Through a door at the far end of the furnace chamber they entered the relative quiet of an equipment locker. Dill’s ears still rang from the fuel room, and his skin felt raw.
Devon snatched a couple of strange-looking masks from a row of hooks on the wall and handed one each to Dill and Rachel. Tubes dangled like squid tentacles from their mouthpieces.
“To protect your lungs,” he explained, pulling on his own mask. “We proceed through dangerous rooms now.”
The next room was half the size of the furnace chamber. Its floor dropped away immediately and they rattled along a catwalk above lines of open vats. Milky liquids bubbled within; curls of steam rose towards them. Squid-masked technicians in grease-stained smocks adjusted valves, inspected dials, while others stood on ladders to remove scum from the boiling liquids with their oar-like poles.
Devon paused to inspect the work going on below. “Acids, alkalis, and ammoniates,” he said, his voice slightly muffled by the mask.
“Weapons?” Rachel asked.
“The most basic. These components will burn lungs, skin”—Devon glanced at Dill—“feathers.”
Dill eyed the contents of the vats through the scratched glass visor of his mask. The air he sucked through the fibrous tubes tasted sour and vaguely metallic. His legs felt unsteady on the rickety catwalk. It would be very easy for someone to lean over too far.
At the door to the next chamber, Devon paused briefly. “Research room,” he said. “Do not remove your masks, and please touch nothing.”
They entered a laboratory, smaller again in size than the previous rooms. Glass beakers and tubes crowded wide workspaces. The chemists here wore smocks as filthy and spattered as butchers’ aprons. Engrossed in their work, they ignored the visitors as they poured and measured, mixed solutions, and scribbled occasional notes in huge ledgers. Racks and racks of stoppered glass tubes filled an enormous wooden carousel positioned in the middle of the room.
Dill approached the carousel and noticed that each tube held a few drops of red liquid.
“What are those?” Rachel asked, a moment later.
“Diseases,” Devon said.
Dill held his breath.
“Some induce fevers, rashes, influenza, jaundice, anaemia. We have solutions here to encourage infection, weaken bones, elicit welts and sores, or even precipitate sterility and hereditary mutation.”
“Sterility?” Rachel stood wide-eyed. “Hereditary mutation?”
“This is still a new science, and mostly we use poisons. But some derivatives of what you see here have already been tested in the field.”
“Against the tribes?”
“The idea appals you?”
Her gaze moved across the racks. “I knew about the poisons, but these diseases…they seem cruel, unnatural.”
Devon laughed behind his mask. “Nature is cruel—and are we not part of nature? Nothing we do can ever be unnatural, because our will is a product of nature, and thus natural.” He turned to Dill. “What do you think? Do you object to the use of our knowledge in this manner?”
Dill said, “I think that some things are best left to God.”
The Poisoner clapped his hands together. “Of course,” he said, tipping his head. “You are quite correct. Now, please, let me show you the core of my work.” He pulled some gloves from a drawer, similar to those the workers wore, and handed them to Rachel and Dill. “If you would be kind enough to put these on, we will proceed to the poison rooms.”
The first room was not what Dill had expected. The smell of brine hung heavy in the air. Pale green light rippled across the floor from banks of aquariums set into the walls. Devon removed his breathing mask, as did Dill and Rachel after a moment’s hesitation. They wandered before the tanks and gaped at the monsters behind the glass.
“The most deadly poisons,” Devon explained, “are harvested from those creatures found in the seas of this world.” He stopped before a tank. Yellow and green banded serpents writhed within. “Tap snakes, from the Ordan reef. One bite contains enough poison to kill half a hundred men.”
Dill watched the sea snakes wiggle back and forth above the sand. Unconsciously, he pressed a gloved hand against the glass. One of the snakes struck at it and he snatched his hand away.
“Here”—Devon pointed to the next tank—“among this coral, if you look closely you might be able to discern a parrot octopus. He is watching us now.”
A large black eye, ringed with blue, peered unblinking from the coral.
