Scar Night (20 page)

“The censers are blessed.”

“You can never be too careful.” Fogwill caught a glimpse of movement, and spun. A black shape, like a dog but much larger, loped away between the chains. “Look, did you see that? What was it? A manifestation?”

The spy shrugged. Fogwill found the gesture oddly disconcerting. This man had once been Spine; not an Adept, but a common Cutter. The needle marks in his neck remained—evidence of the Spine masters’ attempt to temper him. But these traces were augmented by tattooed knots—the indelible stains of failure. A common enough occurrence, for tempering was not always successful. Sometimes minds just broke.

Ejected from the sanctuary of the temple, damaged assassins did not survive for long. Society shunned them, and it was only a matter of time before some cutthroat, with sharper wits and drunken morals, took exception to them.

“You learn anything from the scrounger?” the spy inquired.

“His daughter disappeared close to the Scythe—in the Depression. The bruising indicates it wasn’t Carnival’s work.”

“Figures.” The assassin inhaled. “Want me to go ahead?”

Fogwill nodded.

“If I don’t find anything?”

“Report to me tomorrow morning.”

“And if I do?”

Fogwill hesitated. “You know God’s will.” And, there, the words were out, as simply as that.

I’ve just sanctioned murder.

W
hatever had been inside Thomas Scatterclaw had now departed, leaving him collapsed and senseless. But the voices in the maze were growing louder, bolder.

Why not close your eyes? Just for a moment. The light is so bright.

The room
had
brightened, almost painfully so, but Mr. Nettle had no desire to close his eyes. His anger gave him the strength to ignore the demons, if that was what they were.

Devon had killed Abigail. Devon was mortal. He could be made to suffer. What form of suffering, the scrounger didn’t know, not yet. But he would see the Poisoner scream and beg for his life before the night was out.

We can help you. Close your eyes. Or break the lantern. Yes, smash it. We can help you if it’s dark.

“Shut up!” He had to think. The thaumaturge’s maze still trapped him and he had no idea how to get out of it. Didn’t much like the thought of squeezing back through walls of broken glass with these demons at his heels. Better if he found another way.

There is another way. A safe way. Break the lantern and we’ll show you.

Mr. Nettle studied the room. The rafters were too high to reach, and the floorboards looked too solid to smash through. Maybe he could climb one of the partitions, step across the tops of them to the edges of the room? He cursed himself for having left his backpack outside.

Something cold touched his hand. He lashed out.

At empty air.

The voices wheeled around him, laughing.

Mr. Nettle circled slowly. Movement everywhere, but he couldn’t seem to get a clear look at whatever was moving, as though the air shifted and blurred around indistinct shapes. Shadows that weren’t shadows when he looked; figures that evaporated, became whorls of grain in the partition walls.

Overhead, the lantern flickered and dimmed, and in that moment Mr. Nettle glimpsed them: thin men with white faces and red grins. They were standing in a circle around him.

He ran to the nearest partition, grabbed the top of it, and hauled himself up.

Glass bit his fingers: the other side of the wood was evilly sharp. He hoisted one knee up and crouched on the top of the partition. The maze now looked smaller than it had appeared from below, not more than fifty feet square, but the complexity of it stunned him. Narrow corridors crammed together, running in every direction. Square spirals, L-shapes, and S-shapes. Countless dead ends. And all laced with blood-red glass. Twenty paces away, the door where he’d come in; and beside the door, the room’s single window. If he was careful, he could hop across the top of the maze to reach it. Slowly, he stood. The top of the partition was only two inches wide.

Cheat
, the voices howled.
Cheat, cheat, cheat
.

Mr. Nettle stepped across to the adjacent partition, wavered for a second. He sensed the air shift,
push
him, as though trying to throw him off balance, and he flung his arms out. For several heartbeats he stood there, knees trembling, certain he was going to fall. But he recovered his balance. Then a deep breath, and another step. The partition groaned, wobbled, and his insides lurched. His heart was pounding. The maze of glass glistened below him, like walls of teeth that seemed to grin, salivate.

