Iron Council - China Mieville [140]
The poor had been removed from their collapsing houses, settled in ten- and fifteen-floor blocks of concrete in Echomire and Aspic. And then their once-neighbours had moved curiously into the deserted, hollowed rookeries, and money had at last come. Some buildings had been made into houses for the new wealthy, shored up and two or three holed together: to live in reconfigured “base cottages” became a fashion. But several streets at the heart of Flag Hill’s nameless poverty district had been preserved, architecture as aspic, and made a slum museum.
It was through this that Ori and Enoch came. They had cleaned themselves, worn their better clothes. Ori had never been to this street-long memorial to poverty. There was no rot, of course, no smell, nor had there been for more than a decade. But the windows were still broken (their shard edges reinforced by subtle braces to prevent more cracking), the walls still bowed by damp and discoloured (thaumaturgy and joists holding them at the point of their collapse).
The houses were labelled. Brass plaques by their doors told the history of the slum, and talked of the conditions in which the inhabitants had lived. Here, Ori read, can be seen scars of the arson and accidental conflagrations that plagued the streets, forcing the locals to endure life in the spoils of fire. The house was smoked and char-dark. Its carbonised skin was sealed under a matte varnish.
There were front rooms and outhouses that could be entered. A FAMILY OF SIX OR EIGHT MIGHT CROWD INTO SUCH TERRIBLE SURROUNDINGS. The detritus of slum life was left in place, sterilised and dusted by attendants. IT SEEMS UNBELIEVABLE THAT IN MODERN TIMES SUCH SQUALOR COULD GO UNCHECKED.
The house to which they had been directed was a classic of Flag Hill architecture: big, beautiful, mosaiced in painted pebbles. Ori wondered if he had misread the address, but their keys worked. Enoch was frowning. “I been here before,” he said.
It was empty. It was a sham house. Its rooms were bone-
colourless, as were its curtains. Enoch’s awe at the house and the gardens annoyed Ori.
There were people on the Flag Hill streets, men in tailored jackets, women in scarves. Mostly it was humans, but not only. There were canals here, and a community of wealthy vodyanoi who passed with their jump-crawl, dressed in light waterproof mumming of suits, chewing the cheroots that humans smoked and the vodyanoi would eat. There might pass a cactus now and then, some rare uptown achiever. There were constructs here, jolting steam-
figures that gave Ori nostalgia for his childhood when they had been everywhere. The Flag Hillers were wealthy enough to afford the licences, to have their equipment pass the assiduous tests instituted in the aftermath of the Construct War. Mostly, though, even the rich had golems.
They walked with inhuman care, empty-eyed clay or stone or wood or wire men and women. They carried bags, they carried their owners, looking from side to side in mimicry of human motion, as if they could see through those pointless eyes, as if they did not sense mindlessly and abnaturally to follow their instructions.
When the other Toroans arrived, they all asked the question: “What are we doing here?”
When Baron came he was dressed as smartly as a local. He wore the lambswool, the fine sifted cotton and silk easily. They gaped.
“Oh yes,” he said. Shaven, cleaned, smoking a prerolled cigarillo. “You’re my staff, now. Best get used to it.” He sat with his back to the wall in their new, huge, empty room, and told them about Bertold Sulion.
Toro was with them. Ori realised it. He did not know how long that strange-silhouetted figure had been standing at the edge, with the oil-light drawing the edges of its horns. It was evening.
“Why are we here, Bull?” he said. “Where’s Ulliam?”
“Ulliam can’t come often. Remade would be a rarity on these streets.