The Scar - China Mieville [30]
The man in grey nodded.
“As you wish,” he said. He raised the gun and shot Captain Myzovic through the eye.
There was a short crack and a burst of blood and bone as the captain spasmed backward, his ruined face snarling and stupid.
As he hit the ground there was a chorus of screams and disbelieving gasps. Beside Bellis, Johannes staggered, making guttural sounds. Bellis retched and swallowed, her breath coming very fast as she stared at the dead man twitching in a slick of gore. She bent, afraid she might vomit.
Somewhere behind her Sister Meriope stammered Darioch’s Lament.
The murderer handed the gun back, received another newly primed and loaded. He turned back to the officers.
“Oh Jabber,” Cumbershum crooned, his voice shaking. He stared at Myzovic’s body, then looked at the pirate. “Oh dear Jabber,” he whimpered, and closed his eyes. The man in grey shot him through the temple.
“Gods!” someone shouted hysterically. The officers were yelling, looking wildly around, trying to back away. The thunder of those two gunshots seemed to haunt the deck like ghost sounds.
People were screaming. Some of the officers had fallen to their knees in supplication. Bellis was hyperventilating.
The man in grey quickly scaled the ladder to the forecastle and looked out over the deck.
“The killing,” he shouted through cupped hands, “is over.”
He waited for the frightened sounds to abate.
“The killing is over,” he repeated. “That’s all the killing we need to do. Do you hear? It is finished.”
He spread his arms as noise began to grow again, this time of bewilderment and untrusting relief.
“Listen to me,” he shouted. “I have an announcement. You, in blue, you sailors of the New Crobuzon Merchant Navy. Your navy days are over. You lieutenants and sublieutenants, you must reconsider your stations. There’s no room where we’re going for those who venerate their New Crobuzon commissions.” With desperate, panicked slyness, Bellis slid a glance at Fennec. He was gazing at his knotted hands with fierce intensity.
“You . . .” continued the man, gesturing at the men and women from the holds. “You are no longer Remade, no longer slaves. You . . .” He looked at the passengers. “Your plans for your new life must change.”
He gripped the deck and swept his eyes over his mystified prisoners. Slow channels of blood reached toward them from the cadavers of the captain and his first officer.
“You must come with me,” the man said, just loud enough for everyone to hear. “To a new city.”
Interlude I
Elsewhere
Unclear things glide and grapple rocks, pulling their way through the water.
They move in the night through sea opaque with darkness, through cultivated fields of kelp and seaweed toward the lights of cray villages that scatter the shallows. They slide silently into the kraals.
Penned seals glimpse them and taste the eddies of distorted water that spin off in their wakes, and in a panicked frenzy twist and hurl themselves against the woven walls and roofs of their cages. The intruders peer like curious goblins through the gouged window holes of huts and terrify the inhabitants, who rush out on their segmented legs wielding pitchforks and spears, fearfully jabbing.
The cray farmers are quickly overcome.
They are held, captured and held still, and questioned. Lulled by thaumaturgy, persuaded by violence, the cray mutter answers to hissed questions.
In haphazard shards of information, the sinuous hunters learn things that they need to know.
They hear about the shelled submersibles from Salkrikaltor that cruise the villages of the Basilisk Channel. Patrolling a thousand miles of water, watching the nebulous borders of the cray commonwealth’s influence. Watching for intruders.
The hunters bicker and brood and caucus.
We know where he came from.
But perhaps he does not return.
There is uncertainty. To his home, or east—out?
The trail forks, and there is only one thing to do. The hunters separate into two contingents. One heads southwest for the shallow water, for Iron Bay and Tarmuth and the drooling dilute salt of the Gross