The hours went fast with the mesmeric beat of train wheels that Cutter had forgotten, that the months had taken from his mind as the Iron Council crept too slowly to pick up any rhythm. The train moved just fast enough to make the noise come. The percussion of wheels, the beat of pistons. The uh uh, uh uh, like being tapped on the shoulder again and again, reminded of something, a nervous noise. Cutter rode the train’s anxiety.

I’ll know, in a moment I’ll know, he said inside himself. In a moment I’ll decide. And the perpetual train did not stop and it brought him miles and miles closer to New Crobuzon before, it seemed, he had a chance to think.

What will happen?

He had a weapon ready. He rode in the caboose with outsiders, refugees, who were excited and terribly afraid of what was ahead. It curved, it curved, as if trying to hide its terminus. Miles yet, Cutter thought, but the end of the line seemed to glow darkly just out of sight.

"I need to go home. They’re waiting for me," someone said. Something is, Cutter thought. Something’s waiting for you.

I won’t stay. It was a certainty, suddenly. I’ll not go to that scum Drogon, but I’ll not give him my death either. What will you do? He gave the question a voice. I’ll run. Where will you go? Where I must. And Judah Low? If I can. If I can find him. Judah Low.

Oh Judah oh Judah. Judah, Judah.

When the night came down as if darkness thickened the air, they did not stop. Light went from their windows across the grey plain and made the train a millipede on gaslight legs.

They must be a few tens of miles off now. Quite suddenly the tracks were clean and clear. Perhaps there had been some passage, Cutter thought; perhaps the city had had trains run the pointless distance this far and back, ferrying ghost passengers to ghost stations. Then in the bone light of such early morning he saw figures on the trackside darkness waving adzes and thick twig brooms, shouting for the train to Go on, go on and telling it Welcome home.

Fugitives from New Crobuzon’s Collective. They were there in increasing numbers out of the black before the train, blinking pinned in its moony lights and waving. The day began to come. Deserters from the Collective’s war who had come through Rudewood or the dangers of the alleys west of Dog Fenn, where the militia hunted and gave out revenge. They had come to be an unskilled work party clearing the lines.