Scar Night Page 0,20

work wouldn’t pay the debt. And chances were, the smith would never see the weapon again. They both knew it. The man’s kindness felt like a punch, and Mr. Nettle turned away to hide his discomfort. He’d have to find another way.

“Listen, son,” the smith said, “you’d be doing me a favour. With the bastards paying twenty doubles for a crate of iron, I can hardly afford the porters to bring it in. And what good is this bow to me, sitting here, gathering dust?”

Mr. Nettle couldn’t look at him. “You could sell it,” he suggested.

The smith grunted. “Who to? Ever seen any reservist with coins in his pocket? Those sods can’t afford to eat these days. The regulars have money, aye, but the temple buys their arms for them, and they don’t buy old junk like this.”

“A merchant?”

“They got their airships now. Gods below, they have to pay enough taxes for it, too. Aye, find me a merchant without the temple’s hand in his purse, and maybe I’d have a sale, but those without pockets deep enough to stave off the Spine and the Avulsior are gone now, branded as heathens. Do the work for me, but take this damn thing out of my sight before the priests find it and claim it as tax.”

Mr. Nettle hesitated.

“Buggers like us got to help each other. No bugger else will.”

At last the scrounger nodded.

“All right.” The smith then showed Mr. Nettle how to fasten the bowstring and load a bolt by winching back the windlass. “But know there are just these three bolts, no more. If, say, you want to shoot at something way up high, you’ll need to be a damn fine shot or have a fair bit of luck, eh?”

Mr. Nettle had never even picked up a crossbow before this moment, let alone shot one. And as for luck, he’d never had much of that either. But now at least he had a small chance to put things right, and he began to feel more like his old self. He’d pay his debt before nightfall, be square with this man as much as he could, and then, come tonight, he’d be square with the angel. He hefted the crossbow to his eye and squinted along the sight, imagining wings in the shadows. “What’s your name?” he asked the smith.

“Smith,” the man said, grinning like a conspirator.

5

Ghosts, Poisons, and Pastries

Presbyter Willard sypes was observing and recording the movements of ghosts. To facilitate viewing of the abyss beneath, he had extinguished the observatory lamps, leaving only a few scattered candles sparkling in their crystal lanterns. In the gloom, the Presbyter’s black cassock had no discernible shape. His head floated phantom-like over his desk, as cracked and yellow as the parchment beneath, while his quill sprouted from the arthritic grip of what appeared to be a disembodied hand.

To Adjunct Fogwill Crumb, the Presbyter’s face seemed to have halted momentarily as it melted towards the book. From the mottled expanse of his cranium, skin hung in folds like an accumulation of tallow. Tiny, chitinous eyes shifted somewhere within as the old priest reached to dip his quill in ink, focused once more on the page, and then resumed scratching his words into the journal.

Sypes set down his feather and creaked himself forward to peer into the eyepiece of the aurolethiscope, and for a sinful moment Fogwill wondered if the sound had come from the chair or from his master’s aged bones.

The aurolethiscope occupied most of the space in the observatory. Sypes cranked a handle and the brass machine began to turn like the innards of an enormous clock. Wheels and cogs clicked and whirred at various speeds. The lens column rotated smoothly, raising itself a fraction above the hole in the floor as the Presbyter adjusted focus. Reflections from the lantern winked on the spinning, polished surfaces and gave the machine the look of burnished gold.

Fogwill stood before his master, short, round, and splendid in his ceremonial robe. His pate was smooth and hard as a nut, his face softly plump and dusted with his favourite poppy talcum from Clune. Jewelled rings glinted on his fingers: fat rubies mounted in gold, subtle seastones in silver, and amber sandglass to match his smiling eyes. “Are the soul-lights bright this morning?” he asked.

The Presbyter squinted into the eyepiece. “Nothing for days now. I suspect my eyesight is failing.”

“Perhaps the dead grow less restless.”

Sypes sank back into his chair. He looked like he’d been hunched at