Scar Night

21

Dill and Carnival

Scar night was still ten days away and the waning moon rose huge and bloody out of the Deadsands. It lost its colour as it climbed, becoming sharp and bright until it shone alone in its own circle of night, as if shunned by the stars. Deepgate sparkled below, a thousand blinking points of light. A freezing northern wind tore through the city, whistled and howled through the chains. Cables shivered and sang. Webs of iron trembled and chimed weird, discordant notes.

All around him, Dill thought he heard distant screams.

A cold night, and colder still on the rooftop where the angel cowered. The chill of the slates crept bone-deep into his fingers; his breath misted before him; and still he didn’t move. The darkness pinned him.

Where to start?

One direction seemed as unwelcoming as the next. Adjunct Crumb had told him to stay high and keep moving. “She’ll find you,” he had said. Dill’s hand sought the hilt of his sword, grasped nothing but air. They had taken it, he remembered.

The Adjunct was probably asleep by now. The temple’s dark outline cut a ragged shape behind Dill, a few faint lamps glowing beyond the stained glass, like fading embers. They were probably all asleep by now—even Rachel. Only Dill himself was awake. Awake…alone…and outside.

In the dark.

How long had he been out here? It must have been hours now. He hadn’t felt his eyes change colour since he’d left the temple. They had turned white at that point and they were still white now.

Where to start?

Frost laced his feathers; his arms and legs were numb. Sleep tugged at him despite the cold, and dawn could not be far away. But he didn’t dare move.

A falling star darted across the south. Was it the fourth or fifth he’d spotted tonight? Ayen has been busy, then: another companion banished from the sky . He watched it glimmer and die.

Stay high and move.

Move.

He had to move, or he would freeze.

His chain mail scrittered as he stood up and spread his wings. Adjunct Crumb had given him the armour, which had once belonged to Gaine. Its tiny links were wrought from ancient steel, once light and strong, now corroded and heavy with rust. It soaked in the cold and seemed to clamp it over Dill’s heart. He took another deep breath. The night smelled of metal. Dill took a step forward, then another, his feet slipping on the icy slates. Beyond the edge of the roof a labyrinth of streets spread out before him, brilliant in the moonlight, like leagues of chain-shattered ice. Dill paused there for a long time, buffeted by the wind, and listened to Deepgate’s haunting music.

Move. Or freeze.

He leapt from the roof.

Cold rushed over him, rippled through his shirt and breeches, blew back his hair; it slipped beneath his collar and across his chest, and stole his breath. He followed the course of a cobbled street, beating his wings, once, twice, and then letting the icy air carry him forward.Steady and calm . Once, twice, keeping the rooftops a level distance beneath him. Steeply pitched slate rose in frozen waves above the narrow lanes. Shadows gathered between pools of gaslight.

As he flew he watched those shadows, as the Adjunct had told him to, alert for movement.Carnival can see in the dark , the priest had warned. Don’t let her take you by surprise . There were shadows everywhere. Was she hiding there below, watching him now? He pulled himself higher, sucked in gulps of biting air.

Once, twice, he beat his wings, every stroke taking him further from the temple, further from safety.

And if she was airborne? Would he hear her approach? What if she was behind him? His heart clenched and he twisted round to look, fumbling for his missing sword, certain he would find Carnival reaching for him with those scarred hands and eyes like knife cuts. But there was only the outline of the temple, the cold stars. His fist opened, releasing its grip on…nothing.

The lane jagged its way deeper into the city. Solid doors, shuttered windows, iron chimney grates. Shadows clung to everything.Too many shadows . He started to fly faster, his chain mail dangling from his chest, his shirt billowing beneath it. Again and again he beat his wings, shoulder muscles tightening, feathers glowing around him like blowing sheets of snow. He focused on the rhythm of motion and tried to drive all other thoughts from his head.

Below, the lane sank below a pendulum house suspended from one of the foundation chains. Dill left it behind and sailed up over the chain, in a wide arc that would bring him back around the temple. He would spiral outwards until he reached the rim. And then? He prayed it would be dawn by then.

Steady and calm.

The moon looked down, a bright eye, and Dill imagined other, hidden eyes watching him from below: eyes in the darkness under the eaves, and in the darkened windows, eyes in the temple, and eyes peering between the chains, staring out from the abyss below.

He swung around the temple, high above the weathervanes of Lilley, and saw the gap cut by the Scythe and the funnels of the Poison Kitchens beyond. Industry crammed the banks of the Scythe, shrouded in amber smog. Flamestacks bloomed and lit the bellies of smoke clouds. Steam curled around tangled pipes. The iron skeletons of gantries and cranes and docking spines reached up through the fumes. He looked for airships but saw none. Most were away hunting Devon in the desert, he realized, and he felt even more alone than before.

