Scar Night (21 page)

Derelict buildings crowded the darkness. Whichever direction he chose, he had to carry his burden uphill. Twenty years earlier this district had teemed with industry, but over the years the sheer weight of the many factories, foundries, and warehouses had caused a degree of subsidence that left the neighbourhood sagging towards its centre. For the most part, adjustments had been made to keep the buildings level for as long as possible, but there was nothing to be done about the overstretched cross-chains that had caused the slump.

To the west, on the axis side of the Depression, as this district had come to be known, the abyssal gap curved away from the Poison Kitchens and the neighbouring shipyards. Those who laboured there called it the Scythe because of its crescent shape. It started narrow at Drake’s Flourmill, by the thirty-third chain, broadening to a width suitable for airships at Cotter’s brickworks and the Fly Holes, where the nets had been damaged by suicides. From there the gap ran past Chapelfunnel, where coalgas used to be made, Rin’s Rivets, the Spinning Chambers, and the hole where the Cistern Tavern had been, reaching the Poison Kitchens at its widest extent. Here bristled the spines of the main shipyards, Coulter’s berth among them, still twisted and charred, where the churchship
Ataler
had burned five years before. Hammers from Samuel North Rare Metals rang out beyond that, over the pounding from ore smelters, furnaces, and clay pens. The Scythe narrowed again at the Breach, never repaired since a lesser chain had snapped and ripped a clay store clean in two, killing sixty-three men. It disappeared at the forty-seventh chain, Mesa’s Chain, swallowed by workers’ shanties that grew thick as fungus around its edges.

The Depression had once shaken with the roar and hiss of churchships, tradeships, and warships, the hollers of porters, pulley gaffers, and rope hands, above the groan of stressed cable. Now it slouched and crumbled in silence.

A few blocks back from this gap, Devon’s own apartment had been converted from the top floor of what had once been Crossop’s Rhak and Whisky Warehouse. Although not one of the essential industries that usually command wharfside locations, it had been prosperous in its day and it remained an imposing building. Due to its position in the dead centre of the Depression, it had stayed almost completely level during the subsequent subsidence, requiring only minor ratcheting of its load pulleys. Old Crossop had watched the businesses around him decline, quite literally, until he was one of the last, and then the last. Finally, the lack of tradeships docking at this part of the Scythe left him isolated from his suppliers, and he was forced to sell at a price that made him sputter and clutch his heart. What little stock was left fetched more than the building. Devon had bought that too. He enjoyed the odd glass of Rhak.

Devon had purchased the warehouse fifteen years earlier, and even then it had been the only habitable construction for several blocks around. No windows overlooked his own, half-inch-thick steel doors kept intruders out, and the solid walls muffled any sounds from within, not that there was anyone around to hear. It well suited the Poisoner to have his apartments here.

So all directions were uphill and he had to make a choice. Using the docks for disposal meant somehow casting the body to avoid twenty feet of net, or a treacherous climb along a mooring gantry, neither of which prospects appealed to him. There was also the likelihood of someone spotting him from one of the crowded dwellings on the other side of the Scythe. A closer place came to mind.

By the time he reached the cusp of the hill, Devon’s chest was on fire. He collapsed, gasping, pinned under the corpse that now seemed so heavy. These pains had been getting worse recently, and his lungs bubbled with acid. He spat, and noticed blood in his saliva.

They were draining the aether tanks over in the Poison Kitchens and the flamestacks erupted in silver blooms, painting the brickwork and iron and flat tar roofs of the Depression. Even here, ash from the distant chimneys snowed lightly. Most people would have found such air unpalatable, but Devon had grown accustomed to it: the burning of gases and oils was the taste of progress, raw and undiluted—a smell that should have meant power.

Not power. Chains.

He felt like shouting across the city.

Do you see how you’ve crippled me? The sacrifice I made to keep you safe…Do you care?

He beat his fist against the girl’s body.

You are nothing but walking dead. All of you. Corpses yet to be cast into the abyss. I am the only living man in this city, and I am being slowly murdered.

That was what it was: murder. Deepgate was trying to kill him.

