"Listen. I’ll give you Judah’s message again.

"You have to turn. The Iron Council has to turn. Or leave the train. You come on to New Crobuzon, it’s suicide. You’ll die. They’ll destroy you. And that can’t be. That ain’t acceptable. Iron Council has to turn."

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Two

"They’ll destroy you," he said. "Do you want to die?" he said. "You owe yourself to the world, we need you."

Of course they would not be persuaded. They continued, pushed through the buckled land leaving the scabs of fight behind them. Cutter showed horror that they would not do as he said, but he had expected nothing else. He made his case and the Iron Councillors answered him in various ways.

Some gave the kind of idiot triumphalism that enraged him. "We beat New Crobuzon before, we’ll do it again!" they might say. Cutter would stare uncomprehending because he saw that they knew what they said was untrue, that it would not be that way. They knew.

Others were more thought-through. They gave him pause.

"What would we be?" Thick Shanks said. The cactus-man etched a cicatrix into the skin of his inner arm, cutting a snake shape with an animal’s tooth. "What would you have us be, bandits? We lived free in a republic we made. You want me to give that up, be a bloody wilderness hobo? I’d rather die fighting, Cutter."

"We have a responsibility," Ann-Hari said. Cutter never felt eased in her presence. The fervour in her unnerved him-it made him tired and uncertain of himself, as though she might win him over against his own will. He knew he was jealous-no one had had such an effect on Judah Low as Ann-Hari.

"We’re a dream," she said. "The dream of the commons. Everything came to this, everything came here. We got to here. This is what we are. History’s pushing us."

What does that mean ? he thought. What are you saying ?

"It’s time for us to push through. Whatever happens. We have to come back now, you see?" That was all she would say.

The whispersmith’s friends, his fellow cavalry, disappeared on their horses Remade and whole, becoming dustclouds as they headed east, south. Drogon stayed. Cutter was not sure why.

"What do you want this lot to do? You been in the city… you know we’ll be killed if we go."

"They’ll be killed maybe." Drogon shrugged. "They know what’s happening. Who’m I to stop them? They can’t stop now. You set yourself on a rail and it comes to be what you do. They have to keep going."