Lye Street

by Alan Campbell

  It would not release its grip.

  "Basilis!" cried Cope. "Cast us out!"

  The world dimmed. Smoke engulfed Greene, and he felt his awareness leave him. The strength fled from his legs; he crashed to his knees. From the distance came a sound, like the long, low drone of a hunting horn.

  Chapter Six

  Once more the old prospector found himself in Ravencrag's suite above the Phantasmacists Club. The fumes had cleared. A ruddy glow came from the wood stove, illuminating the musty furniture and bookshelves. Othniel Cope and Ravencrag sat around the table next to Greene. They were groggy and shaken, but thankfully alive.

  Greene felt something heavy in his fist. He was still clutching the branch from the Forest of Eyes. It looked at him, and at the ceiling, walls and floor – all at the same time. Disgusted, he let it drop to the floor.

  The phantasmacist twitched and groaned.

  "Coward!" Greene hissed. "We could have died back there."

  Ravencrag rubbed his eyes. "I'm no common brawler," he snarled. "I'm a scholar, Sal. There's no honour in scrapping with witless beasts."

  "So you took the honourable option of running away?"

  Ravencrag spat. "They showed no interest in attacking anyone until you provoked them."

  "Provoked them?"

  A sudden wail from Cope interrupted him. The thaumaturge was now hunched over the table. Spots of blood darkened the shoulder of his topcoat, but he paid his wounds no heed. In each hand he held a broken piece of the hound's skull. The relic had been cleft in two, and now spilled dust between his fingers. "One of Ayen's hounds has been destroyed!" he cried. "An aspect of my lord, Basilis, is lost. He is diminished!"

  Ravencrag fumbled awkwardly with his cuffs. "It's not my fault," he said.

  The thaumaturge's expression darkened. His fingers tightened around the pieces of broken skull, and it seemed as if he was about to strike the other man. But then something on the floor snagged his attention. "What is this!?" He picked up Greene's branch and glared at it in evident astonishment.

  "I grabbed it to use as a weapon," said Greene wearily. He could feel every moment of the fight in his old bones. He cricked his neck, then winced and wished he hadn't. "I was still holding it when we returned."

  "You ripped this from the forest?" cried Cope, aghast. "You assaulted Ayen's foremost assassin? Heaven's Lord of Warfare? I..." He gaped at Greene, slack-jawed and lost for words. A long moment passed before he regained his composure. "In all the decades I have served and obeyed His will,” he said, “I have never witnessed such blasphemy, such... outrageous contempt!"

  "I was only trying to help," said Greene.

  "Help?" Cope gagged. Then he snarled, "There will be a heavy price to pay for this, Mr Greene. My master does not look upon such acts of barbarism lightly. You have–" Abruptly he stopped yelling. He knocked back the brim of his hat, and then held up the grisly piece of wood between both of his hands, examining it closely. When at last he spoke, his voice had become soft once again, and full of wonder, "But it is still alive."

  "Is that good?"

  The thaumaturge was muttering excitedly to himself. "Astonishing, quite astonishing," he said. "Do you realise what this means? Basilis found a way to free this aspect of himself from the hound's dream. You have returned his vision to earth!"

  "I am sorry," Greene grumbled.

  Cope unbuttoned his topcoat, reached inside, and withdrew the pup from one the garment's many pockets. The dog opened its eyes, blinked, and then cast its gaze around the room. Its unnatural eyes fixed on the prospector. They were furious, the same eyes Greene had seen in the demon forest.

  The pup was an abomination. Greene could not look at it.

  "Basilis is no longer blind," the thaumaturge said. "And if my lord can see, then so can I." He set the dog down, and returned his attention to the hideous branch, peering into one of the demon's many eyes.

  And then he grinned.

  Chapter Seven

  The messages continued to haunt Carnival. She found no escape from them. In every dark attic and abandoned hovel, they cried out to her from the walls:

  LIE STRET LYE STR LIE STREET

  WHITTEN!

  Go to the lye tower.