Cheat, cheat, cheat
. The demons’ fury was palpable. Icy breaths caressed Mr. Nettle’s face. Unseen things thrashed around him. He stepped to the next partition. The wood cracked, but held. Mr. Nettle swayed for a sickening moment. Corridors of glass tilted and pitched. He took another step. Another.

He was halfway across when the lantern went out, and plunged the room into darkness.

14

TWO ASSASSINS

T
HERE WAS A
knock at the laboratory door. Devon slammed the rat cage shut and raised his breathing mask. “What is it now?”

A nervous chemist poked his head in. “Sorry, sir, we need to know if you still want the aether tanks drained tonight. There’s a ship due in from the Plantations in the morning. If we drain the tanks we’ll need to recalibrate, and she’ll be waiting for the best part of the day before we can refuel her.”

“Tradeship or churchship?”

“Churchship.”

“Drain the tanks.”

“What about the ship?”

“The ship can wait. I don’t want any further interruptions tonight.”

“Very good, sir.” The chemist slunk away.

The Poisoner returned to the rat cage and peered down at the scampering creature. From his waistcoat pocket he plucked a small phial and shook it, squinting at the rose-coloured liquid within. He replaced his breathing mask, opened the phial, and carefully drew a drop of the liquid into a pipette. This he mixed with a spoonful of honey in a shallow dish and placed inside the cage. The rat scurried over and began lapping at the solution. Devon watched it anxiously.

When all of it was consumed he studied the rat for a few minutes. There was no visible change in its behaviour.

“Now,” he muttered, picking up a scalpel, “I am afraid this is going to hurt.”

He held the blade over the rat, following it patiently as it bounded about the cage. Then he stabbed it in the back. The rat shrieked and tried to wriggle free, but Devon held the scalpel firmly in place. He pinned the creature down until it stopped struggling, then withdrew the scalpel and plunked it into a beaker of alcohol.

Devon waited, his breathing loud in the mask. Minutes passed. The rat twitched once. Blood leaked from the wound. Then nothing. Devon put a finger under its chest, rolled it over. The creature was dead.

He sighed heavily.

Devon pulled off his mask and dropped it on the workbench. His face was itching, his hair dishevelled about his ears. Carefully, he removed his spectacles and cleaned them before perching them back on the bridge of his nose. He glanced back at the dead rat in the cage. It was still a dead rat in a cage.

The Poisoner crumpled on his stool. Enough for today. He felt exhausted and still had that mess to clean up in his study. He was always tired these days. Over the years he’d found himself going to bed earlier and rising earlier, already worn out before the day began. His body seemed heavier, every task more laborious. He accepted the weariness, but the pain…

Some nights Devon woke in agony, clutching his chest, as if breathing shards of glass. His wounds bled constantly. The poisons, fuels, and sulphurs of the Poison Kitchens had soaked into his flesh and filled his bones like lead. There was no room inside for any more. He was dying.

The Saviour of Deepgate—poisoned and left to rot by the people I’ve saved. And for what? The populace despise me. My own chemists despise me. The Church despises me, for all that I’ve done for them. Who are these people? People whose survival was bought by my suffering. By my Elizabeth’s suffering. Yet I endure this agony so that they can outlive me.

The hypocrisy enraged him. Everyone in Deepgate was waiting to die. Except Devon. They did not deserve their own lives, and yet they took
his
. But he wasn’t finished yet. He’d take back what they’d stolen, and more. Only thirteen souls were required to make the angelwine potent. Had it required a thousand, Devon would have cut them from the city without hesitation.

Deepgate owed him.

It had been careless of him, he supposed, to leave the girl’s body in his apartment, but he’d had no intention of venturing out on Scar Night, and he’d lacked the strength this morning to move the corpse. The prospect of lugging the body around made him feel even wearier. He would just dump it in the first dark gap he found over the abyss, then make himself some supper. Lately he hadn’t been eating enough. A good supper would sort him out: perhaps steak with minted potatoes. He picked up the jar of honey from the worktop, wiped away some spatters of rat-blood, and stuffed it in his pocket—pancakes with honey for dessert.

To minimize any further contact with his chemists, Devon left by one of the back exits. Labourers filed in and out the door in shuffling lines, going to and from the furnaces. Soot-blackened faces weary; clean pink faces despondent.

