But at last the grassland. They had mapped and made peace with the neighbours they found. "We got more maps than the New Crobuzon Library." The train kept moving. At very last, way west, their scouts found the sea.

"The train’s our strength. We have to keep it strong." They could never have the train stand still. It would have been a betrayal. They knew-they always knew-that when they found the place where they could rest, where the land would support them, even then they would never let the train fall still. They worshipped it, in a profane way. They reshaped it, made it monstrous, kept its engines primed, able to power on anything that would burn. They had built a life.

Years. Throwing up structures as they needed them. Their town had grown. And nomads and lost adventurers of all races came to join the renegopolis. The Iron Council.

The town and its government were one. Its delegates, its committee were voted on by catchments based on work and age and random factors. There were vicious arguments, methods of persuasion not always admirable, a hinterland of democracy, patronage and charisma. There were those who advocated moving; those who said the wheels should stop. There had been factions within factions in the early years, over methods of industry and agriculture. They had continued to build life, delegating, being delegates, arguing, voting, disagreeing and making things work.

"Before, I was an oiler," the storyteller had said. "I oiled the wheels."

"And you know why I’m here," Judah had said. "Now it’s time for you to reach a new decision. It’s time for you to leave. To move again."

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Nineteen

Civilisations had been in the tablelands through which they passed, in this strange puna. The Iron Council, tracking back in head-on collision with its own history, passed through ruins.

Something that had perhaps once been a temple, a town of temples. In the shadow of a cratered ziggurat they laid their tracks, and the vent of their engines rose over the vines. They drove home spikes and split corroded marble gods in the rootmass. The Iron Council made the dead home shiver with hammer-blows. It sooted the bas-reliefs of battles in heaven. The Iron Council cut through the ivy-clotted city, towers gone to moulder.

"I know a man from a long time gone," Judah had said to the committee. "We used to be partners. He was a government man for a time, works for some big concern now, but still has his ears open. He and me have history, and sometimes he needs golems for his work. And when he comes to me for that, we talk."