Iron Council - China Mieville [124]
It was a drab few streets of concrete blocks and girders, industrial, distressed by age and unkempt. In the pubs of the area—in The Defeated Enemy, in The Badger, in The Compass and Carrot—Baron went to be a frequenter, to find Sulion.
The headlines of The Quarrel and The Beacon told of slow triumphs in the Firewater Straits, the defeat of Teshi shunboats and the emancipation of the serf towns in Tesh’s demesne. There were unclear heliotypes of villagers and Crobuzoner militia exchanging smiles, the militia helping rebuild a food store, a militia surgeon tending a peasant child.
The Forge, a Caucus paper, found another officer like Baron, on the run. He told the war differently. “And even with all the things we’re doing that he’s talking about,” Baron said, “we ain’t winning. We ain’t going to win.” Ori was not certain that was not the main basis of his anger.
“Baron reminds me of things I seen,” said Ulliam. “And not in a good way.” It was night in Pelorus Fields, in the south of New Crobuzon. A quiet little haunt of the clerks, office men, with enclaves like prosperous villages, garden squares unflowered in the cold, cosy fountains, fat churches and devotionals to Jabber. Bucolic hideouts jutted off from the busyness of Wynion Street, with its shoe markets and tea dens.
Ulliam and Ori took a risk in being there. With the growth in strikes and unlaw, Pelorus Fields felt sieged. As Parliamentarians met with the guilds, whose demands became more organised, as the Caucus spoke out from its unsubtle front organs, Pelorus Fields was anxious. Its respectable citizens patrolled, nightly, in Committees for the Defence of Decency. Frightened copywriters and actuaries running down xenians and the shabby-dressed, Remade who did not show deference.
But there were places like Boland’s. “Show a bit of care, ladies, gents,” was all Boland would say to the Nuevist poets, the dissidents, who came for his coffees and to hide behind ivy-lush windows. Ori and Ulliam sat together. Ulliam’s chair faced away from Ori’s so his backward face was forward.
“I seen men take a room like that before,” Ulliam said. “It was men like that done this to me.
“It’s why Toro didn’t send me to Motley’s—I used to work for him. Long, long time ago.” He indicated his neck.
“What did they Remake you for? Why that way?” It showed trust to ask. Ulliam did not blench at the query, showed no shock. He laughed.
“Ori, you wouldn’t believe me, boy. You can’t have been more than a baby, if you was even born. I can’t tell you it all now; it’s done and gone. I was a herder, of sorts.” He laughed again. “I’ve seen things. Oh, the animals I guarded. Nothing scares me no more. Except, you know . . . when I saw Baron come into that room. I won’t say I was scared again but I remembered what it was, to feel that way.
“Do you think about what we’ll do, when we do this?” he asked later. “This job? The chair-of-the-board?” Ori shook his head.
“We’ll change things. Push it all the way.” Excitement rose in him as it always did, with speed. “When we cut off the head and watch it fall, we’ll wake people up. Nothing’ll stop us.” We’ll change everything. We’ll change history. We’ll wake the city up, and they’ll free themselves.
When they left and walked a few careful feet apart (whole and Remade could not fraternise in Pelorus Fields) they heard screaming from a few streets away, heard a woman running, her voice coming over the nightlit slates of Wynion Street. It just come, it just come, she shouted, and Ori and Ulliam looked at each other tense and wondered if they should go to her, but the sound became crying and then faded, and when they turned north they could not find her.
On Dockday the twelfth