Iron Council - China Mieville [148]
Baron taught them how to take point, secure areas, with the instrumental efficiency of the militia. They walked through their parts as if blocking a play. Step up, swing, step, step, raise, secure, two three, say two officers, two three, step, turn, nod. Ori recited his strategy to himself. How are we going to do this?
“We got surprise,” said Baron. “Get through that one moment, that chink. They got nothing to hold us back. Tell you something though, Ori.” He leaned in without even gallows humour. “Won’t all of us get out. Some of us’ll die there.” He did not look afraid. He did not care if he came out.
You can feel it, can’t you? Ori thought. His untethering. Ori was stretching out as if on a stem. It might snap. He still felt in that strange nightscape with Spiral Jacobs, his valedictory to the old man, when he had walked unmolested through a city turned into some psychotic, louche, broken thing. That was where he was.
There was no urgency in him. It was not a bleak feeling. Ori was only untethered. Things troubled him distantly. Uncertainties rose in him, distantly.
There were commotions. On the warming street, criers and journal-boys ran past, far from their usual grounds, called headlines. Convocation in Dog Fenn, they shouted. Demands to Parliament. Xenian Gangs, Seditionist Caucus. The Toroans sat in the house they had bought from the estate of those they had killed. They ignored the news-vendors, the anxiety on the streets. They began to spread mess, to live in a kind of aggressive squalor. They hung their cesti on their belts; they sharpened the horns.
Magisters, even the top-rank doges, were citizens, it was always stressed, citizens like anyone. They worked masked for justice’s sake, for the anonymity of justice. Any dwelling, in any part of town, could house a servant of law. The Flag Hill house next to the gang was elegant but nondescript.
Incongruously, at last, one early evening, with gunshots far off south—a noise New Crobuzon had grown used to, which no longer called the militia down from their dirigibles, was only part of the nightsound now—visitors began arriving. Cooks and maids and footmen left, given the night off. Not knowing their master’s job, not knowing who it was who came to him. Fops and uptown dandies arrived, dressed for a sedate party. A cactus-man in smart clothes.
Probably the staff think he’s an orgiast, Ori thought. They think their master’s up to shenanigans, peccadilloes or drugs. The guests were militia. Clypean. Preparing for the mayor’s arrival.
Ulliam put on a helmet. He strapped it tight and sighed. It jutted mirrors before his eyes. “Never, ever thought I’d put this on again,” he said.
“I’m not clear,” Enoch kept saying to Ori. “I’m not clear how it is I leave.”
“You heard him, ‘Noch, through the scullery window, over into the gardens, away.” You’ll never leave.
“Yeah, yeah, I, I know. It’s just . . . I’m sure that’s right.”
You’ll never leave.
“You’ll know when it’s time to go, Ori,” Baron had said, and Ori waited. He leaned against the cracked plaster, put his head on the thin ribs of board. Step step secure aim aim shoot.
“You understand what you’ve to do, Ori?” Baron had said. “What’s asked?”
Why this . . . this honour? Ori wondered. Why was he placed at the mission’s heart? He was—after Baron—the best shot; and he did not expect to live, yet had not run. Perhaps that had decided Toro. None of us will live, he thought. I’d still do this a thousand damn times. He felt himself anchor.
“You know where I’ve got to be, and you know where Shoulder’s got to be. We need someone at the top, Ori.”
Ori’s on point, he thought. Ori, take point.
He felt a weight of city below him, as if New Crobuzon were shackled to him as he dangled. He closed his eyes. He imagined he felt things burrowing in the house walls, through his skin. He looked over what he had done, over years. A churchbell sounded. A wyrman shouted