Shekel took coffee with her on an upper deck of the library.

He was an excited boy. He told her that he was doing something with one person, and something else with another, and that he had had a fight with a third, and that a fourth lived in Dry Fall riding, and she withered beside his casual knowledge of the city. She felt disgraced again, for her ignorance, and she listened carefully to his ramblings.

Shekel told Bellis about Hedrigall the cactacae aeronaut. He told her about the cactus-man’s notorious past as a pirate-merchant for Dreer Samher, and described to her the journeys Hedrigall had made to the monstrous island south of Gnurr Kett, to trade with the mosquito-men.

In turn, Bellis asked him about the ridings, the haunted quarter, the city’s route, the Sorghum rig, Tintinnabulum. She turned up her questions like cards.

"Yeah," he said slowly. "I know Tinnabol. Him and his mates. Strange coves. Makler, Metzger, Promus, Tinnabol. There’s one called Argentarius, who’s mad, who no one ever sees. I can’t remember the others. Inside the Castor ’s all over trophies. Gruesome. Sea trophies. Every wall. Stuffed hammerheads and orca, things with claws and tentacles. Skulls. And harpoons. And helios of the crew standing on the corpses of things I hope I never see.

"They’re hunters. They ain’t been in the city so long. They’re not press-ganged, exactly. There’s loads of stories, rumors about what they’re doing, why they’re here. It’s like they’re waiting for something."

Bellis could not understand how Shekel knew so much about Tintinnabulum until he grinned and continued.

"Tintinnabulum’s got a… an assistant," he said. "Her name’s Angevine. She’s an interesting lady." He grinned again, and Bellis turned away, embarrassed by his fumbling enthusiasm.

There were printing presses in Armada, and authors and editors and translators, and new books and Salt translations of classic texts were brought out. But paper was scarce: print runs were minuscule, and the books were expensive. The ridings of the city relied on Booktown’s Grand Gears Library, and paid premiums to ensure their borrowing rights.

The books came mostly from Garwater riding’s piracies. For an unknown number of centuries this most powerful riding in Armada had donated all the books it commandeered to The Clockhouse Spur. No matter who ran Booktown, these donations had ensured its loyalty. Other ridings copied the practice, though perhaps without such stern supervision. They might let their press-ganged keep this or that volume, or would trade some of the rarest volumes they snatched. Not Garwater, which treated book hoarding as a serious crime.

Sometimes Garwater ships would prowl the coastal settlements of Bas-Lag committing wordstorms, and the pirates would rampage from house to house, seizing every book and manuscript they found. All for Booktown, the Clockhouse Spur.

The delivery of all this plunder was ongoing, so Bellis and her colleagues kept busy.