Scar Night (3 page)

The Presbyter eyed the tiny stool. “A terminal manoeuvre, I suspect. My bones are still climbing steps. No, I’ll rest here by the window until they realize I’ve finally arrived.” He gathered the folds of his cassock and perched on the window ledge, folding his hands over the silver pommel of his walking stick.

“Well,” he said.

Dill fumbled with the bundle against his chest.

“I said, well?”

Dill hesitated. “I’m looking forward to it,” he said, lowering his eyes.

“Are you really?”

Dill nodded.

“Not nervous?”

Dill shook his head.

“Really?” The old man’s eyes narrowed. “Good.”

A long moment of silence passed between them. Coals shifted in the fire. Dill glanced back up. His sword was still there, glinting in the candlelight.

“Callis’s own sword,” the Presbyter observed.

Dill gave the weapon another brief look. His head dropped even lower as he turned back.

The Presbyter’s gaze travelled round the cell, lingering on the cracked tiles, Dill’s stool, the candle-chest, snail-bucket, and sleeping mat. There was little else to snag anyone’s attention. His hands twisted on the top of the walking stick. “Well—”

“Thank you,” Dill interrupted, “for bringing my clothes.”

Presbyter Sypes coughed. “I was coming up anyway, on my way to the observatory. Thought I’d wish you luck for the big day.”

Dill’s cell wasn’t on the way to the observatory. It wasn’t on the way to anywhere.

“Thank you, Your Grace.”

“Not nervous?”

“No.”

The Presbyter chewed his lips, struggling with something. Finally he said, “Been up on the roof again, have you?”

Dill flinched. “I…”

“Certain priests have nothing better to do than spy and snipe.” The Presbyter’s entire face wrinkled. “I won’t name names.” The wrinkles deepened. “It was Borelock, that bloodless pickthank. Skulking in the shadows like a damn Shettie saboteur, watching everything, as if it were any of his business. At least he came to
me
this time….” His voice trailed off.

“Still,” the old man added eventually, “can’t say I approve. Parts of the temple roof are rotten through.” He rapped his stick against the window ledge. “Dangerous. Don’t want you falling off and breaking your neck.”

Dill stole a glance at the Presbyter but saw no trace of insincerity there. “It won’t happen again,” he said, and right then he meant it. The whip scars on his back tightened, reminding him that Borelock hadn’t always taken his discoveries to the Presbyter.

Presbyter Sypes was examining the window ledge, as if he expected the stone to crumble at any moment. “Just be careful,” he said. “The temple is no place for foolish mistakes. Dangerous, you understand?”

A gust of wind shook the window glass in its lead surrounds, howled in the chimney. The fire crackled, wavered. Candles guttered. Dill felt the night outside crowding in on them, a pressure behind the windows, pushing, searching for a way in. He swallowed, nodded quickly.

The Presbyter sucked in his cheeks, then let them slacken. “I’d better be off,” he grumbled. “Far too much paperwork for me to be wasting my time here.” He rose unsteadily, his eyes focused inwardly on whatever toils lay ahead of him. “Power shifts among the nobles,” he muttered. “Trade, sciences, censuses, accounts, everything from supplies to bills to taxes to wages to stories to recipes to…hah!…poetry.” His shoulders slumped. “It never ends. The Codex grows fatter, the pillars in the temple library are full of books, stuffed to bursting, and I’m buried under the pages yet to be squeezed in. No place to put it all. How long does it take to build a new storage pillar, eh? Stonemason’s been at it for months now, for months.” He glanced around. “You haven’t seen him, have you? The stonemason?”

“No, Your Grace.”

“Thought not. I think the fellow’s died. Or gone and thrown himself into the abyss.” He sighed. “The fools still do that, you know? One whiff of hard work and they jump, disappear, slip down between the chains like heathens. As if Ulcis would accept unblessed corpses!” The Presbyter rubbed his eyes. “I don’t know, Dill. I don’t know where it will end.”

It seemed to Dill that Presbyter Sypes was ageing ten years for every one that passed. His fingers were wasted, ink-stained, curled into claws, as though still clutching his quill. But the Presbyter would struggle on, year after year, collating, ordering, and binding the city records, filling the pillars in his library with books that no one would ever read.

