The Scar Read online

The captain was yelling at the crew, organizing them into units and arming them, stationing them around the ship’s edge. They fingered their rifles nervously, staring across the slowly moving sea.

  Cumbershum trotted up toward the congregated passengers and ordered them back to their cabins or to the mess. His tone was curt.

  “The Terpsichoria is more than a match for any pirate, and that scout could easily see that,” he said. “But until we’re back behind the Fins, the captain insists that you remain out of the way of the crew. Now, please.”

  Bellis sat for a long while with her letter in her pocket. She smoked and drank water and tea in the half-empty mess. At first the air was tense, but after an hour fear had dissipated somewhat. She began to read.

  And then there were muffled shouts and the vibration of running feet. Bellis spilled her dregs and ran with the other passengers to the window.

  Racing toward them out of the sea were a handful of dark shapes.

  Squat little ironclad scouts.

  “They’re lunatics!” hissed Dr. Mollificatt. “There’s, what, five of them? They can’t take us!”

  A shattering boom sounded from the deck of the Terpsichoria, and the sea yards in front of the leading boat exploded in a huge crater of steam and water.

  “That’s a warning shot,” someone said. “But they’re not turning.”

  The little craft drove on through the violent spray, hurtling suicidally toward the big iron ship. There was the sound of more running from above, more shouted orders.

  “This is going to be hideous,” grimaced Dr. Mollificatt, and as he spoke the Terpsichoria yawed violently with the grind of metal on metal.

  In the hold, Tanner Sack fell violently across his neighbor. There was a massed shout of fear. As the Remade smacked into each other, scabs and infected flesh broke open. There were shrieks of pain.

  Penned in the dark, the prisoners felt the ship uprooted suddenly from the sea.

  “What’s happening?” they screamed toward the hatches. “What’s going on? Help us!”

  They stumbled and kicked and clawed their way to the bars, crushing each other against the iron. There were more screams, and louder panic.

  Tanner Sack shouted with his fellows.

  No one came to them.

  The ship reeled as if it had been punched. Bellis was hurled against the window. Passengers were scattering, screaming or shouting, getting to their feet with terror in their eyes, throwing spilled chairs and stools out of the way.

  “What in Jabber’s name was that?” Johannes shouted. Someone nearby was praying.

  Bellis stumbled with the others out onto the deck. The little armored boats were still plowing toward the Terpsichoria on the port side, but looming from nowhere on the starboard side, where no one had been looking, tight and flush against the ship, was a massive black submersible.

  It was more than a hundred feet long, striated with pipes, studded with segmented metal fins. Seawater still streamed from it, from the seams between its rivets and the ridges below its portholes.

  Bellis gaped at the baleful-looking thing. Sailors and officers were shouting in confusion, running from rail to rail, trying to regroup.

  Two hatches on the top of the submersible began to rise.

  “You!” From the deck, Cumbershum pointed at the passengers. “Inside, now!”

  Bellis retreated into the corridor.

  Jabber help me oh dear gods oh spit and shit, she thought in a confused stream. She stared wildly about and heard passengers running pointlessly from place to place.

  Then suddenly she remembered the little cupboard, from where she could see the deck.

  Outside, beyond the thin wall, she could hear shouts and gunshots. Frantically, she cleared the shelf in front of the window and put her eyes to the dirty pane.

  Bursts of smoke discolored the air. Men ran past the glass in panicked rout. Beyond them and below, across the deck, little groups of men fought in confused and ugly battle.

  The invaders were mostly men and cactus-people, a few tough-looking women, and Remade. They were dressed in ostentatious and outlandish gear: long colorful coats and pantaloons, high boots, and studded belts. What distinguished them from the pirates of pantomime or cheap prints was the grime and age of their clothes, the fixed determination in their faces and the organized efficiency of their attacks.

  Bellis saw everything with impossible detail. She perceived it as a series of tableaux, like heliotypes flashed up one after the other in the dark. The sound seemed disassociated from what she saw, a wiry buzz of noise at the back of her skull.

