“Captain…”
“Just saying…”
Fogwill wrinkled his nose. Once Clay got started it was difficult to shut him up. “They say a lot of things in the alehouses of Deepgate. Like she’s seven feet tall with seven heads and seven tongues.”
“Seven tongues?” The captain turned, grinning.
Fogwill closed his eyes.
Clay returned his attention to the sightglass. “Soldiers on that airship saw her well enough. Navigator survived the crash with most of his skin intact. Nearly had her, he said. Hemmed in with swords, but she broke right through the roof and cut her way through the…” He waved a hand.
“The envelope. But she didn’t attack them directly.”
“Outnumbered,” Clay said. “Should have had her then. Navigator said she had teeth like a wildcat and unholy eyes.”
“She didn’t attack because it wasn’t Scar Night.”
“Tell that to the men lost in the crash.”
Fogwill stared into the fire and said nothing.
The sightglass tapped against the window frame. Clay turned away. “That one’s out of sight,” he murmured. “Round the other side of the temple.”
“Let’s close the window, then. It’s freezing in here.”
Clay stole another disapproving glance at the billows of silk pinned up to adorn the ceiling and the vases of flowers arranged around the study before he finally shut the window. He pulled up a chair and joined Fogwill by the fire. The study heated up quickly. They sat in silence for a while, warming their hands and listening to the crackling wood.
“I’ve been thinking,” Clay said.
Fogwill raised a sceptical eyebrow.
Clay grumbled something under his breath.
“I’m sorry?”
“Nothing. I’ve been thinking about what Devon wants with the Presbyter.”
“Yes?”
“What if the whole thing was a sham? What if they were in it together?”
Fogwill picked up another square of linen and wiped his hands, although this time they didn’t need cleaning. “Together?” he said in a high voice. If even Clay had stumbled on the truth, then what about the Spine? “Absurd. Sypes would never sanction such a thing. It contravenes Church law. Goes against the will of God. Really, that’s quite—”
“But what if God is dead?”
“Dead?” Fogwill stopped cleaning his hands. “You think God is dead?”
The captain shrugged.
“Are you a man of faith, Mr. Clay? Do you believe in the soul?”
“Of course,” the captain replied gruffly.
“I’ve seen them,” Fogwill said. “I’ve seen the soul-lights with my own eyes. Believe me, the ghosts are down there, and if they exist then Ulcis is very much alive. Sypes also watched the dead. He spent every hour of every night peering into the abyss, worrying what they were up to.”
“I can understand that,” Clay yawned. “Never trusted no ghosts either.”
“Have you ever seen a ghost, Mr. Clay?”
The captain shifted in his chair. “Not as such, but I heard this story once—”
Fogwill raised a hand. “This is not the place to discuss it.”
Clay blew through his teeth. “Whole thing is a waste of time. She won’t parley.”
“I don’t suppose you trust Carnival either.”
“Damn right. Something unnatural about her.”
A smile found its way to Fogwill’s lips. “You think there’s something unnatural about an immortal, scar-ravaged, blood-sucking angel who steals souls during the night of moondark? Whatever could be unnatural about that?”
Clay was thinking about it.
After a moment Fogwill laughed. “No, Captain Clay, I can’t think of anything either.”
An hour passed before Mark Hael appeared. He had with him a chemist who wore a grease-stained apron and a breathing mask still slung around his neck. The man’s arms and head were bare, his skin scrubbed raw. Even his lips looked peeled. He sniffed the air and surveyed the room gleefully.
Fogwill couldn’t help but notice the soot stains on the commander’s uniform and the smudges left by both men’s boots on his Loombenno carpet.
“This is Coleblue,” Hael said. “He set up the gas tanks in the Sanctum.”
Coleblue tramped more soot into the carpet and rubbed his red hands together briskly. “I can’t guarantee it will work. We’ve tested it on birds, yes, pigeons—sparrows, doves—same respiratory system, we think, faster than ours, more sensitive, but you never know.”
“What did it do to these birds?” Fogwill asked.
