Saira was of his party-the warmakers. He could tell she was afraid, but still, that was her vote. Crisis forced the Londonmancers into democracy. Billy smiled at Saira, and she swallowed and smiled back.

Chapter Seventy-One

WRAPPERS SURROUNDING THEM, MARGE AND PAUL SHIFTED IN their seats. They had been sat for very many hours in the car. Marge recharged the iPod and tried to remain stoic about the increasingly grating warble of her protector.

“What are you listening to?” Paul asked her, finally. It had taken him long enough. She ignored his question. They ate trash calories, ducking below window-level on the few occasions they thought they heard someone approaching. Paul ground his back against the seat as if an insect bit him.

“What’s your story?” Marge said. Maybe calmed down he might be more comprehensible.

“I got tangled up with all this stuff years ago.” That was all he would say.

More hours. Right then, that carpark was where Marge had lived forever. Emotions and surprise had a hard time getting in to that carpark. So she could merely sit.

It was not silent. All buildings whisper. This one did it with drips, with the scuff of rubbish crawling in breezes, with the exhalations of concrete. Long into dead time, there was another breath at last, a tiny breath. From the kewpie figure dangling above Marge’s dash. She turned her iPod down.

“Paul,” the little figure said, in a man’s tiny voice. “And you must be Marge.”

“Wati,” said Paul. “Marge,” Paul said, “this is Wati.” He spoke carefully. It had been a long time since he had said anything. Marge said nothing. She looked at the doll and waited. “Where’s everyone else?” Paul said.

“What are you offering, Paul?” the doll said. “What’s going on? Will you come back?”

“Wait,” Marge said. To the figurine. “Are you… Are you with Billy? Where is he?”

“Billy can’t come,” it said. “There’s a spot of bother going on.” What a sad laugh it gave. “He says hi, by the way. He’s very worried about you. Didn’t expect to hear from you. He’s sort of concerned about… your man here. I don’t think you know everything about him that might be helpful. Paul, what is it you want to say to us?”

“Oh, you know, you know, Wati, now you’re here I don’t even know what to say,” Paul said. “I have so much to say, I don’t even-I’ve been having plans, you see.” He spoke fast, a wordspill. Marge stared at him. He was quite suddenly like this. “What do I want? Wati, I want you to split, I think, and bring, bring Billy. I want you to…” He paused. “You know what happened, Wati. What the Londonmancers had planned? They were ready to kill me. You know that? You think that’s okay?”

“We don’t know for sure they planned anything, Paul. But where do we go now? What do you want?”

“They were…”

“Where’s the little bits of Grisamentum?” Wati said. “It was in a bottle, weren’t it?” Paul made a face and waved his hand: It’s nowhere, it’s nothing. “Where do we go now?”

“I don’t go anywhere, Wati, but you should,” Paul said, urgently. “You should go. Get Billy and Dane and the Londonmancers.”

“I’m here to hear you out,” Wati said.

It was only now, hearing this strange discussion over the muttering awful music in her ears, that Marge’s chest felt suddenly tight as she had the thought, the wonder, if what she heard was a hostage negotiation, about her.

“You go, Wati,” Paul said. “Go on now.”

“No don’t,” said a new voice. “Not now, really don’t.” It was a voice Marge knew. Two people were approaching, in and out of the light pools by the cars. A man and a boy. “Now’s we’re all together it’s time for us to really fix those threads once and for all. The party’s tonight, after all, and everybody’s coming.”

GOSS AND SUBBY.

Oh my dear sweet Lord.

The leerer and his empty-faced boy. They came out of blackness. Trench coats spattered with gore and dirt, swaggering in shadow. Every few breaths, cigaretteless Goss breathed out smoke.

Marge made a mewling noise. She reached for them, but her car keys were gone. She whimpered. She could not breathe. She turned up the iPod violently, so her ears were full of a stupid crooning rendition of TLC’s “No Scrubs” so loud it hurt her. One earpiece fell out. She clawed around the floor for the keys.

“Run,” Wati whispered from the tiny cutesy figure. “I’ll get help.” And he was gone-Marge felt him go.

But though Wati had spoken quietly, she heard Goss say as he walked stiff and twitchy out of nowhere into that place, “Will you though, my best fellow? Will you really?”

She saw Goss hold up what looked like a handle of stone. A figure in clay, degraded by millennia. “Hello, boss-carrier,” he said to Paul. “You’ve got something of mine on your person. I suppose what we should say is you’ve got something of which I’m its. Looking for help, are you? Waiting on the bluff for the cavalry? Round you go, Subby, Son.”

Marge scrabbled to get away, but here was the boy Subby staring right in at her as I dun wun no scrubs no scrubs no scrubs warbled in one ear. She cried out and jerked away from him. Goss stood by the other door.

“Hello, boss!” he shouted. He reached over Paul and yanked the iPod from Marge’s lap, and she moaned and her hands twitched and clutched as nothing stopped him, as there was no skip of escape, no hesitation, as the trembling voice continued from the receding headphones, and Goss without looking hurled it away from him and it shot too fast an impossible distance away across the concrete cavern and shattered out of sight.

“How you doing under there, boss?” Goss shouted at Paul. “What d’you reckon? Has old Wati had his minute?” He looked at his wrist, as if he wore a watch, and stretched out the hand that held that ruined figure.

(Wati was flickering fast, his manifestation a little discorporeally crippled, limping, like some fast-running three-legged dog. Quick quick! In ceramic bust, general on a horse, plastic pilot in a travel agent doll doll gargoyle puppet across miles back to where the Krakenist remnants and the Londonmancers waited, hauling his exhausted self into the doll one of them carried, shouting breathlessly, “Goss and Subby! They’re there, they’ve ambushed Paul and Marge, they’re going to-” And then as his companions looked appalled at the little plastic man Wati suddenly and violently receded from them, hauled back hard as) Goss yanked the old shape as if angling or starting a motor or pulling muck from a drain. There was an inrush, a gasp, the slap of a soul hitting stone, and Wati came slamming back into the thing Goss held.

“Blimey! Nearly brought your dolly back with you with that one!” Goss said. “Recall this old thing?” He wagged the statue. Camouflaged by collapse, but there were shoulders, a head of some remnant stump kind. The clay memory of a mouth, from which Wati wordlessly shouted. “Recall this old thing, Wati my boy?” Goss said. “Do you know, do you effing know how many bleeding ages it took us to track this little gewgaw down, all the way over in the sands? How do you like my tan?”

The shabti. Of course. The first body, from which Wati was born. Swiped from a museum or from its interment in a tomb. Wati screamed, pulled and pulled to rip himself from the threads that kept his soul in that slave body, but it snagged him. Maybe reoriented, with a few minutes to gather himself and focus his class-rage into more rebel-magic, he might have wriggled free.

“Events have rather done a runner on us, Wati, old pal,” Goss said, as Wati bellowed in his tiny pebble voice. Goss held him head down. “You were quite a little scamp. Let’s wrap you up tight. Time for bed.” He dropped to his knees. Wati screamed. Goss raised the shabti above the concrete and stabbed it down, and shattered it into grit and dust.

Wati’s voice went out.

There was one less presence in the chamber. All around London, members of the defeated Union of Magicked Assistants stopped what they were doing and gasped and looked up and howled.