Scar Night (14 page)

Now Oberhammer’s mansion mouldered: windows boarded, its walls wrapped in chains to keep them from bursting under the weight of his folly above. The clock tower forever displayed thirteen minutes past nine, the time for rats and bats and lunatics, for every ghoul and demon conceived by Deepgate’s commoners. The scientist had stopped the clock at that moment, retired quietly to his drawing room, and opened his wrists with a razor—his valediction to the Church. Now the place was said to be haunted. Iril’s doors had opened here, and when the Maze opens its doors something is always left behind. Rachel recalled the stories from her childhood: the Grey Mummer, the Chain Creeper, the Nunny Lady—ageless sinners who had escaped an overflowing hell to walk in the house below her.

For an angel, there were so many ways into the planetarium, and so many escape routes. It was an impossible place to set a trap, and this, of course, made it perfect.

Rachel rose from damp cushions, feeling moisture seep into her trousers. Both planetarium and mansion hoarded old rain. Water dripped and trickled through the dank sealed rooms below and softened the fabric of the house. Corridors wept. Staircases slumped and ticked. Paintings blistered under bowed ceilings. She shivered, imagining the Creeper working his way up through the house to find her, the Nunny Lady stalking its corridors with her hatpins.

A flourish of controls reached towards her over the front of the viewing platform: a mechanical arm of tarnished levers and heavily corroded wheels. The chains linking this to the great clockwork engines below had been removed, presumably by the workmen who had originally closed down Oberhammer’s house, but Rachel tried turning one of the wheels anyway. It was immovable, welded with rust.

A howl, somewhere close to the south, made her tense. Carnival was nearby. Rachel fought the urge to leave her post, to scale the planetarium and find a vantage point where she could watch the angel’s approach. But her job was here in this cage. The Spine would steer Carnival towards the trap. All Rachel had to do was attract her attention. She slumped back into the seat, loosened the straps around her throwing knives, and waited. Oberhammer’s mansion grumbled beneath her, the way old houses do.

A
series of sharp concussions woke Mr. Nettle. He lifted his head, winced at the pain in his skull. There was a stink of whisky and dung smoke, and he was lying in an alley he didn’t recognize. Cobbles, wet with starlight, shifted and blurred before him, then bled together into a sloping channel that lurched sharply to the left, fifty yards ahead. Tenements brooded on either side, like flint muscles straining against chains. He heaved himself upright and tried to figure out where the hell he was and what he was doing here.

Then he remembered.

He turned round just in time.

Carnival flew at him like a demon, wings wide, hair wild, eyes black with fury.

Mr. Nettle raised his cleaver.

She grinned.

Then veered to the left as a score of crossbow bolts smashed to fragments on the cobbles between them.

Mr. Nettle wheeled.

Spine, dozens of them, on the rooftops. “Civilian,” a voice called down, “get indoors immediately. If you do not have a residence in this district, temporary sanctuary may be granted in one of the Church boltholes or beggars’ nooks for a fee of six doubles or one and a half pennies—”

“Piss off,” Mr. Nettle yelled. He turned back to the angel.

Carnival was thrashing skywards through a second barrage of crossbow bolts. Several ripped through her wings, while others punched deep into her ancient, mould-patched leathers. She howled and headed away from the Church’s assassins.

Mr. Nettle ran after her.

The alley emerged into a broader lane he recognized at once. Narrow and undulating, Cage Wynd sank gradually from the old planetarium in Applecross, running south over a series of humped bridges towards the shipyards. Its name came from the grates and spikes bolted over every window and door. The chainmen and yard workers who lived here had access, more often than not, to more iron than the smithies did. Everyone but the Church knew they were at it: for every two tons of iron that went missing in Deepgate, one of them ended up here, smuggled in and put to use securing local homes from attack. Whole façades of heavy bars and plate and needle-sharp points—it felt like you were standing in the open jaws of a monster. With its sheer weight of metal defences, it was a wonder Cage Wynd hadn’t dragged the whole district into the abyss years ago. Even the old planetarium surmounting the mansion at the top of the lane had been stripped of its cogs and support joists—the brass and steel recycled into makeshift armour for the many tenements below. Little more than brickleweed held the heavy globe to the clock tower’s summit.