Until it finally kills him.

Back hunched, the old priest shuffled across the cell. “God help me,” he said, “if I spot him down there, plotting with the dead, I’ll wring his neck. I’ll have no skulduggery in my temple, or
under
it. None. I won’t stand for any of their nonsense.”

Dill rushed to get the door.

“Someone’s got to keep an eye on them.” The Presbyter jabbed his walking stick at the floor. “Got to make sure they aren’t up to anything unsavoury. This blasted wind, I swear it’s them. Listen to it: the dead moan more than the living. They’re restless, always restless before the ceremony.” He paused on the landing, and his expression softened. “Not nervous, Dill?”

“No, Your Grace.”

“Good lad.” Presbyter Sypes squeezed Dill’s shoulder, then released it. “About tomorrow…” He looked uncomfortable. “Your overseer will be here to collect you in time for the mourners’ bell. Your instruction will begin after the ceremony.”

Dill had been expecting this. John Reed Burrsong had been overseer to his father and to his father’s older brother, Dill’s uncle Sewender. A highly respected soldier and scholar, Burrsong had been instructing temple archons for more than fifty years. Dill had been eight or nine when he’d last seen the old overseer. Burrsong had looked to be more than a hundred years old back then, but he was as tough as old armour—still able wield his great iron sword to best men half his age.

“That’s right,” the Presbyter said. “Your sword. You ought to know how to use it, yes? And there are other things: poisons, decorum, and diplomacy.” He waited for an acknowledgement.

“Yes, Your Grace.”

“The overseer can explain it all better than I can. Be here in the morning. You’ll get along—bound to get along. Pretty little thing, if you don’t mind that haunted look. You don’t mind
that,
do you?”

Dill hid a look of surprise. Clearly, the Presbyter had become lost in one of his fuddles, slipped into another conversation. Not by any stretch of the imagination could John Reed Burrsong be described as pretty, little, or a thing.

“No, Your Grace.”

At once the old man came alive. “I
am
glad we had this chat.” He turned quickly away. “Best of luck. For tomorrow.”

Stone steps spiralled down into darkness. Wind whistled through the broken windows and murderholes below. “Shall I escort you down?” Dill said weakly, torn between his duty and the dread of descending into that terrible gloom. He edged closer to the top step. Presbyter Sypes might stumble, hurt himself in the dark. Had every one of the torch brands down there blown out?

The old priest studied him for a moment then rested a hand on the rough-surfaced wall and lowered himself down the first step. “No need, no need,” he said. “Get back to the fire, lad. Only nine hundred and ten steps to go.”

Dill wavered. A boot fell from the bundle he still clutched. He reached down to pick it up and dropped the rest of the garments, his hands were trembling so much.

“Nine hundred and nine.” The Presbyter gave him a strained smile as he waved the lad away with his stick. “Nine hundred and eight!”

The young angel gathered up his bundle and returned to his cell. He gave the bolts and window a final check, found everything secure, and for a moment considered lighting yet more candles. Night was just beginning, and his cell full of draughts. If the dead beneath the city were restless, some of the candles might blow out.

2

MR. NETTLE

H
E CARRIED HER
with the confidence of a man used to finding his way in darkness. Wooden boards creaked underfoot; ropes groaned and stuttered. With every step, the walkway bucked and swayed closer to the shacks on either side. They called it Oak Alley, those who lived here, but there wasn’t a splinter of oak in the whole damn place. Pulpboard more like, and tin. Mr. Nettle dipped his shoulder to avoid snaring his daughter’s shroud on a stray tin panel. As he ducked, the boards sank with him, bobbing the gangplanks that lay between the walkway and the doorsteps like tongues. The shacks hung motionless over the dark, quietly crumpled in their cradles of hemp.

Up ahead, a brand guttered over its blackened drum, spitting tar. Giant shadows swept around him as he passed. Mr. Nettle raised his bottle and took another slug, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, and settled back into the beat of his own footsteps.

The hood itched against his skin. The whole bloody robe itched. The rough sacking rubbed his wrists like stocks, drawing sweat despite the chill.

