Scar Night Page 0,121

on the floor, she put the weapon to her lips, and blew.

Somehow, the scarred angel had landed on her feet. She spun around, snatching the poisoned dart from the air with appalling ease. Then she put the blunt end of the needle-like missile in her mouth, and sneered. Now she advanced again, pounding her wings, chewing on the dart as if it was a toothpick. “You think you can poison me, Spine?” she growled. “What else have you got? Throwing knives? Acid powders? Are you too scared to use your sword?”

Dill was crawling on his hands and knees beside Carnival, reaching up to her, wheezing. “The angelwine…I’ll tell you…where it is. The Church no longer has it…. Just leave her…please.”

Abruptly the gale blowing through the Sanctum died. Carnival spat out the dart, grabbed Dill’s throat, and hoisted him upright. “Tell me!” she hissed.

Dill gasped, “It’s…lost.”

“Where?”

“The abyss…Devon’s syringe fell…”

She released him abruptly.

Dill crumpled to the floor.

Only a scattered handful of candles remained lit. Webs of shadow from the iron-hedged walls shivered around Carnival. Rachel returned the blowpipe to her belt, and got shakily to her feet. Adjunct Crumb still stood at the lectern, his face ashen.

Then the scarred angel cracked her wings apart and rose into the air. Shadows towered behind her, dark and huge as thunderclouds. For a long moment, she stared hard into the abyss, candle flames glittering in her eyes. With a snarl, she drew her wings back in.

“No!” Fogwill cried. “Listen to me!”

Carnival plunged into the void.

“Gods!” Fogwill rushed to the door and pulled frantically at a bell cord. “A disaster, a disaster. If she finds that syringe we have nothing. Why did you tell her, Dill? Why?”

Rachel rubbed her shoulder and winced. “What the hell does it matter anyway? Let her have her goddamn potion.”

At that moment Captain Clay and Mark Hael burst into the Sanctum. Rachel’s brother surveyed the scene. “What happened? Where is she?”

Fogwill explained.

“Last we’ll see of her,” Clay said. “Good riddance.”

The Adjunct kept pacing this way and that in nervous circles. He dragged his hands over his scalp repeatedly, as though he still had hair. “No,” he protested. “We have to find the syringe before she does. It’s all we have left now!” He stopped pacing. “Dill, you have to go—you have to stop her, now, before it’s too late.”

“He’s not going anywhere,” Rachel said.

But the fat priest ignored her. Pacing again, while his hands traced patterns in the air before him like jewelled butterflies, he muttered to himself, “She won’t kill him. She didn’t harm him before. He’ll be safe while he’s unarmed.”

“You’d send him to Deep, unarmed ?” Rachel said, shocked.

“He’ll need light,” Fogwill said, “a storm lantern.” He turned to Clay. “Fetch a lamp.”

Clay hesitated.

“A lamp! He needs a lamp.”

The temple guard captain nodded, then left the Sanctum.

Rachel placed a hand on Dill’s shoulder. “You don’t have to do this,” she said, then to Fogwill, “You can’t make him do this. You’ll send him to his death!”

The Adjunct’s pace faltered. “I don’t have any choice!” he snapped. As he gazed at her, Rachel saw the truth of it in the ghostly pallor of his skin, the pleading, pain-filled eyes, the bitter, crushing weight of his decision etched into every line of his face.

God, Fogwill, you’re suffering. But why? What can’t you tell us?

But his look had been enough to convince her. “All right,” she said. She marched over to the rim of the aperture. “If he has to go down there, then I’ll go with him.”

Mark Hael snorted. “Been learning to fly, dear sister?”

“He can carry me.” She peered into the darkness, then swung to face Dill. “You’re strong enough.”

Dill lowered his sword until the tip of the blade touched the floor. The gold hand guard gleamed dully in the candlelight. Somehow it was dented. “Rachel,” he said, “I don’t know.. I can’t…”

“You can,” she said.

“Can what?” Captain Clay had returned with a storm lantern, a frown creasing his grizzled brow.

“My little sister insists she wants to go with him,” Mark Hael explained.

“Here, lad,” Clay’s expression remained grave as he placed the storm lantern in Dill’s free hand, closing the angel’s fingers around the handle. “It’s well full of oil—the best we have. Burns bright. There’s extra wick and flints stored in the base of it too, case you need them.”

Dill’s wings slumped. He stared at the lantern for a moment, then raised his eyes to meet Rachel’s. They glowed whiter than she’d ever seen before.

“I’ll protect you, Dill,”