Scar Night Page 0,169

at the door moved to attack her. But the god held his hand up, and they paused, uncertain.

“I want you to remember this pain,” Carnival hissed.

The god’s face contorted with rage. He tried to say something, but Carnival drew the chain even tighter, and all that escaped his throat was a snarl.

“Send them away.” She loosened her grip and let Ulcis suck in a breath. His face bright purple, he tried to reach round for her, his mighty wings thumping for leverage against the floor.

“What do you—?” he began.

“Shut up!” Carnival twisted her fist again. She leaned closer, her teeth an inch from his neck. “Get rid of those bastards or your head comes off. Then we’ll see if you can grow a new one.”

Ulcis slumped, holding up his hands. “Wait,” he gasped. “Rebecca—”

The links bit deeper into his flesh. “My name is Carnival!”

Blood bubbled from the corners of Ulcis’s mouth as veins ridged his neck and his eyes swelled.

The archons edged closer. Rachel slashed the air in front of them with her sword.

“Last chance,” Carnival warned. “Do you want to see another eon? Another day?”

Dill had finally found his feet. The bruises on his face had almost disappeared, and his eyes had changed colour. He regarded Carnival for a moment with a pale gold gaze, then turned to Rachel, a slight frown creasing his brow.

“Domestic,” she explained.

Ulcis waved a panicked hand at the archons. They backed off.

“Into the cell opposite,” Carnival growled.

The chain stretched just far enough to allow Rachel to pick up Mr. Nettle’s keys and lock the door.

“Now go,” Ulcis wheezed. “Leave me.”

Carnival grinned. “I won’t abandon you like this, Father.” She grabbed his wrist and forced it, struggling, to her mouth. “Tonight is Scar Night—or had you forgotten?”

The angel bit deeply.

* * * *

The Poisoner shouldered several bowmen aside, then headed upstairs, past runners, warriors, and wounded, through the cacophony of booming drums and clashing metal, rumbling engines and screams.

When he reached the bridge, he was in no better mood. He glowered at the Heshette councillors assembled, batted their questions aside with his stump, then slumped heavily into his control seat to peer out of the cracked and blackened windows.

Dawn turned the scene outside into an inferno. A handful of churchships hung in the smoke, like angry red welts in a poisonous sky. Deepgate troops broke in waves against the now static cutters, falling over each other to scramble away from the advancing Tooth. Knots of Spine among them kept loosing off bolts in a concentrated assault on the bridge windows. Scores of men disappeared beneath the great machine. Some managed to jump up to the cutting arms and hang there. Many others tried and failed.

“Mow them down, you said,” Devon snarled.

Bataba did not answer. The shaman had withdrawn to the far edge of the bridge, his face pinched and ashen.

Devon slammed a lever forwards and the sharpened cogs began to turn. Most of the men on the cutting arms dropped quickly into the scoop below or were crushed beneath the Tooth’s revolving tracks. A few held on longer, but as the cogs quickened they too were thrown back against the hull or down into the panicked mass of soldiers desperate to escape. The Tooth drove mercilessly over them all.

He banked the great machine to the left to intercept an abandoned siege-tower. The whirring cutters connected and ripped the structure into a cloud of splinters. Men leapt clear or died; a bloody mist fell over the jostling infantry. Devon resumed his southerly course, steering the machine up the ridge surrounding the abyss. Iron groynes broke under the Tooth’s tracks with hollow booms, and all at once Deepgate appeared before them.

The city looked as Devon had seen it on countless mornings before: the dusty shambles of wood and tin of the League; the curved shadow thrown by the eastern scarp; the pool of smog over the Scythe, pierced by chimneystacks, cranes and mooring spines; clumped tenements furrowed by endless winding lanes. And above it all, wreathed in mist, rose the temple. Gaslights still glimmered weakly among the chains. Had anyone bothered to evacuate the city? Devon doubted it. Deepgate had always been a place to die.

The cutters were a churning blur beneath him. Cogs hummed and ticked and sent nervous vibrations through the bridge. Devon eased the Tooth to a halt, just yards from the edge, his eyes fixed on the city before him. He clicked a short lever back.

Bataba edged closer.

“This is what you want?” Devon