The Glass God (45 page)

And then, without any ceremony or triumphant fanfare, Kelly said, “Oh my. Look at that.”

The Alderman sat upright in her chair, an email open on the screen in front of her. “Are you concerned that Big Brother might be watching you?” she asked, bright-faced as ever.

Sharon shifted uneasily in her seat. In all truth, she
was
a little concerned that Big Brother was watching – not necessarily an all-seeing organ of state security, but some higher power with a twisted sense of humour, or possibly just a bored wizard with a scrying glass and a limited understanding of the rules of privacy. However, what Kelly meant was…

“Do you know that every time you touch in and touch out with your Oyster card on the Underground the system records your journey? And that every credit card transaction is traceable to a specific location, and every time you use your library card there’s a note on a system which says so and whenever you log into a computer or access a wireless network or use the internet or book a cinema ticket or enter the congestion charge zone in a vehicle with carbon emissions of more than…⁠? I can see that you do.”

Sharon wasn’t convinced that Kelly could see that she did, but the Alderman, with a remarkable sense of self-preservation, had clearly decided not to press the point. “Now let us suppose,” she went on, merry as a mead-soused monk, “that you take all the last known movements of the witch, Brid, and all the last known movements of the striga, Zhanyi, and you map them together. Everywhere they travelled, everywhere they drew money from a machine, everything they bought which was similar, every journey which brought them into contact… what do you suppose you get?”

Sharon looked at Rhys. Rhys beamed. Sharon looked at Kelly. Kelly beamed. Sharon suddenly felt rather small and alone in the world. “Um… the hidden path and the misty truth?”

“You get
congruence
,” explained Kelly, and she clearly enjoyed the word “congruence” so much that she said it a few more times, just to see whether it was as good on the repetition as it had been on the first delivery. “A few places where their journeys collide. Of course we knew about the spa in Edgware Road; naturally their journeys collide there, it’s where Zhanyi passed the glass blade to Brid… and over a few months they’ve each passed through the centre of town because, frankly, who doesn’t…⁠? But then there’s this.”

She pushed her tablet towards Sharon, who stared muddy-eyed at the map which had appeared on it. It was covered with blue and red bubbles which, she guessed, marked every time Brid and Zhanyi had appeared on the vast electronic systems on which the city ran. Here was a purchase for £4.99 at a coffee shop in Piccadilly; there a deduction of £2.90 for an Underground journey made between zones; here a location request from Brid’s mobile phone as she tried to work out which of the exits from Elephant and Castle led to somewhere better. A great electronic mess of dates and times had been built up by the Aldermen, as Sharon slept, and overlaid on a map of London. But only in one place, for all the near-misses and could-be coincidences, did the various bubbles of Zhanyi’s and Brid’s activities collide, same time, same place.

Sharon looked up at Kelly, and saw that the Alderman was still, unaccountably, beaming. “Okay,” she said. “But maybe they’re just changing trains?”

“Oh, but Ms Li, look at the timings. Two and a half hours between touching out and touching back in? Even by Transport for London terms, that’s a very long time to get a connection.”

Sharon thought about it. Kelly, she had to admit, had a point.

Chapter 78

Build Your Towers High…

It is a temple.

Not many people would realise that was what it was, looking at it, which was odd, as anyone passing within a fifteen-mile radius of the place really couldn’t help
but
look at it, even on a cloudy day; especially on a cloudy day, in fact, when the very spire of the temple vanished into the vapours drifting overhead.

But, passing through its great shadow, which turned like a sundial across the city with the passage of each day, if any of the millions of people living beneath its might had paused, and stopped, and considered it, they, too, might have realised what the select few already knew: that it
was
a temple, glorious, majestic, mighty and new. A worthy tribute to a great god, a new god of glass and light; a palace fit for a deity, a hall of worship, a monument to power and might, a dedication to an idea greater, richer, taller than any mere mortals might aspire to by themselves. It is the temple of the glass god, and it is nearly finished.

Chapter 79

Gather Ye Forces While Ye May

Rhys said, “Oh, I see!”

Kelly said, “Do you think they would?”

