Perdido Street Station - China Mieville [179]
“Stop these attacks. Be sensible. You aren’t going to get out. Stop attacking us and we will show mercy.”
Rudgutter stood in the midst of his honour guard with Eliza Stem-Fulcher. It was highly unusual for him to accompany a militia raid, but this was no ordinary raid. He was stationed across the road and a little way along from Isaac’s workshop.
It was not yet completely dark. Alarmed and curious faces peered from windows up and down the street. Rudgutter ignored them. He took the funnel of iron away from his mouth and turned to Eliza Stem-Fulcher. His face was creased in irritation.
“This is an absolute bloody shambles,” he said. She nodded. “Well, however inefficient they are, the militia can’t lose. A few officers might be killed, regrettably, but there’s no way der Grimnebulin and his cohorts are getting out of there.” The faces peeking nervously from behind windows all around suddenly annoyed him.
He raised the loudhailer sharply and yelled into it: “Get back into your houses immediately!”
There was a gratifying flurry of curtains. Rudgutter stood back and watched as the warehouse shuddered.
Lemuel dispatched the other stingbox-wielder with one elegant and careful shot. Isaac hurled his table down the stairs taking two officers with it when they had tried to rush him, and now he continued with his chymical sniping. Yagharek was helping him, at his direction, showering the attackers with noxious mixtures.
But this was all, could not but be, doomed valiance. There were too many militia. It helped that they were not prepared to kill, because Isaac and Lemuel and Yagharek had no such constraints. Isaac estimated that four militia had fallen: one to a bullet; one to a crushed skull; and two to random chymico-thaumaturgic reactions. But it could not last. The militia advanced on Lemuel behind their shields.
Isaac saw the militia look up and confer for a minute. Then one of them raised a flintlock rifle carefully, aiming it at Yagharek.
“Down, Yag!” he yelled. “They’ll kill you!”
Yagharek dropped to the floor, out of sight of the assassin.
There was no sudden manifestation, no creeping flesh or vast stalking figure. All that happened was that the Weaver’s voice sounded in Rudgutter’s ear.
. . . I HAVE BOUNDED UNSEEN UP TANGLING WIRES OF SKYNESS AND SLIPPED MY LEGS SPLAYED WILLY-NILLY ON THE PSYCHIC DUNG OF THE WEB-REAVERS THEY ARE LOW CREATURES AND INELEGANT AND DRAB WHISPER WHAT HAPPENS MR. MAYOR THIS PLACE TREMBLES . . .
Rudgutter started. That’s all I need, he thought. He replied with a firm voice.
“Weaver,” he said. Stem-Fulcher turned to him with a sharp, curious gaze. “How nice to have you with us.”
It’s too damned unpredictable, Rudgutter thought furiously. Not now, not bloody now! Go and chase the moths, go hunting . . . what are you doing here? The Weaver was infuriating and dangerous, and Rudgutter had taken a calculated risk in engaging its aid. A loose cannon was still a lethal weapon.
Rudgutter had thought that the great spider and he had something of an arrangement. As much, at least, as it was possible to maintain with a Weaver. Kapnellior had helped him. Textorology was a tentative field, but it had borne some fruit. There were proven methods of communication, and Rudgutter had been using them to interact with the Weaver. Messages carved into the blades of scissors and melted. Apparently random sculptures, lit from below, whose shadows wrote messages across the ceiling. The Weaver’s responses were prompt and delivered even more bizarrely.
Rudgutter had politely bade the Weaver busy itself chasing the moths. Rudgutter could not order, of course, could only suggest. But the Weaver had responded positively, and Rudgutter realized that stupidly, absurdly, he had begun to think of it as his agent.
No more of that.
Rudgutter cleared his throat. “Might I ask why you have joined us, Weaver?”
The voice came again, resonating in his ear, bouncing on the bones inside his head.
. . . INSIDE AND OUTSIDE THE FIBRES ARE SPLIT AND BURST AND A TRAIL IS TORN ACROSS