Kraken (58 page)

“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.

G
OSS KICKED THE SHABTI POWDER
. H
E WINKED AT
S
UBBY
.

“Thing is, Paul,” Goss said, and crouched by the passenger door. “Hallo, girlie! Long time. We been here a long time, waiting, to see who you’d get to turn up. Because. Thing is. Do you think we don’t hear the messages that get sent through London? Do you think you can try to talk to your friends and we won’t hear? Chat chat chat through the lights.” He shook his head.

“Now, young squire, what I’m keen to do, very keen, is have a little chinwag with my boss man. So. Get out of the car. Take off your jacket and your shirt. Unwind whatever the tish it is you got keeping his nibs shtum. And let me have a word. Alright? Because it’s all going a bit fiddly out here.”

With little fear noises Marge gritted her teeth and tried to shove out and through Subby, but he pushed back much stronger than he looked. Paul opened his own door and stepped out. Marge tried to tell him
no
. She grabbed for him and tried to pull the door closed.

“Back off a second, Goss,” Paul said. His voice was perfectly steady. Goss obeyed him. Paul took off his jacket. “Let me ask you something, Goss,” Paul said. “Watch her, Subby! Keep her in the car.” He was taking off his shirt. “Think about it,” Paul said. “Do you think I could live with your boss for however many years it is, and not know where you could listen in? Not know that if I send a Londonmancer a message via Southwark, it’ll get there, but that Hoxton’s always been a traitor? Why d’you think I sent them word from here? I
knew
you’d get it.”

Shirtless in the cold, his skin was all-over goose bumps. Wound around him like a shit-coloured girdle was parcel tape. A little sound came from behind him. Paul took Marge’s car keys from his pocket and threw them into the dark. He glanced at Goss and then at Subby. “I wanted you to get the message so I could deliver her to you.”

Marge’s insides went quite hollow. She folded away from him.

“I was kind of hoping I could deliver the others too. And they might still come, especially if Wati got word to them before you …” He made reeling motions. “And then they’re yours.”

Marge crawled across the gear stick, through the open passenger door. The two men and the boy watched her with what looked like mild interest. She crept and stumbled away.

“What’s all this about, Paul?” Goss said. He sounded genuinely intrigued. “When am I going to talk to the boss? Do let’s undo you.”

“Yeah. In a second. But I wanted you to hear this, and I wanted
him
to hear. From me. You listening?” he shouted to his own skin. “I want you, and him, to know that I’m offering you a deal. I’m not stupid—I knew you’d find me. So. No more locking me up like a, a zoo thing. We work together. That’s the deal now. And this is a goodwill offering.” He pointed at Marge. “I know you want Billy. Well, there’s Billy-bait.”

Air felt like it was clotting in Marge’s windpipe as she crawled.

“I’m sorry,” Paul said to her. “But you don’t know what it’s been like. There was no way I was going to get away.”

He took scissors from his pocket and tore the plastic-and-glue carapace from himself. His skin was red beneath it. “Did you get all that, you?” he said. “You’ve still got time to fix this situation. Grisamentum’s gone to war—he’s got some mad plan—but I can tell you where the squid is. Do we have a deal?”

Paul turned, so that his back faced Marge. In her already-horror she was not even surprised to see the malevolent tattoo on his back raise its eyebrows at her.

“Maybe,” it said.

Paul turned to her again. Goss and Subby stared at him. Goss was admiring. Marge was on her hands and knees on the carpark floor, in Wati’s dust, and moving as fast as she could when she could not breathe and her heart shook her.

“Oy, turn back, I want to see,” the voice of the Tattoo said.

“Don’t talk to me like that,” Paul said. “We’re partners now. Look.” He waited another second. “She’s getting away.” He pointed, and glanced at Goss, who clicked his tongue, and strode round the car after Marge.

“Where are you off to, you little bantam?” He chuckled. She managed to stand, and ran, but within a few metres he was with her. He grabbed her by the hair. She let out a sound like nothing she could have imagined. He hauled her.

