Iron Council

But Judah had shouted and banged together his specimen pot and cudgel, shockingly alien in the dim quiet of the bayou. He could not have frightened the thing-a towering amalgam of sea lion and jaguar and salamander with fi

Since then, since the pair he saved had run home and sang the story in a quickly constructed cavatina to stress its truth, Judah has been tolerated.

The stiltspear do not often speak. Days can pass.

Their commune has no name. Its hutlets rise from the reeds and water and are conjoined with walkways and slung with hammocks, and other rooms are sunk in pits in the sodden ground. Insects the size of Judah’s fist amble through the air, purring like big stupid cats. The stiltspear will skewer and eat them.

Stiltspears’ coats of oily down bead with swamp muck. They move like wading birds. They are like birds, and like scrawny cats, with unmoving, near-unfeatured faces.

Sires sing worshipful lays if they are red sires and build tools and reed-houses and tend the mangrove farms if they are tan sires. The dams hunt, one leg at a time raising so slow they have dried by the time the spread-out claws emerge, so no drips trouble the surface as the asterisk of fingers come together into a stiletto that poises over its reflection. Until some fat fish or frog passes and everything is still and the hand lances back into the water and is instantly withdrawn, the fingers opened, the game spiked on the stiltspear’s wrist, a prey bracelet dripping blood.

Between houses, stiltspear young play with mud-made golems as children in New Crobuzon play marbles and shove-stiver. Judah makes notes, takes heliotypes. He is no xenologist. He does not know how to decide what is important. All these charms-the stiltspears’ instinct camouflage, their golems, their herbalist physic, their unsticking of moments-he wants to investigate.

He does not know the names of any or even if they have names, but there are those according to some faint specificity of physique he christens: Red-eyes and Oldster and The Horse. Judah asks Oldster about the mud figures. Toys, his informant says, or games: something like that. -So you’d no longer make them? Judah asks, and the stiltspear snorts and looks skyward in embarrassment. Judah no longer blushes at his gaffes. So far as he can tell it is a question of propriety not ability: it would be as inappropriate for an adult stiltspear to make the little figures as for a New Crobuzon adult to demand the lavatory like a toddler.

Judah accompanies the dams. They seem glazed with the daylight. They catch armfuls of shelled waterspider larger than Judah’s spread hands. They milk their silk, weaving webs between roots and submerged boughs, turning rivulets into fish-traps.

Judah sees something unca

Freshwater dolphin pass in deeper cha

When they sing to their statuettes he tries good-humouredly to copy them, knowing he can only be a clown and, performing with good grace, -Shallaballoo, he says. -Callam callay cazah! And of course nothing happens, of course all the stiltspear children set their mud walking and his own folds sticky on itself and collapses.

It is the end of summer and the paludal air is stretched thin. Shots sound. With the distant percussion of the rifle every stiltspear freezes in camouflage and for seconds Judah is alone in a copse of sudden trees. With silence the swamplanders slowly return to their appearance. Every one of them looks at Judah.

There are hunters, draped in the little corpses of swamp mammals. They are exploring and collecting in the bogland.

Judah passes one within ten yards, but he has become local, so the man does not hear or see him, only hefts his rifle and looks stupidly past Judah to the watercourses. Another man is sharper. He aims directly at Judah’s chest in expert motion.

– Godsdamn blast, he says. -Came near to killing you. There is a cautious look to him as he makes out Judah’s clothes and his swamp-pallor. He thumbs a way north. -They out that way, ‘nother three four miles, be there by sundown, he says.

The bayou animals are quiet. There is not the chittering and faint scuttle and splash. Judah slows. This is a hinge moment and though there is none to blame for getting him here save himself, he must close his eyes and think on what will be and what has been. He will not let the moment finish: by ornery bastard will he hangs onto it, like a dog worrying a man, till time drags itself away bleeding and Judah is back and sadder.

– Oh now, he says. He is some misbegot thing in time. There is a shudder.

