The Scar

  “Bellis, I’m so sorry I’m late,” he said. “Your message . . . It was short notice and I couldn’t rearrange everything. I got here as quickly as I could.”

  Is that right? thought Bellis coldly. Or are you almost an hour late to punish me?

  But she realized that his voice sounded sincerely contrite: that his smile was uncertain, but not cold.

  They walked the deck aimlessly, meandering toward the narrowing front, then turning back again. They talked awkwardly, the memory of their argument heavy on them.

  “How goes the research, Johannes?” Bellis said eventually. “Are we nearly . . . wherever we’re going?”

  “Bellis . . .” He shucked his shoulders in irritation. “I thought perhaps you might have . . . Dammit, if you’ve called me here just to—“

  She cut him off with her hands. There was a long silence and Bellis closed her eyes. When she opened them, her face and voice had softened.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry. The fact is, Johannes, that what you said to me hurt. Because I know you’re right.” His face was guarded as she forced the words out. “Don’t misunderstand me,” she said quickly. “This place’ll never be my home. I was taken here by piracy, Johannes: I was stolen.

  “But . . . but, you were right that . . . that I’d cut myself off. I knew nothing about the city, and I felt ashamed of that.” He started to interrupt, but she would not let him. “And more than anything, I saw the . . . the chance of it all.” Her voice grew impassioned. She spoke what sounded like uncomfortable truths. “I’ve seen things here, I’ve learnt things . . . New Crobuzon’s still my home, but you’re right that there is nothing that binds me to it but chance. I’ve given up on going home, Johannes,” she said (and instantly her stomach clenched because it was so nearly true), “and it’s made me realize that there are things here worth doing.”

  Something seemed to be shifting in him; some expression was burgeoning on Johannes’ face. Bellis suspected that it was delight, and quickly she interrupted it.

  “Don’t expect me to fall in love with this damned place, alright? But . . . but for most of the people on the Terpsichoria, for the Remade, this press-ganging is the best thing that could have happened. And as for the rest of us . . . well, it’s fair that we should live with that. You helped me see that, Johannes. And I wanted to say thank you.”

  Bellis’ face was impassive, the words tasting like curdled milk in her mouth (even though she realized they were not entirely lies).

  There had been a time when Bellis had considered telling Johannes the truth about the threat to New Crobuzon. But she was still stunned by the speed with which he had allied himself to Armada and Garwater. It was clear that he had very little love for the city of his birth. But still, she thought, he would not (surely) be neutral in the case of The Gengris. He must have friends, family in New Crobuzon. He could not be indifferent to that threat. Surely?

  But what if he did not believe her? If he did not, if he thought this was a convoluted attempt to escape, if he brought her and her claims to the attention of the Lovers, who would not give two shits about the fate of New Crobuzon, then she would have frittered away her only chance to get a message back to the city.

  Why should the rulers of Armada care what one far-off nation did to another? Perhaps they would even welcome the grindylow plans. New Crobuzon’s was a strong navy. Bellis had no idea how deep Johannes’ new allegiance extended. She could not risk telling him the truth.

  She waited carefully on the Shadeskinner’s deck, sensing Johannes’ guarded pleasure.

  “Do you think you can do it?” she said eventually.

  He frowned. “Do what?”

  “Do you think you can raise the avanc?”

  He was stunned. She watched the thoughts race across him. Incredulity and anger and fear. She saw him consider lying for a tiny moment, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but that temptation ebbed, taking all the other emotions with it.

  He was composed again in seconds.

  “I suppose I shouldn’t really be surprised,” he said quietly. “It’s absurd to think you can keep something like that secret.” He drummed his fingers on the rail. “To be honest, it’s a constant amazement to me how few people seem to know. It’s as if those who don’t are conspiring with those who do. How did you know? No amount of care or thaumaturgy can keep plans this big secret, I suppose. They’ll have to come clean soon: too many people know already.”

  “Why are you doing it?” Bellis said.

