Scar Night

28

Ulcis

In the darkness of her cell, Rachel had no means with which to judge the passage of time except the tick of water in the passageway beyond the grated door, and the ripening odour coming from the opposite cell.

She had given up calling for Dill.

She hunched against the damp stones, the corners of her eyes flinching at each tiny, hammer-blow drip, and tried not to think about anything other than keeping still. Whenever she shifted position, the manacle bit deeply into her ankle and the bruises on her face and chest throbbed angrily. Her throat was parched, her stomach cramped like a fist. She’d thrown away the bowls of meat their captors had left and flung curses down the passageway after them. No one had appeared to collect the bowls. There had been a jug of water, too, but it was empty now. She was thirsty, but so was Carnival. And Carnival would drink first.

For a time Rachel tried to focus, to send her mind far away—to the smoke-mist forests of Shale, to Spiral Hill in Clune with its whitewashed houses and terraced gardens daubed with children’s colours—to the places she used to dream about as a girl. She tried desperately, throwing herself into these forced dreams. But the images were always elusive. Inexorably, the chain at her ankle pulled her back.

She had extinguished the lantern to conserve oil. In the darkness she thought she spied her cellmate’s shape, but that might just be a trick of her eye. Carnival had remained wrapped in sullen silence for hours. Only the sound of her breaths reached over the space between them. They were short, shallow, and hungry.

“Carnival?”

No answer.

“How long now?”

The reply came through clenched teeth. “Why should I warn you?”

Carnival’s detachment from her own hunger had cracked. Now anger welled through to fill the gaps. She had become irritable, introverted, drawing inwards like a coiled spring.

“A day?”

“Less.” A lash of air buffeted Rachel as Carnival whipped out her wings and drew them back. The angel inhaled sharply, then rasped, “Try the bars again.” Her voice was tense. “Try…hard.”

Rachel rose unsteadily, aches and pains brawling for attention, and felt her way along the wall to the iron grate. The chain slithered over the flagstones behind her. Her hand closed on one of the bars, then she jammed her shoulder against the metal frame and pushed, straining her muscles until she cried out in pain.

The iron did not yield.

Breathless, she slumped to the floor. “It’s hopeless.” She pounded a fist against one of the bars.

Carnival’s breathing quickened audibly.

“Why?” Rachel said. “Why leave us here like this? If they wanted to watch you kill me, then where are they?”

“Not them,” Carnival hissed. “It.”

“Ulcis?”

“I don’t know,” Carnival snapped. “Stop talking, shut up!”

Rachel pulled herself upright. She gripped the bars again and wedged both feet against the lintel. With every ounce of her strength, she heaved.

Nothing.

Gasping, she tore herself away. “If we both try…”

Carnival growled.

“Help me!”

Rachel sensed movement. A scuff, a rattle of chain. Suddenly a hand gripped her wrist.

How did she…?

“Don’t,” Carnival hissed in her ear, “order me.”

“You’re hurting me.”

“Yes.”

Rachel’s breath felt thick in her chest, the darkness around her impenetrable, seething with malice. She reached for her sword, then paused. They had taken her sword, of course—and her knives, darts, and poisons. Even the bamboo tubes with the horrors they contained. Without her weapons she felt naked.

Finally the pressure on her wrist eased. She heard Carnival move away, dragging her end of the chain to the far side of the cell.

“Can I ask you a question?” Rachel said.

“No.”

“Have you ever given a rat to a beggar?”

“What?”

“Forget it.” Rachel rubbed her swollen ankle, then continued, “I met this blind man once, a Glueman, who said you’d given him a rat and told him it was lamb.”

“You believed him?”

“No…I don’t know.”

“Why not?” Carnival snarled. “I’ve done worse. I’ve killed beggars and drunks and whores, nobles and soldiers and children.” She let out a low hiss. “Even Spine.”

“You must have been lonely.”

Silence.

“Talk to me.”

“You think that will save you? It won’t.”

“Fine.” Rachel fumbled for the lantern, spun the flint-wheel. “If you’re going to kill me, I at least want to see your face.”

The cell brightened. Fingers of shadow reached into the passageway beyond the grate. Carnival twisted away and hid her face from the light.