  She saw the captain and Cumbershum screaming orders from the forecastle, firing their pistols and frantically reloading. Blue-clad sailors fought with inexpert desperation. A cactacae midshipman threw down his broken blade and felled one of the buccaneers with a massive punch, roared with pain as the man’s comrade hacked deep into his forearm in a spray of sap. A group of terrified men attacked the pirates with muskets and bayonets, hesitated, and were caught between two Remade with massive blunderbusses. The young sailors went down screaming in a rain of ragged flesh and shrapnel.

  Buzzing sedately between the masts, Bellis saw suspended figures, three or four of them, harnessed to balloons like the first scout, flying low over the fighting, firing flintlocks into the crowd.

  Gore stained the deck.

  There was more and more screaming. Bellis was trembling. She bit her lip. There was something unreal about the scene. The violence was grotesque and hideous, but in the wide eyes of the sailors Bellis saw bewilderment, a doubt that this could possibly be happening.

  The pirates fought with heavy scimitars and squat pistols. In their multicolored clothes they looked like rabble, but they were quick and disciplined, and they fought like an army.

  “Dammit!” shouted Captain Myzovic, then looked up and fired. One of the dangling balloonists jerked, and his head snapped back in an arc of blood. His hands clutched spastically at his belt, releasing ballast like heavy droppings. The corpse began to rise, swiftly, spiraling into the clouds.

  The captain gesticulated frantically. “Regroup, for fuck’s sake,” he shouted. “Take that bastard on the poop deck!”

  Bellis twisted her head, but she could not quite see the captain’s target. She heard him, though, close to her, giving terse orders. The invaders responded, breaking off skirmishes to form tight units, targeting officers, trying to break the line of sailors blocking their way to the bridge.

  “Surrender!” shouted the voice beside her window. “Surrender and this finishes now!”

  “Dispatch that bastard!” the captain shouted to his crew.

  Five or six sailors ran past Bellis’ window, swords and pistols drawn. There was a moment of silence, then a thud and a faint crackling.

  “Oh Jabber . . .” The cry was hysterical, but it broke off suddenly in a retching exhalation. There was a blossoming of screams.

  Two of the men stumbled back into Bellis’ view, and she cried out aghast. They collapsed to the deck in great gouts of blood, and died quickly. Their clothes and bodies were savaged with an incredible number of wounds, as if they had been outnumbered by hundreds of enemies. There was not a six-inch space on any of them that was not scored with some deep gash. Their heads were shredded flesh and bone.

  Bellis was transfixed. She trembled, her hands at her mouth. There was something deeply unnatural about those wounds. They seemed to shiver between states, deep rends that were suddenly insubstantial and dreamlike. But the blood that pooled below them was quite real, and the men were really dead.

  The captain was staring in shock. Bellis heard a thousand overlapping whispers of air. There were two blubbering screams, and wet drumbeats as bodies fell.

  The last of the sailors ran past Bellis, back the way he had come, howling in terror. A hurled flintlock smacked solidly into the back of his head. He fell to his knees.

  “You godsforsaken swine!” Captain Myzovic was screaming. His voice so
unded outraged and deeply afraid. “You demon-loving bastard!”

  Paying him no attention, a grey-clad man walked slowly into Bellis’ field of vision. He was not tall. He moved with studied poise, carrying his heavily muscled body as if he were a much more slender man. He wore leather armor, a dark charcoal outfit studded with pockets, belts, and holsters. It was streaked and streaked with blood. Bellis could not see his face.

  He walked toward the fallen man, holding a straight sword stained completely red and dribbling thickly.

  “Surrender,” he said quietly to the man before him, who looked up in terror and sobbed, fumbled idiotically for his knife.

  The grey-clad man spun instantly in the air, his arms and legs bent. He twirled as if he were dancing and stamped out quickly, the bottom of his foot slamming into the fallen man’s face and smashing him back. The sailor sprawled, bleeding, unconscious or dead. As the man in grey landed he was instantly still. It was as if he had not moved.

  “Surrender,” he shouted, very loud, and the men of the Terpsichoria faltered.

