Rachel’s hand tightened on Carnival’s shoulder. She could feel the scarred angel’s muscles tensing like steel, her fists clenched, her knuckles white. The rope scar at her neck pulsed with each rapid breath. No! Rachel wanted to scream at the god. Don’t force her to remember!
Carnival spoke quietly. “What did you do to me?”
The god of chains rose, an unfolding landscape of flesh, and unfurled his vast wings. Chains of shadow lashed out behind him. “Shall I give you those memories back, daughter? When they’d finished with you there was no point in taking your soul. There was nothing left of it to take.”
But Rachel knew that was a lie. Ulcis had tried to destroy his daughter’s soul, to crush the humanity he so reviled. Yet he hadn’t succeeded. Carnival had buried that part of herself even deeper than the abyss. She possessed her father’s hunger and rage, but she still kept her mother’s soul.
Carnival slipped off the ring Shing had given her and let it fall to the ground. That small gesture wrung Rachel’s heart.
“The syringe,” Ulcis commanded. “Bring it here.”
One of the angels approached, a creature seven feet tall. Naked bone gleamed where battle-scars had opened up its face, and ribs poked through gaps in its armour. Rachel studied the sword at its hip and the bamboo tube lashed beside it; then she frowned. This bastard was carrying her weapons. It handed Ulcis the Poisoner’s syringe, still in the grip of Devon’s severed hand.
“You came here for this?” Ulcis said. The hand twitched, tightened its grip further. The god regarded it without apparent interest.
“It’s mine,” Carnival hissed, crouching, and the scars on her face contracted.
Rachel heard a creak of bone and glanced back to see Mr. Nettle shuffle forward on his crutch. He levelled his crossbow at the god, and stared hungrily at the syringe.
Shit, what’s his interest in the angelwine? Then it struck her. His daughter’s soul. So this is about to get very messy.
No one moved.
The angelwine glittered: a distillation of souls that would restore an angel. Rachel now understood why Carnival had fought so hard to find it. Would it finally cure her hunger? End her torment? Could it remove her scars? Not only the scars she wore on her flesh, but those she carried inside?
That stuff brought Devon back from the brink of death.
And suddenly she realized why Carnival could never be allowed to have it.
Ulcis prised the syringe free from the Poisoner’s dead fingers and flung the severed hand at his daughter. “You may keep this—a gift from me.”
Carnival did not move a muscle as the severed hand dropped to the floor at her feet, then scuttled away like a fleshy crab. But her scars flared brighter; her eyes darkened to the colour of murder.
Steel rasped as the dead angels around them unsheathed their swords.
Rachel heard a click.
Ulcis’s head snapped back, the hunting crescent buried in his right eyebrow.
Mr. Nettle dropped his crossbow and charged.
His improvised splint broke apart, but his momentum still carried him forward, and he slammed into the god with a force that would have brought down a house. The throne pitched backwards, and Ulcis crashed to the ground underneath the scrounger. The entire platform shuddered, tilted; cages lurched and groaned above them. A hundred chains clinked and shivered.
Ulcis roared in anger.
Mr. Nettle butted his head into the god’s face.
His archons rushed forward to attack.
Carnival pounced.
But Rachel was ready: she grabbed the chain secured to her own ankle, and yanked.
The tightened chain halted Carnival in mid-leap. Her leg jerked back and she hit the ground face-first, snarling.
With one hand, Mr. Nettle was wrestling Ulcis for the syringe. With his other fist, he was pummelling the god’s face to a bloody mess. The archon nearest drew back its sword to cut him down.
Rachel threw the burner.
It struck the angel square in the forehead and exploded. A ball of flame engulfed the creature. It screamed, stumbled backwards into the archons behind in a cloud of burning feathers.
Mr. Nettle had rolled free; his robes were on fire, but he came up on his hands and knees with the syringe in one huge fist.
“Mine!” Carnival leapt to her feet, her face creased with rage and pain.
The scarred angel flew at the scrounger, lashed an elbow down on his skull. The blow connected with bone-crunching force.
