The Scar
“It was thick as a thigh, attached to the aerostat thirty feet from me, swinging like a python. I had six chakris. Three of them I sent wide, way wide. The fourth connected, but not cleanly—cut half the rope’s width. The fifth went wide, and I only had one more chance.
“But even though my aim felt good, and I’d steadied my hands, I missed.
“And I knew that I was dead. I dropped my rivebow, my fingers all thick and stupid, and I clung to the bars at the edge of the hatchway. I could only watch. I could feel the wind buffeting me, up through the doors, and I watched the rope fray too slowly to save me.
“The roofs, the slates, the towers, the aircabs, the flags, the monkeys all frantic with fear they didn’t understand, the citizens running stupid from one place to the next as if anywhere would be spared.
“I watched them all through my telescope. I wonder what it was like, under the sea. I wonder how the cray and the menfish and Bastard John were acting. Maybe they’re still alive, who knows? Maybe they could swim free. Maybe they quit the city as it went on toward its end.
“The Sorghum rig and Croom Park and the Grand Easterly and me were first to reach the edge.
“The wind changed for a moment, and the Arrogance drifted out over the cliff of water, and looked down into the chasm.
“Time was very slow as the Arrogance passed above the Scar. Just handfuls of seconds, but they lasted a long time.”
“I crossed past the rim of the sea and looked down, over my knees dangling from the hatch, at the edges of the water. They were vertiginous.
“The sun angled down through the surface of the sea, filtered and refracted by the waves, and passed out again through the vertical face. I could see fishes bigger than me nosing up to the edge where it met the air, a hundred feet below the surface. Light bathed into it. There must be a whole ecology around the edges of the Scar. Even two, three miles down, where the pressure’s merciless, the water there’s sunlit.
“That sheer face of water, colors and eddies moving in strata, extended down miles. Perspective defeated me.
“And then mud. I could see it: a thick, sandwiched band of mud, black, at the bottom of the sea. And then rock. Rock extending down for so many miles that it dwarfed the layer of water. Red and black and grey rock, split wide, clean-edged. And many miles down a glow that moved and burned, showing dimly through the air. Magma. Rivers of molten stone, geothermal tides.
“And then? Below that?
“Then the void.”
Hedrigall’s voice was hollow and appalled.
“It must have been seconds I saw it,” he said, “but I remember every layer, like colors of sand drooled into a bottle. It defeated the eye. It was too big to see.
“Armada paused, poised for seconds on the edge of that abyss, and the avanc gave a final push forward.
“I saw it first through the water. I saw it four miles down, a little way above the dark sea bottom. I saw a shape appear in the deeps, unclear through the sea, suddenly nearer, its outline visible, as it powered itself forward. Until with a sound like a cataclysm it began to breach. To push itself through the brine cliff.
“A mile of flesh.
“Its head was through, water splintering, shattering around it, cataracts thousands of yards long booming and splitting, drops of water the size of houses spinning and disintegrating, falling voidward, into the Scar.
“I could see the first of its chains, colossal, bursting through the water in a four-mile straight tear, splitting the sea between the avanc and the city above. Other chains came through after it, so that the sea wall was scored with parallel vertical rips, like a claw wound.
“The avanc’s body continued through, indescribable, fins and spines, cilia, and as it came through into the air gravity took it, and it began to pitch forward. The chains tightened on the city, and the edges of Armada reached the edge and were pulled on, over.
“The avanc gave out a sound that burst all the glass around me.
“I saw the submarine hulks on which the Sorghum rested welling up toward the flat cliff face of water and then burst through, and all around them, hundreds of feet away on either side, the aft of Garwater and Bask and Curhouse reached the end of the sea, and jutted out, and trembled, and fell.
“There are so many ships in Armada.
“Steamers reached the edge flat-on, and rolled terribly and ponderously over, houses and towers spilling from them like crumbs, a rain of masonry and bodies, hundreds of bodies, pitched kicking and convulsing into the air and down, down many miles. Past all the inner layers of the world.
