Scar Night (43 page)

Steel rasped as the dead angels around them unsheathed their swords.

Rachel heard a click.

Ulcis’s head snapped back, the hunting crescent buried in his right eyebrow.

Mr. Nettle dropped his crossbow and charged.

His improvised splint broke apart, but his momentum still carried him forward, and he slammed into the god with a force that would have brought down a house. The throne pitched backwards, and Ulcis crashed to the ground underneath the scrounger. The entire platform shuddered, tilted; cages lurched and groaned above them. A hundred chains clinked and shivered.

Ulcis roared in anger.

Mr. Nettle butted his head into the god’s face.

His archons rushed forward to attack.

Carnival pounced.

But Rachel was ready: she grabbed the chain secured to her own ankle, and yanked.

The tightened chain halted Carnival in mid-leap. Her leg jerked back and she hit the ground face-first, snarling.

With one hand, Mr. Nettle was wrestling Ulcis for the syringe. With his other fist, he was pummelling the god’s face to a bloody mess. The archon nearest drew back its sword to cut him down.

Rachel threw the burner.

It struck the angel square in the forehead and exploded. A ball of flame engulfed the creature. It screamed, stumbled backwards into the archons behind in a cloud of burning feathers.

Mr. Nettle had rolled free; his robes were on fire, but he came up on his hands and knees with the syringe in one huge fist.

“Mine!” Carnival leapt to her feet, her face creased with rage and pain.

The scarred angel flew at the scrounger, lashed an elbow down on his skull. The blow connected with bone-crunching force.

Mr. Nettle grunted, shook his head once, then surged upright in an eruption of rags and muscle. One arm thrown around her neck, the other across her shoulder, he struggled to push her away. Caught in his awkward embrace, she scrabbled for the syringe, reached it, fumbled.

The glass tube of angelwine fell to the ground, rolled clear in a wide circle. Rachel snatched it up, then ducked as steel sliced the air above her head. Ulcis’s lieutenants had closed the gap, and the tall, battle-scarred archon had just taken a swipe at her. With her own sword. Bastard.

“Give it to me, bitch!” Carnival shrieked. She had now disentangled herself from the scrounger and stood a few paces beyond him. “That belongs to me!”

Still on fire, Mr. Nettle wheeled, ran straight at Rachel.

The assassin sidestepped the big man easily, extended a foot. He tumbled headfirst into the archon who had attacked her. Both sprawled to the ground, armour and ribs crumpling under the scrounger’s weight. Pinned, the archon grunted, and tried to swing its sword.

Her
sword.

Rachel ripped it from the angel’s grip, then snatched the bamboo tube from the sword belt. And then she was running towards Carnival. “Follow me! The chain! We’re still chained!”

But Carnival’s face was nothing but a snarling mask, eyes black with insatiable hunger.

Shit, not now.

As Carnival came at her, Rachel veered sharply, barely managed to duck under the angel’s outstretched arms. She punched her assailant twice—once in the neck, the second blow in the shoulder. Carnival collapsed, hissing and spitting like a wildcat.

Too bright for you in here?

“Get up!” Rachel cried. “The chain.”

A sword thrust to her side. The assassin twisted away. The blade sliced empty air an inch from her belly. Another weapon stabbed at her face. She caught the flat of its blade with the back of her hand, smacked it up, and sank her own sword into the archon’s armpit. A yank and her blade was free, then arcing down to intercept the first assailant’s rising stroke. Steel clashed, rasped. She spun, kicking the archon full in the face. The blow should have broken its neck. But it
grinned,
and bore down on her again.

Shit!

Behind it, the rest were closing in.

Rachel grabbed a fistful of Carnival’s hair, dragging her upright as she ran past. She glanced back to see Ulcis rise and rip the crossbow bolt free of his brow. Blood poured from the wound and from his broken nose, huge chains of indeterminate darkness swirling behind him. Mr. Nettle was still wrestling with the battle-scarred archon. He delivered one rock-crushing blow into the creature’s face, before it struck him savagely on one temple and managed to throw him off. The scrounger slumped to the floor, unconscious or dead.

