the exile Krakenist and we wish the same thing. Our self a product of concatenate development. The kraken would not have this, this is not about them.
Were the giant squid themselves, or their parents, god instars, their apotheosed others, helping with this? Out of, what, divine irritation at some misrepresentation? “Why this squid?” Billy whispered.
Others are against us. We had thought otherwise. We know now. You must get to the kraken and keep it safe from fire.
“Ooh, d’you think?” Billy muttered. “Thanks for that, hadn’t occurred …” He continued reading.
You must free the exile.
“That’s Dane,” he said.
You will be shown.
“Why will we?” said Billy. “What does ‘concatenate development’ mean?” He frowned and tilted his head and read.
Destroy this paper. You will be helped.
AND DANE?
Dane was hanging upside down, and dripping. He had been reciting to himself stories of his grandfather, his grandfather’s courage. “Once,” he said inside his own head, in his grandfather’s voice, “I got caught.” Was it a memory or an invention on Dane’s part? Never mind. “So there was this time there was some scuffle going on with the ringstoners. You ever gone toe-to-toe with a ringstoner? Anyway, we were at it over something or other, can’t even remember, some saint bone of some church we said we’d help so they’d help us, I don’t know …” Concentrate! Dane thought. Come on. “Anyway, so there it was and they had me all trussed like in a bloody cat’s-cradle, and in they come to give it all this, yadda yadda, like. So.” Sniff. Dane as his grandfather, sniffing. “I let them get all close. I was all letting my head go all over the place, you know? They were crowing. You’ll never this, we’ll always that. But when they got right up to it, right up to me, I didn’t say nothing. Till they were right there. Then I said a prayer and like I knew they would, like I bloody knew they would, all the ropes that they had were just what they always were, which is the arms of God, and God unrolled them, and I was free, and then, boy, there was some reckoning.”
Hurray. At some point the echoes of the room Dane was in changed, as people came in. Dane stopped talking to himself and tried to listen. He could not see who was there, with what had been done to his eyes. He could not see, but even through waves of pain he could hear, and he knew that the voice he heard was that of the Tattoo.
“Seriously, nothing?” the Tattoo said.
“Lot of screaming, but you don’t count that,” said the voice of one of the Nazis. “You alright? You seem stressed.”
“I am a bit stressed. Truth to tell I’m a bit bloody stressed. Remember the monsterherds?”
“No.”
A snuffling, a slobber, canine whickering. That dogman was there. That mage-knacked member of this crew, a man made himself half German shepherd, a pitiful fascist meat pun that Dane scorned even as the teeth and muzzle that pun occasioned mauled him.
“Well … They used to run with Grisamentum, back when I … Back when. Well, one of my factories just got interrupted by a bunch of dust or something acting very much like some kind of bloody dragon.”
“I don’t know what that means …”
“It means there’s stuff coming back I wasn’t expecting to face again. This little shitfucker has to know something. He’s in on something. He knows where the fucking squid is—it’s his god, isn’t it? And he knows where Billy Harrow’ll be. Keep at it.”
Keep at it. Dane prayed without ceasing. He prayed silently and motionlessly. Tentacled God in darkness please give me strength. Strength to listen, and to learn. Krakens in your vast silent and ammoniac wisdom have mercy. He knew that he should listen, that he should wait and say nothing, if even he could answer the questions, which mostly he could not even if he would, which he would not, because this would not end. He knew that it would not be too long now, weak as he was and unblooding from all the holes the Nazis had made, woozy and too tired and done to even scream, a thing hanging in thermals of pain—he knew that this was a pitch of this that was its own limit, and that therefore, again, for the second time, before that moment when he would spill enough of himself out that a critical mass of lack would be reached and he would have nowhere