“We’ll be on our way soon,” Devon said, righting the slop bucket before he squatted down beside the priest.
Sypes did not open his eyes.
“There’s no hope of rescue now, Sypes. No further need for your silence.” He paused, then spoke again in a whisper. “Your god is rising, isn’t he? But Ulcis isn’t what your Church would have us believe. That’s why you’re so afraid.”
“I wanted to protect them.” The old man swallowed. “I wanted to free Deepgate from her chains.”
“The only way to do that is to break them.”
“No,” Sypes said, “you’re wrong, Devon. Even chained, the city flourishes with life. Why can’t you see that?”
Devon sighed. “I once said how I was the only living man in Deepgate. I meant that everyone else takes, consumes, for no other reason than to feed the blood that feeds the abyss. That’s not life, it’s a hunger—as mindless as a poison or a disease. But I was wrong to claim life as mine alone. You and I stand each at the apex of twin pyramids, Sypes. Religion and science. There’s nothing beneath us but snapping mouths. But there’s life in you too, old man.”
“I can’t accept that as a compliment. You’re too arrogant. Besides, you’re insane.”
Devon smiled. “Can I get you anything to relieve the pain?”
“No. The pain is no more than I deserve after all I’ve done to them. If I die, it will be some comfort.”
“That reeks of martyrdom, Sypes, which doesn’t suit you.”
“If I’m a martyr, then it’s one to my conscience, not my god.”
“I fail to see the difference.”
Silence fell between them. Finally Devon said, “Tell me about Ulcis. Who is he really?”
“He’s Ayen’s son! A god!” The outburst triggered a coughing fit.
“All right.” Devon raised his hand. “Let’s not kill ourselves over semantics. Sometimes I think we’re both looking at the same thing through different ends of a sightglass. Our perceptions differ, but whatever we are trying to perceive doesn’t change.”
Sypes drew a long ragged breath. “Ulcis,” he said, “consumes the souls of the dead and leaves them empty. The lucky ones remain as vessels for his will. As long as he exists, they linger…like walking husks. Others suffer an even worse fate.” He winced. “Better to wander the Maze than to be used like that, to be stripped of everything that makes us human.”
“That,” Devon said, smiling, “depends upon which god a soul is used to empower.”
Sypes snorted. “Even Ulcis himself would struggle to match your arrogance. You think thirteen souls make you his equal?”
“I find that comparison demeaning. He is, after all, a parasite.”
“After the first holy war, his army grew too large to sustain itself. Without sustenance the dead rot. He could not swell their ranks and continue to…feed them. And so he has since allowed them to feast for a long, long time. For three millennia, the god of chains has waited, growing powerful on stolen souls while his slaves fed on his leavings.” The old man shook his head. “Now they are coming, and they will harvest our world for their master. Oblivion awaits us all. If you cut the city down, you’ll do nothing but aid him.”
Sudden convulsions gripped the priest. His body curled up like a fist, eyes screwed shut, fingers clenched, and coughs racking his emaciated frame.
Devon crouched and seized hold of the Presbyter’s shoulders until the worst of the tremors had passed. Then he pulled a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and, having no clean water to dampen it, pressed it into the old man’s hand. Sypes clutched it like a lifeline.
Devon felt suddenly sorry for the Presbyter. Like all the city’s priests, his faith was anchored in that pit. He hoped Sypes would survive to witness the city fall. It would be a kindness, for only then would he see the truth. The dead did not walk. There was no army in the darkness beneath Deepgate’s chains.
“I’m getting you out of here,” he said.
“No,” Sypes gasped. “I don’t care any more. Help the temple guard instead. Ease his pain.”
Devon had forgotten about Angus. “He’s still alive?”
Sypes nodded. “I heard that he’s deranged, like a rabid dog, biting, and scratching himself. They’ve had to restrain him.”
“You!”
Devon turned to see Bataba standing in the doorway. “What are you doing?”
