direction.
This Trident is an astonishing vessel. Garwater is pouring effort and money into this journey. That is clear.
It must have been a sight, when the Trident lifted off from the deck of the Grand Easterly. It had spent long enough jutting over the ocean, lifted on a framework to keep it clear of the deck’s little capstans and bulkheads. I don’t doubt that there were bets taken on whether we would smash into the sea or into the fabric of the city.
But we lifted clear. It was late afternoon, and there was a darkness at the edge of the sky. I can imagine the Trident hanging there like gods know what, as big as most of the ships of the city, new and scrubbed clean.
We have brought with us the most bizarre thing. Hanging between our engines is a pen full of sheep and pigs.
The animals have food and water for our two-day journey. They must be able to see the gulf of air through the slats in their floor. I thought they might panic, but they can only stare down at the clouds below their hooves, with blank lack of interest. They are too stupid to fear. Vertigo is too complex for them.
I sit here in this little cubby, the lavatory, between the livestock and the control car where the captain and his crew steer us. A corridor from the main chamber.
I have come here to write, several times, since we lifted off.
The others spend their times sitting, whispering or playing cards. I suppose some are in their berths, tucked in the
deck above me, below the gasbags. Perhaps they are being talked once more through what is expected of them. Perhaps they are practicing.
My own role is simple, and has been made very clear. After all these weeks and all these thousands of miles, I am back to being told that I am a conduit, that I will merely pass information and language through me, that I do not hear what is spoken.
I can do that. And until then, I have nothing to do but write.
Where possible, cactus-people have been chosen for this mission. At least five of those aboard have actually been to the anophelii island before, years ago. Hedrigall, of course, and others I do not know.
This raises issues of desertion: it is rare for any Armadan press-ganged to come into contact with their old compatriots again, but there must be Samheri on the island. My business here relies on such a meeting. All the cactacae on this mission, I understand, have reasons not to wish to return to their first home. They are like Johannes, or Hedrigall, or Shekel’s friend Tanner—loyal to their adopted country.
Hedrigall, though, makes me wonder. He knows Silas—or at least he knows one Simon Fench.
I of all people know that the Garwater authorities can misjudge who is to be trusted.
Dreer Samher is pragmatic. At sea, a meeting of Samheri ships and those of Perrick Nigh or the Mandrake Islands might mean battle, but relations with Armada are courteous, for safety’s sake. And besides, they will be at dock. Port-peace operates there as law-merchant does on the land, and it is a strong code, adhered to and administered by those subordinated to it.
Tanner Sack is on the airship, and I can tell that he knows who I am. He watches me with what might be distaste, or shyness, or almost any other emotion. Tintinnabulum is aboard, and several of his crew. Johannes is not—I am relieved at that.
The scientists who are here are a strange mixture. The pressganged look mostly as I expect scholars to. The Armadans look like pirates. I am told that this one is a mathematician, this one a biologist, this one an oceanologer: they all look like pirates, scarred and pugnacious in ragged regalia.
There are the guards: cactus and scabmettler. I have seen inside their armory, and there are rivebows and flintlocks and polearms. They have brought black powder with them, and what look to me like war engines. In case the anophelii do not cooperate, I think we have brought plenty to persuade them.
In charge of all the guards is Uther Doul. And giving him his orders is one-half of Garwater’s ruling pair, alone, the Lover.
Doul stalks from room to room. He talks to Hedrigall more than to anyone else, I think. He seems disquieted. I do my best not to meet his eye.
He intrigues me: his presence, his anomolous voice. He wears the grey leather that is his uniform, much-scarred and pocked, but immaculately clean. The right arm of the tunic is interwoven with wires that extend down to his belt. He wears his sword on his left hip, and he bristles with pistols.
He stares aggressively from windows, then stalks back, usually to wherever the Lover is standing.