  The moon thinned as the penultimate Scar Night of the year drew near. She could feel the blood quickening in her veins, her hunger reaching up to curl like ivy around her thundering heart. Her time to hunt was drawing near.

  Yet the Spine continued to hound her. Armed assassins manned watchtowers in every part of Deepgate. They crawled between the chains and gables of the Warrens. Missiles hissed past her when she took to the skies.

  She discovered a chimney stack built above a disused furnace, and she climbed inside its blackened throat. Twenty feet down she paused, resting awkwardly between two thin protrusions of brick. Her boots dislodged soot, feathers and silver coins from the ledges, sending them tumbling and clinking into the depths. The air stank of burnt coal.

  A white envelope had been wedged into a crack in the mortar. She teased it loose then stared at it for long time, her apprehension growing. Something made her open it and read the note inside. Beneath a sketch of a knife, she read:

  Look in your pockets.

  There was nothing in her pockets! Nothing! She tore the paper to shreds and fled the chimney.

  And so she resolved to avoid the decaying and abandoned places of Deepgate. She flew to the sand-blown streets of the labourers' encampment on the edge of the abyss.

  The settlement had been constructed above the very lip of the chasm, where the great sapperbane chain anchors burrowed deep into the bedrock. Heaps of rock, timber and lime glowed by the light of braziers, throwing massive shadows over the wasteland beyond. Cloth tents stood in amber ranks, the flaps laced shut. A few men huddled in groups, drinking and smoking, but Carnival crept away from them, out to the fringes where the firelight couldn't reach her.

  She ducked under Deepgate's main water pipe and stood at the perimeter of her domain, gazing out across the Deadsands. Dunes stretched to the horizon, bone-coloured under the waning moon. Here and there, the branches of petrified trees reached up from the sand to clutch at the heavens. Nothing lay beyond but the stars.

  The vast emptiness of the wasteland filled her with a new fear. How could there be so many leagues of nothing? Her anguish engulfed her, became a sudden desperate panic. She gasped and clawed at her chest, fighting the urge to return to the city.

  "Hello."

  Carnival wheeled.

  A little girl stood there, one hand resting nervously against the base of the water pipe. She was five or six years old, barefoot and dressed in the same brown rags worn by the camp labourers. She wore flowers in her tangled hair. Her eyes were wide; she had half turned away, as if ready to flee. She gaped at Carnival's wings, then at the scars on her face. "You're the bad angel," she said.

  Carnival stared.

  A call came from somewhere close by, "Noona!"

  The girl glanced away, then back at Carnival. "What's wrong with your face?"

  "Noona!"

  A woman ducked under the pipe. She was slim with long brown hair, barefooted like the girl. "Noona, there you are," she said crossly. "How many times have I told you–" She saw the angel.

  Carnival did not move.

  The woman grabbed the child, scooping her roughly up in her arms. "Stay away from her! Stay the hell away from her!"

  The girl began to cry.

  The woman stumbled backwards in the sand, her back grazing the water pipe. "You stay the hell away from my daughter, you ugly bitch!"

  Carnival took a step back. A desert breeze stirred her feathers.

  "Mummy..." the girl sobbed.

  "Leave us alone!" the woman screamed.

  The angel leapt into the night sky, thrashing her wings. Beneath her she saw men running, firebrands moving between the rows of tents. She heard shouts and curses, the screaming mother, and the child's wails. "Mummy! Mummy!" She flew highe
r, higher, dragging herself up beyond the range of arrows, and out over the dark rusting bowl of the city.

  Deepgate waited in its chains, a thousand blinking lights around the towering mass of the temple. The angel tore through the sky; out over the League of Rope and the Workers' Warrens. Chains ticked and groaned beneath her as metal cooled. Shadows waited in every lane and behind every link and girder; they seemed to reach for her like wraiths. Carnival flew on, her chest numb, her scarred flesh cold and bloodless. She could not think of a single place to go.

  Chapter Eight

  Ravencrag refused to accommodate the thaumaturge. "It was your idea to bring him here," he whispered to Greene while they stood by the wood stove, casting nervous glances back at their unusual guest. Othniel Cope had not moved in an hour. He was squatting on the floor, gazing feverishly at unimaginable sights through his horrible branch. "Besides," Ravencrag added, "you've got a spare room."

