temple whose walls weren’t finished, and whose furnishings hadn’t been put in. A temple which took nearly twenty minutes to get to once you’d left the nearby station, not because it was isolated from transport – quite the opposite – but because the lifts weren’t yet running an express service and the stairwell still smelt of fresh paint.

Say what you would, though – the view was amazing.

They gathered.

One said, “But we called on him only yesterday…⁠”

One said, “He is strong. He will answer.”

One said, “Is it right to disturb him so soon?”

One said, “I have consulted the signs and made the offerings.”

One said – who wasn’t sure about either the signs or the offerings, and couldn’t work out where he’d left his gloves and was feeling less than inspired by the entire course of events, but then, what was a wizard to do? – “I really don’t see how this is a problem.”

One said, “They are going to the workshops! They will find them.”

One said, “B-b-b-but there is n-n-n-nothing to find, is there?”

One said, “The Mayor left a deputy.”

One said, “So what? A deputy Midnight Mayor, what does that even mean? That’s just the person who does the cleaning up!”

One said, “Not to the Old Man. They spoke.”

At this, there was a silence, and even the one who hadn’t remembered his gloves, and was beginning to regret it, felt that this might be an unexpected game changer.

Then she said, and really, on this, her word was final, “I’ll do it. I’ll call him.”

That was a bit of a relief to everyone else, as it made what followed somehow inevitable, and not their fault after all.

Chapter 55

Always Face Adversity with a Smile

It was called World’s End. This had always confused Sharon, since, clearly, the world didn’t end there. Certainly it was a bitch to get to, but anywhere in London that required both a train
and a bus
was, to Sharon’s mind, pushing things too far. Perhaps once it had been a place where the houses stopped; but surely, by the time London had reached this corner of Chelsea, the city’s builders should have noticed that the development of its streets was far outstripping their ability to find appropriate names.

Whatever the reason behind the name, in the small hours of the morning this part of King’s Road did feel like an apt location for a quiet, entropic Armageddon. Towards Sloane Square, the street was a pulsing heartland of designer shops and well-lit galleries, in which every portrait of a red wall on a white background was priced at £15,000 upwards and the only drinks worth having had been preserved for twenty-five years before the bottle was opened. Down here, though, where the shops ran out, World’s End was a hallowed paradise for old gentlemen with many letters after their names; for wealthy bankers who enjoyed rowing on a Saturday, polo on a Sunday; and for families who believed in having groceries delivered, and felt no need for a corner store. The streets of white houses led down to the river’s edge in high-ceiling decorum, heavy silk curtains pulled across sash windows; immaculately tended hedges and perfectly raked gravel paths. If World’s End could choose to be anywhere, it would be a tiny, lavender-scented village in the Lake District, with all the amenities of Manhattan.

Sharon, Miles and Rhys walked through the quiet streets and tried not to make any noise. In other parts of London, noise wasn’t merely a constant; its background hum was almost a reassurance that you were never really alone. Here, where the rose bushes stood upright against a background of Volvos and Mercedes-Benzes and every other streetlight was an adapted historical relic from Victorian times, it was hard to talk in more than a polite murmur.

As they went, Sharon felt the shadow walk drift over her, an easy slipping into invisibility. It was happening almost instinctively now, with her thoughts so tired. She was finding it hard to be herself, to be anything more than a part of the city, just slipping into the city, becoming…

“Ms Li!”

Rhys’s voice snapped her back to wakefulness, and full visibility.

“What?… Was I vanishing?”

“You were vanishing, Ms Li.”

“Was I?”

“Yes, Ms Li. Which isn’t to say you shouldn’t… I mean, when I said you vanished what I was trying to say, actually, was…⁠”

Miles politely cleared his throat. “I think,” he murmured, “if I understand our druidic friend, he was going to enquire as to whether you were
aware
of your impending invisibility, and, if you were, he wished you to be aware that as a state of both physicality and visibility, that was entirely acceptable with him. Am I correct, Rhys?”

