The Glass God (16 page)

At length, as if the question had come out despite the speaker’s best intentions, the scarred man said, “Who r u?!”

Sharon beamed and held out her hand. The man stared at it, horrified, confused, backing away half a pace as if expecting a blade to appear from somewhere within the depths of Sharon’s orange top.

“I’m Sharon,” she explained. “This is Rhys…⁠”

“Hello,” mumbled Rhys, feeling round the back of his head, where a lump was swelling up from the disordered surface of his scalp.

“⁠… we’re from Magicals Anonymous, the community support group!”

They looked at her without moving.

“Okay, I’m guessing you guys haven’t heard of us, but, seriously, it’s great and you’d be welcome at the meetings. I mean, it’s not just meetings, is it, Rhys…⁠?”

“No, Ms Li.”

“⁠… we also give advice on local council issues, the latest legislations and what to do if you get an imp infestation.”

“And health and safety,” added Rhys. “I th-th-think someone wanted classes in that…⁠”

“⁠… which sounds like an excellent idea!” concluded Sharon. “I mean, these things are important, aren’t they? And also it’s, like, you get these magicians, right, and they’re into all their blood and darkness and stuff, and I honestly think that if more of these guys just got out a bit and had a nice time with colleagues who understood, then there’d be fewer roaming nightmares haunting the city streets, don’t you?”

The scarred man looked from Sharon, to Rhys, and back again, and didn’t understand. And because he didn’t understand, and his social responses were limited, and because his friends were watching and they, too, didn’t have enough knowledge of what to do in these circumstances, he drew his hand back and swung his fist as hard as he could towards Sharon’s face.

She saw it a moment before it struck, and vanished.

His fist sailed through empty air, and there was an audible gasp. A moment later, the chair toppled back. The scarred man turned in horror and surprise to Rhys, who shrugged. Then a voice, drifting out of nowhere, proclaimed,

“Wow, you have so many issues, it’s actually quite sad?”

The man lunged at the voice, swinging his fists at random, and struck nothing. Round the room, men and women were tensing up, murmurs rippling in consternation.

“And when I say sad,” went on the voice, “I don’t mean it in the ‘uncool’ way. I mean properly sad, as in, like, upsetting. You know, there’s a bit of me that really goes out to you, now I can see just how much shit you’ve been going through and just what that’s done for your self-esteem.”

The scarred man swung again at nothing, overbalanced and went tumbling into the arms of several others. They just laughed, pushing him back into the centre of the floor.

“Though the part of me that
does
feel sorry,” Sharon went on, “is being seriously undermined by this whole beating-people-up thing, which I totally think is overcompensating.”

“Wer r u?!”

She made no answer.

“Wer r u?!” he screamed.

Something moved behind him, where, in fact, it had always been. It was a pair of once-purple boots, now coated with mud which flew off them in great splats. It went sailing out of nowhere on a pair of laces and sliced squarely across the back of the scarred man’s skull. He staggered, falling onto his hands and knees; and there Sharon was, where she’d always been, in her soggy socks. She stood over the fallen man, boots raised high for another strike and yelled, “And this is what happens when you let your problems get out of control!”

The man rolled onto his back, staring up into the shaman’s face and raising his hands protectively. She drew back a touch, and slowly he relaxed. His mouth twisted into tight shapes, before finally, incredulously, opening up into what might have been the beginnings of a smile.

“U… r shaman,” he breathed.

“Uh… yeah?” Realising this might not have much force to it, Sharon raised her muddy boots again. “And I can’t be having gratuitous violence and that!”

Rhys sneezed. It wasn’t easy for an auto-immune response to be pointed, but he managed.

“Violence in the cause of self-defence,” Sharon went on, “is a sad but occasionally necessary evil, but it’s still evil and only necessary because society hasn’t sussed a smarter way of handling shit, so, and if I can just make this clear, I am, overall, very disappointed.”

The face of the man on the floor was still struggling with its own purpose. “U r shaman!” he repeated.

“Yeah, I did mention that, you know?”

He scrambled away from her, wriggling backwards, then flopped forwards again on his hands and knees before her. “U r shaman!” he cried out, and there was no denying it now, the joy in his voice. “U r shaman!” Around the room, others picked up the murmur, swelling it to a cacophony of strange voices.

“Right…⁠” murmured Sharon. “So this isn’t quite how…⁠”

“@ lst!” cried the man. “A shaman @ lst!”

It was a few minutes later.

