With a powerful thump of her wings she took to the air. She dragged herself skywards, skirting laundry lines, until she came almost level with the tenement roofs. Here her enemies surrounded her.
They loosed their weapons.
She dived below a thrown net, banking and weaving through a flight of harpoons, but then an impact spun her around in the air. Lye Street reeled, and suddenly she was falling. Her foot snagged one of the laundry lines, which stretched and snapped. She hit the ground and rolled, both wings crumpling under her back. Her head struck something hard, metallic. A plate bolted to the street? For a heartbeat her thoughts spun in confusion.
Where was she? Why had she come here?
A harpoon jutted from Carnival's shoulder. She noticed a slender cable, attached to the missile's shaft, rising up towards the roof of the building in front of her. From above came the sound of winches turning. The cable drew taut, then Carnival felt herself being dragged rapidly across the cobbled ground.
Fury bucked inside her.
Snarling, the angel ripped the harpoon out of the dense muscles in her shoulder, sending an arc of blood as high as the rooftops. Her wound burned savagely, but it would heal in moments. She could already feel her blood clotting, swelling up inside her again, coursing through her veins with renewed vigour. Scars itched and flared on her arms, her face, her fists. Her dark eyes thinned.
Her knife! Where was her knife?
A cry came from the watchtower at the top of Lye Street. Carnival spun to see a group of assassins bundling a man through the tower doorway. Their glances met. His eyes widened in terror. She recognised him. Bucklestrappe's descendant. But then the door boomed shut and he was gone.
Bolts and harpoons whined all around her, ripped holes through her wings. Nets clashed against the cobbles, but Carnival ignored it all. With her scars now writhing, tightening around her chest and neck, she roared and spat blood and set off through the onslaught, heading up Lye Street towards the tower door.
Barraby's watchtower stood pinned within a thicket of chains, all radiating outwards like a child's drawing of sunbeams. Windows gaped in its walls, as black and empty as the abyss below the courtyard foundations, as thin as murderholes. A lean man might squeeze through such a gap, and yet Carnival would have to damage her own wings in order to follow. The door itself looked heavily reinforced. She took to the air again.
Two Spine were working furiously on the summit of the watchtower, cranking an old lye ballista around on its cogged pivot, trying to bring its caustic load to bear on the angel. She tore out their throats with her hands and flung their corpses over the parapet.
Missiles whizzed over her head, their crescent tips flashing in the starlight. She ducked, searched for cover. On the rooftops on either side of the street, the temple assassins surged closer, a dark wave of them. So many!
Then she saw the hatch in the tower roof.
She threw it open and plunged through.
She was in a dim stone chamber without windows. Against the outer wall, a curved stairwell sunk through the floor into deeper gloom. The rest of the space had been filled with clay pots, stacked one upon the other.
Carnival listened hard, hearing nothing, then stole down the stairwell.
Darkness filled the narrow space, yet the angel moved easily down the worn steps, her feathers brushing the roughcast wall. She passed a murderhole and peered out, but the narrow opening looked out across the rear of the courtyard. She saw nothing but rusted chains and the smokestacks of a foundry beyond.
A hissing, crackling sound came from above. Glancing back up the stairwell, the angel spied a quiver of white light.
Her instincts saved her. That uncanny wiring of nerves, which had so often driven her beyond the boundaries of pain and endurance, screamed at her now.
Move!
She threw herself down the steps as a massive concussion shook the building. She heard a crack, followed by the crash and rumble of stone. The watchtower lurched. Chunks of masonry poured into the stairwell, sealing it behind her. The air fogged with dust or smoke. Grit hissed through cracks in the darkness above.
Coughing and sputtering, Carnival picked herself up.
A second blast rumbled through the tower, this time from below.
The basement?
Carnival tore down the stairwell and reached a landing. An arched portal opened into another dismal chamber, lit by a single cresset set in a wall sconce.
The man she'd come to kill stood there, gazing at a sword on the floor.