  Was this punishment, Greene wondered, for his assault on Ravencrag's twisted sense of honour? Or had the phantasmacist truly begun to fear their guest? The trip to the Forest of Eyes had sickened the prospector, but this new development worried him. He'd inadvertently recovered part of a creature which had no business being loose in this world, a demon who had betrayed both Ayen and Ulcis and yet actually survived. And neither of the gods would be very happy about that.

  "I have a family," said Greene. "I don't want that creepy bastard near them."

  Ravencrag snorted. "And I don't want him near me," he hissed. "You should have thought about all this before you brought me that blasted grimoire. Look at him, sitting there with his goddamn branch... The goddamn branch you brought back."

  Cope was gazing, slack-eyed, into the branch. His skin had an unhealthy waxy sheen to it. He seemed not to breathe.

  "What do you reckon he can see?" asked Greene. "Is he watching this world, or another?"

  "How the hell should I know?"

  They tried to bring Othniel Cope out if his catatonic state. They could not prise his fingers away from the branch, or his lure his eyes away from those of the demon, but he rose to his feet when guided, and walked in any direction in which they steered him.

  "He seems docile enough," observed Ravencrag. "Maybe we should just kill him and pitch him into the abyss. I know just the–"

  "There's only a week left 'till Scar Night," Greene reminded him. "I need him alive."

  "Then get him out of here. This is your problem, Sal. If you don't remove him from this house, I'll call the city militia."

  No amount of protest would change Ravencrag's mind. There was nothing for it but to take the thaumaturge back to Greene's house in Lye Street while the neighbourhood was still quiet. He would put Cope in the spare room – or a closet, or one of the large trunks he kept in the attic – lock him in, and wait until he decided to come out of his trance.

  They reached Greene's home without incident. The prospector trudged up the steps to his front door just as the sun swelled over the abyss rim, bathing the falcons on the summit of Barraby's watchtower in golden light. At the southern end of the street, the old brick lye tower remained shrouded in gloom. Laundry lines zigzagged between the tenements like gossamer, all empty and wet with dew. Othniel Cope did not resist as the prospector guided him inside and clicked the door shut behind him.

  Jack was already up. His voice called out from the kitchen. "A good night, Sal?"

  "Morning, Jack."

  "You want some porridge? It's warm."

  "No thanks." Greene steered the thaumaturge to the kitchen door. "Jack... this is Othniel Cope, a friend of mine. He'll be staying with us for a while."

  Jack looked up from his breakfast. He was a lanky young man, all elbows, with curly dark hair and an open, cheerful face which now clouded a little at the sight of their guest. "Good to meet you, Sir," he said. Evidently he noticed the other man's catatonia and the blank fixation he had with the branch in his hands, for his brow suddenly creased. He shot a nervous glance at Greene.

  "The man's a thaumaturge," said Greene. "Don't even ask about the branch. It's a religious thing. Help me get him upstairs before Ellie wakes up."

  They sat Cope on a rug by the hearth in Greene's own bedroom, where the prospector reckoned he could best keep an eye on him. Jack said nothing about the branch, but he was clearly agitated when he left for work. The heathens had been known to worship all manner of queer objects.

  Exhausted, Greene collapsed on his bed and promptly fell asleep in his clothes.

  Chapter Nine

  He woke to find amber sunlight slanting through this window. He had slept until late afternoon. A pitcher of fresh water and a glass had been left on the table beside his bed. His heavy topcoat had been removed, and placed on a chair beside the hearth. Cope was nowhere to be seen.

  The prospector leapt to his feet.

  Ellie was busy in the day room, darning one of Mina's tiny socks. She glanced up and smiled as he entered. "Mr Cope has been entertaining us with tales of Dalamoor," she said with a nod to the thaumaturge, who was seated opposite her, sipping a cup of tea. A tray of sandwiches and sweetmeats lay on the table between them. "It sounds so exotic!" she added.

