She was behaving very strangely for a Spine. Normally they just did what they were told without a blink or a wasted word. They were never angry or frustrated—and certainly not sarcastic or rude. Something to do with their training, he supposed. But this Rachel was unusually emotive, and he began to suspect something other than her recent appointment as his overseer was troubling her. He could not, however, have cared less.
“I’ll see you after the ceremony,” she said.
“That won’t be necessary.”
“You don’t have a choice. Neither do I.”
Outside, the warship’s engines rumbled again. The distant shouts of dockhands filtered up, followed by the clanging of bells. Dill felt the ruckus reverberate in his teeth.
Rachel Hael’s expression soured. “The Adraki,” she said. “Looks like Mark managed to dock the flagship without knocking the whole temple over.” Then, seeing his confusion: “Mark Hael, my brother.”
Now Dill recalled where he’d heard her surname before. Mark Hael had been appointed commander of Deepgate’s aeronauts after his own father, General Edward Hael, had lost his warship to Heshette arrow fire in the northern Deadsands. Hampered by sand storms, aeronauts had been searching the wreckage for the general’s body for days. The significance of the Adraki’s arrival at the temple dock became apparent. They had now located Edward Hael—Rachel’s father was to be among the dead given to the abyss at this morning’s ceremony.
“They must have found him—your father.”
She folded her arms.
“Then you will be at the Sending ceremony,” he said.
“Not if I can help it,” she said, turning away.
“But—”
But she was already striding towards the door.
“Hold on,” he called after her, waving the book. “Wait, you mentioned swordplay, poisons.” He didn’t care a whit about either, but he wasn’t about to let her walk out that easily; not with his cauldron of questions still bubbling. “If you’re supposed to…”
She halted midway across his cell, slipped a tiny black phial out from a pouch on her belt and tossed it over to him. “You want to know about poisons?” she said. “Drink that.”
Then she left.
Dill stood there for a while, juggling the phial, book, and key, and tried to untangle his thoughts. He felt cheated. Why a Spine overseer? His first day of service, and he was to be shadowed by a temple assassin. Worse, he was to be instructed by a temple assassin. They weren’t scholars. They weren’t even proper soldiers. Nightcrawlers! What would people think? He gripped the soulcage key so hard it stung his hand.
Don’t lose the key.
Gods below, he was a temple archon, not a child. He coiled up the chain and slammed it on the mantel, then placed the phial and book beside it. A tiny snail he’d missed clung there. Dill pinged it away with a flick of his finger and heard it ricochet off the far wall.
“Bastard.”
He shoved on his boots, then cursed and yanked them off again before pulling his trousers on instead. The trousers were too large, but the sword belt kept them in place. The shirt pinched his back around his wings, and the straps were all too fiddly and complicated to tie up properly. He left half of them undone: it didn’t matter. No one would see them under his jacket. The jacket itself was stiff and equally difficult to get into—another garment adapted to fit around his wings by incompetent temple cassock-stitchers who never had to wear the stupid thing.
Finally fully dressed, he took a deep breath and forced his eyes from their throbbing orange back to the appropriate grey. Then, at last, he looked himself over.
Snails had left their greasy trails down one side of his jacket. One silver button was missing. His boots were loose, and somehow already scuffed, his trousers creased and covered with wisps of cobweb.
He looked like a fool.
“I’m a temple archon,” he said to his ancestor’s image in the window, but that didn’t make him feel any better.
Then he grabbed his sword and thrust it into the scabbard at his belt. So what if the pommel had been sheared off? Maybe it wasn’t a Spine sword, or even a good sword, but it had once belonged to Callis, and that was enough for him. He patted the replacement guard. The Spine assassin was probably just jealous. Dill plucked a loose feather from his sleeve, brushed away imaginary dust, and then, proudly gripping the hilt of his sword, set off for his first proper day at work.
He returned a moment later to collect the key.
4
THE WEAPON SMITH
THE WHOLE CITY got out of Mr. Nettle’s way. Crowds parted at the Applecross fleshmarket, merchants hushed their hollering, pedlars and servants and jugglers and fools stepped aside, and even the beggars shut their whining mouths and stilled their rattling cups. It might have been the size of him, or his battered, bloody face, or the way he trudged past with his jaw set and fists swinging at his sides like he wanted to punch someone. He might have, too, had they not been quick to avoid him.
