Judah had told Cutter of these strange conversations, Pennyhaugh half-crowing at Judah, become his enemy, but them still drinking together. Not debates but performances. "I only see him because he gives me information, and I can give it to the Caucus," Judah said. "And I don’t know… I don’t think he’s stupid enough just to sound off. It’s some kind of gift. "

The committee listened. There were the middle-aged, and Remades who remembered New Crobuzon, women who had once been the camp’s whores: but more than half the delegates were young, had been children or unborn when the Council was made. They watched Judah speak.

"There are always rumours. I asked him, like I know how to do, so he thinks he’s offering it to me. He told me what was happening. You know there’s war against Tesh." They did not know the details, but so big a war as this made Bas-Lag shudder, and stories reached the Iron Council by bush-adventurers.

"There’s slaughter in the Firewater Straits: they call it the Sanguine Straits now. They broke the Witchocracy’s thalassomach hex, and the navy’s pushing ships through, all the way around the coast. Thousands of miles. But another expedition set off, weeks back. Below the warships. Ictineos. Maybe grindylow-led, I don’t know. But they’re coming. It’d take a long time, but they must be nearly here. Might have made landfall.

"They never forgot you in the city, you know. They never forgot Iron Council. Long live. People whisper the words. Your name’s on walls. Parliament never forgave you, never forgot what you done. And now they know where you are."

He had waited for their alarm to subside.

"You couldn’t stay hid forever. You knew it. I don’t know how they know. Godspit, it’s been more’n twenty years, it could be anything. A wanderer tells another tells another tells another: it could have been one of your own, finding their way back to New Crobuzon, caught and interrogated. It could be a spy." He spoke over the noise that spurred. "Far-seeing on a new scale. I don’t know. Point is they know where you are. They found you. I don’t even know how long they’ve known. But they’d never get a troop across the cacotopic stain, or through the Galaggi Veldt and forests and whatever- we had Qurabin." But we didn’t at first, Judah, Cutter thought. What were you planning to do? "But with the war, that’s changed. Because the Firewater Straits are open.

"They’re coming all the way round, by sea. They’re trying to get past Tesh, up past Maru’ahm, and they’ll land on the edge of the grasslands. They’ll come at you not from the east but the west. They could never do that till now.