Iron Council - China Mieville [92]
—or I will have to take action against . . . He looks slow and ostentatious over the terrified Remade, one by one, pauses while he looks at the piped man, the only one who even momentarily meets his eyes, then grabs the trembling boy, who cries and stumbles. —Or I will have to take action against this ringleader, the overseer says.
There is a moment without speech or sound, and he motions two of the gendarmes, and as they move in the crowd begins to shout again, and the gendarmes beat the young man down.
And as if he were with the stiltspear singing, Judah sees in time gone thick. He watches the descent of the billy clubs, the fumbling of the boy who covers his head and his chitin embellishments. He has time to watch the moving of birds above them. He has time and a fascination for the faces of the crowd.
They are stricken and cannot look away. The piped Remade man who was the boy’s protector has his teeth set, the track-layers are opened up with pity, the tunnel-men stare in the shadow of the rockforms with bleak astonishment, discomfort, and everywhere Judah looks as the cuffs land and the gendarmes hold back the crowd he sees a hesitation. Everyone is hesitating and tensed and looking at each other and at the howling Remade boy and the batons and looking at each other again and even the gendarmes are hesitating, each blow taking a moment longer to land than the previous, and their colleagues raise their weapons in uncertainty and there is a swelling of voices.
Judah sees Ann-Hari, held back by her friends, scratching the air, and she looks as if she will die of rage. And people hover as if steeling to dive into something cold, look to each other still, wait, wait, and Judah feels the thing in him reach out, the oddness and the good in him reach out and push them, and it makes him smile even in this blooded heat, and they move.
It is not Judah who moves first—he never moves first—or the Remade with the pipes, nor Thick Shanks nor Shaun but someone quite unknown in the forefront of the tunnel-men. He steps out and raises his arm. It is as if he pushes through a tension that has settled on the world, breaks it and pours out into time like water breaching its meniscus and others come with him, and there is Ann-Hari running forward and the Remade intervening to hold back the nightsticks and whips of the gendarmes, and Judah himself is running now and wrapping his work-hardened arms around the throat of a uniformed man.
Judah’s ears are stopped with a hot tinnitus, and all that he can hear is the beat of his own rage. He turns and fights as he has learnt to fight in brawls along the sides of the rails. He does not hear but feels the firing of guns as shoves in the air. Energy boils in him in hexes, and when he grips a gendarme, in a moment of instinct he makes the man’s shirt a golem that wriggles on his body. Judah runs and fights, and what he touches that is lifeless he gives instants of ablife and makes obey his orders, to struggle.
The gendarmes have flintlocks and whips, but are outnumbered. They have thaumaturges, but they are not the militia: there are no spit gobbets of energy or transformations on the strikers, only base charms the railroaders can match and survive.
There are more cactus-men among the track-layers than there are cactus overseers. They run huge through the TRT guards and lay green fists on them, breaking them easily. They shield their friends; the gendarmes are not carrying rivebows that can slice them apart.
The piped Remade man drags the body of the insect-altered boy. The man pulls coal from his pocket and smears it into his mouth, leaving his lips black. He runs. The gendarmes who can still move are retreating. Others litter the ground, beside broken Remade and free men. It is so fast.
Judah is running. He drips. Gendarmes swing their weapons and are overcome by Remade out of shackles. They shoot and Remade fall. By the train, the gendarmes are regrouping.
—We have to—Judah shouts, and the piped Remade man is beside him