The Scar

Chapter Forty

Uther Doul sat on the bed in Bellis’ cell. The room was still sparse, though the surfaces were now piled with a few accoutrements he had had brought from her rooms: her notebooks, a few clothes.

He watched her as she turned the grindylow statue in her hands. She ran her fingers over it carefully, curiously, feeling the intricacies of its carving. She stared at its twisted face, and into its mouth.

“Be careful,” Doul advised her as she touched her nail to one of its teeth. “It’s dangerous.”

“This is… the cause of it all?” said Bellis.

Doul nodded. “He carried it with him. He used it to kill several men. He folded space with it, performed thaumaturgy I’d never seen. That must be how he got into the compass factory.”

Bellis nodded. She understood that Doul was talking about the means by which Fennec had allowed New Crobuzon to find Armada. Some secret engine, some mechanism.

“It must be safe now,” Doul went on. “The lodestone must have been on their Morning Walker.”

Probably, thought Bellis. A device that tracked Armada. You’d better hope it’s not languishing on one of those ironclads, drifting all sunbaked and pocked, stinking by now with its dead crew, where maybe it could be found one day. She turned the statue over again and studied it closely.

“From what we can tell…” Doul continued slowly, “from what we’ve got out of Fennec, this statue is not the main thing. Just as the point of a gun isn’t the gun but the bullet, so with this: it’s not the statue itself that has the puissance. That’s just a conduit. This,” he said, “is the source of the power.”

Doul tickled the tough, thin strip of flesh embedded in the statue’s back.

“This is the fin of some ancestor, some assassin-priest, some thaumaturge, some magus. Housed in stone, in a shape that mimics its original form. This is a grindylow relic,” said Doul, “the remnant of some… saint. That’s what stinks of power.

“That’s what Fennec told us,” he said, and Bellis could imagine the techniques by which Fennec had been made to answer those questions.

“This is what’s behind it all,” said Bellis, and Doul nodded.

“It did amazing things. It allowed Fennec to do amazing things. But even so, I think he’d only just begun to understand it. I think New Crobuzon must have reason to believe that this… this charmed debris has far more power than Fennec had learnt to use.” He looked Bellis in the eye. “I don’t think New Crobuzon would come so far, try so hard, for anything less than the most powerful forces.”

Bellis looked reverentially at the object in her hands.

“We have our hands,” Doul said quietly, “on something extraordinary. We have found a very great thing. Gods know what it might allow us to do.”

This is the cause of it all, she thought. This is what Fennec stole. He even told me he’d stolen something from The Gengris. This is what he told New Crobuzon he had-didn’t try to pass it on to them, of course. They’d never have come looking for him if he’d given it to them. This is what he dangled in front of them, from across the world, said “Save me and this is yours,” and made them come.

This is what New Crobuzon crossed the world and waged war for. It set everything in motion. For this (unknowingly) I led Armada to the mosquito island. To send some lying message to New Crobuzon, I gave Armada the avanc instead of throwing Aum’s fucking book into the sea.

This is what everyone’s been chasing.

This magus fin.

Bellis did not know what had changed. Doul seemed to have forgiven her. His vicious demeanor had altered. He had come here to show her what they had found, to talk to her as he had done before. She was nervous: she felt all uncertain of him.

“What will you do with it?” she said.

Uther Doul was rewrapping the figurine in a wet cloth. He shook his head.

“We’ve no time to examine this properly, not yet. Not now. There are too many other things to be done; too much is unfolding. We’ve been… distracted. This comes at a bad time.” He spoke without inflection, but she sensed that there was more than that, as he hesitated.

“And anyway, it’s done things to Fennec. It’s changed him.

“Even he doesn’t understand what, or if he does he’s saying nothing. No one knows what forces the grindylow can tap. We can’t reverse what’s happened to Fennec, and we don’t know what the full effects are. No one’s willing to become this statue’s new lover.

“So we’ll store it, somewhere safe, till we finish our project, till we reach our objective and have time and scholars to study this thing. We’ll keep all that’s happened quiet, but in case anyone did discover what Fennec brought on board, I think we’ll keep it somewhere no one would think, or dare, to look for it. Somewhere everyone knows there’s already a charmed treasure or two, and where they know the risks of trespass are just… too severe.”

As he said that, Doul stroked the grip of the Possible Sword for an unthinking instant. Bellis noticed it and knew where the magus fin would be hidden.

“And where,” she said slowly, “is Fennec?”

Doul stared at her. “Taken care of,” he said, and nodded briefly toward the corridor outside. “Held.”

There was a silence that stretched out.

“What are you doing here?” said Bellis eventually, quietly. “How long have you believed me?” She studied him, her confusion exhausting her. Since I stepped onto this fucking city, she thought with sudden clarity, I’ve been on the edge of my nerves, every moment. I’m tired.

