"I think so," she said. "It’s hard to tell. It was as if… He obviously wasn’t supposed to tell me. But maybe he was so… caught up in it, he couldn’t resist. So instead of coming out with it, which would be disloyal, he told me just enough.

"All the time I’d thought he was accompanying the Lovers and Aum and the scientists into those secret meetings because he’s their bodyguard. But it wasn’t that-he’s an expert on this thing, on possibility mining. He knows everything about it, because of once researching that sword of his.

"This is what they’ve been working on. The Lovers want to get to the Scar; they want to tap possibilities, Silas." Her voice remained cool, though she did not feel it. "Like the Ghosthead Empire, do you understand?"

"That’s why the avanc," he breathed, and Bellis nodded.

"That’s why. It’s just a means to an end. The Lovers must have been… entranced when they saw his sword, when he first came to the city. They heard his stories of the Fractured Land, and the Scar-all the secrets he knows-and it was nothing but a dream, then. But then they think of Tintinnabulum and his crew, who could be enticed. This is the ultimate big game, after all." She stared out of the little window at a sea that churned slowly by as the avanc progressed.

"And the Lovers already knew about the chains. Armada tried to capture an avanc before. That was a long time ago, and they don’t give a cuss for tradition. But when Doul came, it was different. Before he came, calling the avanc would’ve been… a stupid, grandiose, pointless gesture. But now? Everyone knows no ship can cross the Empty Ocean. But what fucking force in Bas-Lag could stop an avanc? All of a sudden, there’s a way to get to this Scar that Doul’s told them all about, the thing that the Ghosthead left behind."

The scale of the project was staggering. The realization that all the misery and money and terrible effort that the Lovers had gone to to secure the avanc, the realization that that was only the first part of their plan, was incredible.

"All this," breathed Silas, and Bellis nodded.

"All of it," she said. "The rig, the Terpsichoria, Johannes, the anophelii island, the chains, the fulmen, the fucking avanc… all of it. This is what it’s about."

"Naked power." Silas mouthed it as if the words were dirty. "I assumed the avanc was to do with the piracy. That’s what they implied: that it would make them more efficient thieves, for Jabber’s sake! That at least would have made some kind of sense. But this…" He looked incredulous. "You can tell they’re press-ganged, the Lovers; no fucking serious pirate would pursue this idiocy."