“I guess that ain’t such a surprise,” Dane said. He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. “Do we know who’s paying him?”

“Take your pick. No shortage of candidates. But d’you understand what this means? They’re gunning for us. They’ve taken it up to DEFCON One.”

“I’m sorry, mate. You’re not the only one. I thought I knew which of my places were secure,” Dane said. “The Teuthex sent some of… You remember Clem?” Wati whistled slowly.

“That’s got to fuck with your head,” he said. “At least I know the bastards I’m up against are no friends of mine. If I could, I’d go in have a shufti, see what your old church are up to.”

“There are statues all over the walls…” Billy said.

“There are blocks,” Dane said. “Ways to keep people out. They’re careful.”

“I got to look out for my members, Dane,” Wati said. “We have to win this. But it turns out that I’m warring with the Tattoo whether I like it or not. He comes for my members, I’m coming for him. If the main thing he wants is to get hold of the kraken, the main thing I want is to get it first. Whatever he’s for, I’m against it.”

The two men smiled.

WATI SUMMONSED A JACKDAW OUT OF THE SKY AND TO THE kitchen window. It dropped a piece of paper on the counter, sang something to Wati and left. It was Dane’s list of porters. It was much folded, scratched with bird claws, written on in various clumsy hands, in red, blue and black.

“It wasn’t hard to get information,” Wati said in that out-of-time accent. “Mancers know each other. People with this sort of talent, even if my members haven’t met them through their bosses, they know of them.”

“Why are these ones crossed off?” Dane said. “I’d’ve thought Fatima Hussein was a good candidate for having shifted it.”

“The ones crossed out in blue are out of the country.”

“Alright. What about these others?”

“They have familiars. Their knacks are so tied up with them that with the strike, they couldn’t port cheese into a sandwich.”

“How does it work?” Billy said.

“Quid pro quo,” Dane said. “They’re your eyes and ears, but more’n that. Put something into your animal or your whatever it is…”

“Magic.”

“Put something into it, you get more out,” Wati said. Animals as amplifiers. “There’s four people we reckon could’ve ported this. Simon Shaw, Rebecca Salmag, the Advocate, and Aykan Bulevit.”

“I know a couple of them,” Dane said. “Simon retired. Aykan’s a tosser. Any beamers? I hate beaming.”

“Yeah, but we ain’t talking about you,” Wati said. “We’re talking about your god.”

“Its body.”

“Well, yeah. So, either it was one of this lot, or we’re dealing with something we’ve never seen before,” Wati said. “And it isn’t that bloody easy to stay secret in London.”

“Not that whoever it is seems to be having much trouble,” Billy said.

“There is that,” said Wati. “Keep something in your pocket for me to get into. So I can get to you quick.”

“How’d you feel about a Bratz doll?” Dane said.

“I’ve been in worse. But there’s something else. It isn’t just a question of being able to get the thing out. It’s getting past the protection. All those people on the list are porters, but none of them are fighters. There’s no way any of them should’ve been able to get past the phylax.”

“The angel,” Dane said. “The angel of memory.

“Alright, mate, alright,” he said, seeing Billy’s face. “None of us know much about this. This is out of our league. When the kraken got took, the angel messed up badly. I had to know a little bit because I was in the Centre.”

The presence of a guard from the faithful could have been seen, and was by some, as disrespectful. Because the Architeuthis was already under an aegis, protected, along with every other specimen in the museum.

“What angel?”

“The mnemophylax is the angel of memory. There’s one in all the memory palaces. But this one screwed up.”

“What is it?”

“You think something like memory won’t grow spikes to protect it? That’s what angels are: they’re spikes.” Memory’s defences. Their content irrelevant: the fact of them, and their pugnacity, was all.

“The angel’s not letting this one go,” Wati said. “You pick this stuff up in the in-between. It’s raging. It feels like it failed.”

“It did fail,” Dane said.

What had failed was one of an old cabal abraded into existence out of the city’s curatorial obsession. Each museum of London constituted out of its material its own angel, a numen of its recall, mnemophylax. They were not beings, precisely, not from where most Londoners stood, but derived functions that thought themselves beings. In a city where the power of any item derived from its metaphoric potency, all the attention poured into their contents made museums rich pickings for knacking thieves. But the processes that gave them that potential also threw up sentinels. With each attempted robbery came the rumours of what had thwarted it. Battered, surviving invaders told stories.

In the Museum of Childhood were three toys that came remorselessly for intruders-a hoop, a top, a broken video-game console-with stuttering creeping as if in stop-motion. With the wingbeat noise of cloth, the Victoria and Albert was patrolled by something like a chic predatory face of crumpled linen. In Tooting Bec, the London Sewing Machine Museum was kept safe by a dreadful angel made of tangles and bobbins and jouncing needles. And in the Natural History Museum, the stored-up pickled lineage of the evolved was watched by something described as of, but not reducible to, glass and liquid.

“Glass?” Billy said. “I think I… I swear I’ve heard it.”

“Maybe,” said Dane. “If it wanted you to.”

But the squid had been taken, the angel defeated. No one knew the meaning of or penalty for that. Savants could feel an outpouring of alien regret. They said this ushered in something terrible. That the angels were stepping out of their corridors, beyond the remit that had thrown them up. They were fighting for memory against some malevolent certainty that walked the streets like the dead.

“It isn’t just some porter we’re looking for,” Wati said. “It’s someone who can take on an angel of memory and win.”

“Did they win, though?” Billy said. “You’re talking to the man who found a bloke in a jar.” They glanced at each other.

“We need more information,” Dane said.

“Go to the tellers,” Wati said. “The Londonmancers.”

“We know what they’ll say. You heard the recording. The Teuthex already spoke to them…” But Dane hesitated.

“Why won’t they shop us?” Billy said.

“They’re neutrals,” Wati said. “They can’t intervene.”

“The Switzerland of magic?” Billy said.

“They’re nothing,” Dane said. But he sounded hesitant again. “They were the first, weren’t they?”

“Yeah,” Wati said.

“It’s like they’re oracles again,” Dane said. “Maybe.”

“But isn’t it dangerous for them to see us? People could hear about it,” Billy said.

“Well,” Dane said. “There is one way to make them keep us secret.” He smiled. “If we’re going to see them anyway…”

In for a penny. How else could they have negotiated the power logics of London so long? Employ their services, and like doctors and Catholic priests the Londonmancers were committed to silence.