Iron Council - China Mieville [167]
“Someone is loose in New Crobuzon. This is ambassadormagik. The little manifs are nothing. Tesh want more than that. They’re going to end your city. These spirals—they’re the marks of a hecatombist.”
Qurabin had to explain several times.
“Who left that mark is a purveyor of many thaumaturgies. Of which this is the last. This is the finishing of the law. This will take your city and, and will wipe your city clean. Understand that.”
“These are freedom spirals,” said a refugee, and Cutter all but cuffed him to be quiet.
“They say Tesh is talking? They say there are negotiations? No no no. If there are, they are ploy. This is the final thing they will do. Their last attack. Months of preparation, huge energy. This will end everything. No more wars for New Crobuzon. Not ever again.”
“What is it, what will it be?”
But Qurabin did not answer that.
“There will be no more wars and no more peace,” Qurabin said. “And more ripples will come, spattered, on the other side of the event. The last drops. Manifestations in the nothing left after your city’s gone. They’ll wipe it out.”
It was very cold, and the wind that ran down from the chines snatched smoke from their food-fires. Before and behind them, Councillors bunked in their ironside town. There were the noises of mountain animals. There was talking, and the settling metal of the sleeping train.
“What can we do?” Judah was in horror.
“If you want . . . if you want to fix it, you have to find him. The one who’s doing this, who’s calling things. We have to find him. We have to stop him.
“You—we—have to get back to New Crobuzon. We have to go now.”
part eight
THE REMAKING
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The Battle of Cockscomb Bridge started early. A sun that looked watered-down lit amassing troops on either side of the river. Cockscomb, a thousand years old and built up with houses, joined Riverskin on the south of the Tar to Petty Coil north. The Collective fought very hard for Cockscomb Bridge. After the first astonishing days, when for a brief moment most of the south of New Crobuzon had been at least officially in Collective control, their zone had been eroded. Now, weeks later, Cockscomb Bridge was the westernmost point controlled by the Collective’s Dog Fenn chapter.
Lookouts from the Flyside Militia Tower, long occupied by the insurgents, verified the movements of militia units before dawn, and the insurrectionist tacticians mobilised forces from several boroughs. The militia came from The Crow, through Spit Hearth where those renegade hierophants who had not left or gone into hiding said prayers for one or other or both sides, and on to the déclassé collapse of Petty Coil. There in the decaying baroque of Misdirect Square, looked on by architecture once sumptuous now a little absurd with its blistered paint and falling-down facades, the militia fanned out. Light went in thousands of directions from their mirrors. They wheeled cannons and motorguns to point at the old stones of the Cockscomb, and waited.
Across the water the Collective’s troops came, battalions named for their areas. “Wynion Way, to me.” “Silverback Street, left flank.” Each corps identified by a scrap of coloured cloth, a sash, green for Wynion, grey for Silverback. Each officer wore a bandana in their colour, though their men and women would recognise them, having voted them in. They were mixed platoons, of all races. And Remade.
Rumours about militia tactics abounded. “There’ll be men-o’-war.” “There’ll be handlingers.” “There’ll be drakows.” “They’ve done a deal with Tesh—there’ll be haints on the bridge.” Heading each Collective unit were ex-militia, who had trained their new comrades as quick and thorough as they could. Where populist enthusiasm had resulted in someone utterly callow, untrained or useless voted in as officer, and where misplaced loyalty let them retain their position, some ex-soldier was quietly installed as advisor,