“Interrogating the prisoner,” Devon said.
“You too are a prisoner.” The fetishes in Bataba’s beard formed a crooked ladder up to his chin, under the welt across his ruined eye. “What were you talking to him about?”
“Matters of faith—issues we don’t see eye to eye on.”
The shaman bristled. “Leave the priest. You are coming with me.”
The hatch swung open on to the full fury of a cinderblock sky. A blinding-white stairwell coiled up towards the sun. Below, the Deadsands hissed and shimmered.
“Up!” the shaman said.
Devon climbed.
On the roof of the huge machine it was worse. Soot-blackened funnels bisected the sunlight into searing slabs of white so painfully dazzling as to leave impressions in the eye. Blackthrone blazed, its serrated cliffs skeined with flashing copper, hot mineral seams, and incandescent crystal.
Bataba led him to the precipitous edge of the Tooth.
On the desert below some sort of game was under way. Horses jostled and thundered amid dust clouds, their riders swinging long, hooked poles. Every so often one of them would strike at the ground and send a fist-sized knot of rags hurtling through the air.
“Kabarah,” the shaman explained. “They are contesting for the fat priest’s jewels.”
Shrilling loudly, a handful of men spurred their mounts after the makeshift ball.
“An army is gathering against us,” the shaman continued. “Soon there will be little time for games.”
Beyond the improvised pitch, the wreckage of the two airships lay strewn across the desert. Old women still picked through a shattered gondola, bickering over finds. From this height Devon could not tell which ship it had belonged to. Strips of silver from the envelopes fluttered in the sand like party decorations.
Bataba’s gaze did not shift from the game. “They do not trust you,” he said. “I do not trust you.”
“I can’t imagine why,” Devon said.
“You have no respect for life.”
Devon snorted. “You are just as keen as I am to go to war.”
“For different reasons, Poisoner. We seek to pull a thorn from Ayen’s side, to crush her outcast son and those in this world who sustain him. But you—”
Renewed shouts went up from the riders below. Someone had hit the knot of rags into a roughly marked area of the pitch. A small boy picked up the bundle and scurried back with it to the centre.
“You,” the shaman continued, “do not flinch at murdering thousands to revenge some perceived injustice to yourself.”
“Don’t tell me you don’t long for justice for your own people, for the decades of war that have decimated your tribes.”
“I won’t deny we feel outrage. But our purpose is higher. We fight because it is Ayen’s will.”
“And if Ayen does not exist, has never existed, then what difference is there between us? My motivations at least are founded on belief rather than simple faith.”
“Another reason we do not trust you,” the shaman growled.
Devon felt like pitching him over the side, but he took a measured breath and swallowed his anger. He was growing accustomed to the angelwine’s violent demands. It seemed his consciousness had deliberately tightened around the seething knot inside him. His anger still flared when he least expected it, but he was gaining control.
A horseman struck the knotted bundle and sent it arcing towards the edge of the pitch. The other players surged after it, their mounts raising fresh plumes of dust.
Bataba said, “The skyship survivors told us how the fat man roused t
he chained city against us. An army to rival the greatest in history, they said. It is fitting. Yet when I saw his perfumed corpse wrapped in silks, he seemed more woman than man.” His gaze returned to the game. “We did not expect to find he had balls.”
A shrill ululation went up from below. Another rider had apparently scored. Devon felt faintly nauseous.
At that moment the Tooth shuddered. The roof vibrated and then settled into a steady, rhythmic booming. Curtains of built-up sand hissed loose from the funnels.
“It is time,” the shaman said, “to go to war.”
28
ULCIS
IN THE DARKNESS of her cell, Rachel had no means with which to judge the passage of time except the tick of water in the passageway beyond the grated door, and the ripening odour coming from the opposite cell.
She had given up calling for Dill.