“More intelligent than cats,” Devon said, “and able to survive outside of water for a short time. We caught this fellow making nightly excursions around the room, until we sealed him in. He had a taste for the hammer shrimp over in the feeding tanks.”
Dill glanced nervously at the floor around him, wondering what else might have escaped its tank.
They walked the length of the chamber with Devon stopping at each aquarium to explain its contents. Dill learned of the vicious blisters caused by creepfish spines, and the slow, painful deaths endured by fishermen bitten by widow eels caught in their nets. He marvelled at the pale, globular jellyfish with their ghostly showers of tendrils. There were huge slugs with mottled blue skin, various anemones, brightly coloured gelatinous things of indeterminable shape, and armoured creatures like centipedes bristling with spikes.
At the end of the room, Devon lifted a curtain and they ducked through to yet another area packed with glass tanks. This chamber was brighter, but smelt musty; the air choked with sawdust. Pillars of sunlight dropped from high skylights, revealing dark shapes hunched behind the glass. In one corner of the room, a shelved alcove held bolts of fine cloth, one of which lay spread over a nearby table.
“Arthropods,” Devon explained. “Most of the poisons we extract here are less potent. However, they have their uses. A lingering death is sometimes more desirable than a swift one.” He glanced at Rachel. “The incident with Captain Mooreshank on the Towerbrack Peninsula springs to mind.”
She nodded.
Devon went on. “We are just learning to infuse spider poison into the silk of its cousin. Garments made from such fine material are beautiful but deadly.” He smiled. “Profitable too, we hope.”
Another curtain led to the third poison room. Damp heat fell on them as they pushed through to a vast conservatory. Green light filtered down through towering ferns, and a light mist sprayed from pipes in the roof. The air was dense with rich, tropical smells.
“Flora,” Devon said. “Touch nothing. Some thorns can pierce the protective gloves. Be careful of your wings.”
They edged through lilting orchids with waxy leaves, past creepers twisted around weeping trunks, vines spotted with pale flowers which hung like rope. Sweat trickled down Dill’s neck.
“These plants come from the Fringes: Loom and the Volcanic Isles beyond the Yellow Sea,” Devon said. “Some very rare specimens among them—very fragile.”
Something rustled amid a clump of leaves. Rachel reached for her sword, but Devon stopped her. “A catrap,” he said. “The plant senses our presence. They entice their prey near by shaking, to simulate the sound of a small creature moving through the undergrowth. Poisonous thorns around the base of the plant ensure that whatever predators come to inspect the noise do not leave. Dead creatures enrich the soil around catraps, and the smell of rotting flesh attracts yet more prey.”
“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Rachel murmured.
Devon tilted his head and regarded her through the top of his spectacles. “In nature, deceit is a common method of ensuring one’s food supply.”
Beyond this conservatory, he led them into the cool interior of a high thin tower. A spiral of narrow steps protruded from the circular walls, rising to dizzy heights. Shelves cut into the stone followed the stairway upwards, each one packed with hundreds of murky bottles. To one side, a huge workbench brimmed with beakers, tubes, and flasks of coloured liquids and powders. There were also mortars and pestles of various
sizes, brass burners, and clamps beside a stack of metal cages in which rats scratched and scampered.
“Here we combine and test our poisons,” Devon said.
“You use rats?” Rachel asked.
“Initially.”
Dill’s eyes followed the staircase up and up. It seemed to have no end.
“How many poisons are kept here?” he asked.
“Why, all of them,” Devon replied, dismissing the shelves with a wave of his hand. “Now, my friends, I must conclude our tour, sadly. I have an important experiment to finish this afternoon.” He gave them a warm, red smile. “But please, do not hesitate to return, should you wish to gain more intimate knowledge of my work.”
Some time later, Dill and Rachel sat on the platform overlooking the Poison Kitchens and watched the ash from its chimneys drift into the abyss. A faint, rhythmic clanking sounded over the divide. Rachel’s legs dangled between the bars of the balustrade. She peeled large flakes of rust from its iron rails and sent them spinning into darkness. “What do you think is down there?” she asked suddenly.