Devon spat again and glared at his own bloody saliva. Murder? He’d show them murder.

At the end of the block a freight bridge spanned the gap between Blacklock’s foundry, with its single, drunken chimney, and the receding arches which linked Smithport fulling mill to its warehouse.

There were nets below, but deep enough. He considered cutting through them. The climb down looked so difficult.
I am too weary for this
. By day the bridge’s shadow would conceal the sack, and there would be few passers-by, if any, to notice the smell. Scroungers no longer scoured the Depression. The nets here had long since been picked clean.

Devon heaved the sack up onto the rusty balustrade and tipped it over. The net creaked below. For a long moment he looked down into the darkness. He had completely lost his appetite.

M
r. Nettle knew what was in the sack. He’d known the moment he spied Devon leaving Crossop’s warehouse. A week past, he’d pulled a similar sack from a net not far from here. On that day, he’d waited a long, long time before he cut it open.

Crouched hidden in a doorway in the foundry wall, he waited until Devon was out of sight. Then he sprinted to the corner of the bridge, hooked his grapple around the balustrade, and slid down into the net.

Darkness and silence all around. Mr. Nettle lit his storm lamp. Ash caked the woven hemp, crumbled into the abyss under his lacerated hands. The sack lay directly underneath the bridge in the lowest dip of the net. With the lamp handle gripped between his teeth, he took his cleaver and sliced through the sack’s fabric.

She was younger than Abigail had been, maybe fifteen or sixteen. Her hair darker, lips fuller. But, for all that, it might have been his daughter: her skin was now just as pale, her eyes just as empty. He took her hand in his and rested her head and shoulders in the crook of his arm. She was as light as a flower.

For a long time he held her, as he had held Abigail, rocking back and forth, feeling his breathing resonate through her. He wondered if anyone was looking for her. Was her father roaming the streets even now, calling out her name? What had her name been? Did the Poisoner know? Or care?

The cuts on Mr. Nettle’s hands, forearms, and shoulders throbbed evilly, as though the glass from Scatterclaw’s maze still tore at him.

He took a firm grip of the net, brought down his cleaver, and hacked through the hemp strands immediately around the girl. She slipped away into darkness.

Once he reached the surface again, he bolted back to Crossop’s, hardly caring if the thunder of his boots gave him away. He arrived at the corner of the warehouse just in time to see the Poisoner disappear inside. The metal door shut with a boom. One, two, three locks clanked in succession.

Mr. Nettle stepped out of the shadows and studied the building.

Light shone from an open window on the top floor. The drainpipe running close to it looked old, but there was no other way.

Da
. Abigail’s voice came to him from a distant, quiet part of his mind, but the shock of it still cut through his anger.

Not now, girl.

Da, don’t do this.

Leave me alone.

It’s murder.

It’s justice.

Murder!

Her cry pierced his heart, and for a moment he stood there, uncertain. Murder? How could he
murder
a living, breathing man?

But was it murder?

What if the man you killed didn’t have a soul? Was that a sin? And what if it was?

What if it was?

Blood began to pound in his ears again. He hauled himself up the drainpipe. Rust flaked under his hands, but the pipe held his weight. He climbed vigorously, ignoring the pain in his wounded arms and shoulders; desiccated brick crumbled under the scrape of his boots and sprinkled to the lane below. If he could reach the apartment before Devon, his task would be simpler. He didn’t want to be caught climbing in, where he would be vulnerable. Better if he was already inside, and ready.

At the top he put a foot on the window ledge and balanced his weight between the ledge and the drainpipe. He peered inside.

Oil lamps warmed wood-panelled walls. Brass equipment, glass bottles, flasks. A desk and a broad, high-backed chair facing away from the window, and there, opposite, another chair with leather straps bolted to its arm rests. His eyes narrowed on that chair and the tubes looped around a metal stand to its side. He checked his cleaver was still secure in his belt, reached for the window frame to pull himself in…and stopped.

A puff of smoke had drifted up from the high-backed chair facing away from him. Someone unseen was sitting there.

