Bellis thought of Mariel, of Ignus and Téa. She thought of Thighs Growing, the cactacae cellist, the only one of Isaac’s friends she had remained in touch with. She thought of others. The letter could be to any of you, she thought, and knew that was not true. She had pushed most of them away in those frightened months before she had fled. And even before then, she had not been close to many. Could I have written to any of you? she wondered suddenly.

"Whoever you speak to," she said, "whoever you write to, there are things you wouldn’t say, things you’d censor. And the more I wrote-the more I write -the more I need to say, the more I need to be quite, quite open. So I’ll write it all, and I’ll not have to close it down. I can leave that to the end. I can wait and decide who it’s to after I’ve said everything I have to say."

She did not mention the fact that she would never be able to deliver her letter, that she would be writing it on Armada until she died.

There’s nothing strange about it, Bellis wanted to say. It makes sense. She felt fiercely protective. Don’t think about it as if there’s an emptiness at the other end, she thought at him fiercely. That’s not it at all.

"You must write carefully," said Doul, "only about yourself. No shared jokes. It must be a cold kind of letter."

Yes, thought Bellis, looking at him. I suppose it must.

"You exiles," he said. "You exiles and your writing. Silas Fennec is the same. You look in there now, he’s trying to scribble in his notebook, with his left hand."

"You let him keep it?" Bellis said, wondering what had happened to Fennec’s right hand and suspecting that she knew. Uther Doul looked ostentatiously around her room: at the clothes, the notebooks, the letter.

"You see how we treat our prisoners," he said slowly, and Bellis remembered that she was a prisoner, just like Tanner Sack, just like Fennec.

"Why didn’t you tell the Lovers," said Doul suddenly, "when Fennec told you that New Crobuzon was in danger? Why didn’t you try to get a message back that way?"

"They wouldn’t have cared," she said. "They might even have been glad: one less rival on the sea. And think of the bones to be picked over. They would’ve done nothing."

She was right, and she could sense that he knew it. Still, the maggot stirred in her again.

"Look in the letter," she said suddenly. "It proves I knew nothing."

For a long time, he did not respond.

"You’ve been judged," he said at last. She felt blood cold in her stomach. Her hands trembled, and she swallowed several times and clenched her lips closed.