The Scar (53 page)

“He’s made us a power, there’s no denying it. And then the fucking avanc . . .”

“I thought you were loyal to Dry Fall,” said Bellis, and Carrianne nodded hard.

“So I am, but I’m saying that here . . . I think the Brucolac may be . . . wrong about their plans. I mean . . . it does all fit into place.”

There is a source of power, the Lover had told the crowds, on the edge of the world. An awesome place: a rip through which great waves of puissance pounded reality. One man in Armada has the proof, said the Lover, and knows how to tap that power. But for many years it could not be reached.

There is a beast, the Lover had told them: a stunning kind of thing, an animal that breaches into Bas-Lag and slips away again from time to time. And Armada had called to it certain famous men who could learn how to trap that animal.

The woman who made me, the Lover had thundered, pointing to the Lover, realized that the second fact meant the first could be acted on.

On the far side of the Hidden Ocean, the Lover had said, is the source of that power. But no ship has crossed the Hidden Ocean, they say. Friends—he had spread his arms with triumph, as Carrianne imitated to Bellis—the avanc is no ship.

And so, Bellis realized, the Lover had admitted the truth that he and his had kept from the city for years, the plans that they had already had in place when they employed Tintinnabulum, snatched the
Sorghum
, traveled to the anophelii island, raised the avanc. He had admitted the truth of those plans, and had done so in such a way that he was not stoned for his manipulation and lies, but was buoyed up by applause.

We can cross the Hidden Ocean,
he had shouted to cheers.
We can tap the Scar
.

“That was when we learnt its name,” Carrianne said.

“But it’s so uncertain,” said Bellis, and Carrianne nodded.

“Of course.”

“The ships, the fleet . . .”

Carrianne nodded again. “Some are already tethered to the city. And when the others can’t follow us, that’s alright. Our ships have always sailed alone for months at a time, and they always find their way back to us. Those following us now know what’s happening, and those that are away, well, this is nothing new. The city’s always had its own movements. We’re not going to disappear in the Hidden Ocean, Bellis. We’re not here to stay . . . We’re here to find the Scar, and then leave again.”

“But what the fuck kind of place
is
this?” said Bellis thinly. “We’ve no idea what’s here, what kind of powers, what creatures, what enemies . . .”

Carrianne frowned and shook her head. “That’s all true,” she said. “I understand.” She shrugged. “You’re against the idea. Alright, you’re not alone. There’s a vessel leaving in two days, I think, heading back to the Swollen Ocean, crewed by naysayers, to wait for the city’s return. Though . . .” Her voice petered away. They both realized that Bellis was not one of those who would ever be allowed off-city. “Most of us,” continued Carrianne, “think this is worth doing.”

“Not at all,” Carrianne said quietly, a little later. “I trust the Brucolac, and I’m sure he has reasons for opposing the plans. But I think he’s wrong. I’m excited, Bellis,” she said. “Why shouldn’t we try this? This could be . . . this could be the most exciting time, the finest hour in our history. We have to try.”

Bellis felt something that at first she did not recognize. Not depression or misery or cynicism, but despair. The feeling of all plans, all options, dying.

I’ve lost,
she thought, without melodrama or even anger.

Carrianne was not a brainwashed fool, someone unthinking and buffeted by rhetoric. She had heard the arguments—even partial and partisan as they had undoubtedly been. She must have realized that this venture had been a long time in the planning, and that therefore she and those around her had been deceived.

And still, considering all that, she had decided that the Lovers’ plan was a good one. One that was worthwhile.

That was a sneaky trick,
thought Bellis to the Lovers.
That was below the belt. I didn’t foresee this.

Lies, schemes, manipulations, bribery, violence, corruption—I expected all that,
she thought.
But I never expected you simply to have the argument, and to win.

The thought of Fench’s stillborn pamphlet fleeted through her mind, and she moved her shoulders in a dead kind of laugh.
The Truth!
she imagined.
Garwater Drags Armada To THE SCAR!

The truth.

