Scar Night

by Alan Campbell

  “Don’t do this,” the Presbyter said. “Not here. Let’s speak in private.”

  Devon rolled back his sleeve. “We’ll speak, Sypes, but later.” He glanced at Fogwill and then at Dill. “This requires temple witnesses.” He brought the syringe to his arm and slipped the needle under his skin. “Of course, I had intended to find a smoked glass bottle for it, or a gold-laced phial, something more appropriate…” A tiny amount of liquid disappeared into his vein. “But ultimately a common syringe seemed more practical.” Devon removed the needle and held out his arms like a showman. “Now watch.”

  “Mad as a broom,” Presbyter Sypes muttered.

  If anyone had asked Dill later to recount the subsequent events there in the Sanctum, he would have been unable to say exactly what had happened or in which order they had happened. Events, as he remembered them, unfolded with the speed of a dream.

  A flurry of expressions—bliss, wonder, and pain—crossed the Poisoner’s face. But that visage changed from moment to moment and made each expression seem to belong to a different man. Skin paled from red to pink to white, then tightened across Devon’s forehead and underneath his eyes. Blisters shrank, their fluids retreating back inside his flesh. Weeping sores dried and healed. The bleeding stopped. Devon stood before the abyss aperture with his arms outstretched and said, “I can feel them inside.” His eyes brightened with each heartbeat and he searched the floor wildly. “All of them, I can hear…their voices.”

  With the attention of both Presbyter and Adjunct fixed on this transformation, and Angus folded over his pike, staring into some faraway place, only Dill noticed the man climbing out of the pit behind Devon. A grapple-hook appeared first on the rim, then a bandaged hand, then another hand, and then the largest, ugliest man Dill had ever seen dragged himself up and into the Sanctum. He wore torn rags that exposed a hundred lacerations. Dirt, blood, and stubble had turned his face into a vision of Hell. His eyes were burning with hate.

  The newcomer pulled a cleaver from his belt, raised it.

  “Mr. Nettle!” Adjunct Crumb cried, suddenly aware. “The scrounger!”

  Devon wheeled drunkenly, arms outstretched.

  The massive muscles of the scrounger’s arm bunched, ripping apart seams in his filthy rags. He brought the weapon down with a ferocious swing.

  The cleaver severed Devon’s right hand at the wrist. Blood sprayed everywhere. The hand, still firmly clutching the syringe, dropped to the floor.

  Devon gaped at his wrist as arcs of blood jetted from the stump. He seemed about to say something, then closed his mouth and stood there, just blinking, for a dozen heartbeats, before finally he clamped his good hand over the wound. Blood sluiced between his fingers, spattered on the Sanctum floor.

  Dill had never seen so much blood.

  Mr. Nettle picked up the severed hand and held it up like a trophy. The syringe glittered red in the candlelight. “Abigail,” he said.

  Devon roared and threw himself at Mr. Nettle, slamming into him. Both men fell sprawling to the floor. The hand flew upwards in a high arc towards the pit.

  Mr. Nettle rolled aside and was on his feet instantly. He scrambled, crawled, slipped across the bloody floor, after the hand.

  He was too late. Hand and syringe fell into darkness.

  Angus had been slow to react, but now he rushed towards the scrounger, raising his pike. Mr. Nettle had his back to him, standing on the edge of the abyss, numbly gazing down.

  The temple guard put all of his weight behind the impact. The blow connected with a crack. Mr. Nettle tumbled forward into open space.

  In a heartbeat he was gone, swallowed by the abyss.

  “No!” Devon cried. He ran to join Angus at the edge of the pit, still clutching the stump of his wrist. Both men stared down into the darkness.

  Dill felt his eyes crackle with unknown colours.

  Suddenly the Poisoner twisted away, face sour, and stormed back to confront Adjunct Crumb and the Presbyter. “Another of your assassins?”

  “Not ours,” the Adjunct said quite calmly. “I believe you murdered that man’s daughter.”

  “Ignorant savage,” Devon spat. “I merely displaced her soul.”

  “I think,” Adjunct Crumb said, “he might have preferred her soul to remain where it was.”

  Devon ignored this. He was studying the stump where his right hand had been. Blood glistened wetly but had stopped spurting from the wound. “It matters not,” he said. “Look how it heals already.” He brandished the damaged arm.