Gossip spread faster than disease in the League of Rope, and his muttered lies about Abigail’s murder had done nothing but feed those rumours. Unable to disguise his dead child’s wounds or pallor, he’d shooed away the shroud widows who’d come knocking at his door, cleaning and wrapping the body by himself. There’d been no viewing, no death ale. Curious voices soon turned angry and fearful. To avoid the gauntlet of his neighbours’ stares, he’d figured to deliver her at midnight, when the streets were as quiet as the yawning abyss beneath them.

Oak Alley dipped below the Tummel cross-chain—named after the Glueman who’d fought and died at Sourwater—and rose again steeply. Mr. Nettle stuffed his bottle under one arm, then strained on the rope to pull himself up the slippery boards beyond. When he reached the top, he saw that his secrecy had been in vain.

Barterblunder’s Penny Tavern depended from one of the foundation chains, some eight feet out from the walkway itself. Dented, potbellied, rivet-stitched, and belching smoke, it had lost none of its charm from a former life as a tar boiler. Rowdy laughter came from the open hatch in the tavern roof. Four men were outside. A heavyset fellow with the look of a cutpurse stood on the main walkway, shaking the guide-ropes as a second, scrawnier man wobbled across the tavern gangplank to join him. The other two crouched among the curtains of chains around the hatch, sharing smoke from an old tin hookah. Blaggards, the lot of them, they turned at Mr. Nettle’s approach. Drunken grins collapsed. The cutpurse let go of the guide-ropes.

One of the smokers exhaled. “Where does he think he’s going with that?”

“It’s the big scrounger from up Dens way,” the man on the gangplank said, “with the cut-up girl.”

The cutpurse lowered his head and the shadows under his eyes darkened. He took a step toward Mr. Nettle, all brazen like he owned the road.

“Leave him to the temple guard,” the smoker said. “Man doesn’t know better. He’s drunk or stupid with grief.”

“Got no right to take that thing to the temple,” the cutpurse said.

Mr. Nettle tightened his grip on Abigail and shoved past him. The walkway lurched. The other man spun and gripped the street-rope to steady himself. “You think they’ll let that in?” he called. “Think they won’t know?”

“Might be someone tells them first,” the man on the gangplank said. “Best bury her in the Deadsands, save yourself the walk.”

Mr. Nettle kicked the plank from under him.

The man threw an elbow over one of the guide-ropes. The hemp stretched dangerously, groaned, but held, leaving him swinging over darkness. The smokers laughed.

Mr. Nettle grunted. Damn right he was drunk.

When the men were out of sight, he shifted Abigail’s corpse to a more comfortable place on his shoulder. His heart was beating painfully. For a long while he searched the ground, seeing nothing.

What would Abigail have made of his present mood? How many times had she brooded and sulked, fretted and cried and shaken him to break his silence over one of her worries? He’d never gotten angry; never raised a hand to her like some fathers might have done. He’d just sat there and watched her through his whisky, quiet like. The bottle felt cold in his hand. He took another slug.

After a while, the path brought him to the edge of the Workers’ Warrens. Here the sprawl of timber huts and walkways lapped the walls of stone-built tenements. Frost clung to the cobbles and flint in Coal Street, a wending fissure which led the scrounger into the district of Chapelfunnel. Fog smothered the ground and writhed amid the swish of his mourning robe. Wisps of it coiled around his knees.

Maybe four hours until dawn. He was running out of time. He drank deeply, savouring the burn in his throat. Mutilation was not the answer. Not for
his
child. Those that took knives to their dead were worse than blaggards, or thieves, or cutthroats. They were worse than the heathens. Yet what choice did he have? If he was to see her safe?

Under his robe, the cleaver hung heavy from his belt.

Coal Street narrowed as he went deeper into the Warrens, pressing the fog into a dank vein. He passed Boiler’s Inn, silent and shuttered, and followed the long curve round Fishmarket. Smoke drifted through the locked grates. He narrowed his eyes and pushed on through it, hoping the shroud would not retain the smell. Past Fishmarket the tenements grew taller and slouched inwards. In some places the upper storeys buttressed those opposite, like exhausted brawlers, and then Mr. Nettle’s footsteps echoed in utter darkness. Unseen tunnels burrowed into the walls here, gaping maws that leaked chill draughts, odours of damp straw and horses, hookah smoke and weed. Once, he sniffed the spice of the censers at Sinners’ Well: his stomach clenched at that.