You win,
she thought, and let go of hope.
I’ll be here till I die. I’ll grow old here, a crabby old lady imprisoned on a boat, and I’ll scratch the scars on my back (dear gods they will be wicked) and mutter and complain. Or perhaps I’ll die with the rest of you, and with you my rulers, in some stupid, terrible accident of the Hidden Ocean.

Either way, I’m yours, if I like it or not. You’ve won.

You are taking me with you. You are taking me to the Scar.

Chapter Forty-two

Where for the longest time there had been a shadow, the sky was clear.

The
Arrogance
was gone.

A rope stub lay on the deck where the airship had been tethered to the
Grand Easterly
. It had been severed, and the aerostat had flown free.

“Hedrigall,” Bellis heard from all around her. She stood amid the crowd that had gathered, gaping at the hole in the skyscape. The yeomanry had made brief attempts to keep onlookers back, but had given up in the face of their numbers.

Bellis could move more freely now. She still recoiled at pressure on her back, but there was no more bleeding. Some of the smaller scabs were beginning to peel at the edges. She shifted slightly at the edge of the crowds.

“Hedrigall—and he was alone.” Everyone was saying it.

As Armada slipped farther into the Hidden Ocean, its vessels had more and more difficulty keeping up with it. They trailed behind it like anxious ducklings, and several tethered to the edges of the city switched off their motors and were borne on by the avanc.

The second day after Bellis’ shocking, revelatory discussion with Carrianne, the remaining ships and submersibles in Armada’s orbit had turned back. They could no longer fight the Hidden Ocean. They gathered into a nervous convoy, tacking with the fractious winds, then steamed back to the south. They stayed together for protection, and to drag each other on, back to the Swollen Ocean, with its safer, comprehensible waters, where they would wait.

The city would return for them, within a month, or two at most.

And after that? If Armada had not returned? Well, they were to consider themselves free. That dispensation was given like an afterthought, and its implications were not discussed.

From her window, Bellis had watched the retreat of Armada’s vessels. Others were left behind, now chained like limpets to the city’s flank, or in the Basilio and Urchinspine harbors. They eddied apprehensively, surrounded by the vessels making up wharfs and quays, but they were trapped. They had waited too long to sail away, and they could only bob pointlessly, tied up as if loading or unloading, and wait.

Armadans had never seen their city without its nimbus of ships. They had crowded to the city’s margins to gaze out at the sea. The emptiness had subdued them. But even those acres of vacant water were not so disturbing as the missing airship.

No one had seen anything; no one had heard a sound. The
Arrogance
had crept away in secret. To Garwater it was a stunning loss.

How was it possible? people asked. The dirigible itself was crippled, and Hedrigall was known to be absolutely loyal.

“He had doubts,” Tanner told Shekel and Angevine. “He told me. He
was
loyal, ain’t no doubt, but he never thought this avanc business was best for the city. I suppose the Scar thing was even worse, but he weren’t winning any arguments.”

Tanner was horrified by Hedrigall’s flight. It wounded him. But he talked his thoughts out loud, trying hard to see things as his enigmatic friend had seen them.
Must’ve felt trapped
, Tanner thought.
All the years he lived here, to suddenly see the place doing things in a new way. He don’t belong in Dreer Samher no more, and if he thought that he didn’t belong here neither . . . what must that’ve done?

He imagined Hedrigall fixing the
Arrogance
’s broken motors in some of the spare hours he spent aboard it on his own. Everyone knew that Hedrigall was a loner who spent a deal more time in the
Arrogance
than he needed to. Had he untwisted the girders in the
Arrogance
’s fins? Tested the pistons that had not moved for decades?

How long you been planning this, Hedrigall?
thought Tanner Sack.

Couldn’t he have had an argument? Did he feel so strongly? Did he feel that there was no point even fighting for his home? Did he doubt that that’s what it was any longer?

Where you now, man?

Tanner imagined that big ungainly aerostat heading south, Hedrigall alone at its wheel.

I bet he’s crying
.

It was suicide of sorts. Hedrigall couldn’t have amassed enough fuel to reach land, not anywhere. If he reached Armada’s waiting fleet, they’d want to know what had happened and why he’d left the city, so he’d avoid them.

The winds would take him over the empty sea. The gasbags were very strong; they might keep him buoyant for years.
How much food did you store, man?
Tanner wondered.