On the other side of the car Paul and Subby watched him. “What’s going on? Turn around,” the voice from Paul’s back bleated.

“Hey, there’s one other thing I worked out in my time, Goss,” Paul called to him, and held up the scissors. “I worked out what this thing is.” He patted Subby. “I worked out where you keep your heart.”

A moment cracked. Marge saw Goss way in front of her before she even realised he had let go. She saw him running. She glimpsed a look on his face so aghast it almost made you wince to see it, almost you could sob for it if you weren’t held in still-split time. But no matter how fast he moved Goss was too far away, even with the moments Paul had wasted with that taunt, to get between the scissors and Subby.

Paul brought the blades double-dagger into Subby’s neck. Quick repeated punches. Blood, and the boy’s mindless face did not move except that his eyes widened. Paul stabbed hard. The blood that spattered him was very dark.

Subby dropped to his knees, looking quizzical. “What? What? What’s happening?” the Tattoo foolishly demanded, just like a child.

Goss screeched and screamed and howled. He collapsed midleap. The scissors quivered, embedded in Subby’s neck. Paul shuddered. Goss sprawled across the car bonnet, puking up his own much brighter blood.

“No no
no
no
no
no.” He whined and drummed his heels and stared in outrage at the dying boy-thing.

“Do you think,” Paul said—while “what? what’s happening? what?” the Tattoo kept saying—“that I would work with you?” Paul pulled the scissors from Subby’s neck, pushed them back again. Subby looked from side to side and closed his eyes. Goss screamed and bubbled and kicked and drooled sudden smoke and could not stand.
Screamed
.

“Do you think I would let you come anywhere near me?” Paul said to him. “Did you think I’d collaborate with you? Do you think I’d let you be the muscle for this purebred scum evil motherfucker on my back? Did you
think
I wouldn’t
kill
you?” Paul spat at the dying Goss. Spat at the ground in front of him. “You’ve got this flesh basket to hold what makes you tick, and you think that’ll stop me? Goss, stop up your noise. It is time for you to go to hell and take your poor fucking empty little life-carrier with you.”

Subby was immobile. The blood was coming out of him slower. Goss wheezed and gurgled and looked as if he was trying to level some good-bye curse, but as Subby died with closing eyes, he died too. His last breath went without smoke.

And whatever else was happening—
in times and places all over—
unmentionably many—
that going out—
that finishedness—
rippled—
was very felt—
and every one of London’s bullied and terrified were for a metamoment, from 1065 to 2006, all in their own instants and entangled for a blink, in every awful situation, every little room where they were head-flushed, thumbscrewed, decried, name-debased, taunted, punched, sneered at, the foil of brutality, for a moment just then, for one instant, which might not save them but which would at the very least be a tiny comfort, for always, felt better—
felt joy.

P
AUL WATCHED
G
OSS GO
.

“What’s happening? What’s happening? What? What?” the Tattoo said. Paul ignored it. Marge ignored it.

She watched without motion, holding her head where Goss had hurt her. When Subby died—as if he was a “he,” as if it were more than a box with a face—he mouldered away. He crumbled into a disgustingness, and then that crumbled too, into nothing, leaving only a heart, a man’s unbeating heart too big for Subby’s chest.

Goss did not crumble. Goss lay there like the dead man he was.

“I’m sorry,” Paul said to her, at last.

“I needed him to trust me,” Paul said. “He never would have left Subby alone otherwise.” They stared at each other. The Tattoo screamed, forced to stare into the parking lot darkness where nothing was happening.

“What did you
do?”
the Tattoo said.

“I knew they’d find me,” Paul said. “And I could never take him. This was all I could think to do. I knew they’d hear what we said if we sent it from here, and I
needed
them to listen in and come. Can you help me cover him? Him.” He raised his arms. “The Tattoo.”

