‘Oh? And what’s another way?’
‘Another way would be to say that Gutterglass raised it. I laughed at it. Then I realised he was serious and I argued for two solid hours, at the end of which he threatened to give my body back to the Chemical Synod and to ensure that I spend my next incarnation inside an abstract sculpture with holes in all the most uncomfortable places. At which point, yes, I suppose you could say I “agreed” you could lead them with me.’
‘Oh.’ I had been proud of that, too, imagining myself fierce at the head of a battalion of stone warriors. Now I can feel that pride swan-diving towards my bowels.
‘Gutterglass wants you visible.’ Disgust sours the stone angel’s voice. ‘He wants us reminded who we’re fighting for. Frankly I think a stuffed cat and a scarecrow would be a better symbol for Our Lady’s terrible beauty than you, but sadly, you’re what we have.’
A creaking of stone drowns out any attempt at self-justification. His vast grey wings extend either side of him, cloaking me in shadow. ‘If she wants to us to be inspired, then she should come and inspire us herself.’ I can hear the bitter complaint in his voice. ‘I need real advantages, not symbolic ones. I need Fleet’s war party, I need the Great Fire, the only weapon our foe has ever really feared.’ He exhales wearily. ‘And I need a rest. We’re going into battle against the Crane King, for Thames’ sake ‘I need a God. And instead I have you.’ He shakes his heavy stone head and flaps laboriously away.
CHAPTER 33
An army was gathering in Battersea Park. Streetlamps flickered beside the river and white light rippled along the road to Chelsea Bridge as bright spirits filled empty bulbs. The Blankleits flexed their fields and chattered in excited flashes. A few had fused together peaked caps from glass, semblances of military uniform and now they threw each other badly executed salutes. The Russian in the ragged coat leaned against a lamppost and drank, shaking his head at their enthusiasm.
Gutterglass had been busy too. Foxes and feral dogs yipped and barked and play-fought on the grass. They’d bounded with canine obedience after the Pylon Spiders who’d come by their bins, interrupting their scavenging with stories of a hunt to be joined. Deep in the park’s wooded thickets, far from the white lamps of the shore, glowing amber figures practised their war-waltzes, building their charges with slow turns. Shockwaves uprooted trees and twisted the fallen leaves into whirling vortices. All one hundred and eleven Sodiumite families were called, and most came, but of Electra and her sisters there was no word. Rumour fluttered through the ranks that Filius Viae was biting his blackened nails at their absence.
Pavement Priests moved through the throng, giving benediction in the name of the Lady of the Streets. Their steps were painstakingly slow; they were hoarding their energy for the battles to come.
And, sitting on park a bench, facing the Thames, Beth was pouring the prince of this little war party a cup of good, strong tea.
‘These’ — he sprayed crumbs over the half-empty packet of HobNobs resting on his lap — ‘are amazing.’
‘You should try the chocolate ones.’ Beth said. ‘They’ll blow you away.’
‘There are chocolate ones?’ he said in an awestruck voice.
She laughed. ‘You have much to learn, Grasshopper.’
‘Grasshopper?’
‘It’s a kind of insect.’
‘I know what a grasshopper is, Beth, I just don’t know why you’d call me one. I’m at least two legs short for one thing, and I can’t jump like they do, I mean, I wish but-’
‘Fil, it’s just a-’ Beth interrupted, but the odds against him being familiar with Kung-Fu were astronomical. She sighed. ‘Never mind.’
Steam whistled from the kettle and she smiled her thanks to the Blankleit whose lap was heating it (she couldn’t pronounce his name, so she’d nicknamed him ‘Steve’). She poured water into the two chipped Mr Men mugs she’d dug out of a skip. She counted to ninety in her head, fished out the teabags, added milk and handed one to Fil.
Who stared at it.
‘What am I supposed to do with that?’
‘You drink it.’
He squinted at the liquid suspiciously, and then took a large gulp.
Beth smiled and sipped her tea while Fil doubled up coughing and spluttering. ‘ Ow,’ he wheezed hoarsely.
‘Hot?’
‘It’s scalding! People actually drink this? Voluntarily? That’s barbaric.’
‘We usually let it cool down a bit first.’ She reached across and lifted a HobNob from the packet on his lap. ‘So what you’re saying,’ she said, returning to their previous conversation, ‘is that we’re totally boned.’ She made sure that her face was turned away from Steve so he couldn’t read her lips.
‘I didn’t say that at all,’ he protested. ‘It’s simple: all we have to do is get this little lot’ — he jerked a thumb at the variegated horde in the park behind him — ‘across that bridge, east into the City to Blackfriars. Get ’em formed up and then march on St Paul’s without ol’ Rubbleface noticing it.’
‘Yeah,’ Beth dunked her HobNob, ‘but the Whities and the Amberglows will be trying to rip each other’s throats out as soon as they get within a hundred yards of each other. I can’t imagine that will attract any attention. And the Pavement Priests are determined to charge on Reach with flags waving and a bloody fanfare. And I have no idea how to control the dogs. Remind me what happens if Reach’s forces catch us in the open?’
Fil raised his tea cautiously back to his mouth, darting furtive glances at Beth to check that he was doing it right.
‘They pull us apart like an overfull binbag,’ he replied. ‘Probably.’
‘Oh, so we’re only probably totally boned.’
‘Exactly.’
There was a long silence.
Neither of them had mentioned the kiss. That moment on Canary Wharf was stranded in time, like a lonely shout that needs to be taken up before its echoes fade, or be forgotten.
Be careful of that kiss, Beth cautioned herself harshly. They were at war. She thought of her dad, frozen in grief at his kitchen table. How could you ever let yourself love someone — yes, she let herself think the word love — when they might not survive the night?
Fil was engrossed in a one-sided staring contest with the last remaining HobNob.
‘It all seemed such a good idea at the time,’ he said. ‘Simple: meet a girl, round up a ragtag army, carry out an all-out assault on a skyscraper God.’ He gazed at the biscuit. ‘Discover HobNobs.’
Meet a girl. Beth stared carefully ahead and said nothing.
‘Fair point,’ he said into the silence, ‘put like that it sounds like a really terrible idea. But it’s at least half your fault. I was all for scarpering. I’d’ve been out of here faster than a sewer rat down a pipe. It was you got me to stay.’
Beth’s smile was tight-lipped. ‘That’s me, a siren call to self-destruction.’
He gazed out over the water for a while, and then, later enough that it was almost a non sequitur, he said, ‘I’m glad, though. Glad I did stay.’
Beth looked at him. ‘Even if it was a terrible idea?’
‘Even if.’
Beth studied the paving between her feet as though following the cracks might show her the branching of her possible futures. She splashed the dregs of her tea onto them and stood up. ‘Fil,’ she said, ‘a word?’
She mouthed goodbye to the Blankleit and led Fil through the treeline, under the cover of the massive beeches. Fallen leaves crunched under her feet. Finally, she turned to face him. Her heart was clamping up hard in her chest, but she saw he already knew what she was going to say.
His expression was neither wounded nor indifferent, both of which she’d feared. Instead, his grey eyes were intent. ‘This is about last night?’
