Read Online Iron Council by China Miéville - Free Book Online Page A

tip his glass to. They watched Adely while he watched them.
    Fallybeggar’s Hall was huge, clogged with smoke and drug smells. In the boxes and raised circle were the big men and their hangers-on, and sometimes the big women too. Francine 2 the khepri queenpin came here. Ori could not see well over the fringe of plaster drakows and obscene spirits, but he knew that the figure he saw moving in that box was a player in the militia, and that that one was one of the Fishbone Brothers, and that in that one was a captain of industry.
    Up close to the orchestra by the stage it was a cramped clot of men and women, polyglot and many-raced, gazing at Adely’s ankles. Ori tracked tribal boundaries.
    A slick of vagabonds, petty thieves and their bosses, discharged foreign soldiers, discharged jailbirds, dissolute rich and tinkers, beggars, pimps and their charges, chancers, knife-grinders, poets and police agents. Humans, here and there cactus-heads poking over the crowd (allowed in only if their thorns were plucked), the scarab-heads of khepri. Cigarillos hung from mouths, and people banged their glasses or cutlery in time while waiters went between them on the sawdusted floor. At the room’s edges small groups coagulated, and one like Ori—well-used to Fallybeggar’s—could see where they overlapped and where they separated, and make out their composition.
    There must be militia in the hall, but none wore uniforms.
At the back the tall and muscled man, Derisov, was an agent—everyone knew it but did not know how high or how connected he was, so would not risk killing him. Near him a group of artists, debating their schools and movements with sectarian passion.
    Closer to Ori and watching him, a table of well-turned-out young men, New Quillers, dry-spitting ostentatiously when any xenian came too close. They would hate Ori more than khepri or cactus, as he was race-renegade; and emboldened suddenly by the environs, by cosmopolitan and raucous Fallybeggar’s, Ori raised
his head to meet their gazes and put his arm around the old
she-vodyanoi beside him. She turned in surprise but, seeing the Quillers, gave a grunt of approval and leaned into Ori, making exaggerated eyes at him and them in turn.
    “Good lad,” she said, but with his heart fast Ori would only stare at the four men who watched him. One spoke angrily to his companions but was hushed, and the one who quieted him raised his eyebrows to Ori and tapped his watch and mouthed
later.
    Ori was not afraid. His own tribe were near. He almost nodded at the Quiller in sarky challenge, but such complicity revolted him and he turned away. He could see his friends and comrades at their arguments, disagreeing more fiercely than the painters, but they would come together to fight with him if needed. And there were several of them. The Quillers could not face the insurrectionists.
             
    The crowd were raving for Adely by now, singing along with her show-opener and making delighted pitter-patter motions with their fingers as she concluded—“once a
gain,
in the
raaaaain
”—and then becoming delirious with applause. The Quillers, artists, and
all the other grouplets joined in with no restraint.
    “Oh now thank you all, oh you’re my darlings, oh you are,” she said into the cheers and, professional as she was, they could hear her. She said: “I came out here to say good evening and ask you all to show a bit of willing to them who’s come up here tonight, give ’em a good welcome, let ’em know you love ’em. It’s their first time, some of ’em, and we all know what the first time’s like, don’t we? Bit of a disappointment, ain’t it, girls?” They broke up with laughter
at that, and in anticipation because it was so obvious a lead-in to her song “Are You Done?” And yes, there was the familiar comedy hoboy quacking like a duck, the opening bars, and Adely drew in a big breath, paused, then shouted “Later!” and ran offstage, to