She hunched against the damp stones, the corners of her eyes flinching at each tiny, hammer-blow drip, and tried not to think about anything other than keeping still. Whenever she shifted position, the manacle bit deeply into her ankle and the bruises on her face and chest throbbed angrily. Her throat was parched, her stomach cramped like a fist. She’d thrown away the bowls of meat their captors had left and flung curses down the passageway after them. No one had appeared to collect the bowls. There had been a jug of water, too, but it was empty now. She was thirsty, but so was Carnival. And Carnival would drink first.
For a time Rachel tried to focus, to send her mind far away—to the smoke-mist forests of Shale, to Spiral Hill in Clune with its whitewashed houses and terraced gardens daubed with children’s colours—to the places she used to dream about as a girl. She tried desperately, throwing herself into these forced dreams. But the images were always elusive. Inexorably, the chain at her ankle pulled her back.
She had extinguished the lantern to conserve oil. In the darkness she thought she spied her cellmate’s shape, but that might just be a trick of her eye. Carnival had remained wrapped in sullen silence for hours. Only the sound of her breaths reached over the space between them. They were short, shallow, and hungry.
“Carnival?”
No answer.
“How long now?”
The reply came through clenched teeth. “Why should I warn you?”
Carnival’s detachment from her own hunger had cracked. Now anger welled through to fill the gaps. She had become irritable, introverted, drawing inwards like a coiled spring.
“A day?”
“Less.” A lash of air buffeted Rachel as Carnival whipped out her wings and drew them back. The angel inhaled sharply, then rasped, “Try the bars again.” Her voice was tense. “Try…hard.”
Rachel rose unsteadily, aches and pains brawling for attention, and felt her way along the wall to the iron grate. The chain slithered over the flagstones behind her. Her hand closed on one of the bars, then she jammed her shoulder against the metal frame and pushed, straining her muscles until she cried out in pain.
The iron did not yield.
Breathless, she slumped to the floor. “It’s hopeless.” She pounded a fist against one of the bars.
Carnival’s breathing quickened audibly.
“Why?” Rachel said. “Why leave us here like this? If they wanted to watch you kill me, then where are they?”
“Not them,” Carnival hissed. “It.”
“Ulcis?”
“I don’t know,” Carnival snapped. “Stop talking, shut up!”
Rachel pulled herself upright. She gripped the bars again and wedged both feet against the lintel. With every ounce of her strength, she heaved.
Nothing.
Gasping, she tore herself away. “If we both try…”
Carnival growled.
“Help me!”
Rachel sensed movement. A scuff, a rattle of chain. Suddenly a hand gripped her wrist.
How did she…?
“Don’t,” Carnival hissed in her ear, “order me.”
“You’re hurting me.”
“Yes.”
Rachel’s breath felt thick in her chest, the darkness around her impenetrable, seething with malice. She reached for her sword, then paused. They had taken her sword, of course—and her knives, darts, and poisons. Even the bamboo tubes with the horrors they contained. Without her weapons she felt naked.
Finally the pressure on her wrist eased. She heard Carnival move away, dragging her end of the chain to the far side of the cell.
“Can I ask you a question?” Rachel said.
“No.”
“Have you ever given a rat to a beggar?”
“What?”
“Forget it.” Rachel rubbed her swollen ankle, then continued, “I met this blind man once, a Glueman, who said you’d given him a rat and told him it was lamb.”
“You believed him?”
“No…I don’t know.”
“Why not?” Carnival snarled. “I’ve done worse. I’ve killed beggars and drunks and whores, nobles and soldiers and children.” She let out a low hiss. “Even Spine.”
“You must have been lonely.”
Silence.
“Talk to me.”
“You think that will save you? It won’t.”
“Fine.” Rachel fumbled for the lantern, spun the flint-wheel. “If you’re going to kill me, I at least want to see your face.”
The cell brightened. Fingers of shadow reached into the passageway beyond the grate. Carnival twisted away and hid her face from the light.
“If you won’t talk,” Rachel said, “I will.”