Dill flew on towards the flames, towards the light.

He left Lilley behind and soared over Ivygarths. Chains webbed everything: a garden of gnarled trees; a leaning tower with a light burning in the top window; an inn with a wooden goat hanging above the door. There were no people out; no sounds but the air rushing by, the clink of his armour, and the beat of his wings.

It grew warmer near the Scythe, so Dill decided to rest a while and shed the cold from his bones. He landed on a flat, tarred roof overlooking the abyssal gap, where the sour-sweet smell of coalgas lingered. Foundation chains stretched over the Scythe as though floating on a still, black lake. Factories crowded the far shore and disgorged ash into the gusting wind. Jets of steam hissed and whined among smoke and flames, while a deeper, booming sound arose from the Poison Kitchens.

At least it was warm and bright here. Heat from the flamestacks reached across the gulf and warmed his face and hands, melted the frost from his feathers. His rusted chain mail shone red-gold.

“Ironic, isn’t it?” said a voice from behind, a woman’s voice. “They pollute their own god’s burrow.”

Dill froze.

“Relax,” the woman continued. “I’m in no mood for slaughter.”

* * * *

Finally he’s moving.” Clay squinted through the sightglass they’d set on a tripod before Fogwill’s window. “I thought he’d become frozen to that rooftop.”

“We’re likely to freeze in here if you keep that window open much longer.” Fogwill shifted in his blanket. “Nothing more dangerous than a chill draught at night.”

Clay grunted. “I can think of a few other things.”

Fogwill scowled and pulled his chair closer to the fire. He picked up a poker and stabbed at the embers. “Which way is he heading?”

“South.” The captain of the temple guard seemed not to notice the cold as he hunched over the sightglass in his worn leathers. “Hell’s bloody balls, he looks like a lame dove dragging such a big empty scabbard. What did you make him wear it for?”

“I didn’t. He insisted.”

“Poor sod.”

Fogwill replaced the poker and cleaned his hands with a square of linen. “I wouldn’t have sent him if I didn’t think it was safe.” He did his best to sound like he believed that.

“Plenty of chilly draughts out there,” Clay grumbled, shaking his head. “This plan of yours is madness.”

Fogwill felt inclined to agree, but what choice did he have? He hadn’t even been able to tell Clay the real reason behind this attempt to parley with Carnival. He couldn’t tellthat to anyone. Hence the lie that Carnival would be offered Devon’s angelwine in exchange for the Poisoner’s death. Nobody but Fogwill need know Carnival’s real target. Dill himself had been easy enough to convince. Now that the Church had two immortal enemies, wasn’t it reasonable and apposite to turn them against each other? But others were more sceptical, so Fogwill had contrived a way in which he might speak to Carnival in complete safety. He would set a trap. Mark Hael, apparently thrilled at the prospect of putting Fogwill and Carnival in the same room, had gone off to make the arrangements. Clay, by contrast, had just stared at Fogwill for a long moment and then abruptly walked away, muttering curses.

Fogwill shivered inwardly on recalling the captain’s reaction. He threw the square of linen into the fire. “I would have hoped Commander Hael would be here by now with news from the Poison Kitchens.”

“That place has been in chaos since Devon disappeared. No one else knows how to get anything done. I wouldn’t be surprised if half the armada set out with barrels of butter in their deck cages instead of lime-gas.”

“Perhaps I should go and check on the preparations myself.”

“Won’t do any good. He’ll be here soon enough, when it’s all set up. Aye, aye, the angel’s fumbling at his scabbard now. Might be he’s seen something.”

Fogwill moved to stand up. “Carnival?”

“Nope. Chill draught, probably.”

The priest slumped back into his chair.

Clay twisted the tube of the sightglass and breathed a curse. “Damn focusing,” he muttered. “Got him again, still heading south.”

The fire shifted, crackled. Fogwill placed another log on top and watched the flames curl around it. He plucked another square of linen from a box by the hearth and cleaned his hands again. “We ought to have trained him with the guard,” he said, “like we did with Gaine. But Sypes didn’t see the point. Not with the heathens scattered and our fleet growing in strength. He assumed the war would be over soon. An angel should become a symbol of peace, he told me, not war.”

“Never trusted Gaine,” Clay muttered. “Swear his eyes turned dark every time he looked at me.”

“That’s why we could trust him,” Fogwill said. “Archons can’t hide their emotions like ordinary men can.”

“Damn creepy if you ask me. What about Carnival—reckon her eyes change colour too?”

