Now he had important work to do. Cautious of the sloping roof, he rose and walked over to the stairs that spiralled down into his new home. The Blacklocks had abandoned this tower after the demise of their foundry, when the supporting chains had been stretched to the point where the Depression was deemed unsafe, but Devon was not overly concerned. The tower had remained intact for so long, it was unlikely to collapse in the near future. Not that he had the luxury of choice.
Compared to his previous abode, the room he inhabited was simple. Piles of crumbled mortar banked the circular walls. Wind whistled through a shattered window. Recesses in the naked stone held some of his books and a guttering oil lamp. The rest of his books were in piles on the floor, except for a few he had used to prop up the legs of his desk and chair to keep them level. Crates packed with essential equipment, clothes, and food lay stacked to one side, each with the word Crossop branded into the wood. In the centre of the room stood the letting chair, and seven flasks of Spine blood.
Devon had explored this tower years ago on one of his winter strolls, and kept a note of the place. The Blacklocks had left behind a few simple pieces of furniture: a worm-riddled desk that would not have fitted through the narrow window or down the stairwell, and had not been worth the trouble of dismantling; an old bureau and coffer, similarly too cumbersome to move; and a barrel of lamp oil. The tower cistern was a third full, some ninety gallons or so, brackish but drinkable. But it had been a hard night’s work bringing the rest of his equipment up the hill, and then up the stairs. The exertion had almost finished him. Still, once he was settled, he would be able to live here for several weeks without venturing far into Deepgate. Though he felt some regret at the loss of his fine furnishings and paintings—the delicate Clune mirror, and his set of leather-bound Bradenkas—he was not a man to dwell on his losses for long, and he set to work unpacking the remainder of the equipment. His situation, after all, was in some ways simpler now. His work at the Poison Kitchens would no longer interfere with his development of the angelwine, and disposal of the final body, whoever that turned out to be, need not be so arduous. The tower had a deep basement.
Once his apparatus was set up—the flasks, stands, and burners arranged for extraction, purification, and filtration—Devon sat at his desk and opened the bag containing his papers. He set the Soft Men’s journal to one side and his own notes beside it.
Thirteen souls had brought the original elixir to saturation point. Devon had expected some sign of potency to become apparent before now but, to his dismay, there had been no indication yet of any of the reported effects. True, the notes were fragmented, inconsistent in places. The language was archaic, often laced with terms Devon did not fully comprehend, but from what he could gather, the effects had been remarkable.
After ingesting angelwine, laboratory rats recovered quickly from what would normally have been mortal wounds and poxes. Severed limbs were regrown, even decapitation was not fatal. The heads survived, alert, while the bodies continued to twitch and scratch inside their cages. If head and torso were reunited, they melded, and the rats became completely functional once more. By continuing to refresh saturated flesh with drops of elixir, lifespan could be increased indefinitely.
Devon flipped through the pages of his transcription. One thing beyond the lack of preliminary results troubled him deeply. The animals would succumb to fits of unbridled rage—and madness.
Angelwine-fed rats would attack, rip apart anything living they came into contact with. Frequently they would even attempt to harm themselves, gnaw their own limbs, as though seeking death.
Seeking release from unbearable trauma?
The elixir, however, would not be denied. Life prevailed. Any damage the animals wrought upon themselves soon healed. The only way to end the wretched creatures’ torment had been to remove every last drop of their blood.
Further proof that life’s energy is contained within the blood. The soul? A temple word. And, down in the abyss, what removes the blood from the dead before this energy dissipates? The god of chains?
Devon smiled. One day it might be worth finding out.
There were long gaps in the notes after the initial animal tests. Pages had been defaced, as though such knowledge had been too dangerous for even the Church to hoard. But there were hints: fragments scrawled in margins after Mr. Partridge, Mr. Hightower, and Mr. Bloom had taken a sip of angelwine.
