He rarely saw Toro. For stretches it was a dull and insular life. They did not read as the Runagaters had read. His new comrades played games in the Badside warehouse, went “scouting,” which was walking without aim. No one ever quite spoke their ultimate plan, their target; no one ever quite said what they wanted to do. No one ever said the Mayor’s name or even the word mayor, but instead chair-of-the-board or pigboss: speaking the truth had become a shibboleth. When d’you suppose we might ah help our-friend-at-the-head-of-the-meeting take a permanent sabbatical downstairs? one of them might say, and they would debate the Mayor’s routine and check their weapons.
Ori did not always know what his comrades were doing. Sometimes he would learn only when he heard or read of another heist, the freeing of prisoners from a punishment factory, the murder of some rich old couple in Flag Hill. That last outraged the papers, who excoriated Toro for the killing of innocents. Ori wondered sourly what it was the victims had done, how many they had Remade or executed. He rummaged in the gang’s box of militia spoils, the badges and contracts of office, but could find nothing of the uptown couple to tell why they had been targeted.
With Spiral Jacobs’ contribution they had money to bribe, and bribe well, though the bulk of the cash Toro took for some expensive mysterious project. The Toroans trawled for information and contacts. Ori tried to rebuild his own network. He had neglected his old friends. He had not seen Petron for weeks, or any of the Nuevists. He had felt with a new dissident aggression that they were too frivolous, their interventions mannered. Eventually he sought them out, and realised how much he had missed their savage play.
And he learnt from them. Realised how fast he uncoupled from rumour when he spent all his days with the crew. So once a week he went back to the Griss Fell soup kitchen. He decided he would return to the Runagate Rampant meetings.
He had tried not to neglect Spiral Jacobs. The man was not easy to find. He disappeared for a long time, and Ori only found him after leaving messages with the shelters and the vagrants who were the old tramp’s family.
“Where did you go?” Ori said, and Spiral Jacobs was too vague to reply. The old man’s fog lifted when he spoke of his old life, of Jack Half-a-Prayer.
“How’d you come to know so much about Toro’s plans, Spiral?”
The old man laughed and bobbed his head.
Are you a friend of Toro? Ori thought. Do you meet and talk about the old times, talk about the Man’Tis?
“Whyn’t you just give them the money yourself?” Nothing.
“You don’t know them, do you?”
No one among the Toro-run recognised his description of Spiral. Ori asked Jacobs to tell him about Jack Half-a-Prayer. I think you like me, Ori thought. The mad old man looked at him with a familial care. I think you gave me the money to help them and me both. The weakness of Spiral’s mind came and went.
“Not seen much of you,” Petron had said in a louche cabaret pub of Howl Barrow. They ignored the gyring striptease and illicit dealings at the other tables.
“Doing things.”
“Running with a new crowd?” There was no accusation or venom in Petron’s tone-allegiances were fast among the bohemians. Ori shrugged.
“We’re doing good things, if you want to come back. The Flexibles are doing another show: ‘Rud and the Gutter and the Devil’s Embassy.’ Can’t use Rudgutter’s name, obviously, but it’s about the Midsummer Nightmares, years back: there’s rumours they tried to make some wicked deals to fix it.”
Ori listened and thought, You’ll do a show of me in years to come. “Ori and the Toro-Gored Mayor.” Things’ll be different then.
Two Chaindays running he went to The Grocer’s Sweetheart. No one was there the first night. The second, the trapdoor was raised to him and he was let back into the Runagate Rampant meeting. The Jacks were not all the same as they had been. The Remade man he had met months back was still there. There was a vodyanoi stevedore and a crippled cactus-man Ori did not remember, a few others looking through the literature.
A woman led the meeting. She was small and intense, older than he but still young. She spoke well. She eyed him, and when her face took on an uncertain expression he remembered her: she was the knit-machinist.
She spoke about the war. It was a tense meeting. Not only did the Runagate Rampant not support the war’s aims, stated or interpreted-that position was common to the tiny dissident groups-they said they fought for New Crobuzon to lose.
“You think Tesh is any better?” someone said, angry and incredulous.
The knit-worker said, “It ain’t that we think it’s better, it’s that our prime opponents are here, right here.”
Ori did not speak. He watched her and tensed only a second when it seemed one man’s anger at what he called her Tesh-love would make him violent, but she calmed him. Ori did not think she convinced everyone-he was not sure of his own feelings for the war, beyond that both sides were bastards, and that he did not care-but she did well. When the others had gone he waited and applauded her, and he was only half mocking.
“Where’s Jack?” Ori said. “The Jack who used to take these?”
“Curdin?” she said. “Gone. Militia. Snatched. No one knows.”
They were silent. She gathered her papers. Curdin was dead or jailed or who knew what.
“Sorry.”
She nodded.
“You did well.”
She nodded again. “He told me about you.” She did not look at him. “He told me a lot about you. He was disappointed you weren’t coming no more. Thought a lot of you. ‘Boy’s got the anger,’ he said. ‘Hope he knows what to do with it.’ So… so what’s it like on the wild side, Jack? How’s it with, with the Bonnot Gang, or Toro, or Poppy’s lot or whoever you’re with now? Think people don’t know? So, so what is it you’re doing now?”
“More than you.” But he hated his petulance and did not want to fight, so he said, “How’d you take over?” He meant You know so much, you argue well, you’ve risen to this. When last he saw her he would have been the experienced dissident, with insurrectionist philosophy: and now he had been present at deaths and was harder, and had been cut by a militia knife and knew how to talk to the danger-scum of the east city, but she knew more than him, and it had only been some weeks.
She shrugged.
“It’s the time,” she said. She tried to be dismissive, then met his eye. “Do you… How could you do this now? Now? What d’you think’s happening? Do you know what’s going on? Do you feel it? Five foundries went out last week, Jack. Five. The Rétif Platform of the dockers’ guild’s in talks with the vodyanoi for a cross-race union. That’s our chaverim pulling that, that’s Double-R. The next march we have we’ll make into a meeting, and we won’t have to moulder like this.” She waved at the close walls, brought her fists down on her thighs. She almost stamped. “And you’ve heard the stories. You know what’s returning? What’s coming back to us? And you choose now to go be an adventurer? To turn your back on the commonalty?”
The word made him breathe a sneer. The jargon of it, the commonalty, the commonalty that the Double-R s spoke of so relentlessly.