  They were losing the fight.

  Bodies lay like litter, and dying men screamed for help. Most of the dead wore the blue of the New Crobuzon Merchant Navy. Every second more pirates emerged from the submersible and the armored tugs. They surrounded the Terpsichoria’s men, corralled them on the main deck.

  “Surrender,” shouted the man again, his accent unfamiliar. “Throw down your weapons and we’ll end this. Raise your hands against us and we’ll cull you until you hear sense.”

  “Gods fuck and blast it . . .” shouted Captain Myzovic, but the pirate commander interrupted him.

  “How many of your men would you kill, Captain?” he said, projecting his voice like an actor. “Order them to drop their weapons now, and they need not feel like traitors. Otherwise you order them to die.” He drew out a thick pad of felt from his pocket and began to wipe his blade. “Decide, Captain.”

  The deck was silent. There was only the faint sound of engines from the aeronauts.

  Myzovic and Cumbershum huddled in conversation for a second, and then the captain looked out at his bewildered, frightened men and threw up his hands.

  “Drop your weapons,” he shouted. There was a pause before his men obeyed. Muskets and pistols and short swords smacked dully against the deck. “You have the advantage, sir,” he yelled.

  “Stay where you are, Captain,” shouted the man in grey. “I’ll come to you.” He spoke quickly in Salt to the pirates standing with him in front of the window. Faintly, Bellis heard a word that sounded like “passengers,” and adrenaline made her giddy.

  Bellis huddled still and quiet while she heard shrieks from the corridors beyond, as the pirates led the passengers outside.

  She heard Johannes Tearfly, the pitiful tears of Meriope, the frightened pomposity of Dr. Mollificatt. She heard a shot followed by a terrified scream.

  From outside, Bellis could hear the terrified passengers lamenting as they were ordered onto the main deck.

  The pirates were thorough. Bellis was silent, but she could hear the slamming of doors as the passages were searched. She tried desperately to wedge the door closed, but the man in the corridor shouldered it open with ease; and faced with him all grim and bloodstained, faced with his machete, she lost any heart for resistance. She dropped the bottle with which she had armed herself and let him haul her out.

  The crew were lined up, almost a hundred of them, in wounded misery at one end of the deck. Their dead had been thrown over the side. The passengers were huddled together, a little way apart. Some of them, like Johannes, had bloody noses and bruises.

  In the middle of the passengers, nondescript in brown and looking as subdued and miserable as all the others, was Silas Fennec. He kept his head down. He would not meet Bellis’ furtive gaze.

  In the center of the deck stood the Terpsichoria’s stinking cargo: the scores of Remade brought up from below. They were totally confused, myopic in the light, staring in confusion at the pirates.

  The flamboyant invaders swung from the rigging or swept debris into the sea. They surrounded the deck and trained their guns and bows on their captives.

  It had taken a long time to bring up all the terrified, bewildered Remade. When the fetid holds were checked, several dead bodies were found. They were dropped into the sea, where their metal limbs and additions took them very quickly down and out of the light.

  The huge submersible still lolled fatly in the water, clamped close to the Terpsichoria. The two vessels bobbed in time.

  The man in grey, the pirates’ leader, turned slowly to face his captives. It was the first time Bellis had seen his face.

  He was in his late thirties, she guessed, with cropped greying hair. Strong featured. His deep-set eyes were melancholy, his mouth set taut and sad.

  Bellis stood next to Johannes, near the silent officers. The leather-clad man walked toward the captain. As he passed the passengers, he looked directly at Johannes for two or three paces, then slowly away.

  “So,” said Captain Myzovic, loud enough for many people to hear. “The Terpsichoria is yours. I take it that you intend ransom? I might as well tell you, sir, that whichever power you represent has made a grave mistake. New Crobuzon will not take kindly to this.”

  The pirate leader was still.

  “No, Captain,” he said. Now that he was not shouting over battle, his voice was soft, almost feminine. Like his face, it seemed stained by some tragedy. “Not ransom. The power I represent cares not at all about New Crobuzon, Captain.” He met Myzovic’s eyes and shook his head slowly and solemnly. “Not at all.”

