The Scar - China Mieville [161]
A storm was coming.
They outpaced the worst of the bad weather. Within its own borders the storm was violent, but it did not move fast. It was tearing itself apart from the inside. The Trident ran at its edges, pelted by a periphery of rain, racing its shadow.
When she saw the broken mass of Armada breach the horizon and sprawl across the water below her, Bellis marveled at its scale. It looked like spillage, a slick of ruined and refitted boats, untidy across the waves, shapeless, its edges random and unchanging. The fringe of tugs and steamers that had hauled it for thousands of miles had been untethered while the city was still, and they puttered around it in great numbers, ferrying goods. Bellis thought again of the vast quantities of fuel that they must consume. It was no wonder that the pirate ships of Armada were voracious.
On seeing it, Bellis felt a great wash of emotion that she could not identify at all.
At the city’s outside edge, she saw the Terpsichoria. And with its spire flaming, its effluent warping the air, Bellis could see the complex outlines of the Sorghum rig. There was a bustle of vessels in the sea around its legs. It was drilling again, sucking oil and rockmilk out of the pressurized veins in which they had flowed for centuries. Armada had come to where there was a seam. The Sorghum was storing fuel for the almighty thaumaturgy to come.
They came in over Garwater’s aft-star’d, picking their way carefully over masts. Below them a mass of shapes followed the Trident curiously, tracking it in its shadow: aerocabs and single balloonists, odd ungainly looking airships.
The Trident docked at the Grand Easterly, at the same height as the crippled Arrogance. Bellis could see people staring from surrounding ships and little aircraft, but the Grand Easterly was sealed off. Its deck was almost empty. A small contingent of yeomanry was waiting for them, and at their head, his face alight, was the Lover.
Bellis saw a new cut on his face, a healing scab. It started at the left corner of his lips and curled below his chin. It was the mirror image of the one that Bellis had heard the Lover inflicting on herself.
When the Lovers saw each other, there was a long moment of silence, and then they crossed the distance and held each other. They gripped and tugged at each other. Their touches were passionate and intense, and went on for a minute or more. They did not look like caresses: the Lovers looked as if they were fighting in slowed-down time. The sight of them disturbed Bellis immeasurably.
Eventually they broke. Bellis was close enough to hear them hissing to each other. The Lover was slapping her man, clawing him across his neck and face, harder and harder. When she touched his new cut, her hands were suddenly as gentle as if he were a baby.
“Just as we said,” the Lover whispered, touching her own wound, “at the moment we agreed. Did you feel me? Did you? I swear I felt you, I fucking felt you—every inch, every drop of blood.”
The paneled room was filled with old oil portraits of engineers and politicians Bellis did not recognize—New Crobuzoners left to molder meaningless on the walls of their stolen craft. Around a huge horseshoe table sat the Armadan Senate; and gathered before them were Tintinnabulum, the leaders of the Trident’s scientific and engineering parties, and Krüach Aum. Beside the stunned-looking anophelius sat Bellis.
The Armadan Senate had not met for eight years. But the ridings’ rulers had been waiting for the return of the Trident to put this defining moment in Armadan history to the vote. Due process would be seen to be done.
Each riding in Armada had one Senate vote. Some ridings were represented by one person, some by a small gang. Bellis ran her eyes slowly along the long table, taking in all of the rulers. They were not hard to identify.
Braginod, the cactus queen of Jhour, with her advisors.
Booktown was represented by a triumvirate