“Killed them fast.” Coleblue snapped his fingers. “Like miners’ finches, quick quick.”
Fogwill eyed the chemist’s boiled skin. A sharply unpleasant odour hung about the man that reminded him of gasoliers. “What would happen if I breathed it?”
Coleblue’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t want to do that, no, no, not too many breaths anyway. Carnival will be more sensitive to the poison, yes. As you surmised, she ought to be incapacitated more quickly than you. But it’s best you hold your breath and leave the room as soon as it has been released.”
Clay grunted. “The gas in that airship didn’t bother her much.”
“Liftgas doesn’t burn lungs like this. You can’t breathe liftgas, no, but then she knew it was there, knew not to inhale.” Coleblue looked from Clay to Fogwill. “She won’t even smell this until she drops.” He smacked his hands together.
“I hope I won’t have to use it at all,” Fogwill said. “It’s merely a precaution.”
“Don’t like the sound of it,” Clay said. “Risky.”
Fogwill’s brows arched. “You don’t much trust gas, Captain, do you?”
“Never trust anything you can’t see.”
“What about air?”
“Especially air.”
With a slight shake of his head the priest turned back to the chemist. “Where did you hide the valve?”
“Under the lectern,” Coleblue said. “Twist it anti-clockwise to release the gas. The Sanctum will be flooded in seconds. We can go there now and I’ll show you.”
“Fine.” Fogwill rose. “I’ll be back shortly, Clay. Will you keep an eye out for Dill?” He followed Hael and Coleblue to the door, then stopped. “Mr. Coleblue, what would happen if Dill breathed the gas?”
“Nasty.” Coleblue snapped his fingers again. “Quick quick.”
She means to kill me.
Dill couldn’t have reached for his sword even if he’d had it with him. His limbs were frozen, his blood dead in his veins. His thin armour felt like loops of heavy chain draped around his shoulders, the empty scabbard like an airship anchor.
Carnival stood with her wings half outstretched, hunched slightly as though ready for flight.
Or ready to pounce?
The feathers were hues of dark grey, flecked here and there with brown and black. She was lean, with muscles tight as wire coiled around slender bones, and as gaunt as a Spine assassin. Her mouldy leather trousers and vest might have been a thousand years old. Tangled black hair hung like a torn net over her face, partly obscuring her scars.So many scars .
Old scars cut through ancient scars. Thin white lines crisscrossed her cheeks, her forehead, her chin, her bare arms, leaving no part of her skin unmarked. Knife scars, all of them but one: a gouge like a rope mark looped her neck. She fingered it idly as she studied him, her head tilted to one side, as if she’d never seen his like before. And yet beneath the scars she might have been pretty. She looked no more than a year older than him. Without her scars she might have passed for a temple angel—had it not been for those eyes.
Carnival’s eyes were as black as the abyss, darker than the rage of a hundred archons; cold and empty as death. Fires from the Poison Kitchens burned deep in them and seemed the only glimmer of life there.
“I hate it here,” she said.
“It’s cold…,” Dill said. “But warmer…by the fires
.”
They stared at each other for a long time. Booms and random clanks from the factories drifted with the ash across the Scythe and filled the night.
She was eyeing his empty scabbard. Dill noticed a small iron fork tucked into her own belt. A gardener’s tool?
Carnival sniffed. “This air is foul.”
He nodded.
“Poisonous.”
He nodded.
“You like to inhale poison?”
He shook his head.
“Come with me.”
It wasn’t a request. She turned and walked away, and Dill followed.
She took to the air and glanced round at him once. Her teeth flashed and then she was off in a graceful, powerful arc, wings pounding, quickly gaining height. With his heart hammering, Dill pulled himself up after her.
Carnival led him north. Dill struggled to keep up, but the armour dragged him down. His wings lashed the air and his lungs burned. The scabbard kept knocking against his leg and he now wished he’d never brought it. But he’d needed something to remind him he was a temple warrior. It had mattered at the time; now it felt foolish.
The city below was a blur. Houses and chains and streets rushed by. Dill’s eyes were fixed on Carnival. Her wings cut through swathes of stars, the wind whipping her long black hair. She beat her wings once for his every two strokes, and still the gap between them widened.
