Iron Council - China Mieville [56]
“And I’m waiting, and I’ll beg him, or bribe him—because I know what he likes, don’t I, by now? And I get up, and I run out and think maybe I just won’t stop. I’ll get to the ships, I’ll change my name, I ain’t going to jail, I ain’t going to be Remade. But then I pass a baker’s, and then a greengrocer’s, and I just can’t up and lose everything. I can’t just disappear. So instead of doing a bunk, I do some shopping. And then I come back.
“I wake him up. And we have breakfast together, over my shop in Brock Marsh . . . and then he goes. Big kiss good-bye, and gone. Never seen him again. And I’m left to wonder. Maybe he was never going to do nothing. But the way I see it, the way I like to see it, what with what I done for him that night and what with the beautiful breakfast I made—grilled fish, spiced hash and creamed fruit, with a flower in the middle of the table as if we was married—I think he fell in true love with me for a few minutes that morning. No, I mean it. I fell in love with him too. I ain’t never loved nothing like I loved him when he kissed me and said good-bye. Because I’m sure, I’m sure he knew that I knew. It was his present to me, that leave-taking, that good-bye. Just like breakfast was my present to him. I ain’t never loved anyone like that before or since, except one man.”
When it was obvious he had finished there was barking from the wineherds, and other applause sounds from here and there among the audience. Elsie and Pomeroy clapped a bit, though Pomeroy did not look at him. Watching the big man beat his palms together Cutter felt a blossom of affection. Gods bless, he thought, and to crown it Elsie even gave him a quick smile.
And then he saw Judah, and the smile on the golemist’s face was different—there was no effort or connection to it, it was like the smile on an idol, and through his passion for the older man Cutter burned.
Cutter was uninterested in gods. There were a few from New Crobuzon’s pantheons he felt some small affinity for, usually for heretic reasons: like Crawfoot, whose antics seemed not inept clownery but tactical subversions. You’re insurrectionist, ain’t you? he had always thought, while the priests affected patient indulgence with the fool-god on Crawfootfete E’en. But he did not worship. Such prayers as he offered were cynical or time-serving. But he could see the power of Qurabin’s devotions.
The monk could find the hidden and the lost, though it cost. But in Qurabin’s voice Cutter no longer heard the arrogance of that power. He could hear that something had shifted. The monk’s giving up, Cutter thought.
“Galaggi, they say it is . . . sobrech or sobrechin lulsur. It’s pun.” Qurabin’s voice came and went as the monk unhid the information. “Sobresh is ‘hateful,’ and sobr’chi, is ‘captain.’ In my language it has no name. In Tesh . . . we do not classify so much as you.” And Cutter heard the disgust, the rage in Qurabin’s voice when Tesh came up.
He was not surprised the next day, when Qurabin came to them as they rose and told them that they would not be travelling alone. That the monk would not tell them where Iron Council was but would show them.
He wants to rest, Cutter thought. And to be alone. With us. Plucking up courage. The monk’ll unhide more and more, no matter what the cost. What does it matter? What does he—she—have to live for? To be loyal to?
It rained but it was a different rain. The sun’s rays were frozen in each drop like insects in amber, so it seemed to rain light. The Hiddentowners waved them gone.
Susullil smiled at Cutter and nodded. “Never did understand each other, did we, boy?” Cutter said with true humour. Qurabin’s voice, the odd androgynous