  He reached behind him, without looking, and one of his men handed him a big flintlock pistol. He held it in front of him expertly, squinting at it briefly and checking the pan.

  “Your men are brave, but they are not soldiers,” he said, hefting the weapon. “Will you look away, Captain?”

  There were seconds of silence before Bellis’ stomach pitched and her legs almost buckled as she understood what he meant.

  Realization hit the captain and others at the same moment. There were gasps as Myzovic’s eyes widened, and his face crawled with anger and terror. The emotions crowded each other out in an ugly battle. His mouth twisted, opened, and closed.

  “No I will not look away, sir,” he shouted finally, and Bellis’ breath caught at the sound of it, the hysteria and shock that broke his voice. “I will not, damn and fuck you, sir, you fucking coward, sir, you shit . . .”

  The man in grey nodded.

  “As you wish,” he said. He raised the gun and shot Captain Myzovic through the eye.

  There was a short crack and a burst of blood and bone as the captain spasmed backward, his ruined face snarling and stupid.

  As he hit the ground there was a chorus of screams and disbelieving gasps. Beside Bellis, Johannes staggered, making guttural sounds. Bellis retched and swallowed, her breath coming very fast as she stared at the dead man twitching in a slick of gore. She bent, afraid she might vomit.

  Somewhere behind her Sister Meriope stammered Darioch’s Lament.

  The murderer handed the gun back, received another newly primed and loaded. He turned back to the officers.

  “Oh Jabber,” Cumbershum crooned, his voice shaking. He stared at Myzovic’s body, then looked at the pirate. “Oh dear Jabber,” he whimpered, and closed his eyes. The man in grey shot him through the temple.

  “Gods!” someone shouted hysterically. The officers were yelling, looking wildly around, trying to back away. The thunder of those two gunshots seemed to haunt the deck like ghost sounds.

  People were screaming. Some of the officers had fallen to their knees in supplication. Bellis was hyperventilating.

  The man in grey quickly scaled the ladder to the forecastle and looked out over the deck.

  “The killing,” he shouted through cupped hands, “is over.”

  He waited for the frightened sounds to abate.

  “The kil
ling is over,” he repeated. “That’s all the killing we need to do. Do you hear? It is finished.”

  He spread his arms as noise began to grow again, this time of bewilderment and untrusting relief.

  “Listen to me,” he shouted. “I have an announcement. You, in blue, you sailors of the New Crobuzon Merchant Navy. Your navy days are over. You lieutenants and sublieutenants, you must reconsider your stations. There’s no room where we’re going for those who venerate their New Crobuzon commissions.” With desperate, panicked slyness, Bellis slid a glance at Fennec. He was gazing at his knotted hands with fierce intensity.

  “You . . .” continued the man, gesturing at the men and women from the holds. “You are no longer Remade, no longer slaves. You . . .” He looked at the passengers. “Your plans for your new life must change.”

  He gripped the deck and swept his eyes over his mystified prisoners. Slow channels of blood reached toward them from the cadavers of the captain and his first officer.

  “You must come with me,” the man said, just loud enough for everyone to hear. “To a new city.”

  Interlude I

  Elsewhere

  Unclear things glide and grapple rocks, pulling their way through the water.

  They move in the night through sea opaque with darkness, through cultivated fields of kelp and seaweed toward the lights of cray villages that scatter the shallows. They slide silently into the kraals.

  Penned seals glimpse them and taste the eddies of distorted water that spin off in their wakes, and in a panicked frenzy twist and hurl themselves against the woven walls and roofs of their cages. The intruders peer like curious goblins through the gouged window holes of huts and terrify the inhabitants, who rush out on their segmented legs wielding pitchforks and spears, fearfully jabbing.

  The cray farmers are quickly overcome.

  They are held, captured and held still, and questioned. Lulled by thaumaturgy, persuaded by violence, the cray mutter answers to hissed questions.

  In haphazard shards of information, the sinuous hunters learn things that they need to know.