The Scar - China Mieville [29]
Bellis huddled still and quiet while she heard shrieks from the corridors beyond, as the pirates led the passengers outside.
She heard Johannes Tearfly, the pitiful tears of Meriope, the frightened pomposity of Dr. Mollificatt. She heard a shot followed by a terrified scream.
From outside, Bellis could hear the terrified passengers lamenting as they were ordered onto the main deck.
The pirates were thorough. Bellis was silent, but she could hear the slamming of doors as the passages were searched. She tried desperately to wedge the door closed, but the man in the corridor shouldered it open with ease; and faced with him all grim and bloodstained, faced with his machete, she lost any heart for resistance. She dropped the bottle with which she had armed herself and let him haul her out.
The crew were lined up, almost a hundred of them, in wounded misery at one end of the deck. Their dead had been thrown over the side. The passengers were huddled together, a little way apart. Some of them, like Johannes, had bloody noses and bruises.
In the middle of the passengers, nondescript in brown and looking as subdued and miserable as all the others, was Silas Fennec. He kept his head down. He would not meet Bellis’ furtive gaze.
In the center of the deck stood the Terpsichoria’s stinking cargo: the scores of Remade brought up from below. They were totally confused, myopic in the light, staring in confusion at the pirates.
The flamboyant invaders swung from the rigging or swept debris into the sea. They surrounded the deck and trained their guns and bows on their captives.
It had taken a long time to bring up all the terrified, bewildered Remade. When the fetid holds were checked, several dead bodies were found. They were dropped into the sea, where their metal limbs and additions took them very quickly down and out of the light.
The huge submersible still lolled fatly in the water, clamped close to the Terpsichoria. The two vessels bobbed in time.
The man in grey, the pirates’ leader, turned slowly to face his captives. It was the first time Bellis had seen his face.
He was in his late thirties, she guessed, with cropped greying hair. Strong featured. His deep-set eyes were melancholy, his mouth set taut and sad.
Bellis stood next to Johannes, near the silent officers. The leather-clad man walked toward the captain. As he passed the passengers, he looked directly at Johannes for two or three paces, then slowly away.
“So,” said Captain Myzovic, loud enough for many people to hear. “The Terpsichoria is yours. I take it that you intend ransom? I might as well tell you, sir, that whichever power you represent has made a grave mistake. New Crobuzon will not take kindly to this.”
The pirate leader was still.
“No, Captain,” he said. Now that he was not shouting over battle, his voice was soft, almost feminine. Like his face, it seemed stained by some tragedy. “Not ransom. The power I represent cares not at all about New Crobuzon, Captain.” He met Myzovic’s eyes and shook his head slowly and solemnly. “Not at all.”
He reached behind him, without looking, and one of his men handed him a big flintlock pistol. He held it in front of him expertly, squinting at it briefly and checking the pan.
“Your men are brave, but they are not soldiers,” he said, hefting the weapon. “Will you look away, Captain?”
There were seconds of silence before Bellis’ stomach pitched and her legs almost buckled as she understood what he meant.
Realization hit the captain and others at the same moment. There were gasps as Myzovic’s eyes widened, and his face crawled with anger and terror. The emotions crowded each other out in an ugly battle. His mouth twisted, opened, and closed.
“No I will not look away, sir,” he shouted finally, and Bellis’ breath caught at the sound of it, the hysteria and shock that broke his voice. “I will not, damn and fuck you, sir, you fucking coward, sir, you shit .