Someone sniffed, and then another voice came from the shadows: “Is it human?” This one had wings.
Scars.
Mr. Nettle recoiled. He looked for a weapon, saw none, so he hefted his crutch instead. His unsupported leg screamed in protest. He ignored it, ploughed forward.
“Wait.” The Spine pushed him back, strong for such a little thing. “She won’t hurt you.”
“Don’t count on it,” Carnival muttered.
He growled.
“I recognize him now.” The scarred angel rose from the ground. “My drunken assassin. Lost your cleaver, beggar?”
Mr. Nettle went for her.
A tearing pain in his leg stopped him dead. The assassin had a foot pressed hard against his injured thigh. He swung a punch at her—
—and found himself on his back, gasping.
“Enough!” This time Rachel Hael had him pinned to the ground, her heel digging into the cords in his neck. He tried to grab her, but she dug her heel in deeper. “I said, enough! Darkness take me, there’s plenty down here for you both to piss on without pissing on each other.”
Mr. Nettle noticed that her ankle was manacled to a chain. He twisted his neck, so his eyes followed the links. His grunt was almost a laugh: one bitch chained to another.
The Spine let him up again, handed back his crutch. “What happened to your daughter?”
“Killed,” he said, keeping one eye on Carnival. “Poisoner bled her. Need to find her before she gets herself in any more trouble.”
Assassin and angel exchanged a glance.
“The dead angels here,” Mr. Nettle said, and his eyes narrowed on Carnival. “They’re even worse than you.”
Carnival folded her arms.
Rachel Hael looked uncomfortable. “Your keys, will they open the other cell?”
The opposite cell, when he opened it, was dark and cold, and stank of violence. Blood had been spilled here, lots of it. Mr. Nettle shifted forward, on his crutch, to see better. “Abigail?”
Behind him, the assassin raised her lantern.
White feathers matted with blood were scattered all across the floor. Mr. Nettle bent down and started stuffing them into his pockets. You could sell feathers. Folks made pillows and warm jackets from them. And there were piles of them here, even though filthy. He’d have to clean all the muck and blood off first, but that didn’t matter. They were still worth scrounging.
Then he noticed the corpse in the corner.
The angel lay broken on a bed of straw, like it had been thrown there, its skin black and swollen, mouth and eyes gaping in frozen terror. Its wings had been ripped to shreds, as though a pack of dogs had been at them.
But there was a sword.
Mr. Nettle moved over to take it. That was worth more than all the feathers.
The Spine stopped him. “Don’t,” she said, her voice sounding strangely thick. She hunched down beside the angel and rested a hand on its forehead.
“Dill?”
Mr. Nettle grunted, and went back to gathering feathers. Over his shoulder he saw the assassin prise the weapon free from the angel’s grip. “They didn’t take his sword,” she said; then, angrily, “They didn’t even take his sword!” Then she laid the weapon on the angel’s chest. She didn’t once turn round.
There were more feathers than Mr. Nettle could collect. When his pockets were full, he staggered upright on his crutch. “There’s no more cells after these,” he said.
Carnival was eyeing his swollen pockets, her lips peeled back from her teeth like she wanted to rip out his throat. Mr. Nettle clenched a fist around the bones that formed his crutch. But the assassin stepped between them again. Her eyes were moist. “Let’s get out of here,” she said.
“Sword’s worth money,” Mr. Nettle said.
“Touch it, scrounger, and I’ll break your neck.”
Mr. Nettle gave the weapon a final, longing look before heaving himself painfully toward the door. A sword was no use to him anyway, not down here, not against all these dead things. Especially against the angels, a sword would be no use at all.
“Need to find Abigail,” he said.
“She’s gone,” Carnival snarled. “Forget her.”
“No.” Mr. Nettle towered over the scarred angel. He was twice her size. “She’s here. She’s all alone.”
Rachel Hael took his arm. “I’ll help you look for her,” she said. She glanced at Carnival, and quickly away again. “But first we need to find a way to cut this chain. And we need weapons.”
Mr. Nettle turned back to the sword.
