The Scar - China Mieville [62]
He paused and looked out into the sky. It was nearly five o’clock. “I was trying to head south once I got into the ocean, but I got dragged out into the edges of the channel. Which is where the cray found me.”
“And you waited for a New Crobuzon ship to take you home,” Bellis said. He nodded. “Ours was going in the wrong direction, so you decided to commandeer it . . . with the powers vested in your little letter.”
He was lying, or leaving out some important part of the truth. That was trivially obvious, but Bellis did not comment. If he wanted to fill out his story he would do so. She would not pester him.
As she sat back in her chair, her half-drunk tea beside her on the uneven floor, she felt a sudden gush of tiredness, so that all of a sudden she could barely speak. She saw the first sickly light of dawn and knew it was too late to go to bed.
Fennec watched her. He saw her slump with exhaustion. He was more awake than she. He made himself another cup of tea as she let fits of dozing lap at her like little waves. She flirted with dreams.
Fennec began to tell her stories about his time in High Cromlech.
He told her the smells of the city, flint dust and rot and ozone, myrrh and embalming spices. He told her about the pervading quiet, and the duels, and the high-caste men with lips sewn shut. He described the descent of the Bonestrasse, great houses looming to either side on ornate catafalques, the Shatterjacks visible at the thoroughfare’s end, spilling out for miles. He talked on for nearly an hour.
Bellis sat with her eyes open, starting now and then as she remembered that she was awake. And as Fennec’s stories lurched east, across one and a half thousand miles, and he began to tell her about the malachite chapels of The Gengris, she was conscious that there was a growing crop of shouts and clattering from below, that Armada was waking beneath them, and she stood and smoothed her hair and clothes, and told him that he had to leave.
“Bellis,” he said from the stairs. Before, when he had used her first name, it had been in the spurious closeness of nighttime. Hearing him call her Bellis like that, with the sun up and people awake around them, was different. But she said nothing, and that gave him permission to continue.
“Bellis, thank you again. For . . . protecting me. When you said nothing about the letter.” She watched him tight-faced, and was silent. “I’ll see you again, soon. I hope that’ll be all right.”
And again she said nothing, conscious of the distance daylight had brought between them, and of the many things he was not telling her. But, still, she did not mind if he came again. It had been a long time since she had conversed as she had that night.
Chapter Ten
There were very few clouds that morning. The sky was hard and empty.
Tanner Sack was not going to the docks. He walked afore, through the industrial hulks that surrounded his home. He took a route toward the little tangle of dockside vessels punctuated with pubs and scored with alleys. He had his sea legs, his hips shifting unconsciously with each tilt of the pavements.
He was surrounded by bricks and tarred beams. The sounds of the factory ships and the rig Sorghum ebbed behind him, losing him in the twists of the city. His tentacles swung, and moved very gently. They were wrapped in soothing brine-soaked bandages.
Last night, for the third time in succession, Shekel had not come home.
He was with Angevine again.
Tanner thought about Shekel and the woman, still a little shamed by his own jealousy. Jealous of Shekel or of Angevine—it was a knot of resentment too tangled for him to untie. He tried not to feel deserted, which he knew was not fair. He determined that he would look out for the boy no matter what,