Danderport beckoned him over. “Sir, your opinion please.”
“What?” he snapped.
“The Tooth, sir.”
“What about it?”
Danderport gave him a limp smile, his fingers dancing. “Adraki aeronauts got a proper look at it as they rounded Blackthrone on the hunt for the Skylark. We were wondering if you had any thoughts about the method of its construction. My own theory is that the hull material may be vat-grown. Brent here disagrees.”
Devon considered this. The Tooth of God, as the priests called it, seemed too heavy to have ever moved without sinking deep into the Deadsands. Yet it had moved once. Deep trails of compacted earth still crisscrossed the desert in places, frequently vanishing under drifting sands only to become revealed years later. Whatever materials had been used in its construction were far lighter and stronger than anything they were currently familiar with.
“It is possible,” he conceded.
“Sir, perhaps a closer inspection of the Tooth might be possible at some point?” Danderport’s voice seesawed. “Merely an inspection. We wouldn’t touch a thing.”
The Poisoner harrumphed. “If Sypes agrees to it, I’ll let you know.”
Danderport’s face collapsed briefly before he turned back to his debate.
Devon’s chores gave him a gentle tug. He left the chemists pugging Danderport’s ideas like swill, and strode across the yard and out through the gates. It was late, he was tired, and he had a corpse to dispose of before supper.
In darkness Mr. Nettle continued to balance on top of the two-inch-wide partition wall. He couldn’t move, couldn’t see the next partition or the labyrinth of broken glass below. But he sensed invisible shapes swirling around him and he could taste their rage. It was like a thunderstorm imprisoned within a bottle.
Without even touching him, the Non Morai tore at him.
Close your eyes. Close your eyes. Close your eyes.
“Piss off,” Mr. Nettle growled. He pulled his cleaver from his belt and swiped madly at the air. The partition swayed and almost stole his balance.
The demons shrieked. Close your eyes! Let us in!
He saw them when he didn’t look at them, always out of the corners of his eyes. Vague black shapes, darker than the surrounding gloom. Glimpses of long red teeth and long white fingers. Sharp nails. Whenever he tried to get a proper look at them, they fled, as if furious at his gaze. He twisted his head around frantically, trying to track them. They were everywhere at once, yet nowhere, moving so fast he couldn’t be sure he saw anything at all. Now that his eyes were growing accustomed to the darkness, he spied the window in the far wall, a bleary grey square, and the upper edge of the partition nearest to it. He knew there was another partition in front of him, but he would have to gauge the distance across from memory. If he got it wrong he’d be down in the maze, and without the lantern light he’d likely stay there for good.
Something touched the back of his neck.
Mr. Nettle flinched, twisted round. Shadows churned like a swarm of beetles, hissing.
Close your eyes. Stay here with us.
Hell he would. The scrounger tucked his cleaver back into his belt and stepped out into nothing.
The sole of his boot pressed against something solid. For a moment he balanced there, each foot on the top edge of a different partition, and then he stepped across.
Let us in!
Now he could make out a few faint lines: the tops of two or three partitions closest to the window. Glass glinted below. But he still had to cross twenty feet of darkness as profound as the Chapelfunnel canal. How could he even know if another partition ran parallel to the one he was on? Would he step into the space where one corridor joined another and tumble headfirst between two walls of glass? And if he fell, would he instinctively close his eyes?
There is no danger from us, the Non Morai crooned. We want to help you. If you try to cross here you will fall. Move left a pace. Safer.
Last thing he needed was to have them tell him which way to go. He took another step.
Felt nothing beneath his foot.
Fell.
Glass bit deeply into both shoulders and arms, gouged through flesh. His jaw slammed against the floor, the impact kicking the wind out of him. He couldn’t help it: for an instant he closed his eyes.
That was enough.
Mr. Nettle snapped his eyes open but it was already too late. He felt something pushing into him, like stale water being forced into his lungs. And he could taste it: the taste of airless pools and dead weeds. He clawed at the air in front of his face, tried to pull whatever was there away. But there was nothing. The rank fluid flooded his throat and lungs. Mr. Nettle gagged, coughed, fought for air. Fear gripped him, and he scrambled upright and ran.