The Lover’s scarred face revolts me somewhat. I’ve known—I have been with—those who found release in pain, who made it part of sex; and though I find the prediliction slightly absurd, it does not trouble or disturb me at all. That is not what I find wrong with the Lovers. I have a sense that their cutting is somehow almost contingent. What makes me queasy is something deeper that inheres between them.
I try to avoid the Lover’s eye, but I find myself pruriently drawn by her marks. It is as if they have been carved into some mesmeric pattern. But peering at them surreptitiously from behind my fingers, I see nothing romantic or secret or revelatory, nothing but the evidence of old wounds. Nothing but scars.
* * * * * * *
Later, same day.
Silas delivered what was needed, at the last possible minute. As if for theatrics.
I have to admire his methods.
Ever since our terse conversation in the Sculpture Garden I had been wondering how he would give me the materials for our message. My rooms are guarded, I am watched, what am I to do?
On the morning of the twenty-sixth of Lunuary, I woke to find a packet from him on the floor of my room.
It was an ostentatious piece of prestidigitation. I could not help laughing when I looked up and saw a patch of iron on my ceiling, freshly bolted over a six-inch hole.
Silas had climbed to the top of Chromolith Smokestacks, onto the roof of thin metal that booms like an orchestral drum under the rain, and he had cut a hole in it. Dropping the package inside, he had conscientiously bolted a new roof piece into position. All without the slightest sound: neither awaking me, nor alerting those who must have been watching.
When he performs tricks like that, under duress, to protect himself, it is easy to imagine him at his job for the government. I suppose I am lucky to have him on my side, and so is New Crobuzon.
I was pleased not to see him. I feel very distant from him now. I bear him no ill will: I took from him something that I needed, and I hope that I gave it back to him; but that really must be the end of the matter. We are coincidental comrades,
is all.
Inside the little leather bag, Silas had put several items.
He had written a letter to me, explaining everything. I read it carefully before examining the bag’s other contents.
There were other letters. He had written to the pirate captain we hope to find: two copies of the same letter, in Ragamoll and Salt. To Whomever Agrees to Courier This Missive to New Crobuzon, it begins.
It is formal and to the point. It promises the reader that
he will receive a commission on safe, sealed delivery to its destination. That by the power vested in Procurator Fennec (license number such-and-such) by Mayor Bentham Rudgutter and the office of mayor in perpetuity, it is declared that the bearers of this letter are to be treated as honored guests of
New Crobuzon, their ship is to be refitted to their specifications, they are to receive an honorarium of three thousand guineas. And most important of all, they are to be granted a special tax-free letter of marque from the New Crobuzon government, exempting the vessel, for a year, from prosecution or attack under New Crobuzon’s self-declared maritime law for any reason other than the immediate self-defense of a New Crobuzon ship.
The money is very enticing, but it is the promised exemption with which we hope to sway our cactacae. Silas is offering them the status of recognized pirate without tariffs. They can pillage what they like, never paying a stiver, and the New Crobuzon navy will not molest them—will indeed protec
t them—for the duration of the contract.
It is a powerful incentive.
At the bottom of the letters, Silas has signed his name, and across some just-visible passwords has imprinted in wax the seal of the New Crobuzon Parliament.
I did not know he had such a seal. It is strange to see it here, so far from home. It is astonishingly fine work: the stylized wall, the chair and paraphernalia of office, and below in tiny figures a number, identifying him. The seal is an extraordinarily powerful symbol.
What is more, he has given it to me.
But I am digressing. I will come to the ring.
The other letter is much longer. It spreads over four sides, in an intricate, condensed hand. I have read it carefully, and it has chilled me.
It is to Mayor Rudgutter, and it is an outline of the grindylow invasion plan.
Much of it is opaque to me. Silas has written in a terse shorthand that approaches code—there are abbreviations I do not recognize and references to things of which I have never heard—but there is no mistaking its meaning.
Status Seven, I read at the top of the sheet, Code: Arrowhead, and though I do not understand them the words chill me.
