“Oh my good gods,” said Elsie. “We did it. It’s happened. It’s happened. Oh my gods.” She was rapt. Judah’s face was open.
“It rose in Dog Fenn,” a refugee said. “Came up out of nowhere.”
“That ain’t the case,” another said. “We knew you was coming-the Council. We had to get ready for you, some said.”
They were terribly cowed before the Iron Council. These runaways were speaking to the figures they had seen so many times, for years, in the famous heliotype. They had to be cajoled into talking.
“So there’s no wages: people are hungry. There’s the war, and ex-militia telling what it’s really like, and there are Tesh attacks. We feel like we ain’t safe at all and the city ain’t keeping us… And we hear that someone’s gone to find the Iron Council.” Judah’s face moved to hear it.
“There are Tesh attacks?” Cutter said. The man nodded.
“Yes. Manifestations. And you know, the government’s saying it’s going to sort out the Tesh, going to end the war, but it’s chaos, and no one knows if they’re doing what they say. There’s another demonstration to Parliament to demand protection, and there’s them in the crowd yelling for more than that, giving out their leaflets. Caucus people, I think. But out come the men-o’-war, and the shunn, and the militia come down on us.
“And someone starts saying there’s a handlinger at the front. And people started fighting.
“I wasn’t there-I heard about it, is all. There was dead all over the streets. And when people got the militia on the run… All over the city come up barricades. Time for us to do what we needed, on our own. We didn’t need the militia. Keep them out.
“It was after that we heard the Mayor was dead.”
Delegates from all the districts had gathered in a collective, called and recalled in excitement and panic as the downtowners realised there was no suffrage lottery, that each of them had direct power. After some days the anti-Parliament had curtailed that rude democracy; but only, they swore, because they were in a double war. Most in the Collective were eager to negotiate with Tesh, not caring who controlled what in the seas south.
“Why are you here?” the Councillors asked.
The New Crobuzoners looked down and up again and said that the fierceness of the fighting had driven them away, that there were many exiles. They had been walking for weeks, trying to find the Iron Council.
They were not Caucusers nor collectivists, Cutter thought, only people who had found they were part of a dissident town-within-a-town and under fire, who had run with their possessions in their barrows. They had sought the Council not with a theory or politics, but with the awe of religious petitioners. Cutter disdained them. But Judah was all joy.
“It’s happened, it’s happening,” Judah said. His voice was thick. “The rising, the second Contumancy, we’ve done it. Because of what we did. The Iron Council… it was an inspiration… When they heard we were coming…”
Ann-Hari was staring at him. He seemed to wear a halation in the last of the light. He spoke as if he were reading a poem. “We made this thing years ago and it laid its tracks through history, left its marks. And then we did this to New Crobuzon.”
He looked astounding, a very beautiful thing. He looked transformed. But Cutter knew he was wrong. We didn’t do this, Judah. They did. In New Crobuzon. With or without the Council.
“Now,” Judah said. “We ride into the city, we join them. We aren’t so far from the last of the rails. Jabber, gods, we’ll ride into a changed city, we’ll be part of change. We’re bringing a cargo. We’re bringing history. ”
Yes, and no, Judah. Yes we are. But they’ve got their own history already.
Cutter had come not for the Iron Council, but for Judah. It was a guilt he could never forget. I’m not here for history, he thought. Low mountain pikes looked down on him. In a cold river, the Iron Council vodyanoi were swimming, while the train idled in its strath. I’m here for you.
“And there’ll be no militia now,” Judah said. “They know we’re coming, but with the city in revolt they won’t spare anything to face us down. When we come, there’ll be a new government. We’ll be a… a coda to the insurgency. A commonwealth of New Crobuzon.”
“It’s been hard,” said one of the refugees, uncertainly. “The Collective’s under fire. Parliament’s come back hard…”
“Oh oh oh.” No one saw who spoke. The sounds ebbed up suddenly. “Oh, now.
“What’s this?”
The voice was Qurabin’s. Cutter looked for the fold in air, saw a flit of gusting.
“What’s this?” The pilgrim-refugees were open-eyed in fear of this bodiless voice. “You said there were attacks, Tesh attacks. Manifestations? What kind? And what is this? This, this, this here?”
A buffeting, the stained leather of a newcomer’s bag belling with Qurabin’s tug. The woman moaned at what she thought some ghost, and Cutter snapped at her as Qurabin repeated, “What is that mark?” She looked in idiot fear at the complex gyral design on her bag.
“That? That’s a sign of freedom. Freedom spiral, that is. It’s all over the city.”
“Oh oh oh.”
“What is it, what is it, Qurabin?”
“What are the Tesh attacks?” The monk’s voice was calmer but still very fast. Cutter and Elsie stiffened; Ann-Hari’s concern grew; Judah slowly folded as he saw something was happening.
“No, no, this… I remember this. I need to, I have to, I’ll ask…” The monk’s voice wavered. There was an infolding sense, colours. Qurabin was asking something of the Moment of Secrets. There was silence. The refugees looked fearful.
“How is Tesh attacking?” Qurabin’s voice came back strong. “You said manifestations? Is it colour-sucked things, presences? Emptinesses in the shape of things in the world-animals, plants, hands, everything? And people gone, sickened by them and dead? They come out of nothing, unglow, is it? And they’re still coming. Yes?”
“What is it? Qurabin for Jabber’s sake…”
“Jabber?” There was a hysteria to the monk’s voice. Qurabin was moving, the locus of his sound bobbing among them. “Jabber can’t help, no, no. More to come, there’s more to come. And he has you thinking those are signs for freedom. The spiral. Oh.”
Cutter started-the voice was right up close to him. He felt a gust of breath.
“I’m Tesh, remember. I know. The things that are coming in your city, the haints-they aren’t attacks, they’re ripples. Of an event that hasn’t yet come. They’re spots in time and place. Something’s coming, dropped into time like water, and these have splashed back. And where they land, these little droplets come like maggoty things to suck at the world. Something’s coming soon, and these, these, these spirals, these curlicues are bringing it.
“Someone is loose in New Crobuzon. This is ambassadormagik. The little manifs are nothing. Tesh want more than that. They’re going to end your city. These spirals-they’re the marks of a hecatombist.”
Qurabin had to explain several times.
“Who left that mark is a purveyor of many thaumaturgies. Of which this is the last. This is the finishing of the law. This will take your city and, and will wipe your city clean. Understand that.”
“These are freedom spirals,” said a refugee, and Cutter all but cuffed him to be quiet.
“They say Tesh is talking? They say there are negotiations? No no no. If there are, they are ploy. This is the final thing they will do. Their last attack. Months of preparation, huge energy. This will end everything. No more wars for New Crobuzon. Not ever again.”