Free The Glass Republic: The Skyscraper Throne: Book II by Tom Pollock

bodies crouched for combat, their faces etched in rage.
    She stood slowly and unslung her spear. She had no voice, so she let her gaze speak for her, letting it travel slowly over the Pavement Priests as though her heart wasn’t suddenly slamming. She got ready to spring.
    The sound of beating wings grew louder and a life-sized angel carved from granite descended at a stately pace into the courtyard. Ezekiel’s neck churned against itself as he looked at her. Beth looked into the pinprick apertures in his hosanna-singing mask and imagined his pupils contracting in hate.
    ‘The blasphemer
and
the black marketeer.’ Ezekiel’s voice was as dry as dust. ‘Both at once. That’s … almost disappointing. Take them.’
    The statues blurred into motion, impossibly fast. Beth felt stone fingers grasping at her arm. She twisted from its grip and lashed out with her spear. Rock cracked and a dusty voice groaned. She spun around and swept legs from another. They were too quick for the eye, but she felt them through the street, moving on instinct. Her bare feet sucked up the rank energy of the city and she matched their speed, sliding between their unseen hands as though the air itself was oiled. She struck out for knees and elbows, only using the spear butt, but using it viciously. They fell around her with a sound like collapsing buildings, and for a fraction of a heartbeat she was back in the Demolition Fields, under the gaunt shadows of Reach’s cranes.
    A stone wing flickered into being, crunching into her jaw.Her head snapped back and something sharp pierced her tongue. Blood filled her mouth with a taste like hot asphalt.
    She stumbled and fell back. Statues hemmed her in, almost blotting out the glare of the terrified Candleman, who was sweating bullets of pure light as he pushed at the closing Pavement Priests with his fields. The statues parted and Ezekiel stood over her, wings extended in thin silhouette: Ezekiel the fanatic, Ezekiel who had followed her and counselled her and comforted her. Ezekiel whose faith she’d shattered when she pronounced his Goddess dead.
    Beth spat blood. She bared her teeth in a silent snarl and braced herself for the first stone foot to come crashing down on her chest.
    Nothing happened.
    The Pavement Priests stood there as if they were simple statues – as if there was nothing between their bellies and their backs but solid rock.
    Seconds ticked by.
    Uncertainly, Beth rose to her feet. The statues’ expressions were blank now, but she could feel the astonishment radiating from inside them.
    What?
she wondered.
What is it?
    A jolt of pain from her tooth made her wince and she touched the tender place instinctively with her punctured tongue. She faltered. The tooth felt
wrong
in her mouth, too thin, needle-like, and sharper than a fang.
    ‘
Viae—
’ The whispered oath came from a Pavement Priest with the mustachios of a Victorian gentleman. He tappedthe stone on his wrist and it crumbled like chalk. On the pale skin beneath was an image in iron-grey ink: the Towerblock Crown. The arm blurred to his mouth as he kissed the tattoo.
    Beth started forward and they parted for her. There was something horrified in Ezekiel’s shape as he melted from her path.
    A bathroom window with a fan in it was set into the wall. With Candleman’s light behind Beth, it became a dim mirror. She peeled her lower lip back with her fingers until she could see the place where it hurt. She stared in astonishment.
    A third of the way along her jaw, her gum had dried out, becoming rough, splitting and cracking – but the cracks were geometric; they turned at sharp right angles, outlining tiny rectangles of coarse flesh.
    No, not flesh
, she realised with a shudder,
brick.
    Where her canine should have been, the tiny bricks rose into the narrow cone of a church spire. The sharp iron cross that topped it was wet with her blood.
    Candleman’s words flashed again in her mind:
wipe the church-spire smile off her