Ann-Hari was staring at him. He seemed to wear a halation in the last of the light. He spoke as if he were reading a poem. “We made this thing years ago and it laid its tracks through history, left its marks. And then we did this to New Crobuzon.”

He looked astounding, a very beautiful thing. He looked transformed. But Cutter knew he was wrong. We didn’t do this, Judah. They did. In New Crobuzon. With or without the Council.

“Now,” Judah said. “We ride into the city, we join them. We aren’t so far from the last of the rails. Jabber, gods, we’ll ride into a changed city, we’ll be part of change. We’re bringing a cargo. We’re bringing history. ”

Yes, and no, Judah. Yes we are. But they’ve got their own history already.

Cutter had come not for the Iron Council, but for Judah. It was a guilt he could never forget. I’m not here for history, he thought. Low mountain pikes looked down on him. In a cold river, the Iron Council vodyanoi were swimming, while the train idled in its strath. I’m here for you.

“And there’ll be no militia now,” Judah said. “They know we’re coming, but with the city in revolt they won’t spare anything to face us down. When we come, there’ll be a new government. We’ll be a… a coda to the insurgency. A commonwealth of New Crobuzon.”

“It’s been hard,” said one of the refugees, uncertainly. “The Collective’s under fire. Parliament’s come back hard…”

“Oh oh oh.” No one saw who spoke. The sounds ebbed up suddenly. “Oh, now.

“What’s this?”

The voice was Qurabin’s. Cutter looked for the fold in air, saw a flit of gusting.

“What’s this?” The pilgrim-refugees were open-eyed in fear of this bodiless voice. “You said there were attacks, Tesh attacks. Manifestations? What kind? And what is this? This, this, this here?”

A buffeting, the stained leather of a newcomer’s bag belling with Qurabin’s tug. The woman moaned at what she thought some ghost, and Cutter snapped at her as Qurabin repeated, “What is that mark?” She looked in idiot fear at the complex gyral design on her bag.

“That? That’s a sign of freedom. Freedom spiral, that is. It’s all over the city.”

“Oh oh oh.”

“What is it, what is it, Qurabin?”

“What are the Tesh attacks?” The monk’s voice was calmer but still very fast. Cutter and Elsie stiffened; Ann-Hari’s concern grew; Judah slowly folded as he saw something was happening.

“No, no, this… I remember this. I need to, I have to, I’ll ask…” The monk’s voice wavered. There was an infolding sense, colours. Qurabin was asking something of the Moment of Secrets. There was silence. The refugees looked fearful.

“How is Tesh attacking?” Qurabin’s voice came back strong. “You said manifestations? Is it colour-sucked things, presences? Emptinesses in the shape of things in the world-animals, plants, hands, everything? And people gone, sickened by them and dead? They come out of nothing, unglow, is it? And they’re still coming. Yes?”

“What is it? Qurabin for Jabber’s sake…”

“Jabber?” There was a hysteria to the monk’s voice. Qurabin was moving, the locus of his sound bobbing among them. “Jabber can’t help, no, no. More to come, there’s more to come. And he has you thinking those are signs for freedom. The spiral. Oh.”

Cutter started-the voice was right up close to him. He felt a gust of breath.

“I’m Tesh, remember. I know. The things that are coming in your city, the haints-they aren’t attacks, they’re ripples. Of an event that hasn’t yet come. They’re spots in time and place. Something’s coming, dropped into time like water, and these have splashed back. And where they land, these little droplets come like maggoty things to suck at the world. Something’s coming soon, and these, these, these spirals, these curlicues are bringing it.

“Someone is loose in New Crobuzon. This is ambassadormagik. The little manifs are nothing. Tesh want more than that. They’re going to end your city. These spirals-they’re the marks of a hecatombist.”

Qurabin had to explain several times.

“Who left that mark is a purveyor of many thaumaturgies. Of which this is the last. This is the finishing of the law. This will take your city and, and will wipe your city clean. Understand that.”

“These are freedom spirals,” said a refugee, and Cutter all but cuffed him to be quiet.

“They say Tesh is talking? They say there are negotiations? No no no. If there are, they are ploy. This is the final thing they will do. Their last attack. Months of preparation, huge energy. This will end everything. No more wars for New Crobuzon. Not ever again.”

“What is it, what will it be?”

But Qurabin did not answer that.

“There will be no more wars and no more peace,” Qurabin said. “And more ripples will come, spattered, on the other side of the event. The last drops. Manifestations in the nothing left after your city’s gone. They’ll wipe it out.”

It was very cold, and the wind that ran down from the chines snatched smoke from their food-fires. Before and behind them, Councillors bunked in their ironside town. There were the noises of mountain animals. There was talking, and the settling metal of the sleeping train.

“What can we do?” Judah was in horror.

“If you want… if you want to fix it, you have to find him. The one who’s doing this, who’s calling things. We have to find him. We have to stop him.

“You-we-have to get back to New Crobuzon. We have to go now.”

Part Eight. THE REMAKING

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The Battle of Cockscomb Bridge started early. A sun that looked watered-down lit amassing troops on either side of the river. Cockscomb, a thousand years old and built up with houses, joined Riverskin on the south of the Tar to Petty Coil north. The Collective fought very hard for Cockscomb Bridge. After the first astonishing days, when for a brief moment most of the south of New Crobuzon had been at least officially in Collective control, their zone had been eroded. Now, weeks later, Cockscomb Bridge was the westernmost point controlled by the Collective’s Dog Fenn chapter.

Lookouts from the Flyside Militia Tower, long occupied by the insurgents, verified the movements of militia units before dawn, and the insurrectionist tacticians mobilised forces from several boroughs. The militia came from The Crow, through Spit Hearth where those renegade hierophants who had not left or gone into hiding said prayers for one or other or both sides, and on to the déclassé collapse of Petty Coil. There in the decaying baroque of Misdirect Square, looked on by architecture once sumptuous now a little absurd with its blistered paint and falling-down facades, the militia fanned out. Light went in thousands of directions from their mirrors. They wheeled cannons and motorguns to point at the old stones of the Cockscomb, and waited.

Across the water the Collective’s troops came, battalions named for their areas. “Wynion Way, to me.” “Silverback Street, left flank.” Each corps identified by a scrap of coloured cloth, a sash, green for Wynion, grey for Silverback. Each officer wore a bandana in their colour, though their men and women would recognise them, having voted them in. They were mixed platoons, of all races. And Remade.

Rumours about militia tactics abounded. “There’ll be men-o’-war.” “There’ll be handlingers.” “There’ll be drakows.” “They’ve done a deal with Tesh-there’ll be haints on the bridge.” Heading each Collective unit were ex-militia, who had trained their new comrades as quick and thorough as they could. Where populist enthusiasm had resulted in someone utterly callow, untrained or useless voted in as officer, and where misplaced loyalty let them retain their position, some ex-soldier was quietly installed as advisor, to whisper tactics.