he said. “The city of Deep.”
“You really believe that? Everything they say? The city of the dead? The Ziggurat? The Garden of Bones? An army waiting to reclaim Heaven?”
“Don’t you?”
“I used to.” She brushed a finger over the flaking ironwork. “Now I’m not sure. Everyone seems to be waiting for something better, even if that means waiting to die. But that doesn’t mean there is something better, does it?” She looked at him, then quickly away. “The Spine act as the hand of God, but I don’t think even tempered assassins can hear Him. The closer I get to them, my colleagues, the more uncomfortable that makes me.”
Dill swallowed. She hadn’t even been properly trained? “You didn’t let them temper you?” he ventured.
She let out a long breath. “God, don’t you think I want them to? To be free of all this. It’s like a physical pain.” She pressed the heels of her palms against her forehead. “But it’s not up to me. My brother is head of the house now, and he won’t sign the consent document. He wants to punish me because I can do what he never could. I can kill, up close, and live with it. Stick a knife in a man and watch him bleed.” She grunted. “In a way that makes me even more of a monster than Carnival. They say she wounds herself after every kill she makes, hurts herself to ease her suffering.”
Dill frowned. “Wouldn’t that cause even more pain?”
“There are different kinds of pain,” Rachel said. “Sometimes one can blot out the other.” She scowled at her bandaged hands. “All my scars were given to me by others. I don’t need to inflict my own, never have. So maybe I don’t deserve to be tempered. We yearn for the needles because it’s death without the fear of death.” She laughed: a hard, brittle sound. “The Spine should be hunting me instead of her.”
Dill studied Rachel’s bandages and felt uneasy. “You fought her?”
Rachel shrugged.
“Where did she come from?”
“Straight from Iril, if you believe the priests. A demon sent to harvest souls for the Maze. Others claim she came from out of the abyss with Callis and the Ninety-Nine. When the angelwine finally wore off, she began killing to sustain herself.” She stared hard into the abyss. “I used to believe those stories about her were exaggerated, I believed that Carnival killed but she didn’t really take souls. I thought she was as mortal as you or me. But I’ve seen too many husks left after Scar Nights, and I’ve seen the way she moves: she’s too fast, too strong. And her eyes…so much rage, hunger. Always black.”
“Can you stop her?”
“I doubt it.”
“Then why do you try?”
A bitter smile. “I’m Spine.”
They were silent for a while. The flames above the Poison Kitchens roared intermittently, blazing brightly then diminishing. Fat gouts of smoke rose from the funnels, swelled, and fell again as ash. Beyond, the sun was sinking towards the abyss rim. Through the haze of pollution, the sky looked bruised and sick.
Rachel detached another sliver of rust and threw it into the darkness. “There have been expeditions, you know, down there.”
That surprised him. “Into the abyss?”
“Secret ones. Unknown to the temple. People have stolen airships, made balloons, strange winged things, all sorts of contraptions. Gone down there.”
“What happened to them?”
“They never returned.”
Dill stared into the depths. Even here in the evening light, the darkness of the abyss unnerved him. Rachel continued to throw flakes of rust, watching them dance below like tiny leaves. Across the gulf facing them a siren sounded and a warship disengaged from its refuelling berth beneath the Poison Kitchens. It floated gently down, then nudged its way out of the shadows and into the wide gap, tugged by guide ropes. He heard the distant sound of pulleys cranking and the shouts of dockhands. Then the great ship broke free and burned skywards with a deep roar, climbing steadily until it rose above the cranes and chains and pillars of smoke.
They watched the ship turn slowly, black against the sunset.
Rachel stood up and leaned out over the balustrade. Iron creaked under her weight. “If I fell over would you catch me?” she asked. She lifted her feet, supporting her weight on her stomach.
Dill got to his feet. “I can’t fly very well.”
“Would you try to save me?” She leaned further out. The banister creaked again.
He took a step towards her. “Please, it doesn’t look safe.”
“Would you try, even if you