China Mieville - The Scar

All day, the anophelii came and went, their sedate, monkish manner shaken. They were very sorry to see the newcomers go, realizing they were soon to be bereft of the sudden influx of theories and impressions that they had brought.

Bellis watched Kruach Aum and saw how like a child the old anophelius was. He watched his new companions packing what bags and clothes and books they had brought, and he tried to copy them, though he had nothing. He left the hall and returned a little while later with a bundle of rags and edges of scrap paper that he collected and tied together at the top in a crude imitation of a traveling sack. It made Bellis shiver to watch.

Deep in her own bag, Bellis could feel Silas’ package: the letters, the necklace, the box, the wax, the ring. Tonight , she told herself, and felt panic. Tonight, come what may.

For the rest of the short day she tracked the sun’s passage. In the late afternoon, when the light had become thick and slow and every shape bled shadows, dread overtook her. Because she realized that there was no way she could cross past the swamps and the territories of the murderous mosquito-women.

Bellis looked up in alarm as the door was thrown open.

Captain Sengka stepped forward into the room, flanked by two of his crew.

The three cactacae stood at the entrance, their arms crossed. They were big men, even for their race. Their vegetable muscles bunched around their sashes and loincloths. Light gleamed on their jewelry and on their weapons.

Sengka pointed his massive finger at Kruach Aum. “This anophelius,” he announced, “is going nowhere.”

No one moved. After several still seconds, the Lover stepped forward.

Sengka spoke before she could. “What did you think, Captain?” he said, disgusted. “Captain? Is that what I should fucking call you, woman? What did you think? I’ve turned a blind sun-fucked eye on your presence here, which I did not have to do. I’ve put up with your communication with the natives, which is a breach of security risking a new fucking Malarial Age…” The Lover shook her head impatiently at this hyperbole, but Sengka continued. “I’ve waited patiently for you to get the fuck off this island, and what? You think you can smuggle one of these creatures off-land without my knowledge? You think I’d let you go?

“Your vessels will be searched,” he said decisively. “Any contraband lifted from Machinery Beach, any anophelii books or treatises, any heliotypes of the island will be confiscated.” He indicated Aum again and shook his head incredulously. “Have you read history, woman? You want to take an anophelius out ?”

Kruach Aum watched the altercation with wide eyes.

“Captain Sengka,” said the Lover. Bellis had never seen her more alive with presence, more magnificent. “No one would ever criticize your concern for safety, or your commitment to your commission. But you know as well as I that the male anophelius is a harmless herbivore. We have no intention of bringing out any but this one.”

“I will not have it!” Sengka shouted. “Sunshit, this system is absolute, and it’s absolute because we can learn the lessons of history. No anophelii are to leave this island. That is a condition of their being allowed to live. There are no exceptions.”

“I’m tiring of this, Captain.” Bellis could not but admire the Lover’s calm, cold and hard as iron. “Kruach Aum is leaving with us. We have no wish to antagonize Dreer Samher, but we are taking this anophelius.” She turned her back on him and began to walk away.

“My men on Machinery Beach,” he said, and she paused, then turned back to him. He drew a huge pistol and held it loose, dangling down. The Armadans were quite still. “Trained cactacae fighters,” Sengka said. “Defy me and you will not leave this island alive.” So slowly that the motion did not seem threatening, he raised his gun and pointed it at the Lover. “This anophelius… Aum, you said… he is coming with me.”

The guards all around the room were poised on the edge of motion. Their hands fluttered over their swords and bows and pistols. Scabmettlers in cracked armor and huge cactacae, their eyes moved quickly from Sengka to the Lover and back again.

The Lover did not look at any of them. Instead, Bellis saw her catch the eye of Uther Doul.

Doul walked forward, placing himself between the Lover and the gun.

“Captain Sengka,” he said in that beautiful voice. He stood still, the pistol now trained on his head, looking up at the cactus-man, more than a foot taller and vastly more massive than he. He stared into the barrel of the gun as he spoke, as if it were Sengka’s eye. “It falls to me to bid you good-bye.”

The captain looked down and seemed momentarily uncertain. He drew back his free hand then, his biceps knotting enormously under his skin, his meaty fist tensed and ready to swing, bristling with thorns. He was moving slowly, obviously hoping not to hit Doul, but to intimidate him into submission.

Doul reached out with both his hands, as if supplicating. He paused, and there was a sudden snapping motion of such speed that Bellis-who had expected it, who had known that something of the sort would happen-could not possibly follow it. Sengka was reeling back, shocked, holding his throat where Doul had jabbed him with stiff fingers (not hard but like a warning, finding a space between those vicious spines and taking the breath from him). Doul held the gun now, still pointing toward his own skull, trapped between his flat palms like something granted him in prayer. He kept his eyes on Sengka and whispered to him, words that Bellis could not hear.

( Bellis’ heart is slamming. Doul’s actions shatter her. Whether an attack is brutal or muted, the motion itself, its preternatural speed and perfection, makes it seem like an assault on the order of things, as if time and gravity can no more withstand Uther Doul than flesh. )

The two cactacae standing behind Sengka stepped forward, sluggish and outraged. They reached to their belts, drawing weapons, and the gun held in Doul’s frozen applause flickered and faced them, and flickered again and was clenched in his outstretched right hand, pointed directly first at one and then ( instantaneously ) the other sailor.

( There is no movement. The three cactacae are appalled at this velocity and control that border on thaumaturgy. )

Doul shifted again, the gun leaving his fingers and spinning out of reach. His white sword was in his hand. There were two reports, and Sengka’s crew members yelled in pain, in quick succession, their hands snapping away from their weapons, now clutched in front of them, wrists split.

The sword’s tip was at Sengka’s throat now, and the cactus-man stared at Doul with fear and hatred.

“I hit your men with the flat of my blade, Captain,” said Doul. “Don’t make me show you the edge.”

Sengka and his men backed away, retreating out of his range, through the door and into the last of the daylight. Doul waited by the entrance, his sword extended into the open air.

All around the room a sound was building, a rhythmic muttering, a triumphant, awed bark. Bellis remembered it. She had heard it before.

“Doul!” the men and women of Armada chanted. “Doul! Doul! Doul!”

As they had at the glad’ circus, as if he were a deity, as if he could grant them wishes, as if they were chanting in church. Their adorations were not loud, but they were fervent and grimly joyous, and ceaseless, and in perfect time. They enraged Sengka, who heard in them a taunt.

He glared back at Doul, framed in the doorway.

“Look at you,” he shouted furiously. “You coward, you pig-man, you fucking cheat ! What demon did you let fuck you in return for those skills, pig-man? You won’t leave this fucking place.”