Scar Night

by Alan Campbell

  With a final push, she heaved herself through the gap, through the severed net, and out into fresh air. Cobbles and stars swam before her. The city wheeled drunkenly, rings of light and darkness. She felt Carnival grab her foot, kicked out at her, and then she was free and falling.

  One moment she was sinking towards the heavens, the next towards grey slate roofs. Blissful silence but for the rush of wind, and so cool, the air silken. Exhaustion enfolded her, wrapped soft arms around her body. Rachel closed her eyes.

  She hit something solid, felt her hip jar, but distantly…heard a crash, then she was falling again. Another collision, then more falling. Finally she landed with a thump in something soft. Grit pattered against her face.

  “Mother!” The shriek sounded as though it came from another world. “Mother, a woman fell through the roof!”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Another voice, this one from even further away.

  “She’s here in my bed!”

  “Get to sleep. I won’t tell you again.”

  The Spine assassin smiled, but didn’t open her eyes. The second voice was right: she desperately needed to sleep. And nothing was going to wake her until the morning.

  * * * *

  Why are you doing this to me?” the girl pleaded.

  Devon stopped reading to glance at her. The poor thing was a mess: her eyes were red and choked with tears, her face much paler now, almost translucent, but slick with sweat and veined with inky hair. She still wore her blue and white striped scullery apron, now sprayed red up one side from his struggle to get the needle in. Purple bruises bloomed darkly on the white of her arms where he had manacled her to the chair, and again on one wrist where he had inserted the tube that leached the blood from her.

  “I am looking for God,” he said.

  When the girl started crying again, Devon wondered whether he ought to administer more sedative. The bottle sat to one side of the scattered pages on his desk, the syringe still protruding from its top. The flask at her feet was almost two-thirds full of blood, so he decided against it. There was too much at stake and sedation would only extend the purification process further. He could not afford to spend any more time on this. The previous flasks were set to one side against the wall, deep red and safely out of reach. He’d moved them there once she’d started kicking.

  Beyond the heavy shutters, Scar Night’s darkmoon would be rising over the city, and Carnival would be out hunting vermin in the cold streets. But here in Devon’s study it was bright and warm. Rich with waxed wood and oil wicks smoking behind crystal, it had been transformed into an ad hoc laboratory. Firelight played across a clutter of glass receptacles, the steel distillers, and the brass clamps and stands that crowded every surface. Several gilt-framed oil paintings of long-dead scientists leaned neglected against the wall beneath the scrawled charts that had replaced them.

  Only one portrait remained hanging on the wall. It depicted an elegant woman, austere in expression but for her soft amber eyes and the trace of a smile on her lips. His beloved Elizabeth. Devon looked deeply into her painted eyes, as though for reassurance.

  Will the Spine come for me? Are they stealing up the steps to my apartment even now, blades oiled, crossbows coiled and ready?

  No. Someone powerful was protecting him. Someone had already provided him with the means to save himself.

  Someone high up in the Church.

  It had happened seven months ago, when Devon had returned to his apartments to find an innocuous package: the ramblings of one of his chemists, he’d presumed. He’d left it for a while and almost forgotten about it, but when finally he’d opened it he’d been shaken to the point of terror. In his hands he held the journal of the Soft Men: three scientists named as Mr. Partridge, Mr. Hightower, and Mr. Bloom. It contained pages and pages of notes, hundreds if not thousands of years old. In archaic script the pages outlined the process for making angelwine.

  There were no clues as to who had delivered this package, but Devon had developed his suspicions. The journal could only have come from one place. The Codex.

  Had Presbyter Sypes delivered it?

  Why?

  The question plagued him endlessly, but he felt it would be imprudent to confront Sypes directly. His mystery benefactor clearly wished to remain anonymous. And what if Devon was wrong? One misplaced word could end his own life. The Spine would not look kindly upon the reappearance of such a work.

  He let his gaze drop from his late wife’s portrait to the mantelpiece below it. An ornate clock ticked the moments away, lost amid a clutter of chemical bottles with handwritten labels and sugar-crust corks. Poisons for making angelwine.

