He spoke fast. He had been warned he would not have long. "I ain’t spoken before to people like this," he said and they could hear his voice trembling, this man who had carried guns and killed for New Crobuzon.

The war’s a lie (he said). I got my badge. (He drew it out by his fingertips as if it were dirty. City finds that he’s a dead man, thought Ori.) Months on them ships, we went through the Firewater Straits, on till landfall, and we thought we’d have to fight on the seas, we was trained to, sailor-soldiers, ‘acause them Tesh ships were out for us, we saw them and their weapons in flocks circling but they ain’t seen us, and it ain’t all city-loyal, the militia, not now, us from Dog Fenn on that ship were there because there ain’t no other jobs to do. Let loose and told to go liberate them Tesh villages.

They don’t want us. I seen things… What they done to us. What we done back. (There was a restive stirring somewhere in the streets and a brief incoming of Caucus scouts handslanging frantically to the Proscribed man and he whispered to the speaker. Ori got ready to run. The militia renegade gabbled in anger.) It ain’t no war for liberty, nor for the Teshi, they hate us and we, we fucking hated them I tell you, and it was a, it’s carnage there, just plain murder, they sending their children out stuffed full of hex to make us melt, I had my men melt on me, and I done things… You don’t know what it is, in Tesh. They ain’t like us. Jabber, I done things to people… (The Proscribed man hurried him, pulled him to the shed’s edge.)

So screw the militia and screw their war. I ain’t no friends to the damn Teshi after what they done but I don’t hate them half so much as I hate them. (He pointed at the basalt column-palace of Parliament, prodding the sky with tubes and tuskish jags, profane and arrogant.) Anyone needs dying it ain’t some damn Tesh peasant, it’s them, in there, who got us here. Who’ll take them out? (He cocked his thumb, shot his finger several times toward the Parliament-a Remaking offence.) Screw their war.

And at that someone from Runagate Rampant barked, "Yeah, so fight to lose, fight for defeat," and there was angry calling from those who saw stupidity in this. They yelled at the Runagaters that they supported Tesh, that they were agents of the Crawling Liquid, but before there were fists between the factions, the whistles of the guards went, and the crowd began to scatter. Ori wrote fast on a tear of paper.