Scar Night

by Alan Campbell

  Click.

  The temple guard had by now unlocked the winch. He cranked the handle, drawing in the slack. The Presbyter, Adjunct, and guests looked on silently as, slowly, the chain grew taut and, inch by inch, the soulcage began to rise, wheels and all.

  “Frailer specimen than Gaine.” Mark’s whisper was strikingly loud in the still of the Sanctum. The commander had leant closer to his sister, looking at Dill out of the corner of his eye. Rachel Hael did not reply, just sat there, staring ahead. The brother slumped back in his chair, nonplussed.

  Mark Hael was just as lean as his sister, but there the similarity ended. Deepgate’s aeronaut commander lounged in his chair, arms dangling, an expression of boredom on his deeply tanned face. Rachel looked corpse-pale by comparison. She sat primly upright, dressed in the same grubby leathers she had worn earlier.

  Presbyter Sypes was propped against the lectern as though it was all that kept him standing, his sunken eyes fixed on the aperture below. Adjunct Crumb sparkled beside him like a heap of treasure, hands folded neatly in his lap, his whole head scrubbed and pink as a perfume pot. He caught Dill’s eye and gave him an oily wink.

  The soulcage swung out over the open abyss and the guard paused to rest, flushed and panting.

  Everyone waited.

  For a long time, Presbyter Sypes stared down into the void below the soulcage while Rachel, her brother, and Adjunct Crumb all appeared to be deep in their own thoughts. A breeze stirred the air. Candles flickered. Shadows swayed like wind-blown branches over the floor. Minutes passed. Sypes’s eyelids drooped.

  Adjunct Crumb suddenly cleared his throat. The Presbyter’s eyes flicked open. He sniffed the air, frowned, then muttered something Dill didn’t catch.

  The Adjunct grimaced.

  Presbyter Sypes seemed to remember where he was, and nodded to the guard, who began to lower the cage through the aperture into the waiting abyss. Once it was out of sight, the guard locked the winch, and Dill heard a murmur like cogs whirring in a clock.

  “Death,” the Presbyter announced, “is always close. Death is the pause between each breath, the space between each heartbeat.” He lowered his head. “When Ayen sealed the doors to Heaven, she damned us all to Hell. Ghosts of good men abandoned, for ever destined to walk Iril’s corridors among the wicked…”

  Dill wiped bone-dust from his sword hilt. A fine weapon; solid and heavy—a sword worthy of a temple archon. And he would grow accustomed, he supposed, to its weight.

  “…endless corridors, waist-deep in blood where purulent demons and wraiths, lunatics, murderers, foulest bastards, blasphemers, and whores are damned to wander lost for all eternity…”

  Flecks of gold leaf had come away from the curved hand guard. Dill ran a finger over its polished surface. Gold-leafed lead or not, old swords were definitely superior to new swords.

  “…but Ayen’s spite strengthened the Maze. Nourished with souls over which it had no claim, Iril grew sentient, cunning…”

  Ancient weapons had a presence, a personality, and steel could be sharpened.

  “…even now trying to find ways into this world. Had her eldest son, Ulcis, not sought to depose her…”

  Dill would ask the priests to sharpen the blade for him. Now that he was actively in temple service, they would have to listen to him.

  “…a hundred years of war in Heaven. Only to be cast out, his shattered legion of angels fallen…and imprisoned in the abyss beneath our temple…”

  The weapon’s guard could be replaced too, restored to battle-readiness. Deepgate’s smiths would probably want to emblazon it with a suitable design: something in the spirit of the Ninety-Nine—

  “…Ulcis offered salvation in the abyss…For three thousand years we have entrusted him with our souls…An army waiting in the city of Deep…One day to reclaim Heaven and…Dill?”

  —But not too similar. Using Dill’s own design: an eagle, perhaps, or a sandhawk. He would begin sketching ideas right after the ceremony.

  “Dill, am I boring you?”

  Dill started. He had been idly fingering lines on the sword’s wide, gold-coloured guard. Now he snapped to attention and feigned sombre interest.

  The Presbyter’s eyes twinkled. “Had Ulcis’s coup succeeded, our world would be a very different place today.” The smile left his eyes and he seemed to drift away for a moment before regaining his voice. “Now, before the Gate to the city of Deep, we offer this blessed blood as a libation to Ulcis, Ayen’s eldest, God of Chains, Hoarder of Souls.”

