Still the blows rained. Metal and stone struck him, ripped him, beat him back into the sand. He heard constant thuds all around. A spear entered his groin. He grabbed it and pulled himself upright, tore the weapon free. Knives thumped into his shoulders, his belly, his chest, his neck, and he was looking up at sky again. Something broke a rib: he heard the bone snap, clear and loud in the desert silence. He tried to stand, but a heavy weight cracked into his arm and the force spun him round.
Devon turned back. The Heshette were raising and aiming bows, picking up rocks. He looked down at his ruined body. Flesh hung in strips from bloody wounds. A shard of bone pierced the flesh at the back of his arm. Blood darkened the sand at his feet. His breaths came wetly. He opened split and swollen lips, ran his tongue over a loose tooth. Fluids gurgled inside him when he tried to speak. A knock to the head blurred the vision in his right eye. He reached up and found the shaft of an arrow there, jutting from the eye itself. He snapped off the shaft. Behind his skull, he located the tip, grabbed it, and pulled it through.
Small pieces of his brain clung to the wood.
The pain crept almost tenderly upon him, like an itch he wanted to scratch. It circled the tips of his fingers and trembled on his skin. He sucked in a breath and the pain found him, and tore at him. It howled in his blood and his skull and his tongue and his teeth. It clamoured and clawed behind his eyes and screamed in his ears.
Devon began to laugh.
Darkness. Dill could see nothing. He couldn’t see his outstretched hands or his chain mail rattling against his chest as he dived deeper. He plummeted with his wings folded tight against his back, a scream lodged in his throat. Cold air rushed up at him, streamed through his fingers, ripped tears from his eyes. He screwed them shut but it made no difference. Everything was black. With every heartbeat he was falling deeper into death. He opened his eyes again and let the tears flow freely.
“Rachel!” he cried. The void swallowed his voice before it even reached his ears.
Fear begged him to stop. The abyss couldn’t go on for ever; he would hit the bottom sometime. But he had no choice. If he stopped he’d be just as alone in the dark and Rachel would surely be lost. And he couldn’t go back—not without her.
I trust you.
In his mind he saw her face. The image stirred in him a desperate hatred: hatred of himself, hatred of the Battle-archons who had gone before him. Hatred of everything they had been and he wasn’t. He screwed his eyes shut again.
He dived and dived, and screamed and screamed, “Rachel! Rachel!”
The abyss sucked him under like tar; it filled his lungs, leached into his flesh and his mind until it became everything. Dill’s terror was absolute.
Catch me.
How could he catch her? She was falling somewhere below, or above, or a foot to his left or right. How could he expect to find her in this? He was blind. And she was dead. She had been dead the moment she threw herself into the abyss.
I trust you.
Those words were wrapped around his heart and wouldn’t let go. They would still be wrapped around his heart when he died. Dill opened his eyes, tears trickling from the corners, and stared into nothing. Rushing air forced his lips open and he screamed again. An army of ghosts waited for him below. Would her spirit already be among them? Would he see them before he felt the slam of rock that ended his own life? And then?
What then?
There would be no priests to bless his corpse. Ulcis would offer him no salvation, no place in his army. Would the Maze come for him? Could it reach into the city of Deep to claim him? Or would he lie for ever in the darkness, broken and forgotten?
He would never see his father again. The thought struck him like a fist. Dill furled his wings even closer to his back and extended his fingers and dived and dived.
“Rachel!”
Above the torrent of air he thought he heard a distant voice.
“Rachel!”
Had he heard anything at all? How close was he to the end? Had he merely heard the wails of ghosts, warning him? Calling to him to stop his descent?
“Rachel!”
A voice called back from below. It might have been calling his name—but he wasn’t sure—somewhere off to his left. He checked his dive, banked in that direction. One hand moved to the storm lantern at his belt, the other gripped the hilt of his sword until it stung.
“Rachel!”
“Dill.” The voice seemed to echo across eternity.