Beyond the tunnels there was scarcely more light. With the brands here long out, moonlight fell in grey slabs that made the shadows all the darker. He trudged past bolted door after bolted door. Rusted bridges linked the districts of the Warrens, spanning narrow canals of empty space. He left Chapelfunnel and crossed into Merrygate, iron ringing under the hobnails of his boots.

He was deep in the Warrens, where Merrygate merged into Applecross and the road skirted the broken watchtower to follow Dolmen’s Chain, when he noticed a heap of blankets on the ground ahead stir. A voice chimed out: “Coin for a pilgrim, sir, a penny or a double? Look at the moon grin—one night before she’s dark. A double for a room to keep me safe.”

Blankets hid the boy’s face, but Mr. Nettle saw the cup outstretched.

“Hungry,” the beggar said, reaching for his own mouth. “No mother, no father.”

Mr. Nettle spat at him without breaking stride.

Fifty years a scrounger had taught him plenty. Expect nothing, ask for nothing. If you need a thing, you find it or you pay for it. If you can’t find it or you can’t afford it, you never needed it. A double would make no difference anyway. Didn’t matter what night it was any more. Full moon or dark moon, the lad wasn’t safe. No one was safe these days.

“Ragman!” the beggar cried. “Keep your League-filth coin, you’re no better than me.” He banged his cup against the wall and began to sing. “Come out tomorrow. Come see the moon. Out tomorrow. See the moon.”

Mr. Nettle’s pace faltered for an instant. Thrashing the beggar would only delay him. He held Abigail more firmly, straightened his back, and pressed on. The city soon swallowed the boy’s lunatic song.

Dawn was close, but the districts of Deepgate still slept in frost: air held like a breath for morning. Stars glittered like spear points in a ragged strip between the eaves.

The bottle was nearly empty. He raised it to his lips, then lowered it again without taking a drink. What was he to do? He had to think. A headache was creeping into the base of his skull, and his thoughts ran like tar. Had he sleepwalked into this godforsaken maze? Where was he now? On Tapper Road, where once he’d broken an oil-seller’s jaw for weighting his barrel with stones. He was almost out of the Warrens. How much time left? Not much. He’d wasted it. He’d listened to his own footsteps and watched his breath curl up before him, and drunk his whisky. The cleaver blade felt like ice against his thigh, the bottle neck like a knot in his fist. He threw the bottle away and heard it smash.

Around the next bend, the Tapper Road plunged into deeper fog. Gas lamps bloomed in the distance: the temple districts. He was almost there.

Mr. Nettle paused by a luckhole, a gap where the street-stones had fallen through, lost to the abyss below. Someone had put down planks, but those would come up easy enough. There would still be iron down there, lots of it. Often you could remove three or more girders without weakening the street and making more holes. But sometimes you lifted too much iron and the whole lot would cave in when a loaded cart went over. It was hard to judge.

He pulled Abigail down from his shoulder so that she lay in his arms. Her face sparkled with a patina of ice, as white as the linen in which he had wrapped her. This was good linen, better than any you’d get in the League. He’d found a bolt beneath the Coalgas Bridge fourteen years ago, unsullied, for all the stink of that place, and kept it for himself. Even so, merchants sold silk out in Ivygarths, and he’d walked the miles there yesterday to price it. And walked the miles back empty-handed. It was fine enough linen.

There was nothing delicate about Abigail’s appearance. She had not been pretty: the strong jaw, wide forehead, features as blunt as his own but softer. Her too-wide shoulders and hips were now far from those of the young girl he still saw in her. Despite this, even after all this time, she weighed nothing. He could have carried her for ever.

Mr. Nettle closed his eyes and imagined Abigail opening hers. She would lift her arms around his shoulders.
You don’t have to carry me,
she’d say.
I can walk
. Then he’d lower her to the ground and they could turn round and go home. He pressed his forehead against hers. She was still cold as stone. He opened his eyes again, blinked at the gas lamps in the distance, and pushed on—crossing the Flint Bridge into Lilley.