  Cope gave the prospector a congenial nod. "I hope you don't mind," he said. "I didn't want to disturb you, and your daughter was kind enough to offer me lunch. I was just explaining how you knew my father and had offered to help find me work in Deepgate."

  Greene wondered what the thaumaturge had done with his branch. "Where's Mina?" he asked, but then he heard a giggle and turned to see his granddaughter playing happily in the corner of the room. Mina was bouncing the thaumaturge's pup on her lap. She'd dressed the horrid little creature in her doll's clothes. The demon Basilis, Ayen's Lord of Warfare and Hound Master of Heaven, glared out from the frills of a pink and white striped frock.

  "Granda!" Mina cried, holding up the puppy in her dumpy little arms. "Dis is Mr Bangles!"

  The pup growled.

  "Cuddle time," Mina squealed. She hugged the dog against her chest, half strangling it.

  "Mina, sweetheart..." Greene began.

  "She's perfectly safe," Cope said matter-of-factly. "Basilis has no teeth or claws." The corners of his lips curled in a dangerous smile. "At least, not yet."

  Chapter Ten

  That night several families in the Callow district of the city heard screams issuing from an old pendulum house, long abandoned since two of its support chains had snapped and dragged the lower stories into the abyss nine years before. They had checked their own door locks and the bolts on their window shutters, and, on the morrow, when the sun had been high enough to make them feel secure, the men had ventured out to investigate. Blood was seen leaking from the base of the building, and dripping into the fathomless abyss below. A group of concerned citizens marched out to the Church of Ulcis to demand an audience with Presbyter Scrimlock.

  Bartholomew Scrimlock listened politely to their concerns, and then dispatched a group of his priests to clean up the blood and locate the victim's family. He reassured the citizens: As Scar Night was still five days away, it was highly unlikely that Carnival was the murderer; it was most probably just the work of a common cutthroat. The citizens grumbled, but left.

  But Scrimlock was left wondering. It seemed to him that their renegade angel had become even crueller and more vicious of late. Only recently he'd had reports that Carnival had attacked a mother and her child by the water pipe in the abyss rim labourers' camp. Could it be that her bloodlust had intensified? Had she started to kill on other nights of the month besides darkmoon?

  Now he stood before the window in his library, watching the sun set over Deepgate's grey gables, over the watchtowers his predecessor had commissioned, and he wondered briefly whether he ought to risk the life of another temple battle archon.

  No. Carnival had cut through enough of them.

  Scrimlock's cassock sat heavy on his shoulders. All these troubles were ageing him prematurely. He had lost the vigou
r from his step, and the humour from his voice. His thick brown hair was now peppered with grey; it made him look older than his thirty eight years. His hands had developed a nervous twitch; he rubbed at spots behind his knuckles which were not there, and he worried too much about hell.

  Too much blood had been spilled in Deepgate. Parts of the city were now rife with apparitions. Phantasms haunted murder scenes like the echoes of screams. A gentlemen's club had even sprung up in Ivygarths to study these ghosts. Scrimlock took their reports, their analyses and suggestions, and he locked them in his Codex pillars with all the other books submitted for Church appraisal. He never read them with the same gusto he devoured the scientific tomes, for the metaphysical did not interest him as much as the physical: the nuts and bolts of industry which had built his marvellous city.

  A sad smile came to his lips. The Spine, if they knew his penchant for engineering, might have him deposed. After all, wasn't he was supposed to be a priest?

  Yet hadn't his workers performed miracles? Deepgate's chains were the greatest monument to Church power. They would last for millennia, holding the faithful suspended above their god's deep dark stronghold, until such time as Ulcis rose up to lead them through the gates of Heaven and reclaim his rightful throne. If man's indomitable determination could create such a city, could it not find a way to kill one miserable scarred little angel?

  There was a knock at the door. Adjunct Merryweather entered. He wore a grim expression on his face as he glided towards his master, the hem of his crimson cassock whispering across the flagstones.

  "Success?" asked Scrimlock.

  "Just another cutthroat job," he said. "The locals are now saying it was a righteous assassination, a response to the murder of the ox carriage driver who plummeted from the rim."