Devon ran his finger along some of the clues he had been able to decipher: a few anguished sentences written by Mr. Hightower before the Spine had come to claim him and his colleagues.
—A tainted spirit or many, hidden in the broth, may bend the will of the riven collective.
—Murderers or blackhearts? Or goodly spirits, demented by the weight of thickened sin?
—Tempestuous is their wrath for our sins.
—Souls whisper from the veil. The sharpest knife cannot cut them out. Flesh heals. The voices pull me closer to Iril.
Clearly the text implied that the extracted souls implanted in the new hosts were conscious. And furious. Devon dismissed this, albeit uneasily. He was dealing with metaphysical energies applied to physical matter, unconscious energies that could be utilized and directed by a conscious, living brain. He wasn’t bottling ghosts.
Hightower, given his ardent faith, was simply struggling with forces he was unable to comprehend in anything but spiritual terms. He believed he was possessed.
Devon considered this. Hightower had obviously suffered terribly. The dementia was either a product of his conflicted faith, or side effects caused by pollutants in the elixir. The latter was more likely. Mindless rats, after all, had screamed too.
Back in the temple library, Sypes had surrendered his chair to Fogwill and called for lint, alcohol, and bandages. Now the old man was on his knees, attending himself to the Adjunct’s wounds.
“The Soft Men’s journal took months to find,” Sypes explained, dabbing blood from Fogwill’s calf. “Amid all this…” He waved the red-stained wad of lint at the pillars of books behind him. “This decay.”
Fogwill barely felt the Presbyter’s ministrations. He could not stop shaking. A terrible cold had settled in his heart. In the tumult of his upended life, he groped for pieces that made sense.
Our faith, built upon a lie? Heaven is for ever closed. Callis, Herald to the Hoarder of Souls, little more than a ravenous beast. And our god…
The Temple of Ulcis rose above him, an impossible weight. Naught but cold, empty spaces.
What is our god?
“I could not understand the science, of course. Few of our chemists could.”
The theft of thirteen souls—for what? Did you hope to turn Devon into a monster to rival Ulcis?
Sypes bound Fogwill’s newly cleaned calf in bandages, tightly, forcing the Adjunct to wince. Then the old man rose, his face weary, his brow furrowed. “Do you think it was an easy decision to make?” he snapped. “Devon is the only man with the audacity to see something like this through. He loathes the Church!”
“You’d make him a god?”
“Not him, you fool! One sip of angelwine and he’d have turned as mad as a broom. We would have soon taken the elixir from him.”
Not you, Sypes…Darkness take me…Did you think you could hold madness at bay?
“Look around you, Adjunct!” Sypes lashed his stick at the Codex pillars. “Is there verity here? What truths are mouldering, buried under all these lies?” He hobbled over to the nearest pillar, unlocked a grate, and pulled out one of the volumes. “Blackcake. Cannon. Forgotten words.” He began ripping out pages. “No meaning here! And here…”—another grate, another book—“…Heathen cults. Barrows near Loom. What does that mean?” He threw the book to the floor, pulled out another. “Ha! An account of the Battle of the Tooth. Lies!” The old man tore more pages free, tossed them into the air. “All lies! It means nothing.”
The Presbyter stood, chest heaving, among the tumbling pages. Thin ink-stained fingers cu
rled around his walking stick. “The oldest books are dust, Fogwill. And there’s the only verity. Time subjugates everything. Truth and lies become synonymous. In the end, nothing we think or do matters.”
“But you can’t believe that. You’d oppose your own god, take angelwine, and suffer madness? You’d risk the wrath of the Spine—to save us all.”
The old priest sighed deeply. “The elixir was meant for Carnival. A restorative to end her suffering. With angelwine we…” He leaned heavily on his stick. “It was the only thing with which we might have bought her aid.”
You wanted Carnival as an ally? Barely an hour earlier the Adjunct would have found such blasphemy staggering. But now? A tower of cards, this plan. One enemy employed to fashion the means by which we might recruit a second foe, the second to oppose the most dangerous of them all .
