The Scar (37 page)

This was the pacific engine, by which complex energies would be transmitted along the
Grand Easterly
chain, into that great bridle and whatever it contained, miles below the surface. A goad. Bait and whip.

The sea was clear. Divers thronged the huge underwater construction site. Components were lowered from the cranes of factory ships. The massive harness was taking shape at the end of the huge chains, still tethered scant scores of feet below the surface, its scale troubling to the eye, its outlines exotic and unfathomable, surrounded by the vividly colored fish of this sea, and by submarines and cray craftsmen and suited workers and Tanner Sack all moving with the slow fluidity of the submerged.

Sometimes there was a vibration through the water. The legs of the rig
Sorghum
disappeared into the cylindrical iron floats that supported it below the surface like suspended ships. The shaft of its drill plunged straight down, dim through the tons and tons of water, disappearing, to puncture the seafloor like a mosquito and feed.

Chapter Twenty-nine

Silas came to Bellis three days after she returned.

She had been expecting his visit—waiting with one eye on the door every evening—but still he managed to surprise her.

Bellis had had supper with Carrianne. She liked her ex-colleague sincerely, finding her perceptive and humorous. But still, as she made an effort to smile, Bellis’ sense of loneliness was unabated.
Is it a surprise?
she asked herself ruthlessly.
You court it; you milk it; you make it.

She remembered how things had been in New Crobuzon and admitted to herself that they were not so different. At least here her isolation had a reason; it was a fuel that she burned.

Carrianne had demanded detailed descriptions of the anophelii island, and the weather, and the behavior of the mosquito-people themselves. There was melancholy in her manner—however reconciled Carrianne was to her life aboard, it had been many years since she had set foot on solid land, and Bellis’ stories could only make her feel nostalgia.

Bellis had found the recent trip hard to talk about. She remembered it as if at a great distance, as a monotony of frightened boredom interspersed with grander emotions. There were some things, of course, that she could not discuss. She was deliberately vague about the anophelii, about the Samheri pirates, and most of all about Krüach Aum.

After the altercation she had witnessed between the Brucolac and Uther Doul, Bellis had become fascinated by Dry Fall’s ruler. Carrianne told her what she wanted to know, about the political structure of the riding, the cadre of vampir lieutenants under the Brucolac, and the riding’s goretax.

“That’s when you usually get to meet him,” Carrianne said. She tried to be matter-of-fact, but Bellis could hear the awe in her voice. “Not always—often it’s taken by some lieutenant—but sometimes. They cut you, here or here or here.” She indicated her thigh and breast and wrist. “They paint it with an anticoagulant, and vacuum it into a belljar.”

“How much do they take?” said Bellis, aghast.

“Two pints. The Brucolac is the only one who drinks his fill. The rest of the cadre are restricted—they dilute it. The more they drink, the stronger they grow—that’s the word. And even though the Brucolac chooses his lieutenants carefully, it’s possible that one or other might get power-hungry.

“If they took it traditionally, straight from the vein, they might not be able to control themselves—and they don’t want to kill. And even if they did break away, there’s the contagion. In the spit. So everyone they drink directly from and leave alive, they risk turning into a competitor.”

Bellis left Carrianne at the borders of Dry Fall—“I could not possibly be safer than here,” Carrianne said, smiling—and walked home.

She could have taken a cab; the winds were not strong, and she heard shouts from above as the aeronauts touted for custom. Two days previously, when her day’s work with Aum was finished, she had been wordlessly handed a packet of flags and finials that represented a good deal more than her weekly wage at the library.

I’ve been given a raise,
she thought dryly,
now that I work for Garwater.

The consciousness of her hidden centrality to all that had happened, the awareness that without her, Armada would not be where it was, doing what it was doing, oppressed her, even though her reasons had been clear and good at every stage.

She walked home not to save money but to experience Armada again. Locked in a room full of incomprehensible conversations all day, she felt herself losing contact with the city around her.
And any city,
she told herself,
is better than none.

