Scar Night Page 0,57

journal could only have come from one place. The Codex.

Had Presbyter Sypes delivered it?

Why?

The question plagued him endlessly, but he felt it would be imprudent to confront Sypes directly. His mystery benefactor clearly wished to remain anonymous. And what if Devon was wrong? One misplaced word could end his own life. The Spine would not look kindly upon the reappearance of such a work.

He let his gaze drop from his late wife’s portrait to the mantelpiece below it. An ornate clock ticked the moments away, lost amid a clutter of chemical bottles with handwritten labels and sugar-crust corks. Poisons for making angelwine.

Devon sniffed. A faint odour of sulphur hung in the air, pleasantly unpleasant.

He went back to the journal, tapping a pencil against the gold rim of his spectacles. Fluids leaked from the bandages covering his back. A little fresh blood had gathered in the crook of his arm: not much, but enough to add yet another stain to his already ripe tweed jacket. Devon didn’t care; his looks were of no concern. Elizabeth had still loved him.

Cracked lips pursed while he considered the pages before him.

Blood contained energy: a life-force—or soul, as the Church named it. This journal presented him with a method of extraction, a way to remove the spirit from the blood. To bottle it. Flesh withers. Everything material is poison, everything we consume. Even the air we breathe destroys us. But when we nourish the body with spirit, feed the flesh with something ethereal …Somewhere outside was a creature who did just that, and had done so for thousands of years.

“Please,” the girl said, “stop this.”

Devon glanced again at the flask of her blood before returning his attention to his notes. He had followed the letting and purification processes to the letter, but as yet there had been no sign of the expected results. Was his transcription at fault? Had he overlooked something? Impossible. There had been no error, he felt sure, in his preparations or implementation of the technique. What else could be missing? Some extra manipulation that had not been recorded? It seemed unlikely. The journal, for all it infused mysticism with science, appeared to be complete. Devon chewed the end of his pencil. A pollutant in his materials? Hardly. He could not make them any more sterile. He’d even had the containers blessed. For all the good that will do. And he’d used minimal sedative in the blood itself.

Then what? What was he missing?

The girl’s pleas came in fainter gasps. “You’re…killing me. Please…stop.”

“Hush, girl,” Devon said.

“My name is Lisa,” she wailed. The effort left her breathless.

Devon rolled the pencil between his fingers. A blister opened, leaving the wood slightly damp. Perhaps the souls were tainted, in some way damaged by the process of removal? Or was he failing to extract the entire soul? The Soft Men had taken thirteen souls before the elixir reached saturation point, when spirit could no longer be absorbed by the physical solution. Only then had the recipient flesh been able to absorb the angelwine. Devon had already harvested ten souls. After this girl he required two more. But as yet there was no sign of the elixir nearing saturation point, and this troubled him. Was a soul quantitative?

“My father is Duncan Fry, a lieutenant of the temple guard,” the girl panted. “We have money. He’s saved some, I know he has. He’ll give it to you.”

Devon slammed his palm flat against the desk. “Can’t you see I’m working?” Pain clenched his chest and he grimaced. “For what, what, do you wish to be saved? What are you hungry for? A life toiling under Fondelgrue’s sweaty palm? The grunt of some malodorous swine as he stuffs you? The skin-stretched years spent raising his litter? Iril take you, girl, have some self-respect.”

She flinched, her head twisting away as far as the bonds allowed. Her lips trembled as she spoke. “I’ll…do anything you want. I’ll give you anything you want.”

He tried to review his notes again, but it was useless. The girl’s pleas had broken his train of thought. Instead, he got up from his desk and approached her, then crouched on the carpet before her chair. He lifted her face to his, forcing her to look at him, at the sores and seeping cracks.

“But that is exactly what you are doing,” he said with a crooked smile.

A fresh bout of sobbing took hold of her. Mucus ran from her nose on to his arm. Devon wiped it on her apron