Scar Night Page 0,35

Nettle rose stiffly and tilted back the trolley, resting it on his stomach. Pain shot through his ribs, but he did his best to ignore it. He had a full afternoon’s work ahead.

Even before he got back to Blacklung Lane, he knew something was wrong. As Mr. Nettle wove through the narrow, winding lanes towards the weapon smiths’ warrens, a sense of dread began to fill him. At first he shrugged it aside, thinking it a shadow of his grief, but when he drew nearer the feeling grew until, not knowing why, he found himself hurrying. He was still a street away when he realized what was wrong. The ringing and hammering of metal had stopped. Blacklung Lane was silent. Mr. Nettle ran the last few yards, the crate rattling on his trolley.

Crowds blocked the entrance to the lane itself. The smiths were all outdoors, away from their forges, their coal-streaked, muscled torsos jostling as they tried to push past one another to see what was happening. Smoke billowed from somewhere at the end of the lane and someone cried, “Get back, get back, it’s going to go.”

Mr. Nettle abandoned the trolley and tried to push his way through. The crowd threw him angry looks, shoved him this way and that, but he squeezed among them and managed to force his way forward. Big as these smiths were, Mr. Nettle was bigger. The smell of burning rope hung thick in the air.

“Get back, I say! Back, you fools.”

Up ahead, people were coughing; others were shouting. There was a whoomph, then the groan of stressed metal. Embers twisted upwards through the smoke, and suddenly the crowd surged backwards, carrying Mr. Nettle with it. Men fought to get past him. Someone punched him, another kneed him hard in the stomach and he almost dropped. He grabbed the man’s hair and dragged him down, sending him sprawling beneath the feet of others. And all at once there was space in front of him. And flames.

Blacklung Lane terminated abruptly: where once there had been a slump of cobbles, chains, and soot-blackened walls, there was now a gaping hole rimmed with burning rubble. The far end of the lane had fallen through into the abyss, taking half the adjoining smithies and much of the surrounding neighbourhood with it. A circle of cross-chains hung down into the rift like a basket with the bottom fallen out. The collapse had ripped open a dozen houses. Walls had crumbled away, leaving girders jutting from the stonework and private rooms open to Mr. Nettle’s gaze, their furniture undisturbed but now inches from the open abyss.

Smith and his workshop were gone.

Mr. Nettle took a step back as more cobbles dropped away before him. He pressed himself into the crowd. Coals from the furnaces had set fire to the torn nets below and, even as he watched, those flames grew higher and a cloud of smoke rolled over him.

“Back!” he roared, and pushed hard into the throng. Men stumbled and fell, but those behind him were still struggling, trying to free themselves from others, while at the back still more onlookers were pushing forward.

The crowd swelled alarmingly, and for a dreadful moment Mr. Nettle felt himself being shoved toward the abyss. He tripped, grabbed something—a man’s ear—and pulled himself upright. The man yelled, fell back—if he went over the edge, Mr. Nettle didn’t see. Others were now tugging at his robes from all sides, pulling him, pushing him. He kicked them away. He elbowed someone else in the face, knocked him to the ground.

Another whoomph, and a loud cracking noise. Behind him, more loose stone rumbled into the abyss.

There was no way out through the crowd. He had to go up, over them. Mr. Nettle wrestled with the men nearest to him, forcing them down. Shouts and screams came from everywhere. He climbed over backs and faces and arms and legs, pushing, punching. He kicked out, grabbed hair or skin, and clawed his way forward. For a heartbeat he was carried above the crowd, and then he sank among them, among their legs and boots. Something hit him in the face; he tried to rise, but there were men on top of him, flattening him, suffocating him.

He heard the snap and hiss of parting cables. Suddenly he was covered in blood; his hands and arms were red, wet. He didn’t know if it was his own blood or not. A boot kicked him in the teeth; then it stood on his