The walk took her through Shaddler’s cool, quiet streets and into Garwater via the
Tolpandy
. Past the quiet bickerings of the monkeys that nested in building sites and rooftops, and deserted berths and the canopy of rigging; past the city’s cats (glancing at her, predatory) and its rare dogs and the masses of rats and the nightwalkers; around hen coops; lifeboats and steam launches rusted into position and remade as flower beds; homes cut into the sides of gun batteries, pigeons cooing from the bore of a twelve-inch gun; under wooden huts built onto foretops and yards which met masts like tree houses; through the light of gas and phlogistic cells and oil lamps; and through darkness tinted in various colors, squeezing along the corridors of damp brick that covered Armada’s vessels like a fur of mold. Back to her rooms in the
Chromolith
Smokestacks, where Silas Fennec was sitting, waiting for her.

She was shocked by his unclear figure sitting in the dark. She hissed at him, and turned away until her heart had slowed.

He studied her. His eyes were big and calm.

“How did you get in?” she said. He waved the question away like an insect.

“You know your apartment’s still watched,” he said. “I can’t exactly come knocking.”

Bellis walked over to him. He was motionless except for his face and eyes, tracking her progress. She came close—she came within his space—and leaned toward him slowly, examining him like some scientific specimen. She was ostentatious about it: she inspected him coolly and intrusively. It might have been designed to intimidate, to put him off his ease.

As she bent over him, as if cataloging his aspects, he caught her eye, and for the first time in some weeks, he smiled at her eagerly and openly. She remembered the reasons that she had had for kissing him, and fucking him. Not just loneliness or isolation, though they were paramount. But there were other factors, more centered in him. And although as she stood there she felt not the slightest urge to touch him, although she felt only a ghost of the affection that had once motivated her, she did not regret what had happened.

We both needed it
, she thought.
And it helped; it really did.

She patted the back of his head as she turned away. He accepted that with good grace.

“So . . .” he said.

“It’s done,” she said. He raised his eyebrows.

“As simple as that?”

“Of course not as simple as that. What do you damn well think? But it’s done.”

He nodded slowly. When he spoke his tone was neutral, as if they discussed some academic project. “How did you manage it?”

How did we?
Bellis thought in the silence.
Did we? I have no evidence, no proof of anything.

“I couldn’t do it on my own,” she began slowly, and then she sat upright, shocked by Silas’ look of stricken anger.

“You
what
?” he cried. “You fucking
what
?” He was on his feet. “What did you do, you stupid godsdamned
cunt
. . . ?”

“
Sit
. . .
down
. . .” Bellis was standing now, pointing at him, her fingers shaking with rage. “How dare you?”

“Bellis . . . what did you do?”

She glared at him. “I don’t know,” she said coldly, “how
you
might have managed to cross a swamp crawling with six-foot mosquitos, Silas. I don’t know how
you
would have managed that. We were a mile or more from the Samheri ships—oh, they were there, don’t fret about that. Now maybe
you
are a cactus-man or a fucking scabmettler or something, but I’m blood, and they would have killed me.”

Silas remained quiet.

“So . . .” Bellis’ voice was measured now. “I found a man who
could
travel to the ships, without danger, without being detected. A Crobuzoner, prepared to do the whole deal on the hush, just to stop his first home being devastated.”

“Did you show him the stuff?” said Silas.

“Of course I did. You think he’d swim off blithely at midnight taking only my word as to what he was carrying?”

“Swim? It was Tanner fucking Sack, wasn’t it? Do you think, if you’d looked long and hard”—his voice was strained—“you could have found someone
more
loyal to Garwater?”

“But he
did
it,” said Bellis. “He wasn’t going to do anything without proof. I showed him the letters, and
yes
, Silas, he’s loyal to Garwater. He’s no intention of ever going back. But, dammit, you think he doesn’t have friends left behind? You think he relishes the idea of the grindylow taking New Crobuzon? Godspit!

“For the sake of the people he left. For the sake of memories. Whatever. He took the box, the seal, the letters, and I told him what to do. It was a last good-bye to his fucking city. From him as much as from me and you.”

Silas was nodding slowly, acknowledging that perhaps she had had no choice.

“You gave him the stuff?” he said.

“Yes. But it all went ahead, no problems. Silas . . . we
owe
Tanner Sack.”

“But does he know . . .” said Silas hesitantly, “who I am?”

“Of course not.” He relaxed visibly at her words. “Do you think I’m stupid? I remember what was done to the captain. I’d not have you killed, Silas,” she said. Her voice was soft but not warm. It was a statement of fact, not of closeness.

After some moments of reflection, Silas seemed to finish his deliberations.