Silas has been sparing me details, I realize (the most dubious favor one can do). He knows the plans of the invasion well, has laid them out in cold, precise terms. He warns of units and squadrons in specific numbers, carrying obscure ordnance described in one letter or syllable, no less disturbing for that.
Demi-regiment Ivory Magi/Groac’h to advance south along Canker equipped with E.Y.D. and P-T capacity, Third Moon Quarter, I read, and the scale of what faces us terrifies me. Our previous eagerness to escape, the effort we poured into focusing on that, appalls me now, it is so petty and so small.
There is enough information here to defend the city. Silas has discharged his duty.
Again, at the bottom of that letter is the city’s seal, vindicating it, making it, for all its soulless, banal language, horribly real.
With the letters is a box.
It is a jewelry box; simple, solid, and very heavy darkwood. And within, nestling on its plumply cushioned lining, is a necklace and a ring.
The ring is for me. Its large silver-and-jade face is carved with an inverted imprint—it is the seal. It is crafted with breathtaking artistry. Within its circuit Silas has placed a nugget of red sealing wax.
This is mine. When I have shown our captain the letters and the necklace, I will close them within the cushioned box and lock it, seal it within the leather pouch, and touch the hot wax with this ring, which I will keep. That way the captain will know what is inside, that we are not betraying him, but that he cannot
tamper with the contents if the recipients are to believe and reward him.
(As I think through this chain of events I could become dispirited, I must confess. It seems so tenuous. I am sighing as I write this. I will think on this no longer.)
The necklace is to cross the sea. In distinction to the ring, it is a crude, simple piece, designed without any esthetics at all. A thin, plain iron chain. At its end, an ugly little flap of metal
that is adorned only with a serial number, a stamped symbol (two owls under a crescent moon), and three words: Silas Fennec Procurator.
It is my identification, Silas tells me in his letter. It is the ultimate proof that the letters are genuine. That I am lost to New Crobuzon, and that this is my valedictory.
* * * * * * *
Later still. The sky is darkening.
I am disturbed.
Uther Doul has spoken to me.
I was on the deck of berths above the gondola, coming out of the heads. I was vaguely amused by the thought of all our amassed stools and piss cascading from the sky.
A little way down the corridor I heard a shuffling sound and saw light from a doorway. I peered in.
The Lover was changing. I caught my breath.
Her back was as crosshatched with scars as her face. Most looked old, the scored skin greying and pale. One or two, though, were livid. The marks spread down her back and over her buttocks. She was like a marked animal.
I could not but gasp.
The Lover turned at the sound, unhurried. I saw her bosom and sternum, as wounded as her back. She watched me, pulling a shirt on. Her face, with all its intricate cuts, was impassive.
I stammered some apology and turned abruptly and walked toward the stairs. But with horror I saw Uther Doul emerge from the same room and eye me, his hand on his fucking sword.
This letter I write was burning in my pocket. I was carrying enough evidence to have myself and Silas executed for crimes against Garwater—which would doom New Crobuzon in the process. I was very afraid.
Pretending I had not seen Doul, I descended to the main gondola and took a post by the window, frantically watching the cirrus. I hoped that Doul would leave me be.
It was no good. He came to me.
I felt him standing by my table, and I waited a long time for him to go, to leave without speaking, his intimidation successfully completed, but he did not. Eventually, against my will, it seemed, I turned my head and looked at him.
He watched me silently for a while. I grew more and more anxious, though I held my face still. Then he spoke. I had forgotten how beautiful his voice is.
“They are called freggios,” he said.
“The scars: they’re called freggios.” He indicated the seat opposite me and inclined his head. “May I sit?”
What could I say to that? Could I say No, I wish to be alone, to the Lovers’ right-hand man, their guard and assassin, the most dangerous man on Armada? I pressed my lips together and shrugged politely: It is no concern of mine where you sit, sir.