An image came to his mind, of the
Arrogance
adrift for years, four or five hundred feet above the water, with Hedrigall’s corpse rotting slowly in the captain’s cabin. A windblown sepulchre.

Or maybe he could stay alive. Maybe he would unroll a great, absurdly long fishing line from the
Arrogance
’s bay doors. Tanner imagined it cascading through the air like a spring unwinding, till its baited hook reached the water. By choice the cactacae were vegetarians, but they could survive on fish or flesh if they had to.

There Hedrigall could sit, on the edge of the hatch, his legs swinging like a child’s, reeling in fish. Rubbery bodies flapping on the journey up, air-drowned and long dead when they reached him. He could live for years, blown around the world. Slipping into the roundstream winds that circled the Swollen Ocean, growing old and obstreperous on his unchanging diet, his skin wrinkling and his thorns turning grey. Alone, going mad. Talking to the portraits and heliotypes on the
Arrogance
’s walls.

Till one day some chance might push him out of that great belt of wind, and his craft might eddy out into free air and be carried south or north or gods knew where, until one day, maybe, he might come into sight of land.

Drifting over mountains. Throwing down the anchor, snagging a tree and descending. Touching the ground again.

Is it such a bad fucking plan, Hedrigall, to search for the Scar?

Hedrigall was a traitor, Tanner supposed. He’d done a bunk; he’d stolen Armada’s crow’s nest and lied to his rulers and friends. He’d been too cowardly to have the argument. He was a renegade, and Tanner knew that as a loyal Garwater man, he should condemn him. But he could not.

Good luck, mate
, he thought after some moments, hesitantly raising his hand and nodding.
I can’t not wish you luck.

Garwater’s champions felt Hedrigall’s absence like a rebuke.

He was known to have been loyal, and he left in the wake of his passing more disturbed discussion, more uncertainty and condemnation of the Lovers’ project than had so far existed.

Miles below the sea, the avanc continued its journey. It had slowed only a little on entering the new waters.

Tanner Sack swam and bathed his ravaged back in the sea. There were few divers below and few swimmers above, in these days. They had been scared away, terrified that they might be swept away on some unforeseeable current, borne off to some deadpool in the Hidden Ocean.

Tanner found nothing wrong. He and the menfish and Bastard John flitted from place to place, around and between those enormous chains angling down. They swam quickly, careful not to let the city leave them behind, but there seemed to be no new hazards in the water. The chaos inhered at a larger scale—for the great intruders like ships and submersibles. Even the seawyrms had not been able to continue pulling their now misbehaving chariot ships, and they had swum back with the fleet, back out of the Empty Ocean.

It was peaceful now, with fewer people and fewer things to distract Tanner. Much of Armada’s activity had ceased.

Of course the farmers still cared for their crops and flocks, above water and below, and harvested them when they could. There were still a thousand little jobs of repair and maintenance. The internal workings of the city continued, as they had to: bakers, moneylenders, cooks, and apothecaries put out their signs and took in money. But Armada was a city that had looked outward, to piracy and trade. The industries around the docks, the loading and unloading and counting and refitting and outfitting, were all in stasis now.

So Tanner did not dive daily to work on cracks or breaks or faults or anything like that. He swam for himself, and for his back, and felt the salt bring his skin back to life.

“Come in, Shek,” he said.

He was aware of the tension that was spreading through Armada, the uncertainty, as if Hedrigall had spilled a poison behind him as he left. Tanner wanted to offer Shekel a place where it could dissipate.

There were reasons for people’s growing fears. Tanner had heard strange rumors. Three times now he had heard that some man or woman, some yeoman or Garwater engineer, had disappeared, their house and things left untouched (food half-eaten, in one story). Some said they, too, had fled, and others claimed that these were the depradations of spirits from the Hidden Ocean.

When he was in the water, Tanner’s sense that things were wrong, dangerous, or uncertain dissipated with the currents. He offered Shekel the same respite. He persuaded the boy to swim with him. The pools between Armada’s vessels were almost empty now. Shekel was excited to be one of those brave enough to go in. The great flitches of the ships moved above and around them sedately: they would not be left behind. Shekel struggled with his aggressive, ugly paddle, and Tanner tried to show him better strokes and realized that he did not know any suitable for those who had to breathe air.

