There were strikes most weeks in Gross Coil now. There was trouble in Smog Bend. Quillers had attacked the khepri ghetto in Creekside. The militia went into Dog Fenn, Riverskin and Howl Barrow, took unioners and petty crooks and Nuevists away. The foremost exponent of DripDrip poetry was beaten to death in one such raid, and his funeral became a small riot. Ori went, and threw stones with the mourners.

Ori felt as if he were waking. His city was a hallucination. He could bite down on the air; he could wring tension out of it. Daily he passed pickets, chanted with them.

"It’s gearing up," Old Shoulder said. He sounded gleeful. "When we get it done-when our friend can finally get through and, uh, meet up with you-know-who…"

The gang glanced, and Ori saw several quick looks his way. They were not sure they should be speaking in front of him. But they could not keep themselves quiet. He was careful, did not give in to his desire to ask them Who? Who is I-know-who?

But Old Shoulder was staring at a streetside fixing-post, its fat pillar many-skinned in ancient posters. There was one block-printed heliotype, a stark rendition of a familiar face, and Old Shoulder was looking at it as he spoke, and Ori understood what he was being told. "We’ll finish it all off," the old cactus-man said. "We’ll change everything when our friend meets a certain someone."

He had not seen Spiral Jacobs for days. When at last Ori tracked him down, the tramp was distracted. He had not been to the shelter in a long time. He looked exhausted, more unkempt and dirty even than usual.

Ori followed leads from other forgotten men and women to find him, at last, in The Crow. He was shuffling between the great shops of the city’s central district, its statues, facades of grand marble and scrubbed white stone. Jacobs had chalk in his hand, and every few steps he would stop and murmur to himself, and draw some very faint and meaningless sign upon the wall.

"Spiral," Ori said, and the old vagrant turned, his rage at the interruption making Ori start. It was a moment before Spiral Jacobs composed himself.

They sat in BilSantum Plaza among the jugglers. In the warm colours of the evening, Perdido Street Station loomed beside them, its variegated architecture unsettling, massive and impressive, the five railway lines spreading out of its raised arch-mouths like light from a star. The Spike, the militia minaret, soared up from its western side. Perdido Street Station seemed to lean on it like a man on a staff.

Ori looked at the seven skyrails that stretched from the Spike’s summit. He looked along one tugged to the southeast, over the red-light district and the salubrious Spit Hearth, over the scholars’ quarter of Brock Marsh, to another tower, and on to Strack Island, to Parliament itself, surrounded by the conjoining rivers.

"It’s the Mayor," said Ori, while Spiral Jacobs seemed not to listen, only to play with his chalk and think whatever he wanted to think. "Toro’s crew are fed up with taking out militia corporals and what-have-you. They want to kick things off. They’re going to kill the Mayor."