Sometimes, when the eight were meeting, Angevine would put her ear flat against the wood and press hard, but she could only ever hear the occasional snatch of sound. Enough to learn tantalizing things.

The ship’s madman, Argentarius, whom no one ever saw, she would hear railing and screaming to them, telling them he was afraid. Some prey of theirs had done this to him long ago, Angevine came to understand. It had galvanized his comrades. They were stamping their authority on the deep sea, thumbing their noses at that terrible realm.

When she had heard them speak of hunting, it was the largest game that enthused them: the leviathan and lahamu, the cuttlegod.

Why not the avanc?

None of it was any surprise, really, Angevine thought.

"Is he trustworthy?" Tintinnabulum repeated.

"He is," Angevine said. "He’s a good man. He’s grateful for being spared the colonies; he’s angry with New Crobuzon. He’s had himself Remade, the better to dive, the better to work in the docks-he’s a sea creature now. He’s loyal as any Garwater born, I’d say."

Tintinnabulum raised himself and shut Angevine’s boiler. His mouth pursed thoughtfully. On his desk he found a long, handwritten list of names.

"What’s he called?" he said.

He nodded, leaned over, and carefully added Tanner Sack.

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Eighteen

Rumor and word of mouth were even stronger forces in Armada than in New Crobuzon, but Armada was not without a more organized media than that. There were criers, most yelling the semiofficial line of one or other of the ridings. A few news sheets and periodicals were available, printed on dreadful-quality, ink-saturated sheets that were constantly recycled.

Most were irregular, available when writers and printers could be bothered or find the resources. Many were free; most were thin: one or two folded sheets crammed with print.

Armada’s halls were full of plays and music, coarse and very popular, so the publications were full of reviews. Some contained titillation and scandal mongering, but to Bellis they were depressingly parochial. Disputes about allocation of seized goods, or over which riding was responsible for which haul, were generally the most provocative and controversial topics they carried. And those were just the news sheets she could make sense of.

In the hybrid culture of Armada, as many different traditions of journal were represented as existed in the world of Bas-Lag, alongside unique forms born on the pirate city. More Often Than Not was a weekly that reported only on the city’s deaths, in verse. Juhangirr’s Concern, published in Thee-And-Thine riding, was wordless, telling what stories it considered important (according to criteria quite opaque to Bellis) in sequences of crude pictures.