Jack (2 page)

He ran for more than an
hour. You can go a long way in that time, over the roofs of New Crobuzon.
Within fifteen minutes news had spread and I don't know how, I don't know how
it is that the news of him running moved faster than he did himself, but that's
the way of these things. Soon enough, as Jack Half-a-Prayer tore into view over
some street, he'd find people waiting, and as far as they dared, cheering.

No I never saw it but
you hear about it, all the time. People could see him on the roofs, waving his
Remaking so people would know it was him. Behind him squads of militia.
Falling, chasing, falling, more emerging from attics, from stairways, from all
over, wearing their masks, pointing weapons, and firing them, and Jack leaping
over chimneypots and launching himself from dormers, leaving them behind. Some
people said he was laughing.

Bright daylight ―
militia visible in uniform. That's a thing in itself. He went by the Ribs, they
say, even scrambled up the bones, though of course I don't believe that. But
wherever he went, I see him sure-footed on the slates, a famous outlaw man by
then, and behind him a wake of clodhopping militia, and streaks in the sky as
they fire. Bullets, chakris from rivebows, spasms of black energy, ripples from
the thaumaturges.

Jack avoided them all.
When he shot back, with the weapons he'd just taken, experimental things, he
took men down.

Airships came for him,
and informer wyrmen: the skies were all fussy with them. But after an hour of
that chase, Jack Half-a-Prayer was gone. Bloody magnificent.

The man who sold out
Half-a-Prayer was nothing. You wonder, don't you, who could bring down the
greatest bandit New Crobuzon's ever seen. A nonentity. A no one.

It was just luck, that
was all. That was what took Jack Half-a-Prayer. He weren't outsmarted, he
didn't get sloppy, he didn't try to go too far, nothing like that. He got
unlucky. Some pissant little punk who knows someone who knows someone who knows
one of Jack's informers, some young turd doing a job, whispered messages in
pubs, passing on a package, I don't sodding know, some nothing at all, who puts
it together, and not because he's smart but because he gets lucky, where Jack's
hiding. I truly don't know. But I've seen him, and he's nothing.

I didn't know why he
gave up Half-a-Prayer. I wondered if he thought he'd be rewarded. Turned out
he'd have said nothing if they hadn't hauled him in. He'd been caught for his
own little crimes ― his own paltry, petty, pathetic misdemeanours ―
and he thought if he delivered Jack, the government would look after him,
forgive him and keep him safe. Idiot man.

He thought the
government would keep him out of our hands.

Most of what Jack did weren't
so obviously dramatic, of course. It was the smaller, savager stuff that had
them out for him.

It ain't that they were
happy about the big swaggering thievery, the showings-off. But that ain't what
made Jack a thorn they had to pluck.

No one knows how he got
the information he did, but Jack could smell militia like a hound. No matter
how good their cover. Informers, colonel-informers, intriguists, provocateurs,
insiders and officers ― Jack could find them, no matter that their
neighbours had always thought they were just retired clerks, or artists, or
tramps, or perfume-sellers, or loners.

They'd be found like
the victims of any other killings, their bodies dumped, under mounds of old
things. But there would always be documents, somewhere close by or left for
journalists or the community, that proved the victim was militia. Awful wounds
on both sides of their necks, as if ragged, serrated scissors had half closed
on them. Jack the Remade, using what the city gave him.

That wasn't alright. It
wasn't alright for Jack to think he could touch the functionaries of the
government. I know that's how they thought. That's when it became imperative
that they bring him down. But with all their efforts, all the money they were
ready to spend on bribes, all the thaumaturgy they dedicated ― the
channellers and scanners, the empathy-engines turned up full ― in the end
they got lucky, and picked up some blabbering terrified useless little turd.

I made sure it was me
first went in to greet him, Jack's snitch, after we got hold of him. I made
sure we had some time alone. It weren't pretty, but I stand by it.

It's been a long time
since I been in this secret political life. And there are conventions that are
important. One is, don't get personal. When I apply the pressures I need to,
when I do what needs to be done, it's a job that needs doing, no matter how
unpleasant. If you're fighting the
 
sickness of society,
 
and
make no mistake that's what we do, then sometimes you have to use harsh
methods, but you don't relish it, or it'll taint you. You do what has to be
done.

Most of the time.

This was different.

This little fucker was
mine.

It's a windowless room,
of course. He was in a chair, locked in place. His arms, his legs. He was
shaking so hard, I could hear the chair rattling, though it was bolted down. An
iron band filled his mouth, so all he could do was whine.

I came in. I was
carrying tools. I made sure he saw them: the pliers, the solder, the blades. I
made him shake even more, without touching him. Tears came out of him so fast.
I waited.

"Shhh," I
said at last, through his noise. "Shhh. I have to tell you
something."

I was shaking my head:
 
No, hush.
 
