half an inch into the wall, making dust trickle down from above.
Pen looked alarmed. ‘I get that you’re pissed off, B; you don’t have to bring the roof down on me.’
As she fell silent Beth became aware again of the noise that had always been there: the savage roar of Reach’s machines, only eighty yards away.
‘That picture you did of me,’ Pen said at last, like she had to offer something, ‘on the wall by my house. It was good. I liked it.’
Beth smiled awkwardly. ‘I was hoping you might come up with a poem for it.’
Pen’s lip twisted. ‘All right.
‘There once was a girl from Hackney, who told me she always would back me.
She went off the rails, with me on her tail, and this thing made of barbed wire attacked me.’
She looked at Beth. ‘It’s only a limerick, but I’m a bit rusty, you understand.’
Beth’s ears burnt in shame. She didn’t say anything.
‘Sorry,’ Pen said after a moment, ‘I’m just-’
‘-I know.’ Beth squared her shoulders and turned towards the exit Pen had pointed to. ‘Thanks, Pen.’
Pen’s breathing was shallow, like someone controlling panic. ‘You know I love you, B, but this isn’t for you,’ she whispered. ‘This is for me. I want to want this.’
Beth didn’t understand what she meant. She crouched by Victor’s body and closed his eyes. She felt a dangerous pinprick of sorrow for the old Russian, but she smothered it before it could grow.
Later, she promised herself. Later. She raised the spear to Pen and made for the passage.
The light was stronger there, and the pneumatic drills made the ground shake: the machines belonged to Reach, master of the Wire Mistress. The monsters had stolen her best friend, killed Victor and destroyed so much of her city. She felt fury in her chest, as hot and black and viscous as boiling tar. Her feet were about to break into a run when Pen’s voice rang up the tunnel.
‘B!’ She sounded fragile. ‘I’m scared.’
Beth stopped. ‘Pen?’ she called.
A long moment passed. When Pen answered, she sounded firmer, more in control. ‘No, I’m okay. Sorry, go on. I’m fine. It’s just taking me a while to get a grip on myself again- Go!’
Beth gritted her teeth, turned around, and for the first time in their friendship, she did what she was told.
Pen lay back on the shale, relishing the simple act of shutting her eyes. She took deep, painful breaths, ignoring her cracked ribs, expanding her diaphragm, because she could.
She regretted calling out, but even with the Mistress gone, her desires and fears kept flipping and reversing. She wondered if she’d ever again be able to want something for long enough to pursue it. She shifted, and winced. Every square inch of the fabric she wore was slippery with blood.
If I was going to bleed to death I would have done it days ago, she’d said. I know what I’m talking about.
It was the first proper lie she’d ever told Beth. Not bad for a friendship lasting three years, she told herself. Panic was swarming over her like tiny spiders, but there was a rush too. A sense of pure freedom.
Her eyes snapped open as a new sound sneaked into her ears under the all-too-familiar clatter of Reach’s machines: hurrying footsteps.
Pen’s heart lodged somewhere near her carotid artery. She opened her eyes and craned her neck to see.
CHAPTER 49
A rough rectangle of light, the door to Reach’s court, stood open before Beth. Something intensely and inconveniently bright was shining directly through her exit, hitting her retinas like a battering ram.
Blood-and-stonepiss-in-the-river, she swore silently. She was already deafened by the noise from beyond the doorway; even the panicked thud of her heartbeat had dissolved under the din. Apparently, she was going to have to go out there blind as well.
She hesitated. Outside, the King of Cranes, London’s nemesis, was waiting: the beast in the city’s skin.
He’s killing everything.
She crouched there, wiped the oily sweat from her palm and gripped the spear. Voices flitted in and out of her head.
You might need this. Drive it into the Crane King’s throat.
Come on, B Do more than just run.
Reach will tear you asunder.
Come on, B An ending is all you’ll find…
Do more than just She climbed to her feet and opened her ears to the full clamour of the building site.
— run.
She pelted out into the day.
At first she saw nothing but eye-scouring light as she ran headlong, clutching the spear, not daring to stop. His voice flew in from all around her, echoing in the churn and tear of steel and concrete: I am Reach I am Reach I will be I will be. And there were other sounds, too: the pounding of iron paws on rubble, the slaver and snap of Scaffwolves, horribly close.
Gradually her eyes began to cope: the light was the sun, bouncing off a pair of half-built skyscrapers. Reach had surrounded himself with mirrors. She shielded her eyes and looked from side to side. She sprang from one chunk of rubble to the next, sure-footed as a cat on the treacherous ground.
Cranes soared overhead, but they were just cranes, not fingers. They weren’t linked to hand or arm or body. Where was he? What was he? Her fingers were painfully tight on the spear.
Drive it into the Crane King’s throat.
I would, she thought desperately, if I could find his throat!
The edge of the building site reared up ahead, an impenetrable wreckage of concrete and broken wood and twisted metal, piled up against the hoardings. A growl ripped through the air behind her. She skidded, kicked up dust and turned.
Three Scaffwolves the size of horses prowled up over a mound of broken stone. Through the gaps in their steel skeletons Beth spied the far skyscraper, and reflected in its windows was her own terrified face.
The wolves advanced, heads slung low, ears back. Beth gave ground. She cast about helplessly, arm cocked back, the railing spear ready to throw, but she had no target. She could see diggers, cranes, but no vast construction God. All her pent-up courage was fizzing inside her, but she had no way to release it.
Rough stone bumped into her back. She had nowhere left to run.
She eyed the wolves, wondering if she could move fast enough to take them all. Bravado bubbled in her throat, tasting like blood, and she snarled at them, defiant.
But yet more dormant scaffolding sheathed the half-built tower blocks. Beth knew that if even she could cut down the metal monsters advancing on her, others would immediately take their place.
The wolves stopped. They growled their hollow growls and began to patrol a perimeter, marking a semi-circle around her. Beth growled back. She hawked and spat at them, and they grinned at her with their jagged teeth, begging her to commit to an attack.
And all around them, the storm of construction thundered on: the cranes cranked up their loads and the diggers hacked at the earth, though the cabs were all empty. There was no sign of the force which controlled them.
Beth’s blood hammered through her.
What are you waiting for?
Something slammed into her right shoulder from behind. She staggered forward, and then felt herself being hauled bodily back. Pain burnt up and down her right side — the bones were grinding together wrongly. Her spear- arm went limp.
Beth looked down at her shoulder. Pain made her dizzy, made her sick, made everything slow.