  Dill saw that it was healing. New skin was growing over the wound even as he watched.

  “Angus, we’re leaving now,” Devon said. “Sypes is coming with us. If he resists, put a hole in him.” He returned to the soulcage, rummaged among the shrouds, and pulled out a leather travel bag.

  The temple guard nudged the Presbyter away from the lectern with the point of his pike. “What about the other two?” he asked.

  “What do you think I am?” Devon said. “A common murderer?” He gave a small shrug. “Deepgate needs to know what has happened here. I don’t think it would serve me well to slay Ulcis’s last archon. The god of chains might take that personally. And as for the fat man”—he frowned at the Adjunct—“no finer fool could rule in Sypes’s absence. Lock them both in the soulcage.”

  Pike wavering, Angus steered Fogwill and Dill into the soulcage, locked the door, and tossed the key into the shadows. He then urged Presbyter Sypes towards the door, while Devon lifted his travel bag and followed them.

  Adjunct Crumb stumbled over the shroud-wrapped bodies at his feet and fell heavily against Dill. He shouted after Devon, “You expect to simply walk out of here? The city is full of armed men looking for you.”

  Devon let out a long and weary sigh. “I believe the search has now reached the outskirts of Deepgate. And I have suddenly developed a lack of confidence in your soldiers’ weapons.”

  As they reached the doors, Devon winked back at Dill, who was busy helping the Adjunct to his feet. “Well fought, archon,” he said.

  For the first time, Dill remembered the sword sheathed at his hip. His eyes flared red.

  The Sanctum doors closed with a boom.

  A bolt snapped shut, the sound of it a knife in Dill’s heart.

  19

  A Dangerous Plan

  He was wounded, had one guard with him, and the Presbyter at the end of a bloody pike,” Mark Hael exclaimed. “So how, in the name of a hundred archons, could he have just disappeared?”

  The young aeronaut captain stood stiffly to attention while his commander paced back and forward before him. “We think he stole an airship,” he replied.

  Fogwill sat motionless at Sypes’s desk, as precisely placed as an ornament, his jewelled fingers steepled under his chin. His scarlet cassock swept to the floor in dark cascades and oozed lavender scent. The Codex pillars rose above him; piles of stone and marble still littered the floor around the incomplete one, the Adjunct noted. More than two weeks had passed since he’d last been here and he’d yet to see a single mason on the scaffolding.

  Definitely paying them by the hour.

  Clay, the captain of the temple guard, slouched in the chair opposite and watched this interrogation with a bored expression, his eyes as dull as nailheads in pitted stone. He wore a smoke-coloured cloak over his armour, fastened at his neck with an iron brooch bearing the temple guards’ insignia.

  Commander Hael frowned. His own uniform was ghostly white and edged with gold. “You think he stole an airship?” He stopped pacing. “We either have a missing ship reported or we don’t.”

  “One warship is unaccounted for.”

  “A warship ?”

  The young man kept his gaze level. “The Birkita, a heavy-deck. She was in for rearming—full arsenal. The crew were due to board after this morning’s Sending.”

  The commander hissed. “So he’s armed to the teeth.”

  Fogwill waved Mark Hael back to his seat and leaned acr
oss the desk. “What I would like to know is how they managed to get to the docks without being seen.”

  The aeronaut met Fogwill’s eyes. “We have a report of a temple guard escorting two mourners away from the bridge. We assume it was this man Angus. Of course, the mourners’ faces were hidden, but—”

  Clay barked a laugh. “Everyone’s to blame. What do we do about it?”

  Fogwill rubbed his temples. He could feel a headache coming. He just wanted to be alone, away from these brusque men. “Which direction did the airship head?”

  “North.”

  “Thank you, you may go.”

  The aeronaut glanced at Hael, who nodded.

  “Commander.” The young man saluted, turned sharply, and marched away.

  Clay leaned further back in his chair. “He simply walked out of the temple,” he said, never one to miss the obvious.

  “An erudite observation, Captain Clay,” Fogwill retorted, more angry with himself than with the captain of the temple guard.

