"What did you mean?" he had said. They were in Sheck, under the brick of Outer Crow Station, where he had tracked the convolutes of paint. "What did you mean it turned out perfect?"

The truth appalled him of course, but worse was that he was not surprised.

"Do you think you’re the only one, boy?" Spiral Jacobs said. "I made suggestions all over. You was the best. Well done, son."

"What is it you wanted?" Ori said in Toro’s guttural voice, but he knew the answer, he realised. Jacobs wanted chaos. "Who are you? Why did you make the Collective?" Jacobs looked at him with something it took Ori seconds to recognise as contempt.

"Go away, boy," the tramp said. "You don’t make something like this. It weren’t me done this. I been doing other things. And what you done- frippery. Just go."

Ori was bewildered then debased. Everything the Toroans had done was a sideshow. Toro, Baron, his comrades… he did not understand what they had been used for, but he knew they had been used. His insides pitched. He could not breathe.

Without anger-with sudden calm-Ori knew he must kill Jacobs. For revenge, the protection of his city-he was not sure. He came close. He raised a crossbow pistol. The old man did not move. Ori aimed at his eye. The man did not move.

Ori fired and air rushed with the bolt, and Spiral Jacobs was unmoved, staring with two unbloodied eyes. The quarrel was embedded in the wall. Ori drew a pistol with clustered barrels. One by one the bullets he fired at Spiral Jacobs hit the ground or the wall. They would not touch the old man. Ori put his gun away and punched at Spiral Jacobs’ head, and though Jacobs had not moved Ori hit air.

Anger took him. He launched at the old man who had led him to Toro, had helped him, had had him kill. Ori kicked with all the power in him, all the strength given by the arcane helmet, gouged, and the old man did not move.

Ori could not touch Spiral Jacobs. He tried again. He could not touch him.

His anger had become despair, and even the Collectivists, even the militia a mile away who had grown inured to the noises of fighting stopped at his lowing. Ori could not touch the old man.

Spiral Jacobs was drunk. He was a real vagrant. He was just something else as well.

At last he walked away with slow near-rambling steps, and Toro, doglike, could only follow. Jacobs had walked to the centre of New Crobuzon, toward the vaults of Perdido Street Station, and Toro had followed. Ori was reduced to calling questions Spiral Jacobs would not answer.

"What were you doing?

"Why me?

"What about the others, what were they supposed to do? What’s the real plan?

"What are you doing?"

The Collective. It was a Remaking.