“If you won’t talk,” Rachel said, “I will.”

“I don’t give a damn.”

“As long as I bleed when the time comes?”

Carnival flinched.

Rachel swallowed a pang of regret at her outburst. She foundered for a moment, trying to find a place to begin. At last she said, “My father was a good man. No tears there. My mother died when I was eight, we don’t know why. She got sick. Life twists like that.”

“Shut up!” Carnival snarled. “Do you think I want to listen to this?”

“I don’t care.”

Carnival sank into silent fuming.

“Our family has a townhouse in Ivygarths. A garden with a scraggy tree and a pond full of weeds. Nothing grand. I played with the other officers’ children. We scrumped apples, terrorized ants, made the smaller boys eat newts—the usual stuff.”

Carnival had drawn herself into a knot, her face buried in her knees, arms wrapped around herself.

“Father was always away with the navy, always on some perilous campaign for the temple, for God. You don’t much like aeronauts, do you?”

Carnival didn’t even look up.

“He’d bring back presents. Dolls for me and pots of talcum from the river towns for mother. Painted soldiers for Mark. I’d sit on his knee and listen to his stories about exotic places. Dalamoor souks, monkey bandits, Racha gem-traders with cutthroat smiles. Thaumaturges from distant lands, if you can believe it. Men whose lips had been pierced with gallows-wood, men who knew Deep by a different name.” Her shoulders slumped. “More than anything, I wanted to go with him when he left again. I wanted to be part of his stories.”

Carnival seemed to relax a little. Rachel realised she was listening.

“When the Spine accepted me I didn’t hesitate. I joined because I wanted him to be proud of me, and because I wanted to experience my own stories—to share that part of his life with him.” She regarded her manacle distantly. “That’s why I grew to hate him.”

“Because he wasn’t proud of you?” For once Carnival spoke without bitterness.

“No, because he didn’t tell me what it felt like to kill. He knew, and he didn’t tell me. After I came back from the Lowland Warrens, there was a wedge between us. We both recognized it but neither of us spoke about it. We hardly spoke at all after that.”

Carnival was silent for a while, then raised her head and spoke angrily. “I remember this .” Her finger traced the rope scar on her neck. “My first memory.”

“How old were you?”

“I don’t know!” The angel took a shuddering breath. “I was hanging by a rope from a foundation chain, sacks of rocks tied to my feet.”

Rachel winced. “Who did that to you?”

The angel shrugged.

“You remember nothing? Nothing from before?”

“My name.”

“How did you get loose?”

Carnival’s cold detachment was back in place. “I chewed through the rope.”

Chewed? Oh gods…how?

“It took four days.”

Rachel didn’t know what to say, and an uncomfortable silence fell between them. Outside the cell the water beat fierce, soulless notes. For a long time Rachel sat there listening. She thought about trying to loosen the bars again, but she was now so tired. Would she recognize when the end came? Would she see the moment when Carnival’s defences shattered and the hunger took over? Did she want to know? Perhaps it was better just to sleep, to end it now.

Rachel remembered a voice from a dream she’d once had.

Don’t die on me, bitch.

But she could no longer recall who the speaker had been. Her eyelids flickered.

* * * *

An army of angels filled the dawn sky, their golden armour and steel alight like bright rain falling from the sun. Turbulent sand boiled over the desert, dragged in the powerful wake of their wings. Rachel stood on the crest of a dune and watched the army converge on something half a league to the east—a small dark shape, a winged figure moving through the Deadsands. It was crawling on its hands and knees, crippled by the weight of what it dragged behind. Chains. Hundreds and thousands of chains.

Rachel.

She looked up.

Dill’s sword sparkled gold, but his eyes were as white as his wings. He was being pulled away from her, struggling against an invisible current.

Wait, she shouted.Come back .

But the angel was already growing distant, merging into the ranks of his ancestors. They massed around him, all bronzed muscles and heavy armour plate, sneering, mocking him. Dill cried out. He was trying to tell her something.

What is it? What?

She almost heard him.

* * * *

Rachel jerked awake, startled by a sudden conviction that Dill was still alive; that he needed her.