"I picked the sword up," he said wearily. "Then I came to my senses and put it back down again. I've been walking around the bloody thing for a while now, trying to figure out what to do with it." He glanced up at her. "I don't know if they let me have it because they actually thought I could protect myself from you, or if it's just some kind of a joke. You know how Spine like their little jokes?"
Carnival stepped into the room.
Sal Greene put his hands in his pockets. "They used blackcake to blow the roof," he said. "And to seal the basement too, from the sound of things. I suppose it's a trap and I'm the bait. You ever see so many assassins in one place before?"
When the angel didn't answer, he went on, "I always reckoned this night would slip by me, one way or another. I tried to have you killed, you know? For the sake of my family. Didn't do me much good." Sadness clouded his eyes. He turned away. "You suit your hair like that, all spidery and windblown... And I like the ribbons." He sighed deeply, and took an unsteady step. He was shaking. "That's not going to work with you, is it? Not a chance..."
Carnival heard a scraping sound outside, followed by four loud bangs, like hammer blows.
Greene stared at the wall. "Just tell me one thing," he said. "What did Henry Bucklestrappe do to you?"
She grunted. "You don't know?"
"No."
"To me? Nothing." She heard the scuff of boots in the stairwell behind her.
Greene shook his head and smiled sadly. "You were looking out for someone else then? I never imagined it was that." He met her eyes again. "A friend of yours?"
The angel gave him an awkward shrug. She didn't know.
The old man frowned a little, but he had a look in his eyes which might have been wry amusement. "I wasn't lying about the ribbons," he said. "Makes you look... I don't know, like you give a shit about something other than killing every single person you meet."
From outside the tower came the rasp of a hundred blades being drawn.
Carnival felt the darkmoon thirst rise inside her, quickening her pulse, inflaming her scars. Her hands tightened into fists. She wondered what she'd done with her knife. She reached for her breast pocket, but it was empty.
Behind her, the footsteps grew louder. She heard the scrape of steel against the stairwell wall. The temple assassins had almost reached her. The Spine sword lay on the floor before her, its hammered steel edges gleaming in the light of the cresset. Carnival moved to pick up the weapon, but stopped.
I can make all that is ugly about you beautiful.
The angel raised a hand to touch the ribbons and flowers she had woven into her hair, and she thought about the hellish eyes she'd seen reflected in the shard of mirror. Was that how she appeared now? Despair swamped her heart. Tears prickled the corners of her eyes.
Unarmed, she turned away to meet her enemies.
They clashed in the landing outside the chamber: an old, wiry assassin closely followed by three of his colleagues. His gaunt features and cadaverous eyes evinced no fear. With his sword drawn, he moved as quickly and gracefully as a man of half his years.
Carnival no longer had any intention of fighting or fleeing. A feeling of numbness had filled her limbs. She did not move as the Adept thrust his blade upwards at her heart. The steel point flashed, drove deep into the angel's leather armour. She felt the metal split her flesh, the weapon's edge scrape her rib.
Pressure in her chest forced her back. Carnival tasted blood in her throat. Sh
e leaned forward into the sword, and looked into her opponent's eyes. There was nothing there – no surprise or wonder at the angel's unusual actions, naught but the vacant stare of a temple assassin going about the business of murder. The Adept placed his free hand behind the sword's pommel, and twisted the blade.
The angel's heart convulsed. She gasped.
But then she felt the wound begin to heal. Refusing to suffer such punishment, the flesh beneath her tapestry of scars fought back. Her heartbeats strengthened and become steady again. Blood thickened around the gash in her chest, stemming the flow. She let out a wail of furious anguish. Her immortal blood would not accept her death.
From somewhere deep inside, her thirst took over.
Suddenly, without intending to, she was clutching the naked blade in one lacerated fist, pulling it back out even as her free hand shot up and seized the assassin's neck. She squeezed hard, crushing his windpipe and arteries, and then pitched him backwards into the other Spine.
