Iron Council

But though Toro took three men fast, the New Quillers still way outnumbered them, and were stoked with rage at these racetraitors. They danced in avoidance. Some lumbered, and some were consummate pugilists and gunmen. We ain’t going to get them khepri out, Ori thought.

There was the noise of fast footsteps and Ori despaired, thinking another corps of street-fighters was about to attack them. But the New Quillers were turning, and began to run when the newcomers arrived.

Cactus-women and -men; khepri with the two sputtering flails of the stingbox; raucous, frog-leaping vodyanoi. A llorgiss with three knives. Perhaps a dozen of mixed xenian races in startling solidarity. A broad cactacae woman shouted orders-“Scabeyes, A

Ori was stu

“Who the fuck are you ?” one of the Toroans shouted.

“Get up, shut up,” Toro said. “Drop weapons, present yourselves.”

A vodyanoi and the llorgiss shouted to the khepri in the church, and held open the doors as the terrified captives ran out and home. Some embraced their rescuers. An unclotting drizzle of khepri males-mindless two-foot scarabs seeking the warmth and darkness-scuttled back from the door. Ori shivered. It was only now he could feel the cold. He heard the fires that gave Creekside a shifting skin of dark light. In their up-and-down illumination he saw children come out of the church with their mothers. Young she-khepri with their headscarabs flexing, their headlegs rippling in childish communication. Two khepri women carried neonates, their bodies like human newborns, their little babies’ necks shading into headgrubs that coiled fatly.

He dropped his gun hand, and a khepri, one of these militant newcomers, was ru

“Aylsa.” The cactus-woman stopped her with her name. “He’s got a gun, Thumbs Ready,” said a vodyanoi, and the cactus-woman said: “I know he’s got a gun. There’s exceptions, though.”

“Exceptions?”

“They’re under protection.” Thumbs Ready pointed at Toro.

In the fight-anarchy, it was the first moment that many of the xenians had seen the armoured figure. They gasped in their different racial ways, stepped forward with camaraderie. “Bull,” they said, and made respectful greetings. “Bull.”

Toro and Thumbs Ready conferred too quiet for Ori to hear. Ori watched Baron’s face. It was immobile, taking in each xenian fighter by turn. Ori knew he was working out in what order he could take them, if he had to.

“Out, out, out,” Toro said suddenly. “You done so well, tonight. You saved people tonight.” There were no khepri left in the tumbledown church. “Now you got to go. I’ll see you back there. Go quickly.” Ori realised he was breathing hard, that he was bloodied from wounds, exhausted and shaking. “Go, get back, we’ll debrief. Tonight, Creekside’s protected by the Militant Sundry. Humans with weapons are legitimate targets.”

In the Badside hide. Dawn was pushing at the walls. They lay and fixed each other with unguent and bandages.

“Baron don’t care, you know,” Ori said. He spoke quietly to Old Shoulder while they made nepenthe-spiced tea. “I saw him. He didn’t care if them khepri women died. He didn’t care if them Quillers got them. He don’t care about anything. He scares me.”

“Scares me too, boy.”

“Why’s Toro keep him? Why’s he here?”

Old Shoulder looked at him over the pot, spooned resin in and honeyed it.

“He’s here, boy… because he hates the chair-of-the-board more than we do. He’ll do whatever he has to, to bring you-know-who down. It was you brought him, Jabber’s sake. You was right to. We can keep an eye on him.”

Ori said nothing.

“I know what I’m doing,” Old Shoulder said. “We can keep him watched.”

Ori said nothing.

Fires in Howl Barrow, in Echomire, in Murkside. Riots in Creekside and Dog Fe

“What happened at the tower in Jabber’s Mound?”

“Three sallies: first time they got the militia ru

Some weird thaumaturgy in Aspic Hole; self-defence committees of the terrified respectable in Barrackham, in Chnum, in Nigh Sump where they were attacked by what everyone said was a mob of Remade.

“What a damn night. Gods.” Things were breaking.

“And all because of that thing, that sun-thing.”

“Nah, not really.”

A critical mass of fear was what it had been, what it had released-a terror and a rage that found outlet. Protect us, people had shouted, tearing at the mechanisms that claimed to look after them. “It was just a catalyst,” Ori said.

“What in the name of Jabber and his godsdamn saints was that thing?”

“I know.” Whenever Baron spoke his comrades were quiet. “I know, or at least I know what I think it is, and I think so because it’s what the militia and the Mayor think too.

“What they call a witnessing. Remote viewer. Tesh camera. Come to see what we’re about. The state of us.”

They were aghast.

“I told you. We ain’t wi

At the other end of the world, around the corners of coastlines, where physics, thaumaturgy, geography were different, where rock was gas, where settlements were built on the bones of exploration, where traders and pioneers had died at the savage justice of the western Rohagi, where there were cities and states and monarchies without cognates in Crobuzoner philosophy, a war was being fought. The militia exerting New Crobuzon’s claims, fighting for territories and commodity chains, for theories, they said. Fighting for something unclear. And in response to bullets, the powderbombs, the thaumaturgy, burncurs and elementalists of New Crobuzon, Tesh, City of the Crawling Liquid, had sent this witnessing, to learn them.

“How?” Ori said. “New Crobuzon… It’s the strongest… ain’t it?”

“You going to swallow that?” Enoch jeered. He sounded tired. “New Crobuzon, greatest city-state in the world, and that? Horseshit…”

“No it ain’t,” said Baron, and they were quiet again. “He’s right. New Crobuzon is the strongest state in Bas-Lag. But sometimes it ain’t the strongest wins. And especially when the stronger thinks, because it’s stronger, that it ain’t got to try to fight.

“We’re getting outfought. And the government knows it. And they don’t like it, and they’re going to try to turn it into a victory, but here’s the thing: they know they have to end this. They’re going to sue for peace.”

The sun kept rising, and its light through the warehouse windows reached at sharper and sharper angles and took them one at a time, tangled in their hair and shone from Old Shoulder’s skin. Ori felt warm for the first time in hours.

“They’re going to surrender ?”

Of course they would not. Not explicitly-not in the speeches they would give, not in their history books or in the loyal newspapers. It would be a historic compromise, a nuanced strategy of magnificent precision. But even many of those loyal to the Mayor’s Fat Sun Party and the partners in the Urban Unity Government would balk. They would know-everyone would know-what had been done. That New Crobuzon, however the Mayor put it, had been defeated.

“They’re trying to now,” Baron said, “but they don’t even know how to speak to the Teshi. We ain’t had contact with our mission there for years. And gods know there must be Teshi afuckingplenty in New Crobuzon now, but they ain’t got no clue who, where they are. The embassy’s always been empty. Teshi don’t do things that way. They’re trying thaumaturgy, message-boats, dirigibles… they’ll do whatever they bloody have to. They’ll try pigeon before long. They want a meeting. No one’s going to know what’s damn-well being done till they turn round and tell us ‘Good news, the Mayor’s brought peace.’ And in the meantime the poor bastards in the boats and on the ground’ll keep fighting and dying.”

Under alien skies. Ori felt vertigo.

“How do you know?” said Old Shoulder. He was standing, his legs locked, his arms folded. “How do you know what they think, Baron?”

Baron smiled. Ori looked down and hoped he would not see that smile again.

“ ’Cause of who I’m talking to, Shoulder. You know how I know. After all them bloody pints I sunk in Brock Marsh, I know because I been talking to my new best friend, Bertold Sulion.”