There is a lip of earth, a jetty. There is a clearing at the edge of a big muskeg, flat and detritus-studded acres of gently moving liquid. There is a new trail through dripping trees, to a huddle of tents and wagons, sod huts roofed in moss on the tamed ground. There are shots.

Judah carries a present in his pack and a posy of swampflowers. He sees a party of men in besmirched white shirts and thick trousers. They investigate charts and are squinting at obscure instruments. They boil kettles of food over fires that roll off oily smoke like squid-ink billows. They half-greet Judah. He must look like some mud-and-slurry spirit. The Remade pack-animals tread uneasily as he approaches.

The leader stands. An older man, still scrawny and tough as a dog. Judah looks only at him, follows him into his tarpaulined room.

Light grubs dimly through the canvas. There is simple darkwood furniture, a cabinet that will fold out to a bed, in the tight confines.

The old man smells the battered bouquet. Judah becomes confused-he has forgotten his city ma

He is poised. His hair is white and gathered in a precise pigtail. He has very vivid blue eyes. Judah rummages in his bag (the bodyguards stiffen and raise pistols) and brings out a figurine.

– This is for you, he says. -From the stiltspear.

The man receives it with what seems very genuine pleasure.

– It’s a god, Judah says. -They don’t do so much by way of art or carvings. Only little simple things.

It is a rope-swathed ancestor spirit. This one Judah made himself. The man looks into its swaddled face.

– I want to ask you something, Judah says. -I didn’t know you’d be here yourself…

– Always, when we break new ground. This is holy work, son.

Judah nods as if he has been told something precious.

– There are people in the swamp, sir, he says. -I’m here for them, I guess.

– Do you think I don’t know that, son? Think I don’t know why you’re here? That’s why I’m telling you this is holy work we’re doing. I’m trying to save you sorrow.

– They aren’t as you’d think from Shac’s bestiary sir…

– Son I respect the Potentially Wise more than most but you don’t need to tell me. It’s a long time since I’ve thought it, ah, accurate shall we say. That’s not at issue.

– But sir. I need to know, what I want to know is how… is exactly where you think you might go because there are, these people, these stiltspear, they, they… I don’t know as they could face what you might bring here…

– I wouldn’t mean no harm but I by gods and by Jabber will not turn away now. There is nothing harsh to his voice but the fervour makes Judah cold. -Understand, son, what’s coming. I have no plans for yon stiltspear, but if their way intersects with mine then yes, my way will crush them down.

– Do you know what you see here? he says. -Every one of us here, and every one coming, the dustiest navvy, each clerk, each camp whore, each cook and horseman and each Remade, every one of us is a missionary of a new church and there is nothing that will stop holy work. I mean you no unkindness. Is that all you have to say to me?

Judah stares at him in terrible sadness. He works to speak.

– How long? he says at last. -What are the plans?

– I think you know the plans, son. The old man is calm. -And how long? You need to ask the downs. And then you need to ask the gods and spirits of yon fen how much good clean grit they can eat up.

He smiles. He touches Judah’s knee.

– You sure there’s nothing else you’d like to tell me? I had hope of hearing other things from you, but you’d have spoken them by now. I want to thank you for the god you gave me, and I’ll be obliged if you’ll go to your stiltspear people and tell them that they have my deepest most respectful gratitude. You know I’ll be seeing them soon, don’t you?

He points to the wall, to a map that shows all the land from New Crobuzon to Rudewood, to the swamps and on to the port of Myrshock, and some hundreds of miles into the continent, into the west. Details are vague: this is debated land. But Judah can see the crosshatched levelling in the heart of the swamp.

– I know what I see, the old man says and there is real kindness in his voice. -I have in my time seen enough men go native. It’s an affectation, son, whatever you think now. But I won’t lecture you. There’s no recrimination. I will only tell you that history is coming, and your new tribe best move from its path.

– But dammit, says Judah. -This isn’t empty land!

The old man looks bewildered. -What they have, what they’ve had lying there for centuries in that marsh, whatever it is, it’s welcome to face the history I bring, if it can.

Back in deep waterland among the stiltspear, Judah does not know what to say. The fronds gather behind him, a closure he knows is a lie.