“I always believed you,” he said, his voice expressionless. “I never thought you summoned New Crobuzon deliberately, though I know-I’ve always known-you have no love for this place. When you came to me before, I was expecting to hear something else.

“Listening to Fennec, hearing him talk, trying to stay silent, trying to implicate you, admitting the truth… He’s saying different things with every minute. But the truth is obvious: you were stupid,” Doul said without emotion. “You believed him. Thought you were… what? What did he tell you again? Saving your city. You weren’t out to destroy us; you were trying to save your homeland so that one day you could return to it, still whole and saved. You weren’t trying to destroy us; you were just stupid.”

Bellis’ face was set. She was burning.

Doul watched her. “You were caught up in it, weren’t you?” he said. “In the idea of… connecting with your home. The fact of doing something. That was enough, wasn’t it? You… saving your city.”

Doul spoke in a soft monotone, and Bellis looked down at her hands.

“I bet,” he continued, “that if you ever did think about what you’d been told… I bet you felt uneasy.”

He said it almost kindly. The maggot of doubt was alive again, grubbing through Bellis’ head.

“There was nothing of him,” said Doul, “in the Wordhoard.

“His berth down in the hold, it was clean and dry. His walls were covered with notes, pinned everywhere. Diagrams telling him who’s whose man or woman, and who runs what, and who owes whom. It was damned impressive. He’d learnt everything he needed. He had… spliced himself into the city’s politics. Always keeping himself hidden. Different rendezvous for different informants, and different names-Simon Fench and Silas Fennec were only two of many.

“But nothing of him. He’s like an empty doll. Those notes everywhere, like posters, and a little hand printing press, and ink and grease. His clothes in a trunk, his notebook in his bag-that’s all there was of him. It was pathetic.” Doul met Bellis’ eyes. “You could examine that room for hours, and you’d still have no idea what Silas Fennec was like.

“He’s nothing but an empty skin stuffed with schemes.”

But he’s been quieted now, thought Bellis, and we continue northward. The Lovers win. Their troubles are over, is that right, Uther? She stared at him and tried to reestablish between them something she had lost.

“What were you writing?” said Doul, shocking her, “when I came in?” He indicated her pocket, where she had stuffed her letter.

She always kept it on her, its many thick pages growing heavier. It had not been taken away from her. It could not possibly help her escape.

It had been a while since she had added to it. There were times when she wrote it as regularly as a diary, and weeks when she did nothing. In that small, featureless prison room, with her window facing out into nothing but watery dark, she had turned to it again, as if it could settle her head. But she had found it almost impossible to write.

“Ever since I first saw you,” said Doul. “You’ve always kept it. Even on the dirigible.” Bellis’ eyes widened. “What is it? What are you writing?”

What she said or did here, now, Bellis realized with a kind of cool panic, would reverberate for a long time. Things waited to fall into place. She felt as if she were holding her breath.

Bellis drew the paper from her pocket and read what she had written.

Dustday 9th Chet, 1780. Sixth Playdi of Flesh.

Hello again.

“It’s a letter,” she said.

“To whom?” said Doul. He did not lean over and peer at the paper. Instead he caught her eyes.

She sighed and leafed through the many pages of the letter, finding its beginning and holding it up to him so that he could read the first word.

Dear, the letter said, and then there was a blank. A word-hole.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“It’s not to no one,” she said. “That would be sad, pathetic, to write a letter to no one. And it’s not a letter to someone dead, or anything so… sad. It’s the opposite of all that, the opposite. It’s not closed down like that: it opens up; it’s a door; it could be to anyone.”

She heard herself, became aware of how she must sound, and was horrified.

“When I left,” she said, more quietly, “I’d spent many weeks, many months, in fear. People I knew were disappearing. I knew that I was being hunted. You’ve never been in New Crobuzon, have you, Uther?” She looked at him. “For all your explorations and your skills, you’ve never been there. You’ve no idea-do you have any idea? There’s a special kind of fear, a unique fear, when the militia are closing in on you.

“Who’ve they got to? Who’ve they taken, tortured, corrupted, frightened, threatened, bought? Who can you trust?

“It’s damn hard to be on your own. When I started,” she said hesitantly, “I thought I was probably writing to my sister. We’re not close, but there are times when I crave talking to her. Still, there are things I’d never say to her. And I needed to tell them, so I thought that perhaps this letter was to one of my friends.”

Bellis thought of Mariel, of Ignus and Tea. She thought of Thighs Growing, the cactacae cellist, the only one of Isaac’s friends she had remained in touch with. She thought of others. The letter could be to any of you, she thought, and knew that was not true. She had pushed most of them away in those frightened months before she had fled. And even before then, she had not been close to many. Could I have written to any of you? she wondered suddenly.

“Whoever you speak to,” she said, “whoever you write to, there are things you wouldn’t say, things you’d censor. And the more I wrote-the more I write-the more I need to say, the more I need to be quite, quite open. So I’ll write it all, and I’ll not have to close it down. I can leave that to the end. I can wait and decide who it’s to after I’ve said everything I have to say.”

