"We’re doing good things, if you want to come back. The Flexibles are doing another show: ‘Rud and the Gutter and the Devil’s Embassy.’ Can’t use Rudgutter’s name, obviously, but it’s about the Midsummer Nightmares, years back: there’s rumours they tried to make some wicked deals to fix it."

Ori listened and thought, You’ll do a show of me in years to come. "Ori and the Toro-Gored Mayor." Things’ll be different then.

Two Chaindays running he went to The Grocer’s Sweetheart. No one was there the first night. The second, the trapdoor was raised to him and he was let back into the Runagate Rampant meeting. The Jacks were not all the same as they had been. The Remade man he had met months back was still there. There was a vodyanoi stevedore and a crippled cactus-man Ori did not remember, a few others looking through the literature.

A woman led the meeting. She was small and intense, older than he but still young. She spoke well. She eyed him, and when her face took on an uncertain expression he remembered her: she was the knit-machinist.

She spoke about the war. It was a tense meeting. Not only did the Runagate Rampant not support the war’s aims, stated or interpreted-that position was common to the tiny dissident groups-they said they fought for New Crobuzon to lose.

"You think Tesh is any better?" someone said, angry and incredulous.

The knit-worker said, "It ain’t that we think it’s better, it’s that our prime opponents are here, right here."

Ori did not speak. He watched her and tensed only a second when it seemed one man’s anger at what he called her Tesh-love would make him violent, but she calmed him. Ori did not think she convinced everyone-he was not sure of his own feelings for the war, beyond that both sides were bastards, and that he did not care-but she did well. When the others had gone he waited and applauded her, and he was only half mocking.

"Where’s Jack?" Ori said. "The Jack who used to take these?"

"Curdin?" she said. "Gone. Militia. Snatched. No one knows."

They were silent. She gathered her papers. Curdin was dead or jailed or who knew what.

"Sorry."

She nodded.

"You did well."

She nodded again. "He told me about you." She did not look at him. "He told me a lot about you. He was disappointed you weren’t coming no more. Thought a lot of you. ‘Boy’s got the anger,’ he said. ‘Hope he knows what to do with it.’ So… so what’s it like on the wild side, Jack? How’s it with, with the Bonnot Gang, or Toro, or Poppy’s lot or whoever you’re with now? Think people don’t know? So, so what is it you’re doing now?"