Stars appeared and Isaac began to whisper goodbye to The Clock and Cockerel, to Aspic Bazaar and Ketch Heath and his friends.

It stayed warm as they made their way south, shadowing the trains, into a wide-open landscape of industrial estates. Weeds escaped from lots and encroached onto the pavement, tripping the pedestrians that still filled the night-city, making them swear. Isaac and Derkhan guided Lin carefully through the outskirts of Echomire and Kelltree, bearing south, the trains beside them, heading for the river.

The Gross Tar, shimmering prettily under the neon and the gaslight, its pollution obscured by reflections: and the docks full of tall ships with heavy furled sails and steamboats leaking iridescently into the water, merchant vessels drawn by bored seawyrms chewing on vast bridles, unsteady factory-freighters that bristled with cranes and steamhammers; ships for whom New Crobuzon was just one stop on a journey.

In the Cymek, we call the moon’s little satellites the mosquitoes. Here in New Crobuzon they call them her daughters.

The room is full of light from the moon and her daughters, and empty of all else.

I have stood here for a long time, Isaac’s letter in my hand.

In a moment, I will read it again.

I heard the emptiness of the decaying house from the stairs. The echoes receded for too long. I knew before I touched the door that the attic was deserted.

I was away for hours, seeking some spurious, faltering freedom in the city.

I wandered into the pretty gardens of Sobek Croix, through fussing clouds of insects and past the sculpted lakes of overfed fowl. I found the ruins of the monastery, the little shell displayed proudly at the park’s heart. Where romantic vandals carve their lovers’ names onto the ancient stone. The little keep was deserted a thousand years before New Crobuzon’s foundations were laid. The god to which it was consecrated died.

Some people come at night to honour the dead god’s ghost. What tenuous, desperate theology.

I visited Howl Barrow today. I saw Lichford. I stood before a grey wall in Barrackham, the crumbling skin of a dead factory, and read all the graffiti.

I was foolish. I took risks. Did not remain carefully hidden.

I felt almost drunk with that little snatch of freedom, eager for more.

So I returned at last through the night, to that hollow and forsaken attic, to Isaac’s brutal betrayal.

What breach of faith, what cruelty.

I open it once more (ignoring Derkhan’s pathetic little words, like some dusting of sugar on poison). The extraordinary tension in the words seems to make them crawl. I can see Isaac striving for so many things as he writes. Bluff no-nonsense. Anger, stern disapproval. True misery. Objectivism. And some weird comradeship, some shame-faced apology.

. . . had a visitor today . . . I read, and . . . under the circumstances . . .