China Miéville

That was how he did it. He was never just a thug. Just thugs only ever got so far. The best thugs were all psychologists.

The Londonmancers had been there since Gogmagog and Corineus, since Mithras and the rest. Like their sibling chapters in other psychopoli…they had always been ostentatiously neutral. That was how they could survive.

Not custodians of the city: they called themselves its cells. They recruited young and nurtured hexes, shapings, foresight and the diagnostic trances they called urbopathy. They, they insisted, were just conduits for the flows gathered by streets. They did not worship London but held it in respectful distrust, channelled its needs, urges and insights.

“I know, I know,” Moore said. “Mad beliefs like that, eh? Must be some metaphor, right? Must mean something else?” Shook his head. “What an awfully arrogant thing. What if faiths are exactly what they are? And mean exactly what they say?”

“My dad hates umbrellas,” said Deeba, swinging her own. “When it rains he always says the same thing. ‘I do not believe the presence of moisture in the air is sufficient reason to overturn society’s usual sensible taboo against wielding spiked clubs at eye level.’”

It is more foolish and childish to assume there is a conspiracy, or that there is not?

He planned his funeral, his oration, the invitations, the snubs, but that, death itself, was always Plan B. How, he would have said to his specialists, might we bypass this unpleasantness?

In the emptied remains of a foreign bank was a sports shop. Below posters of physically adept men was a glass-front cabinet and iron grille, behind which was a big chunk of stone…The London Stone. That old rock was always suspiciously near the centre of things. A chunk of the Millarium, the megalith-core from where the Romans measured distances…This had been the seat of sovereignty, and it cropped up throughout the city’s history if you knew where to look…the Stone was the heart, the heart was stone, and it beat from its various places, coming to rest at last here in an insalubrious sports shop between cricket equipment.

We want the same thing, you and me. If we can mess with them, everyone’s happy. Except them. Which is the point, right?”

“Destiny’s bunk,” said the book. “That’s why this lot aren’t the Propheseers anymore.”

“From here on in,” said Mortar, “we’re the Order of Suggesters.”

The sea. I bet you the sea might have ideas. Wouldn’t surprise me if the bastard ocean might have a little something to do with all this. Stands to reason, right? Taking back what’s its? Render unto sea, sir.

“And for what it’s worth, which in my professional opinion isn’t a bloody lot, I’ll pray for you.”

“Pray to what?” Marge said. He smiled. The jukebox played “Wise Up Sucker” by Pop Will Eat Itself.

“Fuck it,” the man said. “Tell you what. What’s the point collecting stuff you don’t use? I’ll pray to all of them.”

London is an endless skirmish between angles and emptiness.