“They’re covered in him; he can knack them more,” Billy said. “He doesn’t care. We forced his hand. He’s going all out. He’s looking for the kraken, and when he’s found it, Byrne’s going to milk it, and…” They looked at each other. “Can you find them? Get a message to the lorry?”

“They’re Londonmancers.” Saira nodded. “And so am I.”

“Tell them to get out of here. Tell them to go… Wait.” Billy held out the Kirk figure, its little plastic eyes watching him. Billy thought and thought, as fast as he could. “Wati.”

“Yeah,” the Kirk said.

“We’ve got as long as it takes for Grisamentum to find the lorry,” Billy said. “And you saw how many of him there are. Wati, I know you’re hurt, but can you wake up? Can you hear me?” No answer. “If he doesn’t wake up,” he said to Saira, “we’ll have to try to go ourselves, but-”

“Where?” Wati said. “Go where?”

“How are you?”

“Hurt.”

“Can you… can you travel?”

“Don’t know.”

“You got here.”

“This doll… used it so much it’s like a chair shaped to my bum.”

“Wati, what happened?”

There was silence. “I thought I was dead. I thought your friend Marge was… It was Goss and Subby.” Billy waited. “I can feel her. Still. Now. I can feel her because she’s got the dust of my old body all over her hands. I can sniff that.”

“She was in Hoxton.”

“… She must have… she got away from Goss and Subby.” Even exhausted, Wati’s voice was awed.

“Can you get to her?”

“That body’s gone.”

“She wears one.” Billy grabbed the front of his shirt where a pendant would be. “Can you use the dust to find her? Can you try?”

“Where’s Dane?”

The fighting continued, the noise of arcane murder. “They killed him, Wati,” Billy said.

At last, Wati said, “What’s the message?”

Saira whispered things into London’s ears, cajoled and begged it, even aghast as it must be that night, to pass a message to her onetime teacher in the lorry. “All we’ve got is speed,” Billy said to her, and told her where to send them. She moulded the wall and made a patch of it an urban hedge, through which she pushed, out into the street.

Billy took some seconds of solitude, as alone as he could be in the dregs of that fighting and that noise. He stared back at the building where his friend had died. Billy wished he knew how to make whatever tentacle-imitating sign wished a killed soldier of the krakens peace. Billy shut his eyes tight and swallowed and said Dane’s name and kept his eyes closed. That was the ceremony he invented.

Chapter Seventy-Five

HOW COULD YOU KEEP SOMETHING THE SIZE OF A LORRY HIDDEN from the skies? Fitch’s indecision protected him awhile: unable either to commit to his fighting sisters and brothers or to desert them, he had stayed less than a mile away and ordered the vehicle into a tunnel, and there in the orange striplight under the pavement had put on the hazard lights as if stalled. And waited, while refugees from that night surged past in their cars. When Saira sent her message, it, London, did not have far to go to pass it on.

While over their head scudded the inked scout selves of Grisamentum, she and Billy ran toward the vehicle’s hide, past birdlime streaks and posters for albums and exhibitions. Come meet us, she had said. We need you. Shamed, Fitch had the engine gun and the lorry lurch out of its burrow into the surveilled streets.

The paper helixed plughole out of the dark sky and mobbed the lorry. It pushed through them. They were sentient, but the papers had the feeding-frenzy throng of multitude predators, mothlike butting themselves against the windscreen. When it met Saira, Billy and the few Londonmancers and squidly loping krakenbit who had been able to run, the vehicle was thronged with excited paper.

Dear God, Billy thought, at the thought of what the appalled locals must think they saw from behind their curtains. Close to him were two Londonmancers and two krakenbit still morphing into teuthic midway forms. They whipped their limbs and sprayed the last of their bleach. Fitch threw open the back and yelled at them to enter. With the unity of a school of fish, the papers gusted back toward the factory.

“They’re going to get Byrne and the rest of himself,” Billy said. “They’re going to come for us now they know where we are. We have to go.”

“But where?” Fitch said.

“Drive,” said Billy. “We’re meeting someone.”

“SO WHAT DO YOU RECKON?” COLLINGSWOOD SAID TO HER COMMANDEERED assistant.

“About what?” he said. They were the same rank. He did not call her ma’am. But he went where she told him to and did as she said.

“What now? Got any burglaries?” She laughed. They drove through a little rain, through sliding, dark and lit-up streets where people still lounged by twenty-four-hour shops while others ran from unholy gang fights.

“Don’t know,” he said.

“Let’s just get back to the bloody office.”

Marge felt safe in the car. She watched Paul. His face was anguished but resigned. He did not speak. His tattoo spoke. Marge could hear its smothered rage, its terror, in wordless growling from under his shirt.

“It’ll be alright,” she said to him foolishly.

She heard another tiny mumbling. She looked about. The words came from her neck.

Marge blinked. She looked at Collingswood, who continued to tease her colleague. Marge touched her little crucifix. At the contact of her dirty fingers the voice came again, a little stronger. “Hey,” it said.

The silver Jesus whispered. Marge looked away into the violent night streets, into what she had gathered might be the end of the world. And here came this messenger.

“Hey,” she whispered herself, and raised the crucifix. Paul watched her. She focused on the tiny bearded face.

“Hey,” it said again.

“So,” she said. “What’s the word from heaven?”

“Wha?” the metal Christ said. “Oh right. Funny.” It coughed. “Put me to your ear,” it said. “Can’t talk loud.”

“Who are you?” she said. Collingswood was watching her in the mirror, now.

“It’s Wati again,” he said. “I got a message, so listen.”

“I thought you were dead.”

“So did I. Don’t wash your hands. Billy needs you to do something.”

“What’s up back there?” Collingswood said. “Who you chatting to?”

Marge held up her finger so peremptorily Collingswood actually obeyed. The tiny chained Messiah whispered to her, for a long time. Marge nodded, nodded, swallowed, said “yeah” as if at a telephone call. “Tell him yeah.” Finally she let the crucifix dangle back below her neck.

She sighed and closed her eyes, then looked at Collingswood. “We have to go somewhere. We have to pick someone up.” Paul sat up. The other officer looked backward nervously.

“Yeah…” Collingswood said thoughtfully. “Not very clear on the whole police prisoner thing, are you?”

“Listen,” Marge said slowly. “You want to take us in? Take us in. But look around and listen to me.” There was a helpful scream of fighting from some nearby street. Marge gave it a moment. “I’ve just been given a job to do, by Billy. You know Billy? And by this little guy on my necklace who I just saw killed by the most evil, terrifying bastard. Who was out for me.

“Now, I’ve been given this job on the grounds that it might be the one thing that stops the end of the world. So. Do you think your arrest report can wait a couple of hours? Where do you want to go on this?”

Collingswood kept staring at her. “Goss and Subby,” Collingswood said.

“You know them, then.”

“I’ve had my tangles,” Collingswood said.

“There you go then.”

“Wati just had his own little barney with them?”

“He’s told me where to go, and what to do.”

“How about you tell me what he said, and we can have a chat about it?” Collingswood said.

“How about you fuck off?” Marge said without rancour. She sounded as tired as she was. “Look around and tell me if you think we’ve got time to waste. How about-look, I’m just throwing this out there. How about we save the world first, and then you arrest us?”