The Scar

  When she had first gone into the dark corridors, Bellis had run her fingers along the miles of shelves as she walked. She had pulled a book out at random and, opening it, had stopped short to see the handwritten name in fading ink on the top of the first page. She had tugged out another volume and there was another name, written in calligraphy and ink only a little more recent. The third book was unadorned, but the fourth, again, was marked as the property of another long-dead owner.

  Bellis had stood still and read the names again and again, and felt suddenly claustrophobic. She was encased in stolen books, buried in them as if in dirt. The thought of the countless hundreds of thousands of names that surrounded her, vainly scrawled in top right-hand corners—the weight of all that ignored ink, the endless proclamations that this is mine this is mine, every one of them snubbed simply and imperiously—took Bellis’ breath from her chest. The ease with which those little commands were broken.

  She felt as if all around her, morose ghosts were milling, unable to accept that the volumes were no longer theirs.

  That day, as she sorted through new arrivals, Bellis found one of her own books.

  She sat for a long time on the floor with her legs splayed, propped up against the shelves, staring at the copy of Codexes of the Wormseye Scrub. She felt the familiar fraying spine and the slightly embossed “B. Coldwine.” It was her own copy: she recognized its wear. She gazed at it guardedly, as if it were a test she might fail.

  The cart did not contain her other work, High Kettai Grammatology, but she did find the Salkrikaltor Cray textbook she had brought to the Terpsichoria.

  Our stuff’s finally coming through, she thought.

  It affected her like a blow.

  This was mine, she thought. This was taken.

  What else was from her ship? Was this Doctor Mollificatt’s copy of Future Tenses? she wondered. Widow Cardomium’s Orthography and Hieroglyphs?

  She could not be still. She stood and walked, tense, wandering vague and stricken through the library. She passed into the open air and over the bridges that linked the library’s vessels, carrying her book clutched to her, above the water and then back into the darkness by the bookshelves.

  “Bellis?”

  She looked up, confused. Carrianne stood before her, her mouth twisted slightly in what might be amusement or concern. She looked terribly pale, but she spoke with her usual strong voice.

  The book dangled from Bellis’ hands. Her breathing slowed, and she smoothed the crisis from her face, arranging it carefully once more, wondering what to say. Carrianne took her arm and tugged her away.

  “Bellis,” she said again, and though she wore an arch smirk there was genuine kindness in her voice. “It’s high time you and I made a little effort to get to know each other. Have you eaten lunch?”

  Carrianne dragged her gently through the corridors of the Dancing Wight, on up a half-covered walkway to the Pinchermarn. This is not like me, Bellis thought as she followed, to let myself be tugged along in someone’s wake. This is not like me at all. But she was in a kind of daze, and she gave in to Carrianne’s insistent pulling.

  At the exit, Bellis realized with a gust of surprise that she was still carrying her copy of Codexes of the Wormseye Scrub. She had been clutching it so tight her hands looked bloodless.

  Her heart sped up as she realized that under Carrianne’s protection, she could walk straight past the guard, could hold the book close, out of sight, could leave the library with her contraband.

  But the closer she got to the door, the more she hesitated, the less she understood her motives, the more she was suddenly terrified of capture, until with a sudden long sigh she deposited the monograph in the carrel beside the desk. Carrianne watched her inscrutably. In the light beyond the door, Bellis looked back at her deserted volume and felt a surge of something, some tremulous emotion.

  Whether it was triumph or defeat she could not tell.

  The Psire was the largest ship in the Clockhouse Spur, a big steamer of archaic design refitted for industry and cheap housing. Stubby concrete blocks loomed on its rear deck, all fouled with birdlime. Strings of washing linked windows where humans and khepris leaned out and talked. Bellis descended a rope ladder behind Carrianne, toward the sea, through the smell of salt and damp to a galley in the Psire’s shadow.

  Below the galley’s deck was the restaurant, full of noisy lunchtime diners. The waiters were khepri and human, and even a couple of rusted constructs. They strode the narrow walkway between two rows of benches, depositing bowls of gruel and plates of black bread, salads, and cheeses.