Rhys sat on a metal junction box which had been torn off the walls, while a woman with a great purple scar sliced across her face from crown to chin, examined the back of his skull for blood or signs of permanent damage. A cardboard mug of what might have been tea with no milk had been pushed into his hands, but when he’d given it a cautious stir, something which might once have been living had floated to the surface, and now he was trying to find a tactful way to get rid of it. Not, he concluded, that the Tribe were necessarily big on tact.

Huddled in the near-dark of tyre-fuelled firelight, the Tribe, old and young, men and women, the dispossessed, shunned and forgotten, huddled safe from the night. The newer the member, the less scarred their features seemed to be, but the oldest among them had fingers of metal, skins of cling film, and only the occasional white of an eye suggested that anything about their faces had ever once been human. Rhys looked away, whenever those bright eyeballs in ruined features had rolled onto him, clutching his not-really-tea, and wondering how long was left until the dawn.

A few paces away, Sharon stood by a burning oil drum with a huddle of Tribesmen, warming her damp socks over the flame. The bare concrete beneath her feet was cold, but dry. Bare pipes and split cable housing in the ceiling and around the walls whispered of an electricity which had once been, and was now no more, in this dead place.

Dressed in a lacerated leather coat and torn trousers made of old hemp sack, the man who had recently been in contact with Sharon’s boots across the back of his head said, “i m 8ft.”

“Sharon,” she replied, as her socks steamed gently above the fire. “Sharon Li. Hi there.”

8ft, along with the rest of the Tribe, stared at her in wonder, and some in fear, like cats eyeing an angry bulldog. They talked, not so much with an accent, Sharon concluded, but with a dialect of their own, an assault on English bred from the era of the mobile phone, where vowels were decadent and punctuation a waste of space.

“w dnt no u wer shaman,” breathed 8ft reverently. “som com ere sayin dat dey r shaman, dat dey r leder, but no 1 is. u is. u r shaman.”

“Um… I am, but I don’t get why everyone’s so worked up about it.”

“u r shaman!” he repeated urgently. “we is tribe! we had shaman, but neon cort bitches kil im n now we av nofin. we is tribe wif no leader we is ppl wif no hed. mst rspct shaman,” he added, inducing sagely nods of agreement from his colleagues. “no law no lies no skin but da shaman… da shaman is da truf n u mst rspct truf.”

“And that’s great,” said Sharon brightly, turning the socks over for another round. “I’m loving the attitude there, and I hope you guys are completely cool if I just lay down, right here for the record, that while I’m open to discussion with you guys about, you know, the truth and stuff, I’ve already got this full-time job thing, so if you’re thinking that I should get with the… you know…⁠” – a flapping of sock, which might have been indicative of cutting knives and skin – “⁠… then I gotta tell you I’ll need to seriously think about that one before doing anything reckless.”

8ft just stared at her. So did the others, their gazes locked and curious, expression still seeping through the ruined faces. Sharon swallowed and looked back at 8ft, his features no less disfigured but acquiring a certain familiarity which she chose to take for comfort.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” she said, turning her sodden socks over to steam on the other side above the flames, “but usually when I tell people I’m a shaman, they look kinda… confused. Which isn’t to say I’m not, because I totally am,” she added quickly. “But everyone seems to want their shamans to be all… you know… feathery and profound and maybe have their own bongo drums, so the fact that you guys are all so… accepting… is a bit odd, especially what with the stuff that everyone says.”

8ft scowled, lines of skin opening and closing across his face. “Ppl lie,” he explained. “ppl mk truf wat dey wnt truf 2 b. ppl wnt us 2 b othr, aprt, bcos den dey dnt hv 2 fink bout us, dnt hv 2 lstn 2 us, n can prtend dat der lives got meanin, got truf, got wat dey wnt 2 fink dey got, evn tho its al lie. All lies n dey jst dont wana c. Bt u!” His eyes were bright in the glow of firelight. “U r shaman! U c truf, even dat wat is hid benef!”

“Um… I guess that is fair. And I don’t want to push my luck here, but uh… you haven’t seen the Midnight Mayor, have you?” Something flickered over 8ft’s face, a contraction, a curling in. “Average kinda guy, dark hair, blue eyes,” she went on hopefully. “Almost human? Only something almost human went down into the sewers near Deptford a few nights ago, and it was bleeding, and the sewers were tagged, and I kinda figured…⁠” She drew in a long, slow breath, “In my capacity as someone who knows the truth, I mean, I kinda figured you guys might know something. Although, ” she beamed, “if it turns out that you’re actually bad guys in all this, and you’re doing a kidnapping, murdering thing, then I gotta tell you that’s really anti-social and I can see why you guys get such a bad rap after all, not that I’m judging because that’s just not what we do, is it, Rhys?”

