The Scar

Interlude VII

For over four weeks, the Tetneghi Dustheart has been at sea.

The galleon has faced dreadful summer storms. It has been becalmed between Gnurr Kett and Perrick Nigh. In the dangerous channels of the Mandrake Islands it sailed too close to some nameless rock and was beset by marauding flying things that tore the sails and pulled several apes from the rigging to their deaths. In the cold waters by the Rohagi eastern coast, the ship was met and attacked-by nasty chance-by a Crobuzoner navy ship. With lucky winds, the Tetneghi Dustheart outran the ironclad, sustaining damage that slowed but did not destroy it.

Its cactacae crew whistle instructions to the exhausted simians above, and the gaudy vessel approaches port-peace, winds through the channel toward Iron Bay.

The day after his meeting with Tanner Sack, when Captain Nurjhitt Sengka announced his new orders to his crew, they reacted with the astonishment and bad feeling that he had expected. The relaxed discipline of Dreer Samher vessels had allowed them to express themselves more or less freely, and they had told Sengka they disapproved, they were pissed off, they did not understand, they were deserting their posts, that the anophelii needed more guards than the skeleton crew that would be left there.

He was implacable.

With every misfortune on the way, with every hold-up, every dragging minute of the month, the crew’s grumbling grew louder. But Sengka, having decided to risk his career on the written promises Tanner had given him, did not deviate from his plan. And his standing with his crew is good enough that he has been able so far to contain their anger, to keep them waiting with hints and winks.

And now the Tetneghi Dustheart crawls toward the Gross Tar. The galleon’s ostentatious gold and sweeping curves are dulled by brutal spring weather that shocks the cactacae, their garish southern esthetic absurd beside the dark browns and blacks and muddy greens and faint blossom colors of the islands they pass.

They are weather-beaten, dilapidated. The crew are impatient. Sengka fingers the sealed pouch.

There is not long now. They are close to the bay and the river, the bricks and bridges. There are more and more rocks in the waters around them. The channel is shallowing. The coast is very close.

Captain Sengka looks closely at the New Crobuzon seal on the little cargo he is delivering. He hefts it in his big hands: the leather, the box bound in wax; the offer of a reward that New Crobuzon will honor; the letter of alarm, its melodramatic warning of war in obscure, absurd, quite meaningless code; the stubby, worthless little necklace that justifies the jewelry box; and beneath that box’s velvet padding, sealed in its false bottom, cossetted in sawdust, a heavy disk the size of a large watch, and a long dispatch in tiny calligraphy.

Procurator Fennec’s secret gift to New Crobuzon, and his real message.