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in the abyss…For three thousand years we have entrusted him with our souls…An army waiting in the city of Deep…One day to reclaim Heaven and…Dill?”

—But not too similar. Using Dill’s own design: an eagle, perhaps, or a sandhawk. He would begin sketching ideas right after the ceremony.

“Dill, am I boring you?”

Dill started. He had been idly fingering lines on the sword’s wide, gold-coloured guard. Now he snapped to attention and feigned sombre interest.

The Presbyter’s eyes twinkled. “Had Ulcis’s coup succeeded, our world would be a very different place today.” The smile left his eyes and he seemed to drift away for a moment before regaining his voice. “Now, before the Gate to the city of Deep, we offer this blessed blood as a libation to Ulcis, Ayen’s eldest, God of Chains, Hoarder of Souls.”

A gust of wind emerged from the pit. Candle flames leapt and brightened. Shadows reached closer to the aperture, then withdrew. Dill stared down into the void, but saw nothing, only a stark, unsettling blackness.

Presbyter Sypes gripped the lectern, leaned over it, his voice booming. “Deny Iril this blood. Free the souls bound within. Let them join your army, and rise again to smash open the doors of Heaven.”

Iron writhed around the walls. The scent of flowers thickened and Dill found himself struggling to breathe, as though something was squeezing the air from his lungs. The soulcage chain trembled. Metal clicked, clattered, whirred. And then suddenly it stopped.

Dill breathed at last. The soulcage was raised again, now empty. An open trapdoor in its base swung back and forward, knocking against the rear axle.

Presbyter Sypes stepped down from the lectern and approached the shroud of General Hael. He laid a hand on the corpse and said, “Edward Hael died protecting everything I hold dear.” He glanced at Rachel, her brother, and Dill. “In his stead Mark will protect the city. And Rachel…”

Mark Hael was watching the Presbyter solemnly, but Rachel buried her face in her hands. When she looked up again, there were tears in her eyes. Adjunct Crumb saw this and failed to hide a look of surprise, but the Presbyter did not appear to notice; he was now busy straightening his cassock.

All at once she seemed even smaller, more out of place here than she had before. Dill offered her a weak smile. Perhaps she didn’t understand: death was a joyous occasion. Her father was to be reborn in the abyss, his soul released into the service of Ulcis. Tears were selfish, a display of faithlessness. Dill knew this, but he remembered his own father’s Sending, and the tears he’d shed himself. Presbyter Sypes hadn’t noticed those tears either. He’d been busy straightening his cassock on that occasion too.

The temple guard cast the general’s body down into the abyss.

Dill didn’t stay to ponder further. He had a whipping to receive.

7

Mr. Nettle’s Luck

With Smith’s bill of sale clutched in his fist, and Smith’s trolley creaking before him, Mr. Nettle sought the gaffer on Berth Seventeen. Tradeships rumbled over a forest of docking spines and tarred chains where armies of men worked with hammers and hooks and aether flames to keep the whole thing hale. More men unloaded goods from docked ships: metal ores and coal from Hollowhill, wood from Shale, food, livestock, and soil from the Coyle Plantations, and wine from the High Valleys; salt, textiles, worked gold, silver, and bronze from the desert settlements. Tremors ran through the girders and stones underfoot. The air smelled of fuel and iron.

The incoming ships were from the depots at Sandport and Clune, heavy with the collected wealth of the river towns, but the outgoing ships were swift and light. They carried little but tax demands and the occasional crate of armour or bolts for the outpost garrisons.

Mr. Nettle remembered the days before the great ships ploughed the skies. Everything had come to Deepgate by caravan, and many of those caravans had never reached the city. At the height of the Heshette war there had been difficult years when the heathens choked the supply lines. He was just a boy back then, but he remembered the food queues, the hunger, and the bloodshed. In those times, Iril had taken many souls.

Great ragged holes pocked the shipyards, some of them big enough to let the airships manoeuvre down to moorings where stitchers and Gluemen could clamber over them and work their repairs. All of the holes he passed by were empty now, full of nothing but darkness and chains, and a