Scar Night

5

Ghosts, Poisons, and Pastries

Presbyter Willard sypes was observing and recording the movements of ghosts. To facilitate viewing of the abyss beneath, he had extinguished the observatory lamps, leaving only a few scattered candles sparkling in their crystal lanterns. In the gloom, the Presbyter’s black cassock had no discernible shape. His head floated phantom-like over his desk, as cracked and yellow as the parchment beneath, while his quill sprouted from the arthritic grip of what appeared to be a disembodied hand.

To Adjunct Fogwill Crumb, the Presbyter’s face seemed to have halted momentarily as it melted towards the book. From the mottled expanse of his cranium, skin hung in folds like an accumulation of tallow. Tiny, chitinous eyes shifted somewhere within as the old priest reached to dip his quill in ink, focused once more on the page, and then resumed scratching his words into the journal.

Sypes set down his feather and creaked himself forward to peer into the eyepiece of the aurolethiscope, and for a sinful moment Fogwill wondered if the sound had come from the chair or from his master’s aged bones.

The aurolethiscope occupied most of the space in the observatory. Sypes cranked a handle and the brass machine began to turn like the innards of an enormous clock. Wheels and cogs clicked and whirred at various speeds. The lens column rotated smoothly, raising itself a fraction above the hole in the floor as the Presbyter adjusted focus. Reflections from the lantern winked on the spinning, polished surfaces and gave the machine the look of burnished gold.

Fogwill stood before his master, short, round, and splendid in his ceremonial robe. His pate was smooth and hard as a nut, his face softly plump and dusted with his favourite poppy talcum from Clune. Jewelled rings glinted on his fingers: fat rubies mounted in gold, subtle seastones in silver, and amber sandglass to match his smiling eyes. “Are the soul-lights bright this morning?” he asked.

The Presbyter squinted into the eyepiece. “Nothing for days now. I suspect my eyesight is failing.”

“Perhaps the dead grow less restless.”

Sypes sank back into his chair. He looked like he’d been hunched at the aurolethiscope all night. “Or more wary,” he said. He scribbled another sentence into the journal, then banged it shut.

Dust settled in time.

“You asked to see me,” Fogwill said.

Sypes turned with a succession of creaks. “I don’t think so.”

Fogwill steepled his fingers under his chin, trying to decide if the old man was baiting him. He produced a scroll from his sleeve. “I received a message.”

“Yes, yes.” Sypes looked irritated. “Is everything in order for the Sending?”

Fogwill rolled up the scroll and replaced it in his sleeve. “Preparations are almost complete. The Sanctum has been scrubbed and blessed, I’ve arranged for fresh candles—”

“Not perfumed?”

The Adjunct’s face slipped a little, before he caught it.

“I see,” Sypes said. “Must we always suffer these brothel odours?”

“Perfume masks the smell of rot.”

Sypes hunched forward and sniffed. “Clearly.”

Fogwill shuffled back a step, but kept his expression patient. There was an odd odour in here, now that he thought about it. He glanced at the hearth. A thick ream of parchment smouldered on the coals, blue smoke curling around its singed edges.

“Poetry,” the Presbyter said, catching Fogwill’s glance. “An Applecross butcher’s contribution to the Codex: one hundred ways to skin a cat.”

“A humorous piece?” Fogwill asked. Certainly a long one, for poetry .

“Not for the cat,” Sypes grumbled. “God forbid any more of the commoners learn how to write.” With a dramatically despondent shake of his head, he leaned back. The chair, or the Presbyter’s bones, protested softly. “How is Dill?”

“On his way to meet the soulcage.”

“Do you think he’s ready?”

Fogwill shrugged.

“Humph.” Sypes’s lips quivered. “The lad’s what now—ten?”

“Sixteen,” Fogwill said. As you well know . Dill was already a full year older than the age Codex law dictated he become Soul Warden, and the populace knew it. In the years following Gaine’s death, Borelock had been required to perform the angel’s duties and, although competent enough, his presence did little to inspire the faithful. Dill was more than just a servant of the Church, more than a symbol. He was a link to the past, to the founding of the same Church. As the living descendant of Ulcis’s own Herald, he and his line had become the thread which linked man to god. But outside the temple, gossip was rife. Had Callis’s line died with Dill’s father? If the bloodline had been severed, would Ulcis still honour his promise to those who worshipped him? Or would he abandon them to Iril, the Maze of Blood? Life in Deepgate was often bleak, sometimes turbulent. The Church had long known that to pull the faithful through, it was necessary to give them something to hold on to.