Our own god?
The Presbyter must have caught Fogwill’s expression, for he said, “The god of chains is furious, Fogwill. He’s coming for our souls, a dead army at his command, all mindless prisoners of his will. Who but Carnival could stand against him?” He rubbed his face, let out a long breath. “The angelwine…? Devon must be found.”
Fogwill nodded slowly. “Our forces?”
“Recall them,” Sypes said. “We need them here…ready.”
“What will we tell them?”
Sypes shrugged. “I haven’t the faintest idea.”
Something strange was happening. For two days Dill had noticed the change, but as usual no one bothered to explain what was going on. Warships were returning from the outposts, more than he had ever seen gathering before. The Deepgate skies were full of them. And soldiers: units of men assembled in the Gatebridge courtyard each morning before marching into the city. Overheard snippets of kitchen staff conversation suggested some form of military manoeuvre was under way. The priests were rushing around, grim-faced, no time to speak to Dill. Even the mourners at the Sending appeared more agitated than usual and, in the Sanctum, both the Presbyter and Adjunct Crumb were wrapped in separate clouds of gloom.
The angel began to wonder if everyone in the city except him was privy to some secret. Was Deepgate expecting an attack from the heathens?
No doubt Rachel had been busy with her Spine duties, for he hadn’t seen her since their tour of the Poison Kitchens. Yesterday, just as the sun broke through the crown of spires, he’d climbed the stairwells and ladders to emerge on the tower roof where she’d convinced him to fly. But she hadn’t appeared. Not that he’d gone there to look for her; it was just that he had rather more time on his hands than usual, and he enjoyed the feeling of the breeze on his feathers, and the chance to get away from the close-lipped priests who shouldered by him on some important errand or other.
The snails were becoming more of a problem too. More of them than ever had been finding their way into his cell, and lately he’d taken to releasing them further afield. He walked for miles throughout the temple, planting one here, one there. He left them outside the priests’ cells, one at each door, and in the Sanctum Corridor; he placed them on steps and on window ledges, and outside the schoolroom. Once he went to the Spine Halls with half a bucket of them, but it was dark down there, so he changed his mind and put them in the Blue Hall instead, under table napkins.
Today he had a full bucket, nearly a hundred snails, and was wandering the dusty passages near the acolytes’ stairwells, looking for suitable places to deposit them, when a stooped, grey-faced priest struggled by with an armful of scrolls, shoving Dill’s wings aside. “Must you always get in everyone’s way?”
“I’m sorry.” Dill flattened himself against the wall.
“Can’t you bind those things up?” the priest snarled. He scurried on down the passageway, cassock swishing the flagstones underfoot, grey head shaking like a stone working loose from those around it.
The priest threw a dismissive final word over his shoulder. “If you must collect snails, for God’s sake don’t let Fondelgrue near them.”
The kitchen? Dill hadn’t thought of that. It would be warm in there. Perhaps the snails would like the heat and stay put. He snapped his wings out and stormed away, his feathers brooming dust from the walls.
I’ll take up just as much room as I like.
So he raced through passageways and arches, wings spread wide, drawing them in only as he passed each of the wall-mounted torches. He left a trail of snails as he went.
By the time he reached the stairwell to the ivy-tower, his bucket was empty and he felt victorious. He hadn’t yielded to another priest. Then again, he hadn’t met one either, but that wasn’t the point. He snatched up a brand and tore up the stairs.
A hundred steps higher the narrow windows began. Dill slotted the brand into an empty sconce, set down his bucket, and pounded up the rest of the stairs. If anyone was coming down, they’d just have to move out of his way.
The trapdoor opened to endless blue sky. Underneath crumbling arches, the gargoyles sat hunched, facing outwards, indifferent.
Rachel wasn’t here. Dill flopped to the ground.