“No, Ms Li.”

Sharon speared 8ft with her best smile and added, so sweet her teeth ached, “Hope that’s all okay?”

8ft glanced round the brick hall, and this time, even the glare-fixed Tribe members turned away. “Y u wnt da mdnght mayr?” he muttered, voice dropping low.

“Apparently he’s the protector of the city,” said Sharon. “Which I think is such a stupid job title I just don’t know where to begin. I mean, no wonder the guy’s got problems with his management style, right?” These words were clearly not something even 8ft, liberal-minded as he could be, expected from a shaman. “Thing is,” she went on, “seems like there’s stuff that the city needs protecting
from
and that’s why it’s got a protector; otherwise it’d be a redundant role and not a very efficient use of resources. So when the Midnight Mayor goes missing, someone’s gotta get him back. Is that okay?” she added, sudden worry flickering over her face. “He didn’t say something stupid, did he? He’s like that, but then he’s got tact problems like you would not believe.”

8ft’s knuckles were raw red and bloodless white. “Da mdnght mayr woz nvr our frnd,” he muttered. “Nvr. 4 yrs we wer atacked, we 4ght, we bled n we died n da mdnght mayr stnd der n say ‘u r ugly n u cnt b gud’ b cos dat woz wat ppl wntd 2 belive n he woz no difrnt. but dis 1… dis mdnght mayr… he isnt lik dat.”

“Well… good?”

8ft shook his head sharply, a quick one-two. “No! he says he difrnt, says he want 2 b frnd, but der is somthin beneth, somethin in da blod… he not human. he not human. dis mdnght mayr, he b devil. he b angel. he b god.”

Sharon’s eyes went to Rhys, who gave a feeble shrug. “Um…when you say ‘god’,” she ventured, “I mean, it may just be a communication thing, but there’s something about that which suggests… something happened. Something has happened. Something… theological?” she suggested. “Maybe not theological, maybe more…⁠”

“Spiritual?” offered Rhys.

“Spiritual, yes, that’s exactly it. Something a bit beyond the comfort zone, if you get what I’m saying?”

8ft shifted uneasily, but didn’t need to give more than a brief nod.

“Fantastic,” sighed Sharon. “Okay, just a few more questions, you know, the important ones, because I’m already paying Rhys overtime here and apparently you’re supposed to have a break every other hour or so in order to increase efficiency, so, here’s the biggies… this god-devil-angel thing which may or may not be going down right now, does it involve any of the following: blood, death, horror, magic, gore, screaming, betrayal, misery and ritual dancing?”

8ft thought about it. “yeh,” he grunted.

“Yeah? Which bits?”

He thought again. “al of it. cept da dancin.”

Sharon’s smile was a lighthouse on a foggy night. “Fantastic,” she breathed. “Well, there’s some small comfort, isn’t there? Final question… do you have the Midnight Mayor?”

8ft shifted uneasily. “sorta,” he grumbled.

“Sorta? Oh God, there’s not, like, body parts are there, because I’m seriously not up for that.”

“I’m not either,” said Rhys, grateful that someone shared his response.

“u shuld com c 4 urslf.”

Chapter 26

Never Forget Your Roots

It’s coming.

It’s coming.

It’s coming.

Someone stop it.

Someone stop it.

Someone stop it!!

Stop it! Stop it before the soil cracks, before the stone splits, before the bones reach up! Stop it before the light goes out, before the iron rusts, before the pipes burst, before the walls crumble to dust! Stop it! STOP HIM!

Too late.

Too late.

Too late.

It’s here.

Chapter 27

Misery Loves Company

Sharon felt a shudder run up the length of her spine, and didn’t know why. She looked back at the receding firelight, and knew that whatever it was that had clattered her teeth, it wasn’t a fear of the dark.

“Rhys?” she muttered. “You hear anything?”

“Um… no, Ms Li? Do you?”

She didn’t answer, but turned to follow 8ft as he led them deeper into the tunnels beneath the mud. The light here was little more than a shadow thrown by the fading fires, or came from the occasional dying bulb dangling from the slimy brick wall. The mess of copper cables and pipes was thicker here, heading down with the slope of the ground towards a heavy, shut metal door; and if Sharon looked, and if she listened, there were still the echoes of things that had passed through the wires, still a memory embedded in the metal, a whisper of…