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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

Strange. I put it like that, but I never knew this place when it wasn’t hankering for the Hidden Ocean. Neither did you. Everything that happened, it was all geared up to getting us out there. I’ve never lived here when it was just a pirate port.

Neither have you.

I’ve been spending time with your Angevine. I’ll be lying if I tell you we’re best friends. We’re a bit shy, you might say. But we see each other, and talk about you, mostly.

We were lied to, and we had enough, and they were risking our necks, dammit, so we made them turn back.

It doesn’t go away, that you’re gone.

I don’t live here anymore. I live nowhere. This place killed you.

I don’t know what it was, the things in that water. I know that what we fought in the water that night was no vampir. No one talks about them. No one knows what they were. Only that they helped to try to turn us.

Bastard John saw them. I see it in his little piggy eyes. But he says nothing.

It was me who turned the city. Those things, the things that took you, the vampir man who fought beside them, they failed.

I did the job for them. Turned us round.

I don’t know if that’s funny. I only know I don’t want to live here anymore, and I can’t go.

I’m a sea-thing now. It’s a bad joke. We both know what real sea-things are, how they move, how fast. Not like me, heavy clumsily stolen fins flapping, slimy sweating, Remade.

And I’m scared, now. I put myself in the sea I sweat. Now every little blenny looks like one of the things that took you.

But I can’t live in the air now. I ain’t got that option no more.

What’ll I do? I can’t go back to New Crobuzon, and if I could I’d rot, without brine.

I’ll make myself swim. It’ll get easier again. I’ll get it done.

They can’t hold me. I can leave. Maybe we’ll go near some coast one day, and there I’ll slip away. There I’ll go and live alone in the shallows so I can see rock under me, where trees and scree meet in the water. I can live there alone. I’ve had enough of it, I tell you.

I ain’t got nothing. I’ve got nothing.

In time, in time they tell me, I’ll not feel so bad. I don’t want time to heal me. There’s a reason I’m like this.

I want time to set me ugly and knotted with loss of you, marking me. I won’t smooth you away.

I can’t say good-bye.

Dustday 2nd Tathis, 1780. Armada.