  Devon sniffed. A faint odour of sulphur hung in the air, pleasantly unpleasant.

  He went back to the journal, tapping a pencil against the gold rim of his spectacles. Fluids leaked from the bandages covering his back. A little fresh blood had gathered in the crook of his arm: not much, but enough to add yet another stain to his already ripe tweed jacket. Devon didn’t care; his looks were of no concern. Elizabeth had still loved him.

  Cracked lips pursed while he considered the pages before him.

  Blood contained energy: a life-force—or soul, as the Church named it. This journal presented him with a method of extraction, a way to remove the spirit from the blood. To bottle it. Flesh withers. Everything material is poison, everything we consume. Even the air we breathe destroys us. But when we nourish the body with spirit, feed the flesh with something ethereal …Somewhere outside was a creature who did just that, and had done so for thousands of years.

  “Please,” the girl said, “stop this.”

  Devon glanced again at the flask of her blood before returning his attention to his notes. He had followed the letting and purification processes to the letter, but as yet there had been no sign of the expected results. Was his transcription at fault? Had he overlooked something? Impossible. There had been no error, he felt sure, in his preparations or implementation of the technique. What else could be missing? Some extra manipulation that had not been recorded? It seemed unlikely. The journal, for all it infused mysticism with science, appeared to be complete. Devon chewed the end of his pencil. A pollutant in his materials? Hardly. He could not make them any more sterile. He’d even had the containers blessed. For all the good that will do. And he’d used minimal sedative in the blood itself.

  Then what? What was he missing?

  The girl’s pleas came in fainter gasps. “You’re…killing me. Please…stop.”

  “Hush, girl,” Devon said.

  “My name is Lisa,” she wailed. The effort left her breathless.

  Devon rolled the pencil between his fingers. A blister opened, leaving the wood slightly damp. Perhaps the souls were tainted, in some way damaged by the process of removal? Or was he failing to extract the entire soul? The Soft Men had taken thirteen souls before the elixir reached saturation point, when spirit could no longer be absorbed by the physical solution. Only then had the recipient flesh been able to absorb the angelwine. Devon had already harvested ten souls. After this girl he required two more. But as yet there was no sign of the elixir nearing saturation point, and this troubled him. Was a soul quantitative?

  “My father is Duncan Fry, a lieutenant of the temple guard,” the girl panted. “We have money. He’s saved some, I know he has. He’ll give it to you.”

  Devon slammed his palm flat against the desk. “Can’t you see I’m working?” Pain clenched his chest and he grimaced. “For what, what, do you wish to be saved? What are you hungry for? A life toiling under Fondelgrue’s sweaty palm? The grunt of some malodorous swine as he stuffs you? The skin-stretched years spent raising his litter? Iril take you, girl, have some self-respect.”

  She flinched, her head twisting away as far as the bonds allowed. Her lips trembled as she spoke. “I’ll…do anything you want. I’ll give you anything you want.”

  He tried to review his notes again, but it was useless. The girl’s pleas had brok
en his train of thought. Instead, he got up from his desk and approached her, then crouched on the carpet before her chair. He lifted her face to his, forcing her to look at him, at the sores and seeping cracks.

  “But that is exactly what you are doing,” he said with a crooked smile.

  A fresh bout of sobbing took hold of her. Mucus ran from her nose on to his arm. Devon wiped it on her apron and put his arm around her shoulders. “Life’s greatest mystery,” he said, “is death. What happens to us? Where do we go? You believe in God, don’t you? You believe in the soul?”

  The girl sniffed and nodded, raised her eyes to meet his.

  “Then you must believe Ulcis can release it from the blood.” He smoothed back some of the hair from her face. “If the soul truly exists, take comfort in knowing that yours will not be wasted.” His expression softened. “I intend to put it to great use. One more plump little grape in a rare bottle of wine, eh?”

  She wailed and shook her head, sending more hair tumbling over her face.