Carnival wrenched herself away from Rachel, furious, seemingly mindless of the chain that bound them together or the archons at her back, mindless of anything now but ripping the assassin apart.

“The chain!”

“Give me the syringe!”

Rachel slipped through the chains surrounding the platform, and reached the bridge with the angelwine still in her grip. The prisoners in their cages were howling, rattling the bars. The whole palace shook as Ulcis’s voice thundered after her.

“Kill them.”

Suddenly Rachel was jerked to a halt.

Carnival had found a different path through the complexities of Ulcis’s palace. The chain between them was snagged, looped round another chain supporting the palace. Neither angel nor assassin could move forward. Carnival clawed at her, but couldn’t reach. Behind her, Ulcis’s archons were gaining on them. The fat god himself had joined the pursuit. His palace trembled under his footsteps. Cages creaked and swung all around him.

“Back,” Rachel cried. “We’re caught!”

For the first time, Carnival seemed to notice her manacled ankle. Her eyes traced the links back to where they had become snagged. “I’ve got you now, bitch.”

“They’ll cut us both down.”

“Not before I rip your heart out. The syringe—give it to me.”

“Behind you!”

Carnival spun about just as a huge archon, its lower face a grinning skull, reached for her. Plates of bone armour shifted as Ulcis’s lieutenant swung its mace at her head with sickening force. Carnival ducked, darted inside the dead angel’s reach. The mace looped around a palace support chain. Her fist snapped out, and the archon catapulted back, a jagged gap where its teeth had been. The other archons were weaving through the chains to engage.

Cursing, Rachel darted back to help her.

They had now surrounded Carnival: spears jabbed in at her from all sides, swords flashing and sparking on a tangle of chains. Most of the archons were enormous, twice her weight, but Ulcis’s daughter was faster than all of them. Her scars seethed blood-red. Her eyes glittered blacker than the abyss itself. Unarmed, she attacked with fists and feet and teeth, and the fury of a thousand Scar Nights.

And she was driving them back.

Unable to find space to deploy their weapons among the chains, Ulcis’s archons were retreating.

Rachel snaked through to join her, and thereby freed the snagged chain. “Now move,” she cried, sliding her sword back into the scabbard on her back.

Panting like an animal, Carnival paused for a heartbeat and glanced around in apparent confusion, before she noticed Rachel and tore after her, yelling, “Mine! Mine!”

Rachel raced past the thundering waterfalls without further hindrance, and slammed into the opposite entrance. The door burst inwards and she fell through. Carnival was at her heels, still spitting, snarling.

“They’re after us, you rabid bitch.” Rachel scrambled away. “Forget the syringe and move!”

They pounded up a rock-lined passageway. Dark tunnels slipped by on either side.

Which way?

Rachel didn’t have time to stop and think. Carnival was close, and behind her sounded the crashing armour of Ulcis’s lieutenants. She ploughed on, trusting to blind luck, gripping the syringe like some stolen gem.

Rachel now knew what she had to do with it.

Suddenly she was back in the chamber where they’d encountered Shing, cauldrons bubbling all around her, the butcher’s block before her. She was going too fast to stop, so she leapt over it. Her shin struck the edge of the block with a crack of pain, and she fell.

“Mine!” Carnival lunged at her.

Rachel drove her heel into Carnival’s neck, knocking the angel backwards into the first of Ulcis’s lieutenants to burst into the room.

“Get up!” Rachel yelled, and she heaved at the chain, dragging Carnival along on her back. The angel’s wings thrashed. A spear lashed out, struck the floor where her head had been a moment before.

Then they were up and running again.

Into darkness.

