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Back The Scar Save as PDF
Chapters (65)
  1. Prologue
  2. Part One: Channels
  3. Chapter One
  4. Chapter Two
  5. Chapter Three
  6. Chapter Four
  7. Chapter Five
  8. Interlude I: Elsewhere
  9. Interlude II: Bellis Coldwine
  10. Part Two: Salt
  11. Chapter Six
  12. Chapter Seven
  13. Chapter Eight
  14. Chapter Nine
  15. Chapter Ten
  16. Chapter Eleven
  17. Chapter Twelve
  18. Chapter Thirteen
  19. Chapter Fourteen
  20. Interlude III: Elsewhere
  21. Part Three: The Compass Factory
  22. Chapter Fifteen
  23. Chapter Sixteen
  24. Chapter Seventeen
  25. Chapter Eighteen
  26. Chapter Nineteen
  27. Chapter Twenty
  28. Interlude IV: Elsewhere
  29. Part Four: Blood
  30. Chapter Twenty-One
  31. Chapter Twenty-Two
  32. Chapter Twenty-Three
  33. Chapter Twenty-Four
  34. Chapter Twenty-Five
  35. Chapter Twenty-Six
  36. Interlude V: Tanner Sack
  37. Interlude VI: Elsewhere
  38. Part Five: Storms
  39. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  40. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  41. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  42. Chapter Thirty
  43. Chapter Thirty-One
  44. Chapter Thirty-Two
  45. Interlude VII: Basilisk Channel
  46. Interlude VIII: Elsewhere
  47. Part Six: Morning Walker
  48. Chapter Thirty-Three
  49. Chapter Thirty-Four
  50. Chapter Thirty-Five
  51. Chapter Thirty-Six
  52. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  53. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  54. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  55. Chapter Forty
  56. Interlude IX: The Brucolac
  57. Part Seven: The Lookout
  58. Chapter Forty-One
  59. Chapter Forty-Two
  60. Chapter Forty-Three
  61. Chapter Forty-Four
  62. Chapter Forty-Five
  63. Chapter Forty-Six
  64. Chapter Forty-Seven
  65. Coda: Tanner Sack

She knew the answer to his question, but she did not want to give it. She did not look at him. She knew he would ask again. Silas Fennec was still free in the city, having seen his attempted rescue fail, and there was only one thing that could be done. She knew that Tanner knew it, that he was testing her, that there was only one possible answer to his question and that if she failed to give it, he might still shoot her dead.

"What are we going to do?" he said again. She looked up at him, weary. "You know that." She laughed unpleasantly. "We have to tell the truth.

"We have to tell Uther Doul."

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Here we drift, near the northern rim of the Swollen Ocean, and only-what?-a thousand, two thousand miles to the west, the northwest, is the Cunning Sea. And nestled in the crooks of its coast, on the shoreline of an unmapped continent, is the colony of Nova Esperium.

Is it the small, bright, glittering city of which I have seen pictures? I have seen heliotypes of its towers, and its grain silos, and the forests that surround it, and the unique animals of its environs: framed and posed, sepia, hand-colored. There’s a new chance for everyone in Nova Esperium. Even the Remade, the indentured, the laborers, can earn freedom.

(Not that that is true.)

I have pictured myself looking down at the settlement from the slopes of the mountains I can see in those pictures (washed out by distance, out of focus). Learning the languages of the natives, picking over the bones of old books that we might find in the ruins.

It is ten miles from New Crobuzon to the estuary, to the edge of Iron Bay.

I keep finding myself in that place, in my memories, beyond the city, poised between the land and the sea.

I have lost my seasons. I left when autumn became winter, and that is the last strong sense I have of time. Since then the heat and cool and cold and heat again have been chaotic, ill-mannered, random, to me.

Perhaps it is autumn again in Nova Esperium.

In New Crobuzon, it is spring.

I have knowledge that I cannot use, on a journey I cannot control, the aims of which I do not share or understand, and I am longing for a home I fled, and for a place I have never seen.

There are birds beyond these walls, sounding to each other, violent and stupid, wrestling with the wind, and with my eyes closed I can pretend to watch them; I can pretend to be on any ship, anywhere in the world.

But I open my eyes (I must), and I am still here, in this Senate chamber again, standing beside Tanner Sack, and my head is lowered, and I am in chains.