She began to feel other vodyanoi pass her in the current. She kicked low, here and there felt the gentle outflow of tunnels that led up to some wealthy vodyanoi’s house. These were not the absurd hovels of the Tar, of Lichford and Gross Coil: there, sticky, pitch-coated buildings of palpably human design had simply been built in the river itself, decades ago, to crumble in unsanitary fashion into the water. Those were the vodyanoi slums.

Here, on the other hand, the cold clear water that ran down from the mountains might lead through some carefully crafted passage below the surface into a riverside house all done in white marble. Its façade would be tastefully designed to fit in with the human homes on either side, but inside it would be a vodyanoi home: empty doorways connecting huge rooms above and below the water; canal passageways; sluices refreshing the water every day.

Pengefinchess swam on past the vodyanoi rich, staying low. As the centre of the city passed further away behind her, she grew happier, more relaxed. She felt her escape with great pleasure.

She spread her arms and sent a little mental message to her undine, and it burst away from her skin through the pores of the thin cotton shift she wore. After days of dryness and sewers and effluent, the elemental undulated away through the cleaner water, rolling with enjoyment, being free, a moving locus of quasi-living water in the great wash of the river.

Pengefinchess felt it swim ahead and followed it playfully, reaching out for it and closing her fingers through its substance. It squirmed happily.

I’ll go up-coast, Pengefinchess decided, round the edge of the mountains. Through the Bezhek Foothills, maybe, and the outskirts of Wormseye Scrub. I’ll head for the Cold Claw Sea. With the sudden decision, Derkhan and the others were transformed instantly in her mind, becoming history, becoming something over and done, something she might one day tell stories about.

She opened her enormous mouth, let the Canker gush through her. Pengefinchess swam on, through the suburbs, up and out of the city.

Chapter 49

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Men and women in grubby overalls spread out from the Griss Twist dump.

They went on foot and in carts, singly, in pairs, and in little gangs of four or five. They moved in dribs and drabs, at unobtrusive speeds. Those on foot carried great swathes of cable over their shoulders, or looped between them and a colleague. In the backs of the carts the men and women sat on enormous rocking twists of the frayed wire.

They went out into the city at irregular intervals, over two or more hours, spacing their departures according to a schedule worked out by the Construct Council. It was calculated to be random.