‘Tough being religious, is it?’ she asked.
Petris barked out a laugh. ‘It’s like sleeping with another man’s wife,’ he told her, ‘nine parts guilt to one part ecstasy, and somehow you’re always alone again in the morning.’
Beth snorted. ‘Bitter, much?’ she said. ‘Well, I’d love to have the time to care.’ She clapped her hands abruptly. ‘Get it together, stoneskin. Sober up, rally your troops. There’s a war on, or haven’t you heard?’
Petris shook his head. Even the tiny motion made the world blur alarmingly and his pulse slammed unpleasantly at the base of his skull. He was very much not in the mood for idiots, which was a shame, because the girl was talking like one. With extreme effort, he hefted his heavy legs under his stone habit and walked into the shade of a leafless oak tree, big enough to cast enough shadow to get him out of that bastard sun. Only then did he rasp, ‘Come again?’
‘Rally. Your. Troops.’ Beth craned her neck over her shoulder, looking southwest.
With a sinking feeling, Petris realised he didn’t need to ask what she was looking at. ‘That’s what I thought you said.’ It had taken all of ninety seconds for him to regret waking up this morning.
‘I’m storming the keep, Petris,’ she said. ‘I’m taking Reach’s house. I need an army. Zeke’s boys did their best, but they didn’t cut it. I need more. I need the best. “ If there’s one thing I’m better at than drinking it’s fighting,” huh?’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘Well, little did I know just how big a boast that was. Time to make good on it.’
Petris fixed her with a sullen stare. ‘I believe you were here when Filius asked the same,’ he said, ‘and I will give you the same answer: No. I cannot fight for Mater Viae’s return.’
Beth hopped onto the headstone for Stanley Philips. End of an Error. ‘Just as well,’ she said coldly, ‘because she’s not coming back.’
A shiver rippled up Petris’ spine. He went quiet for a long time.
‘Really?’ he said finally, with forced levity. ‘That’s interesting. Filius, Gutterglass and Fleet’s war party all say differently.’
‘Fleet’s war party says meow and bugger all else,’ Beth countered. ‘But as for Fil and Glas, they’re both wrong. I don’t know why yet, but I’m sure of it: Mater Viae is not coming back to London.’ Her voice was clear as she spoke. She didn’t blink.
Petris swallowed down enough of the mingled hope and disappointment rising in his throat to growl, ‘How do I know I can trust your word?’
‘You can’t,’ she said bluntly, ‘so stop taking people’s word for stuff. Work it out for yourself.’ She ticked off points on her fingers. ‘Her only son gets shredded by the Wire Mistress. Where was she? Nowhere. The first army to fight for her in fifteen years gets ground into dogmeat on the banks of the Thames, and where is she? Again, nowhere. And then of course there’s the Cats.’
‘The Cats that are never seen without her, you mean?’ Petris said, barely amused.
‘ Exactly.’ Beth leaned forward. ‘Not once, not for one day. I asked around. Not in the whole of recorded history have Mater Viae and her whole retinue ever been seen apart. So why in Christ’s name are they here without her now?’
Petris didn’t answer.
‘Unless,’ Beth continued, and paused.
She had one of those disturbingly intense gazes he could feel on the back of his own eyesockets.
‘Unless she’s somewhere else, somewhere the Cats can’t follow.’
Petris narrowed his eyes. ‘That’s thin, girl.’
‘Thinner than a supermodel’s cake budget, I know,’ Beth agreed, ‘but I’m sure it’s right. It feels right, doesn’t it?’
Petris breathed out and shut his eyes. Yes, it feels right, he admitted silently — but was that only because he wanted it to be true? Because he craved the simple joy of crushed scaffolding in his gauntlets far more than the intricate, addictive torture of secretly praying to a Goddess who never spoke back?
‘All right,’ he said at last, ‘I’ll sing the Treaty Song. I’ll put what you’ve said to the Stone Parliament. All I can promise is a vote, but it will take time.’
Beth blanched at the word time, but she nodded in reluctant acceptance. This was as good as she was going to get. She stood and turned towards the gate.
‘What?’ Petris said. ‘You aren’t going to wait for an answer?’
Beth shook her head. ‘Reach has got my best friend,’ she said. ‘Waiting’s not getting her any more rescued.’
‘I’ve heard,’ Petris said soberly. He was pissed off and hungover and had no inclination to sugarcoat this. ‘The Mistress’ host. I hope by “rescue” you mean “kill”, because that’s the best thing you can do for her now. Her death’s inevitable anyway.’
Beth looked at him in a way that scared him. It was a fanatical look, a look that didn’t accept that anything was inevitable, that wouldn’t accept it. A look that despised him for being weak enough to believe that it was. She hefted Filius’ spear.
‘So you’re going alone?’ Petris was appalled. ‘Into battle a — a God short. That’s-’ He floundered, and finally finished, ‘That’s rash.’
A thin smile crossed Beth’s lips, her face dappled red under the autumn trees.
‘Paraphrasing a wiser friend of mine,’ she said, ‘rash is where I excel.’ Her smile fell away. ‘Gather your church,’ she said. ‘Get the right answer. Get it fast.’ And she ran off through the trees towards the hooting traffic.
CHAPTER 42
Beth raced through London. She felt the gaze of the gargoyles from Highgate’s slated roofs, and haughty men stared down at her from tower block windows, reflections of people who weren’t there. It felt like the whole of the city was urging her on.
Railwraiths clattered past her, dragging carriages of commuters for another day’s work. The passengers were incurious; if they saw her at all through the trains’ filthy windows they didn’t acknowledge it.
She leaped off the tracks near King’s Cross and as her spark-scorched feet hit the tarmac she wound her way past the Chinese takeaways and minicab offices on Pentonville Road, as quick and subtle as water in a gutter. The pavements were thick with pedestrians all bundled up in thick coats against a cold she barely felt, chattering into mobile phones, laughing, complaining about how little sleep they’d had: the lifeblood of the human city, sluggishly beginning to circulate after a cold night.
They were slowing Beth down.
She turned into the backstreets, whirling past graffiti-covered bins, homeless people huddled in sleeping-bags and winos sleeping in pools of piss near the back doors of strip clubs. Drum’n’bass pulsed from an open window in a flat four storeys above — a student, maybe, a rich one, given how high the rents were in this area. She’d tagged these streets years ago; she retrod them now, this time leaving only a scent of petrol and damp cement behind her.
As the buildings became older and grander and the streets more narrow she slowed to a walk. The cranes reared over her; cruel hooks were connected to their jibs by umbilical cords of chain. A street sign on the wall above her read Dean’s Court, City of London EC2Y. She grinned to herself. These pavements her feet were drawing sustenance from belonged to Reach.
She rounded a corner into a pedestrianised square where glass towers punctured the old City’s collapsing grandeur. Now people were seeing her; more than one of the well-heeled men and women who were walking into these buildings stopped to stare at this apparition of oil and grime, with her railing and her manic glare. On the front page of their newspapers she saw versions of the same headline:
Earthquake in London, Chelsea Bridge badly shaken.
‘People believe the story,’ Glas had said, ‘not the facts.’
She grinned or grimaced or sneered — she didn’t know how these smartly dressed movers and shakers would interpret it. She felt more affinity for the buildings around her than these people. The only thing they had in common