  “Hush, girl, you shouldn’t worry. It will all be over soon.” He gave her his warmest smile, wincing inwardly at the pain it caused him, and cupped his hand to her cheek. Tears spilled over his fingers. He leaned closer, speaking gently. “Shhh…You must try to be brave. I know we shun death: we lock it away, forget about it, until one day it rattles the box and reminds us it’s there. For me that day arrived when my wife fell ill. But Elizabeth had an implacable beauty that no force of man or nature could have soured. Even at the end, when her skin wept like mine, she remained beautiful—to me.”

  The girl’s breathing was softer now. The clock on the mantel ticked steadily and the logs crackled in the hearth. Devon rested her head against his chest and held her gently until she died.

  * * * *

  For the love of God, woman, for the sake of all that’s sacred and good, will you not shut up?” Doctor Salt’s hands gripped an imaginary neck.

  Rosemary Salt stood with arms folded, blocking his escape from the parlour. “I will not let you talk your way around this one, Arthur. I don’t give a damn what night it is.”

  “She’ll hear you,” Arthur Salt hissed. “And then none of this is going to make a blind bit of difference. Do you want to get us both killed?”

  His wife didn’t budge. “Twelve bottles, Arthur? How in God’s name did you get through twelve bottles in a month? You must have been permanently ratted.”

  Doctor Salt threw out his arms, his fingers splayed. “I didn’t drink them all myself. I’ve had all these functions to attend lately—you know that—and I can’t very well turn up without bringing some token.”

  “Oh, bring a token, yes, fine. Next time bring your own thick skull full of Warrengrog, but don’t you dare dip into my bonus from the distillery. That case was supposed to do us for a year. What about the bottle I’d promised my father, and the one for your brother, for that matter?” Rosemary Salt stabbed a pudgy finger at her husband. “You think I don’t know what’s been going on? It’s Jocelyn Wilton, isn’t it? You’re always round there.”

  Doctor Salt eased his reply through clenched teeth. “Visiting Patrick. I can hardly refuse an invitation from the faculty head, can I? He needs someone to talk to. He’s worried about Jocelyn’s health, that’s all.”

  “Her health!” Rosemary cried. “Next to you, she’s the biggest drunk in Deepgate. You could pickle eggs with her blood.”

  “Will you keep your voice down? Surely we can talk about this another time. I’ll buy you some more bloody whisky.”

  “You’re damn right you’ll—”

  There was a rap at the door.

  Rosemary Salt froze. She stood with her mouth open, her tongue sticking out absurdly. Doctor Salt looked past her, wide-eyed, into the hallway. “It can’t be her,” he breathed. “I can’t imagine she’d bother to—”

  Several more knocks, urgent.

  Doctor Salt swallowed. “We don’t have to answer it.”

  His wife had a hand pressed to her mouth. “What if it’s not her?” she murmured through her fingers. “It might be one of your patients. We can’t leave them outside tonight.”

  “We damn well can.”

  “What if it’s an emergency?”

  “Sod it.”

  They stared at each other for a long moment.

  Three more knocks.

  “I’ll go ask who it is,” Rosemary said. She lifted the lantern from the dresser and crept into the hall, before stealing a backward glance at him. “We don’t have to actually open the door.”

  He followed her, nerves tense as twisted wire. The front door was bolted; no sounds beyond but the wind gusting outside. The wooden panels shook with the force of it.

  “Who’s there?” Rosemary asked.

  A cold voice answered: “It’s Jocelyn. Let me in.”

  Doctor Salt’s muscles unravelled. Breathing a heavy sigh of relief, he moved towards the door.

  “Wait.” His wife grabbed his arm, and glared at him. She whispered, “What’s that smell?”

  “What smell?”

  “Like burning hair, or—”

  More knocking. “Will you let me in, please?”

  Rosemary turned back to the door. “Jocelyn, what’s wrong? You sound different.”

  “Of course I sound different. I’m terrified.”

  The voice did not sound terrified at all, but what did Doctor Salt know? Women were entirely unfathomable at the best of times, scared women more so. He shrugged off his wife’s arm and moved again towards the door.

  Rosemary Salt grabbed his sleeve and yanked him round to face her. Her eyes, bulging with silent protest, held his own while she spoke. “Why are you here, Jocelyn? You know what night it is.”

  “It’s Patrick, he’s suffered a fit.”

