the reflection of the old man declared haughtily. ‘I shall raise your petition with them at their earliest convenience.’
‘We need to see them now.’
Wispy grey hairs jutted from the reflected man’s chin as he stuck it out. ‘No,’ he said. And then harrumphed again, and repeated, ‘How very uncouth.’
While Fil hesitated, trying to think of some way to claw back the initiative, Beth stepped forward, trying to calculate the consequences of pissing off the gnarled bellboy before deciding she didn’t care anyway.
She cleared her throat noisily. ‘Right you are, Doorkeep,’ she said, in the most offensively chirpy tone she could manage. ‘Then when you’ve got a minute, you can tell the Senators that their Goddess’ son is outside — tell them he looks like he sleeps in a storm drain; they’ll know it’s him — and that he would very much appreciate it if they would get off their stuck-up, inbred backsides and come to the door so he can get on with the serious business of waging war against a maniac crane-toting God.’
She waited until the reflected face of the agent-de-porte had gone milky-pale before adding, ‘Do you think their earliest convenience might be soon?’
The Doorkeep hustled back out of the side of the reflection.
Fil let out his breath explosively. ‘ Beth! ’
‘Fil.’
‘What happened to polite?’
Beth shrugged. ‘He was pissing me off. Besides, uppity bouncers are the same everywhere, Puffa jacket or tux, makes no odds. Give ’em a problem above their pay grade, they always kick it up the chain.’
He stared at her and she smirked; All right, she admitted to herself, maybe I am showing off a bit. ‘I can see you’ve never tried to blag your way into an over-twenty-ones night in Camden.’ She jerked her head at the mirror. ‘Who are they anyway? He looked — well, I don’t want to sound to crazy here, but he looked human.’
‘The Mirrorstocracy, lords-under-glass,’ he replied, still looking at her like she was utterly mad. ‘They’re sometimes born when a person gets caught between two mirrors.’
‘You what now?’
‘Two mirrors,’ he repeated testily. ‘You know all those infinitely receding reflections you get? Well every reflection has a little bit of reality in it, and every now and then they add up to someone like Doorkeep there: a living, breathing copy on the other side of the glass. The Mirrorstocracy are really, really prickly — I can’t believe you-’
‘Shhh, they’re coming back,’ Beth said, fixing on a smile. If this Mirrorstocracy were anything like the posh kids she occasionally sold paintings to, then you could bitch your heart out, as long as you pretended to be nice while you did it. She was going to enjoy this.
Seven figures — three men in grey suits, four women in grey skirts and white blouses — swept into view on the reflected rooftop. They walked like they had the deeds to the world in their back pockets. They stopped exactly level with Beth and Fil’s reflections, not a fraction of an inch forward or back. They were marking their status.
One of the mirror-women directed a minute curtsey at Fil. She had walnutty skin and a sour mouth. ‘Highness,’ she said.
Fil bowed his head at the mirror.
‘Excellency.’
‘Your friend gave our agent-de-porte quite a turn. What can we do for you, Son of the Streets?’
He smiled. ‘I’m here to invoke your vassalage. Load your glass guns and unwind your garrottes.’ He frowned, as though something was only just occurring to him. ‘Have a dig around for any welding-torches that might have been caught in-mirror as well, will you? The scrap we’re heading into, I think we’ll be needing them.’
If this bizarre request startled the woman, she didn’t show it. ‘You’re recruiting.’
He nodded. ‘It’s a man’s life in the army, but don’t let that put you off.’
The lines on the woman’s brown skin contorted as if she was struggling gamely for a smile, but not quite getting there. ‘And I assume the target of this expedition is Reach?’
He grinned.
‘So the Urchin Prince is finally stepping into his Mother’s footprints. How do they feel, Highness?’
‘A little on the large side,’ he admitted. ‘But I’ll grow into them.’
‘I’m sure you will.’ The Senator pursed her lips, then said, ‘I’m afraid we can’t help you, Filius Viae, as much as we would like to.’
His smiled hardened. ‘Really? Why not?’
‘If you consult Imago Seventy-three of the Treaty of Palindromes, it specifies that only Mater Viae herself is empowered to enforce our vassalage. Well, it actually states: egalassav s’ycarcotsrorriM eht ecrofne yam sseddoG eht ylno, but it’s polite to translate.’ The Senator’s voice dripped with phony diplomatic regret. ‘Obviously, we would gladly release the legions to her, but as everyone knows, she has been missing this last decade, and in her absence, the treaty must remain in abeyance. Even in the face of such an august figure as yourself, our hands are tied.’
You could have napped flint with Fil’s smile now. ‘What’s this about, Maggie?’
The Senator sighed as if to say, Well, if you’re going to be so ill-mannered as to insist on me being honest… ‘We suspected that such a request might soon be made. It doesn’t take a mathematician to count the cranes on the horizon. The appropriate response to this delicate question was debated in Senate. I can assure your Highness that there were full-throated opinions on both sides-’
‘I’m sure.’
‘-but, after due reflection, it was felt that given Reach’s current proclivity for building glass towers, he might make a better ally than a foe.’
Fil’s jaw dropped so far you could have shoved a football down his throat. ‘ What? ’
‘Well, the more reflective surfaces there are in your city, the more opportunity we have to redomicile conventional singly-reflected persons to our city as Plebeians.’
He said in disgust, ‘You mean slaves.’
‘Serfs, technically.’ The Senator, like all politicians, was clearly sweet on semantics.
Fil stared at her in silence for a long moment. Then his expression changed from furious to thoughtful and he rocked back on his heels. He shoved his spare hand in his pocket and his smile returned. ‘Okay,’ he said, and he turned back towards the fire escape.
Beth started. ‘ Okay? Fil, that’s it?’
He spread his hands. ‘You heard Her Excellency. They’ve made up what passes for their minds; nothing we can do to change them now-’ He paused. ‘Of course, there are three obvious reasons why that decision’ll result in their republic collapsing into raging bloody anarchy. But I’m sure they’ll have covered those in their “full-throated debate”.’ He shrugged, as though to say some you win…
The Senator’s clearing of the throat was delicately audible. ‘I am sure we will have discussed them, you are right, of course — but just to be certain, might I enquire, Highness, what reasons?’
He smiled like an adder and ticked them off on his fingers. ‘First, there’s the fact that Reach is a psychotic monster, so only someone with a really cavernously empty skull would rely on him to do anything.
‘Second, Mater Viae is coming back, stomping up the warpath like she does, and she’ll be bloodlettingly unhappy that you didn’t come when her favourite little boy called.’ He shrugged. ‘But if you’re okay with that…’
The Senators in the mirror looked at each other in consternation as he put his foot on the fire-escape ladder.
‘Um, Fil?’ Beth started. Somehow she felt this was her cue. ‘You said three reasons?’
The grey boy folded his skinny arms on the top rung and set his chin on them. ‘So I did.’ His smile vanished, his cheeks darkened and for a second he looked furiously, frighteningly angry. ‘The other reason you should think again, your Excellencies, is this: if you don’t, I’ll stick up pairs of giant mirrors facing each other across Trafalgar Square, Bishopsgate and Oxford bloody Circus.’
Senator Maggie paled, but there were confused laughs from some of the others, and one old man said defiantly, ‘So what?’
He sucked his teeth. ‘So I reckon that’s at least a couple of hundred thousand people being caught between them every day. Say only five per cent of them cross over; that’s ten thousand new Mirrorstocrats. Daily. I’ll flood London-Under-Glass with sodding aristos until the mirrorsquitos can’t suck a drop of blood that’s not blue.’ He licked
