Iron Council - China Mieville [42]
“Where do we go?”
“I know where it is,” Judah said. “In what part.” He checked maps, and conferred with Drogon, the plains-traveller. Judah rode with an implacable wilderness calm.
“Why are you here?” Judah said to Drogon. The susurrator answered straight into Judah’s ear. “Yes,” said Judah, “but that tells me nothing.”
“He ain’t doing it to you now,” Cutter said. “He can take you over with his bloody voice. At least twice that’s how he kept us alive.”
Cougars and githwings eyed them from the low hills or the air, and the party sounded their weapons. Copses of waxy plants like bladed succulents menaced them, moved not by breeze.
“See there.” Drogon’s whisper. He hauled the accoutrements of nomadism. He was a man of these ranges, anxious without a horse. He pointed to things they would not have seen. “A village was there,” he said; and yes, they learnt to see it in the ground, walls and foundations sketched in regolith, a landscape’s memory of architecture. “That ain’t no tree,” he said, and they realised that it was the barrel of some ancient gun or gunlike thing, swaddled in ivy and the scabs of weather.
One night while the others slept off their gamy supper, Cutter sat up hours before dawn and saw that Judah was gone. He rifled stupidly through Judah’s bedcloth as if he might find him there. The whispersmith looked up, his face soured to see Cutter needily gripping Judah’s wool.
Judah was off in the direction the wind was going, in a little hillside rincon. He had taken from his pack a cast-iron apparatus, so heavy a thing Cutter was astonished he had brought it. Judah motioned Cutter to sit by the voxiterator. One of his wax cylinders was inserted, and his hand was on the crank.
He smiled. He replaced the plectrum-needle at the top of the grooves.
“You may as well,” he said. “Seeing as you’re here. This keeps me going.” He turned the handle and in the sputter and random tuts from the trumpet, a man’s voice sounded. It was bled of bass, and it sped and slowed gently as the crank’s pace varied, so his inflection was hard to gauge. The wind took the voice as soon as it emerged.
“. . . don’t feel as if I hardly know you but they say you’re family sister so I thought you should hear this from family not wrote down fact is he’s dead Uzman’s dead and gone I’m sorry you’ve to hear it like this I’m sorry you’ve to hear it at all truth is weren’t a bad passing mind he was at peace we buried him ahead and now he’s in our tracks there was those said we should put him in the cemetery but I weren’t having that I said to them you know it ain’t what he wanted he told us do it right do it like it used to be done so I made them we’re mourning him he told us not to don’t mourn organise he said when we was fighting they told me and after the stain he told us don’t mourn celebrate but sister I can’t help it we’re allowed to mourn you mourn sister go on you mourn and I will too it’s me it’s Rahul I’ll say good-bye . . .”
The needle snapped stop. Judah was crying. Cutter could not bear it. He reached out, faltered when he saw that his touch would not be welcome. Judah did not sob. The wind sniffed them both like a dog. The moon was faint. It was cool. Cutter watched Judah weeping and he hurt, he was fervent to hold onto the grey-haired man, but he could do nothing but wait.
When Judah had finished and wiped himself dry he smiled at last at Cutter, who had to look away.
Cutter spoke carefully. “You knew him, the one he’s talking about. I see. Whose was that message? Whose brother was that?”
“It’s for me,” said Judah. “I’m the sister. I’m his sister, and he’s mine.”
Hills rose shallowly, pelted with flowers in regal colours. Dust stuck to Cutter’s sweat, and he breathed air thickened with pollen. The travellers stumbled through strange landscape, weighed