“She’s no angel. Well…no temple angel.”

“Was one once, or so I’ve heard.”

“That’s Warren gossip.”

Clay struggled again with the sightglass focusing ring. “The last archon to come from the abyss, they say. Her eyes have been black as pitch since she bloomed, and that was three thousand years past. Some folk think she takes the blood to replace—”

“Captain…”

“Just saying…”

Fogwill wrinkled his nose. Once Clay got started it was difficult to shut him up. “They say a lot of things in the alehouses of Deepgate. Like she’s seven feet tall with seven heads and seven tongues.”

“Seven tongues?” The captain turned, grinning.

Fogwill closed his eyes.

Clay returned his attention to the sightglass. “Soldiers on that airship saw her well enough. Navigator survived the crash with most of his skin intact. Nearly had her, he said. Hemmed in with swords, but she broke right through the roof and cut her way through the…” He waved a hand.

“The envelope. But she didn’t attack them directly.”

“Outnumbered,” Clay said. “Should have had her then. Navigator said she had teeth like a wildcat and unholy eyes.”

“She didn’t attack because it wasn’t Scar Night.”

“Tell that to the men lost in the crash.”

Fogwill stared into the fire and said nothing.

The sightglass tapped against the window frame. Clay turned away. “That one’s out of sight,” he murmured. “Round the other side of the temple.”

“Let’s close the window, then. It’s freezing in here.”

Clay stole another disapproving glance at the billows of silk pinned up to adorn the ceiling and the vases of flowers arranged around the study before he finally shut the window. He pulled up a chair and joined Fogwill by the fire. The study heated up quickly. They sat in silence for a while, warming their hands and listening to the crackling wood.

“I’ve been thinking,” Clay said.

Fogwill raised a sceptical eyebrow.

Clay grumbled something under his breath.

“I’m sorry?”

“Nothing. I’ve been thinking about what Devon wants with the Presbyter.”

“Yes?”

“What if the whole thing was a sham? What if they were in it together?”

Fogwill picked up another square of linen and wiped his hands, although this time they didn’t need cleaning. “Together?” he said in a high voice. If even Clay had stumbled on the truth, then what about the Spine? “Absurd. Sypes would never sanction such a thing. It contravenes Church law. Goes against the will of God. Really, that’s quite—”

“But what if God is dead?”

“Dead?” Fogwill stopped cleaning his hands. “You think God is dead?”

The captain shrugged.

“Are you a man of faith, Mr. Clay? Do you believe in the soul?”

“Of course,” the captain replied gruffly.

“I’ve seen them,” Fogwill said. “I’ve seen the soul-lights with my own eyes. Believe me, the ghosts are down there, and if they exist then Ulcis is very much alive. Sypes also watched the dead. He spent every hour of every night peering into the abyss, worrying what they were up to.”

“I can understand that,” Clay yawned. “Never trusted no ghosts either.”

“Have you ever seen a ghost, Mr. Clay?”

The captain shifted in his chair. “Not as such, but I heard this story once—”

Fogwill raised a hand. “This is not the place to discuss it.”

Clay blew through his teeth. “Whole thing is a waste of time. She won’t parley.”

“I don’t suppose you trust Carnival either.”

“Damn right. Something unnatural about her.”

A smile found its way to Fogwill’s lips. “You think there’s something unnatural about an immortal, scar-ravaged, blood-sucking angel who steals souls during the night of moondark? Whatever could be unnatural about that?”

Clay was thinking about it.

After a moment Fogwill laughed. “No, Captain Clay, I can’t think of anything either.”

An hour passed before Mark Hael appeared. He had with him a chemist who wore a grease-stained apron and a breathing mask still slung around his neck. The man’s arms and head were bare, his skin scrubbed raw. Even his lips looked peeled. He sniffed the air and surveyed the room gleefully.

Fogwill couldn’t help but notice the soot stains on the commander’s uniform and the smudges left by both men’s boots on his Loombenno carpet.

“This is Coleblue,” Hael said. “He set up the gas tanks in the Sanctum.”

Coleblue tramped more soot into the carpet and rubbed his red hands together briskly. “I can’t guarantee it will work. We’ve tested it on birds, yes, pigeons—sparrows, doves—same respiratory system, we think, faster than ours, more sensitive, but you never know.”

“What did it do to these birds?” Fogwill asked.

“Killed them fast.” Coleblue snapped his fingers. “Like miners’ finches, quick quick.”

Fogwill eyed the chemist’s boiled skin. A sharply unpleasant odour hung about the man that reminded him of gasoliers. “What would happen if I breathed it?”

