The Scar - China Mieville [277]
“Doul . . .” said the Lover, her voice dangerous. Everyone stopped, instantly.
Uther Doul stepped forward, between the Lovers and the advancing Armadans.
And after a second, Tanner came to meet him.
“All of us, Uther Doul?” he said, loud enough for everyone around him to hear. “You want to take every one? You think you can do that? Because we are fetching Hedrigall up here, and if you threaten them—“ He indicated the cactacae. “—then the rest of us are coming with them, and you threaten all of us. Think you can take us all? Shit, maybe you can, maybe you can. But if you fucking do . . . what then? Who are your bosses going to rule?”
There were hundreds of Armadans behind him, and they nodded as he spoke, and some of them shouted their agreement.
Uther Doul looked from Tanner to the masses behind him, back to Tanner again. And then he showed weakness, his command broke, he hesitated and turned his head. Uncertain, he turned, to look to his bosses, to seek clarification. His shoulders moved in a minuscule shrug; he tilted his head in a question: He’s right, what do you want me to do, do you want me to kill them all . . . ?
When he turned like that, when he showed doubt, Tanner won. He moved his hand again, and the cactacae moved past Doul and the Lovers and into the corridor, setting out to find Hedrigall, uneasy but not afraid, knowing that they would be safe.
The Lovers did not even look at them. They stared instead at Tanner Sack.
“What more could you ask?” said Tanner, his voice hard. “You’ve been shown what’ll happen to us. But you’re so fucking insane with this, so fucking caught up in it, that you’d ignore this? You still want to go on.
“And you’d keep this quiet from us. You’d lie to us, let us drive ourselves, mute and stupid as the fucking avanc, over the edge. That’s enough. This stops here. You take us no further. We are turning back.”
“Dammit!” The Lover jabbed her hand at Tanner, meeting his eye. She spat on the deck before him. “You fucking coward! You fool! Do you really think that story he told is the truth? Think about it, godsdammit. You think that’s how the Scar really is? And you think that out of all the ocean, out of the entire fucking Hidden Ocean, we found him by sheer chance? You think it’s a fucking coincidence that our own Hedrigall runs and then we meet another, from some other place, with stories to scare us stupid?
“It’s the same man! This was always his plan. Can’t you fucking see? We thought he’d left us, but he didn’t. Where would he go? He cut loose the Arrogance, and he hid somewhere. And now, when we get so close, so fucking close to the most amazing place in our world, he comes out to frighten us away. Why? Because he’s a coward, like you, like all of you.
“That was his plan. He didn’t even have the courage to run away in shame. He waited to take all of you with him.”
There were those who wavered at that. Even in her blistering rage, her points scored home.
But Tanner gave her nothing.
“You were going to keep it from us,” he said. “You were going to lie. We’ve come so far with you, and you were going to lie to us about this. Because you’re so blinded by some greed you couldn’t risk us facing you down. You know nothing about the Scar,” he shouted. “Nothing. Don’t tell me coincidence; don’t tell me unbelievable—maybe this is how it works. You don’t even know.
“All we know is that one of the best fucking Garwater men I ever knew is down there in your jail, warning us that if we go to the Scar we’ll die. And I believe him. This ends here. We say what happens now. We’re taking control. We’re turning around; we’re heading home. Your orders to proceed . . . are in-fucking-validated. You can’t jail or kill us all.”
There was a roar at that, a mass exhalation of excitement, and people began sporadically to chant Sack Sack Sack.
Bellis paid no attention. Something extraordinary was happening, something almost inaudible under the noisy approval around her.
Behind Uther Doul, the Lover had been watching and listening