Rhys seethed. The seethe became a sneeze, which might have been a “yes”.

“Uh, cool,” said Sharon. “Thanks for that.”

The three walked on in silence.

Then Miles said, “Forgive me mentioning this; about the scyllas, I mean. But I’m not sure if it is prejudice. Is it prejudiced, for example, to suggest that sharing the sea with a great white shark might be a bad idea?”

“You’re comparing scyllas to… great white sharks?”

“In a way, yes.”

Sharon drew in a slow breath, and Rhys, bracing himself, nonetheless felt a shimmer of satisfaction at what must come next.

“So… you’re comparing a rational being who can, I grant you, rend people limb from limb, but who makes a perfectly respectable business enchanting mystic goods from a workshop in World’s End, you’re comparing this probably-council-tax-paying entity who had no choice but to be born with a monstrous head and a taste for raw flesh, with an oceanic creature who gets chemically incensed by the smell of blood and so can’t control their own instinctive animal reactions? Is that what you’re saying?”

Miles’s black shoes tapped sharply on the pavement as they walked.

“I do see your point, Ms Li,” he murmured.

“We do cautiously concede,” Sharon replied, “that vampires may drink our blood, banshees may pulverise our brains with the shriek of their voice and scyllas may suck the marrow from our broken bones. But what we have to do is respect the fact that they are currently choosing not to use these abilities but are trying to adapt to circumstances imposed on them through no fault of their own.”

“Yes, I do see that…⁠”

“Prejudice,” she added, “is what you get when stupid people go around judging the whole rending-talons thing without bothering to see if the talon is actually holding a fucking ice cream!”

Her voice echoed off the houses.

“Anyway,” she muttered. “That’s just what I think.”

Miles was silenced, and Rhys, to his surprise, found that he was no longer sneezing.

Scylla Workshops was in a mews.

The former stables were now a mixture of tactfully disguised garages and elegant front doors; a place where night-time noise wasn’t merely unwelcome, it was practically impossible. The former entrances for servants had been converted into softly lit portals with hanging flower baskets, and notices above the letterbox warning against junk mail. At almost every step, motion sensors caught the passage of strangers down the cobbled street, creating a rolling pathway of light which rippled with them all the way to the far end. There, a single black door in a single white wall declared on a small silver plaque:

Scylla Workshops
 

Sharon said, “Do you think they’ll mind how late we are?”

“With all due respect, Ms Li,” murmured Miles, “you are the deputy Midnight Mayor, seeking to save London from a fate worse than… well, many alternative fates of dire import. I’m sure they’ll forgive you.”

“Cool,” muttered Sharon, and knocked.

Her knuckles rapped on the door, and the door swung open. It should, Rhys felt, have creaked, but in this part of town nothing creaked that wasn’t meant to. They stood there, staring at the narrow dark gap beyond the door.

Sharon said, “Okay, so, anyone else freaked out by this, or am I overreacting?”

“I’m a little freaked, Ms Li.” Rhys fumbled automatically for the reassuring presence of his antihistamines.

“Perhaps it’s a customer feature?” suggested Miles. “Our door is always open – that sort of thing?”

Sharon turned to stare at the Alderman. “Okay, I get it,” she said. “You
are
freaked, and all this ‘it’ll be okay really’ stuff is how you manifest it, right?”

Miles gave an expansive shrug from the elbows out. “You are a knower of the truth, Ms Li.”

“That’s cool,” she replied. “It’s a defence mechanism. Defence mechanisms are way better than repressing.”

She pushed the door back all the way, and felt a moment of nausea while crossing the threshold, as of the world being twisted to one side. There was an impression of a wood-panelled corridor, a stair leading upstairs, an umbrella stand, and then there wasn’t. Then there was simply a wood-panelled corridor and a stair leading, very definitely, down, and a long way down at that.

