The Scar - China Mieville [126]
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Later, same day.
Silas delivered what was needed, at the last possible minute. As if for theatrics.
I have to admire his methods.
Ever since our terse conversation in the Sculpture Garden I had been wondering how he would give me the materials for our message. My rooms are guarded, I am watched, what am I to do?
On the morning of the twenty-sixth of Lunuary, I woke to find a packet from him on the floor of my room.
It was an ostentatious piece of prestidigitation. I could not help laughing when I looked up and saw a patch of iron on my ceiling, freshly bolted over a six-inch hole.
Silas had climbed to the top of Chromolith Smokestacks, onto the roof of thin metal that booms like an orchestral drum under the rain, and he had cut a hole in it. Dropping the package inside, he had conscientiously bolted a new roof piece into position. All without the slightest sound: neither awaking me, nor alerting those who must have been watching.
When he performs tricks like that, under duress, to protect himself, it is easy to imagine him at his job for the government. I suppose I am lucky to have him on my side, and so is New Crobuzon.
I was pleased not to see him. I feel very distant from him now. I bear him no ill will: I took from him something that I needed, and I hope that I gave it back to him; but that really must be the end of the matter. We are coincidental comrades,
is all.
Inside the little leather bag, Silas had put several items.
He had written a letter to me, explaining everything. I read it carefully before examining the bag’s other contents.
There were other letters. He had written to the pirate captain we hope to find: two copies of the same letter, in Ragamoll and Salt. To Whomever Agrees to Courier This Missive to New Crobuzon, it begins.
It is formal and to the point. It promises the reader that
he will receive a commission on safe, sealed delivery to its destination. That by the power vested in Procurator Fennec (license number such-and-such) by Mayor Bentham Rudgutter and the office of mayor in perpetuity, it is declared that the bearers of this letter are to be treated as honored guests of
New Crobuzon, their ship is to be refitted to their specifications, they are to receive an honorarium of three thousand guineas. And most important of all, they are to be granted a special tax-free letter of marque from the New Crobuzon government, exempting the vessel, for a year, from prosecution or attack under New Crobuzon’s self-declared maritime law for any reason other than the immediate self-defense of a New Crobuzon ship.
The money is very enticing, but it is the promised exemption with which we hope to sway our cactacae. Silas is offering them the status of recognized pirate without tariffs. They can pillage what they like, never paying a stiver, and the New Crobuzon navy will not molest them—will indeed protect them—for the duration of the contract.
It is a powerful incentive.
At the bottom of the letters, Silas has signed his name, and across some just-visible passwords has imprinted in wax the seal of the New Crobuzon Parliament.
I did not know he had such a seal. It is strange to see it here, so far from home. It is astonishingly fine work: the stylized wall, the chair and paraphernalia of office, and below in tiny figures a number, identifying him. The seal is an extraordinarily powerful symbol.
What is more, he has given it to me.
But I am digressing. I will come to the ring.
The other letter is much longer. It spreads over four sides, in an intricate, condensed hand. I have read it carefully, and it has chilled me.
It is to Mayor Rudgutter, and it is an outline of the grindylow invasion plan.
Much of it is opaque to me. Silas has written in a terse shorthand that approaches code—there are abbreviations I do not recognize and references to things of which I have never heard—but there