The Scar - China Mieville [275]
“We will stop this, right here,” she said, hard. “We’ll not let this seditious shit succeed. This goes no further. We bury this story, right now, right here, and we go on. Agreed?”
Perhaps the Lover and Uther Doul nodded to her. Bellis heard nothing.
She had turned her face to Tanner at those last words. She watched him listen to his ruler—to whom he had committed himself absolutely, declared himself utterly loyal—announce her plans to deceive everyone in the city. To keep secret everything she had heard. And to drive on to the Scar.
Bellis watched a cold, a dead and frightening cast come over Tanner’s face as he listened. The muscles of his jaw clenched, and Bellis knew that he was thinking of Shekel.
Was he remembering how he’d said and thought that this—what had happened to them, being found—was a blessing? Bellis did not know. But something had set in Tanner’s face, and he looked at her with murderous eyes.
“She,” he hissed to her, “will bury nothing.”
Chapter Forty-seven
Tanner Sack was known. He was the one who had fought a bonefish to save a dying man. He had Remade himself into a kind of manfish, the better for life in Armada. He had lost his boy.
Tanner was known, and he was respected.
You listened to Tanner, and you believed him.
Bellis could tell no one anything. Her mouth was hard and cold as a stone.
She had to turn to others to spread words.
Everyone knew Tanner Sack.
If Bellis had tried to tell what she had heard in that unpleasant little cubbyhole, if she tried to tell the secrets she had listened to, she would not be believed. She would not be heard. But she had introduced someone else to her room, so that he could speak for her and tell the story.
She could not help nodding. Smiling without warmth. Gods, it’s well done, she thought, bowing her head, acknowledging consummate work. She felt skeins of cause, effect, effort, and interaction tying around her. She felt things all coming together, pushing her into this place, at this time, having done this thing.
Oh, it’s well done.
It started almost as soon as she and Tanner came up out of the lower decks.
She blinked, and looked around her at the flags and the washing and the bridges and the towers, still all strong and knotted together with mortar. She was haunted by the images from Hedrigall’s story. She saw the city shattering and falling so clearly that it was a true relief to emerge and see it all solid.
Tanner began. The Lovers were still below, still organizing, trying to hide Hedrigall. While they secreted themselves below the air and schemed, Tanner began.
He looked first for the people he knew well. He spoke quickly and fiercely. One of the first he found was Angevine, and he involved her carefully with the group of dockers to whom he was speaking, who did not know her.
His passion was genuine, utterly guileless. He did not orate.
Bellis watched him move through the crowd still milling on the Grand Easterly’s decks, arguing in angry tones about what it was they had heard, about what Hedrigall had seen—how and why he had come back. There were still a good number of pirates on the huge old ship, and Tanner spoke to them all.
He trembled with rage. Bellis followed him by an irregular and discrete course. She watched him, and was impressed by his fervor. She watched the stunned reactions move like a disease through the masses. She watched the disbelief quickly become belief and frightened anger, and then resolve.
Tanner insisted—she heard him—that they had the right to know the truth, and something uncertain moved inside Bellis.
She did not know what the truth was; she was not sure what she believed. She was not sure what lay behind Hedrigall’s extraordinary story. There were several possibilities. But it did not matter. She refused to think about that now. She had been brought to this