“How would we do that?” Marge said again.

They were not watched, the streets contained no one paying attention. Paul untucked his shirt, turned and showed Billy his skin.

The Tattoo’s eyes widened and narrowed frantically as he tried to speak. As if Billy would respect or listen to him. Across the lower part of Paul’s back more ink had been added. He had had inked tattooed stitches, sewing up the erstwhile crime lord’s mouth. Billy could hear an mmm mmm mmm.

“It wasn’t easy,” Paul said, “we had to find a savvy tattooist. And he kept trying to move, to purse his lips and that. Took a while.”

“You weren’t tempted to get him removed?” Billy said.

Paul put his shirt back on. He and Marge smiled. She raised her eyebrows. “If he gives me too much shit I might blind him,” Paul said. Sadism? Really? Billy would have said not. Justice? Power.

“You’re never going to tell us what did happen, are you?” Marge said suddenly.

“I don’t know,” Billy said. “Goss killed Leon. That’s what started this. For no reason at all.” They let that stand. “But then Paul killed Goss. You were there.”

“I did,” Paul said.

“I was,” Marge said. “Okay.” She even smiled. “Okay. And what else? What else happened?”

“I saved everything,” Billy said. “And you did too.”

“THEY’RE HOLDING BYRNE?” SAIRA SAID.

“I think they’re getting her for the sea-house. Have to show the ocean that we’re sorry.”

“Whether or not she did it?”

“Whether or not.”

“I heard the sea’s started filling a new embassy.”

“I heard the same.”

Billy’s flat was his again. He did not know what to make of it; he often wandered its little hallways in amazement. (Of course it was not his again. It had never been his-he had inherited it from his identical namesake. And he did not know why he had to do these prodding little thought-tests.) They looked over the street. It was nearly the end of the year.

“What year was it?” Saira said. “Year of the what? That just went?”

“I don’t know,” Billy said.

“Year of the bottle.”

“It’s always year of the bottle.”

“Year of the bottle and of some animal.”

“It’s always that too.”

So this was the universe, was it? Billy strained, and maybe it was nothing, maybe it was a quirk of his position-it looked through the window as if a fleeting bird stilled in the sky, for a snip of a second. Saira watched. Raised an eyebrow. Humans were still related to monkeys. All sorts of things might happen in that new old London.

Billy looked out at the city that was not as it had been the last time he had looked through the glass. Billy lived in Heresiopolis now, and would know when the next Armageddon came and failed. He drank now in different bars, and learnt different things.

He sipped his wine and poured more for himself and for Saira. It was the year of the bottle, Billy thought, the year of pickling time, flexing himself and feeling the clock hesitate as if he squeezed its throat. It was the year of the bottle once more.

He touched glasses with Saira. It was not the year of anything else. So.

It was coming up to the end of the world again, of course-it always was. But not so frantically as it had been, perhaps. Not with quite such agonies. Billy wasn’t the angel of memory-he was far too human for that-but he could see memory-angelhood from where he stood. Put it that way. Did he have a history to protect? It seemed to him that the streets were no longer starving.

From outside the sky looked in at them. Billy was behind glass.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CHINA MIÉVILLE is the author of King Rat; Perdido Street Station, winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the British Fantasy Award; The Scar, winner of the Locus Award and the British Fantasy Award; Iron Council, winner of the Locus Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award; Looking for Jake, a collection of short stories; Un Lun Dun, his New York Times bestselling book for younger readers; and The City & The City, named one of the top 100 Books of the Year by Publishers Weekly. He lives and works in London.