Scar Night

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: nothing 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.

Fogwill heard movement inside the shack, and the door again opened a little. He decided to press his advantage. “I don’t believe Carnival was responsible.”

This time the door swung wide and the ugliest face Fogwill had ever seen emerged from the shadows beyond. He stifled a squeal. The face—and yes it was a face, now that he got a good look at it—peered up and down the street then settled on him. It sniffed.

“You stink,” Mr. Nettle said.

Fogwill’s relief at stepping off the plank dissipated as soon as the door closed behind him. Inside, he couldn’t see a thing. For an awful moment he was afraid he’d made a terrible decision in coming here at all. If he was attacked by this lout, he would be quite unable to defend himself. Clay had warned him this man was known to be violent, and he was certainly no friend of the Church. What if Fogwill was stabbed? Or worse? God help him, he might even be ravished.

Then Mr. Nettle struck a flint, and an oil lamp brightened the hall. Standing in the narrow space edged by pulpboard and tin sheets, Mr. Nettle raised the lamp in one fist and regarded Fogwill sourly.

The scrounger was huge. In his ragged dressing gown, he stood larger than a fully armoured temple guard, blocking the narrow hallway like a pile of builder’s rubble. His features were as rough and ill-defined as the hewn stone before a sculptor began carving the details. His flattened nose had been broken and set crooked, and stubble as coarse as iron filings covered half his face, while bruises covered the rest. Red eyes ringed with dark shadows glared down at Fogwill.

From the tiredness in his eyes and the hollowness of his cheeks, the man looked like he hadn’t eaten or slept in a week. He looked finished. And he stank like a dungeon.

“This way,” Mr. Nettle growled.

The scrounger trudged further along the corridor, stepping over bundles of paper and boxes of bottles, then turning his enormous shoulders sideways to get past a stack of crates propped against the wall. The whole house shuddered as though it might fall apart at any moment. Nails jutted randomly from odd places where they had been used to patch scraps of wood and tin on to the walls. On closer inspection, Fogwill realized that the walls themselves had been constructed from junk. Here, one wardrobe door formed part of the side wall, while its twin served as part of the ceiling. There, an old mirror frame, the glass long smashed, filled a gap between two struts. Rusted pipes and broken ladders acted as joists to support this patchwork. Evidently Mr. Nettle was no carpenter. There wasn’t a straight join to be seen. And what was that? A shield? He recognized the design: a temple guard’s shield . Fogwill edged through the space with his hands close to his chest, careful not to touch anything. He tried not to think about rats.

Empty whisky bottles had rolled down the slope of the living-room floor to gather against a faded advertisement for Whitworth’s Honey Washing Oil—a product, Fogwill suspected, Mr. Nettle himself had never used.

The scrounger cleared some boxes from an old chair, and piled them on the rest of the junk behind. He grunted, “Sit.”

Fogwill perched gingerly on the edge of the seat, one of whose arm rests was nothing more than a splintered spike. This was not at all how he had imagined a scrounger’s house to look. He had expected something more like an antiques shop: solid furniture, rare objects rescued from the nets, to be restored and resold. Not just paper and bottles, tin cans, bundles of rags. True, there were one or two unusual items that stood out from the debris: a marble clock with one hand missing, clearly not originating from this part of town; some large brass cogs that could easily have come from the Presbyter’s aurolethiscope; several garish paintings of city scenes daubed on pieces of pulpboard nailed to the walls; but most of it was simply rubbish. It packed the room from floor to ceiling. How could someone live in this filth?

Mr. Nettle put down the oil lamp and folded his arms, waiting for Fogwill to speak.

The priest smoothed his cassock, the plain black one Clay had insisted he wear. “May I ask what your daughter did for a living?” he asked in his creamiest voice.

Mr. Nettle grimaced. Finally he said, “Painter.”

Fogwill cast his eyes over the paintings. “She painted these?” They were particularly amateurish. People actually bought these?

Mr. Nettle nodded.

“Excellent work,” Fogwill said hastily. “She had a good eye.”

“Penny apiece.”

Fogwill wondered if he should buy one to help smooth things over, before he remembered that he’d left all his money back at the temple, so decided to change the subject. “Mr. Nettle, do you know exactly where your daughter was when she disappeared?”

In answer, Mr. Nettle reached behind him and pulled out a ragged square of pulpboard. Fogwill saw it was an incomplete work, a first sketch, and quite as awful as the others. Nevertheless, there could be no doubt of the subject represented.