Mr. Nettle heard a sudden hiss and looked up to see dark shapes swarm over the rooftops opposite. The Spine were loosing dozens of bolts at a spot higher up on his side of the street, just a short distance to the north. The scrounger grunted and set off again, crossing the lane to give him a better view of the assassins’ target.

They appeared to be driving Carnival north, towards the planetarium. Bolts glanced off flint, iron plate, and roof slates, thudded into exposed beams.

“Bitch!” Mr. Nettle threw his arms wide.

She twisted in midair, diving towards him.

Again, the Spine crossbows forced her back, further up Cage Wynd towards the planetarium. They would harry her thus till dawn, keep her moving away from the temple districts and the Warrens. Out of his reach.

The scrounger roared, and surged after her.

Whenever the Spine hurt Carnival she took vicious revenge. The more she was hurt, the worse her retribution became. Even the strongest barricades couldn’t keep the angel out when she was injured. Ropers and beggars hated the Spine for it, for they suffered most. Their pulpboard shacks in the League might as well have been made of paper. Those who could afford it had cages made inside their homes, and locked themselves and their children in. Sometimes it kept them safe; most often not. Carnival had been known to rip through a dozen such homes on Scar Night, tearing whole buildings free of the chains which supported them.

The Spine were hurrying now, their silhouettes converging on the planetarium under a vast expanse of stars. They had stopped shooting.

“Here, whore!”

But Carnival ignored him. Something else had caught her attention—something inside the planetarium itself. Cursing, Mr. Nettle studied the mansion below the huge brass globe. The old house stank of Iril. The clock tower had been bound in chains to keep the crumbling stone together; the windows had been boarded up, but there were wide gaps visible between the planks. Mr. Nettle thought he saw movement within: oddly shaped figures capering. Some said the corridors inside the house moved and shifted, constantly forming new mazes to keep the things trapped there entertained.

He hesitated for a heartbeat before setting off again. When he reached the chains around the clock tower, he began to climb.

A
silhouette suddenly covered the stars that were visible through one of the missing windows. Rachel leaned back in her chair, just enough to make it creak. The silhouette changed shape. Carnival had seen her, but didn’t move yet to engage.

No wonder you suspect a trap. Those idiots have stopped shooting, now they’ve got you in position. And I’m supposed to sit here and do nothing.

So Rachel threw a knife, aimed to kill.

Carnival flinched away from it, snarling. But still she didn’t attack.

Come on, you bitch, come get me
. The assassin threw another knife, and another, but the angel avoided them as easily as if they were wind-blown leaves.
How can she even see them coming?
Rachel pursed her lips.
Provoke her, they said
.

“Hey, freak,” Rachel yelled out.

That did it. Carnival dove.

Rachel leapt forward and sideways just as the chair she’d been sitting in smashed to pieces behind her. She rolled across the observation platform, pulling another knife from her sleeve, and at that same moment heard the heavy crossbow hidden on the mansion roof below fire its payload.

A steel-mesh net engulfed the entire planetarium. The whole structure shuddered as the heavy bolas wrapped around its base.

The angel growled.

Now the scary part. I’m trapped here too
. Rachel threw the knife, but heard it clatter against a strut in a different direction to the one she’d thrown it in.
Shit shit shit. Carnival
knocked
that knife aside. I may as well be lobbing balloons at her
. She got to her feet, drawing her sword. In the starlit gloom the angel’s wings loomed huge and black.

“You are to be sacrificed,” Carnival hissed.

“Not if I can help it.”

Carnival charged her, a blur of darkness. Rachel lunged out with her sword, felt it deflected. The angel merely pushed the blade aside with the heel of her hand, moved inside Rachel’s reach.
Oh God
. Suddenly Rachel felt overstretched, vulnerable to attack, and Carnival was reaching for her throat. Rachel flexed at the knees, dodged beneath her assailant’s hand, and, thereby unbalanced, had no option but to throw herself backwards. Carnival’s own momentum shot her clear.