Fogwill had been surprised at Sypes’s repudiation of the Codex in this matter, but at the time had put it down to the apparent decline of the old man’s mental faculties. Only later had he begun to suspect otherwise. The Presbyter was only senile when it suited him.

Sypes rubbed an ink-stained finger across his chin, leaving a dark blue smudge. Fogwill couldn’t help but wonder if this action too was deliberate.

“You can’t keep him hidden in that tower for ever,” Fogwill said.

The Presbyter gave him a weary nod. “Of course you’re right. But I can’t help worrying about the lad. One arrow, one knife, one poisoned cup: that’s all it would take.”

“It’s not too late to have him combat-trained,” Fogwill said. “The temple guard could do it…or even the Spine, I mean…” He had meant any of the Spine except Rachel Hael. The absurdity of her assignment had not escaped Fogwill. Sypes had chosen the worst assassin in Deepgate to oversee Dill’s training.

“I’m sure she can teach him the basics at least,” Sypes said.

“Well, quite,” Fogwill said. Whatever the angel learned from her was sure to be basic. She hadn’t even been tempered, for god’s sake. “With your permission,” he said. “I think it’s time we found him a wife.”

Sypes looked up, his eyes colder.

“The families have always been well compensated,” Fogwill continued. “Before, and afterwards.”

Sypes grunted. “The sort of woman he needs is the sort who’d marry him without any of this…” He waved his hands at everything and nothing.

“The girls have other motives I’m—”

“Rot! I remember Gaine’s wife on her wedding day, her frozen smile.” Sypes let out a long sigh and his gaze shifted to the hole in the observatory floor. “And now she’s down there, watching us.” He rested his chin in his hand and stared into the abyss. “The dead, Fogwill, what are they up to, hmmm? Hiding, sulking, plotting, scheming in their pit.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “And up here I’m fading all the time. Like old ink on parchment. I’ll join them soon.” He punctuated this last word with a tap of his finger. “And I think they know it.”

Looking at him sitting there, with his stained skin and trembling fingers, Fogwill thought the old man was probably right.

“Nonsense,” he said instead. “You’re as strong as a courser.”

“The marriage,” Sypes said, “I’ll leave it in your hands. I’ve no stomach for such matters.” He picked up his blue-inked quill and plunked it in a bottle of red ink.

“A message, Your Grace.” A boy had appeared in the doorway, fidgeting with his scuffed cuffs.

“Gods,” Sypes said, “does no one knock?”

The boy grinned, handed the Presbyter a scroll, bowed briefly, and bolted, fast as a rat.

Sypes unrolled the message, held it out at arm’s length, squinting. “Good, good,” he said. “The Adraki has docked. Edward Hael’s body is here.”

“Wonderful news,” Fogwill said. Sypes had been worried about the general for days. “His son and daughter will be relieved.”

The Presbyter was still reading, frowning.

“The body?” Fogwill ventured.

Sypes ignored him. Finally, he set down the message and rose from his chair. He grabbed his walking stick and said, “Come with me.”

They left the observatory and plodded up the stairs that wound around the inside of the Acolyte’s Spiral. A gaggle of priests on their way to the missionary halls stood aside to let them pass. As they climbed, the floor disappeared far below. Sypes grumbled constantly, complaining about his heart, about dust, about everything. Halfway up, Fogwill unlocked a grate and they set off through the dim, aether-lit corridors in the direction of the dock.

Mark Hael was waiting for them in the dock anteroom. The aeronaut commander’s face was pinched but lean, with desert skin, mud-brown against the white of his uniform. Three stripes of gold braid looped each cuff. “We left the body outside,” he explained. “The smell.”

A faint, meaty odour hung in the air. Fogwill held his breath, then opened the doors leading out to the dock.

