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breath. She wrenched out the knife, dropped it, agony building, hammering through her heart and bones. Her hands contorted like claws. Saliva—or blood—dribbled down her chin. She sucked in another rasping breath…and wailed.

Gradually, the pain ebbed.

The wound on her thigh was already healing, leaving its scar.

The pan was spattered and filthy. The man’s arm still swung back and forward over it, dripping. Carnival pulled a filthy square of linen from her pocket and wiped her lips, her face and throat. She bunched the linen and rubbed it over her hands. She threw the scrap away, then picked briefly, uselessly, at her cracked nails. She licked her teeth, and spat, then spat again. She tried to drag her fingers through her hair, but couldn’t—her hair was too matted and tangled. For the first time, she noticed the smell: blood swelling over the floorboards, foul and sweet. By morning, the attic would be seething with flies.

Carnival turned away, trembling, fighting the urge to retch. She stumbled a few steps, her feet slipping on the wet planks. She crouched, feeling the dull throb of the new scar on her thigh and the heavy pounding of her heart, until she couldn’t bear the sensations any longer. She cried out, spun round, and lashed a foot at the dead man’s head. His neck snapped like dry wood.

Carnival crumpled to the floor again, her arms wrapped tight about herself. Chains and hooks creaked above her as she wept. Her body convulsed with great racking sobs from the pit of her stomach. She grabbed the knife again, lifted the blade, and drove it back into her thigh, splitting open her newly inflicted scar—again, again, again.

The wound hurt savagely, but not nearly enough.

12

The Poison Kitchens

While Dill waited for Rachel Hael in the schoolroom, he struggled with a question.

How do I dismiss her?

After all, she had been given no choice in the matter either. Presbyter Sypes had thrust her upon him. An overseer who wasn’t a proper scholar, a teacher who couldn’t be bothered to teach him, a Spine Adept who encouraged him to break Church law—nothing about her made any sense. She was supposed to be teaching him about poisons today, but was, of course, late.

She was probably still in bed.

The Presbyter had crumpled over his desk before the dusty wall of books, and lay there snoring. A fly traced lazy circles around his head. There always seemed to be flies around the old man, and Dill had been watching this one for an hour. Occasionally it settled on the Presbyter’s ink-stained fingers or mottled scalp, until he twitched and it buzzed away for another circuit. Shafts of sunlight lanced down from the high windows, seething with dust. Full of the scent of ink and beeswax, the air hung like syrup on Dill’s wings.

The hand of the clock on the wall clunked a minute further from nine, but seemed no closer to eleven. It felt like he’d been waiting here for days already.

Dill stared at the book he was supposed to be reading,A Hierarchy of Bell Keepers, and he sighed. All the books in the schoolroom were like this: dry, dense, and reassuringly dull. Each possessed an authoritative weight he found oddly comforting, and yet he hadn’t been able to finish a sentence today.

Yesterday’s illicit flight still plagued him. Why had she encouraged him to fly? Not just encouraged, bullied . Rachel Hael was a bully. She was a bad influence. She was complicating his life.

Where was she?

Clunk. The clock hand took another tiny step into the wide gulf before eleven. The fly droned past his head. Dill swiped, and missed. For a while, he stared blankly up at the windows and imagined himself flying past them in golden armour, setting off to some distant battle.

The next Sending was tomorrow, and he wasn’t looking forward to it. Borelock would still be furious with him. Had they repaired the archon yet, or would the pillar stand empty? Empty, but full of accusation: a monument to his incompetence, his failure, standing tall before the remaining ninety-eight archons, and before the Herald himself.

Sparks of pink nipped through Dill’s eyes.

Rachel’s arrival at the temple seemed to have triggered his bad luck. First the fallen archon, then the flight. He steered the path of his thoughts away before his eyes took firm hold of it. The Presbyter would never discover what had happened if they both kept quiet. He could put the incident behind him. A life of temple service stretched like a