Scar Night Page 0,26
spared his life or wasted it? And as the rook disappeared between the foundation chains, she wondered if she cared.
* * * *
From a round chamber at the bottom of his spire, Dill descended further into the main body of the temple, by way of a wheezing elevator. Little more than an iron cage ankle-deep in musty rugs, the machine creaked and shuddered down through a hole in the floor, past two fathoms of stone, till it emerged in a vast, seemingly bottomless space: the Hall of Angels. Sunlight glittered through huge orange-, lemon-, and cherry-glass mullioned windows lining the far walls, making tiny silhouettes of the multitude of priests who were busy preparing the temple for Scar Night. Figures swarmed over catwalks and ladders, closing enormous grates over the windows, checking and rechecking the locks, setting up the crossbows on their stanchions positioned before cross-shaped murderholes.
Dill pulled one of several tasselled cords which would, in theory, tell the hidden operators he wished to be taken to the Sanctum corridor. A bell tinkled far, far below, and somewhere beneath him, half a dozen men would be switching winches. The elevator paused, swaying, and then began to descend again, now easing closer to the southern wall. A pigeon settled on the bars immediately above, and began preening, before it noticed the angel and took off with a squawk.
Dill hated this elevator. The Presbyter had had it specially installed after the Church interdict on any of its archons’ resorting to flight. The contraption was slow and uncomfortable, and rarely arrived at the requested floor. And when it did arrive there, it often stopped so far out from the appropriate ledge as to necessitate a treacherous leap. Whether this was due to some failure in the elevator mechanism or to disgruntled winch staff, Dill didn’t know.
Abruptly, the elevator halted. It hung, creaking, in empty space two hundred feet above the floor, and still eighty feet from the nearest wall.
“Hello?” Dill called out.
None of the priests heard him. They were much too far away, too busy securing the windows, or aligning and loading the Spine crossbows.
Hand on his sword, Dill stood in the elevator and waited.
And waited.
“Hello?”
Nobody answered. High above, the same pigeon fluttered by.
* * * *
The kitchen was a battlefield. Strikes of countless knives rang out above the roar of roasting fires and the shouts of busy men. Battalions of cooks in tall white hats sweated over chopping tables, slicing, dicing, gutting, pounding. Cauldrons bubbled over open hearths. Potboys toiled before steaming sinks and scrubbed away at endless crockery, while stewards jostled by with platters of seared goat and sweet mutton, lark pies, rook pies, and hot buttered potatoes.
Fogwill’s face was already flushed, and trickles of sweat carved trails through the talcum on his cheeks. He decided that the faster he proceeded, the cleaner he might stay, so he wove quickly through stoves and sinks, ducked under rows of hanging copper pots, and hopped over streams of milky water. He held his sleeve over his nose, and almost collided with a grizzled porter carrying a pig. The animal squealed and wriggled in the man’s grip and the aged porter spat a curse. A sneering kitchen-hand turned from the limes he was chopping and said something derogatory, but Fogwill couldn’t make out his comment over the din.
“Beastly,” the Adjunct muttered. “Utterly beastly.” The place was a menagerie. Just think of the germs, the dirt brought in by all the animals. After this, he’d have to steep himself in lemon-oil from top to toe.
His robes were sodden around the ankles, and his slippers—well, he didn’t want to study them too closely.
Finally he found the head cook lying asleep on a makeshift bed of sacks heaped beneath a rack of eels, and he almost gagged at the stench. Even the smell of General Hael’s corpse had seemed more wholesome. The eels above him sweated oil in greasy drips that spattered the sleeping man’s fleshy jowls, making him mutter and twitch.
Fogwill prodded the dozing figure with his toe. “Wake up, Fondelgrue. Wake up.” Oil pattered on his own scalp.
Fondelgrue twisted himself awake with a groan, and scratched his swollen belly beneath a tunic that had once been white. Seeing Fogwill, he squeezed an eye shut, farted, and exhaled. “Crumb? What do you want?”
Fogwill noticed the dark spots now dappling his ceremonial robe and leapt back from underneath the eels, praying with all his heart that the foul odour emanated from the man before him rather than