Rachel’s lantern still hung from her belt alongside the poisonsong and the bamboo tube, but she couldn’t light it without slowing down. Was there even any oil left in it? She had no way of seeing where she was going, but she charged ahead regardless, arms outstretched, feet slithering on wet rock.

Carnival’s voice came from close behind. “It’s
dark,
Spine.”

Without pausing, the assassin closed her eyes tight and
focused
. Air currents unravelled, crystallized, full of subterranean sounds and smells: the distant chopping of knives, the roar of forges and hammering steel; the scent of cold water and denser odours of clay and minerals. She concentrated, sifted through them, searching for the one she wanted.

There!

Decay.

Rachel forced every scrap of strength from her exhausted muscles and ran faster. Her lungs burned. The odour she sought thickened, pulled her closer to her goal. She reached out her right hand, encountered iron bars, and swung herself into his cell.

“No!” Carnival screamed.

The chain around her ankle suddenly wrenched Rachel’s foot out from under her. She thumped to the ground, all the wind knocked out of her. Then she began to claw her way forward, straining against the damned chain.

Sounds of battle behind: the clash of weapons. Ulcis’s archons had caught up with Carnival and Carnival didn’t seem happy about it, from the sound of her reaction.

As the chain at Rachel’s ankle slackened, she dragged herself further into the cell, searching the ground with fumbling hands.

Feathers.

Stone.

Metal?

Dill’s chain mail felt cold and thin, his skin as slick as tallow beneath.

Catch me.

Rachel stabbed the syringe into his chest, pushed the plunger all the way down—and collapsed to the ground, exhausted.

“He’s dead,” Carnival howled. “He’s dead, you stupid bitch. You can’t save him!”

Torchlight flooded the chamber, as Ulcis’s archons massed outside the cell.

“He’s dead,” Carnival wailed. “He’s already dead!”

Carnival moved over and lifted Dill’s wrist to her mouth. She bit deeply, and sucked, then threw his arm aside. “Do you see what you’ve done”—she dropped to her knees—“you stupid, selfish…” She couldn’t find the words for her frustration.

Rachel was panting; her arms now hung heavy, empty. She turned at a commotion among the archons gathered outside the cell. They were retreating from the bars. Their master had arrived.

Blood streaked the god’s battered face. His massive chest rose and fell from exertion. He said, “You, my child, have seriously pissed me off.”

Rachel stared up at him, at the bulwarks of flesh, the breasts, the overlapping chins. His eyes glowed like burning coals. In one hand he gripped an enormous iron sword, scraped and serrated from long use. She felt like laughing.

There was a cough behind her. Rachel dragged her eyes away from the obscene god to Carnival, caught her startled expression, and turned to follow her stare.

Dill was sitting up.

31

ON THE BRINK

D
EVON SLAMMED THE
cell door open. “Get up,” he said.

Sypes flinched. The old priest had not moved since the Poisoner had last seen him. He was still lying naked and shivering among the fragments of his walking stick.

“Put this on.” Devon threw the Presbyter’s cassock towards him.

Sypes still did not move.

Devon dragged him upright, and thrust the cassock into the old man’s arms. “Wear it. You must be recognisable.”

Without his stick, Sypes had to lean against the wall for support. His thin arms and legs trembled as he pulled the cassock over his shoulders, and let the hem tumble to his feet.

“There,” Devon said. “Now you look almost human again.”

But that was a lie. There was nothing much human left in the old priest. He was all skin and sinew, mottled with purple and yellow bruises, more corpse than man. The cassock engulfed him, seemed to drag his stooped frame even closer to the ground. Grey eyelids drooped over misty eyes that did not lift to meet Devon’s.

The Poisoner had to help him from the cell. He all but carried the old man along the crew quarters companionway and into the innards of the Tooth. Sypes shivered and coughed and his knees buckled constantly, despite Devon’s assistance. The priest weighed almost nothing.

