Free Iron Council by China Miéville Page A

loud and piercing call. He called Jack’s name, as he had that day. And neared him and pulled out a pistol and a knife (the puppet’s little tinfoil constructions glinted).
Remember me, Jack?
he had shouted, and his puppet shouted.
I owe you this.
A voice like triumph.
    For years after the murder of Jack Half-a-Prayer the plays had followed the first conventional understanding. The pockmarked man—brother, father or lover to one of the murdering Man’Tis’s victims—was too moved by rage to wait, overcome and righteous and straining to kill. And though it was understandable and no one could blame him, the law did not work that way; and when they heard and saw him it was the militia’s sad duty to warn him off, and when that didn’t work to fire at him, putting an end to his plans, and killing the Half-a-Prayer with stray bullets. And it was regrettable, as the legal process had not yet been completed, but it could hardly have been in any doubt that the outcome would soon have been the same.
    That was the story for years, and the actors and puppeteers played Jack as the pantomime baddie, but noticed that the crowds still cheered him.
    In the second decade after the events, new interpretations had emerged, in response to the question,
Why had Half-a-Prayer shouted in what sounded like delight when the man came for him?
Witnesses recalled the torn-skinned man raising his pistol, and thought that they had perhaps seen Jack strain as if to meet him and then
of course
a
mercy
killing. One of Jack’s gang, risking his own life to bring the humiliations of his boss to an end. And maybe he had succeeded—could anyone be sure it was a militia bullet that had ended the Remade captive? Maybe that first shot was a friend saving a friend.
    The audiences liked that much more. Now Jack Half-a-Prayer was back as he had been in graffiti for decades—champion. The story became a grand and vaguely instructional tragedy of hopes noble-but-doomed, and though Jack and his nameless companion were now the heroes, the city’s censors allowed it, to the surprise of many. In some productions the newcomer took Jack’s life then ended his own, in others was shot dead as he fired. The death scenes of both men had become more and more protracted. The truth,
as Ori understood it—that though Jack had been left dead and lolling in his harness the pock-faced man had disappeared, his fate uncertain—was not mentioned.
    Up the little stairs ran the scarred-man puppet, his weapons outstretched, scooping up the overseer’s dropped whip (a complicated arrangement of pins and threads facilitating the movement), as tradition said he had done. But
what was this
? “What is this?”
the narrator shouted. Ori smiled—he had seen the script. He was clenching his fists.
    “Why pick up the whip?” the narrator said. Having been caught in the rude charm of the Nuevist production, the Quillers were definitely standing now, shouting again
shame, shame.
“Iber gotter gun,” said the scarred-man puppet directly to the audience over their rising cries. “Iber gotter knifey. Whybe gonner pick anubber?”
    “I’ve an idea, pock-boy,” said the narrator.
    “Ibey idear already too, see?” the puppet said back. “One an
dese,
” holding out the gun and the whip, “tain’t fer me, see?” An elegant little mechanism spun the pistol in his wooden hand so that suddenly he held it out butt-first, a
gift
for his tethered friend, and he took his knife to Jack Half-a-Prayer’s bonds.
    A heavy glass trailed beer as it arced over the crowd to burst wetly.
Treason!
came the calls, but there were others now, people standing and shouting
yes, yes, tell it like it is!
Dogged, only dancing over the skittering glass, the Flexible Puppet Theatre continued with their new version of the classic, where the two little figures were not doomed or cursed with visions too pure to sustain or beaten by a world that did not deserve them, but were still fighting, still trying