“Not that,” Rachel said. “Leave it—it doesn’t belong to us.”
The scrounger grumbled. Women. No point even trying to figure them out. “Storeroom down the way,” he said. “Might find something there.”
They left the cells behind them and hurried along a rough passageway hewn from naked rock. The lantern threw wild shadows ahead of them, like fleeing wraiths. Carnival sprinted up front, still dragging the chain. One wing slumped from her broken shoulder. Mr. Nettle hobbled on his crutch behind, trailing feathers. Rachel followed last, still lost in thought.
Anger curled around her memory of Dill lying broken and alone in his cell. Why hadn’t their captors taken his sword? It struck her as irreconcilably cruel. By ignoring the weapon, they’d diminished him.
And yet, even now he was dead, she hadn’t been able to take the sword herself—blunt as it was, it would have been better than nothing. But prising it from his dead grip had made her feel as cruel as those who’d so readily dismissed it. She cursed her dream. For a moment she’d felt sure she could save him.
She wondered what Carnival was now thinking. The angel—or demigod, if that’s what she was—stormed ahead of them as though she meant to tear apart the city of Deep with her bare hands. After that battle on the mountain of bones, Rachel didn’t doubt she was capable. It had taken an entire army to stop Carnival then. But now it was Scar Night.
And the scrounger? For his sake she hoped they didn’t find his dead daughter.
The lantern guttered: barely a drop of oil left. Unless they stumbled upon some illuminated tunnels soon, only Carnival would be able to see. The chain between them rattled like a death cough.
The passageway climbed sinuously through a hive of smaller tunnels and crawl-spaces. Dank currents of air whispered around them, carrying sounds so faint Rachel wasn’t sure she’d heard anything at all. Once she thought she heard someone sobbing, another time the chopping of knives. But always in the background, like a pulse, the hammering of metal in the forges. There were faint odours too, which were sickeningly familiar, but she forced those out of her mind and concentrated on keeping her footing on the weeping rock. After a while the passage levelled, and then, abruptly, it opened into a cavernous space.
It was a storeroom of sorts, stuffed with piles of mouldering detritus: furniture, bedsteads, bolts of cloth, crates and trunks full of random objects, stone trenchers and sinks, broken pottery, baskets of bottles, and more bottles containing everything from beads to teeth.
“Look for tools,” Rachel said to Mr. Nettle, “and weapons.”
“Quickly,” Carnival growled.
They set to work rummaging through all the rubbish, most of it smashed up or useless. Years of offerings, Rachel assumed, from the Avulsior’s ceremonies way above; payment for the privilege of watching pilgrims redeemed. There were examples of workmanship from every quarter of Deepgate: once-fine garments, wrought iron, ceramics, children’s toys, wooden sculptures, all heaped here into piles and left to rot.
Mr. Nettle found the poppywood chest.
Rachel could barely have lifted the heavy crossbow, let alone used it effectively, but the scrounger hefted it easily in one massive arm and grinned at her.
“Smith’s,” he explained.
“Belonged to a friend of yours?” she asked.
His grin faded. “Aye.”
There were three bolts with the weapon: a hunting cresce
nt, a burner, and a poisonsong wrapped in oil cloth—though no markings to indicate which type of poison.
“Craw plague,” Mr. Nettle said.
She noted the way he watched Carnival from the corner of his eye as he spoke. Rachel gave him the hunting tip and carefully fastened the others to her belt. Chances were, the plague-bolt was dry—although still able to pierce—but the burner was worth more than any treasure.
“Should be hammers too,” Mr. Nettle said, peering into the chest. “Smith had hammers in here.”
“They’ve been taken. I suppose hammers are worth more to people living underground than a hulking great weapon like that.”
After all, what were they going to shoot at down here?
Rachel could have spent hours sifting through the storeroom for further weapons, but a look at Carnival’s expression drove her to urgency. After she’d fitted a fresh cord to Nettle’s crossbow, wound the windlass, and loaded the hunting tip for him, they set off again.