Weathered and overgrown with weeds, the basalt wharf extended some fifty paces out from the temple wall. It was wide enough not to require handrails, but high up enough to make Fogwill miss their presence. Moored to gantries at the far end was the Adraki . Trapped by a web of cables, its silver envelope towered over them, flashing violently in the sun. Portholes and brass fittings gleamed in the gondola. Deepgate sprawled dizzily far below, slumped in its chains under the blue sky.

“Good lord,” Fogwill gasped, pinching his nose. His perfume stood no chance against this.

“We came in from Sandport overnight,” Mark Hael said. “Ran our tanks dry to get here in time.”

But Fogwill wasn’t listening; he was looking at the corpse.

The thing that had once been General Edward Hael lay on its back, with blackened fingers curled at its chest. Dry blood and ash-caked scraps of uniform matted the cracked skin, and there were charred, empty sockets where eyes should have been. The naked soles of the feet reminded Fogwill of burnt hams.

Sypes coughed. “Are you certain it’s him?” he asked.

Mark Hael nodded. He reached into his pocket and handed something to the Presbyter. “Heshette savages brought the Skylark down near Dalamoor. She must have landed heavily, ruptured a gas tank. Took us a while to clear the area and get down to the wreckage. No survivors—the crew were all…like this.”

Sypes was looking at what he held in his hand. “Nasty business,” he said.

“He’s dry as leather,” Fogwill said.

“We’ll send the soul down today,” Sypes said.

“But—”

Sypes raised a hand, and Fogwill saw that he was clutching a fistful of medals. “Clearly some blood was lost, Adjunct. Some. Little enough for Edward, he’s full of it, brimming.” He gave the body an uneasy glance. “He was devout, a good soldier, a good man. I think it fair to say his soul survives intact.”

Mark Hael had his head bowed. “Presbyter…,” he said.

“You may leave us, Commander,” Sypes said. “The Adjunct and I will attend to this.”

“Very good, Your Grace.” Hael turned to go.

“Commander.”

“Your Grace?”

“I haven’t informed your sister yet.”

Mark Hael nodded and went back into the temple.

As soon as he was gone, Fogwill threw up his hands. “Look at this body, it’s a husk! There’s not a drop of blood left in its veins. The soul is already in Iril.”

“Mark Hael’s a fine lad,” Sypes murmured, almost to himself. “He’ll make a fine general one day. Good blood, eh? Won’t do to have friction between the Church and the military.” He squinted into the sun, gazing out over the desert. “Not now .”

“You can’t bless this thing ! Ulcis would be furious.”

Sypes made a dismissive gesture. “Pious soldiers like General Hael are rare. The god of chains needs good men.”

“But his soul is in the Maze!”

“Nonsense.”

Fogwill shook his head. “I’ll fetch some bearers,” he grumbled, eager to be away from the stench.

“No, Fogwill. There’s not much time before the Sending. Try to round up Devon, will you? He ought to be there, too.”

Fogwill frowned. He opened his mouth to argue, then changed his mind. Why bother? Sypes seemed determined to obstruct him. Finally he said, “I’ll send a boy.”

“I’d rather you took care of this personally.” Sypes pinched the bridge of his nose with two ink-stained fingers, leaving more blue smudges. “If you send a messenger, Devon will just have the lad off scrubbing vats in that infernal factory and we’ll never see him again.”

“Scrubbing vats?” Fogwill couldn’t hide the scorn in his voice. He had his own ideas about what happened to the temple staff who ended up in Deepgate’s Department of Military Science.

Sypes’s tufted eyebrows lowered till his eyes all but disappeared in the crenellations of his face. “Will you go find Devon?”

“I won’t have time to get out there. The ceremony…”

“Then I suggest you try the kitchen.”

“The kitchen?” The Adjunct’s eyes narrowed. “Our kitchen? The temple kitchen?”

“I understand he’s up to his old tricks again.”

Fogwill’s gaze dropped past his freshly laundered robe to his favourite blue plush slippers—a gift from Mother, each silver stitch lovingly wrestled by the old dear herself into vaguely floral splats. His powdered face sagged. “The kitchen,” he said, “of course. Where else would the Poisoner be today?”

