Kraken

by China Miéville

  With something like vertigo, he thought of all she must have been doing, how many things she must have gone through and seen, to get her to this point, where she was able to send him this word, this way. Without, he thought, a Dane to lead her. And with her partner dead. The hunt for the facts of which must surely have been what got her here. His message must have started that journey. He closed his eyes.

  “I wanted to keep her out of it,” he said, a last disingenuousness. He apologised to her, silently. She was in it, and more power to her. “Christ, what’s been happening? What did she say?”

  “She told you to meet her,” the man Bax said. “She’s in a carpark, in Hoxton. She’s with Tattoo.”

  “What?” Billy said. Dane stuttered to a stop.

  “Actually that is not quite what she said,” Saira said. “What she said was that she was with Paul. She said he had a proposition.” Billy and Dane looked at each other.

  “What the hell’s she been doing?” Billy said. “How’s she mixed up with him?”

  “You sure she wasn’t witch to start with?” Dane said.

  “I’m not sure of anything,” Billy said. “But I don’t … I don’t see how, I don’t think she …”

  “Then she’s going to get killed,” Dane said.

  “She’s … Shit,” said Billy.

  “If it’s really her,” Dane said.

  “She said to tell you ‘Gideon’,” Saira said.

  “It’s her,” he said. He shook his head and shut his eyes. “But why would she be with him? Where’s Wati?”

  “Here, Billy.” Wati sounded exhausted. He was in a little fisherman figure made by one of the children of the churchgoers, lying on a windowsill. A man made of toilet rolls and cotton wool. He looked at Billy out of penny eyes.

  “Wati, did you hear that? Can you get there?” Billy said. He tried to speak gently, but he was urgent. “We need to see if this is real. If it’s her. She might not have any idea what she’s getting into, and that name means it either is her or it’s someone who got it from her.”

  “What’s he doing?” Dane said. “Why’s Paul—or the Tattoo—drawing attention to himself? He must know everyone from Griz to Goss and Subby are after him.”

  “He wants something. She even said so. We get there he might have a knife to her throat,” Billy said. “He’s not going to negotiate toothless. Maybe he’s holding her hostage. Maybe he’s holding her hostage and she doesn’t even know.” Billy and Dane looked at each other.

  “Paul didn’t look in shape to do much when he left,” Saira said.

  “Wati, can you get to her?” Billy said.

  “There may not even be any bodies there for me,” Wati said.

  “There’s a doll in her car. And she wears a crucifix,” Billy said. There was a silence.

  “Wati,” Dane said. “Listen to yourself. You sound rough.”

  “I’ll see,” Wati said. He was gone. Limping from figure to figure across London.

  FITCH SAID THEY SHOULD HIDE. ONE LONDONMANCER, GIDDY AT his own heresy, suggested they leave the city.

  “Let’s just drive!” he said. “Up! To Scotland or whatever!” But there was no certainty that Fitch, for example, so much a function of the city, could even live for very long beyond its limits. Billy imagined himself on the motorways, becoming expert at the ungainly swing of the trailer, pulling the preserved squid through the damp English countryside and on into Scottish hills.

  “Griz’d find us in ten seconds.” He would. There was something about the surrounds of slate, the angles of the turns that kept them hidden, even if it was a trap too. The city bent just enough that the Londonmancers stayed out of sight. An organic reflex.

  If they left they would be nude. A giant squid in a lorry, heading north between hedgerows. Fuck’s sake, everything sensitive within ten miles would start to bleed.

  “We’re going to do it this way,” Billy said. “Dane’s way.” He did not look at him. “Because he isn’t going to change his mind, and this way we can stop guessing whether it’s the last night, because we’ll know it is. And Dane’s going to do it, whatever the rest of us do.”

  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.

&nb
sp; 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.

  GOSS KICKED THE SHABTI POWDER. HE WINKED AT SUBBY.

  “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 sec
ond. “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.