  The Adjunct had spent an hour trapped in the soulcage with a silent, brooding Dill before Borelock had wandered into the Sanctum dragging a cleaning bucket. Borelock had blinked once in surprise, and then rushed to release them, whereupon Fogwill had roused the temple guard, who sent runners to summon Captain Clay and Commander Hael. The Presbyter had not passed the Gatebridge, they had assured him, and so Fogwill had set them to scouring the temple, after dispersing the remaining mourners. It was already midday and only now did it appear that Devon had fled Deepgate entirely.

  “We ought to send the armada in pursuit,” Clay suggested.

  Fogwill bristled, twisting a ring on his finger. “Commander Hael, how long before his ship runs out of fuel?”

  “She was fully replenished,” Hael replied stiffly, “so a week, eight days at most. Depends on the weather, the winds, and how hard Devon runs her.” He looked down at Fogwill with marked distaste, unable to disguise his contempt. “What does Devon want from the Presbyter?”

  Fogwill met his gaze squarely. “Answers.”

  “To what?”

  The priest hesitated to reply. Sypes had been adamant that none but the two of them should know of Ulcis’s intentions. How could an army, a whole city, be ordered to fight the god they had so long worshipped? Everything had rested on their recruiting Carnival. And now it seemed they had nothing to offer her. Instead, they had an army of the dead preparing to swell its ranks by force, a kidnapped Presbyter, and a lunatic loose in a warship.

  “He’s not the only one looking for answers,” Hael said. “This manhunt’s been a sham from the beginning. Our plantations are open to attack all along the Coyle. We’ve barely men enough to guard the tradeship ports at Racha and Clune. Both the Jasmin Eulen and the Marisa were fired upon by raiding parties when they last docked. And we’ll have a thousand reinstated reservists looking for pay before Scar Night. Who, may I ask, are we preparing to fight?”

  Fogwill said nothing.

  “I demand that you—”

  “Commander,” Fogwill interrupted. “Do not presume to issue demands to me in my own temple. Devon’s intentions will no doubt become clear before long, and until they do I want the army here and on full alert. The Poisoner has a fully loaded warship at his disposal, and the angelwine may already be changing him in ways we cannot predict.”

  Hael’s eyes turned as hard as the buttons on his uniform. Fogwill tried not to find pleasure in the commander’s irritation, but it wasn’t easy. Hael was a bully, and Fogwill had always despised bullies.

  “I doubt the angelwine will make the slightest difference to him,” Clay drawled. “Devon was nuts to begin with—just putting that stuff in his veins is proof enough. Never trusted him. Wouldn’t go near Fondelgrue’s pies for a week after Devon had been sniffing round the kitchens.”

  “Thank you, Captain.” Fogwill unfolded his hands. “Commander Hael, you said he took the warship north into the Deadsands. But why north? What will he find there?”

  “Nothing,” Hael admitted. “Scattered Heshette camps, sand and petrified forest—and Blackthrone. Most of the oases are poisoned. Anyway, the Heshette will be more of a threat to him than they are to us.”

  “Then why should he go there?”

  Clay tapped one finger against the side of his forehead. “Mad as a bag of crabs.”

  But Fogwill still wasn’t convinced. Devon had some plan. Devon always had a plan. “Very well,” he said, “ready the armada for pursuit.”

  After the others had gone, Fogwill sat alone at Sypes’s desk, thinking. Carnival, it transpired, already knew of the angelwine’s existence. According to some navigator who had survived a recent airship crash, the captain of that vessel had told her everything he knew.

  Only now the angelwine was gone, lost to the abyss.

  But she wouldn’t know that.

  * * * *

  The floor of the Birkita trembled as she burned her way north over the Deadsands. Her engines thumped steadily. Devon stood with his hand and stump resting on the great wheel and squinted through the curvature of windows at the front of the bridge. An orange sun sank into the west, throwing long shadows across the dunes. The teak and brass of the control deck glimmered in the warm light. Dozens of gleaming com-trumpets sprouted from the deck and the walls on either side. Banks of fat round dials displayed pressure, airspeed, altitude, direction, and innumerable other refinements the engineers had added to his original design. Devon assumed those readings he couldn’t fathom to be unimportant. An airship is a bag of gas. It goes up, down, forwards, and backwards. It moves at a certain speed, in a certain direction. What else is there to know?