She did not mention the fact that she would never be able to deliver her letter, that she would be writing it on Armada until she died.

There’s nothing strange about it, Bellis wanted to say. It makes sense. She felt fiercely protective. Don’t think about it as if there’s an emptiness at the other end, she thought at him fiercely. That’s not it at all.

“You must write carefully,” said Doul, “only about yourself. No shared jokes. It must be a cold kind of letter.”

Yes, thought Bellis, looking at him. I suppose it must.

“You exiles,” he said. “You exiles and your writing. Silas Fennec is the same. You look in there now, he’s trying to scribble in his notebook, with his left hand.”

“You let him keep it?” Bellis said, wondering what had happened to Fennec’s right hand and suspecting that she knew. Uther Doul looked ostentatiously around her room: at the clothes, the notebooks, the letter.

“You see how we treat our prisoners,” he said slowly, and Bellis remembered that she was a prisoner, just like Tanner Sack, just like Fennec.

“Why didn’t you tell the Lovers,” said Doul suddenly, “when Fennec told you that New Crobuzon was in danger? Why didn’t you try to get a message back that way?”

“They wouldn’t have cared,” she said. “They might even have been glad: one less rival on the sea. And think of the bones to be picked over. They would’ve done nothing.”

She was right, and she could sense that he knew it. Still, the maggot stirred in her again.

“Look in the letter,” she said suddenly. “It proves I knew nothing.”

For a long time, he did not respond.

“You’ve been judged,” he said at last. She felt blood cold in her stomach. Her hands trembled, and she swallowed several times and clenched her lips closed.

“The Senate’s met,” he continued, “after we’d questioned Fennec. It’s generally believed that Sack and you had no deliberate part in calling New Crobuzon here. Your story’s been accepted. You don’t need to show me your letter.”

Bellis nodded and felt her heart beat quickly.

“You gave yourselves up,” he said in a dead tone. “You told us what you know. I know you. I’ve watched you-both of you. I’ve watched you carefully.”

She nodded again.

“So you’re believed. So that’s that. You’ll be allowed to go free, if you want.” He paused then, for just a tiny second. And later Bellis remembered that pause, and could not forgive him. “You get to choose your sentence.”

Bellis looked away and smoothed her letter and breathed deeply for a while, then looked back at him.

“Sentence?” she said. “You said you believed me…”

“I do,” he said. “I was the main reason you were believed.” He did not say this as if he expected gratitude. “Which is why your prospective sentences are as they are. Why you’re not dead, as Silas Fennec will be dead, once we get what we need from him.

“But you knew you’d not go unpunished. Since when did intent determine judgment? Whatever you thought, or convinced yourself you thought you were doing, you’re responsible for unleashing a war that killed thousands of my people.” His voice hardened.

“You should consider yourself fortunate,” he continued, “that we want to keep the details of all this quiet. If the citizens ever heard what you’d done, you’d definitely be dead. Secrecy allows us a degree of leniency. You should be glad I’ve testified as to your character. I fought hard to have you both freed.” His beautiful voice was frightening her.

“Tell me,” she heard herself ask, and Doul met her eyes as he answered.

“I’m here representing the Senate, to see Tanner Sack and Bellis Coldwine,” he said clearly. “To sentence you both. Ten years, here, alone. Or time already served, plus lashes.

“It’s your choice.”

Doul left soon after that, leaving Bellis very alone.

Fennec had betrayed her. There would be no pamphlets from Simon Fench. No one would listen to her. The city would not turn back.

Doul had not even asked to see her letter. He did not take it from her; he did not peer over her shoulder as she held it; he did not show any interest in it at all.

Don’t you understand what I’ve told you? Bellis thought. You know what revelations are in this. This isn’t any normal kind of communication, all personal secrets and details and nods and references meaningless to any but two people. This is unique-this is my clear communication; this is my own clear voice, everything I’ve done and seen here.

Don’t you want to read it, Doul?

Doul had left once she had chosen her punishment, without glancing back at the thick sheaf of paper still in her hands. All its evidence went unread, languishing still. Uncommunicated.

Bellis turned the pages over, one by one, recounting what had happened to her in Armada. She tried to calm herself. There was something very important that she had to address. Her plans were collapsing. With Fennec caught, there was no one to put out the information she had, no one to stop the Lovers’ crazy plan to cross the Hidden Ocean. And Bellis should turn her mind to that, should try to think of some way to disclose the truth.

But she could not concentrate on that, on anything but what Doul had just told her.

Her hands were shaking. She gritted her teeth, furious at that, and ran her hands over her swept-back hair and exhaled, but she could not stop herself from trembling. She had to press her pen quite hard upon the paper so that the trembling would not make her words illegible. She scrawled a single quick sentence, then stopped suddenly, and stared at it, and could not write any more. She read what she had written, again and again.

Tomorrow they flog me.