He said, “I didn’t mean that to happen to Wati. I’m sorry. I thought Goss and Subby would get here first. Well, they did, but I didn’t think they’d hide and wait. I tried to persuade him to leave.”

“I don’t understand,” she said. “Anything.”

“Yeah. I’m sorry. Let me tell you what I can.”

Chapter Seventy-Two

T
HEY KNEW
—P
AUL EXPLICITLY
, M
ARGE BY THE INSTINCTS SHE
was accruing—that that was hardly the end of it as far as London went. For them, though, it had been an epoch-ending execution. They sat where they had fallen, talking a little, but often just sitting and breathing in Goss-and-Subbyless air. Paul kicked Goss’s heart across the concrete.

When Goss died, the lights in the garage had dimmed twice and gone up again in a hip-hip-hooray, in object joy. Colours changed and shadows moved as emissaries from various courts—seelie, unseelie, abseelie, paraseelie—passed through to check out the spreading rumour. A few ghosts that Marge did not see but felt as movements of sad warmth. With a
squee
, a pigness passed her. It was not long after that that they heard a car.

Without a siren but with lights whirling a police car bumped down the ramp and to them. Three officers emerged, their batons out, pepper spray and Tasers out, their hands overfull of weapons. Their terror was quite obvious. After a pause, out of the car in a smart sweep, her clothes and hair jouncing, leaking smoke from one corner of her mouth, a cigarette bobbing from the other, her eyes narrow and turning her head a little, splendid as Boudicca, was Collingswood.

She stared at Paul, put one hand out, took her Taser from her belt. She looked at Marge, raised an eyebrow and nodded in recognition. She chirruped and whistled, and stroked the air as if it were a piglet’s head.

Collingswood smacked her lips. “Fucking fucking fuck me,” she whispered. She smiled an utterly beautiful smile. “It’s true. You really did. Fuck me. Finally. Oh … my … gosh. We could do with a bit of good news tonight.”

“I told you there was stuff going on with me,” Marge said.

“And look,” said Collingswood. “Slap my naughty knuckles for making the wrong call. And it’s you.” She said that to Paul. “Well, I mean not
you
but
you
. Fucked if I know what’s the point tonight, but you got to do what you can, right? Come on then.” She motioned the two of them up. They obeyed.

“What is this?” Marge said. She sounded mild, not outraged—curious.

“Give me a minute I’ll come up with a bunch of stuff to charge you with,” Collingswood said. “Basically, the gist of it is, you’re coming with me. Might as well salvage something. You too.” She looked at Paul. He stood meekly enough. He looked side to side as something invisible circled him. “I don’t want any trouble. From you
or
from, y’know. Your passenger. For fuck’s sake, don’t you want to get out of all this?” she said.

Yes
, thought Marge.
Really
. Collingswood nodded at her. The officer did not need her sensitivities to read that answer. “Come on then,” she said. “Bloody star, you.”

Paul slumped, walked toward the car too, then abruptly raced past Collingswood and her fumbling officers, toward the exit. He knocked her as he went, so she staggered and dropped her cigarette.

“Naughty fucking naughty,” she shouted. “Tase the bastard.” One of the officers missed, but another got Paul in the back, in his unseen Tattoo, with the electricity-spitting wires. Paul shrieked and fell, spasming.

“Stop, stop!” shouted Marge. “Don’t you know who he is, don’t you know what he’s …? He can’t face being locked up anymore, that’s why—”

“Boohoo,” said Collingswood. “Do I look like I give a shit?” She stood over Paul as he strained to breathe. In truth she did look like she gave a little of a shit. She wore an expression not of regret, exactly, but of troubled irritation, as if the paper in the photocopier had run out.

“No one’s out to fuck you up,” she said to him. “Will you stop it?” A swiney scream screamed in dimensions close enough for Marge to hear it, and receded. “Now you scared off Perky,” Collingswood said. “Get him in the car,” she shouted at her men. “If there’s still London in the morning, we’ll see what we do.”