Tom Pollock - The City's son

Beth gritted her teeth. Sympathy flared hot as a match and died just as fast in her chest. ‘You’re wrong,’ she said, ‘it wasn’t the Lady of the Streets they fought for, it was the streets themselves. These people don’t want a God no more.’

Gutterglass began to protest, stuttering and spitting rubbish juice, but Beth raised a hand to silence her. ‘You know, something’s been bugging me. Why, after fifteen years of ignoring him, would Reach suddenly attack Fil — and why use a Railwraith to do it? After all, he had a whole wolfpack at the tip of his cranes.’

She gazed at Gutterglass with utter loathing. ‘Then I realised: it was all you. It was your rats that got into the grid’s cables. You couldn’t control a Scaffwolf so you used a wraith and laid the blame oh-so-carefully at the front door of St Paul’s. Reach wouldn’t take any interest in Fil, not unless he was a threat, so you made him one.’

Beth’s lip curled. She thought of what he had told her the first night they met: Something that big and angry comes at you, your first instinct’s to stick it with something sharp. Gutterglass had known her ward well.

‘You manipulated everyone I cared about. That lie your Goddess told? You told it again, and again, and you kept telling it, letting the hurt sink in.’ The words tasted bitter in her mouth. ‘The lie’s over, Glas. People need to hear the truth.’

She turned and began to stump down the landfill towards the city. A hand made of ballpoint pens clamped onto her shoulder.

‘You really think they’ll believe you?’ Gutterglass hissed. ‘You spread this pathetic excuse for a myth and I’ll bury you. I’ll make you a changeling: the girl who killed their God. The very streets you walk on will hunt you.’

Beth seized Gutterglass’ wrist and ripped the hand off her shoulder. She squeezed, and felt the bugs flee in panic under her fingers. She bent it back slowly, turning around. She stared into those shells, and saw the hope was gone. Only blank white hatred remained.

‘I’m not going to tell ’em,’ Beth said. ‘You are.’ She pulled her hoodie to one side to reveal the tiny spider, glittering like fibreglass in the hollow of her throat. ‘In fact, you already did.’

Gutterglass uttered a strangled cry and swiped at the tiny creature, but in a flicker of light and static it was gone, its message replicating and copying at the speed of radio waves. Gutterglass’ voice, the voice that had for so long spoken falsely for London’s Goddess, would utter its confession on every street corner. Beth felt a tiny surge of triumph. Her city would know the truth tonight.

‘Come back!’ Gutterglass called after it. ‘Come back, please! I’ll pay!’ But it was pointless. Beth and the spider already had a deal.

For a long moment Gutterglass just stood there, her paper face smooth with shock, then she exhaled. She began to pat herself, searching for something. She popped a cigarette between her lips, but couldn’t find any matches. She looked utterly lost.

Moved by a strange pity, Beth picked a half-empty plastic lighter from amidst the rubbish and lit Gutterglass’ Lucky Strike. She turned to go, but then paused. ‘What was their price for you, Glas?’ she asked quietly. ‘When you made Fil what he was? What did the synod make you pay?’

She looked over her shoulder at the decaying woman.

‘What did you use to be?’

Through the smoke that twisted between them, Beth saw the sour-milk tears stain the paper face. And below them a smile that remembered happier times.

‘Beautiful,’ Gutterglass said.

Beth Bradley and the street-urchin Prince, on the day they stood together on the roof of the world.

Beth’s sketches of her and Fil grinned out from the metal. Above Beth’s image a signature had been scrawled. The space over his face was empty.

Beth leaned back to scrutinise her handiwork. It was still rough, but it was definitely coming along. A vast three-dimensional map now covered the back of the throne: streets, squares, parks, plazas. St Paul’s, Big Ben, the Wheel: London as she could see it from the top of its highest skyscraper. The tower block crown sprouted from the middle of the financial district, camouflaged as just another set of anonymous offices.

Beth’s spray can clanked as she dropped it back into her backpack and rummaged around for the silver. Before she was done, every Lampfolk encampment, Demolition Field and God-possessed crane would be marked on here. She shaded her eyes from the sun and got her bearings, and then began to spray in a crop of tiny streetlamps. She’d already painted in the Motherweb, the radio tower to the south.

Monument; memorial; mural: it was an invitation to anyone who came up here to tread in her footsteps and see what she’d seen. It was risky, but somebody crazy enough to climb this tower in the first place, somebody able to trust the map enough to follow it — well, it might be worth it.

A tickle in the back of her throat was her only warning. A second later a hacking cough burst out of her. She bent double, bracing her hands on her knees, until eventually she was able to straighten up.

‘Testing,’ she said tentatively, still feeling a little giddy. Her voice came out as a dry whisper: ‘Testing, one-two-three.’

She sighed. Bloody typical: her voice had decided to return when she was a seven-hundred-foot straight drop away from any possible conversation. She glanced at the metal railing that ran around the pyramidal roof and — just for a wild moment — she considered vaulting it and scrambling harum-scarum down fifty storeys. After three weeks of silence, the prospect of a chat made it almost worthwhile.

But there was no time. Instead she squatted down on Mater Viae’s oversized throne. She definitely didn’t want the Pylon Spiders to think she was reneging — deals were sacred, after all. ‘Might as well talk to yourself then, B,’ she said huskily, letting her voice swim around her in the air. The thought that she might have forgotten what she sounded like worried her.

‘Salamander. Loop-de-loop. Bling. Cockerspaniel. Supercali fragilisticexpiali-bloody-docious.’ She smiled. ‘Fuck, shit, bollocks, piss and crap.’ She exhaled hard. ‘Love.’

She looked at the picture she’d drawn.

‘I really did love you, you filthy little bastard,’ she said. It felt important to speak it aloud when she could.

A static crackle carried through the air and she sighed. Time was up.

She felt needle-pointed feet pricking between the fine bones in her foot, and then they scrambled up her leg. She only saw the spider for a second, when it crested her shoulder, then it vanished under her chin and prickled in the hollow at the base of her throat.

‘ Ready? ’ The spider’s voice had been borrowed from some sports radio broadcast.

‘Yes,’ Beth replied, and she felt two pricks where the spider’s mandibles split the skin of her neck.

‘ Set. Go! ’

It didn’t hurt, but her vocal chords went taut and she felt the sound bleed out through the puncture wounds, drop by drop, syllable by syllable. She was gripped by an irresistible urge to swallow, to steal a few decibels back, keep a whisper for herself — but she knew it didn’t work like that; the deal had been for everything: her entire voice. The Motherweb had a long history with Gutterglass, and their price for helping Beth to expose her had been very high. The ‘volunteers’ the spiders kept lashed to their radio mast never lasted long; they were exposed to the elements, and without food or water their voices soon dried up and died, leaving the spiders to range out over the city again, tapping the wires for the forgotten and vulnerable.

Beth had offered her own voice, strong and sustained — they could have whatever sustenance it gave them, for the rest of her natural life. The only condition was that they had to collect it from her in the wild. She’d let the Pylon Spiders farm her, but at least she’d be free range. And if she gave them everything they needed, then they didn’t need anyone else.