* * * *

Rachel Hael was hanging upside down in darkness. She concentrated on her breathing, her muscles, her heartbeat, constructing states of mind to control blood flow and respiration. She envisioned a bitter coldness to draw blood away from her skin, a threat to quicken her heart and brace her weary muscles.

Spine called this process focusing . Fatigue, hunger, even thirst could be controlled for a time by any skilled Adept. She ought to be able to hang by her feet on this rope for hours, perhaps even days, without ill effects. But she’d been here for ten minutes and already had a blinding headache. Her Spine master, a thin man whose name she did not know, would have been scornful of her inability to focus, had he been capable of scorn.

Of all the Spine Adepts, only Rachel herself was able to feel scorn, or resentment, or anger, or happiness. All of them weaknesses in an assassin, for emotion was anathema to the Spine. It marred purity of thought and purpose, precluded focusing, and hindered Adepts in the field. Emotion was not tolerated for long. In the Church’s eyes she was the weakest Adept of them all. She’d already proved that to them more than once.

Someone tugged on the rope.

She twisted herself up, slipped her ankles out of the cuffs, and climbed back towards her room.

Her brother stood by the hatch in the floor. “Getting closer to god?” he asked.

Rachel sat on the edge of the hatchway and pulled up the rope, winding it into coils around her elbow. “Helps me relax,” she said.

He gave her a blank look.

“The silence,” she said. There was a sea of silence down there in the abyss, miles of it all around, and for untold miles below her, but it didn’t calm her as much as it once had. These days it just took the edge off.

“What if the rope snaps?” Mark asked.

She shrugged.

“Or someone cuts it?”

She shrugged.

“Gods below!” Mark cried. “The monks told me you’d be down there, but I didn’t believe them. Thought it had to be some kind of Spine joke—before I remembered the Spine don’t have a sense of humour.”

“What do you want?”

“Nice to see you too.”

Rachel picked up her sword from the weapon rack and slid it into the scabbard on her back. She tied the poison pouches to her belt, plugged three short bamboo tubes into the harnesses beside them, and then sat down on the bed, feeding knives and needles into the appropriate slots in her leather armour.

“We found him,” Mark said.

She paused for a moment, then continued loading her armour.

“Sypes expects us both present at the Sending.”

“I’ve stuff to do.”

“You don’t have a choice.”

A bitter smile stretched her lips.

Mark opened the window and leaned out, peering up at the foundation chains and the underbelly of the Gatebridge. “This has to be the lowest room in the temple. Is that some kind of symbolic statement? Keeping you lot down here in the foundations like this, in the darkness?”

“Access.”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

Mark looked round her room, but apparently spotted nothing of interest. “They don’t give you much, do they?”

Rachel slipped a blowpipe into her belt, then hefted her crossbow from the dresser and began to oil the bowstring. “I have everything I need,” she said.

“You any good with that thing?”

“I’m still alive.”

Mark sighed. He searched the room again, before his gaze returned to the crossbow in his sister’s lap. “I heard about the new soul-thief. The aeronauts are looking this way. Apparently most of the husks have been temple staff.”

She ignored him.

“Have you seen anything?”

“Like what? Someone carrying a bloodless corpse?”

Mark Hael was silent for a while, then said, “If you’re hiding something…”

She snorted. “You know me better than that.”

He threw up his hands. “No, Rachel, I don’t know you. I’ve hardly seen you in a dozen years. They’ve moved you from one backwater hole to the next. If you aren’t rotting down here in this monk-infested dungeon they like to call a school, then you’re traipsing through stinking, Heshette-fouled caves under some unholy mountain.” By now he’d found the wine on the dresser. She heard the stopper slide from the carafe, heard him sniff. “Low Coyle Valley,” he said. “Hardly worth the effort of pouring it.”

“Then don’t.”

Mark replaced the stopper. “Listen, I’m sorry. It’s been a difficult week for me.”

Rachel’s teeth clenched. She set down her crossbow and went over to the window, her back to him. She leaned out and let the breeze caress her face. The foundation chains were silhouetted against the morning sky. She knew these chains well; they provided routes into every part of Deepgate—hidden routes. But she knew the city rooftops better. For four years now, she’d hunted them on Scar Night. Four years, totalling about fifty Scar Nights, and in that time she’d loosed nine bolts. The thing she hunted knew the rooftops better than anyone.

