Scar Night Page 0,50

feast. She walked on for miles, losing herself among the dripping chains, and passed four taverns, but did no more than glance at their solid, bolted doors.

* * * *

The rain had ceased at last, leaving the night air scrubbed and cool. Fresh wind from the north gusted and dragged rags of cloud across the stars. Snake-scale tenement roofs glistened faintly, but the streets between were dark. Every shutter had been drawn against the night, every brand smothered, and every gas lamp left unlit. Very few were abroad in the city now. No one but herself and those who hunted her.

With ragged wings folded tight against her back, she squatted on the roof of the Ivygarths watchtower, bracing herself against the chill wind, savouring its force. Tall stone falcons perched at each of the eight corners of the octagonal watchtower, blindly observing the city with grim determination. Carnival’s face was expressionless. Her long black hair whipped around countless scars: scars across her cheeks and forehead, scars across her nose, her neck; scars beneath her moondark eyes. All of them knife cuts, except one.

These watchtowers had been built an age ago: Carnival could not remember when, only that there had been a time when the skyline was different. From their weather-bitten stones she judged them to be more than a thousand years old. Perhaps the Spine had once used them? A vague memory stirred in her, like poison bubbling over the lip of a cauldron.

Another watchtower…Crumpled battlements…Smoke…Blood.

Scars tightened around her heart. She almost cried out, drove her nails into the heels of her palms until the emotion passed and she was left breathless and trembling. Something terrible had once happened in Barraby’s watchtower, the place they now called Sinners’ Well. She did not want to know what.

Other parts of Deepgate pained her too: Canner’s Nook and the Thousand Brick House and the nets below Chapelfunnel Market. Fragments of old, old memories surfaced whenever she drew near to these places; memories that drove her away from them, snarling and gasping. She had been in those places once, she supposed, and people had died.

The abyss was the worst. She had tried more than once to fly down into that darkness, but each time the rope scar around her neck constricted until she clawed for breath and thrashed back up towards the city. The abyss terrified her.

Now she surveyed the city patiently. Her hunger was building—she could feel it behind her eyes and in her veins—but it had not yet grown beyond her control. So she waited, searching for some overlooked weakness: a forgotten attic window; loose tiles on a storm-damaged roof; a smokeless chimney or an unlatched shutter thumping against its frame in the wind.

Nothing. There were no obvious openings, no easy ways into the houses. Her prey had long since learned to be thorough.

Carnival was pleased.

A mile to the west, she spied a shadow move. One of the Spine, a heavy crossbow in his arms, ran crouching across the rooftop of the Goat and Crab Inn in Merrygate, and ducked out of sight behind a chimney. The ninth assassin she’d seen tonight.

His leathers so much darker than the slates. Does he know? Is this poor camouflage deliberate?

Carnival gripped the ledge tighter as the scars on the back of her hands began to itch. Her heartbeats quickened; she moistened her lips. Part of her wanted to go after this assassin, yearned to go after him. She clamped her jaws together, and squeezed the ledge until her fingers hurt, then gasped. The hunger subsided.

A trap. It has to be.

She closed her eyes and listened for quiet sounds beneath the buffeting wind. Fragments of hushed conversations drifted up from the nearest homes.

“…no, both of them, sleeping…” A mother’s voice, concerned for her children.

“…it’s locked, I checked…” Another woman, older, speaking to her husband.

She heard the crackling of coals on a hearth, footsteps on a wooden floor and the clink of cutlery. She heard someone crying and the shreds of an argument.

And then she heard the drunk.

“Goddamn bitching murdering bitch!”

Her eyes snapped open, and she darted to the other side of the watchtower, heart racing, blood pounding behind her scars, making them throb.

“Filthy scar-faced whore.” He was down in the street a few blocks away, shouting up at the rooftops. A big man, staggering all over the place, swinging a cleaver at the shadows with one hand and waving a bottle at the air with the other. He lurched suddenly to one side and crashed into