Scar Night Page 0,153
endurance, even to the brink of insanity. But still he clung to life with a tenacity that Devon found both astonishing and repulsive. The Heshette healers had retreated, leaving the poor man restrained so as to prevent him from tearing at his own flesh. Devon became curious: he wanted to see how much Angus could endure. But he’d promised Sypes to help, so he had compromised.
“You were forbidden access to your poisons,” Bataba said.
“My chemicals were not necessary,” Devon said. “Merely a saw.”
The shaman looked back at the sack, at its lumpy, seeping contents. “What did you do?”
“I stopped him from scratching himself.”
The Tooth climbed a low rise in a series of jolts that jarred Devon’s teeth, and then settled back into the dull thumping of engines as it picked up speed and rumbled down the slope on the other side.
Twilight deepened. The Tooth ploughed on into the Deadsands, swaying gently. It crested dunes, devoured rock beneath its tracks. Stars winked on. Scar Night’s dark moon would soon be rising unseen: its very absence from sight an ominous portent of the blood to be shed before dawn. After a time Bataba left to join the other councillors on the roof.
Devon felt invigorated. He leaned over the array of controls, feeling the pulse and throb of the great machine in every muscle, and surveyed the landscape ahead.
To the south, aether-lights flickered in the night sky.
Decoys.
Devon pulled a lever and a web of metal mesh slammed down in front of the windows. The first attack would come long before the main armada reached them. Deepgate had one black warship, theWhisperer . His own idea. Silver-coloured ships were too easy for archers to spot at night. TheWhisperer was a fast-strike vessel, slender and swift, its gondola stripped of crew quarters, grapples and docking pulleys, and every other non-essential fixture, to make room for its bulkier engines and extra payload. Out of aether contact with the main fleet, it would be somewhere close overhead, riding high currents on an interception parabola. And if the aeronauts’ acting commander, Hael’s second-in-command, was as predictable as his predecessor, an attack ought to occur at any moment.
On cue, a distant boom sounded overhead. A fizz, as firelight lit the ground all around the Tooth for an instant and threw stark wells of shadow across the dunes.
Incendiaries.
Another boom, followed by more fizzing, and the desert flickered orange and red. The Tooth thundered on regardless.
Two drums thudded into the sand ahead, spewing lime-gas. Devon lowered the cutters. The first drum shot into the night with apang; the other exploded into shrapnel. Fragments of metal smacked against the lowered grille. Smoke brushed the windows. Two more drums of gas landed some yards to the left, upwind of the Tooth. Devon banked the machine windward and shredded them like dry leaves.
A hail of missiles glanced off the hull, followed by the concussions of more incendiaries.
All around, the desert burned.
Devon was whistling, rapping a knuckle against the control panel in tune, when the bridge door burst open and Bataba stormed in.
“A black skyship,” he snarled.
Devon regarded him disdainfully. “You cannot expect me to anticipate everything.”
“We lost four men.”
“I didn’t tell them to sit up there.”
“Four men, Poisoner—a score more with burns.”
Devon shrugged.
“You didn’t know about this black ship?”
“I did not.”
“You are lying.”
“Have I not saved you once from a gas attack? Did I not bring down the Adraki, and then coax this machine into battle? And am I not about to crush the ground forces of Deepgate? All for you, shaman, so why would I lie?”
Bataba glowered at him. “Anything else we ought to know? Your usefulness has all but run out.”
“If I think of anything, I’ll let you know.”
Tension gave way to uneasy silence as the Tooth crawled up another steep dune. The rest of the fleet had finally arrived. Silver envelopes converged overhead, shining dully amidst furiously flashing aether-signals. At the summit Devon eased back the throttle. A vast sweep of lights glittered in the desert ahead.
“Deepgate troops,” Devon murmured.
“How many?”
“All of them.”
* * * *
By the light of their broken lantern, Rachel saw that Carnival had been crying. She shuffled over, taking care not to shine the light directly in the angel’s face.
Carnival hid her scarred cheeks in her hands. “Leave me alone.”
“You didn’t remember him?” Rachel asked.
“Leave me!”
Rachel flinched. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want your sympathy! Save your breath, bitch. It won’t save you. Nothing will save you.”
Rachel had to hope otherwise. By forcing Carnival to remember, the god of