Scar Night Page 0,114

is not the place to discuss it.”

Clay blew through his teeth. “Whole thing is a waste of time. She won’t parley.”

“I don’t suppose you trust Carnival either.”

“Damn right. Something unnatural about her.”

A smile found its way to Fogwill’s lips. “You think there’s something unnatural about an immortal, scar-ravaged, blood-sucking angel who steals souls during the night of moondark? Whatever could be unnatural about that?”

Clay was thinking about it.

After a moment Fogwill laughed. “No, Captain Clay, I can’t think of anything either.”

An hour passed before Mark Hael appeared. He had with him a chemist who wore a grease-stained apron and a breathing mask still slung around his neck. The man’s arms and head were bare, his skin scrubbed raw. Even his lips looked peeled. He sniffed the air and surveyed the room gleefully.

Fogwill couldn’t help but notice the soot stains on the commander’s uniform and the smudges left by both men’s boots on his Loombenno carpet.

“This is Coleblue,” Hael said. “He set up the gas tanks in the Sanctum.”

Coleblue tramped more soot into the carpet and rubbed his red hands together briskly. “I can’t guarantee it will work. We’ve tested it on birds, yes, pigeons—sparrows, doves—same respiratory system, we think, faster than ours, more sensitive, but you never know.”

“What did it do to these birds?” Fogwill asked.

“Killed them fast.” Coleblue snapped his fingers. “Like miners’ finches, quick quick.”

Fogwill eyed the chemist’s boiled skin. A sharply unpleasant odour hung about the man that reminded him of gasoliers. “What would happen if I breathed it?”

Coleblue’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t want to do that, no, no, not too many breaths anyway. Carnival will be more sensitive to the poison, yes. As you surmised, she ought to be incapacitated more quickly than you. But it’s best you hold your breath and leave the room as soon as it has been released.”

Clay grunted. “The gas in that airship didn’t bother her much.”

“Liftgas doesn’t burn lungs like this. You can’t breathe liftgas, no, but then she knew it was there, knew not to inhale.” Coleblue looked from Clay to Fogwill. “She won’t even smell this until she drops.” He smacked his hands together.

“I hope I won’t have to use it at all,” Fogwill said. “It’s merely a precaution.”

“Don’t like the sound of it,” Clay said. “Risky.”

Fogwill’s brows arched. “You don’t much trust gas, Captain, do you?”

“Never trust anything you can’t see.”

“What about air?”

“Especially air.”

With a slight shake of his head the priest turned back to the chemist. “Where did you hide the valve?”

“Under the lectern,” Coleblue said. “Twist it anti-clockwise to release the gas. The Sanctum will be flooded in seconds. We can go there now and I’ll show you.”

“Fine.” Fogwill rose. “I’ll be back shortly, Clay. Will you keep an eye out for Dill?” He followed Hael and Coleblue to the door, then stopped. “Mr. Coleblue, what would happen if Dill breathed the gas?”

“Nasty.” Coleblue snapped his fingers again. “Quick quick.”

* * * *

She means to kill me.

Dill couldn’t have reached for his sword even if he’d had it with him. His limbs were frozen, his blood dead in his veins. His thin armour felt like loops of heavy chain draped around his shoulders, the empty scabbard like an airship anchor.

Carnival stood with her wings half outstretched, hunched slightly as though ready for flight.

Or ready to pounce?

The feathers were hues of dark grey, flecked here and there with brown and black. She was lean, with muscles tight as wire coiled around slender bones, and as gaunt as a Spine assassin. Her mouldy leather trousers and vest might have been a thousand years old. Tangled black hair hung like a torn net over her face, partly obscuring her scars.So many scars .

Old scars cut through ancient scars. Thin white lines crisscrossed her cheeks, her forehead, her chin, her bare arms, leaving no part of her skin unmarked. Knife scars, all of them but one: a gouge like a rope mark looped her neck. She fingered it idly as she studied him, her head tilted to one side, as if she’d never seen his like before. And yet beneath the scars she might have been pretty. She looked no more than a year older than him. Without her scars she might have passed for a temple angel—had it not been for those eyes.

Carnival’s eyes were as black as the abyss, darker than the rage of a hundred archons; cold and empty as death. Fires from the Poison Kitchens burned deep in them and seemed the only glimmer of