murder were generally broadly sympathetic, according to his own knacks.
He was a man who won some hearts and minds. In contrast to the Tattoo, a relentless innovator of brutality for whom etiquette and propriety were useful for the shock they occasioned when being pissed on, Grisamentum valued the traditions of the London hinterland. He encouraged righteous behaviour among his troops, proper shows of respect to the city’s names.
He riffed, playfully of course but not as a joke, on the spurious remembrances of hinterLondon. It was long since the most fabulous of the bestiaries’ contents had walked, if they ever had, but rather than shrug and accept this postlapsarian cityscape of degraded knackery, he brought back into fashion the city’s monsterherds. Previously a rather ridiculous set of hobbyists, these invokers of a more maged past in the very matter of London—leaf minotaurs, rubbish manticoras, dogshit dragons—became his occasional troops. And with his passing, they had become again morris dancers of the supernatural, and nothing.
“It’s not like you thought he couldn’t die,” Dane said. “No such thing as immortal, no one’s an idiot. But it was a shock. When we heard.”
That Grisamentum was dying. He did not, as do so many little warlords, which in a terribly charming way he sort of was, obfuscate the facts of his case. He put out requests. He asked for help. He searched for a cure for whatever drab, lethal little disorder it was that had him.
“Who did this?” his partisans demanded in agony. They took no comfort from the fact that the truth appeared to be no one. Contingency and biology.
“He made quite a few deadists pretty rich,” Dane said.
“Deadists?”
“Thanatothurges. Had them in and out, knackers used to knacking stuff about death. People figured he was trying to find a way out of it. He wouldn’t be the first. But there’s only so much anyone can do. Met Byrne out of it, though. She was his lady. Gave him a bit of happiness, I thought, in the last year or two.”
“So?”
“So what? So he died. There was a funeral. A cremation, like a Viking thing. It was amazing, all like crazy fireworks. When he realised he was going he went from deadists to pyros. Djinn and people, Anna Ginier, Wossname Cole. When that pyre went up, boy, it was knacked, and that didn’t burn just like any fire.”
“You saw it?”
“We had a delegation. Like most of the churches.”
The fire scorching in every which way, burning out certain certainties, making holes in things it had no business burning holes in, spectacular as a world of fireworks. The proximity of the venue—some treated chamber in some innocuous-looking bank or whatever—to Pudding Lane, the unusual nature of the fire and the reputations of the pyros that had prepared it had led to speculation that it had been a conduit, some knack-buggered spark scorching all the way back four-hundred-plus years, starting the Great Fire and burning a little hole for Grisamentum out of the present in which he was dying.
“Bullshit,” Dane said. “And anyway, whenever he went, he’d still have had the dying in him.” Because he had died, this man who had just sent a message.
“WHY NOW?” BILLY SAID. HE WALKED ALONGSIDE DANE—NOT A STEP behind him, as he might have done once. They were in Dagenham, in a street full of dirty and deserted buildings, where corrugated iron was almost as common a facade as brick.
“Listen to me, Dane,” Billy said. “Why are you in such a hurry? God’s sake.” He grabbed Dane and made him face him.
“I told you, no one except him knows we met …”
“Whether this is him or not, you don’t know what’s going on. And we’re supposed to be gone to ground. There’s a price on our heads. Wati’s meeting us tomorrow. Why don’t we wait, talk to him about this. You’re the one’s been telling me to think like a soldier,” Billy said.
Dane’s shoulders went up. “Do not,” he said, “tell me I’m not a soldier. What are you?”
“You tell me,” Billy said. They made an effort to keep their voices low. He took his glasses off and came closer. “What do you think I am? You haven’t asked me about my dreams for a while. Want to know what I’ve been seeing?” He had dreamed nothing.
“Of course we have to be careful,” Dane said. “But one of the most important players in London just come back from the dead. Out of nowhere. Why’s he been waiting? What’s he been doing?