Mr. Nettle slunk back behind the window frame, his heart racing. How could the bastard get back so quick? That was impossible. Then who? An accomplice? He ground his teeth. The Poisoner he could handle. Two men might be harder.

He couldn’t see anything around the wide back of the chair. This meant the smoker couldn’t have spotted him either. If he moved quickly, silently now, he still had the advantage of surprise. Doubt held him back. Devon would arrive any second.

Hell with it.

He reached for the window again.

Just then, the door opened and the Poisoner walked in.

D
evon froze. A factory worker was sitting in his chair, and the man was covered, head to toe, in soot. Such mess, quite frankly, was unacceptable here. “Can I help you?” he asked.

The worker pulled out a knife, a Cutter’s blade. In his other hand he held up the manacles Devon had used recently on the girl. “Bruises on the arms,” he said, then tipped his head at the letting chair and the blood-smeared tubes and flasks. “Been stealing souls, have we?”

Devon’s heart sank to his boots.
Have I been wrong all along?
He’d been unforgivably foolish and arrogant to assume it was Sypes who was protecting him. He said, “There is a perfectly rational explanation for all of this.”

Silence ensued.

“Tell me,” Devon said, “does Sypes intend to grant me a trial?”

A guarded look.

He doesn’t know? Not Sypes, then. But who?

“Fogwill,” Devon said, and saw at once the truth of it in the other man’s eyes. The Adjunct had gone behind his master’s back. He studied the would-be assassin carefully, and almost grinned when he noticed the tattooed knots, partially obscured by soot, on the man’s neck.
A Spine reject, broken by the tempering process
. Devon felt a sudden twinge of hope. There was still a chance, then. Broken Spine were notoriously unstable. This man would be a seething cauldron of ego and fanaticism. And, of course, quite insane.

Devon intended to stir things up.

“The Adjunct made a mistake sending you here,” he said. “You are a zealot, but without tempering you lack the capacity for restraint. This makes you easier to manipulate.”

“Think you can manipulate me?”

“It ought to be easy enough,” Devon said lightly. “All I have to do is anger you.”

The other man’s teeth flashed. “Your arrogance is astonishing,” he hissed. “Do you so much want to die?”

Pathetic, really. He just can’t help himself.

“Actually, no,” Devon replied. “Death is my opponent, and my work always sought to defeat him. Our forefathers almost succeeded in that a thousand years ago. You will remember the story of the Soft Men?”

The assassin’s expression darkened. “I remember their punishment.”

Devon smiled. “They developed a process to extract the soul and bottle it. Do you know what happens when a man consumes the soul of another? I will tell you. When flesh becomes saturated with the only substance that truly enriches it, the balance between the physical and metaphysical shifts. Will, so empowered, is irresistible. Desire can extend life, strengthen the body, heal wounds. Physical ageing becomes a matter of whim.”

He took a step closer to the letting chair and to the metal stand supporting the tubes. “This equipment is similar to what the Soft Men used. Thirteen souls are required to reach saturation point, a level of potency when the solution can be absorbed by a recipient. A single drop might sustain a man for many lifetimes; give him such control over his flesh that mortal wounds would become mere scratches. A man infused with angelwine is nearer, in every sense, to God.”

The assassin was now coiled like a spring, the knife gripped tightly in his fist. “You’ll not have your trial,” he snarled.

Devon plucked a small bottle from his coat pocket and held it up. Clear liquid sloshed within. “Eleven unblessed souls.” He pulled the stopper and sniffed. “Stolen from Ulcis, and no doubt hunted by Iril even as we speak. I wonder if the Maze can sense what it has lost.”

The assassin looked aghast, backed away. “Replace the cork,” he hissed. “Hide these souls before—”

Devon threw the contents of the bottle into the assassin’s face.

The man howled and doubled over, spitting, dragging his arm frantically across his face.

Devon grabbed the metal stand and swung it hard. The blow threw the assassin across the desk. He smashed through beakers and test-tubes, and dropped to the carpet.

Pain clenched Devon’s chest. He felt blood trickling beneath his bandages from freshly opened wounds. Wincing, he pulled another, smaller bottle from his waistcoat pocket and examined the pale red liquid within.