“I suppose it was the only choice,” he said, and Bellis nodded curtly.

You ungracious fuck,
she thought, furious.
You weren’t there. . .

“And you say the Samheri have the package? Sealed and ready to deliver?” He was grinning furiously. “We’ve done it,” he said. “We’ve done it.”

“That was more the reaction I was expecting,” Bellis said unpleasantly. “Yes, we have.” They looked at each other for a long time. “When do you think they’ll reach New Crobuzon?”

“I don’t know,” said Silas. “Maybe it won’t work. Maybe it will, and we’ll hear nothing. We’ll save the city, and hear nothing about it, ever. I may see out my days on this fucking tub, desperately scheming to get off. But godsdammit, isn’t it something to know what we’ve done?” He spoke fervently. “Even without response, even without thanks, isn’t it something to know that we’ve saved them?”

And yes,
thought Bellis Coldwine,
it was something. It was certainly something.
She felt a wave of loneliness breaking over her. Was it worse? she wondered. Could it be worse? To never know? To send that message across the world, through so many hazards, through such danger, for it to disappear without a sound? To never know?

Gods,
she thought, bereft and stunned.
Is that the last of it? Is that the end?

“What happens now?” he said. “With me and you?”

Bellis shrugged. “What did you want?” Her voice was more tired than scornful.

“I know it’s hard,” he said gently. “I know it’s more compli-cated than we’d thought. I don’t expect anything from you. But Bellis . . . there are things we share, things between us—and I don’t think that’s the only reason we spent time together. I would like us to be friends. Can you really afford not to have me? To have
no one
who knows? How you really feel? Where you want to be?”

She was not quite sure of him, but it was as he said: they shared things that no one else did. Could she afford to lose him? There might be years ahead of her in this city (
she shudders to think it
). Could she afford to have no one to whom she could speak the truth?

When he stood to go, he held out his hand, his palm open and up, expectantly.

“Where’s the New Crobuzon seal?” he said.

Bellis had been afraid of this. “I don’t have it,” she said.

He did not get angry this time, just closed his hand with a soft clap and raised his eyes to ask her what had happened.

“It was Tanner,” she said, ready for him to fly at her. “He dropped it in the sea.”

“It’s a ring, Bellis,” Silas said quietly. “It sits safe on your finger. You don’t lose it. He hasn’t lost it. He’s kept it, gods know why. Souvenir from home? Something to blackmail you with? Gods know.” He shook his head and sighed, and she was furious with his manner, which said
I am disappointed in you
.

“I’d better leave, Bellis,” he said. “Carefully—you’re watched, remember. So don’t be surprised if I come and go by . . . unconventional means. Would you excuse me a moment?”

He descended the spiral stairs. Bellis heard the sound of his feet dissipating on the metal, ringing hollow like thin tin on tin. She turned at the weird sound, but he had gone. She could still hear the slightest ring of his feet on her staircase, descending, reaching the bottom step, but there was nothing to be seen. He was invisible or gone.

Bellis’ eyes widened very slightly, but even in his absence she begrudged Silas any awe.

He comes and goes like a rat or a bat, now,
she thought.
Keeping out of sight. Been learning thaumaturgy, has he? Got some facility, a little puissance?

But she was unnerved and somewhat intimidated. His departure suggested a charm of exceptional subtlety and strength.
I didn’t know you had that in you, Silas,
she thought. She realized again how little she knew of him. Their conversation was like an elaborate game. Despite his words, despite the fact that she knew they shared secrets, she felt alone.

And she did not think that Tanner Sack had kept the New Crobuzon seal, though she could not say why.

Bellis felt as if she were waiting.

The man stands waiting with wind gusting him on the staircase that spirals the height of her absurd chimney-pot apartment, and he knows that the eyes that might watch her door cannot see him at all.

In his hand is the statue, its filigree of fin folded like layers of cake pastry, its round betoothed remora mouth pouting upward, and his tongue is still cold where he has kissed it. He is much quicker now; he finds it much easier to accept the cold stone’s flickering little tonguing, and he can direct the energies their passionless coupling unleashes far more adroitly.

He stands at angles to the night at a place the statue shows him and where its kiss allows him to stand, at a place or a kind of place where the beams of lights intersect and he is unnoticed, as doors and walls and windows do not notice him so long as he is the brine-stinking statue’s lover.