Free Our Lady of the Streets (The Skyscraper Throne) by Tom Pollock Page A

Reach, and not even the Crane King himself had been a match for the enemy they faced now. ‘
That
’
s not a lot
.’
    ‘Not a lot,’ Gutterglass conceded, ‘but it is something. Three hundred and fifty-nine smart, scared, motivated minds. And maybe, just maybe, one of them will think of something.’ She paused. ‘As long as we can keep their faith alive.’ She turned her eggshell eyes towards the counter. Lined up under the spice rack in plastic bottles were a dozen carefully measured draughts of a dark metallic liquid.
    ‘
And if keeping their faith means stealing their memories
,’ Beth said, ‘
then that
’
s what we
’
ll do, huh? No, Glas. I
’
m not crossing that line
.’
    ‘My Lady, it is wise to have contingency plans. Petris and Ezekiel both feel—’
    ‘
I don
’
t care. Destroy it
.’
    She thought about the conical flask in her rucksack upstairs, about the memories that churned and crawled under the glass. The pang in her chest was like a broken rib.
    Gutterglass bowed in acquiescence. ‘Shall we go again?’ she asked. ‘Try for only one Masonry Man this time?’
    Beth shook her head. ‘
Later. There’s someone I want to see
.’
    *
     
    In a bay in the lowest level of the car park lay a hunk of rock bleached by strip-lighting. It might once have been human-shaped, but it had been heavily eroded by rain and wind and whittled by knife-point graffiti. A muffled crying came from inside the stone.
    Beth tapped the worn statue with the butt of her railing, and it crumbled. The crying grew louder for a moment and then stopped altogether. A pudgy baby with slate-grey skin and storm-grey eyes regarded her seriously from his crevice inside the stone. He always looked at her like this, Beth thought, no matter how much she changed, no matter that her eyes were full of lights and her skin scaled with tiny roofs and speckled with little sodium lamps, he always recognised her.
    ‘
You
’
re growing, Petrol-Sweat
,’ she said to him, and he gurgled delightedly at the urban sounds that made up her voice. ‘
It
’
ll be getting cramped in there in a bit
.’ In truth, the space inside the statue grew along with him. This was normal for a Pavement Priest, Petris had told her.
    When they’d brought him here, Beth had insisted on trying to take him out of the statue, to have him with her in the dormitory, despite the monk’s protestations, but over the course of four hours the stone had grown back, out of him and around him like fast-swelling tumours. He’d shrieked and shrieked, and though Beth had sat with him the whole time, there’d been nothing she could do.
    This, Petris had assured her, was also normal.
    ‘
Not growing fast enough
,’ Beth thought ruefully. Sheshowed him the conical flask and he gurgled and reached for it.
    ‘
Whoa there!
’ She pulled it out of his reach and he made a disgruntled little fist. ‘
Not until you
’
re older
.’ She thought of the memories pent up in the flask: the rangy teenager with brick dust in his hair who’d raced Railwraiths and fought against the Crane King. She felt a flush of heat through the subways under her cheeks as she remembered the texture of his hands under the trees of Battersea Park.
    ‘
A lot older
,’ she repeated. She sighed. There was more than her embarrassment to think about. Gutterglass didn’t know what would happen if you fed seventeen-year-old memories to a six-month-old child, but in the words of the trash-spirit: ‘
I wouldn
’
t anticipate anything good
.’
    So Beth waited, and waited some more, and prayed she could last out the days of the war and still be here when the Son of the Streets’ reborn body caught up with his bottled dreams.
    ‘
I did a bad thing today
,’ she said. ‘
I hurt a friend. I did it on purpose. I
’
m telling myself it
’
s because her safety
’
s more important than her feelings and that
’
s true as far as it goes. Only, I can
’
t help remembering that you told me to go home so