Read Online The City's Son by Tom Pollock - Free Book Online Page B

demanded.
    Beth grinned. ‘You told me to look for you under broken light.’
    She was buzzing: to have found him again, to have him be real . The tower blocks reared vastly against the sodium-soaked clouds and the way they dwarfed her was suddenly thrilling. ‘Is this your home?’ she asked.
    A grin to match hers sneaked onto his face. ‘Home? Well, part of it, I guess – I could bed down in any square inch of London town. Welcome to my parlour.’ He stretched his arms out as though to take in the entire city. ‘Make yourself comfy.’ He laughed, and then seemed to remember who he was talking to.
    He folded his arms and looked at her suspiciously. ‘Who are you? Why are you following me?’
    Beth crossed her arms too. Her stance was pugnacious but she could feel herself trembling with the adrenalin racing through her. ‘Who are you ?’ she countered. ‘Why did you save me ?’
    ‘My name is Filius Viae,’ he said. ‘It means the Son of the Streets. My mother is their Goddess.’ He took a step towards her, his shadow slipping over her face. ‘She laid the foundations of the streets you walk on, and the bones of the roads buried under them. She stoked the Steam-wraiths’ engines and gave the lamps their first sparks. Sheforged the chains that hold old Father Thames in place.’ He smirked at her.
    ‘And I saved you ’cause anyone mental enough to ride one Railwraith and stand in the way of another shouting needs all the help they can get.’
    ‘O- kay ,’ Beth muttered. She drew a deep breath. ‘My name is Beth Bradley,’ she said. ‘It means – well, it means Beth Bradley. My dad’s a journalist – a redundant one. I got kicked out of school and he didn’t care. My best friend was the one who grassed me up. I suppose the reason I’m following you is because – I like your answer better.’ She tried a smile and added, ‘’cept for the name, obviously. I didn’t realise you were called “Phyllis”. I don’t blame you for not telling me that before.’
    This time the boy laughed. ‘I wouldn’t be so sure my answer’s better; right now it mostly boils down to my arse being hunted all over The Smoke.’
    ‘Someone’s trying to kill you,’ Beth said. ‘I remember.’
    ‘Oh, that’s good of you,’ he said, sarcastically tugging a forelock. ‘Ta.’ He settled himself back down onto the wet tarmac.
    Beth’s jeans were drenched anyway, so she slumped down next to him. The wind sculpted half-seen bodies in the rain. ‘But if you’re the son of this kick-arse goddess,’ she said, ‘what are you scared of? Surely she could take whoever’s trying to mess with you?’
    His smile never reached his eyes. ‘She’s not here,’ he said. ‘I’ve never met her.’ Beth made to apologise but hewaved it away. ‘I was raised by her seneschal, Gutterglass. I ran in the shells of her temples on the river and played with the fossilised entrails of the sacrifices the Green Witches made to her.’
    ‘There are actual Green Witches in Greenwich?’ Beth was astonished.
    ‘Nah, Sutton – what, you think there’s a sea of eggs and flour in Battersea?’ His face was deadpan; she couldn’t tell if he was joking. Then his voice took on a hard, brittle edge. ‘I learnt no ritual, no doctrine – nothing to prepare me, not for Reach.’ The fingers of his left hand crooked into a claw.
    ‘ Reach. Is that what’s hunting you?’
    He nodded unhappily.
    ‘So what is it?’
    ‘He’s urban sickness,’ he said in a dead tone, ‘and greed, and cannibal hunger and—And I don’t know what else. I’ve never seen him up close, but I’ve seen the aftermath of him. He is the Crane King; and the cranes are his fingers and his weapons. He uses them to carve himself deep into the city and when he does, everything around him dies.’ He snorted. ‘He’s vain, too; he keeps building glass towers to look at himself in. My mother was his only rival; every generation he appeared, and she beat him back,