“She was working on this?”

“Found it in the nets down there. I searched there first.”

Fogwill studied the sketch. He recognized the neighbourhood. The chimneys and funnels of the Poison Kitchens rising in the background were unmistakable. This wasn’t proof, of course. The implications were there, but it wasn’t enough to warrant accusing Devon, even with Fogwill’s existing suspicions. Carnival had killed in every part of the city. He had to ask next: “Did she have bruises on both arms?”

The scrounger’s eyes narrowed.

“Were her arms bruised?” Fogwill repeated.

Mr. Nettle studied him for a moment. “Aye.”

Our murderer. The scrounger hadn’t kept her on ice all this time. Fogwill cast his gaze over the other paintings: different scenes from the city in the same few gaudy colours. Obviously the girl had had a weird affection for red and yellow, as they were the only colours used, whatever the subject. “We’ve found others,” he explained. “The puncture wounds are the same, but the bruises…Those are not Carnival’s work. Carnival suspends her victims by the feet.”

“Who did it?”

“We don’t know.”

The scrounger pushed his face even closer to Fogwill’s. “But you suspect someone?” His tone was a threat.

Fogwill saw that the muscles on Mr. Nettle’s arms had become as taut as the street-rope holding a house. He squirmed inwardly, but forced himself to meet the man’s gaze. “No.”

The scrounger’s eyes stayed locked on Fogwill’s for a long moment, the bruises on his face seeming to pulse.

Fogwill struggled to appear calm. He smelled whisky on the man’s breath, and felt a trickle of sweat run beneath his own ear. Why had he dismissed Clay so readily?

At last Mr. Nettle stepped back. “Get out,” he said.

Fogwill crossed the plank in two strides and raced back in the direction of the temple, robe fluttering. The walkway buckled and tipped beneath his feet but he didn’t slow. He didn’t slow down at all.

* * * *

Mr. Nettle dressed quickly. He stuffed his scrounging tools into a backpack: rope, grapple, hammer, spikes, a small pulley, storm lantern, and flints. He grabbed his water flask, a disc of hardbread, a pouch of raisins, and a cord of pigskin, and threw them in with the tools. Then he tucked his cleaver in his belt, wheeled Smith’s trolley out to the walkway, and began loading it with pig iron. The help he needed would be expensive. Maybe the iron would cover it, maybe not. It might cost him a lot more.

While he worked, a gust of cold air blew from the abyss and shook the League of Rope. Shanties swung and knocked together. Timbers boomed on pulpboard walls and nails scratched tin roofs. Even the Warrens were moving, down below. Gaslights shivered among the chains. Only the temple stood motionless, black and immense, windows like a jet of embers frozen high above the heart of the city.

The fat little priest had lied. Mr. Nettle knew it in his gut. The Church suspected someone. He rubbed a hand over his sweating face, sighed slowly. Not Carnival? Maybe the priests would do something about it, maybe not. Didn’t matter. Mr. Nettle planned to do something first, whatever the cost.

Sorcery didn’t exist. Everybody knew that. In taverns and grogholes throughout the Warrens, folk dismissed the idea loudly, laughed heartily at the merest suggestion. But a careful listener might note how they dismissed the idea a little too loudly, laughed a little too heartily.

When the trolley was fully loaded, Mr. Nettle spat on the ground, steeled himself, and set off to meet the only man in Deepgate who could speak to hell.

* * * *

The further Fogwill got from Mr. Nettle’s house, the more his nausea and vertigo returned. Here, as in all areas on the outskirts of the city, the distance between the great chains was at its widest; more of each neighbourhood being supported by a less substantial web of chain, cable, and rope.

Everything wobbled, shook, and groaned. Wood sweated. The smell was frightful. Like a sick-house full of plague victims. This entire district is rotting, ill .

Ropes threatened to snap. One cut would bring the whole nasty, ugly, filthy, smelly lot down into the abyss. With each step taken, Fogwill worried that it might be his last. Even those nets he could glimpse beneath the boards offered him little peace of mind. For the most part they were thin and frayed and looked too frail to support the weight of a dog, let alone his own portly frame. The darkness didn’t help. Occasional brands gave the timbers a buttery glow, but for the most part Fogwill was left to stumble along under the weak moonlight, his hands never leaving the street-ropes on either side. So soon after Scar Night, the moon was still a slender crescent. League-folk rarely ventured out at night and the streets were empty, but the lack of louts and cutthroats was little consolation. The man he was going to see was more dangerous than any of them.