A rook hopped across the ledge below, black as the iron around it. She watched it watching her. Was her quarry watching her too? Unlikely, she supposed, for Carnival shunned the daylight.

Mark said, “Decent of Sypes to let Father go through. I don’t think there was a drop of blood left in him. Crumb saw the truth of that. Dry as leather, he said. Felt like slapping the fat little princess for talking about our father that way.”

The benefits of being a Hael. Mark’s rank in the aeronauts, her own acceptance for Spine testing, all won for them by the family name—a name dragged inch by inch from the League to Ivygarths by generations of iron smugglers, plantation slavers, and temple bootlickers.

“You don’t even care,” Mark said. “After everything he’s done for you?”

“Get out,” she snapped.

“There was a time I would have slapped you for speaking to me like that.”

Rachel remembered, but she didn’t turn round. Twelve years with the Spine was armour enough against Mark. It was armour enough against everyone. She sighed. Almost everyone.

Mark’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I have the consent documents, the authorization for your tempering. The Spine masters are pressing me to sign.”

Rachel stiffened.

“I don’t know,” Mark said. “I’ve been thinking…Rachel, I don’t want you like them.”

She closed her eyes.

“They’re soulless.” He waited. “Nothing more than walking corpses. I can’t imagine you like that, my own sister. I don’t want to—”

Rachel could no longer restrain herself. “You liar!” she cried, wheeling to face him. “You’re doing it to hurt me. You’re bitter because you failed their tests and I passed. You blame me for Father’s disappointment in you—”

“You’re still an Adept.”

“Do you know what I had to do to earn that rank? Do you know how hard it was?”

Mark gave her a cold smile. “I heard about your little display.”

“Display?”She’d beaten every Adept, one after another, in single combat, and that hadn’t been enough. So, bruised and exhausted, she’d then challenged her master. An insult—had he been even capable of perceiving insults. In the end he’d been capable of nothing but focusing to keep his lungs clear of blood.

“Well…” Mark was looking around for something to distract him, but failed. “All the more reason that you don’t need to come under the Spine needles. If you can fight like that, untempered—”

“I had no choice! They don’t trust me, won’t accept me. I had to give them grounds to wait for your consent. If you don’t sign those papers, they’ll get rid of me, kick me out—or worse.” She paused, looked hard at her brother, and a sudden realization came to her. “That’s what you want, isn’t it? You want them to boot me out. You want me to fail.”

“I want to protect you,” he muttered.

“You callous bastard.”

“Callous?” Mark’s face reddened. “That’s marvellous, coming from you. How many Shetties did you clear from Hollowhill?”

Trust Mark to use a word like clear . His killing was done from an airship, from a distance. Whole tribes of Heshette were cleared by poison deployment. Men, women, and children were cleared by judicious, precise, carefully managed, cost-effective use of incendiaries. Mark was never close enough to hear them cry or beg. He never saw them bleed or foul themselves. They were simply cleared —never killed, never murdered . Her hand tightened on one of the bamboo tubes at her belt, then she relaxed it. She took a deep breath. “Please,” she said quietly, “sign the papers. Let them temper me. I can’t live like this any more. I can’t do the things they want me to do.”

“No, Rachel.”

“Then get out. I want to be alone.”

“You’re always alone . Do you hate company so much?”

Did she? The monks didn’t exactly forbid relationships. It was never that simple. They just kept her down here, training, focusing, or had her moving from one dark part of the world to the next. She remembered the very first time she’d held a sword, how she’d laughed, spinning with it like a dancer while her father looked on, grinning. That had been one of the last times she’d laughed. But she’d danced with it again: in Hollowhill and the Shale Forest, in Heshette caves and gin dens and Sandport brothels, until the sword had become as much a part of her as faith was to the tempered. She’d danced a hundred times before they’d assigned her to the rooftops, to Carnival. You aren’t ready, they’d warned. But it won’t make any difference .