Dill gave her a puzzled look. “Ulcis, of course,” he said. “The city of Deep.”
“You really believe that? Everything they say? The city of the dead? The Ziggurat? The Garden of Bones? An army waiting to reclaim Heaven?”
“Don’t you?”
“I used to.” She brushed a finger over the flaking ironwork. “Now I’m not sure. Everyone seems to be waiting for something better, even if that means waiting to die. But that doesn’t mean there is something better, does it?” She looked at him, then quickly away. “The Spine act as the hand of God, but I don’t think even tempered assassins can hear Him. The closer I get to them, my colleagues, the more uncomfortable that makes me.”
Dill swallowed. She hadn’t even been properly trained? “You didn’t let them temper you?” he ventured.
She let out a long breath. “God, don’t you think I want them to? To be free of all this. It’s like a physical pain.” She pressed the heels of her palms against her forehead. “But it’s not up to me. My brother is head of the house now, and he won’t sign the consent document. He wants to punish me because I can do what he never could. I can kill, up close, and live with it. Stick a knife in a man and watch him bleed.” She grunted. “In a way that makes me even more of a monster than Carnival. They say she wounds herself after every kill she makes, hurts herself to ease her suffering.”
Dill frowned. “Wouldn’t that cause even more pain?”
“There are different kinds of pain,” Rachel said. “Sometimes one can blot out the other.” She scowled at her bandaged hands. “All my scars were given to me by others. I don’t need to inflict my own, never have. So maybe I don’t deserve to be tempered. We yearn for the needles because it’s death without the fear of death.” She laughed: a hard, brittle sound. “The Spine should be hunting me instead of her.”
Dill studied Rachel’s bandages and felt uneasy. “You fought her?”
Rachel shrugged.
“Where did she come from?”
“Straight from Iril, if you believe the priests. A demon sent to harvest souls for the Maze. Others claim she came from out of the abyss with Callis and the Ninety-Nine. When the angelwine finally wore off, she began killing to sustain herself.” She stared hard into the abyss. “I used to believe those stories about her were exaggerated, I believed that Carnival killed but she didn’t really take souls. I thought she was as mortal as you or me. But I’ve seen too many husks left after Scar Nights, and I’ve seen the way she moves: she’s too fast, too strong. And her eyes…so much rage, hunger. Always black.”
“Can you stop her?”
“I doubt it.”
“Then why do you try?”
A bitter smile. “I’m Spine.”
They were silent for a while. The flames above the Poison Kitchens roared intermittently, blazing brightly then diminishing. Fat gouts of smoke rose from the funnels, swelled, and fell again as ash. Beyond, the sun was sinking towards the abyss rim. Through the haze of pollution, the sky looked bruised and sick.
Rachel detached another sliver of rust and threw it into the darkness. “There have been expeditions, you know, down there.”
That surprised him. “Into the abyss?”
“Secret ones. Unknown to the temple. People have stolen airships, made balloons, strange winged things, all sorts of contraptions. Gone down there.”
“What happened to them?”
“They never returned.”
Dill stared into the depths. Even here in the evening light, the darkness of the abyss unnerved him. Rachel continued to throw flakes of rust, watching them dance below like tiny leaves. Across the gulf facing them a siren sounded and a warship disengaged from its refuelling berth beneath the Poison Kitchens. It floated gently down, then nudged its way out of the shadows and into the wide gap, tugged by guide ropes. He heard the distant sound of pulleys cranking and the shouts of dockhands. Then the great ship broke free and burned skywards with a deep roar, climbing steadily until it rose above the cranes and chains and pillars of smoke.
They watched the ship turn slowly, black against the sunset.
Rachel stood up and leaned out over the balustrade. Iron creaked under her weight. “If I fell over would you catch me?” she asked. She lifted her feet, supporting her weight on her stomach.
Dill got to his feet. “I can’t fly very well.”