* * * *

The crippled thaumaturge lived inside the Sparrow Bridge in Chapelfunnel. A towering wooden construction built upon a granite deck, the bridge spanned the abyss between Tanners’ Gloom on the west side and the old coalgas towers on the east. Once open to the sky, and wide enough to allow two carts to pass side by side, Sparrow Bridge had formerly been a symbol of the district’s booming coalgas industry. In years past, workers could peer over its balustrades and see a canal of air and chains plough deep into the Warrens, hedged on both sides by walls of good strong flint and trunks of smoke. But prosperity brings wealth, and wealth brings men, and men need to be housed. Now Sparrow Bridge towered to four storeys. Homes had been built above, stacked one upon the other like children’s bricks and sewn up with chains bolted to any anchor available. Pinched roofs bucked across its summit in a ragged line. Forty or so families had lived in the bridge before Thomas Scatterclaw settled here. Carts still trundled through the long tunnel below the houses, loaded with leather for the Chapelfunnel market or steel from the dismantled coalgas yards, but now moving only one at a time, and only in the daytime.

Mr. Nettle looked up at the bridge. Scaffolding clung to the outside of the houses, but it was sagging, the poles and ladders rotten. There were holes in the roofs where shingles had come loose. Broken windows fronted the abyss, all of them dark but one, high up, where a dull red light glowed.

“Iron, is it?”

Mr. Nettle turned towards the voice. The man emerging from the tunnel sat on a low, wheeled platform and pushed himself along with bandaged hands. As the man drew near, Mr. Nettle saw that his legs had been severed below the knee. Despite this, he remained powerful. Muscles bunched on his broad chest. His arms looked strong enough to break a horse’s neck. Two deep scars, like sword wounds, running down his left forearm made Mr. Nettle think he might once have been a soldier or a temple guard.

“Is it enough?” Mr. Nettle asked.

“Depends what you want,” the man said. Wheels squeaked under him. “But no, in the end it won’t be enough.”

“That supposed to be a riddle?”

The man grunted. “Danning is my name. Want to know what happened to my legs?”

“No.”

The other man grinned. “You’ll want to speak to Mr. Scatterclaw. Upstairs. I’ll take the iron.”

“Might be he can’t help me.”

Danning shrugged. “Not my problem. That’s how it works here.”

The scrounger hesitated. Smith’s pig iron was a fortune to someone from the League, enough to feed him for six months or more. If the thaumaturge was unable to help, Mr. Nettle couldn’t imagine any future for himself. But what if Scatterclaw could help him? That future might be worse than none at all.

“Can’t make up your mind for you,” Danning said, “but it seems to me you’ve risked plenty coming here already.” He smiled, but it was not a kind smile. “Mr. Scatterclaw knows you’re here. And if Mr. Scatterclaw knows, the Maze knows.”

Mr. Nettle released his grip on the trolley.

Danning tilted his head. “Door beside the red window.” He pushed himself over to the trolley, grabbed the handles, and eased them back so that they rested on his wide shoulders. Then, grunting, he set off the way he had come, six wheels squeaking now.

The scaffolding wobbled the whole way up. Greasy ropes protested and soft planks dipped, but Mr. Nettle reached the uppermost catwalk without incident. The Chapelfunnel canal curved away below him, broken by moonlit chains into narrow strips of abyss. Beside the door, red light sweated through a warped window, blurred red shapes inside. Mr. Nettle stashed his backpack in the shadows and knocked.

A brusque voice issued from inside. “He’s here. Hide yourselves.”

The scrounger waited. He did not want to think about who or what Thomas Scatterclaw might be speaking to. Iril had opened many doors inside Sparrow Bridge.

“We have company,” Scatterclaw bellowed. “Do you want to frighten him out of his wits? Get out of my sight. All of you. Hide!”

Mr. Nettle listened at the door for a long time. He heard nothing further. No footfalls. Nothing. Not knowing what else to do, he knocked again.

A pause, then: “Come in.”

The door revealed a wall of broken glass. Razor-sharp shards of every shape and colour had been glued to a wooden partition set a few feet back from the door. Eight feet high, this partition stretched away on either side to the edges of a long room. It formed a narrow corridor from which a dozen other corridors, also faced with broken glass, led off into the interior. A red lantern depended from the rafters, its light the colour of blood.