  “Because of what it’ll do for the city,” he said. “That’s why the Lovers are doing it.” He kicked the rail contemptuously and jerked a thumb at the steamboats and tugs way to starboard, massed at the end of their chains, hauling southward. “Look at how this bloody thing moves. A mile an hour? Two with a strong wind? It’s absurd. And this kind of effort is so fuel-intensive it’s damn rare for them. Most of the time this place just bobs around, circling the ocean. But think how all that can change if they can snare this thing. They’ll be able to travel wherever they want. Think about the power. They’ll rule the fucking seas.

  “It was tried once before.” He looked away, rubbing his chin. “They think. There’s evidence under the city. Chains. Hidden by hexes centuries old. The Lovers . . . they’re not like any rulers this place has ever had. Especially her. And something changed when Uther Doul came to be their guard, more than a decade back. Since then they’ve pursued this. They got messages to Tinnabol and his crew, the best hunters there are. Not just quick with a harpoon; they’re scientists: marine biologists, coordinators. They’ve been

  in charge of the avanc hunt for years. There’s nothing they don’t know about trapping. If anyone had tried to do this before, they’d have heard stories about it.

  “Of course on their own they could never catch an avanc. But they have more information on them now than anyone in the world. Can you imagine what it would mean to a hunter, to succeed in this? So that’s why the Lovers are doing it, and that’s why Tintinnabulum’s crew are doing it.” He caught Bellis’ eye, and a smile broke on him.

  “And me?” he said. “I’m doing it, Bellis, because it’s an avanc!”

  His enthusiasm was as sudden, irritating, and infectious as a child’s. His passion for his work was quite sincere.

  “I have to be honest,” she said carefully. “I would not have believed that I’d say or think this, but . . . but I understand.” She looked at him levelly. “To tell the truth, it’s part of what mellowed me about this place. When I first found out what was happening, what the plan was with the avanc, I was so overwhelmed that it just frightened me.” She shook her head and groped for words. “But that changed. It’s the most . . . It’s the most extraordinary project, Johannes. And I realized that I want it to succeed.”

  Bellis was aware that she was doing this well.

  “I care, Johannes. I never thought I’d give a stiver for anything that happened in this place, but the scale of this plan, the hubris . . . And the thought that I might help . . .” Johannes watched her with cautious pleasure. “Because of how I found out the truth. That’s why I asked you to come here, Johannes. I have something for you.”

  She reached into her bag and handed him the book.

  Poor Johannes was suffering so many shocks tonight, Bellis thought vaguely, wave after wave of them: the shock of her contacting him, of seeing her, of her apparent change of mind about the city, of the fact that she knew about the avanc, and now this.

  She was silent through his breathless incredulity and gasps and choked joy.

  Finally he looked up at her.

  “Where did you get this?” He could hardly speak.

  She told him about Shekel and his fervor for the children’s section. She reached out gently to the book in his hands and turned the pages back.

  “Look at the illustrations,” she said. “You can see how it got misshelved. I doubt there’s many people aboard who can read High Kettai. It was this that got
under my skin. This.” She stopped at the picture of the massive eye under the boat. Even now as she dissembled, even having seen the simple picture scores of times, still she felt a little rill of astonishment as she looked at it.

  “It wasn’t just the pictures that told me what was going on, Johannes.” From her bag she pulled a mass of paper, covered with her tight handwriting. “I do read High Kettai, Johannes,” she said. “I wrote a damn book about it.” And again, something about that fact sat ill inside her. She ignored it and waved the manuscript at him.

  “I’ve translated Aum.”

  And here was yet another shock for Johannes, who reacted with the same noises and fervor as before.

  That’s the last one, Bellis thought, calculating. She watched him dancing with delight on the empty deck. That’s the end of them. When he had finished his stupid little jig, she began to steer him in the direction of the city, toward the pubs. Let’s sit and ponder this, she thought coolly. Let’s get drunk together, eh? Look at you, so overjoyed that I’m back on your side. So thrilled to have your friend back. Let’s work out what’s to be done, you and me.