“Wait!” he yelled, but the wind stole his cry. Gritting his teeth, he forced his exhausted muscles to keep moving.
And then, abruptly, Carnival stopped. She dropped like a stone towards the rooftops. Dill began to follow, but halted when he saw where she’d landed. It was a walled garden, dark as a pool of tar. Only a small patch of its lawn shone faintly in the moonlight, crisscrossed with shadows from a naked tree planted in the centre, and from the mesh of chains stretched between the neighbouring townhouses. Sheer darkness crouched around the lawn itself. Dill circled above, a tight pain cramping his chest. All of the blood seemed to have drained from his wings.
“What?” Carnival shouted.
To catch his breath, Dill landed on a thin chain above the garden. Iron creaked; the chain shifted. He lost his balance, toppled, and suddenly he was lying on his back on the lawn, gasping and looking straight up at the stars.
Carnival grunted. “Deftly managed.”
Dill rose shakily. The garden didn’t seem as dark as it had looked from above. Sprays of flowers and ivy-strewn walls bordered the lawn, while a wrought-iron gate led to a cobbled lane beyond. All around him the air was fragrant with night roses. He flexed his wings tentatively: nothing appeared to be broken.
Carnival seemed as relaxed as earlier. “I dream of you,” she said.
Dill blinked.
“I dream of all the angels.” Again she regarded him in that curious way. “Why do you think that is?”
“I don’t know.”
“I never know the names, but I know all the faces. Old and young. Sometimes I dream of them among corpses and sometimes I dream of them dying. Then they leave me for ever, and I dream of their sons.” She paused. “Do you dream of me?”
A memory stirred—creaking chains, scars, fresh blood. “Sometimes,” he said.
“What is your name?”
“Dill.”
“You know my name.”
Dill merely swallowed.
“The temple sent you.”
He managed a nod.
“Why?”
Adjunct Crumb had told him what to say. He’d talked eloquently about peace and understanding, about hatred and fear and forgiveness. Dill had spent hours learning the speech, but under her gaze the words failed him. “I…They…” he began.
Carnival didn’t seem to hear him. She stared through him with those night eyes of hers. “I like this garden,” she said. “An old servant used to tend these plants for rich owners who never come here.” She grabbed a sprig of jasmine and rolled the white flowers in one scarred palm. “I think he once sensed me watching him from high in the tree. I heard his blood quicken, saw his muscles tense. Do you know what he did?”
Dill shook his head.
“He carried on tending his flowers, pulling weeds from the earth, pruning back the roses and ivy, never looking up at the tree, all the time his heart beating like a drumroll. When he finished he trimmed the grass with his shears, then gathered it all in his barrow and took it away, like he always did.
“I’ve been here every morning since. He never came back.”
“They want to parley,” Dill managed at last.
She laughed: a high, savage laugh that lifted the hairs on the back of his neck. He took a step back.
Carnival stepped closer. “What do they think I need from them? Peace? Absolution? Will they promise to rein in the Spine?”
Dill backed further away.
Carnival advanced. “A place in the abyss for my soul and all those inside me?” Lances of moonlight cut across her eyes. The scars constricted beneath her tumbled hair. “Or blood? Am I to get first pick of the dead, before the temple dumps them?” She bared her teeth. “Or will they give me a sword, make me an angel like you?” She pressed a finger into his chest, leaned closer until her face was only an inch from his. “I don’t believe in angels.”
Dill felt his wings press back against the garden wall. “Angelwine,” he blurted.
Carnival stopped. Her teeth were clenched, her hair wild about her face, but the fire had left her eyes. “It’s a trap,” she said.
“No.”
“They want to kill me.”
“No,” Dill said. “I mean, yes, but…”
“They think I don’t remember,” Carnival said. “They think I’ve forgotten the planetarium so soon. They think I remember nothing!” Her expression turned to fury. “That Spine bitch, she should have burned, should have…”
Rachel? She means Rachel. He tried desperately to pull her away from her anger. “They want you to come to the Sanctum at dawn. Adjunct Crumb will speak to you there alone. No soldiers. No Spine. He’ll make you a deal.”
