By a sideling creep they went very slowly toward New Crobuzon. Cutter took them a long way from the route of the militia, whom they could see and hear approaching the frozen train. Cutter thought of the hundreds of Councillors who must be running, looking for hides in the rocks, heading swampward. The city refugees among them. The warren of stone forms must be full of the frightened.

"Judah," he said. He breathed the name. He did not know what emotion it was he spoke with. He thought of those killed by what Judah had done. "Judah."

They were hardly subtle or secretive; they left what must, Cutter thought, be blatant trails of footfalls and blood and broken branches. He hunkered under Judah, took the tall man’s weight. Other Councillors must have climbed out of the cut and down into the outside land, but by some quirk of geography or timing Cutter and Judah seemed alone, hauling over gorse and through dry wintered brush. They were alone in the landscape. Spirits. When they came to open level land they would look and miles off see the advance of the militia. Once a vantage gave Cutter a look at the perpetual train. He saw it, slightly out of the world, as if reality bowed under its weight, as if it were at the bottom of a pit. He saw it quite unmoving.

With the slow move of the shadows, Cutter saw the winter day grow older. He knew that things must be changing, time creeping around the timeless. I am here, under Judah’s arm. I am taking him back to New Crobuzon. The knowing in him that it would not last was a thorn.

I’ll not ask you anything. I’ll not ask you why you did what you did. Ain’t got time. But even unbidden Judah began to speak.

"There was nothing that could be done, not really. Nothing to keep them from harm. History had gone on. It was the wrong time." He was very calm. He spoke not to Cutter but to the world. Like one delirious. He was still utterly weak, but he spoke strongly. "History’d gone and that was… I never knew! I never knew I could do it. It was so hard, all the planning, trying to work it out, such learning, and it was… so-" He shook his hands at his head. "-so draining…"

"All right, Judah, all right." Cutter patted him and did not take his hand away. Held Judah. He filled suddenly, closed his eyes, blinked it down. What a pair we are, he thought, and actually laughed, and Judah laughed too.

New Crobuzon’s that way. Cutter directed their walk.

"Where shall we go, Judah?"

"Take me home," Judah said, and Cutter filled again.

"Yes," he said carefully. "Let me take you home."