To Devon’s dismay, he spotted a group of other chemists under the clock-tower gaslight. Above them, the clock sounded midnight with a brassy
thunk
. He recognized Danderport, a sprightly, eager nuisance with permanently moist lips and restless fingers, who was engaged in a fierce debate with some other crinkled, sulphurous little oiler.

Danderport beckoned him over. “Sir, your opinion please.”

“What?” he snapped.

“The Tooth, sir.”

“What about it?”

Danderport gave him a limp smile, his fingers dancing. “
Adraki
aeronauts got a proper look at it as they rounded Blackthrone on the hunt for the
Skylark
. We were wondering if you had any thoughts about the method of its construction. My own theory is that the hull material may be vat-grown. Brent here disagrees.”

Devon considered this. The Tooth of God, as the priests called it, seemed too heavy to have ever moved without sinking deep into the Deadsands. Yet it had moved once. Deep trails of compacted earth still crisscrossed the desert in places, frequently vanishing under drifting sands only to become revealed years later. Whatever materials had been used in its construction were far lighter and stronger than anything they were currently familiar with.

“It is possible,” he conceded.

“Sir, perhaps a closer inspection of the Tooth might be possible at some point?” Danderport’s voice seesawed. “Merely an inspection. We wouldn’t touch a thing.”

The Poisoner harrumphed. “If Sypes agrees to it, I’ll let you know.”

Danderport’s face collapsed briefly before he turned back to his debate.

Devon’s chores gave him a gentle tug. He left the chemists pugging Danderport’s ideas like swill, and strode across the yard and out through the gates. It was late, he was tired, and he had a corpse to dispose of before supper.

I
n darkness Mr. Nettle continued to balance on top of the two-inch-wide partition wall. He couldn’t move, couldn’t see the next partition or the labyrinth of broken glass below. But he sensed invisible shapes swirling around him and he could taste their rage. It was like a thunderstorm imprisoned within a bottle.

Without even touching him, the Non Morai tore at him.

Close your eyes. Close your eyes. Close your eyes.

“Piss off,” Mr. Nettle growled. He pulled his cleaver from his belt and swiped madly at the air. The partition swayed and almost stole his balance.

The demons shrieked.
Close your eyes! Let us in!

He saw them when he didn’t look at them, always out of the corners of his eyes. Vague black shapes, darker than the surrounding gloom. Glimpses of long red teeth and long white fingers. Sharp nails. Whenever he tried to get a proper look at them, they fled, as if furious at his gaze. He twisted his head around frantically, trying to track them. They were everywhere at once, yet nowhere, moving so fast he couldn’t be sure he saw anything at all. Now that his eyes were growing accustomed to the darkness, he spied the window in the far wall, a bleary grey square, and the upper edge of the partition nearest to it. He knew there was another partition in front of him, but he would have to gauge the distance across from memory. If he got it wrong he’d be down in the maze, and without the lantern light he’d likely stay there for good.

Something touched the back of his neck.

Mr. Nettle flinched, twisted round. Shadows churned like a swarm of beetles, hissing.

Close your eyes. Stay here with us.

Hell he would. The scrounger tucked his cleaver back into his belt and stepped out into nothing.

The sole of his boot pressed against something solid. For a moment he balanced there, each foot on the top edge of a different partition, and then he stepped across.

Let us in!

Now he could make out a few faint lines: the tops of two or three partitions closest to the window. Glass glinted below. But he still had to cross twenty feet of darkness as profound as the Chapelfunnel canal. How could he even know if another partition ran parallel to the one he was on? Would he step into the space where one corridor joined another and tumble headfirst between two walls of glass? And if he fell, would he instinctively close his eyes?

There is no danger from us,
the Non Morai crooned.
We want to help you. If you try to cross here you will fall. Move left a pace. Safer
.

Last thing he needed was to have
them
tell him which way to go. He took another step.

Felt nothing beneath his foot.

Fell.

Glass bit deeply into both shoulders and arms, gouged through flesh. His jaw slammed against the floor, the impact kicking the wind out of him. He couldn’t help it: for an instant he closed his eyes.

That was enough.

