that interruption …” And Goss licked the air around her again. Marge was clamped between the two figures as surely as if they actually touched her.
“Alright then,” Goss said at last, stood up straight. “I can’t get a snifter.” He shrugged at his companion, who shrugged back. “Seems not, Subby.” They both stepped back.
“Sorry to bother you,” Goss said to Marge. “We just wanted to check out whether you knew anything, you see.” She retreated. He followed, but not so close as before. He let her get away a little. She tried to breathe. “Because we’re so eager to find out what young Billy’s up to, because we thought he knew everything and then we thought he knew nothing, and then disappearing like that, we thought maybe he must know everything again. But I will be buggered if we can find him. Which”—he waggled his tongue—“means likely enough he has ways and means of not leaving his savour-trail. Wondered if the two of you had spoken. Wondered if you might’ve done a little magery-knackery-jiggery-pokery. I taste not.” Marge breathed in big shudders.
“Well, you mind how you go then, we’ll be on our way. Forget you ever saw us. It never happened. Word to the wise. Oh, unless if Billy does happen to give you a tinkle, do let us know, won’t you? Thanks ever so much, really appreciate it. If he contacts you and you forget to let us know, I’ll kill you with a knife or some such. Alright then? Cheers.”
Then, only then when the man and boy had, it could only be said, sauntered away, not until they had actually turned a corner and were out of sight, did the people nearby run to Marge—including the two who had aborted their rescue, ashamed-looking but mostly just terrified—and ask if she was alright.
Her adrenalin spiked and Marge shook and leaked a few poststress tears, and she was enraged with everyone there. Not one of them had helped her. Recalling Goss and Subby, though, Marge admitted to herself that she could not blame them.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
A DELEGATION OF FAT BEETLES WENT FROM PIMLICO BY WALLTOP and sub-pavement route to a workshop in Islington. They were ink-carriers, little slave things, experimental subjects imbued with temporary powers as part of a savant’s writing of an exhaustive volume of one school of magic, the Entomonomicon. The man’s writing was on hold, because, while individually they were as dumb as specks, the insects were collectivised under a gestalt field, were thinking like a brain, and were on strike.
Where they went birds circled in the air over the town hall. This unlikely flock—an owl, several pigeons, two feral cockatiels—were all familiars, high-ranking enough to be imbued with considerable portions of their masters’ and mistresses’ clouts. They were protesting where several particularly exploitative wizards worked, now struggling with ill-trained scab mannequins.
The idea was that under the stewardship of a UMA activist the coleopteric set would be a flying picket, would join the birds in their aerial circuit. It was reciprocation for the birds’ sympathy picket outside their own workplace the previous week. It had been a powerful symbol of solidarity: some of the strongest hexed assistants in the city feather-to-chitin with some of the weakest, predators avianly chanting alongside what would generally be their prey.
That was the plan. The press had been told to expect visitors. The UMA full-timer signalled to the circling birds that he would be back, and went to caucus with the newcomers. Around the corner in a tiny park, the beetles emerged from a crevice, little bullets of iridescent black waiting for their contact. They milled in leaf litter, gathered in an arrow shape as they heard footsteps.
It was not their organiser, however, who approached. It was a burly man in jeans and black boots, a leather jacket, his face covered by a motorcycle helmet. Waiting by the fence was another man dressed exactly the same.
The beetles, which had been waiting perfectly still, spread out a bit and concerned themselves with the mindless-looking business of insect life, as if they were just pootling around. But with growing alarm, the coagulate striker realised that the faceless man was bearing down on them, kicking aside the camouflaging undergrowth, raising his big biker boots, and bringing them down, right at them, too fast for them to scatter.
With each stamp tens of carapaces split and innards were pulped, and the aggregate consciousness ebbed and became a less sentient panic. The beetles scurried and the man killed them.