Cutter felt an urge to push it over and watch it break apart, to save it from being stuck like that in time, but he let it stand.

"Who’s Drogon?" Judah asked. The susurrator looked lost without his horse. He was busying himself, letting them discuss him.

"He’d not be here if I’d my way," Pomeroy said. "For a whispersmith he’s got a damn lot of power. And we don’t know where he’s from."

"He’s a drifter," said Cutter. "Ranch-hand, tracker, you know. Some horse tramp. He heard you’d gone-gods know what the rumours are now. He’s attached hisself to us because he wants to find the Iron Council. Out of sentiment, I think. He’s saved us more'n once."

"He’s coming with us?" Judah said. They looked at him.

Carefully, Cutter said: "You know… you don’t have to go on. We could go back." Judah looked oddly at him. "I know you think you burnt your bridges with the golem trap in your rooms, and it’s true they’ll be watching for you, but dammit, Judah, you could go underground. You know the Caucus would protect you."

Judah looked at them and one by one they broke his gaze, ashamed. "You don’t think it’s still there," he said. "Is that what this is? You’re here for me?"

"No," said Pomeroy. "I always said I wasn’t just here for you."

But Judah kept talking. "You think it’s gone?" He spoke with calm, almost priestly certainty. "It hasn’t. How can I go back, Cutter? Don’t you realise what I’m here for? They’re coming for the Council. When they find it, they’ll bring it down. They came for the Teshi, but now they found it they can’t let the Council be. I heard it from an old source. Told me they’d found it, and what they’ll do. I’ve to warn them. I know the Caucus won’t understand. Probably cursing me."

"We sent them a message," Cutter said. "From Myrshock. They know we’re after you."

From his satchel Judah brought out papers and three wax cylinders.

"From the Council," he said. "The oldest letter’s near seventeen years old. The first cylinder’s older'n that. Almost twenty years. The last ones arrived three years ago, and they were only two years old when they came. I know the Council’s there."

The messages had travelled by unknown routes. Fellid Forest to the sea, by boats to the Firewater Straits, Shankell and Myrshock, to Iron Bay and New Crobuzon. Or through byways in the hills, or through woods by paths hundreds of miles into the swamps below Cobsea. To Cobsea itself in the great plains. Or by air, or thaumaturgy, somehow making their ways at last to Judah Low.

And could you write back, Judah? Cutter thought. You know they’re waiting. Do they know you’re coming? And how many of their messages were lost? He saw austere gullies strewn with fragments of wax. Gusts sending scraps of encoded paper like blossom across the grassland.

He was awed to see the paper, the grooved cylinders, sound fixed in time. Artefacts from a Caucus rumour, from the stories of travellers and dissidents.