She squinted up at the painfully blue sky beyond the foundation chains. Her eyes were not accustomed to the daylight, for to hunt at night, she’d had to live at night and train in darkness. For four years, she’d woken after dusk, and gone to sleep before the dawn.

“Sypes wants you to stay here,” Mark said. “To look after that sparrow of his.”

“Dill.”

On the window ledge below, the rook pattered along, ripped up a scrap of moss, then took off. Rachel watched it soar toward the sunlit city. The Church had hobbled Dill as surely as Mark had hobbled her. After Gaine, the temple had forbidden its archons to fly. With the Heshette war quashed and the introduction of airships, Battle-archons were no longer required. Or so the Presbyter claimed. Rachel suspected there was more to it than that. Gaine’s older brother, Sewender, had died young, without heirs, and Gaine, who under the circumstances should have taken several wives, had married only once. Sypes, to the horror of the clergy, had not pressed him to marry again. Now that an unknown bowman had killed Gaine, the bloodline had again been reduced to a solitary angel. And what an angel. As Gaine, for all his notoriety, had been but a shade of his ancestors, so Dill, poor awkward Dill, was a mere shade of his father. Callis’s blood had evidently thinned. No wonder Sypes kept him locked out of sight in that tower.

The Church had enemies everywhere. With Deepgate said to be full of Heshette spies, the Presbyter strived to hold on to his community’s last tangible link to god. This interdict, this cruel, immutable law, had been impressed on Dill since he’d been old enough to fly.

Or to fly away?

Sypes had been foolish. Chaining a person would only make him more determined to break free.

“You’ll enjoy that, though,” Mark said. “You like animals, don’t you?”

“Are you trying to annoy me? Is that what you’re doing here?”

“Fine!” He slammed his hands together. “I’m going. I’ll leave you to your knives and bolts and your dark little cell. Just make sure you get yourself to the Sanctum for the ceremony.”

He hesitated at the door. “You’re not going to wear that stuff, are you?”

Rachel didn’t reply. She was thinking about Dill. By hobbling him, had the temple spared his life or wasted it? And as the rook disappeared between the foundation chains, she wondered if she cared.

* * * *

From a round chamber at the bottom of his spire, Dill descended further into the main body of the temple, by way of a wheezing elevator. Little more than an iron cage ankle-deep in musty rugs, the machine creaked and shuddered down through a hole in the floor, past two fathoms of stone, till it emerged in a vast, seemingly bottomless space: the Hall of Angels. Sunlight glittered through huge orange-, lemon-, and cherry-glass mullioned windows lining the far walls, making tiny silhouettes of the multitude of priests who were busy preparing the temple for Scar Night. Figures swarmed over catwalks and ladders, closing enormous grates over the windows, checking and rechecking the locks, setting up the crossbows on their stanchions positioned before cross-shaped murderholes.

Dill pulled one of several tasselled cords which would, in theory, tell the hidden operators he wished to be taken to the Sanctum corridor. A bell tinkled far, far below, and somewhere beneath him, half a dozen men would be switching winches. The elevator paused, swaying, and then began to descend again, now easing closer to the southern wall. A pigeon settled on the bars immediately above, and began preening, before it noticed the angel and took off with a squawk.

Dill hated this elevator. The Presbyter had had it specially installed after the Church interdict on any of its archons’ resorting to flight. The contraption was slow and uncomfortable, and rarely arrived at the requested floor. And when it did arrive there, it often stopped so far out from the appropriate ledge as to necessitate a treacherous leap. Whether this was due to some failure in the elevator mechanism or to disgruntled winch staff, Dill didn’t know.

Abruptly, the elevator halted. It hung, creaking, in empty space two hundred feet above the floor, and still eighty feet from the nearest wall.

“Hello?” Dill called out.

None of the priests heard him. They were much too far away, too busy securing the windows, or aligning and loading the Spine crossbows.

Hand on his sword, Dill stood in the elevator and waited.

And waited.

“Hello?”

Nobody answered. High above, the same pigeon fluttered by.

* * * *

The kitchen was a battlefield. Strikes of countless knives rang out above the roar of roasting fires and the shouts of busy men. Battalions of cooks in tall white hats sweated over chopping tables, slicing, dicing, gutting, pounding. Cauldrons bubbled over open hearths. Potboys toiled before steaming sinks and scrubbed away at endless crockery, while stewards jostled by with platters of seared goat and sweet mutton, lark pies, rook pies, and hot buttered potatoes.

