She could not feel Lublamai’s affliction as deeply as his two friends, of course, but the sight of that dribbling, mindless thing in the cot shocked and frightened her. She was glad that something had happened to Mr. Motley to give her a few hours or days with Isaac, who seemed broken with guilt and misery.

Occasionally he would flare into angry, useless action, shouting “Right!” and clasping his hands decisively, but there was nothing to be decided, no action he could take. Without some lead, some hint, the start of some trail, there was nothing to be done.

That night, she and Isaac had slept together upstairs, he clutching her miserably, without a hint of arousal. David had gone home, promising to return early in the morning. Yagharek had refused a mattress, had curled into a peculiar, hunched, cross-legged crouch in the corner, obviously designed to keep from crushing his supposed wings. Lin did not know if he was maintaining his illusion for her sake, or if he truly slept, still, in the pose he had used since childhood.

The next morning they sat around the table, drinking coffee and tea, eating stolidly, wondering what to do. When he checked the post, Isaac was quick to discard the rubbish and return with Lemuel’s note: unstamped, hand-delivered by some minion.

“What does he say?” asked David quickly.

Isaac held the paper so that David and Lin could read over his shoulder. Yagharek hung back.

Have tracked down source of Peculiar Caterpillar in my records. One Josef Cuaduador. Acquisitions clerk for Parliament. Not wanting to waste time, and remembering promise of Fat Fee, have already been to speak to Mr. Cuaduador along with my Large Associate Mr. X. Exerted some little pressure for cooperation. At first Mr. C. thought I was militia. Reassured him otherwise, then ensured his loquacity with X’s friend Flintlock. Seems our Mr. C. liberated caterpillar from official shipment or some-such. Been regretting it ever since. (I did not even pay him much for it.) No knowledge of purpose or source of grub. No knowledge of fate of others from original group-took only one. One lead only: (Useless? Useful?) Recipient of packet named Dr. Barbell? Barrier? Berber? Barlime? etc. in R amp;D.

Am keeping track of services rendered, Isaac. Itemized bill to follow.

Lemuel Pigeon

“Fantastic!” Isaac exploded, on finishing the letter. “A fucking lead…”

David looked utterly aghast.

“Parliament?” he said, a strangled gasp. “We’re fucking about with Parliament? Oh dear Jabber, do you have any idea of the scale of shit we’re messed up in? What the fuck d’you mean ‘Fantastic!’ you fucking cretin, Isaac? Oh, marvellous! We just have to ask Parliament for a list of all those in the top secret Research and Development department whose names begin with a B, then find them one by one and ask if they know anything about flying things that scare their victims comatose, specifically how to catch them. We’re home free”

No one spoke. A pall settled slowly on the room.

At its south-westerly corner, Brock Marsh met Petty Coil, a dense knot of chancers, crime and architecture of decayed splendour wedged into a kink in the river.

A little over a hundred years previously, Petty Coil had been an urban hub for the major families. The Mackie-Drendas and the Turgisadys; Dhrachshachet, the vodyanoi financier and founder of the Drach Bank; Sirrah Jeremile Carr, the merchant-farmer: all had their great houses in Petty Coil’s wide streets.

But industry had exploded in New Crobuzon, much of it bankrolled by those very families. Factories and docks budded and proliferated. Griss Twist, just across the river, enjoyed a short-lived boom of small machinofacture, with all the noise and stink that that entailed. It became the site of massive riverside tips. A new landscape of ruin and refuse and industrial filth was created, in a speeded-up parody of geological process. Carts dumped load after load of broken machines, rotting paper, slag, organic offal and chymical detritus into the fenced-off rubbish tips of Griss Twist. The rejected matter settled and shifted and fell into place, affecting some shape, mimicking nature. Knolls, valleys, quarries and pools bubbling with foetid gas. Within a few years the local factories had gone but the dumps remained, and the winds that blew in from the sea could send a pestilential stench over the Tar into Petty Coil.

The rich deserted their homes. Petty Coil degenerated in a lively fashion. It became noisier. Paint and plaster bubbled, desquamating grotesquely, as the massive houses became homes for more and more of New Crobuzon’s swelling population. Windows broke, were fixed roughly, broke again. As small food-shops and bakers and carpenters moved in, Petty Coil fell willing prey to the city’s ineluctable capacity for spontaneous architecture. Walls and floors and ceilings were called into question, amended. New and inventive uses were found for deserted constructions.

Derkhan Blueday made her way hurriedly towards this mess of abused, misused grandeur. She carried a bag close. Her face was set and miserable.

She came up over Cockscomb Bridge, one of the city’s most ancient edifices. It was narrow and roughly cobbled, with houses built into the very stones. The river was invisible from the centre of the bridge. On either side, Derkhan could see nothing but the squat, rough-edged skyline of houses nearly a thousand years old, their intricate marble façades crumbled long ago. Lines of washing stretched across the width of the bridge. Raucous shouted conversations and arguments bounced back and forth.

In Petty Coil itself, Derkhan walked quickly under the raised Sud Line and bore north. The river she had passed over bent sharply back on itself, veering towards her in an enormous S, before righting its course and heading east and down to meet the Canker.

Petty Coil was blurring with Brock Marsh. The houses were smaller, the streets narrower and more intricately twisted. Mildewing old houses tottered overhead, their steeply slanting roofs like capes slung over narrow shoulders, making them furtive. In their cavernous front rooms and central courtyards, where trees and bushes died as filth encroached, rude signs were plastered advertising scarabomancy and automatic reading and enchantment therapy. Here, the poorest or most unruly of Brock Marsh’s delinquent chymists and thaumaturges fought for space with charlatans and liars.

Derkhan checked the directions she had been given, and found her way to St. Sorrel’s Mews. It was a tight little passage ending in a collapsed wall. To her right, Derkhan saw the tall, rust-coloured building described in the note. She entered through the doorless threshold and picked her way over building debris, through a short unlit passage that virtually dripped with damp. At the end of the corridor, she saw the bead curtain she had been told to look for, strings of broken glass on wire, swaying gently.

She steeled herself, drawing the vicious shards back gently, drawing no blood. Derkhan entered the little parlour beyond.

Both of the room’s windows had been covered: thick material was glued to them in great fibrous clumps that clotted the air with heavy shadow. The furnishings were minimal. The same shade of brown as the darkened atmosphere, they seemed half invisible. Behind a low table, sipping tea in an absurdly dainty manner, a plump, hairy woman basked in a sumptuous decaying armchair.

She eyed Derkhan.

“What can I do for you?” she asked evenly, in a tone of resigned irritation.

“You’re the communicatrix?” said Derkhan.