Scar Night

20

Changes of Heart

A heavy headwind buffeted the Birkita as she rumbled on through the night, whistling through her air ducts and strumming support cables. The warship was an orchestra of eerie midnight sounds. Stars crowded the darkness beyond the bridge windows. The Deadsands were blowing below in a shapeless silver gauze.

“It would be faster to walk,” Devon grumbled as he raked through his bag of poisons. But he didn’t trust Angus enough with the engines or himself with the controls to set their speed at more than two-thirds full power. Which meant his pursuers must be gaining.

“I am in no hurry to reach Blackthrone,” Sypes said. The old priest had not risen from his chair since he’d settled there, and Devon was beginning to wonder if they’d have to carry him out of the airship seated on it after they landed.

“You wouldn’t be,” he sneered.

“Nor am I in a hurry for you to find a suitable poison.”

The Poisoner grunted. With the warship’s creeping progress against the wind, he’d lost patience with Sypes’s reluctance to talk. The thump of blood in his own heart had grown stronger. His skin had tightened around his muscles. His teeth felt scoured clean, hard; eyes quick and restless. The angelwine was still transforming him, driving him. Why shouldn’t he torture the priest? He had to do something positive before this damn wind blew them back to Deepgate. “Not this one,” he muttered, placing one bottle on the control deck. “Nor this.” He set another bottle aside.

He pulled out a small green phial, read its label, and shook his head.

Was there nothing in the bag he could use? Nothing here that wouldn’t kill the old man outright? He needed something that would cause pain but not push the Presbyter into shock, coma, or worse. Snake venoms, fungal spores, extract of dog-weed and blushlily, widow eel pigment; he set them all aside.

“Damn your heart,” he said.

Sypes stirred in his chair behind him. “Found anything yet?”

“I’m working on it.”

“Any more wine? Or perhaps something to eat? I’m famished.”

“Give me a minute.”

The Poisoner lifted out the last bottle and frowned, then tipped the lot back into the bag and let out a long sigh. “What would you like to eat?”

“Whatever is easy. I don’t want to be a burden.”

“There are some pickled clams in the galley, a yard of salted pigskin. Or cuttlefish—dry, I’m afraid.”

“The clams would be fine.”

Propellers thrummed loudly as Devon pushed open the bridge door. Wind tore at the portholes. He locked the door behind him and then strode along the starboard companionway, sliding his hand along the smooth brass guide-rail.

Pots and pans swung from hooks in the dark galley. Barrels had been stacked against the far wall, most of them empty now or with a few salted scraps at the bottom. The shelves were mostly empty too. All of the fresh fruit and meat had been eaten and theBirkita had not been restocked after her last tour. Devon found the pot of clams he sought in the larder and stuffed it under his arm.

Perhaps he ought to torture Sypes the old-fashioned way? He could tie the old man down and find a knife. A lit taper might also be effective. The loss of a few fingers or an eye under anaesthetic would be no great risk to the Presbyter’s health so long as he staunched the bleeding and kept the wounds clean. There would be bandages and lint somewhere aboard. He could even cut the priest’s balls off. Devon winced at the thought. Some things he would rather not see. Conventional torture was unsophisticated, unpalatable, he decided. It lacked finesse.

But was he prepared to wait while Deepgate’s armada pursued them? Earlier he had stood on the aft deck to watch distant lights rise through the pall of smoke above the city. He had enemies behind him, and yet more foes waiting in the wasteland ahead. The Heshette would not welcome his arrival at the Tooth of God. Something told him his threshold of pain would be tested in the clash to come.

He shrugged the thoughts aside. Right now he had other concerns. Sypes’s continuing silence infuriated him. The old goat was terrified of something. So much so that he’d flouted Church doctrine and gone to almost inconceivable lengths to buy Carnival’s aid.

Why?

Unanswered questions troubled Devon. Sypes knew what was really down there, and if Devon was going to send all of Deepgate down to its maker, he wanted to know who that maker was.

A god?

He could not believe it: the temple had been built on faith and fostered with lies. But how could ignorance be the foundation for any system of order? Devon detested any deference to the supernatural. Were supernatural forces not simply natural forces yet to be explained? Blood contained energy which could be harvested to extend life. Gods, demons, devils, and ghosts did not come into it. Everything had to be defined in terms Devon could comprehend. For a man of his brilliance, this was vital.

Thoughts still stewing, he left the galley and wandered the narrow companionways towards the accommodations section, with the pot of clams under his arm.

Perhaps he should learn to be more patient, for time was one thing he now had in abundance. Sypes would talk in the end. When the old man saw his beloved city about to fall to its doom, he would tell Devon what he desired to know.

The captain’s cabin was only marginally larger than the crew bunkrooms, but richly finished: polished hardwood veneers, etched glass, carpets soft as molten gold. Bottles of Rhak, whisky, and wine gleamed in the drinks cabinet.

There was no white vintage to be found, so Devon selected a light Duskvalley red that would if not complement the clams, at least not overwhelm the flavour.

He was reading the label when the ship pitched forward and he was thrown against the cabin wall. The Duskvalley slipped from his grip. Bottles and glasses clinked and smashed and tumbled across the floor. The drone of engines rose suddenly to a shriek.

“Blood and chains,” he muttered, levering himself upright. “I’ll kill the old fool for this.”

Devon scrambled out of the cabin, leaning heavily against one wall. The starboard companionway sloped downwards to the bridge. He half ran, half slid to the end of it and slammed against the bridge door. Through the porthole he saw Sypes leaning over the control deck, gripping the elevator rudder levers in his hands. A sandstorm filled the bridge windows. Devon fumbled with his keys till he found the right one, and unlocked the door.

