Scar Night

by Alan Campbell

  Devon’s expression darkened. “Don’t say her name, Sypes. You haven’t earned that right.”

  “I’m sorry,” the old man wheezed.

  Devon’s anger faded. “You didn’t trust me enough to approach me directly?”

  “Of course I didn’t.”

  “That at least makes sense.”

  “When the angelwine was ready, I would have known by your appearance. It would have been a simple matter then to take it from you.”

  Unconsciously, Devon raised his severed wrist to his chin. The skin felt new, tender, but there was no pain. He realized he was still wearing all the bandages under his suit—over the years he had grown so accustomed to them, he barely noticed them any more. But of course he could shed them now: the suit would be too large for his unswathed body. He almost smiled. “You wanted the elixir for yourself?”

  “No, for Carnival.”

  He trusts her over me? In a way, the idea amused Devon. There was something profoundly satisfying about having achieved that level of infamy. “The Spine would love you for that,” he remarked.

  “It was a risk.” The Presbyter took another sip of wine. “A sour balance. With angelwine in her blood she would no longer need to hunt victims to sustain herself. That would mean an end to Scar Night—thirteen sacrificed to save countless more. But now those same souls feel like links in a chain around my neck.”

  The bridge lurched sharply to one side, metal protesting in incremental groans. Something twanged behind its walls, like a rope twisted too tightly. Devon grabbed the com-trumpet. “Angus, I told you to purge the starboard…” He plucked up a second trumpet connected to the control deck by a length of flexible pipe, and held it to his ear as a tinny voice erupted from it. “Yes…. No…. Make it a thousand gallons now…. Starboard…. No, the right one…Yes, the thing that looks like a stopcock…What? I don’t know, just turn the damn thing a couple of times….”

  A few heartbeats later the Birkita righted herself with a hiss and a shudder. The horizon became more or less level again, before it started to tilt in the opposite direction. Devon reached for the trumpet again, but the bridge levelled almost immediately.

  The Poisoner turned back to the priest and eyed him for a few moments. Sypes’s explanation seemed thin. Would he so readily sanction the theft of thirteen souls just to end the bloodshed on Scar Night? That went against everything the old man and his Church purportedly stood for. Surely in his god’s eyes there could be no worse crime? There was more at stake here. He’s afraid of something, holding something back. He was even prepared to risk the wrath of his god over this. Any way Devon thought about it, he couldn’t get past that. Is he afraid of his own god? Or whatever he perceives to be a god?

  “Tell me,” he said. “What really lies at the bottom of the pit?”

  “The dead—and Ulcis.” Sypes’s answer came too quickly.

  Devon snorted. “An ousted god, devoid of his throne, who presides over an army of ghosts? I cannot accept that.”

  Sypes took another long draught of wine and replaced the bottle on the floor. His hand was steadier; it lingered to make sure the bottle stayed upright. “You don’t believe in Ulcis?”

  “I believe something resides down there. But a god? No.”

  “Your wife believed—”

  Devon sensed Sypes was trying to distract him, but he could not control his anger. “Elizabeth is dead and rotting, you old fool,” he said. “Only the maggots got to her long before she died. Those same pit-worshipping maggots I gave my own health to protect. Now tell me what you know, I’m losing patience.”

  “You plan to torture me?”

  “What?” Devon was startled to find he was gripping the old man’s arm, hard enough to hurt him. He released him. “Of course not,” he said. “No, no, of course not.” What was wrong with him? These outbursts were unlike him. A fog seemed to have settled in his head. He wasn’t thinking clearly. The angelwine—the side effects the Soft Men had reported? No, it would pass, as the voices had passed.

  Had there been voices?

  After the elixir had entered his veins, he’d been convinced he heard them—the voices of everyone he’d displaced: whispering, crying, screaming. But now? He couldn’t remember.

  “I’m surprised at that,” Sypes said. “You always claimed the efficacy of suffering could not be undervalued.”

  “I think your heart would give out if I so much as shouted at you.”

