The Scar - China Mieville [194]
The rockmilk was more precious by far, and rarer. In guarded storerooms in the Grand Easterly the heavy liquid slopped in rows of jars. The rooms were secured and earthed by careful geo-thaumaturgic processes, to dispel any dangerous emanations. The engine that sent the lulling pulses into the avanc’s brain was powered on the stuff, and the thaumaturges and technicians who ran it kept a careful eye on their reserves of fuel. They knew exactly how much they needed.
Tanner and Shekel and Angevine studied the air over the Sorghum’s cold derrick and saw there was no effluent.
They sat together in a beer tent on the Dober, under a sprawl of tarpaulin-covered poles. The Dober would not support more solid buildings. It was the body of a blue whale, disemboweled, its top half removed, its carcass preserved by some long-forgotten process. It was quite hard and inflexible, though its floor was disturbingly organic: the remnants of blood vessels and viscera varnished as solid as glass underfoot.
Tanner and Shekel were frequent visitors here. Its beer tent was good. They sat facing the whale’s frozen flukes, which jutted from the water as if about to slap its surface and swim free. The Sorghum was directly in their line of sight, framed by the pointed edges of the whale’s tale. The enormous, ugly presence lolled silently.
Angevine was quiet. Shekel was solicitous, making sure her glass was full, murmuring to her quietly. She was still somewhat shocked. Everything had changed for her since Tintinnabulum left, and she had not yet adapted.
(Tanner had no doubts that she would be alright. Gods knew he did not begrudge her a few days’ befuddlement. Tanner just hoped Shekel himself was alright. He was glad the lad was spending a little time with him.)
What will I do? thought Angevine. She kept thinking that she would go along to see what Tinnabol had for her . . . and then of course she remembered that he was gone. It was not that she missed him. He had been courteous and pleasant to her, but there had been no closeness. He had been her boss, and he had given her orders that she had obeyed.
But even that was an overstatement. He had not really been her boss. Her boss was Garwater—the Lovers. It was Garwater money that paid her wages, Garwater that had commissioned her, in the first days after her arrival, to serve the strange, muscular, white-haired hunter. And having disembarked from a ship taking her away to slavery, from a city where her Remaking had stripped her of rights, made her work a duty, to be told that she would be paid as if she were any other citizen had stunned her. It was that which had bought her loyalty.
And now Tintinnabulum was gone, and she was not sure what she would do.
It was hard, having taken pride in work, to be reminded that it did not matter what she did, so long as she labored, for money. Eight years of her history had sailed with Tintinnabulum and his hunters.
It was just a job, she told herself. Jobs change. Time to move on.
“Where are we going?” Bellis asked Uther Doul.
She had finally given in and asked him.
As she had expected, he did not answer her. He looked up at her question, then down again without a word.
They were in Croom Park, in an evening darkness stained with the colors and the strong smell of flowers. Somewhere nearby, an inbred nightingale sounded its attenuated song.
I want to know, Doul, Bellis felt like saying. There are ghosts clinging to me, and I want to know if the wind wherever we’re going will blow them away. I want to know which way my life is likely to turn. Where are we going?
She did not say any of that. Instead they walked.
A path was visible in the moonlight. It was rough, formed by footsteps rather than design. It wound up the steep slope of bushes and trees that rose above them, broken here and there by the remnants