Mr. Nettle grunted, shook his head once, then surged upright in an eruption of rags and muscle. One arm thrown around her neck, the other across her shoulder, he struggled to push her away. Caught in his awkward embrace, she scrabbled for the syringe, reached it, fumbled.
The glass tube of angelwine fell to the ground, rolled clear in a wide circle. Rachel snatched it up, then ducked as steel sliced the air above her head. Ulcis’s lieutenants had closed the gap, and the tall, battle-scarred archon had just taken a swipe at her. With her own sword. Bastard.
“Give it to me, bitch!” Carnival shrieked. She had now disentangled herself from the scrounger and stood a few paces beyond him. “That belongs to me!”
Still on fire, Mr. Nettle wheeled, ran straight at Rachel.
The assassin sidestepped the big man easily, extended a foot. He tumbled headfirst into the archon who had attacked her. Both sprawled to the ground, armour and ribs crumpling under the scrounger’s weight. Pinned, the archon grunted, and tried to swing its sword.
Her sword.
Rachel ripped it from the angel’s grip, then snatched the bamboo tube from the sword belt. And then she was running towards Carnival. “Follow me! The chain! We’re still chained!”
But Carnival’s face was nothing but a snarling mask, eyes black with insatiable hunger.
Shit, not now.
As Carnival came at her, Rachel veered sharply, barely managed to duck under the angel’s outstretched arms. She punched her assailant twice—once in the neck, the second blow in the shoulder. Carnival collapsed, hissing and spitting like a wildcat.
Too bright for you in here?
“Get up!” Rachel cried. “The chain.”
A sword thrust to her side. The assassin twisted away. The blade sliced empty air an inch from her belly. Another weapon stabbed at her face. She caught the flat of its blade with the back of her hand, smacked it up, and sank her own sword into the archon’s armpit. A yank and her blade was free, then arcing down to intercept the first assailant’s rising stroke. Steel clashed, rasped. She spun, kicking the archon full in the face. The blow should have broken its neck. But it grinned, and bore down on her again.
Shit!
Behind it, the rest were closing in.
Rachel grabbed a fistful of Carnival’s hair, dragging her upright as she ran past. She glanced back to see Ulcis rise and rip the crossbow bolt free of his brow. Blood poured from the wound and from his broken nose, huge chains of indeterminate darkness swirling behind him. Mr. Nettle was still wrestling with the battle-scarred archon. He delivered one rock-crushing blow into the creature’s face, before it struck him savagely on one temple and managed to throw him off. The scrounger slumped to the floor, unconscious or dead.
Carnival wrenched herself away from Rachel, furious, seemingly mindless of the chain that bound them together or the archons at her back, mindless of anything now but ripping the assassin apart.
“The chain!”
“Give me the syringe!”
Rachel slipped through the chains surrounding the platform, and reached the bridge with the angelwine still in her grip. The prisoners in their cages were howling, rattling the bars. The whole palace shook as Ulcis’s voice thundered after her.
“Kill them.”
Suddenly Rachel was jerked to a halt.
Carnival had found a different path through the complexities of Ulcis’s palace. The chain between them was snagged, looped round another chain supporting the palace. Neither angel
nor assassin could move forward. Carnival clawed at her, but couldn’t reach. Behind her, Ulcis’s archons were gaining on them. The fat god himself had joined the pursuit. His palace trembled under his footsteps. Cages creaked and swung all around him.
“Back,” Rachel cried. “We’re caught!”
For the first time, Carnival seemed to notice her manacled ankle. Her eyes traced the links back to where they had become snagged. “I’ve got you now, bitch.”
“They’ll cut us both down.”
“Not before I rip your heart out. The syringe—give it to me.”
“Behind you!”
Carnival spun about just as a huge archon, its lower face a grinning skull, reached for her. Plates of bone armour shifted as Ulcis’s lieutenant swung its mace at her head with sickening force. Carnival ducked, darted inside the dead angel’s reach. The mace looped around a palace support chain. Her fist snapped out, and the archon catapulted back, a jagged gap where its teeth had been. The other archons were weaving through the chains to engage.
