Scar Night Page 0,126

teeth.

Dill dimmed the light.

“She saved me,” Rachel said. “She saw you diving after me. She told me where you were.”

Carnival’s face was a shocking white: even her scars seemed to have paled. But her eyes remained cold and empty. “Dark here, isn’t it?” she rasped. Her voice sounded as though she was suffocating. “There’s a ledge over there”—she jerked her head—“where you can rest.”

They flew there in silence. By the light of his lantern, Dill saw Rachel glance back at him over Carnival’s shoulder, and smile. His heart stuttered.

A narrow rim of metal, the ledge jutted from rock as smooth as glass. Vertical ribs of the same metal, an arm-span apart, stretched away on either side. Dill landed a few feet from the others. His sword struck the ledge with a hollow peal.

“The abyss must narrow as it descends,” Rachel said, her voice strangely hollow and metallic. She peered down into the depths, then lifted her head to gaze above. “I think this wall slopes inwards.”

For the first time Dill looked up. Deepgate shimmered far above, faint wisps and pearls of light, like sunlight filtering through a clutch of jewellery. “How far down are we?” he said.

“Half a league at least,” Rachel said. “Perhaps more.” She placed a hand on the abyss wall. “This surface…is melted.”

Reflections from his lantern shone deep in the rock. Dill’s reflection peered out at him, like another angel trapped in glittering black ice. Pale, forlorn, it reminded him of the archons in the temple tapestries.

Carnival left them and moved to perch some distance away, out of the lantern light, her footfalls soundless.

Once they were alone, Dill sat down beside Rachel and whispered, “What about her? What are you going to do?”

“She could have let me die.”

“Why didn’t she?”

“I don’t know, Dill. She won’t speak to me. There’s something different about her, something…deeply wrong with her. I’ve never seen her like this before.” She lowered her voice. “I think she’s terrified.”

“Can you stop her before she reaches Deep?”

Rachel’s hands curled around the lip of the ledge she sat on, and her eyes seemed to dull. She said flatly, “I can’t fight her like this. Here. We have to wait.”

“Until when?”

“Until we reach the bottom.”

“But if Ulcis finds us?”

She shrugged. “There’s nothing else I can do.”

Dill leaned back, feeling his feathers brush the abyss wall. A thousand tons of darkness crushed him. Deafening silence. He closed his eyes, trying to shut it all out, but that only made things worse.

I could take you back; I should take you back up.

She wasn’t supposed to be here. Dill had been ordered to recover the angelwine, not Rachel. If he’d been stronger, braver, she wouldn’t be here at all. She’d jumped because she’d known Dill couldn’t face the abyss on his own. She’d jumped because he was a coward. And now his cowardice had put her in danger again.

“Thank you,” Rachel said, “for coming after me.”

Dill could not find his voice.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m…sorry I didn’t catch you,” he said.

“No.” Rachel placed a hand on his arm. “I’m the one who should be sorry. I was so furious with Mark and Fogwill, I didn’t stop to think. How could you ever have found me down here in this darkness? I realized that the instant I jumped.” She stole a glance at Carnival. “I thought I was dead.”

Dill turned away so that she couldn’t see the light of shame in his eyes.

“I jumped,” Rachel said, “and suddenly it dawned on me what I’d done. I called and called until my voice was hoarse. She caught me. One moment I was falling, the next I was in her arms. At first I thought it was you.”

Dill pulled his arm away from her grasp.

She moved closer, but did not reach out to him again. “At least you tried.”

They sat in silence for an age. Dill’s mind replayed the events in the Sanctum over and over again. He watched Rachel slip away. Catch me . That brittle moment when no one breathed, then her brother was grabbing him, dragging him towards certain death.

Dill had hesitated. Even the weight of darkness couldn’t crush that memory.

Rachel whispered, “You were so brave.”

Dill could not look at her. He didn’t hear Carnival approach, but her voice cut through his thoughts with a welcome sharpness. “I can’t see the bottom.” Face tight and pained, she clutched at the rope-scar on her neck as though the rope was still there. Her voice was hoarse. “Can you carry her now, or