Scar Night Page 0,46

of Angels.”

Dill glowered at her. “I don’t need —”

“Honestly, I didn’t believe them. I had to see it for myself, so I spoke to one of the winch operators after the Sending, a temple guard named Snat. You know they throw dice to decide which floor to take you to?”

Dill felt his eyes darken, white to grey.

“Sometimes they leave you hanging there for a while, don’t they?”

A darker grey.

“It’s a game,” she said. “How many times will you pull the bell cord? They bet on that.”

Darker still.

“Snat was up three doubles, he claimed, when I spoke to him.”

Even darker.

“Big man, he couldn’t stop laughing. Says he’s only five wins away from buying a new sword.”

Dill unfurled his wings.

“From here to there,” Rachel said. She took a step back, still clasping his hand.

The angel gave his wings a flap, and then another. And then, slowly, he began to beat them. He felt the substance of the air, felt the muscles in his shoulders and back clench when his wings descended. He quickened the beats, snapped his wings back, dragged them down, harder, and harder.

His ankles lifted.

Wisps of Rachel’s hair blew back from her face. She let go of his hand.

And he flew.

He rose breathlessly, heart pounding, his whole body tingling. Cool air caressed the back of his neck, rushed over his face. His cheeks prickled and flushed. His wings swept up-down, again and again, like hands plunging through cold springwater. He sucked in a shivering breath and it tasted crystal. Open, endless sky turned from pink to red-gold where mountains of dark cloud mounded in the west. The Deadsands simmered under the horizon, crumpled with orange shadows.

Rachel shouted something below him.

He turned to see her. This shifting of weight unbalanced him and he panicked, groped for something to hold on to, found nothing. Suddenly he was falling, flailing. His shin struck a gargoyle’s head and he rebounded, tumbled backwards, and hit the flagstones with a jolt that stole his breath.

She was by his side at once, a look of furious concern on her face. “Are you hurt? Is anything broken?”

Dill fought for air. Iron bands seemed to tighten around his chest and his breathing came in shallow gasps. Shakily, he got up and patted dirt from his trousers. Loose feathers tumbled around him. A twist of pain in his shin. He winced, staggered, then sat down on the tower’s battlements. “I’m fine. I just…”

“Just what? What’s wrong?”

His legs were trembling. “My fault. I panicked, lost control.”

“How do you feel now?”

He rubbed his shin. The pain in his chest eased and he could breathe more easily. “I feel…I don’t know…stupid.” Blood trickled down his chin.

“You cut yourself.” Rachel pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed his lip.

Dill looked at his hands. Grazes covered his palms. As soon as he noticed them, they began to sting. “I think I landed on my sword,” he said.

“Lucky you had some good hard steel to break your fall.”

He smiled weakly.

There was a softness in her expression he hadn’t seen before. “You flew,” she said. “Sort of.”

Dill cringed, and moved to stand up. “It’s getting dark,” he said. “I have to go now. They’ll be locking down the spires soon. The windows, the trapdoors.”

Rachel nodded.

“Will I see you tomorrow?” He’d asked the question lightly, even selfishly; still hoping, deep down, that this flawed day had not been real, that Rachel would understand his need for a real overseer and relinquish her job to someone more appropriate. But he saw from the tensed muscles in her face, the faintest narrowing of her eyes, that the assassin had heard a different question.

“I hope so,” she said.

* * * *

Fogwill shuffled along beside his master while the old priest limped closer to his desk. He had seen Sypes move more quickly, usually when the old man wasn’t aware he was being observed or when some pressing issue forced him to forget his infirmity for a while, but Fogwill remained patient. The Codex pillars towered over them, the shelves in each crammed with books from floor to distant vaulted ceiling—their grubby leather spines locked safely behind filigree-gilt gratings. Construction of the thirty-first pillar was currently under way. Segments of cut sandstone and slabs of facing marble lay propped on beams around the base of the half-completed column, but there were no stonemasons at work on the wooden scaffolding.

Where are they? Two months of this, and I’ve yet to see a stone raised. Are we paying these masons by the hour?

They weaved through