Tunnels branched and branched again until it seemed like they were negotiating the hollow roots of a tree. Carnival kept always to the widest passages, her wingtips scratching the rock on either side. It grew warmer, and gradually lighter, until Rachel spied fires burning in a chamber ahead.
“Turn off the lantern,” Carnival hissed. “Don’t you smell it?”
Rachel sniffed. Someone was cooking meat.
She realized the same smell had been there for some time. And then she realized she was salivating. Bile rose in her stomach at the thought. She glanced at Mr. Nettle. Had he noticed too? Did he know what the smell meant or had his mind blocked out such a possibility?
What will the truth do to him?
Carnival went striding ahead.
“Wait,” Rachel whispered.
Carnival ignored her, and the chain between them grew taut. Cursing, the assassin took off after her.
Liquids gurgled and frothed within huge, steaming cauldrons set around the edges of the cavern. The rock walls were seeping, and blood-coloured with the heat and light from coals burning under massive grates. A heavy butcher’s block occupied most of the available space between the cauldrons, its wooden surface deeply stained and gouged. Mercifully, there was no sign of any meat.
Carnival stood peering into one of the cauldrons. “Scrounger,” she said, squinting against the light.
“Don’t.” Rachel grabbed her arm.
The angel grunted.
Mr. Nettle joined them. He scowled at the nearby cauldrons, but did not appear interested in their contents.
He can’t face the truth. His mind isn’t capable of accepting it. Or maybe he’s just too damn stubborn. She wondered how long he’d already been down here, and what he’d eaten to stay alive.
Two stout doors led out of the opposite end of the cavern. One of them would doubtless be the cold room. Rachel studied the floor and saw grooves in the dirt suggesting that a number of heavy objects had been dragged through the smaller of the two doors.
Carnival approached this same door.
“Wait!”
But just as Rachel reached out to stop her, the larger door opened. And something clambered through.
The thing had to stoop low to squeeze its wings through the doorframe, moving its fleshless limbs in a series of crooked jerks. When it saw them, it dropped the bone it had been gnawing, straightened its misshapen body somewhat, and narrowed sulphurous yellow eyes. One side of its mouth drooped open to reveal a single pointed tooth. Between its white lips, a sliver of a tongue lolled like a bloodworm. Even here, in this already fetid air, the stink from the creature was overwhelming. Whatever it was, it was rotting.
Rachel then realized it was an angel—or had been once.
30
THE PALACE OF CHAINS
A THOUSAND CAMPFIRES shivered under Scar Night’s dark moon. Dunes extended in frozen waves before them, till it seemed to Devon that he was looking at a city built on the distant shore of a sea. He eased the throttle of the Tooth and let the machine rumble to a halt. Sand showered down past the bridge windows.
So many fires. Every legion of Deepgate’s regulars and reservists warmed themselves in readiness for the onslaught. Unseen, he realized, the seventh and ninth cavalry divisions would be off to the sides, moving into a position to outflank them. And up there the warships. Devon counted more than thirty, burning like comets among the stars. The Whisperer had emptied its payload. Somewhere overhead, it would be flying back to Deepgate to rearm.
Bataba kept squinting through the forward windows, alternately scratching the scar of his right eye and tugging at the fetishes in his beard. “We are Ayen’s fist,” he grumbled. “This war should be fought under her light.”
“Not much we can do about that,” Devon said. “Unless your goddess sees fit to raise the sun early.”
The shaman grunted.
“How do you want to do this?” the Poisoner asked.
“Just mow them down.”
Devon feigned surprise. “I thought the Heshette looked their enemies in the face when they killed them.”
“In daylight, yes. But this fight is on the outcasts’ terms.”
“They’ll send someone out to parley.”
Bataba continued to eye the horizon.
Devon stifled a yawn. “As you wish.” He hitched a lever and the Tooth lurched forward to meet the assembled armies.
Bataba turned his back on the night as the Tooth eased over into a dip. “What can we expect?” he asked.
“A bumpy ride.”
“Anything else we should know about?”