  Carrianne ordered for them, then turned to Bellis with a look of sincere concern.

  “So,” she said. “What’s happening with you?”

  Bellis looked up at her, and for a dreadful second she thought she would cry. The feeling went quickly, and she set her face. She looked away from Carrianne, at the other human customers, the khepri and cactacae. A couple of tables from her were two llorgiss, their trifurcated bodies seeming to face every way at once. Behind her was some glistening amphibious thing from Bask riding, some species she could not even begin to recognize.

  She felt the restaurant move as the waves lapped at it.

  “I know what I’m seeing, you know,” said Carrianne. “I was press-ganged, too.”

  Bellis looked up sharply. “When?” she said.

  “Nearly twenty years ago,” said Carrianne, looking through the windows at Basilio Harbor and the industrious tugs beyond, still hauling the city. She said something slowly and deliberately in a language Bellis almost recognized. The analytical part of her linguist’s brain began to collate, to catalog the distinctive staccato fricatives, but Carrianne forestalled her.

  “It’s something we used to say, in the old country, to people feeling unhappy. Something stupid and trite like, ‘It could be worse.’ Literally it means ‘You still have eyes and your spectacles aren’t yet broken.’ ” She leaned in and smiled. “But I won’t be hurt if you don’t take any comfort from it. I’m further from my first home than you are, Crobuzoner. More than two thousand miles further. I’m from the Firewater Straits.”

  She laughed at Bellis’ raised eyebrow, the incredulous look.

  “From an island called Geshen, controlled by the Witchocracy.” She tasted her dwarf Armadan chicken. “The Witchocracy, more ponderously known as Shud zar Myrion zar Koni.” She waved her hands mock-mysteriously. “City of Ratjinn, Hive of the Jet Sorrow—and suchlike. I know what you New Crobuzoners say about it. Very little of which is true.”

  “How were you taken?” said Bellis.

  “Twice,” said Carrianne. “I was stolen and stolen again. We were sailing our whim-trawler for Kohnid in Gnurr Kett. That’s a long, hard journey. I was seventeen. I won the lottery to be figurehead and concubine. I spent the daylight strapped to the bowsprit, scattering orchid petals in front of the ship, spent the night reading the men’s cards and in their beds. That was dull, but I enjoyed the days. Dangling there, singing, sleeping, watching the sea.

  “But a Dreer Samher war cog intercepted us. The Samheri were jealous of their trade with Kohnid. They had a monopoly—do they still?” she added suddenly, and Bellis could only shake her head uncertainly, I don’t know.

  “Well, they strapped our captain to my place below the bowsprit and scuttled the ship. Most of the men and women they put on lifeboats with a few provisions, and pointed in the direction of the coast. It was a long way away, and I doubt they made it.

  “Some of us they kept aboard. There was no ill treatment beyond cuffs and rudeness. I tortured myself stupid wondering what they’d do to me, but then came the second interception. Dry Fall riding needed ships, and sent poachers out. Armada was far south of here then, so Dreer Samher boats were perfect prey.”

  “And . . . and how did you . . . ? Did you find it hard,” said Bellis, “when you came here?”

  Carrianne looked at her for a while.

  “Some of the cactacae,” s
he said, “never adjusted. They refused, or tried to escape, or attacked their guards. I suppose they were killed. Me and my companions . . . ?” She shrugged. “We’d been rescued, so it was very different.

  “But, yes, it was hard, and I was miserable, and I missed my brother, and all of that. But, you see, I made a choice. I chose to live, to survive.

  “After a time some of my shipmates moved out of Dry Fall. One lives in Shaddler, another in Thee-And-Thine. But mostly we stayed in the riding that took us in.” She ate for a little while, then looked up again. “It can be done, you know. You will make this place your home.”

  She meant it reassuringly. She was being kind. But to Bellis it sounded like a threat.

  Carrianne was talking to her about the ridings.