He had meant to go straight back to the League, meant to go home and lose himself in a bottle, but somehow his boots led him on east of Merrygate, to the warrens of the weapon smiths.
To support all the forges and the heavy stone, there were more chains here than elsewhere in the Warrens, yet there seemed no sense to them, no way to see how they all connected. The smiths themselves had gone to work on these chains, adding to them, linking them, strengthening old iron with new, so Mr. Nettle found he had to duck and weave to get through. Huge staples, as big your arm, bound one chain to another, or were bolted to links where the welds had split. Great pins drove up through the cobbles or through walls, and in places there was nothing but iron underfoot. This resulted in a tangle of metal that the smallest breath of wind set quivering and singing—a song that might be heard for miles in the deep darkness below the streets.
Blacklung Lane was rightly named. Soot covered the brick in a foul fur. When you breathed you tasted coal and felt you could scrape it from your mouth, and when you spat you looked to check if it was black. Smithies packed the lane on both sides. Smoke from the forges boiled through pipes in the walls and then hung in a seething canopy between the buildings. Rusty wrought-iron signs hung over the doors, all swinging and creaking though there was no breeze. The sun had barely burned away the dawn mists, but already the place was bustling. A constant stream of porters shuffled past, carrying coal, wood, and heavy crates of raw or worked metal. The whole lane shook with their footsteps. With Scar Night looming, folks had woken early to make the best of the day, eager to get their work done before the coming sunset.
Iron rang. Steel clattered. Fires roared. Shovels scraped and men sweated. Hammers beat anvils, clang, clang, clang, and Mr. Nettle pushed on past the porters, through the chains, and ducked inside a low door on one side of the lane.
Two men with flame-reddened skin were stoking the furnace. A third leaned over an anvil, working the steel of a red-hot sword.
“What?” this man said without looking up.
“I’ve come to trade,” Mr. Nettle said.
The man gave him a quick glance without pausing in his work.
“What for what?”
Mr. Nettle told him.
The man snorted. “Next door,” he said.
Laughter followed Mr. Nettle out.
And so he went from door to door, from furnace to furnace, from scowl to scowl. The smiths’ laughter spread down the lane like a plague, and the calls, earnest as some were, were all the same: Next door, Next door. Of the many smiths on Blacklung Lane, none would offer more than fourpence for the cleaver and none would accept it as trade for what he needed. By the time he reached the end of the lane, the laughs, the calls, and the pounding of metal threatened to split his skull.
Blacklung Lane ended in a slump where it had come loose from the chains. It might slide into the abyss next week, or in a year, but then sometimes slipped lanes stayed this way for good, and people nearby just made do. Rubbish had g
athered in festering piles where the rain had washed it down the slope. The last smithy of all hung in an impossible cradle of chain and girders, all meshed together like a great iron bonfire tied up with cable and rope. The door was skewed, half obscured by crates, so Mr. Nettle had to climb through with difficulty.
The smith had his anvil propped to one side on a stone slab to make it level, and worked away at it with a mighty hammer, pounding a spike of hot iron so hard it seemed like every strike would bring the whole lane toppling down. He was old for a smith, his muscles thin and knotted, his face creased with years of grime. By the light of the forge his skin looked flayed and roasted. When Mr. Nettle’s shadow fell over him, he looked up and said, “So it’s a hard bargain, then? No one comes here who will pay what the others ask of him. Folk must expect my mind to be as crooked as these walls.”
“Those others are thieves,” Mr. Nettle said.
“Aye, well.” The smith didn’t pause in his work. He continued to hammer the iron while it cooled, flattened both ends, and then bent it in the middle to form a bracket. “But men have to eat, and must bargain to eat, and me more than most. Sixty years I’ve been at this forge and trade is thinner than ever. Folks who can afford any better don’t come down here. They’re afraid the lane will crumble under their weight.”
“I want to trade.”
The smith took up the bracket in a pair of long tongs and dropped it into a trough of water. Steam hissed furiously. He mopped his brow with a rag. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
Mr. Nettle handed him the cleaver.