Sammy, a voice from the shadow walk wherein he dwelt said, “Wankers.”

There was a chorus of assent at this, causing Sharon to glance back, into the shadowed mists of invisibility where lurked…

… a goblin, a troll and a banshee. The banshee, her whiteboard hung by a piece of string around her neck, waved uneasily at Sharon from the depths of the shadows which hid her from human sight. Getting Sally onto a bus for the short journey from Harlun and Phelps to London Bridge station had been, to Sharon’s surprise, incredibly easy. The banshee had been so enthused by the prospect of taking a human form of transportation that the shaman had barely been able to keep up with her, running the risk of a fully fledged and fanged banshee springing into full existence on the top deck of the 17 bus from Archway, and causing, if not commotion, then certainly comment. As it was, the bus driver had been very confused by the multiple tickets dutifully touched in as the invisible troupe boarded the bus, and peered at the empty air even as a voice shrilled from the void, “One pound thirty-five?! I remember when it was forty fucking pence!”

Sammy the Elbow, while no stranger to public transport, certainly wasn’t going to invite it over for tea any time.

Sharon was hardly comforted by those of her companions who felt socially respectable enough to wander around in full visibility. Kevin the vampire had been convinced to put aside his surgical face mask for the duration of the trip, so long as every window on the bus was opened, and he was allowed to sit on a sterile plastic bag. Mr Roding the necromancer had grumbled that he was old enough by at least forty-three years to have earned a freedom pass, and it was only council bureaucracy and narrow-minded attitudes towards the necromantic regeneration of the flesh which meant he had to pay a full fare. Kelly had tutted and sighed and explained that before the financial crisis she would have just hired three bullet-proof vans and a catering unit for the trip, but that even the Aldermen had to move with the times.

To prove this point, five surly-looking men in long black coats had joined the expedition, bent under the weight of fresh sandwiches, flasks of coffee, surgical bandages and sub-machine guns, all zipped up with a cry from Kelly of, “you never know what you’ll meet!”

On paper, Sharon realised, she had a commando-sized force of serious firepower, both chemical and mystical. On paper, two shamans, six Aldermen, one druid (still smiling inexplicably), a vampire, a necromancer, a banshee and a troll of the Dartford Crossing Clan, created an undeniable impression of diehard strength. It was only in reality where the sound of “Oh, my God, blocked drain, blocked drain; oh, it’s, like, fungal breeding ground one-oh-one
disgusting
” undermined the otherwise positive impression.

She looked around them, at the approaches to their destination. Like a lot of central London just south of the river, the predominant sound was of traffic and trains. Borough Market was a painted-iron roof on thin columns where, by day, smoked salmon, organic vegetables and cake so sticky you could use it to glue submarines together were sold for only five pounds fifty above the national average cost, to the tradesman’s cry of “apples, apples here, organic hand-picked apples, three a pound, three a pound!”

Beyond the other side of Borough High Street, London Bridge station was a churning mass of travellers heading south to Gatwick, Croydon and Kent, juggling briefcases, travel cards, and white cinnamon mocha soya skinny lattes with added sprinkles and foam. As stations went, London Bridge wasn’t much – a flat iron roof above metal tracks which splayed out like the fingers of a pianist’s hand from a concourse where benches were a luxury and the update board assured you of a delay, but never admitted how great this delay would be.

All that, however, was slowly changing, and the walls were adorned with gleaming pictures of the newer, better, brighter, whiter London Bridge station that was yet to be, a glowing glass footnote to the main event which now dominated the area, and whose soaring walls now held the attention of Magicals Anonymous, assembled beneath it.

“Well,” said Mr Roding at last, staring up – and then up a little further. “Not sure what Gaudí would say.”

In the shadow walk, Sally scribbled furiously on her board, holding it up for the inspection of Sammy and Gretel:

I think he’d regard it as a rather inorganic, if triumphantly conceived, architectural venture.
 

Alas, Sally’s artistic insight, apt as it may have been, was wasted on the only two people who could see it.

“Are you sure this is it?” asked Sharon. Already her neck was starting to ache from the strain of staring upwards. “I mean, I’m just saying, if I was a secret cult I’d want my temple somewhere… more secret.”