The blade clattered to the floor.
Carnival screamed.
And madness took over. She set upon her foes, meeting their swords with her fists, knees and elbows, laughing and shrieking like a woman deranged. The Spine backed away. With her wings looming like a wall of darkness behind her, the angel advanced down the stairwell. She killed two, four, eight of them. She shattered their bones and broke their skulls. She ripped out their throats with her teeth. She wept and giggled and spat blood in their faces.
The Spine had no use for crossbows in such a confined space, so they fought with blades. And they fought with the skill of master swordsmen. Steel flickered in the gloom before Carnival, clashing and sparking against the stone walls, as the angel deflected an onslaught of blows.
They were quite adept for mortals.
And still they came, pouring up the watchtower's stairwell and in through the narrow windows. They closed on her from the steps behind, clambering over the bodies of the fallen, trying to surround her. In the narrow confines of the stairwell, they attacked from above and below.
She slaughtered them all. And when the dead blocked the passageway, she forced their broken corpses out through the windows so that more of her enemies could reach her. Yet her own savagery appalled her. Blood covered her scars and dripped from her broken fingernails. Her ancient leathers bore a thousand new cuts and abrasions. Amidst her fury she suffered bouts of anguish. She cried out, begging her foes to leave her alone, and then butchered them when they refused. Abandoned weapons littered the steps, but Carnival could not bring herself to pick any of them up.
In time she fought her way down to the watchtower antechamber, where she came upon a heavy door. The iron-banded beams had been designed to hold back an army. She waited a heartbeat before testing her rage against it. The barrier resisted the first blow, and the second.
And then more Spine reinforcements arrived.
Here the temple assassins had room to manoeuvre. Their boiled leathers gleamed in the torchlight. They flooded down the stairwell and into the antechamber. Blades arcing, they rushed to flank the angel, attacking as one. Steel flashed and hissed and cut the air around her. Carnival screamed and laughed and danced between the blows, the shadows of her wings towering behind her, until the last sword crashed to the blood-soaked floor.
She was alone.
Voices came from outside the watchtower. She heard a man praying, followed by the dull tones of another assassin. This second man said, "It's over."
Carnival flexed her shoulders and tasted the blood on her lips. The antechamber reeked of violence. Torches guttered and crackled in their wall sconces, illuminating the wet red arcs which spattered the stones and the corpses and the swords upon the floor.
It's over?
The angel grunted. She crouched, took a deep, snarling breath, and then threw herself at the door.
It burst like so much rotten wood. Cool night air rushed in.
Two men were outside. A Spine Adept had been thrown backwards by the force of the breaking door, but he was already rising to his feet, his sword ready. The other man wore the cassock of a priest. He was kneeling to one side of the doorway, staring up at the angel in terror. "She's here," he hissed
Carnival gazed past the two men, to where the chains around Barraby's watchtower cut the night sky into countless triangles. Stars glittered among the spiderwork iron, bathing the scene in silver light.
She spied movement everywhere: the silhouettes of fifty or more Spine. They were scaling the chains lithely, dropping down to the courtyard below, converging on her. All Adepts? Carnival tried to force her lips into a smile, but the expression felt ugly and unnatural.
She glanced down at the kneeling priest and said, "Run."
Epilogue
When dawn broke, a long line of priests arrived with mops and buckets to wash the flagstones around Barraby's watchtower. They lit incense burners and prayed for the lives of all who had been lost. None of Deepgate's citizens knew exactly what had happened, or what had gone wrong, but rumours abounded. Presbyter Scrimlock, it was said, had locked himself in the temple library and refused to come out.
The sudden appearance of an old man at the watchtower door was never recorded, at least not in the official account, but other writings agree that he stepped out of the building nevertheless. He wore a heavy woollen topcoat, covered in dust. When he saw the sun he lifted his chin and took a long, deep breath.
Then he strolled down Lye Street to number 34 and let himself in.