  A gust of wind emerged from the pit. Candle flames leapt and brightened. Shadows reached closer to the aperture, then withdrew. Dill stared down into the void, but saw nothing, only a stark, unsettling blackness.

  Presbyter Sypes gripped the lectern, leaned over it, his voice booming. “Deny Iril this blood. Free the souls bound within. Let them join your army, and rise again to smash open the doors of Heaven.”

  Iron writhed around the walls. The scent of flowers thickened and Dill found himself struggling to breathe, as though something was squeezing the air from his lungs. The soulcage chain trembled. Metal clicked, clattered, whirred. And then suddenly it stopped.

  Dill breathed at last. The soulcage was raised again, now empty. An open trapdoor in its base swung back and forward, knocking against the rear axle.

  Presbyter Sypes stepped down from the lectern and approached the shroud of General Hael. He laid a hand on the corpse and said, “Edward Hael died protecting everything I hold dear.” He glanced at Rachel, her brother, and Dill. “In his stead Mark will protect the city. And Rachel…”

  Mark Hael was watching the Presbyter solemnly, but Rachel buried her face in her hands. When she looked up again, there were tears in her eyes. Adjunct Crumb saw this and failed to hide a look of surprise, but the Presbyter did not appear to notice; he was now busy straightening his cassock.

  All at once she seemed even smaller, more out of place here than she had before. Dill offered her a weak smile. Perhaps she didn’t understand: death was a joyous occasion. Her father was to be reborn in the abyss, his soul released into the service of Ulcis. Tears were selfish, a display of faithlessness. Dill knew this, but he remembered his own father’s Sending, and the tears he’d shed himself. Presbyter Sypes hadn’t noticed those tears either. He’d been busy straightening his cassock on that occasion too.

  The temple guard cast the general’s body down into the abyss.

  Dill didn’t stay to ponder further. He had a whipping to receive.

  7

  Mr. Nettle’s Luck

  With Smith’s bill of sale clutched in his fist, and Smith’s trolley creaking before him, Mr. Nettle sought the gaffer on Berth Seventeen. Tradeships rumbled over a forest of docking spines and tarred chains where armies of men worked with hammers and hooks and aether flames to keep the whole thing hale. More men unloaded goods from docked ships: metal ores and coal from Hollowhill, wood from Shale, food, livestock, and soil from the Coyle Plantations, and wine from the High Valleys; salt, textiles, worked gold, silver, and bronze from the desert settlements. Tremors ran through the girders and stones underfoot. The air smelled of fuel and iron.

  The incoming ships were from the depots at Sandport and Clune, heavy with the collected wealth of the river towns, but the outgoing ships were swift and light. They carried little but tax demands and the occasional crate of armour or bolts for the outpost garrisons.

  Mr. Nettle remembered the days before the great ships ploughed the skies. Everything had come to Deepgate by caravan, and many of those caravans had never reached the city. At the height of the Heshette war there had been difficult years when the heathens choked the supply lines. He was just a boy back then, but he remembered the food queues, the hunger, and the bloodshed. In those times, Iril had taken many souls.

  Great ragged holes pocked the shipyards, some of them big enough to let the airships manoeuvre down to moorings where stitchers and Gluemen could clamber over them and work their repairs. All
of the holes he passed by were empty now, full of nothing but darkness and chains, and a queer metal wind sighed up from the abyss. But he knew there were men down there, in harnesses on ropes, strengthening the old iron with new. Mr. Nettle could hear their faraway shouts and laughs, the pounding of their hammers. He wondered how men managed to face those chains each day, and if their wives could bear to look at them when they left home in the morning.

  He found the gaffer bawling out a group of dockhands gathered beside an overloaded cart. The weight of coal sacks it carried had tipped the cart back on its wheels, leaving the harnessed donkey suspended a few feet above the ground. The donkey chewed its teeth and merely looked bored.

  “Laggards, you think this is a joke?” The gaffer smacked his billet against his palm. “You want my stick on the back of your heads?”

  “Not our fault,” one of the dockhands protested. “Donkey’s lost weight since yesterday.”

  “Aye, and you will too, when I cut your wage for this folly.”

  Smiles faded from the dockhands’ faces. They set to work unloading the cart.