  A dusty breeze from the air ducts above the windows stirred his wispy hair. Ahead, the knuckled peaks of Blackthrone shone bronze beneath a sky rippled with pink and blue.

  “Your man is absent,” Presbyter Sypes rasped. “Has he abandoned you? Or couldn’t you find his serum in time?”

  The old priest hadn’t moved from the chair Angus had found for him in the captain’s cabin and set in the centre of the bridge floor. The black folds of his cassock all but swallowed him: only his head was visible, even gaunter than usual and bobbing slightly, like a turkey’s, as he spoke.

  “Did you have a pleasant nap?” Devon asked.

  “Have I been asleep?”

  “Constantly.”

  “It’s the heat.”

  “It will become cooler once the sun has set. Angus is in the engine room, and blissfully full of serum. If I had to man the engines I would miss this wonderful view, and if you controlled them we would all be dead.” He turned the ship’s wheel a fraction. “Although at least then I wouldn’t have to listen to your interminable snoring. There’s wine, on the floor by your chair, if you’re thirsty.”

  Sypes found the bottle and raised it to his lips with shaking hands. The wine appeared to steady his nerves. “Men of my age don’t make good travellers.” He made an effort to focus on Devon. “How’s your hand?”

  Devon lifted the stump where his hand had been. New skin covered the wrist. “If that lout hadn’t knocked it into the pit, that hand would be back on my wrist by now. Then I could have used both of them to throttle him.”

  “He seemed a resourceful type.”

  Devon snorted. “Not resourceful enough to have sprouted wings.”

  “I understand you murdered his daughter?”

  “I think we both share the blame for that, Sypes.”

  Sypes lowered his eyes.

  The Poisoner studied one of the dials on the control deck, then turned the wheel a few degrees. “I wonder what your ghosts down there made of this morning’s new arrivals. My hand and a fool assassin plummeting after it.”

  The wrinkles on Sypes’s face gathered. “They’re normally dead before they reach Ulcis’s lair.”

  “Lair? Rather a strange choice of word.” He glanced at the old man. “Less distance for his soul to travel, I suppose. How long would he fall, do you think, before he hit
bottom?”

  Sypes did not reply. The warship shuddered and banked to one side. The bridge creaked ominously. Sypes nodded towards the distant mountain, slightly askew through the forward windows. “You expect to find allies at Blackthrone?”

  “Allies? No, slaves.”

  Sypes’s laugh turned into a hacking cough. “You think the Heshette will ever do what you tell them?”

  “I am an optimist.”

  “They’ll kill us all.”

  Devon held out his stump. “They can try.”

  The old priest furrowed his brow. He reached for the wine bottle to stop it toppling. “They’ll destroy this ship the moment she lands.”

  “Probably.”

  “The angelwine,” Sypes grumbled, “you do realize it’s already turning you insane?”

  The Poisoner merely smiled and turned back to stare out of the window. Blackthrone glowed at an odd angle in the last rays of sunlight. Devon muttered a curse, then spoke into the engine-room trumpet jutting from the control deck. “Angus, purge the starboard ribs by…” He glanced at a dial. “…eight hundred gallons or so.” He turned back to Sypes. “You see the way the mountain shines? Blackthrone ore—sapperbane they used to call it. There must be millions of tons of the stuff there. The strange thing is, we haven’t ever found another source outside this mountain. Not one. I believe Blackthrone is not a natural mountain, but part of something that fell from the sky eons ago.” Devon shrugged. “That is why so little grows in the Deadsands. The mountain is poisonous to this world.”

  Sypes’s gaze flicked to the horizon and back to Devon. “So you’ve decided to rekindle your interest in metallurgy?”

  “I am interested in all sciences—most recently in forbidden sciences.” Devon noticed the way the Presbyter avoided meeting his eyes. “No more skirting, Sypes. Why did you help me?”

  Sypes had sunk further into the chair. For a long time he gazed out of the window, his eyes hooded. Finally he spoke. “This was never supposed to happen, this manhunt.”

  “Fogwill,” Devon said.

  Sypes nodded wearily. “Once the Soft Men’s journal came to you, I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist attempting a distillation. The pains you suffer, the damage the poisons have wrought on you…Here was a way to end your suffering. Your physical suffering, at least. I’m sorry the knowledge came to me too late to save Elizabeth.”