Some claimed that Sal Greene had been involved in the disappearance of a phantasmacist, a known scoundrel who had run a gentlemen’s club in Ivygarths, but no formal charges were ever brought to bear. Temple census documents show that he lived a long life among the city chains without ever returning to the heathen cities he had known so well in his youth. When he finally died, his Sending was unremarkable.
His daughter Ellie became a seamstress, and was respected among the ladies of Lilley. She lived happily with her husband Jack, content to remain in Deepgate. Yet the old prospector's granddaughter, Mina, had obviously inherited something of his wanderlust.
Even as child Mina had been bold, widely known in the Warrens on account of the tiny mongrel she pushed around in a pram. Her mother's stable employment, coupled with a weakness to pander to her daughter's whims, ensured that Mina's dog was never seen in the same frock twice. It was a foul tempered creature, always growling and trying to bite anyone who ventured too close. Mina admonished it constantly with the back of a spoon. The pair became a focus for gossip in the neighbourhood. So much so, that when Mina left the chained city for Sanpah in her early twenties, some even said she took with her the very same ragged little pup.
The End
An extract from SEA OF GHOSTS
- the first book in Alan Campbell's new fantasy series, THE GRAVEDIGGER CHRONICLES
"Let my skill with a bow be judged when the stars flare and die, for I have shot arrows at all of them."
The Art of Hunting
Argusto Conquillas
8/4/900
"Ballistic weapons can be used effectively against a sorcerer, provided they are not aimed directly at the sorcerer."
Treatise on the Use of Imperial Ordnance Against Entropic Trickery
Colonel Thomas Granger
Prologue
A Tapestry of Sex
The shopkeeper stood seven feet tall and wore a fantastic turban, a twist of ice-cream silk laced with pearls. He ran his hand along the bookcase until he found the volume he was looking for, and extracted it with the deft flourish of a carnival magician. "This is the book you want," he said. "A Tapestry of Sex explores the art of seduction; it was penned by the greatest lover who ever lived." He paused in affected wonder. "Herein lie the secrets of Lord Herian Goodman – the methods by which he won the hearts of every man, woman, and cauldron abomination he desired. Take it, read it, allow yourself to be seduced by it."
Ida pressed the pages to her lips and breathed
in odours of perspiration and exotic perfume. She could still hear the hubbub of commerce in the cavernous gloom around her, but the noise seemed suddenly distant. As her eye followed the neat printed words, her heart began to race. She had to buy this book.
The Trove Market had grown into a network of enormous brick vaults and sinuous passages that reached underneath the Imperial city of Losoto, its cluttered aisles defining tributaries through which endless streams of tourists flowed. They wandered through vast arched spaces, gaping at shelves ablaze with gold and silver trinkets, at glass orchids and jewelled clocks and alabaster birdcages, at endless stacks of boiled-black dragon bones. Painted saints and figureheads smiled back at them with eyes of candle-flame and lips like glazed cherries. Tiny brass machines chuckled and chirruped meaningless words, pulsing colourful lights to no apparent purpose. Old swords waited in cabinets for new owners. There were boxes of feathers and jars of colourful dust, bottles of jellyfish wine and cloaks woven from the hair of dead princesses. Manatee skulls lay next to miniature tombstones. Sharkskin men and women writhed and danced in tanks of brine, their grey limbs sliding fluidly behind the curved glass walls, their hair like green pennants. A million customers might pass through Losoto's underground market, plucking at the banks of treasure, and yet the stock never diminished. It could not be eroded. Every artefact in the empire found its way here eventually, to lie in wait for a spark of desire.
Ida clutched her book as fiercely as a mother holds a long lost child. "Goodman was an Unmer Lord?" she asked the shopkeeper.
"Lord, libertine, and a formidable sorcerer to boot. He lived in a house up there, less than a hundred yards from here." He jabbed a finger up at the vaulted brick ceiling, beyond which the streets of Losoto would be basking in the sunshine.