She shuddered at the memory of those breathy exclamations, the Lovers’ twisted declarations of passion. Of love, she supposed. She thought of their scars, the cutting. The blood and split skin, the fervor. She felt as if she would sick up. But it was not the violence, not the knives they used or what they did, that horrified her. It was not that at all. Peccadillos did not disturb her at all-those, she could understand.

This had become something else. It was the emotion itself, the intense, giddying, slick, and sick-making ardor she had heard in their voices that appalled her. They were trying to cut through the membrane between them and bleed one into the other. Rupturing their integrity for something way beyond sex.

That violent, moaning thing that they thought was love, she thought was something akin to masturbation, and it disgusted her.

Bellis was left aghast by it. Nauseated and threatened and aghast.

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-One

During the days, Shekel was free.

Like most of the young bravos who hung out around the Basilio docks, he made his living as he had in New Crobuzon-running errands, delivering messages and goods, keeping his eyes and ears open, for whatever handful of change his momentary employer chose to give him. His Salt was game and comprehensible, if not fluent.

A little more than half of his evenings he spent with Angevine. She berthed in Tintinnabulum’s Castor, below its belfry. She often returned very late at night, since Tintinnabulum spent long hours in the meetings with his colleagues, and with Kruach Aum and Bellis and the Lovers, and Angevine fetched books or materials for him, from the library or from his hidden laboratory at the back of his ship. She would return tired, and Shekel would soothe her with supper and inexpert massages.

Angevine did not speak much about the avanc project, but Shekel could easily sense her tension and excitement.

Other evenings he spent at what he still thought of as his own home, which he shared with Tanner Sack.

Tanner was not always there-like Angevine, the project was keeping him at work long and difficult hours. But when he was present, he spoke more about what he was doing. He described to Shekel the extraordinary look of the bridle, stretching out in the clear water, the schools of bright tropical fish circulating through its links, which were scaling already with the plants and tenacious shellfish; picked out at night with cold lights. All the hours of work, of welding and testing and suggesting, acting as designer, foreman, and builder, left Tanner exhausted and very happy.

Shekel kept the rooms clean and warm. When he was not cooking for Angevine, he cooked for Tanner.

He was troubled.

Two nights previously, on Luddi, Shekel had woken suddenly a little after midnight, in his old rooms on the factory ship. He had sat up and stayed quiet and unmoving.