By the time they reached the corridor leading to the outer hatches, Sypes had started to drift in and out of consciousness. Devon had to shake him whenever he sensed him fade. “Just a few more steps, old man. We’re nearly there.” The Presbyter mumbled incoherently and batted his hands about as though dismissing invisible servants.

Heshette bowmen packed the hot, cramped corridor. They were loosing off arrows through rents in the hull left by the barrage of scorpion spines, whose serrated shafts had been knocked away and dragged aside to leave room. Piles of them now lay against the inside wall, their poisoned barbs covered in rugs and heavy blankets. Outside, war drums boomed a constant dirge over the clash of steel and the shouts and screams of the attacking army.

“Over here”—Devon dragged Sypes the last few feet—“by this hatch.”

The hatch door had been ripped away and pitch-smoke wafted through the gaping hole. Two bowmen crouched there, sheltered one at each side, alternately firing arrows along the length of the hull. Outside, burning wood keened and snapped and whistled. Arrows and bolts whizzed and whined and tore screams from their targets. Great wooden wheels grumbled, boots clumped, and hoofs thundered. Over it all, the war drums endlessly beat out the pace of battle. Bataba waited over to one side, half his tattooed features lit up by flames.

“Most of the ladders have been repelled,” the shaman explained. “But the siege-towers are moving into place and we have no more pitch. We cannot hold them back any longer, so this is your last chance, Poisoner.”

Devon peered outside, then jerked his head back as an arrow smashed to splinters against the wall behind him. Two more followed it in quick succession. He frowned, then grabbed Sypes’s cassock and pulled him over, exposing him to view at the open hatch. Firelight washed over the priest’s face for an instant, before Devon yanked him aside. Another arrow shot through the gap, and whistled past the old man’s ear. Sypes did not appear to notice it. Instead he muttered something about stonemasons.

“There’s always one,” Devon muttered. He waited a moment, and then thrust Sypes back to the opening, like a marionette. This time there were no arrows.

A chorus of shouts outside: “Hold your fire. Hold your fire.”

Bataba echoed the command to his own bowmen. The sounds of battle died. The drums stopped beating.

Devon edged behind the priest and peered over his shoulder.

Fully half of the Tooth’s hull was already on fire. Glinting armour and flames seemed to stretch to the horizon. Visored helms looked up at him from the crush of shields. Corpses, peppered with arrows, littered the battlefield. Pockets of flame sent up boiling columns of tar-smoke. Four intact siege-towers loomed black against the bloody sky. Two others were closer, but ablaze; embers raced skywards through their charred skeletons like tiny fleeing souls.

Trumpets sounded and, beyond the main mass of infantry, scattered units of cavalry regrouped. Three riders broke from the nearest unit and urged their horses forward. Ranks of soldiers parted to let them through.

Devon muttered to Bataba, “Tell your men to keep their bowstrings slack. Shoot these men and it’s all over. We need time.”

The three riders threaded through the army. Devon recognized the insignia emblazoned across the breastplate of the nearest. This was Gullan, sergeant of the cityguard regulars—a tall, broad-shouldered man astride a fierce courser that snapped at foot-soldiers who got too close. The other two, Devon presumed, represented reservist infantry and cavalry divisions. The soldier to Gullan’s left wore dented plate and a peaked helm with winged cheek-guards. He carried a short-sword and had a wooden buckler strapped to his left arm. The man to his right wore a chain hauberk over boiled leathers, and rested a light crossbow on his saddle-horn. Gullan sat easily on his courser between them, ignoring the horse’s ill temper, his eyes fixed on Devon.

Devon shouted down, “I have a proposition for Clay.”

Shouts and jeers went up from the nearest foot-soldiers. Gullan raised a hand and the noise died. “I’ll hear it,” he said.

“I’ll speak with Clay,” Devon said, “not his boot boy.”

“I have Captain Clay’s authority to parley.”

“Is your leader afraid to approach me himself?”

