The Glass Republic: The Skyscraper Throne: Book II by Tom Pollock Page A
Authors: Tom Pollock
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knight with the letters GC reversed – mirror-writing – printed underneath.
The captain lifted off his black helmet to reveal a head of dense, closely cropped hair. His broad face was almost as symmetrical as the swimmer’s, and like the swimmer, a rowof metal stitches glinted down the centre of it. The only difference between his left and right sides was that while his left eyebrow was brown, the right one was grey and had another ring of tiny stitches around it. The skin around the right brow was different too, wrinkled and liver-spotted. It looked like it had been transplanted from a much older man.
‘My name’s Corbin, ma’am’ he said. ‘I don’t know what happened with your last protection detail, but there won’t be any funny business with a Glass Chevalier escort. Scylla and I’ll look after you.’ He patted one of the horses fondly before opening the back door of the SUV.
‘If you’ll just climb in, we’ll be off.’
Pen was barely listening. She was staring over his shoulder, back towards the south end of the railway bridge. There was a billboard there, hoisted against the side of a brutalist slab of concrete apartments. At the bottom of the advert, elegant silver reversed script on a black background read:– MAKE YOUR CHANCE, she realised – and listed a website: gl.yrettolssalggnikool.www –
Above those words was an image, a photograph of a girl.
Pen barely felt the loosening of her jaw, or the cold air that swept into her lungs as she inhaled.
Fifty feet high, every pore blown up to the size of a dinner plate, immaculate dark makeup making her eyes luminous and picking out each individual scar: Pen’s own face smiled back at her from the billboard canvas.
II
A CUT ABOVE
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Pen rested her forehead on the window and watched the city drift by under stony clouds. Men and women filled the pavements, hustling or strolling, laughing into mobile phones, shovelling sandwiches and fried chicken into their mouths from takeaway cartons or simply walking with their heads down and hands thrust into their pockets, lost in themselves. They could almost have been Londoners, had it not been for the eerie symmetry of their bisected faces. Where they passed windows, they cast no reflections. It was like being in a city full of vampires. They paid no attention to the Londoners who moved through the city caught in
their
mirrors, the city Pen called home.
Most of the pedestrians weren’t
exactly
symmetrical though. Like Captain Corbin, they had stitched-in differences on one or other side, a scrap of lighter or darker skin, a mole or a scar, always quarantined from the neighbouring features with a border of silver thread. A few had several such patches, and Pen thought they walked a little taller than the others, a little more confidently. Behind the car, CaptainCorbin plodded along on his cloth-swathed mount, the clatter-clop of horseshoes just audible through the glass.
The buildings that loomed over them were all stretched and warped: distorted reflections of those back home. The old Blackfriar pub spiked up like a gothic nightmare; the Gherkin was elongated to a glass teardrop. Pen shivered. It was as though the London she knew had run in the rain.
There were supermarkets and cafés Pen recognised, their signs displaying London-Under-Glass’ reverse script, but nestled amongst this unfamiliar familiarity were other shops she hadn’t seen before. There was a boutique with silver-on-black signage displaying a disembodied smile. She worked to translate the backwards sign:
Fulcrum and Scroutt: Beauty Brokers
. The windows displayed photographs of women in glittering jewellery with crooked noses or big pink birthmarks on their cheeks. The centrepiece of the display was a miniature treasure chest, and nestled against the plush velvet lining were three elegantly arranged human right ears, all in different shades of skin.
They drove past a narrow alley and Pen did a double take,
The captain lifted off his black helmet to reveal a head of dense, closely cropped hair. His broad face was almost as symmetrical as the swimmer’s, and like the swimmer, a rowof metal stitches glinted down the centre of it. The only difference between his left and right sides was that while his left eyebrow was brown, the right one was grey and had another ring of tiny stitches around it. The skin around the right brow was different too, wrinkled and liver-spotted. It looked like it had been transplanted from a much older man.
‘My name’s Corbin, ma’am’ he said. ‘I don’t know what happened with your last protection detail, but there won’t be any funny business with a Glass Chevalier escort. Scylla and I’ll look after you.’ He patted one of the horses fondly before opening the back door of the SUV.
‘If you’ll just climb in, we’ll be off.’
Pen was barely listening. She was staring over his shoulder, back towards the south end of the railway bridge. There was a billboard there, hoisted against the side of a brutalist slab of concrete apartments. At the bottom of the advert, elegant silver reversed script on a black background read:– MAKE YOUR CHANCE, she realised – and listed a website: gl.yrettolssalggnikool.www –
Above those words was an image, a photograph of a girl.
Pen barely felt the loosening of her jaw, or the cold air that swept into her lungs as she inhaled.
Fifty feet high, every pore blown up to the size of a dinner plate, immaculate dark makeup making her eyes luminous and picking out each individual scar: Pen’s own face smiled back at her from the billboard canvas.
II
A CUT ABOVE
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Pen rested her forehead on the window and watched the city drift by under stony clouds. Men and women filled the pavements, hustling or strolling, laughing into mobile phones, shovelling sandwiches and fried chicken into their mouths from takeaway cartons or simply walking with their heads down and hands thrust into their pockets, lost in themselves. They could almost have been Londoners, had it not been for the eerie symmetry of their bisected faces. Where they passed windows, they cast no reflections. It was like being in a city full of vampires. They paid no attention to the Londoners who moved through the city caught in
their
mirrors, the city Pen called home.
Most of the pedestrians weren’t
exactly
symmetrical though. Like Captain Corbin, they had stitched-in differences on one or other side, a scrap of lighter or darker skin, a mole or a scar, always quarantined from the neighbouring features with a border of silver thread. A few had several such patches, and Pen thought they walked a little taller than the others, a little more confidently. Behind the car, CaptainCorbin plodded along on his cloth-swathed mount, the clatter-clop of horseshoes just audible through the glass.
The buildings that loomed over them were all stretched and warped: distorted reflections of those back home. The old Blackfriar pub spiked up like a gothic nightmare; the Gherkin was elongated to a glass teardrop. Pen shivered. It was as though the London she knew had run in the rain.
There were supermarkets and cafés Pen recognised, their signs displaying London-Under-Glass’ reverse script, but nestled amongst this unfamiliar familiarity were other shops she hadn’t seen before. There was a boutique with silver-on-black signage displaying a disembodied smile. She worked to translate the backwards sign:
Fulcrum and Scroutt: Beauty Brokers
. The windows displayed photographs of women in glittering jewellery with crooked noses or big pink birthmarks on their cheeks. The centrepiece of the display was a miniature treasure chest, and nestled against the plush velvet lining were three elegantly arranged human right ears, all in different shades of skin.
They drove past a narrow alley and Pen did a double take,
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