She snorted. “Tell him to go to hell. Do you think I’m insane?”
Dill didn’t answer that.
“There have been other traps,” she snarled, “a long time ago. Different places. Scores of places.” Her breaths were coming faster, her eyes furiously searching the ground. “Places where the Maze came in my wake. And blood. I think…” She slammed her palms against her sides. “They know I can’t remember. They—”
“She’ll be there,” Dill said.
“Who?”
“The Spine,” he said, “from the planetarium. I can arrange it.”
Carnival froze. She glared at him for a long moment before her scars relaxed into a terrible grin. “You can arrange that?”
Dill felt as though he’d stepped from the city straight into the abyss. He nodded.
“Your eyes,” Carnival said.
Dill hardly heard her. All his life he’d wanted to do something right, to make the Church proud of him. He’d wanted to stand tall among the ranks of his ancestors. But now he wished he could take back everything he’d said and done. A memory came to him of Rachel leaning over the balustrade at the Scythe.
If I fell over would you catch me?
At that moment Dill realized who he was. Not a temple warrior like Callis. Not worthy enough to be called an angel. He was a coward and a betrayer, and his eyes were burning as green as his friend’s.
“You don’t fear me any more,” Carnival said.
He met her gaze sharply. “No.”
“Just wait,” she growled.
22
THINGS GO WRONG
DEVON LEANED AGAINSTtheBirkita ’s aft-deck rail and watched the dawn. He’d allowed Angus a few hours’ sleep before they attempted to land, in the hope that he might be fresher and less likely to fumble the descent. The Heshette would be watching and it was important that the craft’s landing not appear to be uncontrolled. Sypes was still on the br
idge, but now tied to his chair, snoring off the wine he’d drunk earlier. The old priest seemed unable to stay awake for any length of time, as though his mind sought to hide its secrets under a blanket of sleep. Devon himself felt no desire to rest. The angelwine was fire in his veins. It burned and itched and kept him sharp. He wondered if he’d ever need to sleep again.
But he knew it was changing him in other ways. His temper flared at nothing, and his anger, once unleashed, was difficult to rein in. After Sypes’s attempt to destroy the airship it had taken a supreme effort of will not to strangle the old priest. It seemed to Devon his consciousness was thin, but swelling like the skin of a thundercloud.
Over what? Does this anger come from my own subconscious or from theangelwine itself? Could the elixir harbour residues of hate? The thought was ludicrous—a soul was not aware or conscious; nothing more than energy to fuel the flesh—but he still felt uneasy.
He leaned out over the rail and let the desert wind cool his face. Deepgate lay far south across the pink dunes, hidden beneath the horizon, with only a haze of smoke to betray its position. A cloud of silver motes hung in the sky between here and there, and seemed not to move, but the warships would be burning after him with all the speed they could muster. Aether-lights flickered between them as they passed messages back and forward. To the north, Blackthrone rose sharp and serrated in the morning light.
Even from this distance the mountain looked unnatural, like something carved by ancients: the knuckles of a massive bronze fist punching through the foothills around it.
The desert here was virgin, free of the caravan tracks that scarred the lands around Deepgate. Endless ripples and curves of sand swept by, blown into drifting plumes by the wind and broken only by plains of boulders and groves of petrified trees.
Devon estimated he would reach the foothills within the hour. He’d let his captives continue to sleep until then; if for no other reason than that he might enjoy the peace of the morning undisturbed. And then the tribes? It would be the first test of the angelwine, of what he had become. Perhaps he should just keep going, fly over Blackthrone and on to the horizon? What new lands would he find out there? The Deadsands stretched as far as Dalamoor in the far north, a hard desert settlement in the shadow of arid, nameless mountains. Those missionaries who took that road rarely found their way home: victims of thirst or of the Heshette. Survivors brought back stories of wicked cults, bandits, parched farmlands, and hidden pools of slipsand.