He swept towards the sound of it, not daring to hope, his mind full of the pounding of blood and mocking darkness.
“Dill, here, below you!”
Dill flexed his wings to ease his descent. Air dragged at his feathers. He didn’t understand. She couldn’t still be falling; she couldn’t possibly see him to call out. But it sounded so like her.
Or her ghost? Am I already dead? Did I hit the bottom?
“Dill, left, above you, thirty yards.”
Above? He snapped his wings open and let the uprising air pull him to a stop.
“Rachel?”
“Above you, to your left.”
“Where are you?” he pleaded. His voice disappeared into the dark.
“Light your lantern.”
It took an age to locate the lantern at his belt. Then he fumbled for the spark wheel, beating his wings to keep him level, not even knowing if his eyes were open or closed. After three tries the lantern brightened. His hands, belt, and trousers became illuminated. The sword guard gleamed gold. Rusted steel links glistened at his chest. But there was nothing else visible. All around him the blackness of the void stretched on, untouched by the light, and seemed even denser than before. His chest began to tighten; his breathing came quicker. “Rachel?” he called.
“I see you!” she cried. “Above you, not far. I’m here.”
In a daze, Dill followed the sound of her voice.
Rachel had one arm around Carnival’s shoulders, the back of her knees supported in the crook of the angel’s scarred arm.
Carnival’s wings thumped with sluggish force. She bobbed slightly, supporting Rachel as though she weighed nothing. “Turn down the lantern,” she hissed.
For a moment he was too shocked to comply. He just stared.
Carnival’s jaw clenched. Her lips drew back from her teeth.
Dill dimmed the light.
“She saved me,” Rachel said. “She saw you diving after me. She told me where you were.”
Carnival’s face was a shocking white: even her scars seemed to have paled. But her eyes remained cold and empty. “Dark here, isn’t it?” she rasped. Her voice sounded as though she was suffocating. “There’s a ledge over there”—she jerked her head—“where you can rest.”
They flew there in silence. By the light of his lantern, Dill saw Rachel glance back at him over Carnival’s shoulder, and smile. His heart stuttered.
A narrow rim of metal, the ledge jutted from rock as smooth as glass. Vertical ribs of the same metal, an arm-span apart, stretched away on either side. Dill landed a few feet from the others. His sword struck the ledge with a hollow peal.
“The abyss must narrow as it descends,” Rachel said, her voice strangely hollow and metallic. She peered down into the depths, then lifted her head to gaze above. “I think this wall slopes inwards.”
For the first time Dill looked up. Deepgate shimmered far above, faint wisps and pearls of light, like sunlight filtering through a clutch of jewellery. “How far down are we?” he said.
“Half a league at least,” Rachel said. “Perhaps more.” She placed a hand on the abyss wall. “This surface…is melted.”
Reflections from his lantern shone deep in the rock. Dill’s reflection peered out at him, like another angel trapped in glittering black ice. Pale, forlorn, it reminded him of the archons in the temple tapestries.
Carnival left them and moved to perch some distance away, out of the lantern light, her footfalls soundless.
Once they were alone,
Dill sat down beside Rachel and whispered, “What about her? What are you going to do?”
“She could have let me die.”
“Why didn’t she?”
“I don’t know, Dill. She won’t speak to me. There’s something different about her, something…deeply wrong with her. I’ve never seen her like this before.” She lowered her voice. “I think she’s terrified.”
“Can you stop her before she reaches Deep?”
Rachel’s hands curled around the lip of the ledge she sat on, and her eyes seemed to dull. She said flatly, “I can’t fight her like this. Here. We have to wait.”
“Until when?”
“Until we reach the bottom.”
“But if Ulcis finds us?”
She shrugged. “There’s nothing else I can do.”
Dill leaned back, feeling his feathers brush the abyss wall. A thousand tons of darkness crushed him. Deafening silence. He closed his eyes, trying to shut it all out, but that only made things worse.
I could take you back; I should take you back up.
