Perdido Street Station - China Mieville [304]
Isaac clutched her and cried. He held her carefully, feeling her thin bones beneath her skin.
“I would have come,” he moaned in abject misery and joy. “I would’ve come, I thought you were dead . . .”
She pushed him back just a little, until she had space for her hands to move.
Wanted you, love you, she signed chaotically, help me save me take me away, couldn’t he couldn’t let me die till had finished this . . .
For the first time, Isaac looked up at the extraordinary sculpture that rose above and behind her, onto which she was spreading khepri-spit. It was an incredible multicoloured thing, a horrific kaleidoscopic figure of composite nightmares, limbs and eyes and legs sprouting in weird combinations. It was almost finished, with only a smooth framework where what looked like a head must be, and an empty clutch of air that suggested a shoulder.
Isaac gasped at it, looked back at her.
Lemuel had been right. There was, strategically, no reason at all for Motley to keep Lin alive. He would not have done so for any other captive. But his vanity, his mystical self-aggrandizement and philosophical dreamings were stimulated by Lin’s extraordinary work. Lemuel could not have known that.
Motley could not bear for the sculpture to remain unfinished.
Derkhan and Yagharek entered. When she saw Lin, Derkhan cried out as Isaac had done. She ran across the room to where Isaac and Lin embraced and put her own arms around the two of them, crying and smiling.
Yagharek paced uneasily towards them.
Isaac was murmuring to Lin, telling her over and over how sorry he was, that he thought she was dead, that he would have come.
Kept me working, beating and . . . and torturing, taunting me, Lin signed, giddy and exhausted with emotion.
Yagharek was about to speak, but he snapped his head suddenly around.
The tramp of hurried feet was audible in the corridor outside.
Isaac stood, supporting Lin as he came, keeping her enfolded in his embrace. Derkhan moved away from the two of them. She drew her pistols and turned to face the door. Yagharek flattened himself against the wall in the shadow of the sculpture, his whip coiled and ready.
The door burst open and hammered against the wall, sprang back.
Motley stood before them.
He was silhouetted. Isaac saw a twisted outline against the black-painted walls of the corridor. A garden of multifarious limbs, a walking patchwork of organic forms. Isaac’s mouth dropped open in amazement. He realized as he watched the shuffling goat- and bird- and dog-footed creature, as he saw the clutching tentacles and knots of tissue, the composite bones and invented skin, that Lin’s piece was taken, without fancy, from life.
At the sight of him, Lin went limp with fear and the memory of pain. Isaac felt rage begin to engulf him.
Motley stepped back slightly and turned to face the way he had come.
“Security!” shouted Motley from some unclear mouth. “Get here now!” He stepped back into the room.
“Grimnebulin,” he said. His voice was quick and tense. “You came. Didn’t you get my message? Bit remiss, aren’t you?” Motley stepped into the room and the faint light.
Derkhan fired twice. Her bullets tore through Motley’s armoured skin and patches of fur. He staggered back on multiple legs with a bellow of pain. His cry became a vicious laugh.
“Far too many internal organs to hurt me, you useless slut,” he shouted. Derkhan spat with fury and edged closer to the wall.
Isaac stared at Motley, saw teeth gnashing in a multitude of mouths. The floor shook as people pounded along the corridor outside, racing towards the room.
Men appeared in the doorway behind Motley, waved weapons, waited uncertainly. For a moment Isaac’s stomach pitched: the men had no faces, only smooth skin stretched tight over their skulls. What kind of fucking Remades are these? he thought giddily. Then he caught sight of the mirrors extending backwards from the helmets.
His eyes widened as he realized that