  Let’s help you come up with my plan.

  Chapter Seventeen

  In these warm waters, the night-lights and the sound of the waves against the city’s flanks were softer, as if the sea was aerated and the light diffuse: brine and illumination became less starkly elemental. Armada nestled in the long, balmy darkness of what was now, unquestionably, a summer.

  At night, in pub gardens that abutted Armada’s parklands, its plots, its meadowland left fallow on forecastles and main decks, cicadas sang over the wave noise and the puttering tug motors. Bees and hornets and flies had appeared. They clustered at Bellis’ windows, butting themselves to death.

  Armadans were not people of the cold, or of the heat, or of New Crobuzon’s temperate climate. Elsewhere Bellis might apply climatic stereotypes (the stolid cold-dweller, the emotive southerner), but in Armada she could not. On that nomadic city, such factors were irregular, they defied generalization. All that could be said was that for that summer, at that conjuncture of date and place, the city softened.

  The streets were full for longer, and the patchwork phonemes of Salt conversations were everywhere. It was looking to be a loud season.

  In a hall in the Castor, Tintinnabulum’s ship, a meeting was taking place.

  It was not a big room. It strained to contain everyone within it. They sat in uncomfortable formality on stiff chairs around a battered table. Tintinnabulum and his companions, Johannes and his colleagues, biomathematicians and thaumaturges and others, mostly human but not all so.

  And the Lovers. Behind them, Uther Doul stood by the door, his arms folded.

  Johannes, faltering and excited, had been speaking for some time. At the climax of his story, he paused ostentatiously and slapped Krüach Aum’s book onto the table. And after the pause, at the crescendo of the first wave of gasps, he followed it with Bellis’ translation.

  “You can see now,” he said with a trembling voice, “why I called this extraordinary meeting.”

  The Lover picked up the two documents and carefully compared them. Johannes watched her in silence. Her mouth curled in concentration, and the scars on her face coiled to contain her expression. On the right side of her chin, he noticed the puckered flesh and scab of a new wound. He looked briefly at her lover beside her and saw a matching wound below his mouth, on the left.

  Johannes felt the unease he always did at the sight. No matter how often he saw the Lovers, their proximity brought on a nervousness in him that did not fade. They had an extraordinary presence.

  Perhaps it’s authority, Johannes thought. Perhaps that’s what authority is.

  “Who here speaks Kettai?” the Lover said.

  Opposite her, a llorgiss raised an arm.

  “Turgan,” she acknowledged.

  “I know some,” it said in its breathy tones, “mostly Base, a little High. But this woman is much more proficient than me. I have looked at the manuscripts, and much of the original was beyond me.”

  “Don’t forget,” said Johannes, raising his hand, “Coldwine’s High Kettai Grammatology is a standard reference book. There aren’t that many textbooks for High Kettai . . .” He shook his head. “Weird, difficult language. But of those that there are, Coldwine’s is one of the best. If she weren’t on board, if Turgan or someone else had to translate this, they’d probably spend most of their time referring to her damn book anyway.”

  His hands were jerking in aggressive, choppy movements.

  “She’s translated into Ragamoll, obviously,” he said, “but it’s easy enough to render that into Salt. But, look, the translation is not the most exciting thing here. Maybe I’ve not been clear . . . Aum’s not Kettai. We couldn’t visit a Kettai scientist, obviously. Kohnid’s way off our route, and Armada wouldn’t be safe in those seas . . . but Krüach Aum’s not from Kohnid. He’s anophelii. Their island’s a thousand miles south. And there’s every chance he’s alive.

  It brought them up short.

  Johannes nodded slowly. “What we have here,” he continued, “is invaluable. We have a description of the process, the effects, we have confirmation of the area involved—all those things. But unfortunately Aum’s footnotes and calculations are missing—as I said, the text is badly damaged. So what we have is merely the . . . the lay description. The science is missing.

