The Scar

Chapter Thirty

Armada lolled in the sun. It was getting hotter.

The frantic work continued, and below the water, the shape of the avanc’s harness grew slowly more solid. It was ghosted, its outlines in girders and wooden supports, like an abstract for some implausible building. As the days went on it grew a little more substantial, its intricate spines and gears more like something real. It grew through the extraordinary efforts of the crews. The city was on something like a war footing, every iota of industry and effort commandeered. People understood that they were careering at breakneck speed into a new epoch.

The scale of the harness always staggered Tanner Sack. It loomed below the ecology of scavenger fish that never left the city’s underside, larger by a long, long way than any ship. It dwarfed the Grand Easterly, which bobbed above it like a bath toy. And the bridle was to be completed within weeks.

The work was constant. During the dark hours, the sputtering illumination of chymical flares and welding torches attracted night fish. They surrounded the chains and gangs of divers, schools of them staring big-eyed, agog at the lights.

There were moving parts, and joints, and rubberized gasbags cannibalized from old dirigibles. There were sealed motors. But essentially it was just a vast halter, its links and segments stretching more than a quarter of a mile long.

Ship after ship was gutted, stripped from the inside, scuttled, and melted down. The fleet of warships and traders that surrounded the city and its ports was thinned, for the sake of this project. A frontier of smoke plumes enveloped the sacrificed vessels while heat torches took them apart.

As Shekel made his way along the aft of Garwater one evening, to Bellis’ house, he looked out toward the horizon and saw a half-gone ship at the edge of the city. It was the Terpsichoria: its outlines crumbled and broken; its bridge, most of its superstructure, and its deck gone; its metal viscera taken to the factories. The sight brought him up short. He had no affection for the vessel; he was not dismayed-but astonished, for reasons he could not articulate.

He stared down at the water that turned below him. It was hard to believe that it was happening, that such colossal efforts were taking place, link after link slotted together in a vast series under the fabric of the city.

There were several languages active in Bellis’ life. She felt exhilarated to relearn her disciplines: the nameless technique she had perfected for segmenting her mind, keeping her internal dictionaries distinct; the language trance she had last used in Tarmuth.

Aum made quick progress with Salt. Her pupil was talented.

During the afternoon’s discussions with Tintinnabulum and the other scientists, every so often-to Bellis’ pleasure-Aum would intercept some question before she had translated it and written it down. He would even write down some of his own answers, in basic Salt.

It must be extraordinary for him, Bellis thought. Salt was the first language he was conscious of having both spoken and written dimensions. It was unthinkable to him to hear High Kettai-it had been a meaningless concept. To hear Salt questions and to write the answers in the same language must be an astonishing mental leap, but he dealt with it with aplomb.

Bellis did not warm to Kruach Aum. She found his constant wide-eyed curiosity draining, and she felt no strong sense of personality beneath it. He was a brilliant, boring man whose culture had made him like a precocious child. She was cheered by the speed with which he learned Armada’s language; she suspected that she would be mostly redundant soon.

High Kettai and Salt surrounded her every day.

Her own head was the preserve of Ragamoll. She had never been one of those linguists who thought in the language she was using at the time. Silas was the only person to whom she spoke in her first language, in the rare times that she saw him.

There was a day when a fourth language entered her life, briefly. Quiesy-more popularly known as Deadish. The language of High Cromlech.

She still did not really understand Uther Doul’s reasons for talking to her about his home tongue. After one of her sessions with Aum, he had asked her if she enjoyed learning new languages, and she told him truthfully that she did.

“Would you be interested to hear a bit of Quiesy?” he said. “I don’t often get to speak my own tongue.”

Dumbfounded, Bellis had agreed. That evening she had gone with him to his quarters aboard the Grand Easterly.

The sounds of Quiesy were formed in the back of the throat, softly barked, the noises swallowed, and interspersed with precisely timed silences as important as the sounds. It was, Doul warned her, a language of strange subtleties. Many of the thanati gentry had sewn-shut mouths, he reminded her, and others had voice-boxes too rotted to work. There were modes of Quiesy spoken with hands and eyes, as well as written forms.

Bellis was fascinated by the gentle language, and was held by Uther Doul’s performance. In his quiet, controlled way he was enthusiastic as he recited several passages of what sounded like poetry. Bellis realized that she was not there to learn the language, but to appreciate it as an audience.

There was still a foreboding in her at being in Doul’s company, alongside other emotions. Alongside excitement.

He wordlessly handed her a glass of wine. She recognized this as an invitation to stay. She sat and sipped and waited, looking around his room. She had expected some hidden stronghold, but he lived in a berth like thousands of others. It was sparse: there were a desk and two chairs, a shuttered window, a chest, one small black-and-white etching on the wall. Below the window was a weapons rack, full of familiar and arcane armaments; and in the corner of the room a complex musical instrument, with strings and keys, like a harp-accordion hybrid.