I
felt cruelty in me.
 
Hush,
 
I
said,
 
hush.
 
And
when he quieted, I spoke again.

"I made sure I got
to take care of you," I said. "In a minute my boss'll be coming in to
help us, and he knows what we're going to do. But I wanted you to know that
 
Imadesure
 
I got
this job, because...well, I think you know a friend of mine."

When I said Jack's name
the traitor started mewling and making all this noise again, he was so scared,
so I had to wait another minute or two, before I whispered to him, "So
 
this.
 
..is
for
 
Jack."

The leader of my crew
came in then, and another couple of lads, and we looked at each other, and we
began. And it weren't pretty. And I ain't supposed to glory in that, but just
this once, just this once. This was the fucker sold out Jack.

I knew it couldn't
last, Jack's reign (because that's what it was). I couldn't not know it, and it
made me sad. But you couldn't fight the inevitability.

When I heard they'd
caught him, I had to fight, to work hard, not to let myself show sad. Like I
said, I was only a small part of the operation ― I'm not a big player,
and that's more than fine by me, I don't want to run this dangerous business.
I'd rather be told what to do. But I'd taken such pride in it, you know?
Hearing of what he was doing, and always knowing that I was connected. There
are always networks, behind every so-called loner, and being part of
one...well, it meant something. I'll always carry that.

But I knew it would
end, so I tried to steel myself. And I never went to see him, when they
stretched him out in BilSantum Plaza, Remade again, his first Remaking gone,
knowing he'd be dead before the wound healed. I wonder how many in that crowd
were known to him. I heard that it went a bit wrong for the Mayor, that the
crowds never jeered or threw muck at the stocks. People loved Jack. Why would I
want to see him like that? I know how I want to remember him.

So the snitch, the
tattletale, was in my hands, and I made sure he felt it. There are techniques
― you have to know ways to stop pain, and I know them, and I withheld
them.

I left that fucker red
and dripping. He'll never be the fucking same.
 
For Jack,
 
I
thought. Try telling tales again. I did something to his tongue.

As I did it, as I dug
my fingers in him, I kept thinking of when I met Half-a-Prayer.

People need something,
you know, to escape. They do. They need something to make them feel free. It's
good for us, it's necessary. The city needs it. But there comes a time when it
has to end.

Jack was going too far.
And there'll be others, I know that too.

I knew it was
necessary. He really had gone too far. But I can't talk to my workmates about
this, like I say, because I don't think they think this stuff through. They
just always went on about what a bastard Half-a-Prayer was, and how he'd get
his, and blah blah. I don't think they realise that the city needs people like
him, that he's good for all of us.

People have their
heroes, and gods know I don't grudge them that. It ain't a surprise. They
― the people I mean ― don't know how hard it is to keep a city, a
state like New Crobuzon going, why some of the things that get done get done.
It can be harsh. If Jack gives people a reason to keep going, they should have
it. So long as it don't get out of hand, which, of course, it always does.
That's why he had to be stopped. But there'll be another one, with more big
shows, more grand gestures and thefts and the like. People need that.

I'm grateful to Jack
and his kin. If they weren't there, and this is what I think my mates don't
understand, if they weren't there, and all them angry people in Dog Fenn and
Kelltree and Smog Bend had no one to cheer on, gods know what they'd do. That
would be much worse.

So here's a cheer for
Jack Half-a-Prayer. As a spectator who enjoyed his shows, and a loyal and
loving servant of this city, I toast him in his death as I did in his life. And
I exacted a little revenge for him, even though I know it was past time for him
to stop.

It was a basic
Remaking. We took that little traitor's legs and put engines in their place,
but I made sure to do a little extra. Reshaped a suckered filament from some
fish-thing's carcass, put it in place of his tongue. It'll fight him. Can't
kill him, but his tongue'll hate him till the day he's gone. That was my
present to Jack.

That's what I did at
work today.

When I met Jack he
wasn't Jack yet. My boss, he's the master craftsman. Bio-thaumaturge. It was
him did the clayflesh, who went to work. It was him took off Jack's right hand.

But it was me held the
claw. That great, outsized mantis limb, hinging chitin blades the length of my
forearm. I held it on Jack's stump while my boss made the flesh and scute run
together and alloy. It was him Remade Jack, but I was part of it, and that'll
always make me proud.

I was thinking about
names as I knocked off today, as I walked home through this city it's my honour
to protect. I know there are plenty who don't understand what has to be done
sometimes, and if the name of Jack Half-a-Prayer gives them pleasure, I don't
grudge them that.

Jack, the man I made.
It's his name, now, whatever he was called before.

Like I say, in the
short time I knew him, before I made him and after, I never called Jack by his
name nor he me. We couldn't, not in this line of work. Whenever I spoke to
Jack, I called him "Prisoner," and answering, he called me "Sir."