“But it’s perfect, Ms Li!” exclaimed Kelly. “It’s got glass, it’s got majestic worship-here vitality, it’s got symbolism, it’s got an absolutely incredible view, and frankly, who’d ever suspect it as a site for mystic worship?”

Sharon thought about this. To her irritation, the Alderman had a point. “Besides,” Kelly insisted, “this is the only place where the journeys of both Brid and Zhanyi regularly intersected, and what did Zhanyi say?”

“Highest. Brightest. Newest,” murmured Sharon, barely aware that she spoke. “Palace fit for a god.”

Kelly threw her arms up for emphasis, a gesture somewhat dwarfed by the scale of the thing it was trying to encompass. “You see?” she declared. “It’s perfect!”

Sharon bit her lip, but still couldn’t find fault with the argument. “Okay,” she said. “I guess we’ll give it a go. Um… guys?”

There was a mutual chorus of grunts, grumbles and grimaces from the assembled Magicals Anonymous members.

“So uh… anyone here got a problem with heights?”

Chapter 80

… And Your Dreams Higher Still

It is called the Shard.

As names go, at first impression this is perhaps deceptive, as “shard” commonly implies a piece of a thing, perhaps small, perhaps broken, perhaps sharp round the edges, but generally associated with it getting underfoot, or becoming lost down the back of the sofa.

This is not like that.

Shard might imply other notions: perhaps a piece of glass, uneven but inclining towards a sharpened point. A certain reflection of light through crystal, a certain smoothness of surface, a certain brightness of reflection – these could be implied in the word, but still it would not do credit to what the Shard actually is.

A billboard at the base of the building itself gave more details, but they were numbers, ideas without any real connection. Seventy-two floors from the surprisingly narrow square base to the tip of the pointed spire; ninety-five if you counted the array of infrastructure, machines, cogs and pipes that sustained life within the building. Three hundred and ten metres, give or take a little from the antennae and warning lights that sat upon the top against any low-flying aircraft; the tallest building in the European Union – certainly, the figures gave the actual size of the building, but, even so, they failed to do credit to the thing itself.

What it was, was a tower – no, more than that – a spire. A spire made of glass, not a concrete surface in sight as you looked up, and then up, and then a little further to where it pricked the sky. Another tower like this, more than twice as high as any neighbour, might have loomed over the city, a redefinition of what greatness meant. But as much as it was tall, it was also slender, a finger pointing towards heaven. And here it was again, the thought that Sharon couldn’t quite shake off as Magicals Anonymous slipped invisibly past the security guards in the unpainted foyer, only a few weeks from completion – spires and heaven, majesty and glass, people called the Shard a monument, a temple to architectural ambition and financial expense, and they said these things in jest, or as a turn of phrase, the words used and discarded as quickly as they came. But it was, she realised, of all things, the place most fit and proper to pay homage to a new god of glass.

They rode the lift up in silence.

The lift was functional, but not yet up to speed, and one wall still consisted largely of metal frames and cardboard fillers, as the builders waited for panels to arrive. The car itself was large enough to hold all of Magicals Anonymous, with room to spare, built for early morning commuters rushing up to the seventy-second floor, a whole journey into the sky in and of itself. At the fifty-third floor, Sammy’s impatience finally broke through.

“I hate heights!”

All eyes turned to the diminutive goblin. “I
asked
…⁠” began Sharon.

“Didn’t think I hated heights cos I’ve never been very high,” countered Sammy. “But now I think about it, I think I hate heights.”

“You’re in an enclosed vehicle! You can’t even see how high you are.”

“I,” he replied, arms wrapped around himself, the sleeves dangling from his wrists, “have got so much frickin’ insight and wisdom that I don’t need to see shit to know it’s there. That’s how frickin’ shamanly I am.”

“Well, I’m sorry,” exclaimed Sharon. “But it’s too late to stop now!”

“I’m not sayin’ I won’t be fine when we get there! I just wanted to let you know how grateful you oughtta be to me for stickin’ with this.”

“I think it’s very interesting,” offered Gretel. “I am looking forward to seeing the view.”