China Mieville - The Scar

“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 more and Bellis had fussed with the stove. “I’ve been a trader since before I was twenty. I’m a New Crobuzon man, don’t get me wrong. Born and brought up in the shadow of the Ribs. But I doubt I’ve spent five hundred days in that city in the last twenty years.”

“What do you trade?”

“Whatever.” He shrugged. “Furs, wine, engines, livestock, books, labor. Whatever. Liquor for pelts in the tundra north of Jangsach, pelts for secrets in Hinter, secrets and artworks for labor and spices in High Cromlech…”

His voice drifted away as Bellis caught his eye.

“No one knows where High Cromlech is,” she said, but he shook his head.

“Some of us do,” he said quietly. “Now, I mean. Some of us do now. Oh it’s a damn hard journey, granted. From New Crobuzon you can’t go north through the ruins of Suroch, and south adds hundreds of miles through Vadaunk or the cacotopic stain. So it’s Penitent’s Pass to Wormseye Scrub, round Gibbing Water, skirt Kar Torrer Kingdom and over Cold Claw Sound…” His voice faded and Bellis hung on, eager to hear where next.

“And there are the Shatterjacks,” he said softly. “And High Cromlech.”

He took a long drink of wine.

“They’re nervous of outsiders. Live ones. But gods know we were a sorry-looking bunch. We’d been on the road for months, lost fourteen men. We went by dirigible, barge, llama, and pterabird, and miles and miles on foot. I lived there for months. I brought back a lot of… amazing things to New Crobuzon. I’ve seen things even stranger than this city, I tell you.”

Bellis could say nothing. She was wrestling with what he said. Some of the places he mentioned were virtually mythological. The idea that he might have visited them-lived in them, for Jabber’s sake-was extraordinary, but she did not think he was lying.

“Most people who try to get there die,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone. “But if you can do it, if you can get to the Cold Claws, especially the far shores… well, you’re made. You’ve access to the Shatterjack Mines, the grasslands north of Hinter, Yanni Seckilli Island in the Cold Claw Sea-and they’re eager for business, I tell you. I spent forty days there, and the only real trade they have is with the savages from the north, who turn up in coracles once a year, carrying stuff like biltong. Of which there’s only so much you can eat.” He grinned. “But their main problem is that The Gengris cuts them off from the south, doesn’t let outsiders pass that way. Anyone who can get past that from the south, they treat like a lost brother.

“If you make it, you have access to all manner of information, places, goods, and services that no one else has. That’s why I’ve… an arrangement with Parliament. That’s why that pass, giving me powers to commandeer vessels, in certain circumstances; giving me certain rights. I’m in a position to provide information to the city that they can’t get from anywhere else.”

He was a spy.

“When Seemly crossed the Swollen Ocean and found Bered Kai Nev six and a half centuries ago,” he said, “what do you think he carried in his holds? The Fervent Mantis was a big ship, Bellis…” He paused-she had not invited him to use her first name. But she made no sign of disapproval, and he continued. “It carried booze and silk and swords and gold. Seemly was looking to trade. That’s what unlocked the eastern continent. All the explorers you’ve heard of-Seemly, Donleon, Brubenn, probably Libintos and bloody Jabber, too-they were traders.” He spoke with childish gusto.

“It’s people like me who bring back the maps and the information. We can offer insights like no one else. We can trade them with the government-that’s my commission. There’s no such thing as exploration or science-there’s only trade. It was merchants who traveled to Suroch, who brought back the maps Dagman Beyn used in the Pirate Wars.”

He saw Bellis’ expression and registered that this particular story did not cast him and his fellows in the best light.

“Bad example,” he muttered, and Bellis could not help but laugh at his contrition.

“I won’t live here,” Bellis said. It was near two in the morning, and she was watching the stars through the window. They dragged with excruciating slowness across the pane as Armada was tugged gradually around.

“I don’t like it here. I resent being kidnapped. I can understand why some of the other press-ganged from Terpsichoria don’t mind…” She said that as a grudging sop to the guilt that Johannes had inculcated in her, and she knew uncomfortably that it was grossly insufficient, that it denigrated the freedom that had been granted to the Terpsichoria ’s human cargo. “But I will not live out my life here. I’m going home to New Crobuzon.”

She spoke with a hard certainty she did not quite feel.

“Not me,” he said. “I mean, I like coming back, and living it up after some trip or other-dinners in Chnum, that sort of thing-but I couldn’t live there. Though I understand why you’d like it. I’ve seen a lot of cities, and never anything to compare. But whenever I’ve been there more than a couple of weeks, I start to feel claustrophobic. Hemmed in by the dirt and the begging and the people… and the cant they spout in Parliament.

“Even when I’m uptown, you know? BilSantum Plaza or Flag Hill or Chnum-still I feel like I’m trapped in Dog Fenn or Badside. I just can’t ignore them. I have to get out. And as for the bastards that run the place…”

Bellis was interested in his unabashed disloyalty. He was in the pay of the damn New Crobuzon government, after all, and even through the slight fog of wine, Bellis was coldly conscious that it was they, his bosses, who had caused her to flee.

But Fennec showed no commitment to them at all. He badmouthed the Crobuzoner authorities with bohemian good humor.

“They’re snakes,” he went on. “Rudgutter and all the others, I wouldn’t trust them as far as I could piss them. Dammit, I’ll take their money. If they want to pay me to tell them things I’d be happy to tell them anyway, am I going to say no? But they’re no friends of mine. I can’t sit easy in their city.”

“So is all this…” Bellis spoke carefully, trying to gauge him. “Is this not a hardship, then, being here? If you’ve no great love for New Crobuzon-”