“What?” he said, crossing to where the refugee spoke.

“Golem-man Low, he’s got an army of made men. He’s making them of clay in his cellar, ready to take over the city. He’s been seen, outside New Crobuzon, in the rail yards, on the sidings, by the tracks. He’s got plans.”

They came closer, and the escaped they met were more and more recent out of the city. “It’s done,” one said. “There ain’t no Collective anymore. Wish to gods there was.”

That night Cutter looked for Drogon and realised that the whispersmith had gone. He walked the length of the train, sent messages and queries, but there was nothing.

It was possible the susurrator was off riding, hunting, on a mission of his own, but Cutter was very suddenly certain that Drogon had gone. That they were close enough to New Crobuzon, that the horseman had had enough, and had ridden, his adventures with the Iron Council over.

Is that all? Such a slow deflation, such a lacklustre end. Was that all you wanted, Drogon? Not tempted to say good-bye?

Cutter prepared to leave. It could not be long. He felt a hollowness, a preemptive loss. He wondered how and where the militia would confront them and destroy the Council. The Remade and their families and comrades, the Councillors, all knew what was coming. Their track-laying songs became martial. They oiled their guns; the forges at trackside and in the carriages turned out weapons. The Iron Councillors carried made and stolen guns. The glass and brass foci of ordnance-shamanism. Racks of spears and west-coast weapons.

“We’ll gather people with us, we’ll be an army, we’ll sweep in. We’ll turn things around.” Cutter winced to hear the dreams. “We’re bringing history.”

There was a drip of people across the land, on their way anywhere, without plans but away from the carnage of New Crobuzon.

Still empty land, only a few half-kept orchards, a few groves of temperate fruit-trees. There was a moment of transition. They were in the wilds, in unsafe lands, and then with a suddenness and a strange anticlimax they were in domesticated country. They knew they were close.

The graders and scouts returned. “Yonder. Just beyond.” Over stone-flecked undulations. “The old rails. Down to Junctiontown, in the swamps. And up to New Crobuzon.”

Two days away. Every moment they continued, Cutter expected a deployment of New Crobuzon troops to emerge from the tunnels and flint hides of that damp region, but they did not come. How long would he stay? He had tried to dissuade them. Would he handle the mirror one more time?

“Low the golemer’s been seen, he’s in the hills, he’s watching over us. He’s by the old rails.”

Oh yes? Has he? Cutter was sour. He was very lonely. Where are you, Judah? He did not know what to do.

In small numbers, some Councillors-the older, mostly, the first generation, who remembered the punishment factories-left. Not many, but enough to be felt. They would go into the hills to scout for wood or food and would not come back. Their comrades, their sisters, shook their heads with scorn and care. Not everyone was unafraid, or willing or able to ignore their fear.

I’ll decide the plan when I see the old rails, Cutter told himself, but then he walked with the track-layers as they bent the iron road through gaps between sediment and basalt stanchions and through the V the graders had cut in soft displaced earth and there, there, there wetly ashine, black but glowing, were the rails. More than twenty years old. Curving away, drawn together by perspective, slipped through geography. The metal path. The crossties were bucked by neglect but held the rails down.

The Councillors gave a cheer that was reedy in the cold wet air but that continued a long time. The track-layers waved their tools. The Remade gesticulated their unshaped limbs. The road to New Crobuzon. That old road. Left to moulder when the collapse of money and the stockpiles in warehouses had made an end to the TRT boom. They had been left to the shifting ground-Cutter could see where the banks of the cut had bowed and buried the metal. They were running grounds for wild things.

In some places the iron had been stolen by salvagers. The Council would have to lay down some from its own stock. The Iron Council had come this way before, unborn, when it was just a train. The wet of the stones, the dark and glistening way. Cutter stared. And what was it? What was happening in his city? Where the Collective was fighting? How should he run?

Judah, you bastard, where are you?

The hammermen laid down the rails, and with careful measured sideswipes of their mallets, they put in curves. They made bends, gently, so that their tracks came out of the west and skewed gradually through the banks of the train-gash up and onto the roadbed of the old rails.

This is all a postlude, Cutter thought. This is all happening after the story.

The Collective was falling or fallen and all there was was this unfolding of violence. We’ll swing it, change it, Cutter thought with sad scorn, in the voice of a Councillor.

The greatest moment in the history of New Crobuzon. Laid low by war and by the end of war, which was gods help me my doing, our doing. But what could we do? Could we let the city fall? The Collective would have fallen anyway, he told himself, but he was not sure of that. He drew icons in the earth, making trains in outline, men and women running away or toward something. Maybe the Collective’s just hiding. Everyone in the city waiting. Maybe I should stay on the train. He knew he would not.

There were guards around the sprawling train-town now for fear of militia and of the bandits. Mostly the brigands that came, fReemade and whole, came to join the Council. They arrived daily, wondering if they had to audition, show their worth. The Councillors welcomed them, though some fretted about spies. There was too much chaos in those last days to worry. Cutter saw newcomers everywhere, with their tentative enthusiasm. Once with a start he thought he saw a man attached backward on a horse’s neck.

Walking back through the cold at night, through a startled gust of rock pigeons, Cutter heard a voice. Deep in his ear.

“Come up here. I’ve something to tell you. Quiet. Please. Quietly.”

“Drogon?” Nothing but the idiot fluting of the birds. “Drogon?” Only small stones skittering.

It was not a command but a request. The susurrator could have made him come, but had only asked.

Drogon was waiting in the dark hills overlooking the train.

“I thought you’d gone,” Cutter said. “Where’d you go?”

Drogon stood with an old white-haired man. He held a gun, though it was not aimed.

“This one?” the old man said, and Drogon nodded.

“Who’s this?” said Cutter. The old man held his arms behind his back. He wore an old-fashioned waistcoat. He was eighty or more, stood tall, looked at Cutter sternly, kindly.

“Who is this Drogon? Who the fuck are you?”

“Now, lad…”

“Quiet,” said Drogon peremptorily in Cutter’s ear. The old man was speaking.

“I’m here to tell you what’s happening. This is holy work and I would not have you not know. I’ll tell you the truth, son: I had and have no interest in you.” He spoke with a singing cadence. “I was here to see the train. I’ve been wanting to see the train a long time, and I come by darkness. But your friend”-he indicated Drogon-“insisted we speak. Said you might want to hear this.”

He inclined his head. Cutter looked at the gun in Drogon’s hand.

“So here is what it is. I am Wrightby.”

“Yes, I see you know me, you know who I am. I confess gratification, yes. I do.” Cutter breathed hard. Godsfuckingdamn. Could it possibly be true? He eyed Drogon’s gun.