Scar Night Page 0,112
and sailed up over the chain, in a wide arc that would bring him back around the temple. He would spiral outwards until he reached the rim. And then? He prayed it would be dawn by then.
Steady and calm.
The moon looked down, a bright eye, and Dill imagined other, hidden eyes watching him from below: eyes in the darkness under the eaves, and in the darkened windows, eyes in the temple, and eyes peering between the chains, staring out from the abyss below.
He swung around the temple, high above the weathervanes of Lilley, and saw the gap cut by the Scythe and the funnels of the Poison Kitchens beyond. Industry crammed the banks of the Scythe, shrouded in amber smog. Flamestacks bloomed and lit the bellies of smoke clouds. Steam curled around tangled pipes. The iron skeletons of gantries and cranes and docking spines reached up through the fumes. He looked for airships but saw none. Most were away hunting Devon in the desert, he realized, and he felt even more alone than before.
Dill flew on towards the flames, towards the light.
He left Lilley behind and soared over Ivygarths. Chains webbed everything: a garden of gnarled trees; a leaning tower with a light burning in the top window; an inn with a wooden goat hanging above the door. There were no people out; no sounds but the air rushing by, the clink of his armour, and the beat of his wings.
It grew warmer near the Scythe, so Dill decided to rest a while and shed the cold from his bones. He landed on a flat, tarred roof overlooking the abyssal gap, where the sour-sweet smell of coalgas lingered. Foundation chains stretched over the Scythe as though floating on a still, black lake. Factories crowded the far shore and disgorged ash into the gusting wind. Jets of steam hissed and whined among smoke and flames, while a deeper, booming sound arose from the Poison Kitchens.
At least it was warm and bright here. Heat from the flamestacks reached across the gulf and warmed his face and hands, melted the frost from his feathers. His rusted chain mail shone red-gold.
“Ironic, isn’t it?” said a voice from behind, a woman’s voice. “They pollute their own god’s burrow.”
Dill froze.
“Relax,” the woman continued. “I’m in no mood for slaughter.”
* * * *
Finally he’s moving.” Clay squinted through the sightglass they’d set on a tripod before Fogwill’s window. “I thought he’d become frozen to that rooftop.”
“We’re likely to freeze in here if you keep that window open much longer.” Fogwill shifted in his blanket. “Nothing more dangerous than a chill draught at night.”
Clay grunted. “I can think of a few other things.”
Fogwill scowled and pulled his chair closer to the fire. He picked up a poker and stabbed at the embers. “Which way is he heading?”
“South.” The captain of the temple guard seemed not to notice the cold as he hunched over the sightglass in his worn leathers. “Hell’s bloody balls, he looks like a lame dove dragging such a big empty scabbard. What did you make him wear it for?”
“I didn’t. He insisted.”
“Poor sod.”
Fogwill replaced the poker and cleaned his hands with a square of linen. “I wouldn’t have sent him if I didn’t think it was safe.” He did his best to sound like he believed that.
“Plenty of chilly draughts out there,” Clay grumbled, shaking his head. “This plan of yours is madness.”
Fogwill felt inclined to agree, but what choice did he have? He hadn’t even been able to tell Clay the real reason behind this attempt to parley with Carnival. He couldn’t tellthat to anyone. Hence the lie that Carnival would be offered Devon’s angelwine in exchange for the Poisoner’s death. Nobody but Fogwill need know Carnival’s real target. Dill himself had been easy enough to convince. Now that the Church had two immortal enemies, wasn’t it reasonable and apposite to turn them against each other? But others were more sceptical, so Fogwill had contrived a way in which he might speak to Carnival in complete safety. He would set a trap. Mark Hael, apparently thrilled at the prospect of putting Fogwill and Carnival in the same room, had gone off to make the arrangements. Clay, by contrast, had just stared at Fogwill for a long moment and then abruptly walked away, muttering curses.
Fogwill shivered inwardly on recalling the captain’s reaction. He threw the square of linen into the fire. “I would have hoped Commander Hael would be here by now with news from