pipette over the glass. “I will piss in you and then bleach you so you dissolve. Where is the rest of you?”
He wrote. The penmanship was ragged. FUCKERS.
“Alright,” said Dane. “Bleach that murdering bastard.”
WAIT. Billy scratched. INK FACTRY. CLOSED.
Billy looked at Saira. Dane whispered to the toy he carried, though Wati was not in it. “Why take all the books?” He dipped more bleach again.
RESERCH.
“How can he read them all?” said Dane. “Research? Why does he care anyway? What in the name of God has all this been about?”
It was Grisamentum’s plan that started the countdown to the fire to come. Kicked everything into motion. Only by the superstition of Adler, one of the few who knew his boss still lived in that intermediate ashy way, had the Londonmancers found out about the scheme. Grisamentum’s intended theft had made them intervene, against their own oaths, because they could not have that burning.
“Why,” whispered Billy, “do you want to burn it?”
DONT CRAZY WHY?
“So what is it?” Billy said.
“What’s he doing?” Fitch said. “Why did he even want the kraken?”
CANT U GUESS?
The ink wrote that, forcing the needle unexpectedly to the paper and scribbling with Billy’s hand. Billy redipped.
MAGIC.
ONLY I CAN BE.
“Okay,” said Billy after seconds of silence. “Does anyone understand this?”
“Why’s he saying this?” Dane said. “You’re not even bleaching him.”
“He’s crowing,” said Paul, suddenly. Billy nodded.
“Bleach the motherfucker,” said Dane. “Just on principle.” Billy dipped the bleach-tipped needle and the ink swilled to get away.
NO NO BE ITS MAGC ONLY I CAN. NO 1 ELS IN LONDONN CN BE.
“He’s losing it,” Saira said.
“Ink,” Billy said.
• • •
THEY STARED AT HIM.
“That’s what he means,” Billy said. “That’s what no one else in London can be. The kraken’s ink. Anyone else might be able to use it, but Grisamentum can be it.”
Such a magic beast. Alien hunter god in its squiddity. Englassed. Knowing how this stuff worked, Billy thought. It had the biggest eyes—so all-seeing. Bastard of myth and science, specimen-magic. And what other entity, possessing those characteristics, being that thing, had the means to write it all down?
“Jesus,” Billy said. “This has always been about writing. What do you mean?” he said to the ink. “How does it work?”
CAN B IT CAN WILL BE INNNK
It was too gone, too bleached and limited, that little drip of Grisamentum, to answer. Alright. Analogies, metaphors, persuasion—this, Billy knew, was how London did it. He remembered watching Vardy gnosis up, from will, and Billy decluttered his mind and tried to mimic him.
So.
With script, a new kind of memory, grimoires and accounts. Traditions could be created, lies made more tenacious. History written down sped up, travelled at the speed of ink. And all the tedious antique centuries before we were ready, the pigment was stored for us in the cephalopod containers—motile ink, ink we caught and ate and let run down and stain our chins.
Oh, what, he thought, it was camouflage? Please. Architeuthis lives in the aphotic zone: what purpose would the spray of dark sepia serve in a world without light? It was there for other reasons. We just would not get the hint, not for millennia. We didn’t invent ink: ink was waiting for us, aeons before writing. In the sacs of the deepwater god.
“What could you do with kraken ink?” Dane said. Not scornful—breathless.
“What can you be with it?” Billy corrected.
The very writing on the wall. The logbook, the instructions by which the world worked. Commandments.
“But it’s dead,” Billy said.
“Come on, look at Byrne, he’s worked with thanatechs before,” Dane said. “All he needs is to wake its body up, just a little bit. For a little bit of ink. All he has to do is milk it.”
It would not take so much to bring that preserved kraken an interzone closer to life. Thanks to Billy and his colleagues there was no corruption, after all, no rot to cajole backward, which was always the hardest battle for necrosmiths. A threshold-life would be enough to stimulate the ink sacs.
“But why would he burn it?” Saira said. “Why the burning?”
“His plan sets it in motion,” said Fitch at last. “That’s all we know.”
“Maybe it’s to do with his crew,” Billy said. “It must be him has Cole’s daughter. Maybe it’s out of his control. What are you doing with the girl?” He said the last sentence loudly to the ink spot. “What are you doing with Cole’s daughter?” He shook it to wake it.