When probably a minute had passed, and Uther Doul had said nothing, Bellis spoke.

“I was… very interested to hear the story of your youth,” she said. “I admit that I hadn’t previously been sure of High Cromlech’s existence-until I met you. However, apart from the whispers about the land of the dead and defeating the Ghosthead Empire, I’ve lost your trail of rumors.” She was not practiced at the kind of hard humor for which she was trying, but he moved his eyebrows to signify a pretense at amusement. “I’d be very pleased if you wanted to tell me more about what happened after you left High Cromlech. I doubt I’ve ever met anyone so traveled. Have you ever…?” She paused, suddenly anxious, and he replied to her.

“No. I’ve never visited New Crobuzon,” he said. He seemed to be fretting, in his poised, silent way.

“You aren’t sure you believe what I told you about my sword, are you?” he said suddenly. “I don’t blame you. It isn’t nearly old enough, you were thinking. What do you know about the Ghosthead Empire, Miss Coldwine?”

“Little,” she admitted.

“Of course, though, you know that they were in no way human-or khepri, vodyanoi, strider, or what have you. These were not xenian in the sense we usually mean it. Whatever prints and descriptions you may have seen are fallacious. The question What did they look like? has no straightforward answer. This weapon-” He indicated his belt. “-is so obviously shaped for human hands, you might have thought my claims about its provenance a lie.”

Bellis had had no thoughts at all about the shape of the Possible Sword, as Uther Doul must have known.

“You’re not seeing the sword,” he went on softly. “Only one aspect of it. It’s contextual-as was so very much for the Ghosthead. I take it you’ve read some of their Imperial Canon? Even as translations of translations of translations, even with all the additions and omissions and commentary that implies, there are some extraordinary things there. Especially the Covertiana.” He sipped his wine.

“Some purport to be passages from the earliest days of the arrival of the Ghosthead in Bas-Lag, before the Empire began.” He blinked at Bellis. “Certainly,” he said as if she had disputed him. “Arrival. The Ghosthead were not native to this world.”

Bellis knew the myths.

“There is one passage…,” Doul mused (and Bellis realized with consternation how his wonderful voice was lulling her). “ ‘The Verses of the Day.’ Perhaps you know them? ‘Redoubtable, tail flicking, swimming over a plain of worlds, past orbs, lights in the night’s blindness.’

“That describes the Ghostheads’ journey from… their place to Bas-Lag. In the belly of a metal fish swimming through a dark sea of stars. But what’s most interesting is the description of their home, where they came from. It has been confused with hell.”

Uther Doul sat on his crib, and did not speak for some time.

Is this why I’m here? thought Bellis suddenly. Is this what he wants to tell me? He was like a boy, wanting her there but quite uncertain what to do.

“It describes the morning coming with ‘ferrous cataracts and a wall of fire,’ ” he said eventually. “The entire eastern sky was ablaze with light and heat enough to blind anyone looking up even from the bottom of a sea, to ignite the air, burn the mountains, liquefy metal. Far, far hotter than the heart of any foundry. Morning broke, and the world burned.

“Within minutes the wall of heat had risen and curved above them, directly overhead, blotting out the sky and burning every atom of gas in the air. And then, as the minutes went on, the fire shrank, until its edges became visible, and it was a disc. And the heat began to ebb away a little, though the oceans were still molten iron.

“The fire in the sky receded, moving west, as the day passed. By midmorning, the disc had shrunk further, and it was the sun, nearly at the far horizon. By noon it was much smaller, and the land was very cold.

“The sun shrank and traveled west in a long, drawn-out dusk, and the Ghosthead homeworld became icier than the Rime Ocean. By nightfall, the sky was already dark, and the sun was no more than a moving star.

“And it was cold-colder than anything we could imagine. The world was enveloped in layers of ice and frost-the very gases, the very aether piled up in bergs and walls, chilled more solid than stone.”

He gave Bellis a faint smile.

“That was the Ghosthead homeland. Imagine what kind of creatures might live, might survive in such a place; how hungry they might be for rest. That’s why they left.”

She said nothing.

“Do you know what I mean,” Doul said, “by the belief in the Broken Country?”

Bellis furrowed her brow, then suddenly nodded. “In New Crobuzon we call it…” She thought for the translation. “The Fractured Land Hypothesis. I once had a friend who was a scientist. He was always talking about things like this.”

“The Broken Country, across an impossible sea,” said Doul. “I spent a long time, in youth, studying myths and cosmogony. Fractured Land, Ghosthead Country, the Verses of the Day.

“The Ghosthead came here from the universe’s eastern rim. They passed the rock globes that circulate in the sky-another, more evanescent kind of world than ours on the infinite plateau-and came here, to a land so mild it must have seemed like balm: an endless, gentle midmorning. And its rules were not theirs. Its nature was debatable.