He clasped his hands on the table. He spoke (exquisitely), and I did not interrupt him or walk away or discourage him with apparent lack of interest. Partly, of course, I was afraid for my life and safety—my heart was beating very fast.
But it was also his oration: he speaks like one reading from a book, every sentence carefully formed, written by a poet. I have never heard anything like it. He held my gaze and seemed not to blink.
I was fascinated by what he told me.
“They are both press-ganged,” he said. “The Lovers.” I must have gaped. “Twenty-five, thirty years ago.
“He came first. He was a fisherman. A water peasant from the north end of the Shards. Spent all his life on one or other of those little rocks, casting his nets and lines, gutting and cleaning and filleting and flensing. Ignorant and dull.” He watched me with eyes a darker grey than his armor.
“One day he rowed too far out and the wind took him. A Garwater scout found him and stole his cargo and debated whether or not to kill him, terrified, skinny little fisherboy. In the end they took him back to the city.”
His fingers shifted, and he began gently to massage his own hands.
“People are made and broken and remade by their circumstances,” he said. “Within three years the boy ruled Garwater.” He smiled.
“Less than three quartos after that, one of our ironclads intercepts a vessel—a gaudy recurved sloop—on its way from Perrick Nigh to Myrshock. One of Figh Vadiso’s noble families, it appears: A husband and wife and daughter, with their retainers, relocating to the mainland. Their cargo was stripped. The passengers were of no interest to anyone, and I’ve no idea what happened to them. They may have been killed; I don’t know. What is known is that when the servants were inducted and welcomed as citizens, there was one maid who caught the new ruler’s eye.”
He looked out into the sky.
“There are some who were there, on board the Grand Easterly, at that meeting,” he said quietly. “They say she stood tall and smiled crooked at the ruler—not like one trying to ingratiate herself, or one terrified, but as if she liked what she saw.
“Women don’t have it well in the northern Shards,” he said. “Each island has its own customs and laws, and some of them are unpleasant.” He clasped his hands. “There
are places where they sew women shut,” he said, and watched me. I met his eye: I do not intimidate. “Or cut them, excise what they were born with. Or keep them chained in houses to serve the men. The isle our boss was born to was not so harsh as that, but it . . . exaggerated certain traits that you might recognize from other cultures. From New Crobuzon, for example. A certain sacralization of the woman. A contempt masked as adoration. You understand, I’m sure. You published your books as by B. Coldwine. I’m sure you understand.”
That shook me; I admit it. That he knew this much about me, that he understood my reasons for that harmless little piece of obfuscation.
“On the boss’s island, the men go to sea and leave their wives and lovers on the land, and no amount of custom or tradition can chain legs closed. A man who loves a woman with a fierce enough passion—or says he does, or thinks he does—aches when he leaves her. He knows intimately how strong, how powerful her charms are. He himself succumbed to them, after all. So he must lessen them.
“On the boss’s island, a man who loves strongly enough will cut his woman’s face . . .” We watched each other, unmoving. “He’ll mark her, to make her his, inscribe his property, notch it like wood. Spoil her just enough that no other will want her.
“Those scars are freggios.
“Love, or lust, or something, some combination, overtook the boss. He courted the newcomer and quickly claimed her, with the masculine assertiveness he had been trained into. And by all accounts she welcomed his attentions and returned them, and she was his concubine. Until the day he decided she was his entirely, and with a kind of clumsy bravado, he drew his knife after coitus and cut her face.” Doul paused, then smiled with sudden and sincere pleasure.
“She was still; she let him do it . . . And then she took the knife and cut him back.”
“It was the making of them both,” he said softly.
“You can see the disingenuity. He was a remarkable boy to have risen so high so fast, but he was still a peasant playing peasant games. I don’t doubt he believed it when he told her that it was for love that he cut her, that he did not trust other men to resist her, but whether he did or not, it was a lie. He was marking territory, like a pissing dog. Telling others where his holdings began. And yet she cut him back.”