“I wasn’t even praying. I had no will. I could only watch.
“Bridges and tethers snapped. Trawlers came apart as they fell. Barges and lifeboats, and tugs and wooden warships. Splintering. Bursting, exploding, on fire as boilers spun and red-hot coals spewed through them. Ships six hundred feet long and centuries old cartwheeled as they went down.
“The Grand Easterly’s aft was over the Scar now, jutting out into the air.
“Armada spilt over the lip of the ocean and broke down into a random, plummeting constellation of parts, the live and the dead falling through an avalanche of bricks and masts. I could hear nothing except the splintering water and the avanc’s cry.
“Three hundred feet of the Grand Easterly was jutting over the void now, and all around it much smaller ships spewed into the ravine. And suddenly its weight told, and I heard a cracking like some god’s bone breaking, and the rear third of the ship, to which I was tethered, split and hinged down, hauling me with it, clinging with my arms locked around a girder, down, into the Scar.
“You wonder how you’re going to die, don’t you? Bravely, screaming, unaware, or what? Well, I met my death in a stupor, my mouth hanging like a fucking fool, as a steamer’s arse pulled me down.
“The edge of water rose up past me as I plummeted past the Scar’s lip, below the surface level of the sea.
“For a second I could see through water to the keels of ships that were above me, watch them plow on to their destruction. I was rushing down, and the rest of the Grand Easterly and every ship of the city was collapsing toward me.
“Once or twice, for moments, I saw dirigibles. Little cabs, men in harnesses, who’d managed to leap from the decks of their vessels as they went over, and were caught in the slipstream fighting to haul their balloons skyward. They were crushed and killed, again and again. A falling hull or shards of towerblocks would smash them out of the air.
“The Arrogance was accelerating down. I closed my eyes and tried to die.
“And then, four miles below me, the avanc moved.
“It must have been in agony, its body bursting and hemorrhaging in the air, folding over and bending double as it came out of the water wall. Half a mile of its back was through into the Scar, now. Maybe it was spasming in pain. It pushed itself very suddenly out, bursting right out of the sea, into the Scar, and down.
“It cried out again as the whole of its fucking bulk emerged, and its thrust shoved it down faster than gravity would have taken it. The avanc lurched; its chains went suddenly taut and tugged the rest of the city over the edge. The aft of the Grand Easterly was wrenched down, too, and the Arrogance was snatched so suddenly that the tattering rope that held it snapped.
“It snapped.
“My eyes flew open as the aerostat hurtled skyward, up past the falling city, up and out of the shadow of that wall of ocean, pelted by metal and sharp-split wood, out of the Scar, into the sky.
“I roared out of that crevice and careered into the sky. My arms were locked tight, holding me into place. I was going to live.
“Below me, the last of Armada slipped into the Scar. Winterstraw Market in a rain of little vessels. The Uroc, the Therianthropus, the asylum, the old sawdust boats of the haunted quarter—all become nothing. Tipping up, in sheets of spray, and going over, till the surface of the Hidden Ocean was left undisturbed.
“As I rose, I looked down directly into the Scar
and saw an interference, a haze like dust, as Armada fell, and far below that the avanc, spinning as it went, wrapping itself in twenty miles of chain, moving pathetically, trying to swim out of that endless fall. Even it looked small and dwindling.
“Eventually I fell back, exhausted and stunned to be alive, and when I looked down again I could see nothing at all.”
Hedrigall’s voice ebbed away. He spoke again after several seconds of quiet.
“I went higher than I’ve ever been before. High enough to look down and see the Scar as it really is. A crack, that’s all. A crack in the world.
“I don’t know if any other aeronauts got free. But I was more than a mile up, and I saw nothing.
“The wind that high was strong, gusted me south for hours. It took me away from there. Out of that murderous place in the water, where all the currents lead to the Scar. The Arrogance was leaking. Split and burnt by debris. I was coming down.