She wasn’t supposed to be here. Dill had been ordered to recover the angelwine, not Rachel. If he’d been stronger, braver, she wouldn’t be here at all. She’d jumped because she’d known Dill couldn’t face the abyss on his own. She’d jumped because he was a coward. And now his cowardice had put her in danger again.
“Thank you,” Rachel said, “for coming after me.”
Dill could not find his voice.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m…sorry I didn’t catch you,” he said.
“No.” Rachel placed a hand on his arm. “I’m the one who should be sorry. I was so furious with Mark and Fogwill, I didn’t stop to think. How could you ever have found me down here in this darkness? I realized that the instant I jumped.” She stole a glance at Carnival. “I thought I was dead.”
Dill turned away so that she couldn’t see the light of shame in his eyes.
“I jumped,” Rachel said, “and suddenly it dawned on me what I’d done. I called and called until my voice was hoarse. She caught me. One moment I was falling, the next I was in her arms. At first I thought it was you.”
Dill pulled his arm away from her grasp.
She moved closer, but did not reach out to him again. “At least you tried.”
They sat in silence for an age. Dill’s mind replayed the events in the Sanctum over and over again. He watched Rachel slip away. Catch me. That brittle moment when no one breathed, then her brother was grabbing him, dragging him towards certain death.
Dill had hesitated. Even the weight of darkness couldn’t crush that memory.
Rachel whispered, “You were so brave.”
Dill could not look at her. He didn’t hear Carnival approach, but her voice cut through his thoughts with a welcome sharpness. “I can’t see the bottom.” Face tight and pained, she clutched at the rope-scar on her neck as though the rope was still there. Her voice was hoarse. “Can you carry her now, or must I?”
“I can do it, I think,” Dill said.
“Then do so.”
They stood up and the assassin wrapped her arms around his neck. Her touch sent a shiver through him.
Carnival was watching them, dark eyes unreadable, her scars a map of hate and murder.
Each scar a life. She’s made a mask for herself. But perhaps there’s still an angel hidden somewhere deep beneath those scars. She knew I would never reach Rachel in time. She could so easily have let her fall to her death. But she didn’t.
“Thank you,” Dill said, “for saving her.”
Carnival spoke without emotion. “Don’t thank me, angel. I don’t know what’s down there or how long it will take me to find the Poisoner’s angelwine. But I do know one thing.” She looked at Rachel and hunger flashed in her eyes. “This bitch still has blood in her veins.” She smiled. “And Scar Night is coming.”
24
UNEASY ALLIANCES
THE HESHETTE SHAMAN spoke from behind his scarf. “If we remove your head from your neck, cut off your arms and legs, and divide what’s left into small enough pieces to feed to the goats—will you die then, do you think?” His accent was Dalamoor, the clipped speech of camel herders. Bones in his beard clicked together as he leaned forward.
Devon sat in the sand and tried to reach with his left hand an arrow stuck behind his left shoulder. He’d already pulled out the others, and they’d hurt. The axes had been less painful to dislodge but had left deep gouges in his chest and neck. He’d had to push the severed flesh together again to help it knit, but his wounds were healing. He no longer bled. The pain in his skull had subsided and the vision was clearing in his once ruined eye. He looked up at the scarf and said, “I really don’t know.”
The shaman struck him hard in the throat with his staff. Devon fell back, gagging. He spat blood and sand and wrenched himself back to his knees, driving his stump into the ground. The other tribesmen stood in a circle around the pair of them, faces hidden by their own scarves, weapons ready.
“That…course of action,” Devon said between breaths, “would be…bad…for both of us.”
“Worse for you, I think,” the shaman said. One of the tribesmen laughed.
Devon finally got hold of the arrow and yanked. It came out with a spike of pain that forced his teeth together. “Aren’t you even curious as to why I’m here?” He dropped the arrow onto the bloody, sand-crusted pile before him. There were a dozen there already, bone-tipped and fletched with vulture feathers.
