The Scar - China Mieville [58]
She was still angry with him, she realized, and still somewhat ashamed.
There was a third bout of knocking, and Bellis stepped forward, her face set, ready to hear him out and see him off. When she pulled open the door she stopped short, her mouth hanging with astonishment, her curt admonition whispered away from her with her breath.
Standing on her threshold, huddled against the cold and looking up at her warily, was Silas Fennec.
They sat in silence for a little while, drinking the wine Fennec had brought.
“You’ve done well, Miss Coldwine,” he said eventually, looking appreciatively around the battered metal cylinder that was her room. “A lot of us newcomers are in much less attractive places.” She raised one eyebrow at him, but he nodded again. “I promise you it’s true. Have you not seen?”
Of course she had not.
“Where are you living?” she asked.
“Near Thee-And-Thine riding,” he said, “in the base of a clipper. No windows.” He shrugged. “Are these yours?” He pointed to the books on her bed.
“No,” she said, and tidied them quickly away. “They only let me keep my notebook. Even books I’d damn well written, they took away.”
“Same for me,” he said. “All I’ve got left is my journal. It’s the log of years of traveling. I’d have been heartbroken to lose it.” He smiled.
“What do they have you doing?” Bellis asked, and Fennec shrugged again.
“I managed to avoid all that,” he said. “I’m doing what I want to do. You work in the library, don’t you?”
“How?” she said sharply. “How did you keep them off your back? How do you manage to live?”
He watched her for a while without answering.
“I got three or four offers—like you, I imagine. I told the first that I’d accepted the second, the second that I’d said yes to the third, and so on. They don’t care. As for how I live, well . . . It’s easier than you think to make yourself indispensable, Miss Coldwine. Providing services, offering whatever it is people will pay for. Information mostly . . .” His voice petered out.
Bellis was bewildered by his candor, suggesting conspiracies and underworlds around her.
“You know . . .” he said suddenly, “I’m grateful to you, Miss Coldwine. Sincerely grateful.”
Bellis waited.
“You were there in Salkrikaltor City, Miss Coldwine. You saw the conversation between the late Captain Myzovic and myself. You must have wondered what exactly was on that letter that had the captain so unhappy, that turned you back, but you remained quiet. I’m sure you realized that things could have become . . . very hard for me when we were hijacked by Armada, but you said nothing. And I’m grateful.
“You did say nothing?” he added with an anxiety he could not quite hide. “As I say, I’m very grateful.”
“When we last spoke, on the Terpsichoria,” Bellis said, “you told me it was vital you get back to New Crobuzon immediately. Well, what now?”
He shook his head uncomfortably.
“Hyperbole and . . . and bullshit,” he said. He glanced up, but she showed no disapproval of his language. “I get into habits of exaggeration.” He waved his hand to dispel the issue. There was an uncomfortable pause.
“So you can express yourself in Salt?” Bellis asked. “For this work you do, presumably you have to, Mr. Fennec.”
“I have had many years to perfect Salt,” he said in the language, swift and expert, with an unfeigned smile, and continued in Ragamoll. “And . . . Well, I’m not going by that name here. If you’d indulge me, I’m known here as Simon Fench.”
“So where did you learn Salt, Mr. Fench?” she said. “You mentioned your travels . . .”
“Dammit.” He looked amused and embarrassed. “You make the name sound like a hex. You can call me what you like, Miss Coldwine, in these rooms, but outside, I beg your indulgence. Rin Lor. I learnt Salt in Rin Lor, and the outer edge of the Pirate Islands.”
“What were you doing there?”
“The same thing,” he said, “that I do everywhere. I buy and I sell. I trade.”
“I’m thirty-eight years old,” he said after they had drunk some