“I don’t give a damn.”
“As long as I bleed when the time comes?”
Carnival flinched.
Rachel swallowed a pang of regret at her outburst. She foundered for a moment, trying to find a place to begin. At last she said, “My father was a good man. No tears there. My mother died when I was eight, we don’t know why. She got sick. Life twists like that.”
“Shut up!” Carnival snarled. “Do you think I want to listen to this?”
“I don’t care.”
Carnival sank into silent fuming.
“Our family has a townhouse in Ivygarths. A garden with a scraggy tree and a pond full of weeds. Nothing grand. I played with the other officers’ children. We scrumped apples, terrorized ants, made the smaller boys eat newts—the usual stuff.”
Carnival had drawn herself into a knot, her face buried in her knees, arms wrapped around herself.
“Father was always away with the navy, always on some perilous campaign for the temple, for God. You don’t much like aeronauts, do you?”
Carnival didn’t even look up.
“He’d bring back presents. Dolls for me and pots of talcum from the river towns for mother. Painted soldiers for Mark. I’d sit on his knee and listen to his stories about exotic places. Dalamoor souks, monkey bandits, Racha gem-traders with cutthroat smiles. Thaumaturges from distant lands, if you can believe it. Men whose lips had been pierced with gallows-wood, men who knew Deep by a different name.” Her shoulders slumped. “More than anything, I wanted to go with him when he left again. I wanted to be part of his stories.”
Carnival seemed to relax a little. Rachel realised she was listening.
“When the Spine accepted me I didn’t hesitate. I joined because I wanted him to be proud of me, and because I wanted to experience my own stories—to share that part of his life with him.” She regarded her manacle distantly. “That’s why I grew to hate him.”
“Because he wasn’t proud of you?” For once Carnival spoke without bitterness.
“No, because he didn’t tell me what it felt like to kill. He knew, and he didn’t tell me. After I came back from the Lowland Warrens, there was a wedge between us. We both recognized it but neither of us spoke about it. We hardly spoke at all after that.”
Carnival was silent for a while, then raised her head and spoke angrily. “I remember this.” Her finger traced the rope scar on her neck. “My first memory.”
“How old were you?”
“I don’t know!” The angel took a shuddering breath. “I was hanging by a rope from a foundation chain, sacks of rocks tied to my feet.”
Rachel winced. “Who did that to you?”
The angel shrugged.
“You remember nothing? Nothing from before?”
“My name.”
“How did you get loose?”
Carnival’s cold detachment was back in place. “I chewed through the rope.”
Chewed? Oh gods…how?
“It took four days.”
Rachel didn’t know what to say, and an uncomfortable silence fell between them. Outside the cell the water beat fierce, soulless notes. For a long time Rachel sat there listening. She thought about trying to loosen the bars again, but she was now so tired. Would she recognize when the end came? Would she see the moment when Carnival’s defences shattered and the hunger took over? Did she want to know? Perhaps it was better just to sleep, to end it now.
Rachel remembered a voice from a dream she’d once had.
Don’t die on me, bitch.
But she could no longer recall who the speaker had been. Her eyelids flickered.
An army of angels filled the dawn sky, their golden armour and steel alight like bright rain falling from the sun. Turbulent sand boiled over the desert, dragged in the powerful wake of their wings. Rachel stood on the crest of a dune and watched the army converge on something half a league to the east—a small dark shape, a winged figure moving through the Deadsands. It was crawling on its hands and knees, crippled by the weight of what it dragged behind. Chains. Hundreds and thousands of chains.
Rachel.
She looked up.
Dill’s sword sparkled gold, but his eyes were as white as his wings. He was being pulled away from her, struggling against an invisible current.
Wait, she shouted. Come back.
But the angel was already growing distant, merging into the ranks of his ancestors. They massed around him, all bronzed muscles and heavy armour plate, sneering, mocking him. Dill cried out. He was trying to tell her something.