His tuition was distracted. But when Wati did come, it was so quietly that neither man had any intimation of his presence until he spoke. “Sorry I’m late,” he said, a snarly voice in the chubby plastic man’s pipes. “Emergency meetings. You got no idea.”
“Everything okay?”
“Not even. We got attacked.”
“What happened?” Dane said.
“Look, it ain’t a picnic and everyone knows that, right? But they came in hard, and they came in brutal. André’s still in hospital.”
“Cops?”
“Pros.”
“Pinkertons?” The agency’s name was a byword for mercenary strikebreaking.
“They weren’t secret about it. It was the Tattoo’s bastards.” Dane stared at the statuette, and it stared back at him.
“I guess that ain’t such a surprise,” Dane said. He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. “Do we know who’s paying him?”
“Take your pick. No shortage of candidates. But d’you understand what this means? They’re gunning for us. They’ve taken it up to DEFCON One.”
“I’m sorry, mate. You’re not the only one. I thought I knew which of my places were secure,” Dane said. “The Teuthex sent some of … You remember Clem?” Wati whistled slowly.
“That’s got to fuck with your head,” he said. “At least I know the bastards I’m up against are no friends of mine. If I could, I’d go in have a shufti, see what your old church are up to.”
“There are statues all over the walls …” Billy said.
“There are blocks,” Dane said. “Ways to keep people out. They’re careful.”
“I got to look out for my members, Dane,” Wati said. “We have to win this. But it turns out that I’m warring with the Tattoo whether I like it or not. He comes for my members, I’m coming for him. If the main thing he wants is to get hold of the kraken, the main thing I want is to get it first. Whatever he’s for, I’m against it.”
The two men smiled.
• • •
WATI SUMMONSED A JACKDAW OUT OF THE SKY AND TO THE kitchen window. It dropped a piece of paper on the counter, sang something to Wati and left. It was Dane’s list of porters. It was much folded, scratched with bird claws, written on in various clumsy hands, in red, blue and black.
“It wasn’t hard to get information,” Wati said in that out-of-time accent. “Mancers know each other. People with this sort of talent, even if my members haven’t met them through their bosses, they know of them.”
“Why are these ones crossed off?” Dane said. “I’d’ve thought Fatima Hussein was a good candidate for having shifted it.”
“The ones crossed out in blue are out of the country.”
“Alright. What about these others?”
“They have familiars. Their knacks are so tied up with them that with the strike, they couldn’t port cheese into a sandwich.”
“How does it work?” Billy said.
“Quid pro quo,” Dane said. “They’re your eyes and ears, but more’n that. Put something into your animal or your whatever it is …”
“Magic.”
“Put something into it, you get more out,” Wati said. Animals as amplifiers. “There’s four people we reckon could’ve ported this. Simon Shaw, Rebecca Salmag, the Advocate, and Aykan Bulevit.”
“I know a couple of them,” Dane said. “Simon retired. Aykan’s a tosser. Any beamers? I hate beaming.”
“Yeah, but we ain’t talking about you,” Wati said. “We’re talking about your god.”
“Its body.”
“Well, yeah. So, either it was one of this lot, or we’re dealing with something we’ve never seen before,” Wati said. “And it isn’t that bloody easy to stay secret in London.”
“Not that whoever it is seems to be having much trouble,” Billy said.
“There is that,” said Wati. “Keep something in your pocket for me to get into. So I can get to you quick.”
“How’d you feel about a Bratz doll?” Dane said.
“I’ve been in worse. But there’s something else. It isn’t just a question of being able to get the thing out. It’s getting past the protection. All those people on the list are porters, but none of them are fighters. There’s no way any of them should’ve been able to get past the phylax.”
“The angel,” Dane said. “The angel of memory.
“Alright, mate, alright,” he said, seeing Billy’s face. “None of us know much about this. This is out of our league. When the kraken got took, the angel messed up badly. I had to know a little bit because I was in the Centre.”
The presence of a guard from the faithful could have been seen, and was by some, as disrespectful. Because the Architeuthis was already under an aegis, protected,