Bars of shadow reached over the rough floor and the coils of chain. The cell was illuminated.

From outside.

“Who are you?” Carnival crouched in the centre of the cell, gazing past her, furious.

“God,” a deep voice answered.

Rachel wheeled.

The god of chains was a landslide of flesh. Muddy skin cascaded in great overlapping slabs down from his tight-stretched pate to his bowed calves. He was naked; male, it seemed. The only evidence of his gender remained his voice, overhangs of fat obscuring any more obvious proof. And he was winged. Huge wings, like eruptions of grit, poured from the hillocks of his shoulders. Large as they were, Rachel suspected this creature had not flown in many years.

“Pathetic,” Carnival hissed. “Makes sense your god would look like this. No wonder Ayen kicked him out.”

The god ignored her. He raised his lantern and leaned closer to the bars, breasts shifting like continents, and swung eyes the colour of ancient blood towards Rachel. “You are Spine,” he rumbled, “but untempered. Why?”

“So much for omniscience,” Carnival said, sneering, her anger palpably keen to take strides along this new avenue.

“Are you Ulcis?” Rachel asked.

“Answer my question.”

“Answer mine.”

The god’s mountainous visage creased in a hundred places. “I am Ulcis,” he said.

“I am untempered,” Rachel explained, “because my brother would not allow it.”

“That matters not,” said Ulcis. “The Presbyter hid this from me. Why?”

Sypes? The old man was in contact with his god? Was hiding things from him? Warnings sounded in her head, and she felt suddenly unwilling to entertain this god further. “Ask him yourself.”

Ulcis studied her a while longer with hooded eyes, searching, as though he was trying to peel away layers. When at last he spoke, his voice was an earthquake, “You are not the first to come seeking answers, mortal. Life and death, the eternal question—”

“I’m not seeking answers,” Rachel broke in. “I’m looking for a syringe.”

“Have you seen it?” Carnival said.

The god bristled. His great bulk gathered. Boulders of flesh rolled as he straightened. Furrows enveloping his eyes, he swung to face Carnival, prodded a fat finger in her direction. “You, freak, why are you here?”

Carnival padded up to the bars and spat in his face.

A tremor ran through him. “You don’t remember me,” he boomed.

She spat in his face again.

“You don’t remember anything”—the fat god wiped spittle from his jowls and his eyes began to glow—“do you, Rebecca?”

Carnival’s scars turned blood red.

The light in Ulcis’s eyes seemed at once to deepen, to intensify. Darkness gathered around him, and compressed to form chains growing from his shoulders and wings. Chains that reached into the cell, and enveloped Carnival. Sounds issued from those chains: the voices of ten thousand souls.

Rachel felt the air turn deathly cold.

“Remember?” the god said to Carnival. “Remember your mother, the mortal whore? A bone-crawler like the others, but so pretty, even in death when she began to rot. I gave her back her soul so that I might enjoy her suffering more.” He sneered. “But you took it with you when we ripped you from her womb. You stole it from me. You will remember now, child—your first kill?”

Carnival gasped, tried to pull away, but the wraith chains held her tight.

“Now.” Ulcis’s voice was thunder. “Remember my rope.”

Carnival lunged for him.

Rachel heard bones snap as the angel hit the iron grate.

The god recoiled. In spitting fury, Carnival clawed the air in front of him.

“Now you remember, daughter,” Ulcis said. “The rope? My gift to you, savage little Rebecca. My little carnival freak.”

* * * *

Devon felt like he rode the shoulders of a god. Perched on the chair before the control bank, he snapped a lever back and the bridge responded with a powerful shudder. A deep rumbling shook the walls and floor. The Tooth lurched forward, engines thumping, into the Deadsands. Sand sprayed from either side of the forward scoop like crashing waves. The massive tracks ground and crushed everything in their path.

“An outcrop of rock,” Bataba warned, pointing. “Look there! You must steer west.”

“Nonsense,” Devon shouted over the booming engines. “This thing could flatten a mountain.”

“Show me. The cutting arms.”

