She did turn to him, though he thought at first she would not. She looked with the effort of one waking and shook her head as if she did not understand his language. She did not speak, but she gave him to understand that she was going nowhere, that she was done.

"And, and…" Some pride or respect meant Ori would not have himself sound plaintive or aghast, and he spoke only when he knew his voice would level. "And this was the only way, then, eh? Us?" Ruby, he was saying, Ulliam, Kit, all of them down there, did they have to be part of this? Baron, godsdammit, and Old Shoulder. Gods know who’s died for you.

She gestured at the stiffening Mayor.

"We done what they wanted. We done what they come here to do."

"Yes." Yes but it isn’t the same. It was a sideshow, it wasn’t what you were here for, and that’s different, it makes it different.

Does it? Didn’t we win ?

A middle-aged woman from the working-class estates of southwest New Crobuzon sat by two blood-glazed corpses. A young man from Dog Fenn held a gun uneasily and listened to his enemies getting closer. Everything was different.

"I want to go, " he said, shaking suddenly as all the anxiety he had dulled welled in him. He felt himself want again, for the first time in many days. And what it was he wanted, was to get out.

"So go."

From the bitten-out hole through which they had come in he could hear hammering, sledgehammers taken to the doors of their empty house and echoing up its stairwells.

"You’ve killed me!"

"For Jabber’s sake, Ori, go." She kicked her helmet at him. It jerked, rocked on its horns. He looked at it, at her, at it, picked it up. "Hexes are down. Go." It was very heavy.

"I don’t know how to use this. What do I do?"

"Just push. Just push."

There were shouts from the approaching militia.

"You’re giving me your helmet?"

She screamed at him. She said Go! but it stopped being a word, was quickly more animal than that, was only misery. He backed away and looked at the sticky emitting dead who kept her company, the way she sat, too tired even to tug her baby’s hands.