The men’s oil-slicked faces had a rainbow sheen. Their lips made faint sucking noises as they parted for breath. Click click click went the cigarette lighters — each of them had one, and they snapped them open and shut as they walked, open and shut, open and shut Their acrid stench cut through Beth’s sinuses like sandpaper and tears stung her eyes. Fil had told her about their appearance, the smell, even the lighters. The one thing she hadn’t expected was the symmetry.
They tilted their heads and smiled their black smiles identically. When one of them raised his right hand in greeting, another on the far side raised his left. They spread across the marshes like ripples on a pool of oil, graceful as dancers in their pitch-black tailoring.
Fil leaned on his spear and watched their display, his attitude all show-off cocky, but Beth saw his jaw clench. Maybe he wasn’t afraid, she told herself; maybe he was only fighting the smell.
The tallest of the Chemical Synod stepped forward from the centre and the others stepped back and out in precise formation.
‘Johnny Naphtha.’ Fil’s smile was tighter than a violin string.
‘Filiuss Viae,’ the oil-soaked man acknowledged. His deep voice was smooth, pleasant. ‘The Sson of the Sstreetss. Pipssqueak of the Pavementss. Visseroy of the Viaductss. Sswame of the Ssidewalkss. Malingerer of the M25-’
Fil sighed and interrupted. ‘Could you possibly stop taking the piss, Johnny?’
‘Sstunned that you would ssuggesst I would commit ssuch ssacrilege, Filiuss.’ Johnny turned to Beth and the synod bowed to her in unison. Oil dripped from their foreheads to splash on the pebbles. ‘And who is this Kissmet- kisssed courtessan who iss kind enough to accompany your Highnessss?’
‘I am not,’ Beth said flatly, ‘a bleedin’ courtesan.’
Fil’s brow wrinkled. ‘A what?’
‘It’s a nice word for a hooker,’ said Beth, who’d learned it from Pen.
‘Sso ssorry, a ssimple ssemantic sslip.’ Johnny inclined his head. ‘A conssort, then.’
‘Not one of them neither.’
‘Ah.’ Johnny Naphtha’s smile widened, and a strange thought occurred to Beth, that that smile was indestructible, that you could put Johnny Naphtha through a car-crusher and his grin alone would come out whole on the other side.
‘I’d certainly ssooner commit ssuicide than distress such a ssoul further,’ he said smoothly. He gestured back towards the dye factory. ‘So pleasse, come insside.’
The door of the dye factory led through to metal-walled cloisters covered in oceans of rust and continents of dead brown moss. The Chemical Synod formed up around Beth as they walked, wrapping her in dizzying fumes. The snap of the lighters filled her with a thrilling premonition of fire. She was beginning to feel light-headed, and she snarled inwardly at herself to stay alert.
Johnny Naphtha and Filius Viae loped side-by-side up ahead, apparently haggling over the price of her transformation. Johnny Naphtha bent his head, listening closely while Fil described what he wanted.
Beth studied his sinewy back, noting the oily sweat that slicked it, the way his sharp shoulder blades protruded. Then his shoulders slumped and he gestured once, as though protesting, but his heart didn’t seem to be in it.
Johnny Naphtha produced a clear bottle from inside his jacket and Fil resentfully took a long swig Or that’s what it looked like, but the level of the liquid in the bottle didn’t go down; instead it changed colour, grew darker. Fil handed the bottle back to Johnny Naphtha, who snatched it from his reluctant fingers and slipped it back into his coat.
‘ Do you really want to be like me? ’ he’d asked her. And there was only one answer: to be like him, to understand this place the way he did; to belong to the city, the way he did. The idea stole away her breath and sealed it in a secret place under her heart.
‘That’s disgusting,’ said Beth. The famous pool was thick with oily filth and fringed with blackened grass. A chain-link fence surrounded it, and a rust-eaten sign warned interlopers:
BEWARE RUDER ARM
Some joker had graffiti’d in an arm in black, making the rudest sign they could think of. The synod’s members stood around the perimeter, snapping their lighters.
Fil faced Beth across the water. ‘What is?’
‘ That,’ she said, pointing at the pool. ‘It’s filthy.’
‘It is?’ He sounded surprised.
‘Look how polluted it is-’
He looked incredulous. ‘Of course it’s polluted! What — did you think you could pick up powers like I’ve got by swimming in clean water? You might as well go home and take a bloody bath!’
‘The day I take bathing advice from you, petrol-sweat,’ she countered, ‘is the day I kill myself.’ Her reflection wavered dimly on the oily surface. She could make out the outline of her head, but the face set into it was a blank.
‘So,’ she said. Her voice was steady, but her heart was hammering.
‘So,’ he replied.
‘Better get on with it, I guess.’
‘I guess.’
‘Just wasting time here.’
‘Yep.’
‘No going back now.’
The synod symmetrically shook their heads, and Beth felt a jolt in her chest. It was like hearing a heavy door slam behind you in a dark house.
She sat down on the bank of the pool, kicked off her trainers and pulled off her socks. Oily black mud chilled the skin between her toes. Tentatively she stuck one foot into the filthy water ‘Ow!’ she cried, and yanked it back. The skin had blistered red. She looked up at Fil.
‘I did tell you it could hurt.’
‘ Right,’ she muttered under her breath and stood up. She poised herself on the dead grass at the edge and bent like a diver, ready to get in. If she plunged in as fast as possible, she figured, she’d at least get the shock over with.
The blood thundered in her ears like trains, like traffic, like hollow pipes in the basements of tower blocks, like tides of the river itself.
Do you really want to be like me?
She tensed her muscles.
‘Beth,’ Fil said. ‘I’m proud-’
She dived.
CHAPTER 28
Beth involuntarily screwed up her eyes and clamped her mouth shut. She exhaled hard through her nose as the thick meniscus of the pool slid over her face. Then the water swallowed her.
Liquid rushed into her ears, roared in, drowning out her heartbeat. She felt her T-shirt billowing as the water covered her stomach, prickling it like insect feet. Blisters erupted on her neck, inside her ears, between her fingers, stinging her lips.
Don’t breathe in, don’t breathe in.
She pushed more breath out of her nostrils. She couldn’t imagine the pain of having the toxins flood her sinuses, but the pressure built up steadily in her chest. She held her mouth shut.
Don’t breathe. Don’t breathe. Don’t panic.
When you have to tell yourself that, a voice in her head countered dryly, you’re already screwed.
The water savaged her skin. She could feel warm blood pouring out through her pores.
The pressure grew as the liquid squeezed her until every beat of her pulse felt fit to crack open her head.
