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

been scared and angry, swigging constantly from an unmarked bottle.
The cemetery had been hit
, he’d said.
    ‘Goddamn clayling popped right out of Stoke Newington High Street,’ he’d growled. ‘Asked if we would serve
Her
. I told him to fuck off.’ Another swig. ‘I hadn’t even closed my mouth and then there were a thousand of them, all identical, all staring at me with those empty fucking eyes. We didn’t stand a chance.’
    He had fifty stoneskins, he’d said, in sore need of a stiff drink, a place to regroup and something to believe in. ‘We can find the first two somewhere else,’ he’d grunted at Beth, ‘but right now, you’re the only candidate for the third I don’t want to put my fist through.’
    So, with Pen praying she wouldn’t, Beth had let them stay. And then, as Pen had known they would, more stone and bronze figures had appeared at Selfridges’ doors. Ezekiel and Bracchion and Templar and Churchill had all limped in at the head of their own decimated bands. Then came little glowing clusters that were the remnants of Sodiumite war-families, their glass skins cracked and their limbs shattered; then the Blankleits had come after them.
    It took constant, frantic work to keep Beth’s presencequiet. All anyone knew when they arrived was that this was where the others had come. One by one, newcomers were vetted and vouched for before being let in on the secret. Others – whom no one knew or no one trusted – were frozen out until they left to look for another home. For those whom remained, Beth’s was the name that lurked unspoken in every room, that hovered dangerously on the lips of sleepers as they mumbled in their dreams.
    Beth looked increasingly alarmed as their numbers swelled. Pen knew what she was thinking: these people were all looking for her to lead them against the power of the Mirrored Goddess, but she had not the faintest idea how. More and more, Beth said less and less. She’d withdrawn, losing herself amongst the department store’s human population, where her roof-tile scales and street-laced skin were unremarkable: just one more oddity in a world gone insane.
    Pen wondered, as she wondered almost every day now, whether it was time to go.
    *
     
    Beth kept her head down and pressed through the crowd, Oscar chirruping quietly under her hood. A thickset man blundered into her and she would have fallen if Pen hadn’t caught her.
    They called the lift and Beth pressed five. A few seconds later they arrived at the Beds and Bedlinen department. The wooden bedsteads had long since been smashed up and used for firewood, but they’d designated this floor thedormitory regardless, and mattresses were lined up all over the floor, even made up with store stock, thanks to a cheery, middle-aged man from Dalston called Henry. Henry believed in the power of little luxuries like clean sheets to lift people’s moods, and he spent most of his time whistling show tunes and hand-washing duvet covers while he waited for the government rescue he was convinced was coming any day now.
    Beth dropped onto an unoccupied bed and arched a road-marked eyebrow at Pen. ‘
What?
’
    ‘What do you mean, what?’ Pen countered.
    ‘
You look like you have something on your mind
.’
    Pen shrugged. She really wanted to have it out with Beth, but not while she was exhausted. She gestured at the duvet cover, and the beaming cartoon panda dyed on it. ‘It’s just I’ve been your best friend for almost four years now and I never would have you pegged for a panda girl.’
    Beth smiled thinly. She looked back towards the front of the building where, for all Pen knew, Timon was still smoking and brooding.
    ‘
Well
,’ she said, ‘
I do move in mysterious ways
.’ She shuffled down under the duvet. ‘
You know what? At times like this, I miss the cats. I mean, I know Mater Viae wants to kill me and all, and She
’
s smashing up the city I live in, but did She have to lure away all my sodding cats as