The Scar - China Mieville [231]
Only days here and like the subtlest spies you have learnt most everything about this place.
That is why (what is that you say?) that is why you have come to me.
One took something from your towers a world away, something precious and unique that you would have back. One has escaped you for scores of miles, for the length of continents, onto this place, to my city. And it has taken you a long a very long time but that one was a benighted fool to think you would let him run.
You tracked him. You have found his home.
But there have been commotions through the floors above you as you lie and wait and prepare and ask questions of whomever you can snatch from Armada’s decks. And cunning predatory and without fear as you may be there are too many above you, there is no way you can scour the whole city. Step from the water and you are unhidden, and hunted.
You cannot find your quarry. He has disappeared. And he will not surrender what you have come for, not willingly, not without terror. And if you were to ask for help of those who run the city and they were not to take your side, you have played up all your counters, and you could not oppose them if they turned on you. You are not so many. You cannot wage war. You cannot search for the one who has fled you.
Not without help.
Why have you come to me?
Deepling why have you come to me?
You come here kill my citizens and face me the Brucolac brazen like a blackmailer. How do you know I will not destroy you?
I understand.
Oh you are fine, you are a prodigious spy. I am in awe of you and of what you have learnt in only these few days and nights. Let me—here—bow my head to you.
Is there anything you have not learnt? Not understood?
You have come to me because you know that I am angry.
You know what the Lovers have called up. Perhaps you even know where we are going.
You know that I do not accept this. That I am the only force that stands against them.
Perhaps you know that I consider mutiny.
Have you heard my name, again and again? I am sure that is what has happened. You know that I am the most powerful person here who is hankering for something, who is angry, who wishes things were not as they are.
You know that I can be bought.
What is it you propose, hakenmann?
There are actions none but you could perform that might tip a balance. That might create new circumstances. Change forces, force changes. Create facts.
Perhaps this journey, this idiot pilgrimage, might be halted.
Oh yes, if you did that. If you could stop our progress.
Only you can help me, you tell me in your intricate ways. Only you can stop this mad journey. What then is up to me?
Even I, perhaps, could not fight my way through the gangs and gangs of guards who patrol their engines, their rockmilk spurs. I do not know what must be done. But there is another way—something else, some force—to bring us to a slow, and stop. You can halt the beast.
If you could do that.
And in return? (See? you tell me, strange pride flashing like scales, you know all about this barter by which we live.)
In return? I will help you find that hidden one who has run from you.
Perhaps you do not know what it is to laugh. Certainly you do not know why I laugh so hard so long.
You cannot know.
Whom I have held and bloodied. What I have seen him wield. You cannot know that loyal to Armada and without alternative I have put aside my anger at the Lovers and let them take him, shamed as I was, implicated in the carnage he brought us. He is no ordinary thief, this war criminal, and they hold him in limbo till we can sentence him right. When our lunatic journey ceases.
You have come just a little late.
Not too late, however. What’s done is not too late to undo.
I know where they hold him.
You cannot know that what you offer me would any other time