Grinning, Devon twisted a valve open. Fluids pulsed within the trembling control bank. Air hissed from moist vents. He gripped a bony protrusion and slid it back. A ferocious grinding noise came from below, and a great jet of pulverized rock flew skywards. The bridge shook again, and the Tooth’s cutters lifted into view, in a blaze of spinning cogs.

But the shaman had turned away. He was looking at a sack Devon had deposited in one corner of the bridge. Dark stains seeped into the burlap from its contents.

“Where are your men?” Devon asked. “I thought they would be here to see this.”

“Up on the roof.”

“I see.” Devon eased the handle back a notch. The Tooth growled. Cutters bit deeper into the dunes, till geysers of sand sprayed up and over the bridge windows. The setting sun soaked through it like blood. “Ah,” Devon said. “My apologies, shaman. I believe I meant to move this handle the other way.”

“Careful, Poisoner.” Bataba’s gaze remained pinned to the sack.

Devon slotted the handle back into place, then nodded at the object of the shaman’s attention. “I made Sypes a promise,” he explained, “to ease the temple guard’s suffering.”

Angus had been in a terrible state. The poison in his veins had pushed him to the very limits of endurance, even to the brink of insanity. But still he clung to life with a tenacity that Devon found both astonishing and repulsive. The Heshette healers had retreated, leaving the poor man restrained so as to prevent him from tearing at his own flesh. Devon became curious: he wanted to see how much Angus could endure. But he’d promised Sypes to help, so he had compromised.

“You were forbidden access to your poisons,” Bataba said.

“My chemicals were not necessary,” Devon said. “Merely a saw.”

The shaman looked back at the sack, at its lumpy, seeping contents. “What did you do?”

“I stopped him from scratching himself.”

The Tooth climbed a low rise in a series of jolts that jarred Devon’s teeth, and then settled back into the dull thumping of engines as it picked up speed and rumbled down the slope on the other side.

Twilight deepened. The Tooth ploughed on into the Deadsands, swaying gently. It crested dunes, devoured rock beneath its tracks. Stars winked on. Scar Night’s dark moon would soon be rising unseen: its very absence from sight an ominous portent of the blood to be shed before dawn. After a time Bataba left to join the other councillors on the roof.

Devon felt invigorated. He leaned over the array of controls, feeling the pulse and throb of the great machine in every muscle, and surveyed the landscape ahead.

To the south, aether-lights flickered in the night sky.

Decoys.

Devon pulled a lever and a web of metal mesh slammed down in front of the windows. The first attack would come long before the main armada reached them. Deepgate had one black warship, theWhisperer . His own idea. Silver-coloured ships were too easy for archers to spot at night. TheWhisperer was a fast-strike vessel, slender and swift, its gondola stripped of crew quarters, grapples and docking pulleys, and every other non-essential fixture, to make room for its bulkier engines and extra payload. Out of aether contact with the main fleet, it would be somewhere close overhead, riding high currents on an interception parabola. And if the aeronauts’ acting commander, Hael’s second-in-command, was as predictable as his predecessor, an attack ought to occur at any moment.

On cue, a distant boom sounded overhead. A fizz, as firelight lit the ground all around the Tooth for an instant and threw stark wells of shadow across the dunes.

Incendiaries.

Another boom, followed by more fizzing, and the desert flickered orange and red. The Tooth thundered on regardless.

Two drums thudded into the sand ahead, spewing lime-gas. Devon lowered the cutters. The first drum shot into the night with apang; the other exploded into shrapnel. Fragments of metal smacked against the lowered grille. Smoke brushed the windows. Two more drums of gas landed some yards to the left, upwind of the Tooth. Devon banked the machine windward and shredded them like dry leaves.

A hail of missiles glanced off the hull, followed by the concussions of more incendiaries.

All around, the desert burned.

Devon was whistling, rapping a knuckle against the control panel in tune, when the bridge door burst open and Bataba stormed in.

“A black skyship,” he snarled.

Devon regarded him disdainfully. “You cannot expect me to anticipate everything.”

“We lost four men.”

“I didn’t tell them to sit up there.”

“Four men, Poisoner—a score more with burns.”

Devon shrugged.

“You didn’t know about this black ship?”

“I did not.”

“You are lying.”