“There are some who say that when they landed, the force of it was enough to unleash the chaos of Torque, up from the vent. That’s fable. But their arrival was violent enough to smash open the world-reality itself. The Fractured Land is real, and was their doing. You break something… what’s inside spills out.

“When I left my first home, I spent years studying that breakage. Searching for techniques and instruments to make sense of it, control it. And, when I came here, the Lovers saw things in what I’d learnt that I hadn’t imagined.

“Think of the Ghostheads’ power, their science, their thaumaturgy. Imagine what they could do, what they did do, to our world. You see the scale of the cataclysm of their arrival. Not just physically-ontologically. When they landed, they fractured the world’s rules as well as its surface. Is it a surprise that we whisper the name of the Ghosthead Empire in fear?”

And yet, thought Bellis, reeling with the heretic philosophy, and yet it was we who put paid to the Ghosthead. Through the Contumancy, and then the Sloughing Off. Weak as we are.

“They say you led the Contumancy,” she said.

“I lead nothing,” said Doul sharply, surprising her, “not anymore. I’m a soldier, not a leader. High Cromlech… it’s a caste world. You grew up in a mercantile city, so you take it for granted. You can have no idea of the liberation of selling your services, doing what your employer tells you. I am not a leader.”

Uther Doul walked with her through the Grand Easterly’s corridors.

When he stopped at one of the numerous intersections, she thought for a sudden second that he would kiss her, and her eyes widened. But that was not his intention.

He put his finger to his lips. “I want you to learn something,” he whispered, “about the Lovers.”

“What are their names?” Bellis said in tired anger. “I’m sick of the… the mystery, and I don’t believe you can’t remember.”

“I can,” said Uther Doul. “Of course I can remember. But what they were once called is not at all the point. They’re the Lovers now. You’d better learn that.”

Doul led her into the lower decks. He took her away from sound, away from the patrols. What is this? thought Bellis, excited and unnerved. They were now in dark, very quiet portions of the ship. There were no windows; they were below the waterline, in a long-deserted place.

Finally Doul ducked below a snarl of pipes and ushered her into a tiny chamber. It was not a room, just a little found space. All the surfaces were dusty, and the paint was peeling.

Doul gently put his finger in front of her lips.

Bellis was aware that meekly following Doul, fraternizing with him, was not sensible behavior from one who had been deeply involved in counter-Garwater activities. What am I doing here? she thought.

Uther Doul was pointing up at the ceiling, only an inch or so above her head. He cocked an ear expressively. It took some seconds before Bellis heard anything, and when she did, she was not at first sure what it was.

Voices. Muffled by layers of air and metal. Half-familiar. Bellis turned her head up. She could almost make out words now. This was an accidental little listening post. By quirk of architecture and materials, the sounds from the room above issued (by pipes, hollow walls?) through the ceiling.

Voices from the room above.

The Lovers’ room.

She started in astonishment. It was the Lovers that she could hear.

Cautious and slow, as if they might somehow see her, Bellis craned her neck and listened.

Words fluttering across registers, uttered with quick breaths. Mewing, pleading, delighting. Gasps of sexual closeness and pain and other intense emotions. And words coming through the metal.

… love… soon… fuck… yes and… cut… now… love… cut… yes, yes…

Yes.

The words were thick. Bellis recoiled from them-physically, literally, stepping away from the weak spot in the metal. The words, the sounds, were crooned quickly, so steeped in passion and need that they had to be bitten out or they would become a wordless shriek.

cut yes love cut

Two streams of words, male and female, overlapping and interweaving and inextricable-their rhythms inextricable.

Dear Jabber! thought Bellis. Uther Doul watched her, expressionless.

Cut and cut and love and cut! she thought, and went for the door, appalled. She thought of what they were doing, in their room, a few feet away.

Doul led her away from that terrible little cubbyhole. They ascended through layers of metal toward the night air. Doul still did not speak.

What are you doing? she thought, staring at his back. Why show me that?

There had been nothing prurient in his demeanor. She did not understand. Stiff, eloquent, and formal in his own room, uncovering extraordinary stories and theories to keep himself talking, he had become, in these corridors, a truculent child with a secret hideaway. And with something like the wordless, inarticulate pride she would expect from such a child, he had led her to his private den and shown her its secret. And she could not fathom why.

She shuddered at the memory of those breathy exclamations, the Lovers’ twisted declarations of passion. Of love, she supposed. She thought of their scars, the cutting. The blood and split skin, the fervor. She felt as if she would sick up. But it was not the violence, not the knives they used or what they did, that horrified her. It was not that at all. Peccadillos did not disturb her at all-those, she could understand.

This had become something else. It was the emotion itself, the intense, giddying, slick, and sick-making ardor she had heard in their voices that appalled her. They were trying to cut through the membrane between them and bleed one into the other. Rupturing their integrity for something way beyond sex.

That violent, moaning thing that they thought was love, she thought was something akin to masturbation, and it disgusted her.

Bellis was left aghast by it. Nauseated and threatened and aghast.