“But they couldn’t hold it off. The Nuevists died. Petron and the others. The militia went in. There was street-fighting, but Howl Barrow’s gone. Got the last globe today.” Howl Barrow had released sealed glass floats to drift down the River Tar, past Strack Island, till the Collective’s bargers and mudlarks fished them and broke them to get the messages out.
“I tried, Judah, honestly, though your plan’s madness. But there’s no one spare. Everyone’s protecting the Collective. I don’t blame them, and I’m going to join them. We’ve a couple of weeks left, no more.”
Madeleina looked agonised but she did not say anything.
“I can’t help you, Judah,” Curdin continued. “But I’ll tell you something. When you left and there were rumours why, I thought you were… not mad, stupid. A stupid, stupid man. I never thought you could find the Iron Council. I would have bet it was long gone, nothing but a rotten train in the middle of a desert. Full of skeletons.
“I was wrong, Judah. And you, and all of you, done something I never thought could be done. I won’t say the Collective is because of you, because it ain’t. All I’ll say is that word that the Iron Council was coming… well, it changed things. Even when we thought it was just a rumour, even when I thought it was a myth, it still felt like something was… it was different. Maybe we heard you were coming a little bit too soon. Maybe that’s what happened. But it changed things.
“But I don’t quite trust you, Judah. Oh, gods, don’t get me wrong, I ain’t saying you’re a traitor. You always helped us, with golems, with money… but you watch from outside. Like you get to be pleased with us. It ain’t right, Judah.
“I wish you luck. If you’re right, and maybe you are, then you’d better win. But I ain’t coming to fight with you. I fight for the Collective. If you win and the Collective loses, I don’t want to live anyway.” Though it must be hyperbole, Cutter drew himself up at that, in respect.
“How you plan on finishing this, Judah?”
Judah pursed his lips. “I’ll have something,” he said.
“You’ll have what?”
“I’ll have something. And there’s someone here who knows what to do. Who knows Tesh magic.”
“I know, I know,” Qurabin said suddenly and loud. “The Moment I worship will tell me things. Will help me. It’s a Tesh thing. My Moment knows the gods this consul might call.”
“Consul?” Madeleina said, and when Judah told her that Spiral Jacobs was the ambassador of Tesh, Curdin laughed. Not a pleasant laugh.
“Yon Teshi’ll know what to do, is that it?” Curdin came close on his clumsy four legs. “You’re going to die, Judah,” he said. He spoke with true sadness. “If you’re right, you’re going to die. Good luck.”
Curdin shook each of their hands and left. Madeleina went with him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Though winter it was suddenly warm. Unseasonal was not the word-it was uncanny, as if the city was in an exhalation. A warmth like that of innards took the streets. The party went with Toro.
Two nights they walked the streets, behind Ori, who stopped and stared at all the graffiti. Each night they did not find Spiral Jacobs, Qurabin’s distress became animal. Toro would trace a finger along Spiral’s marks, find signs, nod and lower his head, shove and be gone for long minutes, and then would return and shake his head: No, no sign.
Once he could not find him; once he found him but in the farthest north of the city, in the quiets of Flag Hill, scrawling his marks, unafraid of Ori as ever. There was no way for the others to get to him. Ori tracked Spiral Jacobs around the city, but until he came back to the Dog Fenn chapter, he could only be reached by Ori, who could do nothing alone.
Each day they had to live knowing the agent of the city’s destruction was walking free, that they could not touch him. They tried where they could to protect the streets of the Collective. From the river’s shores they saw a fight between two trains traveling alongside on the Dexter Line, a Collectivist and a militia, shooting into each other’s windows as they went.
There was a lightning raid by dirigibles scattering leaflets. PEOPLE OF THE SO-CALLED “COLLECTIVE,” they said. THE GOVERNMENT OF MAYOR TRIESTI WILL NOT TOLERATE THE MASS-MURDER AND CARNAGE YOU HAVE UNLEASHED ON NEW CROBUZON. AFTER THE OUTRAGE OF THE BARRACKHAM TOWER ALL CITIZENS NOT ACTIVELY SEEKING ESCAPE ARE DEEMED COMPLICIT IN THE DESPICABLE POLICIES OF YOUR COMMITTEES. APPROACH THE MILITIA WITH HANDS CLEAR AND UP, HALLOOING YOUR SURRENDER, and so on.
The third night. There they were, on the streets, with hundreds of Collectivists, a last wave of mobilizations, of every race. Little snips of magic, prestidigitation of light, chromathaumaturgy sending up pretences of birds made of radiance. The rebels made the night a carnival, as it had once been.
Everywhere people were running, according to news of a militia incursion, a moment’s panic, a rumour, a nothing at all. They drank, ate whatever repulsive food had been mustered or smuggled through the militia’s cordon. There was a millennial sense. Drinkers toasted Judah and Toro and Cutter and the others as they walked under half-lit gaslamps, raised mugs of poteen and beer and cheered the passersby in the name of the Collective.
Qurabin was moaning. Low but always audible.
“Something’s happening,” Cutter said to no one.
They passed Bohrum Junction where houses converged in a wedge of antique architecture, past dry fountains where war orphans played some catchpenny game and tied shell-casings to a dog too diseased to eat. Toro walked, making no effort to hide himself, and the children pointed and catcalled. Hey Bull, hey Bull, what you going to do? Who you going to kill? Cutter did not know if they thought Ori just a man in a strange uniform, or if they knew they had seen the bandit kithless himself that night. Perhaps in the exotica of the Collective, gods and the unique arcane were not worth awe.
Rahul came with saurian gait, knives in each human hand, his muscular reptile claws clenching. “Come come on,” said Qurabin.
Each wall of graffiti Ori would stop and stare at with light-
emitting Bull-mask eyes. With an effortful grunt he straightened his legs, poked into nothing, and then there he was again in a new rent scant feet away, so fast Cutter could not be sure his feet had not still dangled from the first hole as his head emerged yards off.
“He’s here,” Ori said. “Trauka Station. Come.”
Not a mile off. They passed near the riverwall through long-
emptied markets, where the integuments of the stalls were left, metal ribs slotted together, a herd of skeletons.
They were just one of the running groups that night. Into Trauka through narrow old streets in a mix of ugly architecture, under paint proclaiming Free Collective Territory and Fuck You Stem-Fulcher written then crossed out and Been done mate appended in another hand. Toro disappeared, reappeared a street from them, beckoning, splitting worldskin to keep sure of his quarry’s motion, coming back to the party to direct them. As if they were directed by a dozen identical bull-faced men throughout the city.
The smoke and miracle-colour blood that dripped from Toro’s helmet was thick; the horns were sparking as if with friction. So much violence against ontology was straining the thaumaturgic circuits. “Come,” Toro said again, and beckoned. “Just here, two turns from here, left left, he’s moving, come now.”
Judah stopped, quickly set down ceramic conductors and a funnel in the darkest part of a brick overhang. There was a snap of thaumaturgy. He sounded an invocatory whisper-no not an invocation-he had told Cutter that the difference was crucial-not an invocation but a creation, a constitution of matter or ideomatter. Cutter watched and Judah gathered. Cutter felt the creep of awe on his skin, watching the man for whom he felt and had always felt so animal an emotion, surely the most potent golemist in New Crobuzon, its autodidact magus.