By rope bridge to the starboard side of Garwater. An illuminated dirigible skidded slowly overhead, and a klaxon sounded nearby while a steamhammer pounded (some late shift), and the sound for a moment was so reminiscent of New Crobuzon that he felt a strong, nameless emotion.

Tanner lost himself in a maze of old ships and bricks.

In the water below he thought he saw fleeting and random patches of light: the anxiety of bioluminescent plankton. The city’s snarls seemed to be answered sometimes, miles away, by something big and very distant and alive.

He wound in the direction of Curhouse and Urchinspine Harbor. Below him was surf, to either side decaying brickwork damp with mildew and salt-stained. High walls and windows, many broken, and alleyways between main streets, winding between old bulkheads and cowls. Rubbish on deserted dhows. Balustrades and taffrails buffeted in the cold wind by the ragged remnants of posters; politics and entertainment advertised in garish colors rendered from squid and shellfish and stolen ink.

Cats padded past him.

The city shifted and corrected, and the tireless fleet of steamships beyond Armada’s bounds plowed on, chains outstretched, hauling their home.

Tanner stood in the quiet, looking up at old towers, the silhouettes of slates, chimneys, factory roofs, and trees. Across a little stretch of water, broken by a hamlet of houseboats, lights glimmered in the cabins of boats from shores about which Tanner Sack knew nothing. Others were watching the night.

(-Have you fucked before? she said, and Shekel could not help but remember things he did not much want to. The Remade women in the dark stinking ofTerpsichoriawho took his fumbling prick inside them for more portions of bread. Those whom the sailors held down whether they would or not (all the men catcalled him to join them) and whom twice he had lain on (once only pretending to finish before slinking away discomforted by her shrieks and) once entering for true and spending inside her, tightly struggling and crying as she was. And before them girls in the back alleys of Smog Bend, and boys (like him) showing their privates, their transactions something between barter and sex and bullying and play. Shekel opened his mouth to answer and the truths struggled, and she saw and interrupted him (it was a mercy she did him) and said-No not for games or money and not when you took it or gave it by force but when you fucked one who wanted you and who you wanted like real people like equals. And of course when she said that of course the answer was no, and he gave it, grateful to her for making this his first time (an undeserved gift that he took humble and eager).