Scar Night Page 0,151

campaign for the temple, for God. You don’t much like aeronauts, do you?”

Carnival didn’t even look up.

“He’d bring back presents. Dolls for me and pots of talcum from the river towns for mother. Painted soldiers for Mark. I’d sit on his knee and listen to his stories about exotic places. Dalamoor souks, monkey bandits, Racha gem-traders with cutthroat smiles. Thaumaturges from distant lands, if you can believe it. Men whose lips had been pierced with gallows-wood, men who knew Deep by a different name.” Her shoulders slumped. “More than anything, I wanted to go with him when he left again. I wanted to be part of his stories.”

Carnival seemed to relax a little. Rachel realised she was listening.

“When the Spine accepted me I didn’t hesitate. I joined because I wanted him to be proud of me, and because I wanted to experience my own stories—to share that part of his life with him.” She regarded her manacle distantly. “That’s why I grew to hate him.”

“Because he wasn’t proud of you?” For once Carnival spoke without bitterness.

“No, because he didn’t tell me what it felt like to kill. He knew, and he didn’t tell me. After I came back from the Lowland Warrens, there was a wedge between us. We both recognized it but neither of us spoke about it. We hardly spoke at all after that.”

Carnival was silent for a while, then raised her head and spoke angrily. “I remember this .” Her finger traced the rope scar on her neck. “My first memory.”

“How old were you?”

“I don’t know!” The angel took a shuddering breath. “I was hanging by a rope from a foundation chain, sacks of rocks tied to my feet.”

Rachel winced. “Who did that to you?”

The angel shrugged.

“You remember nothing? Nothing from before?”

“My name.”

“How did you get loose?”

Carnival’s cold detachment was back in place. “I chewed through the rope.”

Chewed? Oh gods…how?

“It took four days.”

Rachel didn’t know what to say, and an uncomfortable silence fell between them. Outside the cell the water beat fierce, soulless notes. For a long time Rachel sat there listening. She thought about trying to loosen the bars again, but she was now so tired. Would she recognize when the end came? Would she see the moment when Carnival’s defences shattered and the hunger took over? Did she want to know? Perhaps it was better just to sleep, to end it now.

Rachel remembered a voice from a dream she’d once had.

Don’t die on me, bitch.

But she could no longer recall who the speaker had been. Her eyelids flickered.

* * * *

An army of angels filled the dawn sky, their golden armour and steel alight like bright rain falling from the sun. Turbulent sand boiled over the desert, dragged in the powerful wake of their wings. Rachel stood on the crest of a dune and watched the army converge on something half a league to the east—a small dark shape, a winged figure moving through the Deadsands. It was crawling on its hands and knees, crippled by the weight of what it dragged behind. Chains. Hundreds and thousands of chains.

Rachel.

She looked up.

Dill’s sword sparkled gold, but his eyes were as white as his wings. He was being pulled away from her, struggling against an invisible current.

Wait, she shouted.Come back .

But the angel was already growing distant, merging into the ranks of his ancestors. They massed around him, all bronzed muscles and heavy armour plate, sneering, mocking him. Dill cried out. He was trying to tell her something.

What is it? What?

She almost heard him.

* * * *

Rachel jerked awake, startled by a sudden conviction that Dill was still alive; that he needed her.

Bars of shadow reached over the rough floor and the coils of chain. The cell was illuminated.

From outside.

“Who are you?” Carnival crouched in the centre of the cell, gazing past her, furious.

“God,” a deep voice answered.

Rachel wheeled.

The god of chains was a landslide of flesh. Muddy skin cascaded in great overlapping slabs down from his tight-stretched pate to his bowed calves. He was naked; male, it seemed. The only evidence of his gender remained his voice, overhangs of fat obscuring any more obvious proof. And he was winged. Huge wings, like eruptions of grit, poured from the hillocks of his shoulders. Large as they were, Rachel suspected this creature had not flown in many years.

“Pathetic,” Carnival hissed. “Makes sense your god would look like this. No wonder Ayen kicked him out.”

The god ignored her. He raised his lantern and leaned closer to the bars, breasts