Scar Night Page 0,156

pillows and warm jackets from them. And there were piles of them here, even though filthy. He’d have to clean all the muck and blood off first, but that didn’t matter. They were still worth scrounging.

Then he noticed the corpse in the corner.

The angel lay broken on a bed of straw, like it had been thrown there, its skin black and swollen, mouth and eyes gaping in frozen terror. Its wings had been ripped to shreds, as though a pack of dogs had been at them.

But there was a sword.

Mr. Nettle moved over to take it. That was worth more than all the feathers.

The Spine stopped him. “Don’t,” she said, her voice sounding strangely thick. She hunched down beside the angel and rested a hand on its forehead.

“Dill?”

Mr. Nettle grunted, and went back to gathering feathers. Over his shoulder he saw the assassin prise the weapon free from the angel’s grip. “They didn’t take his sword,” she said; then, angrily, “They didn’t even take his sword!” Then she laid the weapon on the angel’s chest. She didn’t once turn round.

There were more feathers than Mr. Nettle could collect. When his pockets were full, he staggered upright on his crutch. “There’s no more cells after these,” he said.

Carnival was eyeing his swollen pockets, her lips peeled back from her teeth like she wanted to rip out his throat. Mr. Nettle clenched a fist around the bones that formed his crutch. But the assassin stepped between them again. Her eyes were moist. “Let’s get out of here,” she said.

“Sword’s worth money,” Mr. Nettle said.

“Touch it, scrounger, and I’ll break your neck.”

Mr. Nettle gave the weapon a final, longing look before heaving himself painfully toward the door. A sword was no use to him anyway, not down here, not against all these dead things. Especially against the angels, a sword would be no use at all.

“Need to find Abigail,” he said.

“She’s gone,” Carnival snarled. “Forget her.”

“No.” Mr. Nettle towered over the scarred angel. He was twice her size. “She’s here. She’s all alone.”

Rachel Hael took his arm. “I’ll help you look for her,” she said. She glanced at Carnival, and quickly away again. “But first we need to find a way to cut this chain. And we need weapons.”

Mr. Nettle turned back to the sword.

“Not that,” Rachel said. “Leave it—it doesn’t belong to us.”

The scrounger grumbled. Women. No point even trying to figure them out. “Storeroom down the way,” he said. “Might find something there.”

* * * *

They left the cells behind them and hurried along a rough passageway hewn from naked rock. The lantern threw wild shadows ahead of them, like fleeing wraiths. Carnival sprinted up front, still dragging the chain. One wing slumped from her broken shoulder. Mr. Nettle hobbled on his crutch behind, trailing feathers. Rachel followed last, still lost in thought.

Anger curled around her memory of Dill lying broken and alone in his cell. Why hadn’t their captors taken his sword? It struck her as irreconcilably cruel. By ignoring the weapon, they’d diminished him.

And yet, even now he was dead, she hadn’t been able to take the sword herself—blunt as it was, it would have been better than nothing. But prising it from his dead grip had made her feel as cruel as those who’d so readily dismissed it. She cursed her dream. For a moment she’d felt sure she could save him.

She wondered what Carnival was now thinking. The angel—or demigod, if that’s what she was—stormed ahead of them as though she meant to tear apart the city of Deep with her bare hands. After that battle on the mountain of bones, Rachel didn’t doubt she was capable. It had taken an entire army to stop Carnival then. But now it was Scar Night.

And the scrounger? For his sake she hoped they didn’t find his dead daughter.

The lantern guttered: barely a drop of oil left. Unless they stumbled upon some illuminated tunnels soon, only Carnival would be able to see. The chain between them rattled like a death cough.

The passageway climbed sinuously through a hive of smaller tunnels and crawl-spaces. Dank currents of air whispered around them, carrying sounds so faint Rachel wasn’t sure she’d heard anything at all. Once she thought she heard someone sobbing, another time the chopping of knives. But always in the background, like a pulse, the hammering of metal in the forges. There were faint odours too, which were sickeningly familiar, but she forced those out of her mind and concentrated on keeping