Iron Council - China Mieville [134]
Years. Throwing up structures as they needed them. Their town had grown. And nomads and lost adventurers of all races came to join the renegopolis. The Iron Council.
The town and its government were one. Its delegates, its committee were voted on by catchments based on work and age and random factors. There were vicious arguments, methods of persuasion not always admirable, a hinterland of democracy, patronage and charisma. There were those who advocated moving; those who said the wheels should stop. There had been factions within factions in the early years, over methods of industry and agriculture. They had continued to build life, delegating, being delegates, arguing, voting, disagreeing and making things work.
“Before, I was an oiler,” the storyteller had said. “I oiled the wheels.”
“And you know why I’m here,” Judah had said. “Now it’s time for you to reach a new decision. It’s time for you to leave. To move again.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Civilisations had been in the tablelands through which they passed, in this strange puna. The Iron Council, tracking back in head-on collision with its own history, passed through ruins.
Something that had perhaps once been a temple, a town of temples. In the shadow of a cratered ziggurat they laid their tracks, and the vent of their engines rose over the vines. They drove home spikes and split corroded marble gods in the rootmass. The Iron Council made the dead home shiver with hammer-blows. It sooted the bas-reliefs of battles in heaven. The Iron Council cut through the ivy-clotted city, towers gone to moulder.
“I know a man from a long time gone,” Judah had said to the committee. “We used to be partners. He was a government man for a time, works for some big concern now, but still has his ears open. He and me have history, and sometimes he needs golems for his work. And when he comes to me for that, we talk.”
Judah had told Cutter of these strange conversations, Pennyhaugh half-crowing at Judah, become his enemy, but them still drinking together. Not debates but performances. “I only see him because he gives me information, and I can give it to the Caucus,” Judah said. “And I don’t know . . . I don’t think he’s stupid enough just to sound off. It’s some kind of gift.”
The committee listened. There were the middle-aged, and Remades who remembered New Crobuzon, women who had once been the camp’s whores: but more than half the delegates were young, had been children or unborn when the Council was made. They watched Judah speak.
“There are always rumours. I asked him, like I know how to do, so he thinks he’s offering it to me. He told me what was happening. You know there’s war against Tesh.” They did not know the details, but so big a war as this made Bas-Lag shudder, and stories reached the Iron Council by bush-adventurers.
“There’s slaughter in the Firewater Straits: they call it the Sanguine Straits now. They broke the Witchocracy’s thalassomach hex, and the navy’s pushing ships through, all the way around the coast. Thousands of miles. But another expedition set off, weeks back. Below the warships. Ictineos. Maybe grindylow-led, I don’t know. But they’re coming. It’d take a long time, but they must be nearly here. Might have made landfall.
“They never forgot you in the city, you know. They never forgot Iron Council. Long live. People whisper the words. Your name’s on walls. Parliament never forgave you, never forgot what you done. And now they know where you are.”
He had waited for their alarm to subside.
“You couldn’t stay hid forever. You knew it. I don’t know how they know. Godspit, it’s been more’n twenty years, it could be anything. A wanderer