The Scar - China Mieville [169]
The walk took her through Shaddler’s cool, quiet streets and into Garwater via the Tolpandy. Past the quiet bickerings of the monkeys that nested in building sites and rooftops, and deserted berths and the canopy of rigging; past the city’s cats (glancing at her, predatory) and its rare dogs and the masses of rats and the nightwalkers; around hen coops; lifeboats and steam launches rusted into position and remade as flower beds; homes cut into the sides of gun batteries, pigeons cooing from the bore of a twelve-inch gun; under wooden huts built onto foretops and yards which met masts like tree houses; through the light of gas and phlogistic cells and oil lamps; and through darkness tinted in various colors, squeezing along the corridors of damp brick that covered Armada’s vessels like a fur of mold. Back to her rooms in the Chromolith Smokestacks, where Silas Fennec was sitting, waiting for her.
She was shocked by his unclear figure sitting in the dark. She hissed at him, and turned away until her heart had slowed.
He studied her. His eyes were big and calm.
“How did you get in?” she said. He waved the question away like an insect.
“You know your apartment’s still watched,” he said. “I can’t exactly come knocking.”
Bellis walked over to him. He was motionless except for his face and eyes, tracking her progress. She came close—she came within his space—and leaned toward him slowly, examining him like some scientific specimen. She was ostentatious about it: she inspected him coolly and intrusively. It might have been designed to intimidate, to put him off his ease.
As she bent over him, as if cataloging his aspects, he caught her eye, and for the first time in some weeks, he smiled at her eagerly and openly. She remembered the reasons that she had had for kissing him, and fucking him. Not just loneliness or isolation, though they were paramount. But there were other factors, more centered in him. And although as she stood there she felt not the slightest urge to touch him, although she felt only a ghost of the affection that had once motivated her, she did not regret what had happened.
We both needed it, she thought. And it helped; it really did.
She patted the back of his head as she turned away. He accepted that with good grace.
“So . . .” he said.
“It’s done,” she said. He raised his eyebrows.
“As simple as that?”
“Of course not as simple as that. What do you damn well think? But it’s done.”
He nodded slowly. When he spoke his tone was neutral, as if they discussed some academic project. “How did you manage it?”
How did we? Bellis thought in the silence. Did we? I have no evidence, no proof of anything.
“I couldn’t do it on my own,” she began slowly, and then she sat upright, shocked by Silas’ look of stricken anger.
“You what?” he cried. “You fucking what?” He was on his feet. “What did you do, you stupid godsdamned cunt . . . ?”
“Sit . . . down . . .” Bellis was standing now, pointing at him, her fingers shaking with rage. “How dare you?”
“Bellis . . . what did you do?”
She glared at him. “I don’t know,” she said coldly, “how you might have managed to cross a swamp crawling with six-foot mosquitos, Silas. I don’t know how you would have managed that. We were a mile or more from the Samheri ships—oh, they were there, don’t fret about that. Now maybe you are a cactus-man or a fucking scabmettler or something, but I’m blood, and they would have killed me.”
Silas remained quiet.
“So . . .” Bellis’ voice was measured now. “I found a man who could travel to the ships, without danger, without being detected. A Crobuzoner, prepared to do the whole deal on the hush, just to stop his first home being devastated.”
“Did you show him the stuff?” said Silas.
“Of course I did. You think he’d swim off blithely at midnight taking only my word as to what he was carrying?”
“Swim? It