  The Presbyter laughed uneasily, a laugh that soon turned into a fit of coughing. He groped for the wine bottle, knocked it over. It rolled away, spilling wine across the deck. Devon retrieved it and handed it to him. Sypes drank deeply. When the worst of the coughing had passed he said, “If you’re planning to get me drunk—”

  “God forbid, and suffer more of your snoring?”

  “Then?”

  Then what? What was he going to do? He’d had the answer moments ago, he felt certain. But now he felt confused. He tried to concentrate, to find his way out of the fog shrouding his thoughts. Where was he? Where was Elizabeth?

  Elizabeth…

  Lying on her bed weeping. Dying while he watched in impotent grief. A life leached away until there was nothing left. First her looks, her energy, and then finally her hope. She had cried like a child and nothing he had contrived could save her. Devon felt a phantom fist clench at the missing end of his arm. The city took everything eventually. He knew what he had to do.

  “The dead,” he snarled, “do not reside at the bottom of the abyss. They are gathered above it. Pilgrims are brought to Deepgate to feed before they’re butchered—souls harvested to sustain whatever is down there. Is that life?”

  “What would you know about life?”

  Devon roared, “My blood and sweat have kept the rest of you safe! You crippled me, ruined me. You took her from me. You murdered her!”

  “You are no longer crippled….” Sypes was floundering now, his face flinching as though he expected Devon to strike him.

  “What is this?” Devon thrust his stump at Sypes. “You couldn’t take enough of me. You never will. The masses find who they need, and then consume . A flat-eyed, bovine hunger. And all of you dead, festering under your skins, waiting to become fodder for your faith.”

  He took a deep breath. Before today, such an outburst would have racked his lungs with pain. But not now. His blood thundered in his veins, vigorous, fresh. He’d wrenched his life back from the city. But it wasn’t enough. How could it ever be enough? Deepgate owed him more than it could ever repay.

  “Whatever foul thing lies in that pit built the Tooth of God to cut the ore from Blackthrone and forge the chains, and then it slunk down into the abyss for three thousand years—to feed. A god?” He sneered. “No, a parasite, like the rest of you.”

  Sypes’s eyes narrowed.

  “You will tell me exactly what is down there.”

  “What do you plan to do?”

  Devon smiled thinly. “I’ll get its attention. I’ll cut the chains.”

  Sypes spluttered.

  “Why not?” Devon said. “Aren’t you all going down there eventually? Isn’t that the point of your lives? Why not send everyone down at once?”

  Even the mottled spots on the Presbyter’s scalp seemed to pale. “You would murder everyone in the city?”

  “Murder?” Devon cried. “I’m giving them what they want!”

  * * * *

  The young aeronaut’s gaze had been snared by the shining brass of the aurolethiscope; he did not look at Adjunct Crumb as he spoke. “Thirty heavy-decks have been dispatched after the Birkita under pushed compression. They’ll unravel a flag line back to us as they go.”

  “Fascinating,” Adjunct Crumb replied. “And ultimately meaningless. Dill, do you have any idea what this man has just said?”

  Dill didn’t, and he admitted so.

  The aeronaut glanced at the Adjunct and started again. “The heavy-decks—”

  “Heavy-decks?”
r />   “Loaded warships. Lime-gas, incendiaries—”

  “I see. Please continue.”

  “—are pursuing the Birkita under pushed compression. They’ve twin-lined the engines and upped fuel pressure by—”

  “All right, all right, I don’t need to know all the details. So they’ve tinkered with the engines to make the ships go faster. But what was all that nonsense about unravelling flags?”

  “Ships will detach at intervals from the main fleet and remain static to form a flag line.”

  “A flag line?”

  “A communications line.”

  “Ah!” The priest looked pleased. “Why didn’t you say so to begin with? Now go, shoo. The angel and I have important matters to discuss.”

  When the aeronaut had disentangled his attention from the observatory workings and had left, Adjunct Crumb beckoned Dill closer to the aurolethiscope. “Honestly, these people have the most complicated way of saying the simplest things. It’s a wonder Deepgate’s navy functions at all.” He reached up into the machine and began adjusting things. “Now, if I remember, Sypes did it this way. We need to plug phantom-glass into the prism cupola”—he slotted something in—“…and twist the gloom filters round to prudent obreption.” He twisted something shiny. “That’s it. Now we ought to be able to see them. Would you like to see the dead?”

