“As I’ve told you, I feel safer with a little protection,” said Lemuel, and smiled coldly. “I put the word out that there was a little protection work going, and I gather there’ve been a few responses. I’m off to assess ‘em. And I will guarantee to bring a metalhexer for you before the evening sets in. One of the applicants, or failing that there’s a guy who owes me a favour in Abrogate Green. I’ll see you both at…um…seven o’clock, outside the dump.”

He left. Derkhan moved closer to Isaac in his exhausted misery and put her arm around him. He sniffled like a child in her arms, the dream of Lin still clinging to him.

A homegrown nightmare. A genuine misery from deep in his mind.

The militia crews were busy fitting enormous mirrors of polished metal to the backs of the airship harnesses.

It was impossible to refit the engine rooms or change the layout of the cabs, but they covered the front windows with thick black curtains. The pilot would spin the wheel blind, instructed by the yells from the officers halfway along the gantry, staring out of the rear windows above the enormous propellers, into the angled mirrors that offered a confusing but complete view of the sky before the dirigible.

Motley’s hand-picked crew were escorted to the top of the Spike by Eliza Stem-Fulcher herself.

“I gather,” she said to one of Motley’s captains, a taciturn Remade human whose left arm had been replaced with an unruly python that he fought to quieten, “that you know how to pilot an aerostat.” He nodded. She did not remark on the obvious illegality of that skill. “You’ll be piloting the Beyn’s Honour, your colleagues the Avanc. The militia have been warned. Keep an eye out for other air traffic. We thought you might want to get started this afternoon. The quarries tend to be inactive before the night, but we thought it might be an idea for you to get used to the controls.”

The captain did not respond. All around him, his crew were checking their equipment, checking the angles of their helmets’ mirrors. They were stern and cold. They seemed less fearful than the militia officers Stem-Fulcher had left in the training room below, practising aiming through mirrors, firing behind their own backs. Motley’s men, after all, had dealt with the slake-moths more recently.

Like one of her own officers, she saw that a couple of the gangsters wore flamethrowers; hard backpacks of pressurized oil that burst through a flaming nozzle to ignite. They had been modified, as had her own man’s, to spray the burning oil directly backwards out of the pack.

Stem-Fulcher stole another glance at several of Motley’s extraordinary Remade troops. It was impossible to tell how much original organic material was retained under the Remades’ metal layers. Certainly the impression was one of almost total replacement, with bodies sculpted with exquisite and unusual care to mimic human musculature.

At first sight, nothing of the human was visible. The Remade had heads of moulded steel. They even sported implacable faces of folded metal. Heavy industrial brows and inset eyes of stone or opaque glass, thin noses and pursed lips and cheekbones glinting darkly like polished pewter. The faces had been designed for aesthetic effect.

Stem-Fulcher had only realized that they were Remade, rather than fabulous constructs, when she had glimpsed the back of one’s head. Embedded behind the splendid metal face was a much less perfect human one.

This was the only organic feature retained. Jutting out from the back end of those immobile metal features were mirrors, like a sweep of hair. They were held in front of the Remades’ real, human eyes.

The body was at one hundred and eighty degrees to the human face, pistol-arms and legs and chest all facing the other way, with the metal head completing the illusion from the front. The Remade kept their bodies facing the same way as their unreversed companions at all times. They walked along corridors and into lifts with their arms and legs moving in a convincing automated analogue to a human stride. Stem-Fulcher had fallen deliberately behind them for a few steps, and watched their human eyes darting back and forth, their mouths twisted in concentration as they scanned what was ahead of them through their mirrors.

There were others, she saw, Remade more simply, with greater economy, to the same purpose. Their heads had been twisted around in a half-circle, until they gazed out from their own backs over a twisted, painful-looking neck. They stared into their mirrored helmets. Their bodies moved perfectly, without fumbling, walking and manipulating weapons and armour with hardly stilted motion. There was something almost more offputting about their relaxed, organic motions below reversed heads than the solid artificial motion of their more thoroughly Remade comrades.

Stem-Fulcher realized she was looking at the result of months or more of continual training, constantly living through mirrors. With bodies reversed as theirs were, it would have been a vital strategy. These troops, she pondered, must have been specifically designed and built with slake-moth husbandry in mind. Stem-Fulcher could hardly believe the scale of Motley’s operation. It would be no wonder, she thought ruefully, if, in dealing with the slake-moths, the militia seemed a little amateurish by comparison.

I think we were quite right to bring them on board, she reflected.

With the passage of the sun, the air over New Crobuzon slowly thickened. The light was thick and yellow as corn-oil.

Aerostats swam through that solar grease, eddying back and forth across the urban geography in a weird half-random motion.

Isaac and Derkhan stood in the street beyond the dump’s wire. Derkhan carried a bag, Isaac carried two. In the light, they felt vulnerable. They were unused to the city day. They had forgotten how to live in it.

They skulked as insignificantly as they could, and ignored the few passers-by.

“Why the godsdamn did Yag have to piss off like that?” hissed Isaac. Derkhan shrugged.

“He seems restless, all of a sudden,” she said. She thought, then continued slowly. “I know it’s bad timing,” she said, “but I find it…quite moving. He’s such a…an empty presence most of the time, you know? I mean, I know you get to talk to him in private, you know the…the real Yagharek…But most of the time he’s a garuda-shaped absence.” She corrected herself harshly. “No. He’s not garuda-shaped, is he? That’s the problem. He’s more of a man-shaped absence. But now…well, he seems to be filling up. I’m beginning to sense that he wants to do something or other, and doesn’t want to do something else.”

Isaac nodded slowly.

“I know what you mean,” he said. “There’s definitely something changing in him. I told him not to leave and he just ignored me. He’s definitely becoming more…wilful…if that’s a good thing.”

Derkhan was staring at him curiously.

She spoke slowly.

“You must be thinking of Lin all the time,” she said.

Isaac looked away. He said nothing for a moment. Then he gave a quick nod.

“Always,” he said abruptly, his face collapsing into the most shocking sadness. “Always. I can’t…I haven’t time to mourn. Yet.”

A little way away, the road curved and separated into a small clutch of alleys. From one of these hidden culs-de-sac came a sudden metallic bang. Isaac and Derkhan tensed and flinched backwards against the chainlink fence.

There was a whispering, and Lemuel peered around the corner of the alley.

He caught sight of Isaac and Derkhan, grinned triumphantly. He pushed his hands in a shoving motion, indicating that they should get into the dump. They turned and found their way to the tear in the wire mesh, checked that they were not watched and wriggled through into the wasteground.