Mr. Nettle snapped his eyes open but it was already too late. He felt something
pushing
into him, like stale water being forced into his lungs. And he could taste it: the taste of airless pools and dead weeds. He clawed at the air in front of his face, tried to pull whatever was there away. But there was nothing. The rank fluid flooded his throat and lungs. Mr. Nettle gagged, coughed, fought for air. Fear gripped him, and he scrambled upright and ran.

Glass walls ripped his shoulders to shreds. He ploughed on blindly, unable to breathe. Mr. Nettle knew he was a coward. He’d always been one. He’d known it since his father, a huge man with weed-stained fingers, had held him by the scruff of the neck over the edge of Nine Ropes Bridge, over the darkness.

There’s bottles down there.

Five years old and not knowing there was a net, he’d begged his old man not to let go of him. Then he was falling. Then came the net. He’d lain there for an age, sobbing and clutching the hemp strands, and when the tears finally stopped, he’d scrambled around looking for bottles. There had been none.

There never were any bottles
, the Non Morai hissed, imitating his old man’s voice.
Thought that net had frayed and wasted
.

Now Mr. Nettle felt the same terror again: blind fear crushing his heart and lungs. He barged down the corridor. Sharp edges plucked constantly at his flesh. Blood sluiced over his arms. He didn’t care, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. He was going to die.

He slammed into a wall.

Glass fragments shattered against his hands, shoulders, chest. Mr. Nettle roared in pain, recoiled, and threw himself at the wall again.

Iril’s shrine shuddered. The partition collapsed, crashing into the one behind.

Then he was climbing up and over a slope of glass. At the top he saw the window, only three yards away. He leapt, fell short. Arms wrapped around the top of the next partition; shards deep in his knees now. He dragged himself up, pulled himself over. The window was in front of him.

No!
A whirlwind of screams, as the Non Morai clawed at his bleeding skin, their touch like freezing rain.
Cheat! You cannot leave the maze! You dare not!

The door now forgotten, Mr. Nettle dived through the window.

He hit the scaffolding outside in a shower of glass. The whole structure skreaked, tilted, and swung out over the Chapelfunnel canal. Glass tinkled off chains below. Mr. Nettle lay still for a dozen heartbeats, afraid to breathe or move. Then, slowly, the pressure in his chest eased, he felt his lungs clear and his throat loosen. The stale taste in his mouth faded. He spat furiously…and breathed.

Every inch of him had been cut, his clothes were in tatters, the skin on his hands shredded. But he rose like a man released from heavy chains and gazed grimly out across Chapelfunnel to where the flames of the Poison Kitchens roared beneath a smiling moon.

T
he stench of blood in Devon’s apartment forced him to open a window. He would have to get rid of the corpse and air the room if he was ever going to enjoy his meal. From a closet he grabbed one of the sacks he kept specially for this purpose. Less than a dozen left now—he made a mental note to obtain some more. Once the place was cleaned up, he would get one of his men to deliver some. He’d have to peruse the temple screening documents again, find someone without a family.

Drained of fluid, the girl’s body was relatively light, so he didn’t have much trouble piling it into the sack. For a moment he wondered if he shouldn’t dump it further away this time. There were places without nets where the abyss would swallow the evidence for good.

No. Devon wanted the bodies to be discovered. He wanted the Presbyter, if that was who had helped him, to witness the result of his assistance.

Do you see what I’m working on? Do you approve?

He took pleasure in the thought of the old man balking in silence. Killing did not come easily, even to a man like Devon. Despite the purity of his motives, he found murder tiresome and disagreeable, even vulgar. Deepgate had reduced him to this, a common cutthroat, and the city had an obligation to share the burden it had imposed upon him.

But most of all he wanted Sypes to break his insufferable silence. What did the old man hope to gain from Devon’s work? Power? Immortality? Did he think Devon would share the fruits of his labours so readily?

Is he really so afraid of death? Or is there something more?

The Poisoner rubbed his eyes. He would learn the answers before long. Right now he had a body to dispose of, and he was too tired and hungry to walk far.

But still his cautious side interjected: why court attention? If he was publicly exposed as a soul-thief, no one could protect him. The Spine would see him hanging from the Avulsior’s gallows. Therefore, he would compromise, hide the body some distance away. The sooner he got the job done, the sooner he could get on with his supper.