The Scar - China Mieville [100]
Only the ones you hear about, thought Bellis.
“What happens to them?” she said.
Carrianne looked down at her drink for a while, then back up at Bellis with another hard smile.
“It’s just about the one thing that every ruler in Armada agrees on,” she said, “the Lovers, the Brucolac, King Friedrich and Bragi-nod and the Council and all. Armada can’t afford to be found. Of course there are sailors that know we’re out here somewhere, and there are communities like Dreer Samher that we can trade with. But to be found out by some big power—like New Crobuzon? That would want us off the seas? People trying to escape are stopped, Bellis. Not caught, you understand. Stopped.”
Carrianne slapped Bellis on the back.
“Godsdammit, don’t look so appalled!” she said heartily. “You can’t really tell me you’re surprised. You know what would happen if they got home and let out the wrong sort of information, and your lot got hold of Armada? Just ask any of the Remade who made it out of the New Crobuzon slave ships, see how loyal they feel about the Crobuzoner navy. Ask some of those who’ve been to Nova Esperium and seen what happened to the natives. Or some of the sailors who’ve come up against New Crobuzon freebooters waving their damn letters of marque. You think we’re pirates, Bellis? Drink up and shut up!”
That night for the first time, Bellis wondered aloud what she and Silas might do if they could not return home. She raised the possibility as a spur.
But a kind of calm horror descended on her as she realized that her own escape was not the only consideration. What if we can’t escape? she thought coolly. Is that the end of it? Is that the last word?
Silas was watching her, his face bleak and tired. Looking at him, Bellis saw the spires and markets and brick rookeries of her home city with sudden, stark clarity. She remembered her friends. She thought again about New Crobuzon. In spring, stinking of sap; at the close of the year, cold and intricate; at the festival of Jabber’s Morning, lit up, strung with gimgews and lanterns, jostled by singing crowds, the trains decked out in pious livery. At midnight on any day of the year, in the lamplight.
At war, at bloody war with The Gengris.
“We have to get a message to them,” she said quietly. “That’s the most important thing. Whether or not we can get back, we have to warn them.”
With that, she let go of what she could not achieve. And miserable as it made her, something inside her became less frantic. The schemes that she tentatively suggested now were more grounded, more systematic, more likely to succeed.
Bellis realized that Hedrigall was key.
There were many stories about the big cactus-man, the Samheri fabler and aeronaut. A cloud of rumors, truth and lies. And among the things that Shekel had breathlessly told her, one had stuck
hard in Bellis’ memory: Hedrigall had been to the island of the mosquito-people.
It could be true. He had been a trader-pirate from Dreer Samher, who were the only group known regularly to deal with the anophelii. Sap, not blood, ran in them: they were undrinkable. They could barter without fear.
And he might remember things.
The day was overcast and warm, and Bellis sweated from the moment she left her rooms for work. Even scrawny as she was, by the end of the day she felt laden down with excess flesh. The smoke from her cigarillos seemed to cosset her head like a stinking hat, and even Armada’s unending winds didn’t dust her clean.
Silas was waiting for her outside her rooms.
“It’s true,” he said, grimly elated. “Hedrigall’s been there. He remembers it. I know how the Dreer Samher traders operate.”
Their maps could become more accurate, their knowledge of the island less tenuous.
“He’s loyal, is Hedrigall,” Silas said, “so I’ve got to be careful. Agree or disagree with what he’s told to do, he’s a Garwater man. But I can get information out of him. It’s my job.”
Even with what they learned from Hedrigall,