Chapter Seventy-Six
THE LORRY ROARED ON, IN PLAIN SIGHT, HARASSED BY A HARD core of inked papers that stayed in its slipstream to track its breakneck journey.
“We’re not going to lose them,” Saira said. She was driving now. “Just got to get there fast and do the job. They can’t take us, not this few. It’s when the rest of Grisamentum arrives we’re in trouble.”
Finally they reached the street Billy remembered. It was still all quiet, as if there were no war. People looked from houses at them and hurriedly away. Saira braked by the last, dim house.
“Are we here?” Fitch said. The trailer was stinking and crowded. The last Londonmancers waited by the dead kraken. “Why are we here? What’s the sea going to do?”
The papers rose, a malevolent little covey, circled. Fuck you, Billy mouthed, as they gusted over the roofs and away. “They’re fetching the rest of him,” he said. “Come on, come on.” He froze at approaching blue lights. A police car tore toward them and rubber-burned to a stop. Collingswood emerged, and Billy opened his mouth to yell at Saira to drive, but he heard Marge’s voice.
“Billy!” she almost screamed. She got out and stared at him. “Billy.” He ran for her, and they held on to each other a long time.
“Look,” said Collingswood. “It’s beautiful, innit?”
“I’m so sorry,” Billy said to Marge. “Leon…”
“I know,” she said. “I know. I got your message. And I got your other message. Look, I brought him.” Sitting in the car by Paul was Simon Shaw.
WHEN FITCH SAW PAUL, HE STARTED, AND OPENED HIS MOUTH BUT obviously did not know what to say. The other Londonmancers looked uneasily between the two. Fitch tried again to speak, and Paul just shook his finger no. “We got nothing to talk about,” Paul said. “Not while he’s on his way.” He pointed. Circling like a blown leaf was a single scrap of Grisamentum. “He’s coming, so let’s get this done.”
There would almost be a showdown between Grisamentum and the Tattoo, Billy thought, at last. But it would, rather, be between Grisamentum and Paul. Whatever Fitch’s plans had been or now were, Billy realised, Paul was not afraid of him anymore.
“Billy,” Collingswood said. “Mate. What the shit have you been up to?” She winked at him. “If you didn’t want the job you should’ve just said no, fuck’s sake.”
“Officer Collingswood,” he said. Found himself grinning at her for a second. She pursed her lips.
“What’s the plan then, geezer?”
“Come on,” Billy said. “Let’s move. You ready?” Simon looked terrified but nodded. They opened the lorry so he could stare at the kraken’s tank. Metabolise its position in his head. “Good man,” Billy said. “You know what’s going to happen?”
Billy had prepared his case in writing. It was a long and detailed message, which he had sealed in a glass bottle. “Shall we?” he said to Saira and Simon. “We need its permission.”
“And bearings,” Simon said. “I told you, I can’t do it without pretty precise bearings.”
Billy tapped the bottle. “I said all that. It’s in there. Don’t panic.”
The message in the bottle begged.
YOU SAID THE KRAKEN WAS NO LONGER YOURS. PLEASE, YOU HAVE TO help us. Even if it’s not one of yours, for the sake of the city where you’ve been for however long, please, we are asking you to use your neutrality and your power like when you helped against the Nazis. We need a safe place. We all heard about how the Tattoo wouldn’t face you that time, and we need that sort of clout again.
Everything is at stake, Billy had written. We just need to get past this night. And protect it. We are desperate. He pushed the message into the letter box.
They stood quietly in the dark. A man rode by them on a bike, with squeaking pedal-strokes. Fitch and the Londonmancers waited. The last krakenbit hid their teuthic tumourous amendations in the lorry. The sea inside the house did not answer the bottle for a long time.
“What’s happening?” Simon whispered.
“We can’t stick around forever,” Saira whispered.
Billy raised his hand, to rap the window, with a sense of blasphemy, when he was preempted. Something knocked instead from the inside. A slow beat through the curtain. A lower corner of the cloth moved. It was pulled slowly back.
“It’s showing us,” Billy said. “So you can see for coordinates, Simon. Do what you need to do.”
“Bloody hell,” said Saira. “I guess that’s permission.”
The curtain retreated from a corner of darkness. There was nothing visible behind it, until from deep within that dark came motions-insinuations in the pitch. They came closer, halting inches behind the glass. Staring out from the dim light that streetlamps shone into the room were tiny translucent fish.
Their ventral fins thrummed. They regarded Billy with see-through eyes. A suddenness came, a quick thing, viper-mouth agape, and the little fish were gone. The curtains gently eddied.
Lights came on in the dark room. The lights were moving. They came up on a grotto. A room full of sea. A living room, sofa, chairs, pictures on the walls, a television, lamps and tables, sunk in deep green water, investigated by fish and weeds. Those lights were the pearl tint of bioluminescent animals.
A living room, furnishings interrupted with coral, grazed on by sea cucumbers. The tassels of a lampshade moved with current, and an anemone waved its feathery stingers in filigree echo. Fish moved throughout, ghost-lit by themselves and their neighbours. Fingernail-sized things, arm-thick eels. By a sunken hi-fi riveted with barnacles, a fist-sized light moved like a long-armed metronome. The tick-tock light made Billy stare.
“Have you got it?” he said to Simon, with effort. “What you need?”
“I’ll have to move the water out, just before, in the right shape,” Simon murmured. He stared and itemised to himself according to the strange techniques he had perfected.
“Done,” he said. A moray glided from some dark, coiled around the sofa leg, tugged it into a new position, to make space for what was coming. “Okay,” Simon said. He closed his eyes, and Billy heard in the air around them the muttering of Simon’s last imbecilic vengeful ghost.
“He knows what I’m doing,” Simon said. “He thinks I’m going myself. He’s trying to stop me murdering me again.” He even smiled.
Chapter Seventy-Seven
THERE WAS THE NOISE OF PAPER. “THEY’RE HERE!” FITCH LEANED from the lorry. “Grisamentum! He’s coming!”
“Are you ready?” Billy said.
“They’re coming,” shouted Fitch. The air of the street was filling with papers. They investigated front gardens. They came at the lorry, staring with ink-blot eyes.
“Whatever the bloody hell you are going to do I suggest you do it,” Collingswood said.
Simon went to the kraken’s tank and put his hands on it. He closed his eyes. Headlights moved across the face of houses. There was the familiar prickling sound, the sequin glimmer. It faded up and down, and the tank was no longer there.
THERE WAS A RUMBLING FROM THE HOUSE. A BURP OF WATER SPILLED from the letter slot. With no tank to brace him, Simon fell to his knees.
“Big,” he muttered. He looked up and smiled. His ghost howled.
The kraken was in the embassy of the sea. Billy and Simon and Saira stared at each other.
“Did we…?” said Saira.
“It’s done,” said Billy.
“Congratufuckinglations,” Collingswood said. “Now will you please get in sodding prison?”
“It’s safe,” Billy said. The paper raged and raged around them. Cars came closer and stopped. Papers began to batter them angrily, pelleting into missiles. Paul shifted his chest out, as if he, not the picture he bore, were the ink’s enemy. Billy heard a voice he recognised. Byrne shouting “Goddammit!” from somewhere, as she approached and saw the empty lorry. “Time to go,” he said.