“Have I not saved you once from a gas attack? Did I not bring down the Adraki, and then coax this machine into battle? And am I not about to crush the ground forces of Deepgate? All for you, shaman, so why would I lie?”

Bataba glowered at him. “Anything else we ought to know? Your usefulness has all but run out.”

“If I think of anything, I’ll let you know.”

Tension gave way to uneasy silence as the Tooth crawled up another steep dune. The rest of the fleet had finally arrived. Silver envelopes converged overhead, shining dully amidst furiously flashing aether-signals. At the summit Devon eased back the throttle. A vast sweep of lights glittered in the desert ahead.

“Deepgate troops,” Devon murmured.

“How many?”

“All of them.”

* * * *

By the light of their broken lantern, Rachel saw that Carnival had been crying. She shuffled over, taking care not to shine the light directly in the angel’s face.

Carnival hid her scarred cheeks in her hands. “Leave me alone.”

“You didn’t remember him?” Rachel asked.

“Leave me!”

Rachel flinched. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want your sympathy! Save your breath, bitch. It won’t save you. Nothing will save you.”

Rachel had to hope otherwise. By forcing Carnival to remember, the god of chains had sought only to hurt his daughter. One look at him had been enough to shatter three millennia of defences, to reopen her deepest scars. It had left her vulnerable, but, Rachel suspected, it had also exposed her heart.

Carnival hugged her knees. A tracery of cuts engraved her arms. One wing hung crooked from her broken shoulder; the feathers limp and matted with grime.

Rachel squatted on the floor beside her. She picked up a handful of the chain links and let them drop. “It’s Scar Night right now, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“You’re going to kill me.”

A pause, then: “Yes.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m sorry he’s your father. I’m sorry for everything.” And she was sorry. Sorry her own life had ended up like this. Sorry Dill was dead. Sorry her father was dead.

When she thought about the old man, it was always the same image: him returning home from some campaign, a solid, earthy man in a starched white shell of a uniform, silver buttons liquid in the light of the hearth. She remembered his comical frowns as Mother fussed around him, babbling on about the books she’d read, the gossip from the officers’ wives club, Mark’s scuffles with the authorities at the academy. And she remembered her father’s face when she told him she’d joined the Spine: the grim line of his mouth, the wounded look in his eyes.

You could have stopped me. Why didn’t you stop me?

Rachel looked down at Carnival, at the lank black hair strewn all around her ruined face, the broken feathers in her wings, the rotting leather vest, patched a thousand times and flecked with ancient mould. Carnival was curled up tight, making herself small, childlike. Her thin scarred arms wrapped tightly around her knees, like bandages.

“Talk to me,” Rachel said softly.

Carnival was weeping again. “Leave me alone! You’re trying to save your own worthless flesh.” Carnival raised her head, teeth clenched, thin dark eyes swamped with tears. “You think I give a damn about you? You’re nothing to me. You’re meat. Meat!”

“You can fight this.”

“Fight this?” A pained laugh. “Fight this!” The angel spat out the words. “You ignorant bitch!”

“Your life didn’t begin with that rope, and it didn’t end with it.”

“It should have been a chain!”

“Stop feeling so sorry for yourself.”

At once, the tightness left Carnival’s face. Tears now flowed freely over her scars. She dropped her chin to her knees again, and took a deep, shaky breath. “I hate this.” Anguish tapered her voice. “I hate them—you. I’ll kill them. You. All of you. Everyone!” She wailed. “Get away from me! Get the hell away from me!”

Rachel touched her shoulder. “Rebecca.”

Carnival slapped her away, hard. “My name is Carnival!” she screamed.

“I’m sorry, I—”

A key rattled in the lock of the cell door. Rachel whirled round.

A giant stood behind the bars, dressed in filthy robes, his bulk filling the doorway. At first she thought Ulcis had returned, but then she saw that this man was built more solidly than the god, a mass of dense muscle. Bruises and stubble shadowed his face. Human bones strapped to his left leg formed a rude splint, while more, longer bones had been lashed together into a crutch on which he leaned. He fumbled with keys in his massive hands. The door creaked open.

“Abigail?” he said.