  “We’re heading for a sinkhole some way off the southern coast of Gnurr Kett. Now, I’ve checked with a couple of cactacae ex of Dreer Samher, who used to deal with the anophelii: where we’re going, we’ll only be a couple of hundred miles from the anophelii island.” He paused, aware that he was speaking too quickly in his excitement.

  “Obviously,” he went on, more slowly, “we could continue as previously planned. In which case we know roughly where we’re going; we know more or less the kind of power involved in the summoning; we have some idea of the thaumaturgy involved . . . And we could risk it.

  “But we could go to the island. A landing party. Tintinnabulum, some of our scientists, one or other or both of you.” He looked at the Lovers.

  “We’d need Bellis to translate,” he went on. “The cactacae who’ve been there can’t help us: when they traded it was all hand signs and head shaking, apparently, but obviously some of the anophelii speak High Kettai. We’d need guards—and engineers, because we’re going to have to start thinking about containment for the avanc. And . . . we find Aum.”

  He sat back, aware that it was not one iota as simple as he had presented it, but still he felt excited.

  “In the very worst case,” he said, “Aum’s dead. In which case we’ve lost nothing. Perhaps there’ll be others there, who remember him, who can help us.”

  “That’s not the worst case,” said Uther Doul. The atmosphere shifted: all whispering stopped, and everyone in the room faced him—except the Lovers, who listened gravely without turning.

  “You’re talking,” Doul continued softly, in his singer’s voice, “as if this is just a place, like other places. It’s not. You have no idea what you’re saying. Do you understand what you’ve discovered? What Aum’s race means? This is the island of the mosquito-people. The worst case is that the anophelii women come upon us on the beach and suck us dry, leaving our husks to rot. The worst case is that we are all instantly butchered.”

  There was a silence.

  “Not me,” someone said. Johannes gave a half smile. It was Breyatt, a cactacae mathematician. Johannes tried to catch his eye. Well scored, he thought.

  The Lovers were nodding.

  “Your point is taken, Uther,” said the Lover. He stroked his small mustache. “But let’s not . . . exaggerate. There are ways around the problem, as this gentleman points out . . .”

  “This gentleman is cactus,” said Doul. “For those of us with blood the problem remains.”

  “Nevertheless—“ The Lover spoke with authority. “—I think it would be fooli
sh to suggest that there’s no way this can be done. That’s not how we proceed. We start by working out what’s to our advantage, what is the best plan . . . Then we work our way around problems. If it seems that our best chance of success lies on this island, then that’s where we’ll go.”

  Doul did not move. He looked impassive. There was nothing in his demeanor to suggest that he had been overruled.

  “Godsdammit!” Johannes barked in frustration, and everyone turned to him. He was shocked at his own outburst, but he continued without losing momentum. “Of course there are problems and difficulties,” he said passionately, “of course it’ll take organization, it’ll take work and effort and . . . and maybe we’ll need protecting, and we can bring cactacae fighters with us, or constructs, or I don’t damn well know what . . . But what’s going on here? Are you all in the same room as me?”

  He picked up Aum’s book and held it reverentially like a sacred sutra.

  “We have the book. We have a translator. This is the testimony of one who knows how to raise an avanc. This changes everything . . . Does it matter where he lives? So his home is inhospitable.” He stared at the Lovers. “Is there anywhere we wouldn’t go for this? Surely we can’t even consider not going.”

  When they broke up, the Lovers spoke noncommittally. But everything was different now, and Johannes knew he was not alone in knowing that.

  “It may be time to announce our intentions,” the Lover said as they gathered their notes.

  The room was full of people trained into a culture of secrecy. Her suggestion shocked them. But, Johannes realized, it made sense.

  “We knew we’d have to be open about this some time,” she continued. Her lover nodded.

  There were scientists from Jhour and Shaddler and The Clockhouse Spur taking part in the attempt to raise the avanc, and the rulers of those ridings had been consulted out of courtesy. But

  the inner circle was all Garwater: those who once had not been, the Lovers had, in a breach of tradition, persuaded to defect. Information about the project was tightly circumscribed.