Iron Council - China Mieville [128]
“What happened at the tower in Jabber’s Mound?”
“Three sallies: first time they got the militia running, made it into the base. Then got beat back. Same as always.”
Some weird thaumaturgy in Aspic Hole; self-defence committees of the terrified respectable in Barrackham, in Chnum, in Nigh Sump where they were attacked by what everyone said was a mob of Remade.
“What a damn night. Gods.” Things were breaking.
“And all because of that thing, that sun-thing.”
“Nah, not really.”
A critical mass of fear was what it had been, what it had released—a terror and a rage that found outlet. Protect us, people had shouted, tearing at the mechanisms that claimed to look after them. “It was just a catalyst,” Ori said.
“What in the name of Jabber and his godsdamn saints was that thing?”
“I know.” Whenever Baron spoke his comrades were quiet. “I know, or at least I know what I think it is, and I think so because it’s what the militia and the Mayor think too.
“What they call a witnessing. Remote viewer. Tesh camera. Come to see what we’re about. The state of us.”
They were aghast.
“I told you. We ain’t winning the war. It ain’t as powerful as that—it didn’t touch us, did it? The war ain’t over yet. But yes, they’re spying on us. And as well as all them normal spies they must have, they ain’t afraid to show us, now, they’re watching. They got strange gris-gris, the Tesh. Their science ain’t ours. They’ve eyeballed us. There’ll be more.”
At the other end of the world, around the corners of coastlines, where physics, thaumaturgy, geography were different, where rock was gas, where settlements were built on the bones of exploration, where traders and pioneers had died at the savage justice of the western Rohagi, where there were cities and states and monarchies without cognates in Crobuzoner philosophy, a war was being fought. The militia exerting New Crobuzon’s claims, fighting for territories and commodity chains, for theories, they said. Fighting for something unclear. And in response to bullets, the powderbombs, the thaumaturgy, burncurs and elementalists of New Crobuzon, Tesh, City of the Crawling Liquid, had sent this witnessing, to learn them.
“How?” Ori said. “New Crobuzon . . . It’s the strongest . . . ain’t it?”
“You going to swallow that?” Enoch jeered. He sounded tired. “New Crobuzon, greatest city-state in the world, and that? Horseshit . . .”
“No it ain’t,” said Baron, and they were quiet again. “He’s right. New Crobuzon is the strongest state in Bas-Lag. But sometimes it ain’t the strongest wins. And especially when the stronger thinks, because it’s stronger, that it ain’t got to try to fight.
“We’re getting outfought. And the government knows it. And they don’t like it, and they’re going to try to turn it into a victory, but here’s the thing: they know they have to end this. They’re going to sue for peace.”
The sun kept rising, and its light through the warehouse windows reached at sharper and sharper angles and took them one at a time, tangled in their hair and shone from Old Shoulder’s skin. Ori felt warm for the first time in hours.
“They’re going to surrender?”
Of course they would not. Not explicitly—not in the speeches they would give, not in their history books or in the loyal newspapers. It would be a historic compromise, a nuanced strategy of magnificent precision. But even many of those loyal to the Mayor’s Fat Sun Party and the partners in the Urban Unity Government would balk. They would know—everyone would know—what had been done. That New Crobuzon, however the Mayor put it, had been defeated.
“They’re trying to now,” Baron said, “but they don’t even know how to speak to the Teshi. We ain’t had contact with our mission there for years. And gods know there must be Teshi afuckingplenty in New Crobuzon now, but they ain’t got no clue who, where they are. The embassy’s always been empty. Teshi don’t do things that way. They’re trying thaumaturgy, message-boats, dirigibles