The Lover’s scarred face revolts me somewhat. I’ve known-I have been with-those who found release in pain, who made it part of sex; and though I find the prediliction slightly absurd, it does not trouble or disturb me at all. That is not what I find wrong with the Lovers. I have a sense that their cutting is somehow almost contingent. What makes me queasy is something deeper that inheres between them.

I try to avoid the Lover’s eye, but I find myself pruriently drawn by her marks. It is as if they have been carved into some mesmeric pattern. But peering at them surreptitiously from behind my fingers, I see nothing romantic or secret or revelatory, nothing but the evidence of old wounds. Nothing but scars.

Later, same day.

Silas delivered what was needed, at the last possible minute. As if for theatrics.

I have to admire his methods.

Ever since our terse conversation in the Sculpture Garden I had been wondering how he would give me the materials for our message. My rooms are guarded, I am watched, what am I to do?

On the morning of the twenty-sixth of Lunuary, I woke to find a packet from him on the floor of my room.

It was an ostentatious piece of prestidigitation. I could not help laughing when I looked up and saw a patch of iron on my ceiling, freshly bolted over a six-inch hole.

Silas had climbed to the top of Chromolith Smokestacks, onto the roof of thin metal that booms like an orchestral drum under the rain, and he had cut a hole in it. Dropping the package inside, he had conscientiously bolted a new roof piece into position. All without the slightest sound: neither awaking me, nor alerting those who must have been watching.

When he performs tricks like that, under duress, to protect himself, it is easy to imagine him at his job for the government. I suppose I am lucky to have him on my side, and so is New Crobuzon.

I was pleased not to see him. I feel very distant from him now. I bear him no ill will: I took from him something that I needed, and I hope that I gave it back to him; but that really must be the end of the matter. We are coincidental comrades, is all.

Inside the little leather bag, Silas had put several items.

He had written a letter to me, explaining everything. I read it carefully before examining the bag’s other contents.

There were other letters. He had written to the pirate captain we hope to find: two copies of the same letter, in Ragamoll and Salt. To Whomever Agrees to Courier This Missive to New Crobuzon, it begins.