“Would you try to save me?” She leaned further out. The banister creaked again.
He took a step towards her. “Please, it doesn’t look safe.”
“Would you try, even if you knew you couldn’t pull me back?”
“Yes.”
Rachel leaned back and put her feet on the ground, but she didn’t turn to face him. “Maybe you would,” she said softly.
13
THE LEAGUE OF ROPE
A SINGLE BRAND lent a ruddy glow to the rusted tin slopes and bleached wood of the League shantytown. Shacks hung skewed in their cradles, linked to the walkway by thin planks. Beyond the ropes, the lights of Deepgate dipped away and rose again far in the distance, broken only by the temple’s silhouette.
Fogwill watched reflections curl over Captain Clay’s black armour as the temple guard looked around in distaste. Boards creaked under the big man’s armoured boots. “Are you sure this is it?” he asked.
Clay wrinkled his nose and sniffed the air. “Smells like it.”
Fogwill didn’t need to be told. Something was rotting nearby. A dead rat, perhaps? And Clay had insisted that he come out here without perfume. His cassock retained a trace, as the captain had pointed out with a scowl, but not enough to mask this unholy stench. “Then you’d better go,” he said. “I’ll manage from here.”
The captain of the temple guard grunted. “Adjunct, this is the Dens.” He leaned over his pike. “This scrounger near strangled one of my men. Dirty great big ugly vicious bastard. Wouldn’t trust him as much as a bag of cats.”
“Nevertheless, I shall speak with him alone. Your presence would anger him more . I can find my own way back.” Fogwill suddenly realized what he’d said, and rather wished he hadn’t said it.
Clay hesitated, then turned, shaking his head, and marched back along the boards, with his pike held sideways for balance. The walkway lurched with his every step; support ropes twanged and fretted. Ropes, not even cables here. Fogwill held on tightly and tried not to look at the darkness beneath the shacks on either side, but it was hopeless: the abyss pulled his gaze towards it. He closed his eyes.
When the walkway had settled and the worst of his nausea had passed, the Adjunct stood alone outside the box made of timbers and tin sheets that, apparently, served as a house. Its single gaping window showed no sign of life within.
He ducked under the street-rope that supported this side of the walkway and eyed the plank spanning the gap to the front door. It was about four feet across, with nothing but a couple of rotted ropes to hold on to: nothi
ng else to stop one falling into the darkness. He couldn’t see a net below. There surely must be a net. Even here. It’s the law. That thought didn’t reassure him as he tested the plank with his foot. It gave a sickening creak. Perhaps he ought to call over to the house for assistance? And thus reveal himself as the frightened whelp he was? Very clever . It might also wake the neighbourhood, and he didn’t want this neighbourhood woken. There was no alternative but to cross. Fogwill took a deep breath and edged forward, gripping both swaying ropes as best he could. Even in the dim light he could see the white marks round his fingers where he had removed his rings. The plank bowed under his weight as his slippers inched towards the middle.
Those four feet seemed to take him as long as the walk from the temple, and when he reached the door he was shaking. It took all of his courage to release his hand from the security of the rope and knock.
There was no answer.
Fogwill cursed. He ought to have told Clay to wait for him. This was not a part of Deepgate where it was wise to linger alone after dark.
He knocked again, harder.
“Closed!” a gruff voice shouted.
Fogwill leaned closer to the door and spoke as loud as he dared. “May I speak with you for a moment?”
There was no reply. Fogwill waited. He knocked again.
“Away!” the voice bellowed.
Fogwill flinched. He’s going to wake the whole street . “Please, it’s urgent.” The other shacks remained dark and silent. Hanging above the centre of the walkway, a brand fizzed tar into its drum. He lifted his hand to knock again when the door creaked open a fraction. No light came from within as he leaned toward the crack and whispered quickly, “I must speak with you. It’s about your daughter.”
“Bloody priest, leave me alone. Leech took her.”
The door slammed in Fogwill’s face.
“No,” he protested.