The City's Son by Pollock Tom

Author:Pollock, Tom [Pollock, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Speculative Fiction
ISBN: 0738734306
Google: horimAEACAAJ
Amazon: 0738734306
Barnesnoble: 0738734306
Goodreads: 13490791
Publisher: Flux
Published: 2012-01-01T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 26

‘Gutterglass won’t say so, but I’m fairly sure my mother was ashamed of me. Now, now, no need to choke up. I’m not looking for sympathy; I only want to explain, give you the context, so you’ll understand why she did what she did.

‘She must have been gutted when I was born, with these fingers with their bones so easy to break, these eyes that can see only seven colours. I was so small compared to her – she was this Goddess, this city, and me? I was a tear-and-turd-squirting bundle constantly yammering to be fed.

‘I once asked Glas if my father was human and though she always said she didn’t know, I think either my old man or one of his relatives must have been. The weaknesses bred true.

‘I know, I know, brings a tear to your eye and all that. But that’s how it was. Of course, I was still the son of a Goddess, and that had its perks. If she’d just left me to grow naturally my arms would have been as strong as girders and I’d have outrun the trains. But for what she wanted me for, that wouldn’t have been enough.

‘Mater Viae needed more: she needed me to shine like the Thames on a summer’s day. She needed my bones to outlast the city foundations, and more than that, she needed me to be proof of her, to carry her name.

‘She took me out east, out to the docks, though London’s old port belonged to Reach then. She walked wrapped in rags, with only Fleet, the bravest of her retinue of Cats, beside her. As she passed, the street signs yearned to change, but she bid them hold.

‘She kept to the brickways, the roads of fish and sewage and opium and knotted rope, the old paths – as hard as Reach tried, he could never gentrify the docks. They were loyal to her spirit, even while he reared his towers up over them.

‘She walked beside the canals and the wrecks of the old tea clippers raised themselves out of the depths, eager to relive their memories of bringing her tribute. She shushed them down again, gracious but urgent: she wasn’t there to be noticed. Fleet wound her way, meowing, around her mistress’ ankles, and my mother stroked her with slate-skinned fingers. They crept along, me in her arms, my mother cooing road-shanties to keep her infant child becalmed, her voice low enough that the vibrations in the air wouldn’t disturb the crane-struts.

‘—what? What? I’m building a picture up, all right? I’m “setting the scene”. You want me to get on with it? Fine. It’s night. It’s dark. It’s enemy territory. They’re sneaking. It’s risky. Get it? Good. Excuse me for trying to make it interesting.

‘So anyway, there’s this old abandoned dye factory, hunched over the river like a hungry old man scouring it for fish. The men that live there, the Chemical Synod, they exist beyond my mother’s sway, but she’d done deals with them before – making deals is their reason to be.

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