Scar Night Page 0,15

were other soldiers, or scholars? The temple teemed with them: dusty old men with spectacles and beards. Men who remembered wars, and times when the water tasted better and everyone was polite, and would tell you about them with flinching eyes and great weary sighs. There had to be someone more appropriate. Someone older. Lessfragile -looking.

“Sypes told me to watch you,” Rachel said. “And to train you, I suppose. Swordplay, poisons, diplomacy, that sort of thing.” She reached inside a pouch attached to her armour, produced a tiny book, and flipped it towards him.

Dill glanced at the title. Desert Trade Etiquette for Merchant Noblemen by P. E. Wallaway. “What’s this?”

“Something to do with diplomacy, isn’t it?” She glanced at the cover. “That’s what they told me. You ought to read it, if you get a chance. I’m sure it’s fascinating.”

“I don’t—”

“I don’t blame you,” she conceded.

Dill bit his lower lip. This seemed all wrong. Had Presbyter Sypes finally succumbed to his encroaching dotage? A young woman armed with a book she hadn’t read and a sword she probably couldn’t pull out of its scabbard without hurting herself did not amount to a proper overseer.

“I’m hardly thrilled myself,” she said. “Let me guess, orange means annoyed?”

Dill looked away, tried to focus his eyes back to grey. Dust motes danced and sparkled before Callis’s window. His snail-bucket sat underneath it. He felt like kicking it.

“Why do you have a bucket of snails in your room?” she asked eventually.

“What?”

“Snails?”

“Because.”

She waited.

“Because they climb up here,” he said. “I put them in the bucket and take them away.”

“Where?”

He scowled. “What training have you had, anyway?”

“Where do you take the snails?”

Why was she talking about snails? He batted the book at her impatiently. “Down below, into the temple.”

“Why?”

“To let them go.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know!” It was just something he did. He didn’t want them here, so he took them away, released them in the corridors behind the priests’ cells. She was trying to distract him, and he wasn’t having any more of it. “Why you?”

Rachel Hael let out a long sigh. “A husk arrived at the temple doors this morning. There’s talk of another soul-thief loose in the city, as if one wasn’t bad enough. Maybe it’s becoming fashionable.” She shrugged. “I suppose they’d rather your blood stayed in your veins.”

This morning? “But Scar Night is tonight. The moon’s not yet gone dark.”

“Really?” She yawned theatrically.

So here was his pocket-sized overseer: a finch of a girl who thought she knew something about soul-thieves. Perhaps she’d read a book on the subject. The crackling in his eyes intensified. “What does that have to do with you?”

“God knows.”

But Dill suddenly knew. He recognized her uniform. He looked again at her sword hilt, and this time he noticed just how well worn it was. A feeling of unease crept over him. That’s why she’s so pale. “You’re Spine,” he said.

“Spine.” She spat the word. “I hate that title. Temple backbone, very noble. I prefer Nightcrawler . Isn’t that what the commoners call us? Right up to the point where they get dragged off for questioning.”

What was she doing here? Spine weren’t usually assigned other duties. They couldn’t be assigned other duties, not after their training. What was the Presbyter thinking of?

Rachel interrupted his thoughts. “A message for you.” She threw him a package wrapped in thick paper. Dill fumbled in catching it and the package dropped to the floor and burst open.

It contained an iron key on a chain, and a note from the Presbyter.

Make sure you lock the soulcage outside the temple. Until the dead are blessed, Hell will be looking for them and I don’t want the Maze opening any doors in here. God knows what might escape. And don’t lose the key—it’s three thousand years old and it’s the only one we have.

Dill scrunched up the note and threw it into the hearth. Don’t lose the key! Did they think he was an idiot? Callis looked down with disdain from his glass battlefield, while even his painted enemies seemed to cower less and leer more.

“Good news?” Rachel asked.

He frowned.

“It’s that kind of morning.” She sighed. “Which probably means it’s only going to get worse.”

She was behaving very strangely for a Spine. Normally they just did what they were told without a blink or a wasted word. They were never angry or frustrated—and certainly not sarcastic or rude. Something to do with their training, he supposed. But this Rachel was unusually emotive, and he began to suspect something