A maze? The thaumaturge had built a shrine to Iril. Mr. Nettle stepped inside and closed the door behind him. The corridor was just wide enough to allow him to move sideways along it without tearing his clothes on the glass fragments. Mazes, in any form, were forbidden in Deepgate. Iril’s demons drew power from mazes. Not two months ago, an Ivygarths silversmith had been dragged before the Avulsior for crafting a brooch, it was said, of such intricacy that it had been likened to Iril’s corridors. But here was a real maze, a solid thing composed of wood and glass. The Church would burn it to the ground if they discovered it.

He edged along to the first intersection. Another corridor ran to a dead end twenty feet ahead. Six more branched off from it. Mr. Nettle called out, “Scatterclaw?”

“Over here.”

But the voice seemed to come from everywhere at once. Mr. Nettle turned carefully into the sharp passageway and eased himself along, wary of losing his way. On one side he noted a crescent-shaped shard of glass, black in the red light, and tried to burn it into his memory. He decided on the third branch on the right.

A third lengthy corridor, at least forty feet long, with many more leading away from it. The scrounger frowned. From the outside, Sparrow Bridge did not seem wide enough to contain all this. He looked back, spied the crescent-shaped shard, then squeezed on between the treacherous glass walls and shuffled deeper into the maze. Something nicked his shoulder and he halted, felt blood trickle down his back.

“Stop! Stop! Stop!” Scatterclaw cried. “Stay where you are, all of you. He is not lost. You are not lost, are you, Scrounger?”

“No.”

“Then proceed.”

Sweat ran from Mr. Nettle’s brow, but he dared not lift his hand to mop it. There was barely room to breathe in here. He sucked in his chest and moved on again. Another opening led to another corridor and this one appeared to stretch for twice the length of the last. Walls of glass glistened blackly. Nothing made sense: the entire room could not be more than sixty feet wide. He glanced up and saw the lantern overhead. Had it always been hanging directly above his head? He was growing weary of this.

“Scatterclaw,” he shouted.

“Don’t linger. They know where you are.”

“Who?”

No reply.

Mr. Nettle cursed and moved on. He took a left, edged fifty paces, then a right. When he looked up the lantern was still there, directly above. Damn the thaumaturge. Wasn’t it enough that he’d paid a wealth of iron to speak to the man? Now he was expected to crawl through this trap. He’d half a mind to climb the partition, get a good look at the place, or use his cleaver to shave away some of the glass fragments.

But Mr. Nettle did neither. Thomas Scatterclaw was not a man he wanted to anger. Folks said he’d come across the Yellow Sea from a place where Iril was worshipped. They said he’d come here a hundred and forty years ago and his body had been grey and fleshless then. They said he’d pierced his lips, ears, and eyes with splinters of gallows wood so that he could converse with demons, and that he’d had nails hammered into his spine to keep his gaze from Heaven while he slept.

The scrounger waited for a dozen breaths, and then pushed on. A left, then another left. Twenty paces. A right. Ten paces. Another right. Always the same wickedly sharp corridors, always the same blood-coloured lantern overhead. Had he been tricked? Was he to spend the rest of his life in here? He wandered for what seemed like hours, down corridor after corridor, glass inches from his chest and inches from his back.

Finally he stopped.

Ten paces ahead was an opening in the left wall. But this did not lead to another corridor; it opened into a wider space. Even from here he could see another partition a short distance beyond, but this time a wall without glass. Warily, Mr. Nettle approached it.

Thomas Scatterclaw sat cross-legged in the centre of a box-like space some twenty feet across and hemmed in by partition walls. A deep-red robe and cowl hid every inch of him, but Mr. Nettle thought he saw bumps in the cloth on the man’s back where no bumps should be. On the floor in front of him, a rusty kitchen knife and a plain, chipped bowl. The bowl was full of blood.

Mr. Nettle grunted. “You the thaumaturge?”

“Take the knife and open a vein.” Thomas Scatterclaw didn’t look up. “Add your blood to this—to the dead blood.”

“What for?”

“Do it quickly.”

“You don’t know what I want.”

“No,” Scatterclaw said, “but Iril does. Quickly now, there are demons in here.”

Mr. Nettle glanced round. Nothing but the tired wooden partitions. No sounds, no creak of wood. The thaumaturge was trying to unnerve him.

“Now,” Scatterclaw snarled.

Mr. Nettle picked up the knife, and without thinking any more about it, cut across the back of his hand behind his thumb. Blood welled and trickled over his hand.

