Tanner is out, suddenly, in the open water, among the darting Bask menfish who have let him into their ranks. He has reached out with his long tentacles and gripped the chitinous shell of one of the little nautilus subs. He faces the little glass porthole, and he can see the man inside stare out aghast, thinking he has gone mad to see this savagely wailing face, this New Crobuzon face, in the water, mouthing curses at him in his own language, raising a stubby weapon level to his face and firing.

The bolt bursts the glass and drives on into the New Crobuzon sailor’s face, its reinforced jag splintering his cheekbone and the base of his skull and pinning his head to the back of his tiny craft. Tanner Sack stares at the man he has killed, no, who is not yet dead, whose mouth spasms with agony and terror as the sea vomits into his ruptured sub and drowns him.

Tanner kicks backward, shaking violently, watching the man die, watching the nautilus fill with water and begin to spin and descend.

The dead and torn-apart are scattered across all the ships and across the sea as if they are scraps of burned paper distributed randomly by fire.

Tanner Sack hunts men.

Around him, vessels plummet. He is surrounded by dying men from what was once his home. They bleed and scream bubbles. They are too far down to reach the surface. None of them will breathe again.

Tanner spews suddenly, the sick forcing his throat open and billowing out from him. He feels nauseous, unstuck in time, drunk or dreaming, as if this is not real but a memory, already, even as it happens.

(Below him pass dark curious things that he thinks are his allies the menfish, and then knows immediately are not.

They are gone, and Tanner does not have the time, the luxury, to wonder what they were.)

The fighting progresses in spastic jerks. A clockwork ship from Booktown is torn open, and it sheds its gears and its massive coiled springs and the ruined bodies of khepri. The waters around Jhour vessels move oily with sap from slaughtered cactacae. Where scabmettlers are torn apart by bombs, the clouds of their blood harden as they burst, into a shrapnel of scabs. Hotchi are crushed between hulls.

The beasts summoned by the Armadan cray witches slam their fletches into Crobuzoner ships and tip the crews into the water, to snatch them up with sudden scissoring jaws. But there are too many to control, and they become a danger to their own witch-masters.

In the smog, Armadan shells find Armadan decks, and New Crobuzon javelins and bullets burst through the flesh of their own troops.