Iron Council - China Mieville [210]
Cutter let out a sound. He stopped his horse as Rahul stopped and he and Ann-Hari looked up. Judah Low was standing. He moved in agitation, craving their attention.
“Ann, Ann-Hari,” Judah shouted. “Cutter.” He beckoned hugely.
“Judah,” Cutter said.
“Come up, come up. What are you doing here? What are you doing? Gods, come up.”
Rahul’s great lizard weight could not take the incline, which slithered under him. He could only wait by the tracks as Cutter and Ann-Hari gripped handhold stubs of roots, ascended, stood, Cutter keeping his head down as long as he could so it was only at the very last that he raised his shale-grey face and looked at Judah Low.
Judah was looking at Ann-Hari with an opaque expression. He embraced her a long time, as Cutter watched. Cutter licked his lips. Cutter waited. Judah turned to him and with something at least half a smile gripped him too, and Cutter let Judah for a tiny moment take his weight. Cutter closed his eyes and rested his head, then made himself stand back again. They could see the tracks’ exit from the raised land.
They watched, the three of them, watched each other. Here he was, the tall thin grey-haired man Judah Low. What are you? Cutter thought. Around Judah were signs that he had been waiting. A water bottle. The obscure debris of his golem craft. A telescope.
In this place there was no one around them. The last cut before the city. Wyrmen went overhead again and circled, and shouted hysterical warnings as they went.
“What you been doing?” Cutter said. “What are you doing? They wouldn’t stop, Judah, they wouldn’t turn. I tried . . .”
“I know. I knew they wouldn’t. It doesn’t matter.”
“What happened? In the city?”
“Oh Cutter. Done, it’s done.” Judah was placid, cowish. He looked between Cutter and Ann-Hari’s heads at the curve of the track, in the direction from which the perpetual train would come. Looked back at them, back at the tracks. His attention switched ceaselessly.
“What’ll we do?” Cutter said.
“There’s nothing to be done, now,” Judah said. “It’s not the same now. The city . . . it’s changed again.”
“Why are you here, Judah?” Ann-Hari said. “What are you here for, Judah Low?” She was complicitous. They were smiling at each other, just. A little play in their voices. Even with the carnage to come, even having seen the militia, there was something still playful in her. She reached and touched him again and again, and he her. The thing between them was like an animal coiling from him to her and back. He looked over her shoulder and back at her.
“Judah!” Cutter shouted, and Judah turned to him.
“Yes, yes, Cutter,” he said. “Of course.” He was calming. “Why did you come here?”
“What have you done, Judah?” Cutter said. But there was a noise, and Judah gave a happy gasp just like a little boy and jumped on his toes, again like a boy. There were tears in his eyes. A smile and crying.
A wraith of smoke emerged a half mile off. The perpetual train. It wriggled up, the discharge, like a soot grub from a burrow, faster, slewing a tight turn through blasted barriers and coming closer. A wind came up before the train and pushed at their faces, Cutter and Ann-Hari turning to watch the lamps that rounded and shone weakly through the daylight, washed out the stone and the tracks, and the Iron Council came into the last of the cut.
No. Cutter did not know if he spoke aloud. He did not believe there were revolutionists hidden behind the militia. He watched and shouted aloud or in his head, as the Iron Council came through cleft stone and rolled at speed toward death. No.
The flared guard made into teeth, the engine a fetish head, carved with stories, hung with animal spoils, crowded with the toughest warriors, the biggest Remade, the cactacae with scramasaxes ready, roaring, feted by New Crobuzon refugees who ran alongside, who cheered desperately and threw confetti. The second engine, all its follow-ons, the whole tracktop town become militant, become its weapons, the Iron Council become a fighting city. Its wheels beat the iron, smoke gouting from its