  “Pig iron,” Mr. Nettle said, “for Smith.” He thrust the bill at the gaffer, who ignored it.

  “Tomorrow,” the gaffer growled, then, to his men, “Take them from the top first, you dolts, you want to spill the lot?”

  “No,” Mr. Nettle said.“Now.”

  The gaffer gave him a square look. He seemed about to say something, then to change his mind. Maybe he noticed the way Mr. Nettle’s shoulders had tensed. He sighed and grabbed the bill. “Over there. Warehouse eleven, like it says here. Pallet three hundred two.”

  After Mr. Nettle had got the bill checked by the warehouse boss, he found the crates where he’d been told, and heaved the first onto his trolley. Wooden axle squeaking, he set off back to Blacklung Lane.

  He worked hard for Smith all afternoon. His ribs protested with every step, and at times the pain was worse than from the beating, but he just kept moving, planting one foot in front of the other and trying to clear his mind of everything but the cobbles ahead and the grumble of the trolley wheels. Each box seemed to weigh more than the last, and there appeared to be no end to them. He could have sworn someone was loading up the pallet even as he emptied it. At this rate, he’d be lucky to finish the job by the time it got dark. Lucky? He scowled. What was luck? Bad luck was just what happened day to day. Bad luck was an icy morning, or finding nothing in the nets for a week, or getting ill when you had to work. Bad luck was just life. And good luck? It was nothing but a pause in the bad. That was when you didn’t get ill, and therefore could keep dragging the nets every day. That was when you found something you could sell, and you could eat. But maybe his luck was changing. Smith was a good man. He didn’t want to think about it, though. The more he thought about it, the more he felt he was tempting fate. Good luck, real good luck, didn’t come to people like Smith and Nettle.

  By the fourth afternoon bell he had delivered half the iron. His ribs were aching, and his muscles beginning to fold. The sun beat down mercilessly and sapped his strength. Sweat soaked into his mourning robes. He slumped to the ground by a common pipe under the Merrygate watchtower, there slaked his thirst and sloshed water over his face. Some folks looked at him strangely, and some even stared outright, but most ignored him like he was a beggar.

  Only three bolts. What were the chances? If he missed with the first, the angel was sure to finish him before he could load the second, poisoned or no. One bolt would have to do it. But which one would he use? The soultaker was the most fitting—a soul for a soul. Though it would cost the most to replace, since diseased bolts were rare. Smith had never said anything about him paying for the bolts, but he figured he owed the man that at least—assuming he made it through the night. Mr. Nettle rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms. What if the angel killed him? The crossbow would be left on the streets for anyone to find, and Smith would never see it again. That was a poor trade for a day’s work. He shunned the thought.

  Mr. Nettle rose stiffly and tilted back the trolley, resting it on his stomach. Pain shot through his ribs, but he did his best to ignore it. He had a full afternoon’s work ahead.

  Even before he got back to Blacklung Lane, he knew something was wrong. As Mr. Nettle wove through the narrow, winding lanes towards the weapon smiths’ warrens, a sense of dread began to fill him. At first he shrugged it aside, thinking it a shadow of his grief, but when he drew nearer the feeling grew until, not knowing why, he found himself hurrying. He was still a street away when he realized what was wrong. The ringing and hammering of metal had stopped. Blacklung Lane was silent. Mr. Nettle ran the last few yards, the crate rattling on his trolley.

  Crowds blocked the entrance to the lane itself. The smiths were all outdoors, away from their forges, their coal-streaked, muscled torsos jostling as they tried to push past one another to see what was happening. Smoke billowed from somewhere at the end of the lane and someone cried, “Get back, get back, it’s going to go.”

  Mr. Nettle abandoned the trolley and tried to push his way through. The crowd threw him angry looks, shoved him this way and that, but he squeezed among them and managed to force his way forward. Big as these smiths were, Mr. Nettle was bigger. The smell of burning rope hung thick in the air.

  “Get back, I say! Back, you fools.”

  Up ahead, people were coughing; others were shouting. There was a whoomph, then the groan of stressed metal. Embers twisted upwards through the smoke, and suddenly the crowd surged backwards, carrying Mr. Nettle with it. Men fought to get past him. Someone punched him, another kneed him hard in the stomach and he almost dropped. He grabbed the man’s hair and dragged him down, sending him sprawling beneath the feet of others. And all at once there was space in front of him. And flames.