A score of crossbows rose at this remark. In response, Devon pushed the Presbyter forward, so that the old man leaned precariously over the edge.

“Hold.” Gullan held his hand out, palm down. Most of the weapons lowered. “I will escort you to him, Poisoner.”

“Perhaps. Withdraw this army, and I will consider it.”

This caused indignation among the closer ranks of infantry. Swords rattled on shields. Gullan said, “Say what you need to say, Devon.”

“This is not a matter of need. This is a matter of mutual benefit. Why else have I halted this machine on the brink of Deepgate?”

“The Tooth of God is finished,” Gullan said. “Its only purpose now will be to serve as your tomb.”

“Shall I start the engines again before we speak further? How many more of your men should I crush before you hear me on equal terms?”

The reservist sergeant with the peaked helm spoke urgently to Gullan. There was a heated exchange between them, and then the regular said, “Release the Presbyter and we’ll talk.”

Devon felt a faint rumble through the floor. He edged Sypes forward an inch. It was a hundred-foot drop to the ground below. The Presbyter made no move to save himself. He remained as slack as a puppet in Devon’s grip.

“You wish me to release him?” Devon asked. Then he whispered to Sypes, “What do you think? Should I release you?”

Another rumble sounded within the Tooth, louder this time.

Sypes frowned down at the army, apparently confused.

“Wake up, old man.” Devon shook him. “Better for us all if you appear lucid.”

The Presbyter’s face tightened. He gazed over the upturned faces of the men beneath him, and blinked. And then he twisted, grabbed Devon’s shirt with both hands and pulled hard.

Devon shot out his free arm to grab the lintel above his head, but his stump could grip nothing, and he fell forward, still holding on to Sypes with his good hand. The world swirled under him.

But instead of dropping into the mass of soldiers way below, he thumped against the hull just under the hatch, and swung back out. The Presbyter’s cassock had snagged on something. They were both now hanging underneath the hatch. Devon wrapped his damaged arm around the priest’s neck, and struggled to get a better grip with the other. Sypes gasped and choked.

Bataba and the two bowmen were pulling on the priest’s cassock, trying to heave both men back inside the Tooth. Devon twisted, collided against the hull again, and rebounded. Flashes of steel and fire and sky wheeled all around him. The cassock tightened around Sypes’s neck till the old man’s eyes bulged. His face was turning red but his fists still gripped Devon’s shirt.

And then all at once they were being hoisted up, as the Heshette dragged them back inside the Tooth. Sypes lay wheezing on the floor. As Devon rose unsteadily, three crossbow bolts thudded into his chest and knocked him back down with the force of a hammer blow. A fourth caught him in the neck even as he fell. He felt his jawbone shatter. The steel tip jarred into his palate and blood flooded his mouth.

Devon rolled aside as a further shower of bolts and arrows shattered against the wall behind him.

The bowmen in the corridor returned fire.

“Gahh,” Devon croaked, lying on his back on top of the Presbyter. He could feel the wooden shaft lodged in his neck, its end pressing against his chest where the other bolts protruded. Air burbled in his lungs. Grimacing, he ripped the bolt from his throat and threw it away. Agony blossomed in his jaw. “Gahh…” One by one he yanked out the others.

“Da…ness take you.” Devon spat blood and hauled himself upright. “Damn you, Sypes. Tha…was sore.”

Presbyter Sypes lay motionless at his feet. None of the missiles had struck him.

“You had better be dead,” Devon growled. “Tha…was unfeasibly—”

The corridor shook as, deep within the Tooth, engines grumbled to life. A roar went up from the bowmen in the corridor, answered by a savage bellow from the troops outside. Bugles and trumpets shrilled renewed orders. War drums began to pound.

“We’re moving!” Bataba shouted.

