At a hastily convened mass meeting on the Grand Easterly, the Lover put her case. She declaimed violently against the Crobuzoners, reminding her citizens that their missing families had been slaughtered by such as these, their city blasted, half their Armadan ships destroyed. There were now many times more press-ganged aboard than Garwater or any other riding had had to take in at one time before. With their resources stretched, with Armada vulnerable, with New Crobuzon having declared war, how could they possibly absorb so many enemies?

But many of those who were Armadans now had once been enemies. For as long as the city had existed, Armadans had held that once the fighting stopped, there was no quarrel with its enemies’ foot soldiers. They were to be welcomed, and hopefully transformed, and made citizens. That, after all, was what Armada was-a colony of the lost, the renegade, the absent-without-leave, the defeated.

The New Crobuzon sailors shivered in their prisons, unaware of the controversy that surrounded them.

It would not be murder, the Lover claimed. The prisoners could be put aboard a ship, with provisions, and pointed in the direction of Bered Kai Nev. It was not impossible that they would make it.

That was a poor argument.

She changed her tack, arguing angrily that with the avanc, the city must go on, that it had the power to go to places Armadans had never dreamed of, to do unimagined things, and that to waste their resources wiping the noses of a thousand blubbering newcomers-murderers-was idiocy.

Even with their wounds still bleeding and fresh, even with the memory of war still painful, the mood of the crowd was turning against the Lover. She was not convincing them. The other rulers held their peace, watching.

Bellis understood. It was not that those gathered had any love, any particular pity or compassion, for their captives. It was not about those bloody, wounded troops holed up in agony and squalor below. The Armadans were not concerned for those captives, but for their own city. This is Armada, they were saying. This is how it is what it is. Change that, and how do we know what we are? How do we know how to be?

With one speech, the Lover could not defeat so many centuries of tradition-tradition thrown up for the city’s survival. She was alone on the stage, and she was losing her argument. With a sudden, rocking uncertainty, Bellis wondered where the Lover was, whether he agreed.

Sensing the discontent, those among the crowd who agreed with the Lover’s line began to shout, spontaneously offering support, crying revenge against the captured. But more voices rose in opposition, and quieted them.