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The gendarmes have withdrawn.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 tunnellers and the track-layers are aghast at the freeing of the Remade. No one is sure who did it, how. Some stolen keys, a moment that went through the kraal of tethered criminals (though still there are a few who will not emerge, who cling to their irons).

– This ain’t what we’re here for. This ain’t what this was. A tunneller is shouting at Shaun Sullervan, disdaining to speak to Ann-Hari or the host of Remade stretching their limbs. -I didn’t want that boy to be beat, it ain’t nothing he’d done, but this is stupid. What are you going to fucking do? Eh? We have…

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 cannot sustain. The gendarmes have taken the guntower and one other car: the Remade have the rest of the train. The iron tower cracks in the heat, and the weapon at its top swivels.

The free men want to treat Shaun and Thick Shanks as leaders of a Remade rabble, but Ann-Hari stands with them, and with the pipe-woven man, whose name Judah learns is Uzman, and with other Remade.

– 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 tunnel-men. From the guntower come noises of industry. The strikers watch from behind blockades. The moon is split near exactly in half. It is waning. In its light and the lanterns’ and the phosphor of lux hexes, the men and women of the perpetual train gather.

– We can’t just wait, says Thick Shanks. -People are running already. Gods know how many gendarmes got out-too many horses are gone. Hand-trucks. And it ain’t just the overseers leaving, Uzman. We have to make them give in.

– Give in what? Ann-Hari speaks. The thing in Judah moves. -Give in what? What do you want from them, chaver? They’ve nothing to give us. They’re still scared-that’s why they’re in that tower-but when they start having to throw their shit out over the parapets, they’ll come out gunning.

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. Ann-Hari shouts, and in her agitation her arcane hill Ragamoll asserts itself.

– 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 tunnellers-you struck. Against us. Her lieutenant prostitutes nod. -But why did you fight the gendarmes? Because they, they Remade, wouldn’t scab. They wouldn’t. They took beating for you. To not break your strike. And they did it for us. For me.

Ann-Hari reaches out and grips Uzman and pulls him to her, he acquiescing with surprise. She kisses him on his mouth. He is Remade: it is a vivid transgression. There are shocks and exhalations, but Ann-Hari roars.

– 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, Ann-Hari says, -if anyone deserves service on credit, it’s the damn Remade.

The prostitutes closest to Ann-Hari and most militant seek out Remade ostentatiously to touch.

– We have to link up, shouts Thick Shanks, but no one is listening to him. They are listening to his friend Ann-Hari. Judah makes a golem out of the dust.

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 Ann-Hari and shouts obscure praise to her while she and Thick Shanks argue.

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.

Ann-Hari’s face is a joy of anger. The man cowers from her and she passes him and runs in the direction of the train, followed by Remade, Thick Shanks and Uzman, and Judah, who slaps his golem on its arse as if it is a baby and shocks it, hexes it into motion. It astonishes those it passes.