Devon could feel it: the Tooth had begun to crawl forward once more. Its tracks were already crushing a wide path through Deepgate’s army. A savage grin split his bloodied face. He felt the elixir answer his wounded body’s demands, felt it curl around his lungs and heart—repairing, strengthening—and for a moment he even thought he heard the keening of thirteen souls. He grabbed Sypes by the loose skin of his neck and yanked him to his feet. “Do you hear it, old man? Do you feel it in those brittle bones of yours? The end now. Everything you’ve done has led to this.”

Sypes’s head lolled drunkenly.

“These deaths are
your doing,
Sypes.”

“Please,” Sypes gasped, “Alexander…”

Devon smashed the priest’s head against the hull, once, twice, thrice, until fragments of bone and brain covered the bulkhead. Then he pitched him out of the hatch.

“That damn repair had better hold,” he roared.

Bataba stared at him in shock.

“What?” Devon snapped. “We’re moving, aren’t we?”

I
t’s alive, is it? Good, now we can kill it again.” The god of chains was still fuming. Occasionally he pinched his nostrils and examined the blood on his fingers with a mixture of horror and disbelief.

Rachel couldn’t tear her eyes away from Dill as he tried to rise, but flopped back to the floor, where he sat trembling and rubbing his arms. His face was chalk-white on one side, black on the other where the blood had pooled.
And started to decompose
. The stench from him turned her stomach.

Dill reached to pick up his sword and frowned at it, opening and closing his mouth as though struggling to remember the name of the object. A black, swollen tongue slid between his lips. “Word,” he said. “Min.”

“Dill?”

No response.

“Dill!”

When he looked at her, Rachel saw that his eyes were colourless, not the sharp white of fear but a misty gelid hue. “Dill, what do you remember?”

Dill wrapped his arms around himself and his gaze dropped to the empty syringe protruding from his chest. He plucked it out and let it clatter to the floor. Then he stretched out his wings…and winced.

Carnival and Ulcis were watching him intently: she with a look of lost hope; he with mounting ire. Swords unsheathed, two of the god’s lieutenants blocked the exit from the cell.

Dill was healing fast. As Rachel watched, the bruises on his face paled and his missing feathers grew back with astonishing speed. His eyes seemed clearer than just moments before. He placed a finger inside his mouth and pulled back his lower lip to reveal several missing teeth. The finger came away bloody. “Cold,” he whispered.

Ulcis sniffed contemptuously, and turned to leave. “Lock the cell door,” he said. “Let the freak devour her—”

With a clatter of iron, Carnival suddenly cast a loop of chain around his neck and yanked. The links snapped rigid and jerked the god off his feet. He crashed to his back on the flag-stones.

She was at his neck in an instant, twisting the chain tighter. Ulcis gasped, and both archons at the door moved to attack her. But the god held his hand up, and they paused, uncertain.

“I want you to remember this pain,” Carnival hissed.

The god’s face contorted with rage. He tried to say something, but Carnival drew the chain even tighter, and all that escaped his throat was a snarl.

“Send them away.” She loosened her grip and let Ulcis suck in a breath. His face bright purple, he tried to reach round for her, his mighty wings thumping for leverage against the floor.

“What do you—?” he began.

“Shut up!” Carnival twisted her fist again. She leaned closer, her teeth an inch from his neck. “Get rid of those bastards or your head comes off. Then we’ll see if you can grow a new one.”

Ulcis slumped, holding up his hands. “Wait,” he gasped. “Rebecca—”

The links bit deeper into his flesh. “My name is Carnival!”

Blood bubbled from the corners of Ulcis’s mouth as veins ridged his neck and his eyes swelled.

The archons edged closer. Rachel slashed the air in front of them with her sword.

“Last chance,” Carnival warned. “Do you want to see another eon? Another day?”

Dill had finally found his feet. The bruises on his face had almost disappeared, and his eyes had changed colour. He regarded Carnival for a moment with a pale gold gaze, then turned to Rachel, a slight frown creasing his brow.

“Domestic,” she explained.