  “Garwater you know,” Carrianne said, her voice deadpan. “The Lovers. The scarred Lovers. Fucked-up bastards. The Clockhouse Spur you know.”

  The intellectuals’ quarter, thought Bellis, like Brock Marsh in New Crobuzon.

  “Shaddler’s the scabmettlers’. Bask. Thee-And-Thine.” Carrianne was counting off the ridings on her fingers. “Jhour. Curhouse, The Democratic Council. That brave redoubt. And Dry Fall,” she concluded. “Where I live.”

  “Why did you leave New Crobuzon, Bellis?” she said unexpectedly. “You don’t seem to me the colonist type.”

  Bellis looked down. “I had to leave,” she said. “Trouble.”

  “With the law?”

  “Something happened . . .” She sighed. “I did nothing, nothing at all.” She could not keep the bitterness out of her voice. “A few months ago there was a sickness in the city. And . . . there were rumors that someone I knew was involved. The militia were working their way through everyone he’d known, everyone he’d had involvement with. It was obvious they’d come for me, eventually. I never wanted to leave.” She spoke carefully. “It was no choice.”

  The lunch, the company, even the small talk Bellis normally despised, had all calmed her. As they rose to leave, she asked Carrianne if she was feeling well.

  “I noticed in the library . . .” she said. “I hope you don’t mind me saying, but I was thinking you look rather pale.”

  Carrianne smiled archly. “That’s the first time you’ve asked after me, Bellis,” she said. “You want to watch that. I might start thinking you give a brass eye about me.” The amiable taunt stung. “I’m fine. It’s just that I was taxed last night.”

  Bellis waited, sifting through the information she had already assimilated, to see if Carrianne’s statement would make sudden sense. It did not.

  “I don’t understand,” she said, exhausted by incomprehension.

  “Bellis, I live in Dry Fall riding,” said Carrianne. “Sometimes we’re taxed, understand? Bellis, you know our ruler’s the Brucolac, don’t you? You’ve heard about him?”

  “I’ve heard of him . . .”

  “The Brucolac. He’s oupyr. Loango. Katalkana.” With each esoteric word, Carrianne held Bellis’ eyes and saw that she was not understood. “Haemophage, Bellis. Ab-dead.

  “Vampir.”

  * * *

  Surrounded as she had been for weeks by a cloud of rumors and hints like insistent midges, Bellis had learned at least a little about most of the ridings. All the weird little femto-states clamped together in unhealthy congregation, resenting each other and maneuvering for position.

  But somehow the most important, the most striking or unbelievable or appalling things, she had missed. At the end of the day, she thought of that moment when she had been made to see how ignorant she was: when Carrianne had explained her pallor and Bellis had realized how far from home she was.

  She was pleased that she had done little more than blanch at Carrianne’s explanation. Something had hardened in her when she heard the word vampir—the same word in Ragamoll and Salt. Carrianne had, at that moment, taught her that there was nowhere further for her to go. She could be no further from her home.

  In Armada they talked a language she could understand. She recognized the ships, even altered and rebuilt as they were. They had money and government. The differences of calendar and terminology she could learn. The found and scavenged architecture was bizarre but comprehensible. But this was a city where vampir did not need to hide and predate furtively, but could walk in the nights openly, and could rule.

  Bellis realized then that all her cultural markers were obsolete. She was sick of her ignorance.

  At the Sciences card catalog Bellis’ fingers fluttered through the entries, speeding through the alphabet until she found Johannes Tearfly’s name. There was more than one copy of several of his books.

  If the Lovers who run my life wanted to get hold of you so badly, Johannes, she thought to herself as she scribbled the classmarks of his works, then I’m going to get inside their minds. Let’s see what they’re so excited about.

  One of the books was on loan, but copies of the others were available. As an employee of the library, Bellis had borrowing rights.

  It was very cold as she made her way home past the crowds, under jabbering Armada monkeys in the rigging, over the swaying walkways and decks and raised streets of the city, over the waves that slopped between vessels. The sky was raucous with catcalls. In her bag, Bellis carried Predation in Iron Bay Rockpools; Sardula Anatomy; Essays on Beasts; Theories of Megafauna; and Transplane Life as a Problem for the Naturalist—all by Johannes Tearfly.