Sharon looked back, and the world behind the open door seemed a long way off; Miles and Rhys, framed in the portal, looked tiny, though they were only a few paces away. She gestured at them to follow, and for a moment they were small, and then they were very large again, right by her side, nearly knocking her into the stairwell.

“Interesting,” murmured Miles. “Not so much an illusionary disguise as a spatial distortion?”

“I guess down is the only way to go,” Sharon muttered, and began to descend.

Bright lights shone at regular intervals above the staircase. As Sharon reached the bottom of the stairs, her foot crunched on the broken plastic and glass that had been ripped from one of the bulbs overhead. The light swayed above her, with the screw of the bulb still tight in its fitting and a black electric scar running up one side of the wire. “Right,” she murmured. Then, “Okay. Rhys?”

“Yes, Ms Li?”

“You got your antihistamines?”

“Yes, Ms Li. But they make me drowsy if…⁠”

“I’m not saying take them yet. Just… have them close.”

So saying, she pushed back a cream-coloured velour curtain and stepped into a low, windowless reception area. Like the rest of the building, the walls here were panelled in light-brown wood, and there were two cream-upholstered sofas where guests might sit, and read the magazines laid out on the low glass-topped coffee table. A poster proclaimed, “
All Our Enchantments At Scylla Workshops Come With A Guaranteed Three-Year Warranty!
” Other picture frames held gold and silver certificates, announcing that in the years 2001–2013 Scylla Workshops had been the proud winners of some of the most prestigious awards for material magic manipulation, and were an industry-standards leader.

A small white door led away from reception, to what could only be the workshops. Next to it a formal sign proclaimed, ‘Personal Protective Equipment COMPULSORY Beyond This Notice’. To illustrate the point, a figure of a man had been drawn, demonstrating his hearty boots, his strong plastic hat, his high-visibility waistcoat and his neutral-density charm bracelet.

The reception desk itself was unmanned. In the middle of it sat a brass bell. Sharon dinged it. Nothing happened.

Rhys said, “Um?”

Miles said, “Perhaps we are a little late…⁠”

Sharon dinged the bell again, louder.

Silence.

Silence in the reception, silence in the workshop, silence in the stairwell, silence in the street. Thick, World’s End silence, that brooked not an atom stirring out of place, not a footfall on unclean soil.

“Right!” exclaimed Sharon. It was the “right” of righteousness, of problems to be solved and adventures had, of mysteries to be unlocked and – yes – for grave and terrible dangers to be endured in the cause of… well, of equal opportunities, open minds and broad community support. So saying, the shaman marched forward to the small white door, paused by the sign warning her about all the protective equipment she should be wearing, considered her options, shrugged, and pushed the door open.

It, too, opened easily. At once the smell of strong cleaning products hit Rhys and slithered their throat-drying stench down to the pit of his lungs. Grey energy-efficient light, this time for illumination rather than art, deadened the space beyond the door with its dull glow. The thick carpet of the reception area became harsh concrete; the walls were painted a deep green. Sharon pushed through a hanging barrier of rubber straps like the entrance to a butcher’s shop, and stepped out into a cavern.

It was a cavern, she decided, because the ceiling was high overhead – far, far too high for Chelsea – but the floor was so far below, a darker blackness almost out of sight, tiny and pinched in by the weight of wall above it. Gantries and stairs zigzagged between each other, creating dozens of slot-in floors hanging off chains from the walls, and, on each new level, technical and occasionally mystical apparatus had been neatly set out: great blue-glowing refrigerators and the polished ivory of a siren’s skull, bleached peroxide white; trays of plastic pipettes and rubber gloves, and the engine torn from the heart of a still-smoking wreck. The stairs, Sharon suspected, were purely for show: great shipwright-thick lengths of chain dangled between every floor, their rusting iron coated with traces of a blue-grey slime that might well have come from tentacles curling round the supporting metal. Rhys peered over her shoulder, gasped, “Well, no one seems to be…⁠” and stopped. His eye fell on something hunched and grey, one rolling curve just visible above the edge of a table top.