Iron Council - China Mieville [117]
Ori did not always know what his comrades were doing. Sometimes he would learn only when he heard or read of another heist, the freeing of prisoners from a punishment factory, the murder of some rich old couple in Flag Hill. That last outraged the papers, who excoriated Toro for the killing of innocents. Ori wondered sourly what it was the victims had done, how many they had Remade or executed. He rummaged in the gang’s box of militia spoils, the badges and contracts of office, but could find nothing of the uptown couple to tell why they had been targeted.
With Spiral Jacobs’ contribution they had money to bribe, and bribe well, though the bulk of the cash Toro took for some expensive mysterious project. The Toroans trawled for information and contacts. Ori tried to rebuild his own network. He had neglected his old friends. He had not seen Petron for weeks, or any of the Nuevists. He had felt with a new dissident aggression that they were too frivolous, their interventions mannered. Eventually he sought them out, and realised how much he had missed their savage play.
And he learnt from them. Realised how fast he uncoupled from rumour when he spent all his days with the crew. So once a week he went back to the Griss Fell soup kitchen. He decided he would return to the Runagate Rampant meetings.
He had tried not to neglect Spiral Jacobs. The man was not easy to find. He disappeared for a long time, and Ori only found him after leaving messages with the shelters and the vagrants who were the old tramp’s family.
“Where did you go?” Ori said, and Spiral Jacobs was too vague to reply. The old man’s fog lifted when he spoke of his old life, of Jack Half-a-Prayer.
“How’d you come to know so much about Toro’s plans, Spiral?”
The old man laughed and bobbed his head.
Are you a friend of Toro? Ori thought. Do you meet and talk about the old times, talk about the Man’Tis?
“Whyn’t you just give them the money yourself?” Nothing.
“You don’t know them, do you?”
No one among the Toro-run recognised his description of Spiral. Ori asked Jacobs to tell him about Jack Half-a-Prayer. I think you like me, Ori thought. The mad old man looked at him with a familial care. I think you gave me the money to help them and me both. The weakness of Spiral’s mind came and went.
“Not seen much of you,” Petron had said in a louche cabaret pub of Howl Barrow. They ignored the gyring striptease and illicit dealings at the other tables.
“Doing things.”
“Running with a new crowd?” There was no accusation or venom in Petron’s tone—allegiances were fast among the bohemians. Ori shrugged.
“We’re doing good things, if you want to come back. The Flexibles are doing another show: ‘Rud and the Gutter and the Devil’s Embassy.’ Can’t use Rudgutter’s name, obviously, but it’s about the Midsummer Nightmares, years back: there’s rumours they tried to make some wicked deals to fix it.”
Ori listened and thought, You’ll do a show of me in years to come. “Ori and the Toro-Gored Mayor.” Things’ll be different then.
Two Chaindays running he went to The Grocer’s Sweetheart. No one was there the first night. The second, the trapdoor was raised to him and he was let back into the Runagate Rampant meeting. The Jacks were not all the same as they had been. The Remade man he had met months back was still there. There was a vodyanoi stevedore and a crippled cactus-man Ori did not remember, a few others looking through the literature.
A woman led the meeting. She was small and intense, older than he but still young. She spoke well. She eyed him, and when her face took on an uncertain expression he remembered her: she was the knit-machinist.
She spoke about the war. It was a tense meeting. Not only did the Runagate Rampant not support the war’s aims, stated or interpreted—that position was common to the tiny dissident groups—they said they fought for New Crobuzon to lose.
“You think Tesh is any better?” someone said, angry and incredulous.
The knit-worker said, “It ain’t that