"Because of voice and tense," she had responded without apparent emotion. "The entire clause is in the ironic-continuous." She had almost added It’s common to mistake it for the pluperfect, but had contained herself.

Bellis had no idea what all this grilling meant. She felt as if she were being siphoned dry. She had been cautiously proud of her act. She was enthusiastic about the project and the island, then reined herself quickly in, as if a tussle was going on within her between an unfurling desire and a sulky, curmudgeonly, press-ganged response.

But no one had yet told her she would come with them to the island, the crux of her whole plan. She wondered if something had gone wrong. And, anyway, Silas had disappeared. Perhaps it was time, she told herself coolly, for a new plan. If it did not work out, if they left her behind for another translator, then she would tell them the truth, she decided. She would beg mercy for New Crobuzon, would tell them about the grindylow attack so that they would know and might send the message for her.

But with an unpleasant fear she remembered Uther Doul’s words just before he shot Captain Myzovic. The power I represent cares not at all about New Crobuzon, he had said. Not at all.

She crossed the Whiskey Bridge from the Badmark, a barge at the outer edge of Garwater, to the broad clipper Darioch’s Concern.

The streets of Shaddler seemed bleaker to her than Garwater, more pared down. Façades were simpler, where they existed at all. Wood was scrubbed and cut into spare, repeating patterns. Pomp’s Way was a market street abutting both Garwater and The Clockhouse Spur, and the pavement was full of carts and animals and visiting shoppers-khepri, human, and others-jostling with the scabmettlers who made up half of Shaddler.

Bellis could recognize the scabmettlers now even without their armor, from their distinctive, heavy physiognomy and ashen complexions. She passed a temple, its bloodhorns silent, its guards adorned with clot-plate. Beyond it was a herbarium, with sheafs of dried astringents smelling strong in the warmth.

There were sacks of the distinctive yellow blodfrey that boiled up into the anticoagulant tea. She could see men and women drinking it from a cauldron. It was taken to ward off allclot attacks: the scabmettlers were prone to sudden and total setting of the blood in their veins, which killed them quickly and painfully, transforming sufferers into twisted statues.