The Scar - China Mieville [198]
He was staring at Bellis and, under the superb modulations of his voice she sensed a tremulous feeling. She swallowed, trying to concentrate. This is important, now, she told herself. Listen, make sense of this. I don’t know why, but he’s telling me something, he’s letting me know—
And then—
oh good gods above, can that be what he I don’t, Is that possible, that he, surely, have I, have I misunderstood?
Is that what he means?
Her face was set, and she realized she was staring at him, and he her, both mute, staring through the gloom.
Certainly, she thought, giddy, what boat could make it over the ocean to the Fractured Land? Who’d want to go to the Fractured Land? The Land’s not worth it. It’s too far, too dangerous, even for this. Even for this. But what was it he told me, what did they say, how did it go . . . ?
“We have scarred this world, wounded it, made our mark on its remote land . . . and stretching for thousands of leagues across its sea.”
There’s something in the sea. Nothing to hurt us there, not like the land. No monsters there, no lightfungus or butterflies to threaten the miner—the possibility miner. And what’s in the sea is much closer—the Fractured Land would be at the very edge of the world, but the Ghosthead lays say the sea’s scar stretches for countless miles. In toward the world’s center. Toward us. Closer.
No ship has ever made it across the Empty Ocean . . . I believe that. I know the stories, the currents and wind that push incomers away. No ships could cross that ocean.
But what could stop an avanc?
Why is he telling me?
Is that where we’re going, Uther? Across the sea? Across the Empty Ocean, to the remnants of that wound, that fracture? It’s not just the land that was broken open—the sea, too. So is that where we’re going? To mine the possibilities in what’s left of that great . . . cosmic laceration, Uther?
That’s what the Brucolac meant, isn’t it, Uther? That’s what he was talking about.
Why are you telling me? What have I done? What are you doing? Why do you want me to know?
The avanc can take us to see what happened to the wound in the sea. That’s why it was summoned. That’s why Tintinnabulum was employed; and why the Sorghum was stolen for fuel; and why we went to the island and brought back Aum; and why you, Doul, have been working on a secret project, because of your sword, because of your expertise in this science. This is what everything leads to. This is why the avanc was summoned. It can cross the water that Armada would never breach without it.
It can cross that ocean.
It can take us to the Scar.
Chapter Thirty-five
“How the fuck did you find me?” Silas Fennec was clearly troubled.
“You speak like I’m some ingenue,” whispered Bellis. “What, you think you’re invisible? You think I’m incapable?”
She was dissembling: tracking Fennec had been mostly luck. She had been listening out for word of Simon Fench for days. Since her conversation with Doul, she had redoubled her efforts.
Eventually it had not been she who had tracked him at all, but Carrianne. In response to Bellis’ continuing requests for help, her friend had told her, with her usual sly cheerfulness, that she had heard that the mysterious Mr. Fench had been seen at The Pashakan. It was a pub built belowdecks in the Yevgeny, a hundred-foot sloop in Thee-And-Thine.
Bellis had not ventured much into King Friedrich’s riding since her trip to the glad’ circus. She made her way toward its raucous byways with concealed trepidation.
She had passed along the streets of the Sudden Understanding, the many-masted clipper that formed part of the edge of Urchinspine Docks and that linked Dry Fall and Thee-And-Thine ridings. The enormous vessel was one of the few in Armada that did not rest clearly in the control of one or the other ruler. The main bulk of its body was Dry