‘ Then teach me! I’m smart, all right? I can learn — and maybe I can help. Or are you so damned arrogant that you think you’re better off alone?’
He opened his mouth, but Beth cut him off. ‘What, you counting on your little streetlight girlfriend? Unless I very badly misread her bloody body language, you’ve got some chilly nights coming up.’
‘Lec’s not my-’
‘Yeah, whatever.’ Beth snorted. ‘Is there anyone else? Anyone else who’s willing to stand up to this Crane King you’re so scared of?’
As he stared at her she could feel the anger and embarrassment and loneliness coming off him like heat. ‘Well, I am,’ she said quietly. ‘Maybe I don’t know, but I saved your life once, and you saved mine. I want to help you.’ She only realised quite how true the words were as she spoke them. ‘Let me help you do more than just run.’
His grey eyes searched hers. ‘Why?’
‘Because I’m alone, too,’ Beth said softly.
They fell silent then. The clouds had blown over and the night was clear and cold. Beth started to shiver.
‘No, you’re not,’ he said at last. ‘Hold out your arm.’ And without warning he slashed the razor-sharp tip of his railing across her wrist.
Beth didn’t know why, but she didn’t jump back or yelp. She held herself completely still as he scratched her again and again, and she felt the blood welling up and dripping onto the wet ground.
She didn’t take her eyes from his. ‘And that was?’ She kept all but a tiny tremor from creeping into her voice.
He shrugged, almost shyly. ‘If you’re going to be a soldier in the army, girl, you need to wear the mark.’
She looked down at her wrist. Through the smeared blood she could just make out the fine lines of the cuts: buildings, arranged into a crown.
A tight, exhilarated pride welled up in her.
‘It’s also a warning. The blood’s the reminder: this is real, Beth. These things will hurt you, and there’s no magic door you can run back through and slam shut to get away from them. You can never go home again, understand? Because they’ll follow you — if you do this, if you draw Reach’s eye, you give up safety. You give up home. For ever.’ His voice was as flat and cold as an open heath in a harsh wind.
Beth put her wrist to her cheek, then stared at the crown: immutably and irreversibly cut into her.
‘Then I’m ready.’ Her heart was turning mad somersaults. ‘Son of the Streets.’
II
CHAPTER 11
Beth looked at the spider. The spider gazed inscrutably back. Beth swallowed. It was as tall as a man, perched daintily on eight needle-pointed feet on the telephone cable that looped into the alley. Its carapace was as smooth as fibreglass, reflecting the light of the streetlamp below. A crackling noise came off it, like voices murmuring at a pitch just below audible.
‘So.’ The pavement-skinned boy leaned against the wall, hands thrust into his pockets. ‘How do you like our ride?’
Beth gave him a flat stare. ‘Our ride? It’s a giant spider.’
He pursed his lips and shrugged in a ‘can’t-deny-the-obvious’ kind of way.
‘Is it dangerous?’ Beth asked.
‘Does it look dangerous?’ he countered.
‘Yeah: it looks like a giant spider.’
‘Wow, that’s some impressive power of observation you got there…’
‘I’m not finding this reassuring, Fil.’
She’d taken to shortening ‘Filius’ to ‘Fil’ — as though being on single-syllable terms could tame this wild boy with the sharp bones and the soot-smeared skin. He’d led her into an ordinary scratched-to-hell BT Payphone on the High Street, picked up the handset and hesitated. When she’d asked him if he needed change, he’d given her a half-smile, as if at her naivete. ‘That’s not how they’ll want payin’,’ he’d said.
He had put the receiver to his mouth and then somehow imitated the clicks and buzzes that you got on a line with really bad reception. He’d stopped and listened for a bit, then hung up, looking satisfied.
Then he’d led her around the corner into the alley and here she was, eyeball to eyeball with a spider the size of a small car.
‘Remind me why we have to do this again?’ she said. The thing’s eyes were like glittering pits of ash.
‘Communications.’ He didn’t look away from the creature as he answered. ‘There’s no point having an army if you can’t talk to it.’ He edged closer towards it.
‘O- kay,’ Beth said. There was a hesitancy in the way he was approaching the beast she really didn’t like. An uncomfortable prickle ran up her neck. ‘And — sorry if this a daft question — but why are we creeping towards it like we’re scared it’s going to eat us?’
The look he shot her said, You really want me to answer that?
He laid a hand on the spider’s head. It went all fuzzy, like a TV picture with bad reception, then blurred back into solidity and crept down off its wire. Fil visibly relaxed. He beckoned Beth forward.
Proud that she was managing to keep the trembling to a minimum, she reached out to the thing. The spider’s skin was cool and smooth. The voices coming from it grew louder and she could feel snatches of conversation pulse around her head.
‘ Love you, honey,’ they were saying, and
‘ Good luck today! I’m proud of you,’ and
‘ Can’t wait to see you tonight.’
‘ I love you.’
‘ I love you.’
‘ I love you.’
Dozens of accents, male and female voices, all one on top of another, full of love and affection, thrummed around her skull. Beth felt her heart swell to them. Embarrassed warmth touched her ears and she realised she was smiling.
Dizziness washed over her and she felt like she would fall, but the spider extended a blade-like limb to catch her. It pulled her closer into its abdomen — closer to the voices.
‘ I love you,’ they whispered.
‘Hey!’ Fil rapped the spider sharply on its carapace with his railing. ‘None of that!’
The voices faded again to background noise and Beth’s head cleared. She shuddered. ‘What was that?’ she breathed. The spider’s leg sat cool as steel across her stomach. She pushed at it, but it didn’t budge.
‘Fil!’ she protested.
‘Overzealous little-’ he muttered. He leaned right into the spider until their foreheads were touching. ‘Stow that, you little shite-picker. You get me?’
The thing buzzed static.
‘Yeah, I’ll bet you were just trying to relax her.’ He snorted. ‘Do that again and I’ll relax you: permanently. Onto the biggest bit of card I can lay my hands on.’
The creature bent its forelegs, apparently in submission.
He looked up at Beth. ‘You okay?’
Beth met his gaze. Her heart was thundering and she felt like she was going to be sick, but all she could hear