“The third through fifth divisions, the sappers, they’ll have undermined the ground between. Tunnels, trenches of pitch, that sort of thing. Expect more explosions, but I doubt they’ve had time for any serious excavation. So that shouldn’t be a problem. They’ll have cobbled up some siege-towers, heavy ballistics and such, but nothing powerful enough to stop us. As long as we keep moving, they’ll have a hard time breaching our hull in significant numbers. We should be safe until we reach the abyss. Their reservists, for all their zeal, haven’t fought or trained in a decade.” He paused. “My main concern is Spine saboteurs. Ichin Tell will have assassins hidden here and there in the sand, whose job will be to get inside while our attention is diverted. Look out for grapples from below.”
“I will post lookouts.”
“Better to set an ambush for them,” Devon said. “Allow them an opening and let them come in. But be ready to close it again on them quickly.”
“Don’t tell me how to fight, Poisoner. We’ve beaten their likes before.”
“In desert skirmishes,” Devon agreed, “but you’ve never faced numbers like this. Almost every living man who ever held a sword for Deepgate is out there now.”
Bataba seemed not to hear him. He turned away as the Tooth began to climb out of the depression. “I’ll fetch the council,” he said, and then left the bridge.
When they reached the crest of the next dune, Devon saw a group of horsemen riding out to meet them, the temple standard rippling gold and black in the light of a dozen brands. A trumpet sounded shrill beneath the roar of the Tooth’s churning engines. Devon kept the same course and fed power into the cutting arms. Cogs of the weird metal spun and sang, and threw off arcs of sand. The approaching riders broke formation and skirted the huge machine. As the trumpet blared again, Devon jammed the throttle forward in response.
Deepgate still lay hidden below the horizon, but huge fleshy columns of smoke rose from the city, as though every furnace was ablaze in forging weapons. The sky above was painted in colours of oil and coal and fire. Churchships dotted the billowing smoke like red blisters.
A last line of defence, perhaps? Had Clay armed the temple armada too? The Poisoner wasn’t overly concerned. By the time the churchships engaged him, the city itself would already be lost.
After half a league, the horsemen regrouped and rode back towards the waiting army.
Presently the council
arrived on the bridge. They were in no better mood than Bataba, at least half of them with fresh burns from the Whisperer’s attack. None concealed their contempt for the Poisoner. They gathered around, brandishing their tribal knives in plain view, until their scowls were drawn to the distant lights.
“We’ve set bowmen at the vents on both sides,” Bataba explained. “Barrels of tar from the wrecked skyships stand ready in dawn and dusk corridors. These saboteurs will find scaling our walls no easy task.”
Devon wasn’t convinced, but he left his concerns unvoiced. “Just keep one eye on the sky,” he reminded him.
Bataba ignored the jibe. He was studying the landscape before them. The Poisoner turned to follow his gaze. They were closer now, close enough to see units of troops clustered around the campfires, and mounted soldiers milling behind. Armour and shields flashed. On higher ground to the southeast and southwest the skeletal silhouettes of wooden towers, mangonels, and scorpions waited before the abyss.
“The outriders have returned,” Bataba said.
The horsemen had broken through the infantry and reined in before a group of command tents situated behind the bulk of the army.
“At least we know where Clay is,” Devon observed, “or wants us to think he is.”
They didn’t have long to wait after the outriders had delivered their report. Buglers echoed commands through the lines of troops, and the armies of Deepgate rippled into motion.
Hundreds of banners split aside and streamed to east or west. Rear cavalry units moved into flanking positions. Reservist infantry assembled into blocks between them, bristling with spears and pikes. Lines of pitch fire tore through the sand before ranks of archers and arbalests. Aether-lights flared in unison high above, and Deepgate’s warships started to converge, moving into position for a concentrated assault.
The plain before them now levelled. Rocks popped and crumbled beneath the Tooth’s tracks, reduced to dust in the face of the great machine. Engines thundered. But to Devon these noises seemed distant, blanketed by a heavy silence in his mind.
He waited. The Tooth rocked and juddered, slowly building speed, flattening everything in its path. Caravan tracks crisscrossed the desolate ground before them like old wounds. The stars seemed to wink in approval. Deepgate’s fire-lit trunks of smoke grew nearer.