Iron Council - China Mieville [121]
Each of the Caucus groups was courting Baron and the other renegade militia. With careful scorn Ori explained the agenda of the various factions. He told stories of Toro’s adventures, the crew’s works, and pulled Baron to his orbit.
Baron was a prize. The Toroans were delighted. Toro came the night Baron joined them, put a bony hand on the militiaman’s chest to welcome him.
That was the first time Ori saw how Toro travelled. When Old Shoulder and the gang were done talking, Toro lowered that carved and cast metal head and horns and pushed. The helmeted figure was leaning against nothing, against air, and then driving, straining forward, until those hexed horns caught at something, caught on it and the universe seemed to flex and stretch at two points, and Ori felt the air crack with thaumaturgy and Toro’s horns pierced the world and Toro stomped suddenly through. The split skin of reality closed again like lips, back into position, and Toro was gone.
“What does Toro do?” Ori asked Ulliam the Remade that night. “To make boss? I’m not complaining, you know that, right? I’m just saying. What does Toro do?”
Ulliam smiled.
“Hope you never find out,” he said. “Without Toro, we’re nothing.”
Baron brought a military savagery to the gang. When he was talking of the war he shook and barked rage; he became etched with veins. But when he went on jobs, on revenge-raids against informers, on punishment beatings against the drug gangs encroaching on Toro’s land, in the action itself he was utterly cold, mouth barely twitching as he worked without emotion on someone.
He frightened his new gang-comrades. His machinish drive, the ease with which he gave out punishment, the way his eyes switched off and the life in them sank very deep. We ain’t nothing, Ori thought. The Toroans had thought themselves hard desperados—and yes they had done violent, murderous things in the name of change—but their anarchist anger was a vague floundering next to the cool rageless expertise of the soldier. They were in awe of him.
Ori remembered the first execution he had seen, of a captain-informer. The roughhousing had been easy. They had found the proof, the blacklists of names, the executive orders. But even with all their hatred, even with the memory of fallen brothers and sisters, even with Ulliam’s memory of the punishment factories themselves, the execution was a difficult thing. Ori had closed his eyes so as not to see the shot. They had given Ulliam the gun saying it was for his Remaking, but Ori thought it was also because Ulliam could not look at his quarry. His backward-facing head focused on nothing. And even then, Ori bet he closed his eyes when he pulled the trigger.
By contrast Baron walked in anywhere he was bid and fought who he was told to fight and killed if told to implacably. He moved like the best constructs Ori remembered from his youth: like something oiled, metal, mindless.
When the Murkside Shrikes again, with pissy provocation, started to spread into Toro’s streets, Ori, Enoch and Baron were sent to finish the incursions. “One only,” Toro said. “The one with the harelip. He’s the planner.” Ori, always the best shot, had a flintlock, Enoch a double-crossbow, but neither had a chance to fire. Baron had checked and cleaned the barrels of his repeater with effortless expertise.
Young men and women, the hangers-on of the youthful Shrikes, lounged over the stairs to the Murkside attic drinking very-tea and smoking shazbah. Ori and Enoch followed Baron. Twice he was challenged by some junkie nominally on guard: twice he dismissed them with a look, a whispered threat. Ori was still turning the corner on the last mezzanine when he heard the quick-kicked splintering of wood, shouts.
Two shots had sounded already by the time he reached the door. Two boys about seventeen were fallen on ruined legs and screaming.