It stayed firmly shut. The priest had lodged his chair beneath the handle.

“Old fool!” Devon shook the door, pounded on it.

Sypes wheeled, frowning.

Using the handrail, Devon struggled back up the sloping companionway and took a right, cutting along the midship companionway to the port side. His shoulder thumped against the wall. The Birkita ’s engines were screaming and stuttering now, the air vents clogged with sand. When he reached the port companionway, its angle was so steep that he had to slide along the deck on his backside till his knees cracked against the alternative bridge door. Again he rattled his keys, tried one, then another. Finally he unlocked the door.

It wouldn’t open. Sypes had moved the chair and slid it under the handle of the portside entrance.

“Open this.” Devon kicked at the door.

Sypes ignored him. Sand fumed behind the bridge’s forward windows. The slope of the companionway was becoming steeper—too steep to climb back up it. The old man had angled the airship’s elevators, flooded the aft ribs, and emptied the forward ones, letting the weight of the bridge drag them nose down.

“You’ll kill yourself!” Devon screamed, and kicked with both feet, again, again.

The door opened at last and he fell through it.

Sypes didn’t turn as Devon hit the control deck beside him. His white-knuckled hands held both elevator control levers fully forward. Angus’s voice chattered wildly through the engine-room com-trumpet. Cables stretched and groaned under pressure. Wood creaked. The sandstorm parted and dunes loomed behind the windows.

Devon threw the priest aside, twisted valves to flood the forward ribs, and slammed the elevator levers back.

Nothing happened.

Behind the glass, the dunes drew nearer. Tufts of withered grass shuddered in the wind. Rocks and petrified trees cast stark shadows under the warship’s aether-lights. They were only a hundred yards from the ground, then ninety yards, eighty.

The warship’s nose lifted slightly.

“Faster,” Devon growled. With one hand and one stump he jammed both levers as far back as he could, then shouted into the com-trumpet: “Angus! Increase fuel pressure. We need more hot air up front now .” He twisted to face Sypes. “Where the hell did you learn how to operate an airship?”

“It’s just a bag of gas,” Sypes explained from the floor. “How hard could it be?”

The Poisoner snarled, went back to the controls.

Dunes approached. Sixty yards away, fifty, forty.

The nose crept a little higher.

Devon saw ripples of sand through the haze, wind-etched curls and waves beneath the limbs of petrified trees. Thirty yards. Air hissed from the forward ribs as they stretched almost to bursting under the increased pressure.

Twenty yards.

Stone branches raced past the window like grasping claws.

The Birkita levelled. She started to climb.

Devon eased his grip on the controls.

Presbyter Sypes picked himself up from the floor and nodded at the pot still wedged beneath Devon’s arm. “You forgot the wine,” he said.

* * * *

He told you to do what?”

“To find Carnival and deliver a message.” Dill’s eyes were still white after his meeting with Adjunct Crumb, but he didn’t care. Rachel was long used to the sight by now.

“Why?”

Dill explained.

“He wants to bargain with her? Recruit her to go after Devon ? That makes no sense.”

“He said I’d be safe with her as long as I was unarmed.” He paused. “He took my sword away.”

She looked at him in astonishment.

“He said nobody had ever faced her unarmed before.”

“With good reason. I wouldn’t want to face her without every weapon available in the Spine arsenal.” She sat on the sill beneath Callis’s window and flexed and stretched her wounded hand absently. The bandages were off now, but her skin still looked red and swollen.

Dill had only just learned about Rachel’s fight in the planetarium. The Spine had reported to the priests, and one of them, a fellow called Primpleneck with a lazy eye, had related the story to a temple guard called Paddock. The story spread through the ranks of the temple guard until the kitchen staff got to overhear their conversation at breakfast. The stewards told the cooks, who told the maids and the potboys, who in turn told the cleaners, who, having no one else to tell, gossiped to the stable staff. At least, that was what the dung-shoveller had said when he accosted Dill outside the stables that morning.

“Oh that,” Dill had said to him haughtily. “I heard about that ages ago.”

He’d stalked off and begun an extra-long snail run afterwards. There were so many unexpected places to hide the slimy little things, when you really put your mind to it.

“I won’t let them,” Rachel said.

“What?”

“It’s too dangerous. I won’t let them send you.” She stood up. “I can’t be expected to protect you under these circumstances. They assigned me to be your overseer, so I’m going to oversee you now. I’ll speak to Fogwill, demand he call this whole thing off. I’ll get your sword back for you.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe they’d risk you. Don’t they realize who you are?”

“The last archon.”

“No…” She frowned. “That’s not what I meant. I meant…” She appeared to be struggling to find the right words. “I meant that you’re the only part of this whole rotten mess that hasn’t been spoiled or corrupted. You are the heart of the temple…the heart of Deepgate. They need you more than they can possibly imagine.”

Dill felt his eyes change colour. It wasn’t a colour he recognised at once. He hadn’t felt it since his father had been alive.

Rachel was already walking to the door.

“Wait,” he said.

She didn’t stop. “It’s a bad idea, Dill. It’s lunacy. I don’t know what Fogwill thinks he’s doing.”

“Please, I want to do this. Let me go.”

She halted. Perhaps something in his voice had given her pause. She said, “I don’t know.”

But Dill knew. Here was the moment he’d waited for his whole life: the chance to do something for the temple; the chance to be an archon worthy of his ancestors. Here was his chance to shine. Even without his sword he felt more like a temple archon now than he’d ever done before.