  Dill approached the aurolethiscope warily, conscious of his wings intruding in the tiny observatory, afraid of knocking something over, and also painfully aware of the gloom all around. The darkness seemed to compress around him. He could feel the weight of the temple pressing down, squeezing blood to the pit of his stomach, and he had to struggle to keep his breathing calm.

  The observatory desk was buried under wax-sealed scrolls, bone quills, glass pyramids of red, green, black, and blue ink. Further scrolls, in leather tubes, packed the shelves all around. A glass-fronted cabinet held on display, like surgeons’ tools, the elaborate devices for adjusting and calibrating the aurolethiscope. The machine took up so much space that the room itself might have been just a part of it, a hidden space within its workings. The lens column towered to twice his height, and all the surrounding cogs, struts, and foils crowded the dim arched ceiling.

  The Adjunct squeezed to one side of the desk, his sleeves at chest level to avoid the candle flame. A cloud of perfume wafted out from him, like sugared summer fruits. “Now, look through here,” he said, “and tell me what you see.”

  Dill leaned over the desk and peered into the eyepiece. The lens reflected his grey-white eye as he moved closer until he saw nothing but complete blackness.

  “Can you see them?”

  Dill looked harder, trying to make out any change in the uniform darkness. “I…It’s hard to tell.”

  “Give your eyes a moment to adjust.”

  He scanned the void before him. Still nothing. He might have been studying a sheet of black paper. He felt the shadows in the observatory reach closer, felt his pulse quicken. “What do they look like?”

  Adjunct Crumb huffed. “Try adjusting the focus. The handle to the left of the eyepiece. That’s it.”

  Dill cranked the handle. Above, he heard the brass skeleton click into motion.There . He stopped. For half a heartbeat he’d glimpsed movement in the void. Tiny lights. He edged the handle back a fraction and the lights appeared again, very faint, twinkling.

  “You see them?”

  Two, three lights. They drifted slowly through the darkness, changing shape, occasionally winking out and on again. “I see them,” he breathed.

  “The souls of the dead,” the Adjunct said.

  Dill strained to see more clearly, trying to discern the shapes of people in the lights. But they were too distant, just pale shifting glimmers. If only Rachel could see this …He watched the ghosts until they moved out of sight. Even after they had disappeared, he kept his eye to the glass for a long time, hoping they would return, but he saw no more.

  Eventually Adjunct Crumb placed a hand on his shoulder and gently moved him aside. “You’re lucky to have seen them, very few people have—especially at this time. Normally they only appear around the time of the Sending.”

  “They welcome the new dead?”

  Adjunct Crumb appeared to suppress a wince. “So we believe.”

  Dill gazed at the eyepiece of the aurolethiscope and wished the Adjunct would let him take another look, but the priest settled back into the chair and regarded Dill thoughtfully. “We have enemies all around us,” he announced.

  “The heathens?”

  “Certainly.” He hesitated. “But I fear we now have a new enemy, a more dangerous one.”

  Dill nodded. Is this why he summoned me? They need my help against Devon? Rachel had already told him all the news: how the Poisoner’s angelwine had driven him insane. Now he was loose in a stolen warship brimming with weapons, and the city was preparing for the worst. Abruptly Dill felt breathless, squeezed between excitement and fear.

  “Do you remember the oath you swore to serve and protect the temple?” Adjunct Crumb continued.

  The ceremony had occurred on his tenth birthday. Standing on the brink of the abyss, with a million candles shining in the Sanctum walls, Dill had pledged his allegiance before Presbyter Sypes, Adjunct Crumb, and Gaine. They had named him temple archon and presented him with the old sword that now hung at his hip. “I’ll do anything you ask,” he said.

  Adjunct Crumb looked into the eyepiece of the aurolethiscope. “Tell me, what do you know of Carnival?”

  “The Leech?”

  The priest frowned. “She’s been called many things,” he said. “Although I’m not sure I approve of ‘The Leech.’ A commoners’ term if ever I’ve heard one.”

