Iron Council - China Mieville [31]
Skullday, Ori ran with the Nuevists. He took his day-wages and joined them in The Two Maggots pub by Barrow Bridge, and with the beetle-spit-smeared rooftops of Kinken visible over the river they played games and argued about art. The students and exiles of the arts quarter were always happy to see Ori because he was one of a handful of real labourers in the circle. In the evening Ori and Petron and several others staged an art-incident, dressing as pantomime pigs, parading to Salacus Fields and past The Clock and Cockerel, long fallen on its honour, where the parvenus and uptown posers came to play at bohemia. The Nuevists grunted at the drinkers and shouted “Ah, nostalgia!” in porcine voices.
Dustday Ori stevedored, and drank in the evening in a workers’ pub in Skulkford. Among the smoke and beer-laughter, he missed the flamboyance of The Two Maggots. A barmaid caught his eye, and he recognised her from some illicit meeting. She folded back her apron for him to see the Runagate Rampants in her pinny pocket, inviting him to buy, and the resentment and frustration he had felt for Curdin came back to him hard.
He shook his head so brusquely she obviously thought she had misremembered. Her eyes widened. Poor woman, he had not meant to scare her. He persuaded her that he was safe to talk to. He called her Jack. “I’m tired of it,” he whispered. “Tired of Runagate Rampant, forever saying what’s what but never doing anything, tired of waiting for change which don’t come.” He executed a ridiculous handslang parody.
“What’s the point, you saying?” she said.
“No, I know there’s a point . . .” Ori poked the table in fervour. “I been reading this stuff for months now. I mean . . . but the militia are doing something. Quillers are doing something. And the only ones on our side doing anything are nutcases like the Excess League or bandits like Toro.”
“But I mean you ain’t serious, right?” Jack let her tone come down carefully. “I mean, you know the limitations . . .”
“Godspit and shit, Jack, don’t start with ‘the limits of individual action’ right now. I’m just tired. Sometimes, don’t you sometimes wish you didn’t care? I mean course you want a change, we want a change, but if a change ain’t godsdamn coming, then the next thing I wish is that I didn’t care.”
Fishday evening Ori disembarked at Saltpetre Station. In the smoggy gloaming, he went through the brickwork warrens of Griss Fell, past householders scrubbing their porches of the grit of machinofacture and graffitied coils, chatting from window to window across the little streets. In an old stable, a soup kitchen doled out bowls to a line of destitutes. Nominally the charity was run from Kinken, and keeping order were a trio of khepri armed in imitation of their guard-gods, the Tough Sisters, with crossbow and flintlock, spear and hooknet, and one with the metaclockwork stingbox.
The khepri stretched their lean and vivid women’s bodies. They spoke to each other without sound, moving the antennae and headlegs of their headscarabs, the iridescent two-foot beetles at the top of their necks. They vented chymical gusts. They turned to Ori—he was reflected in their compound eyes—and recognised him, waved him to one of the cauldrons. He began to dole out soup to patient tramps.
Kinken money had started the service, but it was kept running by locals. When the Mayor said the city could not provide for the needy, alternative structures arose. To shame New Crobuzon’s rulers or out of despair, various groupings provided social programs. They were inadequate and oversubscribed, and one spawned another as the sects competed.
In Spit Hearth they were run by the churches: care of the old and the orphaned and poor was in the hands of hierophants, monks and nuns. With their ersatz hospitals and kitchens, apostate