“I sawed myself some hide from the dirigible, lashed it to wood from the cabin. Made myself a raft, knowing what was coming. I waited by the bay doors till we were scudding low and fast, and I threw out the raft and leapt after it.
“And then finally, only then, curled in my little raft, I let myself remember what I’d seen.
“I was all alone with those memories for two days. I thought I’d die.
“I thought for a moment that maybe if I could stay alive for long enough, the currents might take me and shove me out into the Swollen Ocean, where our other ships are waiting. But I’m not a fool. I knew there was no chance of that.
“And then . . . this.”
For the first time in his extraordinary story, Hedrigall sounded as if he would break down again.
“What is this? What is this?” The hysteria in his voice grew louder. “I thought I was dying. I thought you were a dying man’s dream. I saw you die . . .” He whispered it. “I saw you die. What are you? What city is this? What’s happening to me?”
Hedrigall became dangerous then, shouting, feverish, and terrified. The Lovers tried to soothe him, but it was some time before his rantings became subdued and he fell into a stupefied sleep.
A long silence followed—a long, stretched-out quiet—and Bellis felt herself back in her own skin again as the spell of Hedrigall’s story slowly faded. Her skin was elyctric; she bristled with tension. She felt all drunk on awe from his telling.
“What,” hissed the Lover coldly, his voice fraught, “has happened?”
“It’s the Scar,” Tanner whispered to Bellis. “I know what it is. This close to the Scar, it’s leaking. And that Hed up there . . .” He paused and shook his head, his face haggard and bleached with wonder. Bellis knew what he would say.
“That ain’t the real Hedrigall,” said Tanner, “not the factual one, not the one from . . . from here. Our Hedrigall ran away. That Hedrigall’s leaked out . . . from another possibility. He’s from one where he stayed on, and where we traveled that bit faster, got to the Scar earlier. He’s what happened . . . what will happen.
“Oh my Jabber, oh dear Jabber and shit.”
Above them, the Lovers and Uther Doul were arguing. Someone—Bellis had not heard who—had said the same thing as Tanner. The Lover was reacting violently.
“Dung!” she spat. “Fucking dung! It doesn’t work that way; that’s not what happens. Out of the whole sea, you think we’d happen to find him, even if he had leaked through? This is a fucking setup. That’s Hedrigall, alright. It’s our Hedrigall, and he never left. This is a setup to turn us back. He is not effluvium from the Scar.”
She was furious. She let no one else speak. She raged at Uther Doul, and even at the Lover, to Bellis’ amazement; he was asking her to calm down, to just think . . . So close to what she sought, the Lover felt it threatened, and she was thundering.
“I’ll tell you what,” she said. “This is shit, and we will keep this lying bastard locked up until we get the truth from him. We say he’s recovering; we wait; we find out what really happened. We don’t accept this crap he’s spouted to us.”
“Is she mad?” hissed Tanner Sack to Bellis. “What’s she talking about?”
“This is obviously designed to create panic,” the Lover continued. “This is a plan to ruin everything. He’s in fucking league with gods knows who, and we can’t let them win. Uther, take him away. Brief the guards—and pick them well; pick those you’re certain of. Brief the guards about the lies he might shout to them.
“We will stop this, right here,” she said, hard. “We’ll not let this seditious shit succeed. This goes no further. We bury this story, right now, right here, and we go on. Agreed?”
Perhaps the Lover and Uther Doul nodded to her. Bellis heard nothing.
She had turned her face to Tanner at those last words. She watched him listen to his ruler—to whom he had committed himself absolutely, declared himself utterly loyal—announce her plans to deceive everyone in the city. To keep secret everything she had heard. And to drive on to the Scar.
Bellis watched a cold, a dead and frightening cast come over Tanner’s face as he listened. The muscles of his jaw clenched, and Bellis knew that he was thinking of Shekel.