Glass walls ripped his shoulders to shreds. He ploughed on blindly, unable to breathe. Mr. Nettle knew he was a coward. He’d always been one. He’d known it since his father, a huge man with weed-stained fingers, had held him by the scruff of the neck over the edge of Nine Ropes Bridge, over the darkness.
There’s bottles down there.
Five years old and not knowing there was a net, he’d begged his old man not to let go of him. Then he was falling. Then came the net. He’d lain there for an age, sobbing and clutching the hemp strands, and when the tears finally stopped, he’d scrambled around looking for bottles. There had been none.
There never were any bottles, the Non Morai hissed, imitating his old man’s voice. Thought that net had frayed and wasted.
Now Mr. Nettle felt the same terror again: blind fear crushing his heart and lungs. He barged down the corridor. Sharp edges plucked constantly at his flesh. Blood sluiced over his arms. He didn’t care, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. He was going to die.
He slammed into a wall.
Glass fragments shattered against his hands, shoulders, chest. Mr. Nettle roared in pain, recoiled, and threw himself at the wall again.
Iril’s shrine shuddered. The partition collapsed, crashing into the one behind.
Then he was climbing up and over a slope of glass. At the top he saw the window, only three yards away. He leapt, fell short. Arms wrapped around the top of the next partition; shards deep in his knees now. He dragged himself up, pulled himself over. The window was in front of him.
No! A whirlwind of screams, as the Non Morai clawed at his bleeding skin, their touch like freezing rain. Cheat! You cannot leave the maze! You dare not!
The door now forgotten, Mr. Nettle dived through the window.
He hit the scaffolding outside in a shower of glass. The whole structure skreaked, tilted, and swung out over the Chapelfunnel canal. Glass tinkled off chains below. Mr. Nettle lay still for a dozen heartbeats, afraid to breathe or move. Then, slowly, the pressure in his chest eased, he felt his lungs clear and his throat loosen. The stale taste in his mouth faded. He spat furiously…and breathed.
Every inch of him had been cut, his clothes were in tatters, the skin on his hands shredded. But he rose like a man released from heavy chains and gazed grimly out across Chapelfunnel to where the flames of the Poison Kitchens roared beneath a smiling moon.
The stench of blood in Devon’s apartment forced him to open a window. He would have to get rid of the corpse and air the room if he was ever going to enjoy his meal. From a closet he grabbed one of the sacks he kept specially for this purpose. Less than a dozen left now—he made a mental note to obtain some more. Once the place was cleaned up, he would get one of his men to deliver some. He’d have to peruse the temple screening documents again, find someone without a family.
Drained of fluid, the girl’s body was relatively light, so he didn’t have much trouble piling it into the sack. For a moment he wondered if he shouldn’t dump it further away this time. There were places without nets where the abyss would swallow the evidence for good.
No. Devon wanted the bodies to be discovered. He wanted the Presbyter, if that was who had helped him, to witness the res
ult of his assistance.
Do you see what I’m working on? Do you approve?
He took pleasure in the thought of the old man balking in silence. Killing did not come easily, even to a man like Devon. Despite the purity of his motives, he found murder tiresome and disagreeable, even vulgar. Deepgate had reduced him to this, a common cutthroat, and the city had an obligation to share the burden it had imposed upon him.
But most of all he wanted Sypes to break his insufferable silence. What did the old man hope to gain from Devon’s work? Power? Immortality? Did he think Devon would share the fruits of his labours so readily?
Is he really so afraid of death? Or is there something more?
The Poisoner rubbed his eyes. He would learn the answers before long. Right now he had a body to dispose of, and he was too tired and hungry to walk far.
But still his cautious side interjected: why court attention? If he was publicly exposed as a soul-thief, no one could protect him. The Spine would see him hanging from the Avulsior’s gallows. Therefore, he would compromise, hide the body some distance away. The sooner he got the job done, the sooner he could get on with his supper.