No one had time for him any more. Why were they always in such a rush? If the city was preparing for an attack, shouldn’t he at least be informed? Was he not still an appointed guardian of the temple?
He jumped to his feet, flapped his wings irritably. Are you watching? The windows in the surrounding spires were all closed, the priests too busy threading through the corridors inside, too busy weaving their big secret to notice or care. Dill beat his wings harder, lifted an inch from the ground, before he panicked and let himself drop.
But a door open an inch is still an open door. Right then, Dill decided to do something he knew was forbidden. He decided to teach himself how to fly.
His initial attempts were dire. Worried that someone would emerge from the tower, he found a beam of wood to secure the trapdoor. Even then, he fretted and paced for a while before he felt confident that nobody would suddenly appear. Each time he beat his wings and felt himself begin to rise, he would pause, nervously listening for someone climbing the steps below. Eventually, he plucked up the courage to rise a full foot in the air. Then three feet. Then six. But he always descended again quickly to press his ear against the trapdoor.
Turning became a problem. He found he could hold himself static in the air quite comfortably, but when he attempted to move left or right, forward or backwards, he would lose his balance, panic, and crash to the stone surface before he knew what had gone wrong. He could hover, raise and lower himself, but what use would that be except for replacing candles in the temple candelabra? How had Gaine done it? Dill had never seen his father fly, but knew the angel had flown with the churchships into battle in his youth. If only his father were here to show him.
Days passed. Dill returned each morning to the ivy-tower to practise. He held himself aloft for longer each time, hovering above the centre of the circular roof, with the stone gargoyles shunning him, yet mocking him, and he dreaded the turns he would try to make, and the inevitable tumble to the flagstones that would follow. His hands and knees were constantly grazed, his clothes always dusty and torn. Nobody seemed to notice. The temple staff remained preoccupied with their secret dilemma. Rachel, meanwhile, did not appear. Dill persisted alone.
And then one morning, it came to him.
He was hovering some six feet above the roof, hearing finches twitter among the arches, when he noticed a tiny flower sprouting from a gargoyle’s neck. On impulse he decided to pluck it, and before he knew it had crossed the circle and was holding the flower in his hand. It felt like a trophy. He then moved back and left across the circle, towards another of the stone creatures. It now seemed effortless: he just thought of shifting in a certain direction, and it happened. His heart was racing.
The motions he made with his wings were so subtle he wasn’t even sure what he was doing. He deliberately tried moving to the right and felt himself begin to fall, only just catching himself in time. No: too much thought. He had to
relax, let his wings carry him effortlessly. The trick, he discovered, was not to try , but rather just let it happen. Slowly, he banked right and upwards, turning again to bring himself into the centre of the circle. Now higher this time; he ignored the physical motions of his wings and made a tight circle over the tower roof, then up, even higher, to the point where falling would injure him badly. With each new manoeuvre, his confidence grew.
He had it. He could fly.
Dill soared, laughing. He left the gargoyles and the broken arches far below and flew over wedges of pitched slate and chimneys, and out beyond the Rookery Spire. Deepgate stretched before him, soft with morning mist. He sucked in a deep lungful of sweet air, circled the spire, then flew back to gaze triumphantly down at the familiar ivy-tower. The gargoyles now looked tiny, earthbound and ugly, staring out with their fixed grimaces, oblivious to the angel above them.
And then he realized the trapdoor was rattling. Someone was trying to get out onto the roof.
A moment of panic nearly sent him plummeting, but he recovered and managed to control his descent. Dill landed safely, if not particularly elegantly. When he knocked the wooden beam away and pulled open the trapdoor, he was out of breath and shaking.
Rachel stepped out into the sunlight and eyed him suspiciously. “What have you been up to?” she said. Her gaze travelled the length of his scuffed clothing.
“Nothing.”
“Why couldn’t I open that trapdoor?”
He blushed, cheeks and eyes. “I was…exercising.”
Scar Night; Book One of the Deepgate Codex Trilogy Page 22
