Scar Night Page 0,62

year,” Devon replied. “For some reason, they never remain in my service for long. Perhaps the work is too much for them.”

“What work is that exactly?”

Devon’s grin widened. “I shall not bore you with the details.”

Adjunct Crumb flushed. All of his jewels rustled. “Would you care to join me for tea?” he asked. “There are some small matters I’d like to discuss with you.”

Devon removed his spectacles and cleaned blood from them with a handkerchief from his waistcoat pocket. “I should love to, but sadly I must decline. I have been summoned to perform a service for the Church.” He returned the spectacles to his nose and arched his eyebrows. “By the Spine, no less. Our new archon is to be instructed in the use of poisons. I thought a tour of our facility might prove enlightening.”

“Of course.”

A tour? Dill shot a look at Rachel, but she ignored his glance. She hadn’t mentioned a tour. How could he possibly visit the Poison Kitchens? That meant he’d have to leave the temple and walk through the city, and Presbyter Sypes would never permit that. There had to be some mistake. He looked to Adjunct Crumb for help, but the fat priest’s attention remained fixed on Devon.

“If you will excuse me,” Devon said, “the sooner I get this fellow back to the lab, the sooner he can be put to some use.”

The Adjunct’s flush appeared to deepen. “What use would that be?”

Devon leaned closer and gave him a conspiratorial wink, a trickle of tawny fluid curling around the eye. “If I told them beforehand, I would never get anyone to take the job.” He bowed. “Please, excuse us.” He turned to Rachel and Dill. “Shall we?”

“Just a moment,” Rachel said. She lifted a strip of pigskin from a platter on the nearest table, tore it into three, and then slipped a piece into each of the tubes at her belt. She plugged the tubes again quickly, and said, “Well, it was going to waste.”

Dill thought he saw the bamboo containers shiver.

“How wonderfully gruesome,” Devon said.

They left the Blue Hall by way of a vaulted passageway that curved around the eastern side of the temple towards the Gatebridge. Arched stained-glass windows in the outer wall threw colourful fans across the flagstones.

“Thank you for agreeing to this,” Rachel said to Devon.

“My pleasure,” he replied. “We can’t have our angel ignorant of Deepgate’s grandest export.” Taut skin stretched and cracked around the corners of his mouth.

A side door led them to the exterior end of the Sanctum corridor. The broken archon, Dill noted, had not yet been repaired. The porter opened the temple doors for them, and they stepped out into sunlight.

For every step forward Dill took, he glanced back twice at the temple. Armies of gargoyles crowded its black walls. Spires, pinnacles, and battlements rose to impossible heights. Glass sparkled like shattered rainbows. And, all around, the city curved upwards in a great bowl of stone and iron towards the abyss rim. The chains shimmered behind a veil of watery air. Dill kept his head low, ashamed of his frost-coloured eyes.

At the end of the bridge they veered right and plunged into the tangled lanes of Bridgeview. Here the city lapped the moat of chains around the temple itself and, finding no more space to expand out, swelled upwards. The very rich bunched themselves here: their townhouses brawled for space, abandoning the passages between them to permanent shadow. To allow the privileged to walk in sunlight, walkways had been constructed high above the lanes: slender platforms of silkwood swung leisurely from one balcony to the next, like bunting. The tallest and oldest dwellings overhung the temple moat, while those behind, as though jealous of this prime position, leaned in as close as the width of the walkways in some places. Often it seemed that a resident could reach out his hand to knock on his opposite neighbour’s window.

“Doesn’t your family own a house here?” Devon asked Rachel.

“West of here,” Rachel said. “If it’s still standing. I haven’t been there in years.”

“I was sorry to hear about your father—a fine general. I apologize for missing the Sending.”

“I’m sure you must have been very busy.”

“Work never stops.”

For once Dill was thankful for the gloom: it suited his mood. Of them all, only the porter seemed to share his dismay at being outside. The young man walked along all hunched, hands stuffed in his pockets, while Devon strode ahead with alacrity, his head high, and Rachel kept