Pain jarred through Rachel’s neck, a chair collapsing under her shoulders. She didn’t have the luxury of worrying about that, for Carnival was moving again, turning, coming for her.
So fast!
The assassin rolled over, scrambled away, lashing her sword blindly behind her.
I’m fighting like some frightened recruit
. By luck, the clumsy manoeuvre bought her just enough time to regain her feet.

Glass burst inwards overhead.
What?
Rachel whirled round. For a crazy moment, it appeared to be raining again, though the sky above was cloudless. Water streamed through missing panes, dripped from the planetarium’s skeleton struts. Carnival recoiled from the downpour, widening the gap between them. A drip splashed over Rachel’s hand, greasy on her skin. Then she recognized the dense, chemical odour, and she realized what was happening.

Not water. This wasn’t part of their plan. Not part of the plan they told me.

Evidently the angel had noticed the smell too. “Sacrifice,” she said with a mocking grin.

Rachel heard the flame arrows before she saw them. The first struck the brickleweed growing on the west curve of wall, fizzled for an instant, then erupted. The second smashed through one of the constellation-etched facets in the eastern side of the globe and lodged inside the viewing platform. Flames blossomed around it. Half a dozen more arrows followed.

Lamp oil—they’ve drenched the place in it. They’re going to burn us both alive.

In as many heartbeats as there had been arrows, Oberhammer’s planetarium was ablaze.

“Spine,” Rachel snarled. “The utter bastards.”

Carnival’s eyes narrowed to slits; her scars seemed to turn blood-red in the firelight. She lashed her wings and lifted herself six feet above the platform. Flames reached out and plucked at the air around her.

Expendable?
Rachel lowered her sword.
They weren’t joking
.

Carnival, however, did not appear to share her fellow captive’s resignation. Wreathed in flames, the angel’s wings thundered in the centre of the globe. She paused to gather her strength, then threw herself against the southern curve of the planetarium.

Rachel felt the jolt through the floor as all of the facets on that side shattered. Glass exploded outwards, showered into the lane below. Metal groaned under the impact.

Oh shit, she’s not going to…She can’t…This globe must weigh a hundred tons.

Carnival drew back, tensed, and then slammed herself again against the inside surface of the globe.

A deep grinding sound. The planetarium tilted.

Flames had taken good hold of the viewing platform and were rising, crawling over the rows of chairs. Smoke hissed from their padding, rose in billowing columns to spread across the roof. Twists of it spiralled behind Carnival’s outstretched wings. The heat forced Rachel back, closer to the southern edge. Hand over her mouth, she hopped down from the platform itself and clung to a curve of metal protruding between two broken facets. She pulled at the steel net, uselessly. The planetarium’s brass skeleton gleamed in the firelight, sweated streams of green and red and gold.

Carnival pulled back again, whipping the flames around her into a frenzy. She closed her eyes, gave a roar, and plunged forward again.

Grrrrrrnnd.

Rachel heard stone crack and crumble below her. Metal grated, moaned, buckled. The brickleweed trembled, crackled, and then tore apart.

Oberhammer’s folly toppled.

M
r. Nettle was two-thirds of the way up the external wall of the clock tower when the fire started. He paused, breathless and uncertain, his boots wedged between the supporting chains and the mouldering wall. He’d seen the metal net go flying over the planetarium and the bolas wrap themselves around the pinions at its base. He’d cursed the Spine for that; now he cursed them for the fire. Three thousand years of battle and they manage to best Carnival
tonight
? The notion sat in his belly like poisoned meat. Stinking luck: the angel didn’t deserve to die at the hands of the Spine. She deserved his cleaver in her skull. Maybe he could still get to her before the fire took firm hold. Wouldn’t matter if he burned too, as long as he got one good swipe at her, left one deep scar behind for Abigail.

He looked down. Spine had gathered on the roofs on either side of the lane below, twenty or thirty of them, armed with crossbows. Cage Wynd dropped away between them, sank down the hill towards the cranes and airship pits in the yards.

The scrounger sucked in a breath through his teeth. He wasn’t going to let the angel burn until he’d gotten his revenge. He turned to face the wall again, began hauling himself up faster.