  Doctor Salt reached for the door but his wife stopped him again. She mouthed the words We can’t be sure .

  “Sod you,” the doctor said. “I’m not leaving her out there a second longer.” He shoved his wife aside, snapped back the bolt, and threw open the door.

  * * * *

  This was going to hurt. Dying always hurt. She never got used to it. She had ratcheted the chain taut, then locked it. The excess swung through a dim beam of starlight, creaking under the hook in the rafters. She had bound the doctor’s mouth and hands, manacled his feet, and hung him upside down so that his head brushed the floorboards. His breath hissed through the corners of his mouth. His eyes were wild, bare chest wax-white and heaving, face bruised and swollen with blood and streaked with his tears. He twisted his feet against the manacles, dragged his shoulders up from the floor, then collapsed once more, his body swinging in and out of shadow.

  Carnival would abandon the attic after it was done. The smell would bring Spine, and the blood would bring demons. She’d take the hook, ratchet, and manacles to another dark, derelict place, but she’d leave the blood-soaked chains. Deepgate had no shortage of chains.

  She steadied him and scraped a pan across the floorboards, edging it under his torso. Her stomach was a fist. She looked at him for as long as she could bear.

  His eyes flicked to the knife in her hand and away, silently screaming. The air through his nose came in quick, insistent rushes. She could have removed the gag: now he would do nothing but fight for breath.

  She grabbed his wrist and felt him spasm. His bladder relaxed and urine ran down his chest and over his chin, and pattered into the pan. Carnival ignored it, knelt, cut once. Blood welled. He trembled as she brought her lips close to his skin.

  Delicious warmth filled the attic. The chains creaked gently back and forward as she drank. Back and forth, slower, slower.

  Carnival gradually relaxed. The ache of hunger melted away.

  Darkness slid in thickly and filled the attic. It soaked into wood, into flesh and blood. Above her, the chain settled to silence. The man was still now. Only Carnival’s throat moved.

  When she was sated, she stood up and looked down at the dead man’s wr
ist. She had bitten it more than she’d meant to, torn the skin badly around the original cut. She let his arm fall loose, scattering stars of blood across the floor.

  Carnival wiped her mouth, and lifted her knife again. Blood dripped from the tip.

  She waited, trembling.

  And then she died.

  And was reborn.

  Pain ripped through her, so intense it seemed to scour her soul. She fell forward, gasping, onto her hands and knees, her own blood screaming in her ears. Her stomach buckled and heaved. She clenched her jaw and forced herself upright.

  Her head felt light. For a long moment Carnival didn’t know where or who she was, and then she saw the blood and remembered.

  What have I done?

  A different kind of pain then consumed her, one that clawed her from the inside, like the talons of an animal trying to break free. She wheeled round, took a few steps forward, then turned back, not knowing where to go. Her fingers made vague shapes over her chest.

  Blood everywhere. Blood on her hands, on her clothes.

  What have I done?

  She hesitated, turned away, turned back. A wave of sickness rose within her.

  She looked down at her thigh and stabbed the knife in deep. She felt it glance off her femur. Blood spewed over her leg. The pain was frightening, exquisite. She savoured it, clung to it, twisted the knife and opened the wound further. Fresh pain blossomed; she closed her eyes and drew a long, shuddering breath. She wrenched out the knife, dropped it, agony building, hammering through her heart and bones. Her hands contorted like claws. Saliva—or blood—dribbled down her chin. She sucked in another rasping breath…and wailed.

  Gradually, the pain ebbed.

  The wound on her thigh was already healing, leaving its scar.

  The pan was spattered and filthy. The man’s arm still swung back and forward over it, dripping. Carnival pulled a filthy square of linen from her pocket and wiped her lips, her face and throat. She bunched the linen and rubbed it over her hands. She threw the scrap away, then picked briefly, uselessly, at her cracked nails. She licked her teeth, and spat, then spat again. She tried to drag her fingers through her hair, but couldn’t—her hair was too matted and tangled. For the first time, she noticed the smell: blood swelling over the floorboards, foul and sweet. By morning, the attic would be seething with flies.