Abigail had often come here to paint. She’d liked the crooked old townhouses with their slatted shutters and delicate iron balconies, and she’d liked to sit under a shady tree in the cobbled rounds and listen to birds chirrup while she worked. But she’d liked the gardens best.

They’d been down here together once, trying to sell a rake he’d scrounged in Ivygarths, and Abigail, being little, had done the door-knocking. An old fellow had let them in to one of the gardens and stood haggling with Mr. Nettle like a Roper, while Abigail had run in circles gawping at all the different flowers. After that, she’d wanted to go in all the gardens, but Lilley folk kept them locked tight. Still, he’d gotten eight doubles for the rake and was put in a fine mood, so he’d lifted her up on his shoulders so she could peek over the walls.

Southeast of Lilley the road veered away from Dolmen’s Chain and rose to Market Bridge, and here were the pedlars out stamping their feet, rubbing their hands, and hollering through the morning mist.

“Coal, oil, coal, oil.”

“Hot bread, fruit bread.”

“Birders, ratters, guarders.”

Some Lilley servants were already out, milling round the carts, buying, arguing, and laughing like it was their money they were spending.

There was no other way but on through the market. Mr. Nettle kept his head down and quickened his pace, and no one bothered him until he reached the flower sellers at the far end.

“You, mister?” The man got right up off his stool and stood in front of him, blocking his way. “Got daisies and poppies and Shale Forest milkflowers, all fresh and nothing over a double a bunch.”

He had a thin, dirt-coloured beard and a loop of gold in his ear, big enough to slip a finger through.

“Nothing over a double, and halfpenny sprigs of sickleberry from Highwine—and look here.” He picked up a bunch of the white roses and cradled them like he was holding a baby. “Lilley roses, home grown, six a penny.”

Mr. Nettle was staring at the earring.

The pedlar was looking at Abigail’s shroud. “Nobles been buying them up for twice that. Soil comes all the way from Goosehawk’s Plantation in Clune. Listen, give you another couple on top, same price.” He pushed the flowers into Mr. Nettle’s hand.

They were a tired-looking bunch: curling petals and brown stems.

“That’s eight for a penny,” the pedlar urged.

Mr. Nettle gripped the stems and shook hard. Petals scattered.

“Hey.”

“Withered,” Mr. Nettle said. He snatched a fist of petals from the ground and threw them at the pedlar. “Dead.”

The sky was flat white when he carried Abigail into Bridgeview, where the road unravelled into dozens of deep lanes. He wove through one after another, checking the signs to keep from losing his way. Victoria Lane, Plum Lane, Silvermarket. On Rose Lane he heard the shuffle of feet and looked up. High above, the soft silhouettes of the nobles’ bridges jagged between the townhouses. Muted conversation drifted down: they were going to see the angel; they were tired and cold, and if this dreadful fog didn’t lift they’d see nothing. Mr. Nettle reached the end of the lane, clumped down four steps, and came at last to a misty courtyard abutting the open abyss. Here he stopped.

The Gatebridge shattered the dawn. Arcs and struts of iron rose in a skeletal fan. Along the deck, low bolted gasoliers burned feverishly, lighting wedges of the thick oak beams which ran all the way to the temple steps at the opposite end. The dead lay there: six or seven that he could see. So few? His stomach tightened like twisted rope. He brought his hand to his mouth before he remembered he’d thrown the bottle away. His gaze lingered a while on those pale shrouds. Why could there not have been more today?

The Church of Ulcis rose up behind, its walls like black cliffs. Fierce convolutions of stone, sharp in the glare of the gasoliers, spread outwards from the doors, softened, and faded into the fog, so the building itself looked like it stretched to the ends of the world. Mr. Nettle knew how vast it was. On clear days you could see its fist of spires clear from the League, so big you felt you could reach over and grab it. But this was as close as he’d been in twenty-three years. There had been thirteen dead that previous day, fourteen including his wife. He’d left Abigail asleep in her tiny cot and carried Margaret here. A week before Scar Night and the guards had been lax: they’d opened none of the shrouds. But that day he’d had nothing to hide.