Fogwill’s face was already flushed, and trickles of sweat carved trails through the talcum on his cheeks. He decided that the faster he proceeded, the cleaner he might stay, so he wove quickly through stoves and sinks, ducked under rows of hanging copper pots, and hopped over streams of milky water. He held his sleeve over his nose, and almost collided with a grizzled porter carrying a pig. The animal squealed and wriggled in the man’s grip and the aged porter spat a curse. A sneering kitchen-hand turned from the limes he was chopping and said something derogatory, but Fogwill couldn’t make out his comment over the din.

“Beastly,” the Adjunct muttered. “Utterly beastly.” The place was a menagerie. Just think of the germs, the dirt brought in by all the animals. After this, he’d have to steep himself in lemon-oil from top to toe.

His robes were sodden around the ankles, and his slippers—well, he didn’t want to study them too closely.

Finally he found the head cook lying asleep on a makeshift bed of sacks heaped beneath a rack of eels, and he almost gagged at the stench. Even the smell of General Hael’s corpse had seemed more wholesome. The eels above him sweated oil in greasy drips that spattered the sleeping man’s fleshy jowls, making him mutter and twitch.

Fogwill prodded the dozing figure with his toe. “Wake up, Fondelgrue. Wake up.” Oil pattered on his own scalp.

Fondelgrue twisted himself awake with a groan, and scratched his swollen belly beneath a tunic that had once been white. Seeing Fogwill, he squeezed an eye shut, farted, and exhaled. “Crumb? What do you want?”

Fogwill noticed the dark spots now dappling his ceremonial robe and leapt back from underneath the eels, praying with all his heart that the foul odour emanated from the man before him rather than the creatures above. “I’m looking for Devon,” he said. “Have you seen him anywhere?”

Behind them, plates clattered and something smashed. Fondelgrue ignored the accident. “What would that poxy Poisoner be doing in here?”

“Maybe trying to tamper with the food again.” Fogwill shot a contemptuous glance at the gurgling, frothing pots, the smoking ovens encrusted with old food. “But I see you’ve got everything completely under control.”

The head cook slid a hand through his slick hair, then paused to examine something caught beneath his fingernail. He gave Fogwill a sideways look. “I think he tests his poisons and diseases on us.”

“I’ve heard him claim he comes here for inspiration.”

Fondelgrue smiled thinly.

“Well, if you do see him,” the Adjunct said, “please let him know he’s expected presently in the Sanctum—for a very important service.”

The head cook stifled a yawn. “It’s always bloody important with you lot.”

Behind them, a steward was yelling at a potboy. Something else smashed, but Fondelgrue didn’t flinch. Finally he grunted, and closed his eyes. “Well, you can see Devon isn’t here.”

Fogwill surveyed his surroundings again. Two potboys were wrestling in an aisle between banks of sinks and chopping boards. As they skidded and rolled around on the wet floor, one of them knocked against a table and a basket of cutlery scattered to the floor in a metallic hail.

“You have new staff, I see,” Fogwill commented. “Have they all been screened?”

Presbyter Sypes had a right to be nervous. With the Heshette enemy now decimated, there was always the risk they might turn to more subtle methods of revenge. One cup of poison?

Fogwill took a deep breath, and regretted it immediately. A dog whined nearby, then ceased abruptly. A dog? He didn’t want to know. He glanced once more at the wrestling potboys, then set off in the opposite direction. The odour, he noticed with horror, pursued him.

Threading his way back through the great kitchen, he had to dodge countless cooks, dish-washers, beaters, carvers, vegetable choppers, stewards, maids, and porters. The kitchen was bursting with them—who would notice one less body here? Or even a dozen? How many had the Poisoner whisked away to his own foul kitchens over the years? Fondelgrue’s words came back to him. I think he tests his poisons and diseases on us.