  She sat up late curled close to her stove, while freezing clouds diffused the moonlight outside. She read by lamplight, skipping from book to book.

  At one in the morning she looked out over the dark shipscape.

  The halo of boats that ringed the city still dragged it onward.

  She thought of all the Armadan boats at sea, the agents of its piracy, taxing the ships and communities they passed. Ranging for months across thousands of miles, until, laden down with booty, and even as their city moved, they made their way back by arcane methods.

  The city’s nauscopists watched the sky, and knew from its minute variations when vessels were approaching, so the tugs could haul Armada away and out of sight. Sometimes the evasion failed, and foreign ships were intercepted, welcomed in to trade, or hunted down. By secret science, the authorities always knew when incoming vessels were Armada’s own, and welcomed them home.

  Even so late there were still sounds of industry from some quarters, cutting through the beat of waves and animals’ night calls. Between the layers of rope and wood that overlaid her view like scratches on a heliotype, Bellis could see to the little bay of boats at the aft end of Armada, where the rig Sorghum wallowed. For weeks, fire and thaumaturgic wash had billowed up from the tip of its stack. Every night the stars had been effaced around it in a drab, dun light.

  No more. The clouds above the Sorghum were dark. The flame was out.

  For the first time since she had arrived in Armada, Bellis dug through her belongings and brought out her neglected letter. She faltered as she sat there by the stove, the paper folded in front of her, a fountain pen poised. And then, irritated with her own hesitation, she began to write.

  Even as Armada made its slow way south toward warmer waters, for a few days the weather turned hard cold. Winds blew frost in from the north. The trees and ivy, the slim gardens that adorned the decks of boats, became brittle and blackened.

  Just before the chill hit, Bellis saw whales off the city’s port edge, playing with apparent pleasure. After a few minutes they came suddenly much closer to Armada, slammed the water with their huge tails, and were gone. The cold came quickly after that.

  There was no winter in the city, no summer or spring, no seasons at all; there was only weather. For Armada it was a function not of time, but place. While New Crobuzon hunkered under snowstorms at the end of the year, Armadans might be basking in the Hearth Sea; or they might be bunked below while crews in thick coats tugged them slowly to anchor in the Muted Ocean, at temperatures that would have made New Crobuzon seem mild.

&nbs
p; Armada tramped the oceans of Bas-Lag in patterns dictated by piracy, trade, agriculture, security, and other more opaque dynamics, and took what weather came.

  The city’s irregular climate was hard on plant life. The flora of Armada survived by thaumaturgy, luck and chance, as well as stock. Centuries of husbandry had produced strains that grew fast and hardy, and could thrive in a wide range of temperatures. There were irregular crops throughout the year.

  Farmlands were draped across decks and under artificial lights. There were mushroom plantations in dank old holds, and loud, stinking berths full of generations of wiry inbred animals. Fields of kelp and edible bladderwracks grew on rafts suspended below the city, alongside mesh-cages full of crustaceans and food-fish.

  As days passed, Salt came to Tanner more easily, and he began to spend more time with his workmates. They would carouse in the pubs and gambling halls on the aft edge of Basilio Harbor. Shekel came too, sometimes, happy in the company of the men, but more often he took himself off, alone, to the Castor.

  Tanner knew that he went to see the woman Angevine, whom Tanner had not met, a servant or bodyguard for Captain Tintinnabulum. Shekel had told him about her, in faltering adolescent terms, and Tanner had started off amused and indulgent. Nostalgic for himself at that age.

  Shekel spent more and more time with the strange studious hunters who lived on the Castor. Once, Tanner came looking for him.

  Belowdecks, Tanner had passed into a clean, dark corridor of cabins, each with a name stamped upon it: Modist, he had read, and Faber, and Argentarius. The berths of Tintinnabulum’s companions.

  Shekel was in the mess, with Angevine.