Cursing, Rachel darted back to help her.
They had now surrounded Carnival: spears jabbed in at her from all sides, swords flashing and sparking on a tangle of chains. Most of the archons were enormous, twice her weight, but Ulcis’s daughter was faster than all of them. Her scars seethed blood-red. Her eyes glittered blacker than the abyss itself. Unarmed, she attacked with fists and feet and teeth, and the fury of a thousand Scar Nights.
And she was driving them back.
Unable to find space to deploy their weapons among the chains, Ulcis’s archons were retreating.
Rachel snaked through to join her, and thereby freed the snagged chain. “Now move,” she cried, sliding her sword back into the scabbard on her back.
Panting like an animal, Carnival paused for a heartbeat and glanced around in apparent confusion, before she noticed Rachel and tore after her, yelling, “Mine! Mine!”
Rachel raced past the thundering waterfalls without further hindrance, and slammed into the opposite entrance. The door burst inwards and she fell through. Carnival was at her heels, still spitting, snarling.
“They’re after us, you rabid bitch.” Rachel scrambled away. “Forget the syringe and move!”
They pounded up a rock-lined passageway. Dark tunnels slipped by on either side.
Which way?
Rachel didn’t have time to stop and think. Carnival was close, and behind her sounded the crashing armour of Ulcis’s lieutenants. She ploughed on, trusting to blind luck, gripping the syringe like some stolen gem.
Rachel now knew what she had to do with it.
Suddenly she was back in the chamber where they’d encountered Shing, cauldrons bubbling all around her, the butcher’s block before her. She was going too fast to stop, so she leapt over it. Her shin struck the edge of the block with a crack of pain, and she fell.
“Mine!” Carnival lunged at her.
Rachel drove her heel into Carnival’s neck, knocking the angel backwards into the first of Ulcis’s lieutenants to burst into the room.
“Get up!” Rachel yelled, and she heaved at the chain, dragging Carnival along on her back. The angel’s wings thrashed. A spear lashed out, struck the floor where her head had been a moment before.
Then they were up and running again.
Into darkness.
Rachel’s lantern still hung from her belt alongside the poisonsong and the bamboo tube, but she couldn’t light it without slowing down. Was there even any oil left in it? She had no way of seeing where she was going, but she charged ahead regardless, arms outstretched, feet slithering on wet rock.
Carnival’s voice came from close behind. “It’s dark, Spine.”
Without pausing, the assassin closed her eyes tight and focused. Air currents unravelled, crystallized, full of subterranean sounds and smells: the distant chopping of knives, the roar of forges and hammering steel; the scent of cold water and denser odours of clay and minerals. She concentrated, sifted through them, searching for the one she wanted.
There!
Decay.
Rachel forced every scrap of strength from her exhausted muscles and ran faster. Her lungs burned. The odour she sought thickened, pulled her closer to her goal. She reached out her right hand, encountered iron bars, and swung herself into his cell.
“No!” Carnival screamed.
The chain around her ankle suddenly wrenched Rachel’s foot out from under her. She thumped to the ground, all the wind knocked out of her. Then she began to claw her way forward, straining against the damned chain.
Sounds of battle behind: the clash of weapons. Ulcis’s archons had caught up with Carnival and Carnival didn’t seem happy about it, from the sound of her reaction.
As the chain at Rachel’s ankle slackened, she dragged herself further into the cell, searching the ground with fumbling hands.
Feathers.
Stone.
Metal?
Dill’s chain mail felt cold and thin, his skin as slick as tallow beneath.
Catch me.
Rachel stabbed the syringe into his chest, pushed the plunger all the way down—and collapsed to the ground, exhausted.
“He’s dead,” Carnival howled. “He’s dead, you stupid bitch. You can’t save him!”
Torchlight flooded the chamber, as Ulcis’s archons massed outside the cell.
“He’s dead,” Carnival wailed. “He’s already dead!”
Carnival moved over and lifted Dill’s wrist to her mouth. She bit deeply, and sucked, then threw his arm aside. “Do you see what you’ve done”—she dropped to her knees—“you stupid, selfish…” She couldn’t find the words for her frustration.