By the time Fogwill found the door, he was beginning to imagine that every one of these cauldrons might contain unknown terrors. That meat—suspiciously tinged with green? This pallid fowl—what ailment distressed it so? The Adjunct then and there resolved never to eat viands prepared by this kitchen again. At least for a week or so. He would meanwhile press Sypes on the matter of security, oversee the changes himself.

A steward glided past balancing a silver platter full of pastries.

Fogwill grabbed one, inspected it closely. Did the cream it contained have a faintly sulphurous odour? He dabbed his tongue to the soft pastry: was there a hint of bitterness masked by its succulent, buttery sweetness?

He stuffed the entire pastry into his mouth, and left the kitchen, munching.

Some risks were just worth taking.

* * * *

Arch Chemist and Poisoner Alexander Devon lay awake, bleeding. Blood trickled from cracks furrowing his face and neck, across his chest, and from the broken skin under his arms and knees, and soaked into his old stained sheet. Blisters burst on his back when he moved. His lungs felt furred: every breath bubbled and stung, every cough expelled strings of fluid, which he spat into a bucket beside the bed. Raw eyelids rested like broken glass on his swollen eyeballs. When he turned to check the standing clock by the window, his bones grated and his muscles scraped against the inside of his skin. He was late for work, yet moving meant agony. But Devon rose from his bed anyway, and tried to force his grimace of pain into a grin.

Life, after all, was full of little challenges.

Elizabeth’s side of the bed remained smooth and dry. He pressed fingers to his lips and touched the place where her head had once rested. Years of washing the sheets had thinned the outline of her wounded body until there was nothing left but a faint line of old blood. One day, he supposed, all trace of her would fade completely.

He removed the sheet and dumped it in a basket, then he set to work tending his own wounds. First his arms: he dabbed the weeping skin with a soft cotton pad steeped in alcohol, smeared away the blood, and then gently bound himself with clean bandages. Next his chest: once the skin was clean, he tucked the end of a bandage under one armpit and wrapped it around and around himself down to his waist. A jolt of pain shot through his knees as he bent to attend to his legs and feet, but he took his time. It was important to cover every wound, lest more infection set in. The Poison Kitchens harboured every type of infection.

When he was done, he dressed himself carefully in his old tweed suit and tried to regain his composure for the day ahead. Every inch of him felt raw and brittle. He placed his spectacles on his nose. Though his sight was fading, his eyes still looked clear and warm. Once handsome in a roguish sort of way, his was a good-humoured face, still etched with smile-lines—a face that people would instinctively warm to, were it not for the cracks and blisters and weeping skin.

Devon’s flesh knew the touch of poison.

Morning filtered through the gauzy drapes of his bedroom window while, outside, the bricks and tarred roofs of the Depression basked in sunlight. Birds chattered incessantly, nesting here in thousands, away from the egg-thieves and from the scroungers who had stripped this derelict district bare so long ago. Devon closed his eyes, letting their melodies wash over him. Far away, the mourners’ bell chimed solemnly in the temple.

Elizabeth would have loved it here. He had looked forward to showing her this place once its conversion was finished; it was to have been a surprise. Clay pots and trenchers still littered the warehouse roof, while pebbles marked meandering paths through heaped mounds of imported Plantation soil. He’d planted orangegrass, bluewisps, and roses; put up trellises; and built a slender whitewood gazebo. But the flowers he had planted were all withered now, the soil dry and dead. He’d taken too long to prepare his surprise. Now only traces of her survived: the faded stains in the sheets he’d brought from their Bridgeview townhouse, a few of her perfume bottles, all empty now, and the painting of her that had cost him half a year’s salary to commission. Devon shared his new home with memories.

He picked up one of Elizabeth’s perfume bottles, and inhaled deeply. Even the scent was faint—like the ghost of some long-dead flower—but it bolstered his resolve as it always did. Gently he replaced the stopper and set the bottle down, his hand lingering on the smooth glass.

The sound of sobbing could be heard from his laboratory next door. Good, the girl was awake. He ought perhaps to make her some coffee and try to calm her down. But the coffee might interfere with the sedative he planned to use on her. He sighed. Maybe he would speak to her softly, and try to ease her pain. It wasn’t going to be easy, though: there would be a lot of pain. The poor thing would struggle desperately.

But life, after all, was full of little challenges.