The Crobuzoner ships finally came close enough to be seen: a long line of smoke-spewing black metal.

"They’re running up flags," said Hedrigall from the top of the superstructure at the Grand Easterly ’s stern. He was staring through the ship’s huge fixed telescope. "Sending us a message while they get good and close. Look: the name of their flagship and…" He hesitated. "They want to parley?"

Doul had dressed for war. His grey armor was studded with straps and with holstered flintlocks-on each hip, each shoulder, each thigh, in the center of his chest. About his body, the handles of daggers and throwing knives protruded from their scabbards. He looked, Bellis realized with a shiver, as he had when he came aboard the Terpsichoria.

She did not care; she was not interested anymore. She looked away and back toward the Crobuzoner ships, in agonies of excitement.

Doul took the telescope.

" ‘Captain Princip Cecasan of the N.C.S. Morning Walker,’ " he read slowly, and shook his head slowly as he scanned the pennants. " ‘Parley requested regarding New Crobuzon hostage.’ "

For one stunned instant, Bellis thought it was a reference to her. But even as her face spasmed with astonished joy, she realized how absurd that was (and something deep in her mind waited to inform her of another explanation). She turned and looked at the faces of Uther Doul, Hedrigall, the Lovers, and all the gathered captains.

She shivered to see them. Not a single one, she realized, had reacted to the Morning Walker ’s offer to talk with anything but hard contempt.

In the face of that collective emotion, that absolute antagonism, the certainty of those before her that New Crobuzon was a power to be distrusted, fought against, destroyed, her own joy ebbed away. She remembered what she had read of the Pirate Wars, and New Crobuzon’s attack on Suroch. She remembered, suddenly, her conversations with Johannes and with Tanner Sack. She remembered Tanner’s rage at the thought of being found by Crobuzoner ships.

Bellis remembered her own terrified flight from New Crobuzon. I crossed the sea because I was afraid for my life, she thought. Seeing the militia everywhere I looked. Afraid of the agents of the government. Agents like the sailors in those ships.

It was not just the pirates-New Crobuzon’s maritime rivals-and not just the fRemade who had reason to fear the oncoming ships, Bellis realized. All her certainty left her. She, too, should be afraid.

"They’re armed enough to level a city," Doul said to the assembled captains. "And they tell us they want to bargain?"

There was no one in the crowd who needed convincing. They listened silently.