Was he remembering how he’d said and thought that this—what had happened to them, being found—was a blessing? Bellis did not know. But something had set in Tanner’s face, and he looked at her with murderous eyes.
“She,” he hissed to her, “will bury nothing.”
Chapter Forty-seven
Tanner Sack was known. He was the one who had fought a bonefish to save a dying man. He had Remade himself into a kind of manfish, the better for life in Armada. He had lost his boy.
Tanner was known, and he was respected.
You listened to Tanner, and you believed him.
Bellis could tell no one anything. Her mouth was hard and cold as a stone.
She had to turn to others to spread words.
Everyone knew Tanner Sack.
If Bellis had tried to tell what she had heard in that unpleasant little cubbyhole, if she tried to tell the secrets she had listened to, she would not be believed. She would not be heard. But she had introduced someone else to her room, so that he could speak for her and tell the story.
She could not help nodding. Smiling without warmth. Gods, it’s well done, she thought, bowing her head, acknowledging consummate work. She felt skeins of cause, effect, effort, and interaction tying around her. She felt things all coming together, pushing her into this place, at this time, having done this thing.
Oh, it’s well done.
It started almost as soon as she and Tanner came up out of the lower decks.
She blinked, and looked around her at the flags and the washing and the bridges and the towers, still all strong and knotted together with mortar. She was haunted by the images from Hedrigall’s story. She saw the city shattering and falling so clearly that it was a true relief to emerge and see it all solid.
Tanner began. The Lovers were still below, still organizing, trying to hide Hedrigall. While they secreted themselves below the air and schemed, Tanner began.
He looked first for the people he knew well. He spoke quickly and fiercely. One of the first he found was Angevine, and he involved her carefully with the group of dockers to whom he was speaking, who did not know her.
His passion was genuine, utterly guileless. He did not orate.
Bellis watched him move through the crowd still milling on the Grand Easterly’s decks, arguing in angry tones about what it was they had heard, about what Hedrigall had seen—how and why he had come back. There were still a good number of pirates on the huge old ship, and Tanner spoke to them all.
He trembled with rage. Bellis followed him by an irregular and discrete course. She watched him, and was impressed by his fervor. She watched the stunned reactions move like a disease through the masses. She watched the disbelief quickly become belief and frightened anger, and then resolve.
Tanner insisted—she heard him—that th
ey had the right to know the truth, and something uncertain moved inside Bellis.
She did not know what the truth was; she was not sure what she believed. She was not sure what lay behind Hedrigall’s extraordinary story. There were several possibilities. But it did not matter. She refused to think about that now. She had been brought to this place, and she would do what was required, and bring this to an end.
Bellis watched as those whom Tanner had told then told others, and they told more, until it was quickly impossible to track the story. It moved under its own momentum. Very soon, most of those who told a garbled story of Hedrigall’s escape from the Scar could not have said how they knew it.
The Lovers had told a great deal of the truth about the Scar, as they understood it, in a popular form. There were few people in Armada who did not know that possibilities spilled from it, that that was the source of its power. Several had seen Uther Doul’s sword switched on: they knew what probability mining did. And here, so deep in the Hidden Ocean, so close to the Scar itself, with its seepage, with probabilities welling up from it like plasma, it was not hard to believe that Hedrigall—this Hedrigall, raving in the lower decks of the steamer—was telling the truth.
And while their own Hedrigall might be thousands of miles away, fled weeks ago, adrift above the ocean or crashed or surviving as a hermit on some foreign land or drowned in the sea, the Armadans accepted that the one they had picked up was a nigh-man. A refugee from a terrible Bas-Lag in which Armada had been lost.
“Two days ago,” Bellis heard one woman say with a dreadful awe. “All of us, we’ve been dead for two days.”
It was a warning. No one could possibly miss that.
While the sun crossed toward the lowest quarter of the sky, the story spread its fingers, passing into all the ridings. Its presence clogged up the atmosphere.