“In the bowl,” Scatterclaw said. “Hurry.”

Mr. Nettle did as he was told.

Iril’s priest appeared to shudder beneath his robe. He leaned forward and picked up the bowl, and Mr. Nettle saw that his exposed hands were black and gnarled as though they had been burned, the fingers twisted around each other like tightly woven roots. Had the thaumaturge done this to himself too? Scatterclaw tilted the bowl under his cowl, and drank.

Disgusted, the scrounger watched the man drain the bowl and set it down.

“Do not close your eyes,” Scatterclaw said. “Not for an instant. Do you understand? No more than a blink. They get in through your eyes but only if you cannot see them. They will try to sneak up on you, trick you. If they get inside you, you will never leave this maze. You’ll stay trapped in here with them until Iril comes for you.”

“Who?”

“The Non Morai.”

Again Mr. Nettle looked around anxiously.

“You’ll see them if you look hard enough,” Scatterclaw said. “And I advise you do look hard. Be thankful it isn’t dark, for darkness makes them bold. All that trouble on Cog Island was caused by the Non Morai at night. Doors from Hell attract them like flies.”

The light in the room appeared to thicken, until Mr. Nettle felt as though he was straining to see through a red veil. Walls and floor and rafters turned a dark, dark red that was almost black. He heard movement behind him and whirled round. Nothing. Now he could smell an odour like spoiled meat. Something moved at the corner of his vision, as though trying to approach unseen, but when he swung to look, there was nothing there. Yet Mr. Nettle felt an aura of malice in that empty space, so strong his heartbeats quickened.

Thomas Scatterclaw breathed slow and deep, and then spoke in a glutinous voice that was not his own. “How many are here?”

Behind him, Mr. Nettle heard a chorus of whispers. Eleven .

He wheeled, saw nothing.

“And a living soul,” Scatterclaw said.

Ours, the voices hissed.

Thomas Scatterclaw, or whatever had taken possession of him, was silent for a long time, and then the cowl turned to face Mr. Nettle. “Your daughter is not with us. A living man has taken her.”

The scrounger’s fists bunched. “Who?”

“He is diseased. Hafe reaches for him.”

“Hafe?”

“The hell of the fourth angel. Halls of dirt and poison. Green ghosts, harrowcells, and flowers.”

Mr. Nettle frowned. The Maze, he suspected, was trying to confuse him. So it was with Iril. “Who is he?”

Voices then swarmed all around Mr. Nettle. Close your eyes. Let us in and we’ll tell you .

For a heartbeat the scrounger almost obeyed. It seemed the most natural thing to close his eyes, to let the voices inside. But some part of him resisted. “Who is he?”

The voices hissed, snarled.

Thomas Scatterclaw said, “Devon.”

* * * *

Smoke rose from smouldering censers around the Sinners’ Well and hung in a fragrant pall between the severed heads. Nine of the twenty spikes were occupied: six men, two women, a child. Pulpboard signs proclaimed them blasphemers, Iril worshippers, or Heshette spies. All rooted out by the Spine, brought before Ichin Samuel Tell to be redeemed before the mob. Their bodies had been cast, still bleeding, into the abyss; the heads left as a reminder of Spine efficacy. Fogwill surveyed the scene through watering eyes and breathed through the folds of his sleeve. Was his man here? Was he too late?

Then, in the shadows, he spied the glow of a pipe. It lit up a narrow, dirt-streaked face, and then all was dark again. Fogwill approached his spy.

“Good evening, Adjunct,” the man said.

“Any developments?” Fogwill asked.

“No. He works late, as usual.”

“You managed to get away without any problems?”

The man sucked on his pipe till it illuminated ranks of narrow teeth, bony cheeks, and a knife-thin nose. “Left for a smoke, didn’t I? Half the workers do it.” He grinned. “Who was going to stop me? The furnace gaffer? He’s scared of me. I still got my knife, and they all know it.”

Fogwill glanced over at the nearest head. Crows had already taken the woman’s eyes and lips. He grimaced. “Why did we have to meet here? I abhor this place.”

“I like it here.” Smoke leaked through the spy’s teeth. “The heads tell me things.”

Fogwill tried to swallow, but his throat was too dry. The man was a lunatic. “What things?” he asked, despite himself.

“Secret things,” the spy said.

“Blood has been shed here,” the Adjunct said. “It’s dangerous. God knows what things might be lurking here.”

“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.

* * * *

Whatever 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.