The suburb was beyond the reach of New Crobuzon’s municipality. There was an unreliable alternative infrastructure: a self-appointed network of postal workers, sanitary engineers, even a kind of law. But these systems were inefficient and partial at best. For the most part, neither the militia nor anyone else went in to Spatters. The only visitors from outside were the regular trains appearing at the incongruously well-maintained Fell Stop Station, and the gangs of masked gunmen who appeared sometimes at night to terrorize and murder. The Spatters street-children were particularly vulnerable to the ferocious barbarism of the murder-squads.

The slum-dwellers of Dog Fenn and even Badside considered Spatters beneath their dignity. It was simply not part of the city, nothing but a strange little town that had grafted itself onto New Crobuzon without a by-your-leave. There was no money to entice industry, legal or illicit. The crimes in Spatters were nothing but small-scale acts of desperation and survival.

There was something else about Spatters, something that brought Isaac to visit its unwelcoming alleys. For the past thirty years, it had been New Crobuzon’s garuda ghetto.

Lin watched the huge towerblocks of Ketch Heath. She could see tiny figures riding the updrafts that they created, swirling above them. Wyrmen, and maybe a couple of garuda. The cab was passing under the skyrail that dipped gracefully out of the militia tower that loomed near to the blocks.

The cab pulled to.

“All right, guv, this is where I stop,” said the driver.

Isaac and Lin disembarked. On one side of the cab was a row of neat white houses. Each was fronted with a small garden, most of which were assiduously maintained. The street was lined with shaggy banyan trees. Opposite the houses, on the other side of the cab, was a long thin park, a strip of greenery three hundred or so yards wide that sloped steeply down and away from the street. This thin slip of grass acted as a no-man’s-land between the polite houses of Vaudois Hill inhabited by clerks and doctors and lawyers, and the crumbling chaos beyond the trees, at the bottom of the hill: Spatters.

“It’s no fucking wonder Spatters isn’t the most popular place, is it?” breathed Isaac. “Look, it’s ruined the view for all these nice people up here…” He gave an evil grin.

In the distance, Lin could see that the edge of the hill was split with the Sink Line. The trains passed through a chasm cut into the parkland of the hill’s western flank. The red brick of Fell Stop Station loomed out over the quagmire of Spatters. In this corner of the city, the tracks were only fractionally above the level of the houses, but it did not take much architectural grandeur for the station to tower over the surrounding makeshift dwellings. Of all Spatters’ buildings, only the refitted towerblock shells were taller.

Lin felt Isaac nudge her. He pointed at one clutch of blocks, close to the railway.

“See that?” She nodded. “Look up top.”

Lin followed his fingers. The bottom half of the big buildings looked deserted. From the sixth or seventh floor up, however, wooden boughs poked at odd angles out of crevices. The windows were covered with brown paper, unlike the empty sockets. And way up on the flat roofs, at nearly the same level as Lin and Isaac, little figures were visible.

Lin followed Isaac’s gesture up into the air. She felt a jolt of excitement. Winged creatures were visible sporting in the sky.

“Those are garuda,” Isaac said.

Lin and Isaac walked down the hill towards the railway lines, bearing slightly to their right to arrive at the garudas’ looming makeshift eyries.

“Almost all the garuda in the city live in those four buildings. There probably aren’t two thousand in the whole of New Crobuzon. That makes them about…uh…nought point fucking nought three per cent of the population…” Isaac grinned. “I’ve been doing my research, see?”

But they don’t all live here. What about Krakhleki?

“Oh sure, I mean, there are garuda that get out. I taught one once, nice geezer. There’s probably a couple in Dog Fenn, three or four in Murkside, six in Gross Coil. Jabber’s Mound and Syriac each have a handful, I’ve heard. And once or twice a generation, someone like Krakhleki makes it big. I’ve never read his stuff, by the way. Is he any good?” Lin nodded. “Right, so you’ve got people like him, and others…you know, what’s the name of that fucker…the one in the Diverse Tendency…Shashjar, that’s the one. They stick him in to prove the DTs are for all xenians.” Isaac made a rude noise. “ ‘Specially the rich ones.”

But most of them are here. And when you’re here, it must be difficult to get out…

“I’d suppose so. Bit of an understatement, in fact…”

They crossed a brook and slowed as they approached the out-lands of Spatters. Lin crossed her arms and shook her headbody.

What am I doing here? she signed sardonically.

“You’re expanding your mind,” said Isaac cheerfully. “Important to learn how other races live in our fair city.”

He tugged at her arm until, mock-protesting, Lin allowed him to drag her out of the shade of the trees and into Spatters.

To get into Spatters, Isaac and Lin had to cross rickety bridges, planks thrown across the eight-foot ditch that separated the township from Vaudois Hill park. They walked in single file, their arms sometimes outstretched for balance.

Five feet below them, the trench was filled with a noisome gelatinous soup of shit and pollutants and acid rain. The surface was broken with bubbles of fell gas and bloated animal corpses. Here and there bobbed rusting tins and knots of fleshy tissue like tumours or aborted foetuses. The liquid undulated rather than rippled, contained by a thick surface tension so oily and strong that it would not break: the pebbles that fell from the bridge were swallowed without the slightest splash.

Even with one hand clapped over his mouth and nose against the stench, Isaac could not contain himself. Halfway across the plank he let out a bark of revulsion that turned into a retch. He controlled himself before he puked. To stagger on that bridge, to lose one’s balance and fall, was too utterly vile a thought to consider.

The taste of the slurry in the air made Lin feel nearly as queasy as Isaac. By the time they stepped onto the other side of the wooden slats, both Lin’s and Isaac’s good humour had entirely worn off. They trudged in silence into the maze.

Lin found it easy to orient herself with such low buildings: the copse of blocks they sought was clearly visible just before the station. Sometimes she walked ahead of Isaac, sometimes he ahead of her. They picked their way over channels of sewage that ran between houses. They were unmoved. They were beyond disgust.

The inhabitants of Spatters came to stare.

Sour-faced men and women, and hundreds of children, all dressed in bizarre combinations of rescued clothes and sewn sackcloth. Little hands and fingers clutched at Lin as she passed. She slapped at them, walked in front of Isaac. Voices all around them started murmuring, and then a clamouring for money started up. No one made any attempt to stop them.

Isaac and Lin trudged stolidly through the twisted streets, keeping the towerblocks in their sights. They trailed a crowd. As they grew closer, the shapes of the garuda fleeting through the air above became clear.

A fat man nearly as large as Isaac stepped out in front of them.

“Squire, bugger,” he shouted curtly, nodding at both of them. His eyes were quick. Isaac nudged Lin, indicated her to stop.

“What d’you want?” said Isaac impatiently.

The man spoke very quickly.

“Well, visitors being unco down the Spatters I was chewing on whether you’d fancy a little helpster, like.”