Behind the metal-girdled entrance, the room itself was immensely tall, panelled in darkwood of such exquisite quality it was almost black. Portraits of previous mayors circled the room, from the ceiling thirty feet above, spiralling slowly down to within six feet of the floor. There was an enormous window that looked out directly at Perdido Street Station and the Spike, and a variety of speaking tubes, calculating engines and telescopic periscopes stashed in niches around the room, in obscure and oddly threatening poses.

Bentham Rudgutter sat behind his desk with an air of utter command. None who had seen him in this room had been able to deny the extraordinary surety of absolute power he exuded. He was the centre of gravity here. He knew it at a deep level, and so did his guests. His great height and muscular corpulence doubtless added to the sense, but there was far more to his presence.

Opposite him sat MontJohn Rescue, his vizier, wrapped as always in a thick scarf and leaning over to point out something on a paper the two men were studying.

“Two days,” said Rescue in a strange, unmodulated voice, quite different from the one he used for oratory.

“And what?” said Rudgutter, stroking his immaculate goatee.

“The strike goes up. Currently, you know, it’s delaying loading and unloading by between fifty and seventy per cent. But we’ve got intelligence that in two days the vodyanoi strikers plan to paralyse the river. They’re going to work overnight, starting at the bottom, working their way up. A little to the east of Barley Bridge. Massive exercise in watercræft. They’re going to dig a trench of air across the water, the whole depth of the river. They’ll have to shore it up continuously, recræfting the walls constantly so they don’t collapse, but they’ve got enough members to do that in shifts. There’s no ship that can jump that gap, Mayor. They’ll totally cut off New Crobuzon from river trade, in both directions.”

Rudgutter mused and pursed his lips.

“We can’t allow that,” he said reasonably. “What about the human dockers?”

“My second point, Mayor,” continued Rescue. “Worrying. The initial hostility seems to be waning. There’s a growing minority who seem to be ready to throw in their lot with the vodyanoi.”

“Oh, no no no no,” said Rudgutter, shaking his head like a teacher correcting a normally reliable student.

“Quite. Obviously our agents are stronger in the human camp than the xenian, and the mainstream are still antagonistic or undecided about the strike, but there seems to be a caucus, a conspiracy, if you will . . . secret meetings with strikers and the like.”

Rudgutter spread his enormous fingers and looked closely at the grain of the desk between them.

“Any of your people there?” he asked quietly. Rescue fingered his scarf.