  Blacklung Lane terminated abruptly: where once there had been a slump of cobbles, chains, and soot-blackened walls, there was now a gaping hole rimmed with burning rubble. The far end of the lane had fallen through into the abyss, taking half the adjoining smithies and much of the surrounding neighbourhood with it. A circle of cross-chains hung down into the rift like a basket with the bottom fallen out. The collapse had ripped open a dozen houses. Walls had crumbled away, leaving girders jutting from the stonework and private rooms open to Mr. Nettle’s gaze, their furniture undisturbed but now inches from the open abyss.

  Smith and his workshop were gone.

  Mr. Nettle took a step back as more cobbles dropped away before him. He pressed himself into the crowd. Coals from the furnaces had set fire to the torn nets below and, even as he watched, those flames grew higher and a cloud of smoke rolled over him.

  “Back!” he roared, and pushed hard into the throng. Men stumbled and fell, but those behind him were still struggling, trying to free themselves from others, while at the back still more onlookers were pushing forward.

  The crowd swelled alarmingly, and for a dreadful moment Mr. Nettle felt himself being shoved toward the abyss. He tripped, grabbed something—a man’s ear—and pulled himself upright. The man yelled, fell back—if he went over the edge, Mr. Nettle didn’t see. Others were now tugging at his robes from all sides, pulling him, pushing him. He kicked them away. He elbowed someone else in the face, knocked him to the ground.

  Another whoomph, and a loud cracking noise. Behind him, more loose stone rumbled into the abyss.

  There was no way out through the crowd. He had to go up, over them. Mr. Nettle wrestled with the men nearest to him, forcing them down. Shouts and screams came from everywhere. He climbed over backs and faces and arms and legs, pushing, punching. He kicked out, grabbed hair or skin, and clawed his way forward. For a heartbeat he was carried above the crowd, and then he sank among them, among their legs and boots. Something hit him in the face; he tried to rise, but there were men on top of him, flattening him, suffocating him.

  He heard the snap and hiss of parting cables. Suddenly he was covered in blood; his hands and arms were red, wet. He didn’
t know if it was his own blood or not. A boot kicked him in the teeth; then it stood on his head. Crushing weight bore down on his aching back.

  The scrounger yelled, strained against the man’s weight, and wrenched himself up onto his elbows. Another push and he got his feet under him. He heaved upwards: men fell on either side and Mr. Nettle stood. Thicker smoke now engulfed him. He closed his eyes, struck out with his hands, and pushed and pushed and punched and punched his way into the mass of people. His fists connected dozens of times.

  A deep rumble erupted from somewhere behind. More men began to scream.

  Eyes shut, lungs full of smoke, Mr. Nettle battered his way further through the crowd.

  And suddenly he burst free.

  All around, the smiths were dragging fallen comrades from the panicking throng. Others were rushing to the scene with buckets of water, but hampered by the tangled mass of people, they could do nothing but drop these nearby and run to fetch more.

  Mr. Nettle paused there, gasping for breath. His robe was now torn to tatters and covered in blood, too much blood to have come from the blows he’d delivered. The snapping cables, he realized, had torn right through the crowd. He checked his own limbs, counted his fingers. He felt dazed, bruised, but still in one piece.

  He’d been lucky, he thought miserably.

  8

  The Battle of the Tooth

  Dill couldn’t decide whether Presbyter Sypes was still reading or asleep. The old priest’s head hovered inches from the tome on the desk before him, while his face appeared to have subsided and set like Fondelgrue’s porridge. Dry breaths rasped in his throat, but he wasn’t snoring, so therefore he was probably still reading. Yet the old man hadn’t turned a page since Dill had entered the schoolroom.

  Dill’s gaze drifted across the bookshelves behind the desk. From floor to ceiling the spines of the ancient volumes formed a mosaic of sombre hues with the occasional speckled gold of lettering. Apart from this assemblage of books and a couple of tired wooden desks and chairs, the schoolroom was bare. Late-afternoon sunlight slid in through windows high in the western wall and lay in honey-coloured slabs on the floorboards. A single fly wove its languid way between the beams of light and seemed to labour through an air too thick with silence. All at once Dill realized the harsh breathing had stopped, and he turned to find the Presbyter staring at him.