Our Lady of the Streets (The Skyscraper Throne) Read Online Free PDF

but unbearable, so Pen broke it. ‘Timon, right?’ she said, putting a hand on his carved sleeve. ‘Good meeting you. Petris and Ezekiel are inside. What do you say we talk to them, get a search party organised? I’m sure we can find your friend.’
    Timon hesitated, considering this, and then nodded, the stone of his neck grinding loudly against itself. Pen gestured for him to follow her inside, but he said, ‘If it’s all right, Lady Khan, I’ll stay out here and smoke for a bit. Can I find you later?’
    His hand blurred to his mouth and suddenly there was a lit roll-up jammed between his stone lips. The tip flared as he drew on it.
    Lady Khan
. Pen stiffened slightly. ‘Call me Pen,’ she said.
    She ushered Beth towards the doors, and this time Bethdid lean on her. As they went inside Pen looked over her shoulder. Smoke streamed slowly out between Timon’s lips. He was breathing deeply, gathering himself to step back onto the long, exhausting path of searching and hoping. As she watched, he turned his hand over and stared at the inside of his right wrist. The stone had flaked away, and on the pallid skin underneath it was a tattoo of a tower-block crown.
    *
     
    Funny
, Pen thought to herself as she surveyed the lower lobby,
when I was a kid I would have killed to live in Selfridges
.
    The concession stands thronged with figures, glass, stone and flesh. Shouts echoed off the art deco rafters, threats and bids and promises and insults. Lampfolk argued in flash-bulb semaphores, their voices glimmering from the wires in their glass throats and throwing stark shadows on the walls. The display cases once stocked with expensive perfumes and skin-creams and make-up now were loaded up with wires and batteries and chocolate, carrots and cabbages, old family keepsakes, tins of soup and cans of Coke. In the middle, in the densest part of the crowd, two old men were ladling stew from a massive aluminium saucepan balanced on top of four camping stoves. Men and women jostled and elbowed each other as they waited their turn in what was more a small linear scrum than a queue.
    Affrit Candleman stood at one stall, his glass skin shabby with soot. The old Blankleit was haranguing a passingPavement Priest with hand gestures and semaphores as he pointed to a plastic bag of light bulbs by his foot, but the statue didn’t turn around; he wasn’t interested in Candleman’s particular brand of bespoke nostalgia. Right now, no one needed reminding how good the good times had been.
    Selfridges’ ground floor was now part market, part soup kitchen and all chaos. Beth pulled her hood up carefully and, with Pen still supporting her, they entered the ruckus.
    It had made sense, when the symptoms first struck the city, for those families displaced from their homes to come here. The fevers hadn’t touched this place, and there was food and shelter – and even an improbably well-stocked wine cellar for the large numbers of men and women who’d felt the apocalypse would be more appealing if they were blind drunk. As stocks dwindled they’d organised. Rough and ready committees had formed and then almost immediately disintegrated, but enterprising foragers brought in just enough extortionately priced carrots and canned tuna to keep the whole thing going. It was noisy and crowded, with plenty of people coming and going, and in those first weeks it was as good a place as any for Beth to hide.
    But then Petris had appeared, his stone monk’s habit silhouetted in the doorway. He’d zigzagged across the floor in his stop-motion, Pavement Priest way, growling drunkenly and peering into frightened faces until he’d clapped eyes on Beth.
    Even drunk – and he had been
astoundingly
drunk; the vodka sharpness that had risen off him still stung Pen’s nostrils – he’d understood the situation. He’d let his gaze slide off Beth and then he’d blurred away.
    Later, while the rest of the building slept, he’d met them on the roof. He’d