Coleblue’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t want to do that, no, no, not too many breaths anyway. Carnival will be more sensitive to the poison, yes. As you surmised, she ought to be incapacitated more quickly than you. But it’s best you hold your breath and leave the room as soon as it has been released.”

Clay grunted. “The gas in that airship didn’t bother her much.”

“Liftgas doesn’t burn lungs like this. You can’t breathe liftgas, no, but then she knew it was there, knew not to inhale.” Coleblue looked from Clay to Fogwill. “She won’t even smell this until she drops.” He smacked his hands together.

“I hope I won’t have to use it at all,” Fogwill said. “It’s merely a precaution.”

“Don’t like the sound of it,” Clay said. “Risky.”

Fogwill’s brows arched. “You don’t much trust gas, Captain, do you?”

“Never trust anything you can’t see.”

“What about air?”

“Especially air.”

With a slight shake of his head the priest turned back to the chemist. “Where did you hide the valve?”

“Under the lectern,” Coleblue said. “Twist it anti-clockwise to release the gas. The Sanctum will be flooded in seconds. We can go there now and I’ll show you.”

“Fine.” Fogwill rose. “I’ll be back shortly, Clay. Will you keep an eye out for Dill?” He followed Hael and Coleblue to the door, then stopped. “Mr. Coleblue, what would happen if Dill breathed the gas?”

“Nasty.” Coleblue snapped his fingers again. “Quick quick.”

* * * *

She means to kill me.

Dill couldn’t have reached for his sword even if he’d had it with him. His limbs were frozen, his blood dead in his veins. His thin armour felt like loops of heavy chain draped around his shoulders, the empty scabbard like an airship anchor.

Carnival stood with her wings half outstretched, hunched slightly as though ready for flight.

Or ready to pounce?

The feathers were hues of dark grey, flecked here and there with brown and black. She was lean, with muscles tight as wire coiled around slender bones, and as gaunt as a Spine assassin. Her mouldy leather trousers and vest might have been a thousand years old. Tangled black hair hung like a torn net over her face, partly obscuring her scars.So many scars .

Old scars cut through ancient scars. Thin white lines crisscrossed her cheeks, her forehead, her chin, her bare arms, leaving no part of her skin unmarked. Knife scars, all of them but one: a gouge like a rope mark looped her neck. She fingered it idly as she studied him, her head tilted to one side, as if she’d never seen his like before. And yet beneath the scars she might have been pretty. She looked no more than a year older than him. Without her scars she might have passed for a temple angel—had it not been for those eyes.

Carnival’s eyes were as black as the abyss, darker than the rage of a hundred archons; cold and empty as death. Fires from the Poison Kitchens burned deep in them and seemed the only glimmer of life there.

“I hate it here,” she said.

“It’s cold…,” Dill said. “But warmer…by the fires.”

They stared at each other for a long time. Booms and random clanks from the factories drifted with the ash across the Scythe and filled the night.

She was eyeing his empty scabbard. Dill noticed a small iron fork tucked into her own belt. A gardener’s tool?

Carnival sniffed. “This air is foul.”

He nodded.

“Poisonous.”

He nodded.

“You like to inhale poison?”

He shook his head.

“Come with me.”

It wasn’t a request. She turned and walked away, and Dill followed.

She took to the air and glanced round at him once. Her teeth flashed and then she was off in a graceful, powerful arc, wings pounding, quickly gaining height. With his heart hammering, Dill pulled himself up after her.

Carnival led him north. Dill struggled to keep up, but the armour dragged him down. His wings lashed the air and his lungs burned. The scabbard kept knocking against his leg and he now wished he’d never brought it. But he’d needed something to remind him he was a temple warrior. It had mattered at the time; now it felt foolish.

The city below was a blur. Houses and chains and streets rushed by. Dill’s eyes were fixed on Carnival. Her wings cut through swathes of stars, the wind whipping her long black hair. She beat her wings once for his every two strokes, and still the gap between them widened.

“Wait!” he yelled, but the wind stole his cry. Gritting his teeth, he forced his exhausted muscles to keep moving.

And then, abruptly, Carnival stopped. She dropped like a stone towards the rooftops. Dill began to follow, but halted when he saw where she’d landed. It was a walled garden, dark as a pool of tar. Only a small patch of its lawn shone faintly in the moonlight, crisscrossed with shadows from a naked tree planted in the centre, and from the mesh of chains stretched between the neighbouring townhouses. Sheer darkness crouched around the lawn itself. Dill circled above, a tight pain cramping his chest. All of the blood seemed to have drained from his wings.

“What?” Carnival shouted.

To catch his breath, Dill landed on a thin chain above the garden. Iron creaked; the chain shifted. He lost his balance, toppled, and suddenly he was lying on his back on the lawn, gasping and looking straight up at the stars.

