Iron Council - China Mieville [17]
“What’s he saying?” said Elsie, but Cutter waved her quiet.
“I still don’t know I trust you, but I been watching you and I know the best chance I got’s with you. And I showed you your best chance is with me. I’d have gone with your man if I’d been able, after I heard he’d gone.”
“How do you know . . . ?” Cutter said.
“You ain’t the only one with your ear to the ground, who knows what he is. But listen, we ain’t got time: it ain’t just him who’s being followed. This lot were after your man—they don’t know any more than we do already—and there’s others are after you. Been tracking you since Rudewood. And they’re gaining. And they ain’t just militia, either.”
“What? What’s coming?” And what Cutter heard he repeated in terror.
“Handlingers,” he said.
More frightened of dying alone than of the anger of their enemies, those militia still alive began to call out. They were without plan or intrigue—they cajoled not to any end but only eager to be spoken to as they lay in the heat.
“Hey, hey, hey mate, hey mate.” “Come on. Come on, then, come on.” “Jabber, my arm’s gone man, Jabber, Jabber it’s gone.”
They were mostly men in their thirties with expressions of pride and resignation that seemed scoured-on; they did not expect or even want quarter, only to be acknowledged before they died.
The dogs still screamed and circled. Drogon corralled three of the weird-skulled things, herding them with his big horse. He calmed the frantic animals with inaudible commands.
“Why’s he helping?” Elsie said. “What does he want?”
Pomeroy was for killing him, or at least constraining him and leaving him behind.
“Dammit, I don’t know,” said Cutter. “Says he heard what was happening. That he’s out for the Council, too. I don’t know. But look what he’s done—he could’ve killed us by now. He saved my life—took out the man who’d sighted me. You saw how he used them guns. And you said yourself, Pom, he’s a thaumaturge.”
“He’s a susurrator,” said Pomeroy with scorn. “He’s just a whispersmith.”
“I been whispered to by him, brother. Remember? This ain’t a little susurrus to make a dog lie down. He sounded across miles, put me and that fReemade highwayman in thrall.”
It was a petty field, subvocalurgy: the science of furtive suggestions, a rude footpad technique. But this man had made it something more.
The dogs were Remade. The olfactory centres of their brains had been hugely enlarged. Their crania were doughy and distended, as if their unshaped brains bubbled over. Their eyes were tiny, and at the end of their jaws their nostrils were dilated and set in flared and mobile flesh like pigs’. Their wrinkled snouts wore wires and they carried batteries, making thaumaturgic circuits. Each had a rag in its collar.
“Oh Jabber, those are his damn clothes,” said Cutter.
“These’ll track across continents,” whispered Drogon. “That’s how they were following him.”
They did not kill the militia left alive, nor spit in their faces nor give them water, only left them stone ignored. Drogon concentrated on the dogs. He was whispering, and they were calming. They were eager to trust him.
“Them dogs is ours,” Pomeroy said. Drogon shrugged and held out the leash, and the distorted animal looked at Pomeroy and showed its teeth. “What’s your story?” Pomeroy said.
Drogon pointed at Elsie, whispered, and she walked toward him. He took her hands and put them on his forehead, and she went into her hexing state. He kept speaking, enunciating something only she could hear.
When he was done she opened her eyes. “He told me to read him. He told me to verity-gauge. And he said, ‘I want what you want, I want