‘My name is Filius Viae,’ he said. ‘It means the Son of the Streets. My mother is their Goddess.’ He took a step towards her, his shadow slipping over her face. ‘She laid the foundations of the streets you walk on, and the bones of the roads buried under them. She stoked the Steam-wraiths’ engines and gave the lamps their first sparks. She forged the chains that hold old Father Thames in place.’ He smirked at her.
‘And I saved you ’cause anyone mental enough to ride one Railwraith and stand in the way of another shouting needs all the help they can get.’
‘O- kay,’ Beth muttered. She drew a deep breath. ‘My name is Beth Bradley,’ she said. ‘It means — well, it means Beth Bradley. My dad’s a journalist — a redundant one. I got kicked out of school and he didn’t care. My best friend was the one who grassed me up. I suppose the reason I’m following you is because — I like your answer better.’ She tried a smile and added, ‘’cept for the name, obviously. I didn’t realise you were called “Phyllis”. I don’t blame you for not telling me that before.’
This time the boy laughed. ‘I wouldn’t be so sure my answer’s better; right now it mostly boils down to my arse being hunted all over The Smoke.’
‘Someone’s trying to kill you,’ Beth said. ‘I remember.’
‘Oh, that’s good of you,’ he said, sarcastically tugging a forelock. ‘Ta.’ He settled himself back down onto the wet tarmac.
Beth’s jeans were drenched anyway, so she slumped down next to him. The wind sculpted half-seen bodies in the rain. ‘But if you’re the son of this kick-arse goddess,’ she said, ‘what are you scared of? Surely she could take whoever’s trying to mess with you?’
His smile never reached his eyes. ‘She’s not here,’ he said. ‘I’ve never met her.’ Beth made to apologise but he waved it away. ‘I was raised by her seneschal, Gutterglass. I ran in the shells of her temples on the river and played with the fossilised entrails of the sacrifices the Green Witches made to her.’
‘There are actual Green Witches in Greenwich?’ Beth was astonished.
‘Nah, Sutton — what, you think there’s a sea of eggs and flour in Battersea?’ His face was deadpan; she couldn’t tell if he was joking. Then his voice took on a hard, brittle edge. ‘I learnt no ritual, no doctrine — nothing to prepare me, not for Reach.’ The fingers of his left hand crooked into a claw.
‘ Reach. Is that what’s hunting you?’
He nodded unhappily.
‘So what is it?’
‘He’s urban sickness,’ he said in a dead tone, ‘and greed, and cannibal hunger and-And I don’t know what else. I’ve never seen him up close, but I’ve seen the aftermath of him. He is the Crane King; and the cranes are his fingers and his weapons. He uses them to carve himself deep into the city and when he does, everything around him dies.’ He snorted. ‘He’s vain, too; he keeps building glass towers to look at himself in. My mother was his only rival; every generation he appeared, and she beat him back, over and over again… but then she disappeared, and ever since then he’s been growing in that black pit of his under the Cathedral.’
He looked up at Beth. ‘But now she’s coming back, to reclaim the Skyscraper Throne, and Reach can’t wait any more. He wants to weaken her, wants anyone who could fight for her dead. Starting with me.’ He looked down and muttered, ‘She’s nearly here, but I might never meet her.’
He looked so lost that, on impulse, Beth reached out and pulled him close. After a second’s hesitation, he yielded. It was frightening and thrilling to hold this hunted boy against her. As though the very act of it put her under the eye of a monster.
‘Look, we’ll sort him,’ she whispered: comforting, nonsensical bravado. The rain turned the dust in his hair to mortar that clung to her cheek. ‘He won’t know what’s hit him.’
He pulled away from her, brushing rainwater off his face. ‘You’re very free with that “we”,’ he said, ‘and that’s kind and all, but what makes you so sure? I saw how you were with the Railwraith — I don’t mean to be rude, but you were crappin’ yourself.’
‘I was not!’ Beth protested. ‘I was-’ but there was no point denying it. ‘Well, yeah, okay, I was: I was terrified. Happy? But you know what? I’d rather be that scared, every bloody day of my life, than go back to the way I felt before I met you.’
A silence followed, long enough and deep enough for Beth to begin to truly appreciate the extent to which that statement made her sound like a stalker.
‘But not in a creepy way or nothing,’ she added, far too late. He was staring at her like she was a different species.
Embarrassed, Beth looked away, and her eyes fell on the nearest streetlight. The rain had started to let up, and now individual drips were slowly becoming distinct. As she watched the sodium light flared and guttered, then started flashing more violently.
‘Oh, Thames, here we go,’ the boy muttered under his breath.
The light stretched and distorted in Beth’s eyes like a captive yellow star, and then the burning rays reshaped themselves, the liquid light melting together into limbs and shoulders, a torso, a face — a young woman. She was naked, and Beth could see brightly burning filaments twisting like arteries under her transparent skin as she flowed down the lamppost to the ground. She walked towards them with a sensuously arrogant stride.
The urchin stood, apparently reluctant. ‘ This should be fun,’ he muttered.
The glowing woman opened her mouth and a light flashed on and off in the back of her throat. She pointed to Beth.
‘Just someone I met,’ he replied out loud, innocently.
The light-woman burnt a deeply unimpressed orange. More glowing speech issued from her mouth.
‘What did she say?’ Beth asked.
‘Yeah… I don’t think you want to know,’ he murmured.
‘Oh, I think I do.’
He winced. ‘She called you the daughter of a forty-watt bulb.’
‘She what?’
‘It — uh, it doesn’t really translate.’
The light-woman moved to stand in front of Beth, who could feel some kind of force pulling at the hairs on her skin. She curled her toes inside her trainers. Every molecule of her was thrumming with how strange this was.
The woman took another step forward. Beth smelled something she strongly suspected was her own eyelashes singeing. She smirked, quite deliberately, and the woman smirked too and strobed off a word.
‘Lec!’ The urchin sounded shocked.
The light-woman turned and blazed furiously at him for a moment before running off up the steps and over the bridge, the only sound the hissing of water evaporating away from her feet.
‘We’ll see who’s ungrateful!’ he shouted after her. ‘Remember who got you that treaty in the first place!’
‘What was that all about?’ asked Beth.
He rolled his eyes. ‘She’s just being dramatic. But never mind her-’ Using his iron railing like a shepherd’s crook he guided Beth back towards the footbridge. ‘I told you once, and I’m telling you again: go home.’
Beth opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her off. ‘I’m not joking. Maybe I never acted like my mother’s son before, but I can start now. Reach’ll kill me, Beth Bradley.’ He spoke evenly, pragmatically. ‘And if you’re with me, he’ll kill you too. I’d hate to have to explain that to your redundant journalist dad.’
‘How’re you going to explain anything when you’re dead?’ Beth asked before she could stop herself.
He glared at her. ‘Yeah, because being bloody pedantic is so going to change my mind,’ he snapped.
Beth said stubbornly, ‘Look, I know there’s a risk. I know I might-’
‘It’s not a question of might. ’ He sounded exasperated. ‘For me, maybe, it’s a question of might: I might be able to run far enough and fast enough to keep ahead of him. But for you it’s a question of will — I don’t mean to be rude, but is there any way in which you wouldn’t be a liability? Can you climb the outside of a skyscraper? Can you run the wire ahead of a Pylon Spider?’
Beth glared at him. ‘I don’t even know what you’re talking about now.’
‘Yeah, that’s what I thought.’
She gritted her teeth. ‘I did understand one thing you said though: run.’ She almost spat the word. ‘Is that your plan? Is that how you’re going to live up your mum’s legacy? By running?’
‘You have no idea what you’re saying-’