Shekel slipped heavy goggles over his eyes and plunged his head below for as long as their imperfect seal kept out the water. He and Tanner would stare at the shoals of fishes, species they had never seen. Colored and finned intricately, as intense and bizarre as tropical species, here in these more temperate waters. Like scorpion and ratfish, their forms were broken with spindly appendages, and eyes that glowed with unlikely colors.

When Shekel and Tanner hauled themselves out again, Angevine would be waiting, with maybe a bottle of beer or liquor. And even if Tanner and Angevine still spoke to each other a little warily, and realized that they always would, what they shared in Shekel, and the way they had learned to share it, gave them a respectful connection.

It’s kind of a family,
Tanner thought.

It was not hard for Bellis to find Uther Doul again. She had only to wait on the deck of the
Grand Easterly
, knowing he would appear eventually. She was stiff with resentment and incensed by her own hurt. She could not believe how he had dropped her.

As she approached he stared at her, but not with the disgust that she feared. Not with hostility, or with interest, or any kind of connection or recognition. He simply stared.

She drew herself up. She had tied back her hair again, and she knew that the look of stunned pain was ebbing gradually from her face. She still moved stiffly, but nearly two weeks since her flogging she had regained much of herself.

Bellis did not greet Doul. “I want to see Fennec” was all she said.

Doul thought for a second, then inclined his head. “Alright,” he said.

And although this was what she wanted, Bellis hated him for that, because she knew that he allowed it because there was nothing she could do or say to Fennec that could now come in Armada’s way at all. Now that she was not any kind of threat, now that all her cards had been played.

Bellis was quite meaningless now, so she could be indulged.

His magus fin had been taken from him, but it was clear that Garwater was still afraid of Silas Fennec. The corridor along which he was imprisoned was thick with guards. All the doors could be sealed tight: it was below the waterline.

A man and woman sat outside Fennec’s door, fussing over some arcane machine. Bellis felt the dry charge of thaumaturgy against her skin.

Inside, it was a large room, broken by a few portholes through which dark eddies could be seen. Half of the room was sectioned off by iron bars, and beyond them, in a little alcove, hunkered away from the windows and the entrance, Silas Fennec sat on a wooden bench, watching her.

Bellis took in the sight of him. She was caught in a quick kaleidoscope of images of him (their times together, friendly, cold, sexual, surreptitious). Her mouth twisted to see him, and she tasted something very sour.

He was thin, and his clothes were dirty. He met her eyes. She realized, with a sudden shock, that there was a bandage wrapped tight around his right wrist and that his right hand was gone. He saw her notice his injury, and his face twisted before he could control it.

Fennec sighed and stared straight at Bellis.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. He spoke with a drab hostility.

Bellis did not answer. She examined his cell. She saw a heap of unkempt clothes, paper, charcoal, his fat notebook. She studied the bars that kept him from her. They were wrapped around with cables that coiled away and under the door into the room. Fennec watched her trace them back to their source.

“Linked up to those machines out there,” he said to her. He sounded tired. “It’s a dampener. Sniff the air. You can even hear it. Kills the thaumaturgons. No one could do the slightest little hex in here now.” He sniffed and smiled without humor. “It’s in case I’ve got some secret plan. I’ve told them I can only do about three little charms, and none of them would get me out of here anyway but . . . Guess what? They don’t believe me.”

Bellis glimpsed weird flesh under his shirt. It looked necrotic, speckled with amphibian markings. It pulsed, and Fennec pulled his shirt closed.

Her eyes widening, Bellis turned her back on him and paced.

“Don’t,” Fennec said to her suddenly. He sounded almost kind.

“What the fuck do you mean?” she said, and was pleased to hear her voice was cold.

He looked at her with an infuriating, knowing look.

“Don’t do this,” he said. “Don’t come here; don’t ask me; don’t do this. What are you here for, Bellis? You’re not here to rail at me—that’s not your style. You’re not going to crow. They caught me; so what? They fucking caught you, too. How’s the back?”