Derelict buildings crowded the darkness. Whichever direction he chose, he had to carry his burden uphill. Twenty years earlier this district had teemed with industry, but over the years the sheer weight of the many factories, foundries, and warehouses had caused a degree of subsidence that left the neighbourhood sagging towards its centre. For the most part, adjustments had been made to keep the buildings level for as long as possible, but there was nothing to be done about the overstretched cross-chains that had caused the slump.
To the west, on the axis side of the Depression, as this district had come to be known, the abyssal gap curved away from the Poison Kitchens and the neighbouring shipyards. Those who laboured there called it the Scythe because of its crescent shape. It started narrow at Drake’s Flourmill, by the thirty-third chain, broadening to a width suitable for airships at Cotter’s brickworks and the Fly Holes, where the nets had been damaged by suicides. From there the gap ran past Chapelfunnel, where coalgas used to be made, Rin’s Rivets, the Spinning Chambers, and the hole where the Cistern Tavern had been, reaching the Poison Kitchens at its widest extent. Here bristled the spines of the main shipyards, Coulter’s berth among them, still twisted and charred, where the churchship Ataler had burned five years before. Hammers from Samuel North Rare Metals rang out beyond that, over the pounding from ore smelters, furnaces, and clay pens. The Scythe narrowed again at the Breach, never repaired since a lesser chain had snapped and ripped a clay store clean in two, killing sixty-three men. It disappeared at the forty-seventh chain, Mesa’s Chain, swallowed by workers’ shanties that grew thick as fungus around its edges.
The Depression had once shaken with the roar and hiss of churchships, tradeships, and warships, the hollers of porters, pulley gaffers, and rope hands, above the groan of stressed cable. Now it slouched and crumbled in silence.
A few blocks back from this gap, Devon’s own apartment had been converted from the top floor of what had once been Crossop’s Rhak and Whisky Warehouse. Although not one of the essential industries that usually command wharfside locations, it had been prosperous in its day and it remained an imposing building. Due to its position in the dead centre of the Depression, it had stayed almost completely level during the subsequent subsidence, requiring only minor ratcheting of its load pulleys. Old Crossop had watched the businesses around him decline, quite literally, until he was one of the last, and then the last. Finally, the lack of tradeships docking at this part of the Scythe left him isolated from his suppliers, and he was forced to sell at a price that made him sputter and clutch his heart. What little stock was left fetched more than the building. Devon had bought that too. He enjoyed the odd glass of Rhak.
Devon had purchased the warehouse fifteen years earlier, and even then it had been the only habitable construction for several blocks around. No windows overlooked his own, half-inch-thick steel doors kept intruders out, and the solid walls muffled any sounds from within, not that there was anyone around to hear. It well suited the Poisoner to have his apartments here.
So all directions were uphill and he had to make a choice. Using the docks for disposal meant somehow casting the body to avoid twenty feet of net, or a treacherous climb along a mooring gantry, neither of which prospects appealed to him. There was also the likelihood of someone spotting him from one of the crowded dwellings on the other side of the Scythe. A closer place came to mind.
By the time he reached the cusp of the hill, Devon’s chest was on fire. He collapsed, gasping, pinned under the corpse that now seemed so heavy. These pains had been getting worse recently, and his lungs bubbled with acid. He spat, and noticed blood in his saliva.
They were draining the aether tanks over in the Poison Kitchens and the flamestacks erupted in silver blooms, painting the brickwork and iron and flat tar roofs of the Depression. Even here, ash from the distant chimneys snowed lightly. Most people would have found such air unpalatable, but Devon had grown accustomed to it: the burning of gases and oils was the taste of progress, raw and undiluted—a smell that should have meant power.
Not power. Chains.
He felt like shouting across the city.
Do you see how you’ve crippled me? The sacrifice I made to keep you safe…Do you care?
He beat his fist against the girl’s body.
You are nothing but walking dead. All of you. Corpses yet to be cast into the abyss. I am the only living man in this city, and I am being slowly murdered.
