“It’s not like you thought he couldn’t die,” Dane said. “No such thing as immortal, no one’s an idiot. But it was a shock. When we heard.”

That Grisamentum was dying. He did not, as do so many little warlords, which in a terribly charming way he sort of was, obfuscate the facts of his case. He put out requests. He asked for help. He searched for a cure for whatever drab, lethal little disorder it was that had him.

“Who did this?” his partisans demanded in agony. They took no comfort from the fact that the truth appeared to be no one. Contingency and biology.

“He made quite a few deadists pretty rich,” Dane said.

“Deadists?”

“Thanatothurges. Had them in and out, knackers used to knacking stuff about death. People figured he was trying to find a way out of it. He wouldn’t be the first. But there’s only so much anyone can do. Met Byrne out of it, though. She was his lady. Gave him a bit of happiness, I thought, in the last year or two.”

“So?”

“So what? So he died. There was a funeral. A cremation, like a Viking thing. It was amazing, all like crazy fireworks. When he realised he was going he went from deadists to pyros. Djinn and people, Anna Ginier, Wossname Cole. When that pyre went up, boy, it was knacked, and that didn’t burn just like any fire.”

“You saw it?”

“We had a delegation. Like most of the churches.”

The fire scorching in every which way, burning out certain certainties, making holes in things it had no business burning holes in, spectacular as a world of fireworks. The proximity of the venue-some treated chamber in some innocuous-looking bank or whatever-to Pudding Lane, the unusual nature of the fire and the reputations of the pyros that had prepared it had led to speculation that it had been a conduit, some knack-buggered spark scorching all the way back four-hundred-plus years, starting the Great Fire and burning a little hole for Grisamentum out of the present in which he was dying.

“Bullshit,” Dane said. “And anyway, whenever he went, he’d still have had the dying in him.” Because he had died, this man who had just sent a message.

“WHY NOW?” BILLY SAID. HE WALKED ALONGSIDE DANE-NOT A STEP behind him, as he might have done once. They were in Dagenham, in a street full of dirty and deserted buildings, where corrugated iron was almost as common a facade as brick.

“Listen to me, Dane,” Billy said. “Why are you in such a hurry? God’s sake.” He grabbed Dane and made him face him.

“I told you, no one except him knows we met…”

“Whether this is him or not, you don’t know what’s going on. And we’re supposed to be gone to ground. There’s a price on our heads. Wati’s meeting us tomorrow. Why don’t we wait, talk to him about this. You’re the one’s been telling me to think like a soldier,” Billy said.

Dane’s shoulders went up. “Do not,” he said, “tell me I’m not a soldier. What are you?”

“You tell me,” Billy said. They made an effort to keep their voices low. He took his glasses off and came closer. “What do you think I am? You haven’t asked me about my dreams for a while. Want to know what I’ve been seeing?” He had dreamed nothing.

“Of course we have to be careful,” Dane said. “But one of the most important players in London just come back from the dead. Out of nowhere. Why’s he been waiting? What’s he been doing? And why does he want to talk to me? We have to know, and we have to know now.”

“Maybe he was never dead. Maybe it’s him we’re looking for.”

“He was dead.”

“Demonstrably he wasn’t,” said Billy, putting his glasses back on. That did not follow. He had no idea how this worked. “How do you know he doesn’t want to kill you?”

“Why would he? I never did nothing against him. I worked with some of his boys. He never had a big crew, I knew them all. He knows the Tattoo’s after us, and those two… No love lost. Anyway,” he said, “we’re in disguise.” Billy had to laugh. They were in new uninteresting clothes, was all, from the latest safe house. “We’re going to have to do something about those glasses,” Dane said. “Total giveaway.”

“You keep away from my glasses,” Billy said. “If he’s been around all this time, and he’s not said anything to anyone… what’s changed now? You’re exiled. You can’t tell anyone he’s still alive. You’re a secret now, just like him.”

“We have to…” Dane was not a natural exile. Twice, three times he had referred to others of his ilk in the church. “Time was, when Ben was doing the same thing as me…” he had said. “There used to be this other geezer, and him and me…” Whatever he and him had done they did not anymore. Billy had seen those big men at the service; there was clearly muscle among the Krakenists. But there was a difference between a handy young devotee and an exonerated assassin. Dane was not old, but he was old enough to have been doing this for years, and these comrades he mentioned were all in the past. Something had happened to the church, Billy thought, in that time. A decline, maybe. You don’t self-exile out of nowhere.

Did teuthic agents retire? They had died, surely. The coterie of nonaligned colleagues like Wati and Jason from which Dane sought help, his half-friends-half-comrades, a network at odds with his lone squid status, did not share the absurd faith that drove him. Dane was the last of the squid agents and he was lonely. This revelation of relation to another power, a real power, with which he had history and allegiance, suddenly and unexpectedly revived, had snared him. Billy could only apply a little caution.

They were early to the rendezvous. It was a petrol station, closed down, boarded up, in a triangle of land between residential blocks and unconvincing light industry. The pumps were gone; the cement, striped with tire rubbings, was grown over.

“Stay close,” Dane said. They underlooked a flyover, and must be visible from the upper windows of the closest houses. Billy moved as Dane suggested, unfurtive, as if he had a normal job to do. That was how you disguised yourself in these places.

By the corner of the lot, behind engine remnants, was a passage over a low wall into the back streets. “That’s our route out, but it’s other stuff’s route in, too, so watch it,” Dane said. “Be ready to run like fucking fuck.”

The light dwindled. Dane did not attempt to be unseen, but he waited until a certain critical mass of darkness to take out his speargun. He held it dangling. As the sky turned a last flat dark grey, a woman climbed through the split in the fence and walked toward them.

“Dane,” she said.

She was in her forties, wearing an expensive coat, skirt, silver jewellery. Her greying hair was up. She carried a briefcase. “That’s her,” said Dane. “It’s Byrne.” He muttered urgently. “That’s her. The one came to work for Gris when he got sick. Sweet on him. Haven’t seen her since he died.”

Dane aimed the speargun from his hip. “Stop where you are,” he said. She eyed his unlikely weapon. “Stay there, Ms. Byrne,” he said. In the rubbly remaindered space, no one spoke for several seconds. Maybe half a mile off Billy heard the Dopplered wheeze of a train.

“Got to excuse me being a little jumpy,” Dane said at last. “I’m a bit shy these days, got a few problems…”

“Condolences,” the woman said. “We’ve heard that you and your congregation have had a falling out.”

“Right,” said Dane. “Yeah. Ta. Thanks for that. Long time. Bit of a turn-up your boss sending me a note.”

“Death isn’t what it used to be,” she said. She was posh.

“Right, right, right,” Dane said. “Well, you’d know, wouldn’t we? We both know you didn’t bring him back. No disrespect, I’m sure you’re great at what you do, but. Not even Grisamentum or you could do that. Where is he? No offense, but it ain’t you I come to see.”

“It isn’t so much you he wants to see, Dane Parnell. Though it is about that god of yours.” She pointed at Billy.