That was it. She had never even known the name of her buyer.

Lin decided that she could do better than that.

She had sent a message through Gazid, down the illicit conduit of communication that led fuck-knew-where, saying that yes, she was interested, and would be prepared to meet, but she really must have a name to write in her diary.

The New Crobuzon underworld digested her message, and made her wait a week, and then spat back an answer in the shape of another printed note, pushed under her door while she slept, giving her an address in Bonetown, a date, and a one-word name: Motley.

A frenetic snapping and clatter sifted into the corridor. Lin’s cactacae escort pushed open one dark door among the many, and stood aside.

Lin’s eyes adjusted to the light. She was looking into a typing pool. It was a large room with a high ceiling, painted black like everything in this troglodytic place, well-lit with gaslamps, and filled with perhaps forty desks; on each was a bulky typewriter, at each a secretary copying from reams of notes by their sides. Mostly human and mostly women, Lin also caught smell and sight of men and cactacae, even a pair of khepri, and a vodyanoi working at a typewriter with keys adapted for her huge hands.

Around the room Remade were stationed, mostly human, again, but of other races too, rare as xenian Remade were. Some were organically Remade, with claws and antlers and slabs of grafted muscle, but most were mech, and the heat from their boilers made the room close.

At the end of the room was a closed office.

“Ms. Lin, finally,” boomed a speaking-trumpet above its door as soon as she entered. None of the secretaries looked up. “Please make your way across the room to my office.”

Lin picked her way between the desks. She looked closely at what was being typed, hard though it was, and harder in the odd light of the black-walled room. The secretaries all typed expertly, reading the scribbled notes and transferring them without looking at their keyboards or their work.

Further to our conversation of the thirteenth of this month, read one, please consider your franchise operation under our jurisdiction, terms to be arranged. Lin moved on.

You die tomorrow, you fuck, you wormshit. You’re going to envy the Remade, you cowardly cunt, you’re going to scream till your mouth bleeds, said the next.

Oh . . . thought Lin. Oh . . . help.

The door to the office opened.

“Come in, Ms. Lin, come in!” The voice boomed from the trumpet.

Lin did not hesitate. She entered.

Filing cabinets and bookshelves filled most of the small room. There was a small, traditional oil painting of Iron Bay on one wall. Behind a large darkwood desk was a folding screen illustrated with silhouettes of fish, a large version of the screens behind which artists’ models changed. In the centre of the screen, one fish was rendered in mirrored glass, giving Lin a view of herself.