The Scar - China Mieville [138]
“Captain,” said the Lover, stepping forward, Uther Doul moving behind her like her shadow. “It’s good to meet you. We must talk.”
Sengka was not a freebooter, but an official Dreer Samher
pirate. The Samheri’s regular stationing on the island was monotonous and easy and dull: nothing happened, nobody came, nobody went. Every month, or two, or six, a new Samheri mission would arrive from Kohnid or Dreer Samher with a cargo full
of livestock for the she-anophelii, and perhaps some random
collection of commodities for the men. The newcomers would relieve their bored compatriots, letting them go off with whatever brilliant essays and reclaimed scientific refuse they had gathered to trade.
Whoever was stationed on the island spent their time bickering and fighting and betting amongst themselves, ignoring the mosquito-women, visiting the men only to take what they needed by way of food or machinery. And officially, they were there to police the flow of information into the island, the linguistic purity that gave Kohnid its stranglehold—and to stand in the way of any anophelii escape.
The idea was ridiculous; no one ever came to the island. Very few sailors knew of it. There were occasional very rare cases of lost vessels arriving on the shore, but their ignorant crews generally suffered rapid death at the hands of the island’s women.
And no anophelii ever left.
Formally, therefore, the Armadan newcomers’ presence on the island was not forbidden under the agreement between Dreer Samher and Kohnid. Only High Kettai was being used, after all, and nothing had been brought in to trade. But the presence of strangers who could converse with the natives was unprecedented.
Sengka looked wildly around. When he realized that these bizarre intruders came from the mysterious boat city of Armada, his eyes widened. But they were courteous and seemed keen to explain themselves. And although he cast angry glances at the cactus-
people who had once been his countrymen, and hissed insults at them, called them traitors and pretended disdain for the Lover, he did listen, and he let himself be led back to the large room where the Armadan party waited.
And while the Lover and the cactus guards and Uther Doul moved away, Tintinnabulum came to Bellis’ side. He gathered his long, white hair in a ponytail, blocking her from the view of the others with his powerful shoulders and arms.
“Don’t stop now,” he murmured. “Get to the point.”
Crahn, she wrote.
For a brief moment, she felt slightly hysterical with the absurdity of this. If she set foot outside, she knew, she risked instant and unpleasant death. Those ravenous mosquito-women would find her before very long, a sack of blood like her; they’d smell her out and siphon every drop out of her, drain her as easily as turning a spigot.
Yet within these sheltering walls, only an hour since she had seen the carnage on the path, a dead anophelius burst on the heat-split skin and bones of the drained animals, she was asking polite questions of an attentive host in a long-dead language. She shook her head.
We are looking for one of your people, she wrote. We need to speak to him. This is greatly important. Do you know one named Krüach Aum?
Aum, he responded, no slower or quicker than before, without a shred more or less interest, who fishes for old books in ruins. All of us know Aum.
I can bring him to you.
Chapter Twenty-four
Tanner Sack missed the sea.
His skin was blistering in the heat, and his tentacles felt sore.
He had waited for most of a day as the Lover and Tintinnabulum and Bellis Coldwine and the others conversed with the silent anophelii men. He and his companions had muttered to each other, had chewed their biltong and tried without success to ask for fresher food from their curious, reserved hosts.
“Stupid arse-faced pricks,” Tanner heard from some hungry men.
The Armadans were traumatized by the starving ferocity of the she-anophelii. They were conscious that their hosts’ mates lurked in the air just beyond the walls, that the