  “She’s a monster, a soul-thief,” Dill said. “Rachel told me about her.”

  “That’s as well. I know we sometimes keep things from you, but it’s for your own good. An angel should not be unnecessarily burdened with life’s cruelties.”

  But an archon should be told about the temple’s enemies.

  “Carnival would make a strong ally.”

  Carnival?

  “She…” Adjunct Crumb turned the aurolethiscope handle round idly. “I know what she’s done in the past. She’s a tormented creature, but I fear now she may be the lesser of two evils.”

  Dill was speechless. How could Devon be worse than Carnival? How could anyone be worse than Carnival?

  The Adjunct kept turning the handle this way and that. He didn’t appear to be concentrating too hard on the view. “Carnival is a demon in every sense, but she’s a demon that we know, even if we don’t understand her.” A ruby on his finger sparkled in the candlelight. “I am not proposing we forgive her, but”—overhead the cogs clicked—“beyond Scar Night, life goes on.”

  “Why would she help?” Dill asked. “I thought she hated us.” He’d almost said: hated you..

  The aurolethiscope settled to silence. Adjunct Crumb leaned back and folded his fingers beneath his chin. “We have something she desperately needs.” He went back to watching the abyss. “It has come to my attention that she is aware of the existence of Devon’s angelwine.”

  “But it’s lost. It fell—”

  “And she must never be made aware of that fact. If she learns we no longer have it, our advantage becomes worthless.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  Adjunct Crumb was turning the handle again. The whole machine ticked, clacked, and whirred. “I want you to deliver a message to her,” he said.

  Dill’s wings twitched involuntarily. He felt his eyes frost in fear. “Me?”

  “It will be easier for you to find her. You can fly.”

  “But, I’ve never flown before, I don’t…” The lie crushed his voice to silence. Pulses of white and green ran alternately through his irises. Fortunately the Adjunct did not turn away from the aurolethiscope to notice them.

  “It’s about time you learned. It must happen quickly, and Rachel can help yo
u. I want you to find Carnival before next Scar Night and deliver an offer to parley. Tell no one about this, do you understand? No one.” He paused. “Dill, it has to be you. She’d kill anyone else I sent after her. Commoners are her prey. Spine forever hunt her. Priests send the Spine after her. She loathes the aeronauts. Only recently she brought down a warship for no apparent reason. Most of its crew lost their lives.”

  Dill could scarcely breathe. Battle-archons had faced Carnival before. He’d read about them in his books: archons who had already fathered many sons. The Church would never have risked their deaths otherwise. Few survived, and none had escaped uninjured.

  “She’ll kill me,” he said.

  “No,” Adjunct Crumb said. “I think she’ll listen to you.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ll be unarmed.”

  20

  Changes of Heart

  A heavy headwind buffeted the Birkita as she rumbled on through the night, whistling through her air ducts and strumming support cables. The warship was an orchestra of eerie midnight sounds. Stars crowded the darkness beyond the bridge windows. The Deadsands were blowing below in a shapeless silver gauze.

  “It would be faster to walk,” Devon grumbled as he raked through his bag of poisons. But he didn’t trust Angus enough with the engines or himself with the controls to set their speed at more than two-thirds full power. Which meant his pursuers must be gaining.

  “I am in no hurry to reach Blackthrone,” Sypes said. The old priest had not risen from his chair since he’d settled there, and Devon was beginning to wonder if they’d have to carry him out of the airship seated on it after they landed.

  “You wouldn’t be,” he sneered.

  “Nor am I in a hurry for you to find a suitable poison.”

  The Poisoner grunted. With the warship’s creeping progress against the wind, he’d lost patience with Sypes’s reluctance to talk. The thump of blood in his own heart had grown stronger. His skin had tightened around his muscles. His teeth felt scoured clean, hard; eyes quick and restless. The angelwine was still transforming him, driving him. Why shouldn’t he torture the priest? He had to do something positive before this damn wind blew them back to Deepgate. “Not this one,” he muttered, placing one bottle on the control deck. “Nor this.” He set another bottle aside.