From the corridors on the upper floors sprouted sets of interconnected rooms. Many had been ministerial offices at one time. For a short while, each had been the headquarters of some small company or other. Then they had been empty for many years, until the mould and rot had been swept away and ambassadors had moved in. That was a little more than two centuries previously, when a communal understanding had swept the various governments of Rohagi that from now on diplomacy would be greatly preferable to war.

There had been embassies in New Crobuzon far longer. But after the carnage in Suroch put a bloody end to what were called the Pirate Wars or the Slow War or the False War, the number of countries and city-states seeking negotiated resolutions to disputes had multiplied enormously. Emissaries had arrived from across the continent and beyond. The deserted floors of the Mandragorae Wing had been overrun by the newcomers, and by older consulates relocating to tap the new welter of diplomatic business.

Even to leave the lifts or stairs on the floors of the Zone, a gamut of security checks had to be run. The passages were cold and quiet, broken by a few doors and insufficiently lit by desultory gasjets. Rudgutter and Rescue and Stem-Fulcher walked the deserted corridors of the twelfth floor. They were accompanied by a short, wiry man with thick glasses who scurried along behind them, never keeping up, lugging a large suitcase.

“Eliza, MontJohn,” said Mayor Rudgutter as they walked, “this is Brother Sanchem Vansetty, one of our most able karcists.” Rescue and Stem-Fulcher nodded greetings. Vansetty ignored them.

Not every room in the Diplomatic Zone was occupied. But some of the doors had brass plates proclaiming them the sovereign territory of one country or other—Tesh, or Khadoh, or Gharcheltist—behind which were huge suites extending onto several floors: self-contained houses in the tower. Some of the rooms were thousands of miles from their capitals. Some of them were empty. By Tesh tradition, for example, the ambassador lived as a vagrant in New Crobuzon, communicating by mail for official business. Rudgutter would never meet him. Other embassies were deserted due to lack of funds or interest.

But much of the business conducted here was immensely important. The suites containing the embassies of Myrshock and Vadaunk had been extended some years ago, due to the expansion of paperwork and office space that commercial relations necessitated. The extra rooms jutted like ugly tumours from the interior walls of the eleventh floor, bulging precariously over the garden.

The mayor and his companions walked past a door marked The Cray Commonwealth of Salkrikaltor. The corridor shook with the pound and whirr of huge, hidden machinery. Those were the enormous steam-pumps that worked for hours every day, sucking fresh brine fifteen miles from Iron Bay for the cray ambassador and sluicing his used, dirty water into the river.