The hours went fast with the mesmeric beat of train wheels that Cutter had forgotten, that the months had taken from his mind as the Iron Council crept too slowly to pick up any rhythm. The train moved just fast enough to make the noise come. The percussion of wheels, the beat of pistons. The uh uh, uh uh, like being tapped on the shoulder again and again, reminded of something, a nervous noise. Cutter rode the train’s anxiety.

I’ll know, in a moment I’ll know, he said inside himself. In a moment I’ll decide. And the perpetual train did not stop and it brought him miles and miles closer to New Crobuzon before, it seemed, he had a chance to think.

What will happen?

He had a weapon ready. He rode in the caboose with outsiders, refugees, who were excited and terribly afraid of what was ahead. It curved, it curved, as if trying to hide its terminus. Miles yet, Cutter thought, but the end of the line seemed to glow darkly just out of sight.

“I need to go home. They’re waiting for me,” someone said. Something is, Cutter thought. Something’s waiting for you.

I won’t stay. It was a certainty, suddenly. I’ll not go to that scum Drogon, but I’ll not give him my death either. What will you do? He gave the question a voice. I’ll run. Where will you go? Where I must. And Judah Low? If I can. If I can find him. Judah Low.

Oh Judah oh Judah. Judah, Judah.

When the night came down as if darkness thickened the air, they did not stop. Light went from their windows across the grey plain and made the train a millipede on gaslight legs.

They must be a few tens of miles off now. Quite suddenly the tracks were clean and clear. Perhaps there had been some passage, Cutter thought; perhaps the city had had trains run the pointless distance this far and back, ferrying ghost passengers to ghost stations. Then in the bone light of such early morning he saw figures on the trackside darkness waving adzes and thick twig brooms, shouting for the train to Go on, go on and telling it Welcome home.

Fugitives from New Crobuzon’s Collective. They were there in increasing numbers out of the black before the train, blinking pinned in its moony lights and waving. The day began to come. Deserters from the Collective’s war who had come through Rudewood or the dangers of the alleys west of Dog Fenn, where the militia hunted and gave out revenge. They had come to be an unskilled work party clearing the lines.

The Crobuzoners waved their hats and scarves. Run come home, one shouted. Some were crying. They threw dried petals on the tracks. But there were some stood and waved their arms No, shouted, No they’ll kill you, and others who wore a kind of sad pride.

They ran and leapt onto the Council. They threw winter flowers and food to the Councillors and their children, exchanged shouted words with them, dropped back. Those on the train had become stern and taciturn with history and mission, and it was their followers on foot who met the escapees and embraced them, merged.

People ran by the train, keeping pace with it, and shouted names. Bereft families.

“Nathaniel! Is he there? Nathaniel Besholm, Remade man, arms of wood. Went into the wilds with the lost train.”

“Split Nose! My father. Never came back. Where is he?”

Names and snips of histories breathed out by those for whom the return of Iron Council was not only a myth come to be real but was a family hope redivivus. Letters addressed to those long-disappeared in exile now suddenly perhaps come back were thrown into the windows. Most were for the dead or those who had simply deserted: these were read and became messages to everyone.

It was day now-the day that the Iron Council would reach the end of the line. It was slowing, the drivers wanting every moment of the journey.

“Low the Golem-man!” one woman shouted in her old voice as they went past. “He’s been prowling around, getting everything ready for you! Come faster!”

What? Cutter looked back. Up from inside him was a suspicion. What?

“Don’t fear,” someone shouted. “Listen, we’re only hiding, us Collectivists, we’re waiting, we’re behind the militia lines waiting for you,” but Cutter was looking for the woman who had spoken of Judah.

There isn’t far. They would be there by noon perhaps, at the end of the line, to the ranks of military in the sidings. Only a few miles left. “I’ve a plan,” Judah said. Gods. Gods. He’s here.

Overhead the Iron Council wyrmen flew in both directions. Their outflyers would soon be at the city.

Cutter was on horseback, the easy long gallop he had learnt over the months he’d become a wilderness man. He could almost keep up with Ann-Hari, who rode Rahul the Remade.

Rahul’s strides pounded, and he ran below the scree and pebble litter with the risen wall of the roadbed a windbreak beside him, dandelions and weeds in its slanted flank. Cutter rode where the wind was most resentful, throwing dust in his eyes. He ignored it. He pushed on under clouds that moved with sudden urgency and sowed rain nearby. He looked to the tracks, he looked ahead. He was beside the rail.

“Just come with me then if you want,” he had said to Ann-Hari. “Prove me wrong. You can always come back. But if I’m right, I’m telling you… I’m telling you Judah has something planned.” And though Ann-Hari had been exasperated there was in his urgency and the uncertain valence of his concern-was he excited, anxious, angry?-something that struck her and had her ride with him.

He had failed Judah, and he had to see him, unsure as he was what he sought to do-to persuade Judah to turn the Council if he could, to explain himself, to have him accept Cutter’s regret that he had failed. When the horse-guards blocked him he demanded they summon Ann-Hari. “You have to let me go,” he said. “Give me a fucking horse. Judah’s ahead! I have to see him!”

She affected impatience but he saw her start. She said she would come. “Whatever. Escort me if you don’t trust me, I don’t care, but there’s only a few hours left, and I have to fucking see him.”

What’s he doing?

Then. In the lands nearest New Crobuzon. Where rivers crossed under the raised road, and the stones that gave cover were gnawed by acid rain. Foothills stretched out their legs and rucked up the land in untidy grass, where the piceous thick of Rudewood like a black and black-green rash tided toward the train’s path and even in places stretched sparse little hands of forest to the edges of the track. Cutter, Rahul and Ann-Hari passed through trees and tree-shadow.

The perpetual train was quickly invisible behind them, the rails, newly renewed, meandering. Cutter rode as if he were alone, beside the metal raised like proud flesh, like slub in the land’s weft. There were some refugees still lining the iron who waved him on, but most had run to be with the train itself. He ignored the halloos- Where’s the Council? Come to save us? They’re ahead, boy, be careful. He kept his stare to the tracks, the trackside. The train was no more than an hour behind him.

He felt as if New Crobuzon sucked him in, as if its gravity-the denseness of brick, cement, wood, iron, the vista of roofs, stippling of smoke and chymical lights-as if its gravity took him. The stoned land rose like floodtide toward the line, and Cutter’s horse descended past a place where the roadbed and the country were level. Rahul was beside him. By a meadow of boulders Cutter saw a barge passing. They were near the farmlands. He watched the trackside. The occasional mechanism where a signal might have stood, some meter to read the speed or passage of trains. Here a clutch of stones and metal debris in the train’s path or by its side.