Carnival grunted. “Deftly managed.”

Dill rose shakily. The garden didn’t seem as dark as it had looked from above. Sprays of flowers and ivy-strewn walls bordered the lawn, while a wrought-iron gate led to a cobbled lane beyond. All around him the air was fragrant with night roses. He flexed his wings tentatively: nothing appeared to be broken.

Carnival seemed as relaxed as earlier. “I dream of you,” she said.

Dill blinked.

“I dream of all the angels.” Again she regarded him in that curious way. “Why do you think that is?”

“I don’t know.”

“I never know the names, but I know all the faces. Old and young. Sometimes I dream of them among corpses and sometimes I dream of them dying. Then they leave me for ever, and I dream of their sons.” She paused. “Do you dream of me?”

A memory stirred—creaking chains, scars, fresh blood. “Sometimes,” he said.

“What is your name?”

“Dill.”

“You know my name.”

Dill merely swallowed.

“The temple sent you.”

He managed a nod.

“Why?”

Adjunct Crumb had told him what to say. He’d talked eloquently about peace and understanding, about hatred and fear and forgiveness. Dill had spent hours learning the speech, but under her gaze the words failed him. “I…They…” he began.

Carnival didn’t seem to hear him. She stared through him with those night eyes of hers. “I like this garden,” she said. “An old servant used to tend these plants for rich owners who never come here.” She grabbed a sprig of jasmine and rolled the white flowers in one scarred palm. “I think he once sensed me watching him from high in the tree. I heard his blood quicken, saw his muscles tense. Do you know what he did?”

Dill shook his head.

“He carried on tending his flowers, pulling weeds from the earth, pruning back the roses and ivy, never looking up at the tree, all the time his heart beating like a drumroll. When he finished he trimmed the grass with his shears, then gathered it all in his barrow and took it away, like he always did.

“I’ve been here every morning since. He never came back.”

“They want to parley,” Dill managed at last.

She laughed: a high, savage laugh that lifted the hairs on the back of his neck. He took a step back.

Carnival stepped closer. “What do they think I need from them? Peace? Absolution? Will they promise to rein in the Spine?”

Dill backed further away.

Carnival advanced. “A place in the abyss for my soul and all those inside me?” Lances of moonlight cut across her eyes. The scars constricted beneath her tumbled hair. “Or blood? Am I to get first pick of the dead, before the temple dumps them?” She bared her teeth. “Or will they give me a sword, make me an angel like you?” She pressed a finger into his chest, leaned closer until her face was only an inch from his. “I don’t believe in angels.”

Dill felt his wings press back against the garden wall. “Angelwine,” he blurted.

Carnival stopped. Her teeth were clenched, her hair wild about her face, but the fire had left her eyes. “It’s a trap,” she said.

“No.”

“They want to kill me.”

“No,” Dill said. “I mean, yes, but…”

“They think I don’t remember,” Carnival said. “They think I’ve forgotten the planetarium so soon. They think I remember nothing!” Her expression turned to fury. “That Spine bitch, she should have burned, should have…”

Rachel? She means Rachel. He tried desperately to pull her away from her anger. “They want you to come to the Sanctum at dawn. Adjunct Crumb will speak to you there alone. No soldiers. No Spine. He’ll make you a deal.”

She snorted. “Tell him to go to hell. Do you think I’m insane?”

Dill didn’t answer that.

“There have been other traps,” she snarled, “a long time ago. Different places. Scores of places.” Her breaths were coming faster, her eyes furiously searching the ground. “Places where the Maze came in my wake. And blood. I think…” She slammed her palms against her sides. “They know I can’t remember. They—”

“She’ll be there,” Dill said.

“Who?”

“The Spine,” he said, “from the planetarium. I can arrange it.”

Carnival froze. She glared at him for a long moment before her scars relaxed into a terrible grin. “You can arrange that?”

Dill felt as though he’d stepped from the city straight into the abyss. He nodded.

“Your eyes,” Carnival said.

Dill hardly heard her. All his life he’d wanted to do something right, to make the Church proud of him. He’d wanted to stand tall among the ranks of his ancestors. But now he wished he could take back everything he’d said and done. A memory came to him of Rachel leaning over the balustrade at the Scythe.

If I fell over would you catch me?

At that moment Dill realized who he was. Not a temple warrior like Callis. Not worthy enough to be called an angel. He was a coward and a betrayer, and his eyes were burning as green as his friend’s.

“You don’t fear me any more,” Carnival said.

He met her gaze sharply. “No.”

“Just wait,” she growled.