“Well, I can use the steel, but what you after for it?”
Mr. Nettle hesitated. “A crossbow.”
The smith gave a look that might have been a wince, or maybe just weariness. “Do you see weapons in here?” he said. “I make pins and brackets for walls. Pins and brackets, and I’m lucky if I earn a penny for any of them. Nobody pays up front for iron worked over a slump unless it’s cheap as sand.”
“Will you bend the iron if I get it? I’ll cut the wood myself.”
“Not for this.” He gave the cleaver back to Mr. Nettle.
“I’ll pay, trade more for the work.”
“Aye well, come back again. If you can get more steel we’ll talk.”
“I need it tonight.”
The smith shook his head. “A hard bargain right enough. Fittings for a crossbow in a day, and so little up front.”
“I can work off the debt,” Mr. Nettle said. “Stoke your furnace, carry coal. I’ll make these brackets for you if you show me how.”
“What do you want the crossbow for?”
Mr. Nettle said nothing.
The smith looked at Mr. Nettle’s torn mourning robe, at the bruises and blood on his face. After a moment he said, “Moondark tonight, eh? If you’re thinking to go out hunting, I’ll not see the debt paid.”
Mr. Nettle bristled. He hadn’t thought past Scar Night, didn’t think it important. But the man had a right to be wary: a debt was a debt, and you paid your debts. Each man had as much right to eat as any other, and if Mr. Nettle didn’t come back he’d be leaving the smith down on this deal. That was as good as stealing food from his table. Right then Mr. Nettle had a queasy, empty feeling in his gut, and wanted more than ever to go back to his bottle.
“Listen,” the smith said, “you talked about cutting the wood for a crossbow. Are you a carpenter? Do you know how to make such a thing? Have you ever shot one? Ever seen one?”
“No,” Mr. Nettle admitted. He felt as he had on the Gatebridge: imprisoned by circumstance and, for all his anger and strength, the walls containing him were stronger.
“Aye, I thought not. Maybe it’s best you give up. Let it go.”
“I can’t.” The scrounger’s teeth clamped shut.
“I’m sorry.” The smith turned away.
Sudden desperation took hold of Mr. Nettle. He grabbed the man’s shoulder, harder than he meant to, to halt him. Then he eased his grip. He’d almost said help me but the words lodged in his throat. Quickly, he said, “I’ll pay, I’ll work for you,” and was surprised at the tremor he heard in his voice. It sounded odd, as though another man had spoken.
The smith turned back to look up at him, his face seeming hard as bronze in the firelight. What was it Mr. Nettle saw in those eyes? He’d never seen such a look before. And then he realized it was pity. He let go of the other man, turned to leave, at once ashamed and afraid the smith had heard his unspoken plea. He was a fool to have come here. A bloody fool. He didn’t need anyone’s help, not now, not ever.
“Hold on,” the smith said.
Mr. Nettle hesitated, his ears burning with more than the blows the temple guard had given him.
“Come through the back. I’ve some stuff maybe you can borrow—if you work for it.”
The floor sloped away so steeply that Mr. Nettle had trouble crossing it. He had to walk sideways, his arms held out for balance, his feet sliding. The smith didn’t seem bothered by the slope. He loped across the room in an odd, shambling way that made him look like a cripple.
They climbed through a lopsided door into a dim stone cell barely high enough for Mr. Nettle to stand upright. His head brushed stone that might have been either a wall or the ceiling. Straw covered a pallet over to one side, which lay at a steep angle against the far wall, or floor.
Noticing his gaze, the smith said, “Righted my pallet at first so it was level. But one day I found I couldn’t sleep in it. Can’t sleep on a flat bed no more. You get used to such a thing, eh?”
The tilt of the room made Mr. Nettle feel faintly sick. Long nails in the walls held dozens of iron brackets and pins that hung skewed, like clock hands pointing at seven or eight. The smith knelt before a huge poppywood chest, solidly built with stout iron bands around its deep red grain. He unlocked it and rummaged through, then brought out tools, mostly hammers and tongs of various sizes and states of repair, and laid them to one side. “Here it is,” he said. “Give us a hand.”