Rachel was panting; her arms now hung heavy, empty. She turned at a commotion among the archons gathered outside the cell. They were retreating from the bars. Their master had arrived.
Blood streaked the god’s battered face. His massive chest rose and fell from exertion. He said, “You, my child, have seriously pissed me off.”
Rachel stared up at him, at the bulwarks of flesh, the breasts, the overlapping chins. His eyes glowed like burning coals. In one hand he gripped an enormous iron sword, scraped and serrated from long use. She felt like laughing.
There was a cough behind her. Rachel dragged her eyes away from the obscene god to Carnival, caught her startled expression, and turned to follow her stare.
Dill was sitting up.
31
ON THE BRINK
DEVON SLAMMED THE cell door open. “Get up,” he said.
Sypes flinched. The old priest had not moved since the Poisoner had last seen him. He was still lying naked and shivering among the fragments of his walking stick.
“Put this on.” Devon threw the Presbyter’s cassock towards him.
Sypes still did not move.
Devon dragged him upright, and thrust the cassock into the old man’s arms. “Wear it. You must be recognisable.”
Without his stick, Sypes had to lean against the wall for support. His thin arms and legs trembled as he pulled the cassock over his shoulders, and let the hem tumble to his feet.
“There,” Devon said. “Now you look almost human again.”
But that was a lie. There was nothing much human left in the old priest. He was all skin and sinew, mottled with purple and yellow bruises, more corpse than man. The cassock engulfed him, seemed to drag his stooped frame even closer to the ground. Grey eyelids drooped over misty eyes that did not lift to meet Devon’s.
The Poisoner had to help him from the cell. He all but carried the old man along the crew quarters companionway and into the innards of the Tooth. Sypes shivered and coughed and his knees buckled constantly, despite Devon’s assistance. The priest weighed almost nothing.
By the time they reached the corridor leading to the outer hatches, Sypes had started to drift in and out of consciousness. Devon had to shake him whenever he sensed him fade. “Just a few more steps, old man. We’re nearly there.” The Presbyter
mumbled incoherently and batted his hands about as though dismissing invisible servants.
Heshette bowmen packed the hot, cramped corridor. They were loosing off arrows through rents in the hull left by the barrage of scorpion spines, whose serrated shafts had been knocked away and dragged aside to leave room. Piles of them now lay against the inside wall, their poisoned barbs covered in rugs and heavy blankets. Outside, war drums boomed a constant dirge over the clash of steel and the shouts and screams of the attacking army.
“Over here”—Devon dragged Sypes the last few feet—“by this hatch.”
The hatch door had been ripped away and pitch-smoke wafted through the gaping hole. Two bowmen crouched there, sheltered one at each side, alternately firing arrows along the length of the hull. Outside, burning wood keened and snapped and whistled. Arrows and bolts whizzed and whined and tore screams from their targets. Great wooden wheels grumbled, boots clumped, and hoofs thundered. Over it all, the war drums endlessly beat out the pace of battle. Bataba waited over to one side, half his tattooed features lit up by flames.
“Most of the ladders have been repelled,” the shaman explained. “But the siege-towers are moving into place and we have no more pitch. We cannot hold them back any longer, so this is your last chance, Poisoner.”
Devon peered outside, then jerked his head back as an arrow smashed to splinters against the wall behind him. Two more followed it in quick succession. He frowned, then grabbed Sypes’s cassock and pulled him over, exposing him to view at the open hatch. Firelight washed over the priest’s face for an instant, before Devon yanked him aside. Another arrow shot through the gap, and whistled past the old man’s ear. Sypes did not appear to notice it. Instead he muttered something about stonemasons.
“There’s always one,” Devon muttered. He waited a moment, and then thrust Sypes back to the opening, like a marionette. This time there were no arrows.
A chorus of shouts outside: “Hold your fire. Hold your fire.”
Bataba echoed the command to his own bowmen. The sounds of battle died. The drums stopped beating.