Iron Council

They raise slivers of the fence that has contained them. They swing the chains that tethered their feet. They grip shivs, pot shards embedded in wood. There are scores, and then hundreds of them.

– Jabber who let them out, what you done? someone shouts hysterically.

The thing in Judah swells up to see them. It bloats him; it moves like a baby in his belly. Judah shouts for them, a welcome, an alarum.

Men on all fours become bison-men, carrying men wrapped about with limbs, and women walking on elongated arms made of animals’ parts, and men stamping on piston legs like jackhammers come alive, and women all over whiskers, or with finger-thick tendrils feeling through their skin, and tusks stolen from boars and carved from marble, and mouths become interlocked gears, and switching tails of cats and dogs frilling waists like skirts and sweating in inks from Remade glands and astream with a rainbow mess, and this aggregate of criminals, this motley comes closer in freedom.

The gendarmes have withdrawn. They are in their armoured cab, in the guntower. Some have grabbed mules and horses from the tracks’-end corral and gone.

– No no no.

Many among the tu

– This ain’t what we’re here for. This ain’t what this was. A tu

He looks at the blinking Remade, who stare at him. He twists a little.

– No offence, mates. He is speaking to the Remade now. -Look, it ain’t my fucking business. You seen we won’t let them beat you down no more. But, but, you can’t, you got to go back, this is… He indicates the guntower.

It is late. There is a siege and a strange siege calm.

– People have fucking died, the man says. -They’ve died.

The boy with the insect additions is dead. Other Remade were dropped by bullets. A cactus-man was split by a moment of flying wood. Gendarmes have been piled up, broken on mallets, on spikes, on the ersatz weapons of the railroad. There are dazed mourners by trench graves.

Hunters return. Prostitutes sit on rocks in that deserted middle of the world and watch the train. Its firemen and brakemen agitate as the giddy Remade fill the boiler and pull levers and those with boilers of their own steal the high-grade coke. People mill bewildered and ask each other what has happened. They look at the sun and the shifting tree corpses and wait for someone to come into control.

A strange angst because there is such calm here now and it ca

The free men want to treat Shaun and Thick Shanks as leaders of a Remade rabble, but A

– Take your boys back in. What you think they’re doing in there? the free workers’ speaker says. He points at the tower. -Getting ready is what. To take you. Now, we made our point. If you go back now, they’ll pay us up, and there’ll be no, no penalties…

He speaks to Shaun, but it is Uzman answers.

– You’ll get your money, and you’re telling us to give this back? The train?

He laughs, and the craziness of what the free men are asking is very evident. They want these Remade to unfree themselves. Uzman laughs. -We ain’t decided yet what we do here, he says. -But we decide.

There are shouted arguments like street meetings, out of the guntower’s lines, between Remade with Remade, layers, rust-eaters together, the tu

– We can’t just wait, says Thick Shanks. -People are ru

– Give in what? A

They raise their voices. The crowd turns to them, slowly.

– We make demands, Thick Shanks says. -They’ll bring reinforcements. We have to have demands ready.

Shaun says, -Like what? You want them to free the fucking Remade? Ain’t going to happen. Recognise the new guilds? What is it we want?

– We have to link it up, Thick Shanks says. -We send our own riders back to New Crobuzon, talk to the guilds there, make joint demands. If we can get them to back us-

– You’re dreaming. You think they’ll do that? For us?

– We have to take control of this. This is ours, now, says Uzman.

Someone jeers and makes a noise about the godsdamned Remade. A

– Shut up, she says to the heckler. -You curse the Remade, as if it make you better. Why we here? You fought. You-she gestures at the tu

A

– These Remade strike for us, so you won’t be broken. You strike against us and we against you, but these Remade are on both our damn sides. You know it. You fought for them. You scorn them now? They won you your damn strike, and ours too, even though we strike against each other. She kisses Uzman again. Among the prostitutes, some are aghast and others are cheering. -I tell you, A

The prostitutes closest to A

– We have to link up, shouts Thick Shanks, but no one is listening to him. They are listening to his friend A

It is deep night but very few are sleeping. Judah’s golem is taller than he, held together with oil and dirty water. The old man become the Weaver’s prophet stands behind A

A gendarme comes to them from the direction of the train. He waves a truce flag. -They want to talk, says a woman on chitin wheels.

– Wait, he shouts as he walks. -We want to end this. No recrimination. We’ll talk to the TRT, get the money through. Everyone wins. You, Remade, we can talk. End your peonage early, maybe. We can talk about everything. Everything’s open.

A