That was what it was: murder. Deepgate was trying to kill him.
Devon spat again and glared at his own bloody saliva. Murder? He’d show them murder.
At the end of the block a freight bridge spanned the gap between Blacklock’s foundry, with its single, drunken chimney, and the receding arches which linked Smithport fulling mill to its warehouse.
There were nets below, but deep enough. He considered cutting through them. The climb down looked so difficult. I am too weary for this. By day the bridge’s shadow would conceal the sack, and there would be few passers-by, if any, to notice the smell. Scroungers no longer scoured the Depression. The nets here had long since been picked clean.
Devon heaved the sack up onto the rusty balustrade and tipped it over. The net creaked below. For a long moment he looked down into the darkness. He had completely lost his appetite.
Mr. Nettle knew what was in the sack. He’d known the moment he spied Devon leaving Crossop’s warehouse. A week past, he’d pulled a similar sack from a net not far from here. On that day, he’d waited a long, long time before he cut it open.
Crouched hidden in a doorway in the foundry wall, he waited until Devon was out of sight. Then he sprinted to the corner of the bridge, hooked his grapple around the balustrade, and slid down into the net.
Darkness and silence all around. Mr. Nettle lit his storm lamp. Ash caked the woven hemp, crumbled into the abyss under his lacerated hands. The sack lay directly underneath the bridge in the lowest dip of the net. With the lamp handle gripped between his teeth, he took his cleaver and sliced through the sack’s fabric.
She was younger than Abigail had been, maybe fifteen or sixteen. Her hair darker, lips fuller. But, for all that, it might have been his daughter: her skin was now just as pale, her eyes just as empty. He took her hand in his and rested her head and shoulders in the crook of his arm. She was as light as a flower.
For a long time he held her, as he had held Abigail, rocking back and forth, feeling his breathing resonate through her. He wondered if anyone was looking for her. Was her father roaming the streets even now, calling out her name? What had her name been? Did the Poisoner know? Or care?
The cuts on Mr. Nettle’s hands, forearms, and shoulders throbbed evilly, as though the glass from Scatterclaw’s maze still tore at him.
He took a firm grip of the net, brought down his cleaver, and hacked through the hemp
strands immediately around the girl. She slipped away into darkness.
Once he reached the surface again, he bolted back to Crossop’s, hardly caring if the thunder of his boots gave him away. He arrived at the corner of the warehouse just in time to see the Poisoner disappear inside. The metal door shut with a boom. One, two, three locks clanked in succession.
Mr. Nettle stepped out of the shadows and studied the building.
Light shone from an open window on the top floor. The drainpipe running close to it looked old, but there was no other way.
Da. Abigail’s voice came to him from a distant, quiet part of his mind, but the shock of it still cut through his anger.
Not now, girl.
Da, don’t do this.
Leave me alone.
It’s murder.
It’s justice.
Murder!
Her cry pierced his heart, and for a moment he stood there, uncertain. Murder? How could he murder a living, breathing man?
But was it murder?
What if the man you killed didn’t have a soul? Was that a sin? And what if it was?
What if it was?
Blood began to pound in his ears again. He hauled himself up the drainpipe. Rust flaked under his hands, but the pipe held his weight. He climbed vigorously, ignoring the pain in his wounded arms and shoulders; desiccated brick crumbled under the scrape of his boots and sprinkled to the lane below. If he could reach the apartment before Devon, his task would be simpler. He didn’t want to be caught climbing in, where he would be vulnerable. Better if he was already inside, and ready.
At the top he put a foot on the window ledge and balanced his weight between the ledge and the drainpipe. He peered inside.
Oil lamps warmed wood-panelled walls. Brass equipment, glass bottles, flasks. A desk and a broad, high-backed chair facing away from the window, and there, opposite, another chair with leather straps bolted to its arm rests. His eyes narrowed on that chair and the tubes looped around a metal stand to its side. He checked his cleaver was still secure in his belt, reached for the window frame to pull himself in…and stopped.