The shaman tugged at his beard. “We’ll need a saw to do this right.”
“I have come here to offer you something,” Devon said.
“The arms and legs first, I think,” the shaman continued.
“Will you parley?”
“And then the head. If he still lives we can position the head to give him a better view of the more delicate cuts.” The shaman turned to one of his men. “You, fetch a saw.”
“Yes, Bataba.” The man bounded off under the Tooth’s hull, towards the rear of the machine.
“Sharp or blunt, whichever you prefer,” Bataba called after him.
The man grinned back.
Devon’s shoulder itched as the arrow wound closed and healed. Another of the savages had upturned his poison bag and was sifting through the coloured bottles, sniffing at their glass stoppers.
“I recommend the red one,” Devon said to him. “Yes, that small one.” He turned back to face Bataba. “Is my heightened constitution of no interest to you?”
“It presents me with a challenge,” Bataba conceded.
A score of men had already surrounded the Birkita’s gondola and, growing confident they were not to be attacked from within, were edging closer. In moments they’d find Sypes.
“I can offer you something far more rewarding than my death,” Devon said.
“Your death will be sufficient, Poisoner.”
“You know me?”
“Did you think Deepgate was entirely free of our spies? We learned of the Church’s manhunt days ago. And now skyships pursue you here. But you are a fool to have come to us.”
“We share an enemy.”
Bataba snorted. “Thirty years of poison and disease and you seek an alliance?”
The Heshette were inside the airship now, shouting and smashing everything they could find. One of them gave a shrill ululation, and moments later Sypes was dragged through the aft port door and thrown onto the deck. As the old priest sprawled facedown on the buckled wood, Devon winced. “You ought to be more careful with him,” he said. “He’s as frail as he looks and worth a considerable sum in ransom. This priest is Deepgate’s Presbyter.”
Bataba watched the Presbyter pick himself up. “A token of your faith? Or are you a token of his?”
“Kill him if you wish.”
“You think I require your permission, Poisoner?”
Devon did not reply. By now the tribesman had returned with a rusty saw—painfully blunt. He felt n
auseous.
Everything now rested on his offer.
“Listen to me,” he said. “I came here to end this war, to end the decades of bloodshed. I came here to offer you victory. I can give you Deepgate.”
Bataba turned slowly, his face still hidden by the scarf. Blood matted the tokens sewn into his beard. “You are a liar and a murderer. Every word you speak is poison. We will ransom the priest, but not you.”
Devon spat more blood into the sand. “Then you’re a fool,” he said. “Do you think our sciences end with me? There are others to take my place. And how much do you think you’ll get for him? Look at him, he’s almost dead. Just keeping him alive will be a struggle. The temple will prevail without one crippled old priest. I’m asking for your help to end this war.”
Bataba hefted the saw, studied the dull serrated blade. “This will cause a great deal of pain,” he said flatly.
Devon snorted. “A waste of your efforts. Pain, as you can see, means little enough to me.”
The shaman looked up. Slowly, he unwrapped the scarf from his head.
Devon’s breath caught. Half the shaman’s face was darkly tanned and smooth; the other half was a ruin. The left eye was misty grey, the right nothing but a red welt. Burns like reptile skin swept up from his neck and over his sunken cheeks. His right ear was missing. Black tattoos spiralled through the burns, through the wrinkled mess of his missing eye, and narrowed to points on his cracked and blistered scalp. Clumps of hair still sprouted from the unburned side.
“Yes,” the shaman said, “little enough to you.”
We should turn off the lantern,” Rachel said, above the whoomph of Dill’s wings. She hugged his neck with one arm, while her legs wrapped around his midriff.
“No.” Dill held the lamp close, like a mother holding a baby.
“We need to save the oil.”
“I…” He could think of nothing to justify his need, other than the truth.
“He’s afraid of the dark,” Carnival growled, banking close by.
Rachel studied him for a moment, then rested her head against his shoulder. “We can keep it lit a while longer, then,” she said.