The Scar - China Mieville [9]
Standing at the back of the ship on the second day, by the morass of gulls and ospreys still bickering over the ship’s effluent, Bellis looked for islets but saw only waves.
She felt jilted. Then, as she searched the horizon, she heard a noise.
A little way from her the naturalist, Dr. Tearfly, stood watching the birds. Bellis’ face set hard. She prepared to leave as soon as he spoke to her.
When he looked down and saw her watching him coldly, he gave her an absent smile and pulled out a notebook. His attention was off her immediately. She watched as he began to sketch the gulls, paying her no mind at all.
He was in his late fifties, she guessed. His thinning hair was combed tightly back, and he wore little rectangular spectacles and a tweed waistcoat. But despite the academic uniform he did not look weak or absurdly bookish. He was tall, and he held himself well.
With quick, precise strokes, he marked out folded avian claws and the brute pugnacity of the seagulls’ eyes. Bellis warmed to him very slightly.
After a while she spoke.
It made journeying easier; she admitted that to herself. Johannes Tearfly was charming. Bellis suspected he would be equally friendly to everyone on board.
They took lunch together, and she found it easy to steer him away from the other passengers, who watched them intently. Tearfly was endearingly free of intrigue. If it occurred to him that keeping the company of the rude and distant Bellis Coldwine might lead to rumors, he did not care.
Tearfly was happy to discuss his work. He enthused about the unstudied fauna of Nova Esperium. He told Bellis about his plans for publishing a monograph, on his eventual return to New Crobuzon. He was collating drawings, he told her, and heliotypes and observations.
Bellis described to him a dark, mountainous island she had seen in the north, in the small hours of the previous night.
“That was North Morin,” he said. “Cancir’s probably off to the northwest right now. We’ll be docking at Dancing Bird Island after dark.”
The ship’s position and progress were matters of constant conversation among the other passengers, and Tearfly looked at Bellis curiously, bewildered by her ignorance. She did not care. What was important to her was where she was fleeing from, not where she was, or where she was going.
Dancing Bird Island appeared just as the sun went down. Its volcanic rock was brick-red, and hunched into little peaks like shoulder bones. Qé Banssa clambered up the slopes of the bay. It was poor, an ugly little fishing port. The thought of setting foot in another resentful town imprisoned by maritime economics depressed Bellis.
The sailors without shore leave were sullen as their comrades and passengers disappeared down the gangplank. There were no other New Crobuzon ships at dock: nowhere for Bellis to deliver her letter. She wondered why they were stopping at this negligible port.
Apart from an arduous research trip to the Wormseye Scrub years previously, this was the furthest Bellis had ever been from New Crobuzon. She watched the small crowd at the dockside. They looked old and eager. Over the wind she heard a smattering of dialects. Most of the shouts were in Salt, the sailors’ argot, a found language riveted together from the thousand vernaculars of the Basilisk Channel, Ragamoll, and Perrickish, the tongues of the Pirate and Jheshull Islands.
Bellis saw Captain Myzovic climb the steep streets toward New Crobuzon’s crenellated embassy.
“Why are you staying on board?” said Johannes.
“I don’t feel any great need for greasy food or trinkets,