The Scar - China Mieville [31]
With a flutter of displaced water they are gone.
The other group, with a more uncertain task, heads away and down.
They swim low, heading for the crushing deeps.
Interlude II
Bellis Coldwine
Oh. Oh where are we going?
Locked in our cabins and questioned blank-faced, as if these murderous men these pirates were census takers or bureaucrats or . . . —Name? they ask, and—Occupation? Then they want to know my—Reason for heading to Nova Esperium? and I think I will laugh in their faces.
Where are we fucking going?
They take long notes, they itemize me on their printed forms, then turn to Sister Meriope and do the same for her. They respond the same way to the linguist and the nun, with little nods and points of clarification.
Why can we keep our things? Why do they not strip the jewelry from me rape me or run me through? No weapons, they tell us, and no money and no books, but our other belongings we can keep, and they rummage through our sea chests (a halfhearted search) and take out daggers and bills and monographs and dirty my clothes but leave what else they find. They leave letters, boots, pictures, and all accumulated tat.
I argue for my books. I can’t let you take them I say, let me keep them they’re mine, some I wrote, and they let me keep the blank-paged notebook but the printed ones, the stories the textbooks the long novel they take from me. Effortlessly. They don’t care when I show them that B. Coldwine is me. They take the Coldwines away.
And I don’t know why. I cannot make sense of what they are doing.
Sister Meriope sits and prays, muttering her sacred suras, and I am surprised and pleased that she is not weeping.
We are kept inside and time to time they come to us with tea and food, not rude nor pleasant, disinterested as zookeepers. I want to get out I tell them. I rap sharp on my door and I must visit the privy I say, and peer around the door frame and the guard in my corridor bellows at me to get inside, and brings me a bucket which Sister Meriope stares at in mortification. I don’t care, I was lying, I wanted to find Johannes or Fennec, I want to see what is happening elsewhere.
All over, sounds of feet and half-heard discussion in a language I almost understand.—North-north-east I hear and other side of the deck and—Ever? I couldn’t tell and—where’s His Guardship gone? and then I hear more that is opaque.
Through the porthole by my head I see nothing but squalls above water, darkness above and below. I smoke and smoke.
And when my cigarillos are finished I lie back and realize I’m not waiting to die, I don’t believe I’ll die, I am waiting for something else.
To arrive. To understand. To be at my destination.
I realize with some surprise as I watch sundown’s greasepaint that I am closing my eyes and I am bone tired and godspit really? really will I? I will, I will sleep I
sleep
unquiet but long, sleeping eyes flickering with Meriope’s religious whimpers, opening sometimes but still
asleep
till with a rush of panic I sit up and look out at a brightening sea.
Morning is coming. I have missed the night, hiding away in my dreaming head.
I dress carefully. I rub my long boots clean. I paint my face as always and tie back my hair.
It is half past six when a cactus man knocks at our door and brings us gruel. As we sip he tells us what will happen.—We are nearly arrived he says.—When we have tied up follow the other passengers, listen for your names and go where you are told, and you’ll . . .” but I lose track, I lose track, we will what? Will we understand then? Will we know then what is happening?
Where are we going?
I pack my belongings away and prepare to disembark somewhere, somewhere. I am thinking of Fennec. What is he doing and where is he, so quiet when the captain was killed (blood bursting)? He would not want it known that he has a commission, that he can command ships, reschedule ocean crossings.
(I hold him in my hands.)
Out. Into a quick bright wind. It worries at me insistently.