beautifully behind Saira. She heard him, but he was already on her. He backhanded her into the bricks. She braced herself. Where her fingers clenched, they squished the bricks as if they were Plasticine.
Saira hissed, literally hissed. Dane smacked her again. She looked at him with blood on her lip. It had been easy to forget that for Dane this was sacred fervour.
“Steady, man,” Billy said.
“Not many people could port something that size out of there,” Dane said. “But you know that. We know who got it out of there, and we know what you dangled to make him do it. I don’t like it when someone steals my god. It gets me all fucking twitchy. What did you do? What did Al Adler have to do with all this? The end of the world’s coming, and I want to know what you did with my god.”
“You know who you’re bloody talking to?” she said. “I’m a Londonmancer …”
“You’re living a dream. The London heart stops beating, you know what’s going to happen? Fuck all. London don’t need a heart. Your mates know what you been doing?”
“That’s enough.”
Fitch had entered the yard. They stared at him as he closed the door behind him. He stood by Saira, in the path of Dane’s weapon.
“You think I should be in a museum,” he said. “Might be. But museum pieces have their uses, right, Billy? You’re almost right about me, Dane. See, when you don’t have the knack you used to, you’re no threat. So people tell you things.”
“Fitch,” said Dane. “This is between me and Saira …”
“No it is not,” Fitch said. He squared all pugnacious, then withered. “She just handled the money. You want to know what happened, talk to me.”
“I SHOUT,” HE SAID, “AND THE OTHERS’LL BE HERE.”
Things flew overhead. Edgy birds. He glanced at them, and from where Billy stood, the perspective looked wrong.
“You took it?” Dane said.
“If you were still a Krakenist, I’d not be talking to you,” Fitch said. “But you aren’t, and I want to know why. Because you’ve got him.” He nodded at Billy. “And he’s the one who knows what’s going on.”
“I do not,” Billy said. “Not this again.”
“Why don’t you want the Krakenists to know what’s going on?” said Dane. “We … they … ain’t London’s enemies.”
“I know how they want to get rid of their holies. And I know where that sort of thing leads.”
“What? They aren’t even looking for it, let alone getting rid of it,” Billy said.
“I wish you was right, Fitch, but you ain’t,” Dane said. “The church ain’t doing anything.”
“Why do you want the kraken?” Fitch said. “I’ve got no business seeing anything in the guts these days. They just sit there squelching. But there it was. Fire. First time since I don’t know how long, and oh my London what I did see.”
“What’s Al Adler in this?” Billy said.
“Why did you take it?” Dane whispered.
Fitch and Saira looked at each other. Saira shrugged. “I don’t think we have a choice,” she said.
“It was his fault,” Fitch said. He whined. Billy could tell the old man was relieved to break his vow. “It was him started it. Coming here with his plans, and the burning at the end of it.”
“Al? You said he was superstitious,” Billy said to Dane. “So—he came for a reading. But no one liked what they saw.”
“Tell us,” Dane said, his voice shaking, “everything.”
ADLER HAD COME TO THE LONDONMANCERS WITH A RIDICULOUS, audacious plan. He was going to steal the kraken. He was not afraid to say so in that hallowed confessional: Fitch, not judging, unshocked even at that stage by the enormous crime to come, bound to confidentiality by oaths in place since the Mithras temple, split the city’s skin to see what might happen.
“There’s no way Al thought of that job,” Dane said.
A courtesy, a formality. Fitch expected to see nothing, as he had for years. What he saw was fire.
The burning end of it all. Burning what it couldn’t burn, taking the whole world.
And after? Nothing. Not a phoenix age, not a kingdom of ash, not a new Eden. This time, for the first time, in a way that no threatened end had ushered in before, there was no post-after.
“Most of the Londonmancers don’t know anything about this,” Saira pled. They could not have been expected to overturn their vows like their leader and his best lieutenant had done. “It was obvious Al was just a front guy. Hardly criminal genius,