"What do you want from us, Judah? We ain’t got troops. I mean we do, but who’s ‘we’? I can’t control the Collective’s fighters. If I try to tell them what we need, they’ll think-even godsdamned now-that it’s a sodding ploy from a Runagater, trying to take over the Collective. I ain’t a military commander; I couldn’t control them. Or do you want Runagaters? Specifically?" He looked at his factionists.

"There’s a few left. Kirriko Street Irregulars is ours, but who the fuck knows how to contact them? The others are at the front. They’re on the barricades, Judah. What would you have me do? You think we can call a godsdamned meeting of the delegates, explain the situation? We’re breaking down, Judah-it’s each district for itself. We have to hold off the militia."

"Curdin, if we don’t stop this there won’t be a damn city, let alone the Collective."

"I understand." The Remade man’s eyes looked rubbed with sand. He was scabbed from fighting. He swayed. "What would you have me do?"

A standoff, as if they are enemies. A silence.

"The city needs this."

"I understand, Judah. What would you have us do?"

"There must be someone, some thaumaturge, some of the kithless…"

"I know who makes the spirals," someone said.

"Maybe there is, but you’ll have to find them, and don’t look at me like that Judah of course I’ll do what I can, but I don’t know where to go. It’s the end now: there ain’t no one giving orders."

"I know who makes the spirals. I know who makes the spirals."

Quiet, finally. It was the young woman Runagater who spoke.

"Who makes the spirals. Who’s calling something. The Tesh agent."

"How?" Judah said. "Who?"

"I don’t know him, not really… but I know someone who does. He used to be a Runagater, or nearly. I know him from meetings, Curdin. You do too. Ori."

" Ori? Who went to Toro?"

"Ori. He’s still with Toro, I think. It was Toro killed Stem-Fulcher, they reckon, for whatever bloody good it did. Toro disappeared after, but he’s been seen again. Maybe Ori’s with him. Maybe Ori can bring Toro to help.

"Ori knows who does the spirals. He told me."

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Toro was a dog now, a stupid and brutalised dog following a master it hated, unable to stop. Ori considered it that way.

We did it! he had thought. For a very short time. For less than one night. Even in the sadness and the shock of learning the first Bull’s motives and her manipulations, even uncoupled as he felt himself from the movement he had thought defined him, he had been proud that the killing of the Mayor had been this great catalyst.