Free The Scar by China Miéville Page A

stay long in Tarmuth. She had to join a ship as soon as possible. Her gut was heavy with hope that she might make it to Nova Esperium, but she realized with an awful foreboding that she was no longer in a position to make a choice.
    She felt no shock. She simply realized, rationally and slowly, that she would have to go wherever she could. She could not delay.
    Alone, away from the fug of anger and confusion that had swept over the rest of the ship, Bellis felt all her hope was dried up. She felt desiccated like old paper, as if the blustery air on the deck would burst her and blow her away.
    Her partial knowledge of the captain’s secrets was no comfort. She had never felt more homeless.
    She cracked the seal on her letter, sighed, and began to add to its last page.
    Skullday 6th Arora, 1779. Evening,
she wrote.
Well, my dear, who would have thought this? A chance to add a little more.
    It comforted her. Although the arch tone she used was an affectation, it consoled her, and she did not stop writing while Sister Meriope returned and went to bed. She continued by the light of the tiny oil lamp, hinting at conspiracy and secrets, while the Swollen Ocean gnawed monotonously on the
Terpsichoria
’s iron.

    Confused shouting woke Bellis at seven o’clock the next morning. Still lacing up her boots, she stumbled with several other sleepy passengers out into the light. She squinted into the brightness.
    Sailors pushed up against the port railings, gesticulating and shouting. Bellis followed their gazes to the horizon and realized that they were looking
up
.
    A man was hanging motionless in the sky, two hundred feet above them, out over the sea.
    Bellis gasped idiotically.
    The man kicked his legs like a baby and stared at the boat. He seemed to stand in the air. He was strapped in a harness, dangling just below a taut balloon.
    He fiddled with his belt and something, some ballast, fell away, spinning lazily into the sea. He jerked and rose forty feet. With the faint sound of a propellor he moved in an inelegant curve. He began a long, unsteady circuit of the
Terpsichoria
.
    “Get back to your godsdamned stations!”
The crew broke up industriously at the sound of the captain’s voice. He strode out onto the main deck and peered at the slowly turning figure through his telescope. The man hovered near the top of the masts in a vaguely predatory manner.
    The captain yelled up at the aviator through the funnel. “You there . . .” His voice carried well. Even the sea seemed quiet. “This is Captain Myzovic of the
Terpsichoria
, steamer in the New Crobuzon Merchant Navy. You are requested to touch down and make yourself known to me. If you do not comply I will consider it a hostile action. You have one minute to begin a descent or we will defend ourselves.”
    “Jabber,” Johannes whispered. “Have you ever seen anything like that? He’s too far out to have come from land. He’s got to be scouting from some ship, out of sight over the horizon.”
    The man continued to circle above them, and for seconds the buzzing of his engine was the only sound.
    Eventually Bellis spoke. “Pirates?” she whispered.
    “Possible.” Johannes shrugged. “But the freebooters out here couldn’t take a ship our size, or with our guns. They go for smaller merchants, the wooden hulls. And if it’s privateers . . .” He pursed his lips. “Well, if they’re licensed by Figh Vadiso or wherever, then they just might have the firepower to engage us, but they’d be insane to risk war with New Crobuzon. The Pirate Wars are over, for Jabber’s sake!”
    “Right!” the captain shouted. “This is your last warning.” Four musketeers had stationed themselves at the rail. They took aim at the airborne visitor.
    Instantly the sound of his motor changed. The man jerked and began to move erratically away from the ship.
    “Fire, dammit!” shouted the captain, and the muskets sounded, but the man had sped up and away and beyond their aim. For a