Together they heaved out a big sack-wrapped bundle and set it down on the floor.
It was full of weapons: four knives, without handles, but with good, sharp blades; a plain shortsword of the size Deepgate reservists sometimes used; a morning star with oiled, fluted blades; and a large crossbow. The last possessed a wide yew bow bound in iron and backed with steel, and a clunky device like a winch at the butt of the stock.
“Used to be better paid before the lane slipped,” the smith said. “Made more than wall pins in my time, eh?”
Mr. Nettle picked up the crossbow. With all the iron and layered wood, it weighed as much as a sack of coal.
“It’s not meant to be carried about,” the smith said. “Great crossbow this—made it for a merchant who wanted to mount it on his cart for travelling out to the Plantations. It’s not the finest-looking thing, but it’ll put a bolt clean through a man. This at the back’s the windlass, see, for winding back the bowstring. Got the bowstring here too somewhere, wrapped in oilcloth.” He reached back into the chest, spoke over his shoulder. “Only have three bolts for it, mind; just the samples I got from the bolt-maker. Was going to have more made, but the merchant never came back. I figure the Shetties got him on his last trip. Still, they’re a fine three. Here they are, and here’s the bowstring.” As he turned round his eyes were glittering.
The first bolt had a glass bulb full of sluggish liquid attached to one end. “Incendiary,” the smith explained. “You’ll want be careful with that one.” He laid the bolt down carefully. “There’s plenty reservists with glass eyes and leather skin from lighting up their pipes near these.”
The next had a crescent-shaped steel end. “Hunting tip,” the smith said. “Merchant must have fancied going after hawks or vultures when he wasn’t defending his carrots from the heathens. Kind of figure you might find a use for this, eh? Not poisoned, but just dip the end in bird shit and the smallest graze will do nasty work.”
The last bolt had a thick
leather hood over its tip. The smith took up a pair of tongs and, very carefully, removed the hood to reveal a plain, sharp steel point. “Now, this,” he said, “is a rare one. Maybe it’s not still potent now, but maybe it is. I’m not touching it to find out.” The smith turned the bolt over like it was made of fine glass. “Craw plague—Devon’s finest. Milked from spiders that grow inside men’s flesh, no lies. Know what that’ll do?”
Mr. Nettle shook his head.
The smith grinned. “Wound will never heal. Never. Won’t stop bleeding till there’s no blood left and the Maze comes looking for its share.” Gingerly, he replaced the hood over the tip. “Soultakers, they call these.” Again, he glanced at Mr. Nettle’s tattered mourning robe. “Maybe you like the sound of that, eh?”
“You’ll lend me this?” Mr. Nettle asked.
“Aye, lend. And I want work in payment. I’ve two ton of pig iron needs brought from the yards and a hundredweight of brackets to go out to Rins before dark. Mind you pay this debt before sunset.” He shifted uncomfortably. “No offence meant, but I recall what night it is tonight.”
Mr. Nettle lowered the crossbow. “Can’t take it.”
“Eh?”
“Too much. Can’t repay this.”
A day’s work wouldn’t pay the debt. And chances were, the smith would never see the weapon again. They both knew it. The man’s kindness felt like a punch, and Mr. Nettle turned away to hide his discomfort. He’d have to find another way.
“Listen, son,” the smith said, “you’d be doing me a favour. With the bastards paying twenty doubles for a crate of iron, I can hardly afford the porters to bring it in. And what good is this bow to me, sitting here, gathering dust?”
Mr. Nettle couldn’t look at him. “You could sell it,” he suggested.
The smith grunted. “Who to? Ever seen any reservist with coins in his pocket? Those sods can’t afford to eat these days. The regulars have money, aye, but the temple buys their arms for them, and they don’t buy old junk like this.”
“A merchant?”
“They got their airships now. Gods below, they have to pay enough taxes for it, too. Aye, find me a merchant without the temple’s hand in his purse, and maybe I’d have a sale, but those without pockets deep enough to stave off the Spine and the Avulsior are gone now, branded as heathens. Do the work for me, but take this damn thing out of my sight before the priests find it and claim it as tax.”