Scar Night Page 0,65

furnace door they passed, heat blasted Dill’s face and wings, snatching loose feathers and sending them spiralling into the heights.

Through a door at the far end of the furnace chamber they entered the relative quiet of an equipment locker. Dill’s ears still rang from the fuel room, and his skin felt raw.

Devon snatched a couple of strange-looking masks from a row of hooks on the wall and handed one each to Dill and Rachel. Tubes dangled like squid tentacles from their mouthpieces.

“To protect your lungs,” he explained, pulling on his own mask. “We proceed through dangerous rooms now.”

The next room was half the size of the furnace chamber. Its floor dropped away immediately and they rattled along a catwalk above lines of open vats. Milky liquids bubbled within; curls of steam rose towards them. Squid-masked technicians in grease-stained smocks adjusted valves, inspected dials, while others stood on ladders to remove scum from the boiling liquids with their oar-like poles.

Devon paused to inspect the work going on below. “Acids, alkalis, and ammoniates,” he said, his voice slightly muffled by the mask.

“Weapons?” Rachel asked.

“The most basic. These components will burn lungs, skin”—Devon glanced at Dill—“feathers.”

Dill eyed the contents of the vats through the scratched glass visor of his mask. The air he sucked through the fibrous tubes tasted sour and vaguely metallic. His legs felt unsteady on the rickety catwalk. It would be very easy for someone to lean over too far.

At the door to the next chamber, Devon paused briefly. “Research room,” he said. “Do not remove your masks, and please touch nothing.”

They entered a laboratory, smaller again in size than the previous rooms. Glass beakers and tubes crowded wide workspaces. The chemists here wore smocks as filthy and spattered as butchers’ aprons. Engrossed in their work, they ignored the visitors as they poured and measured, mixed solutions, and scribbled occasional notes in huge ledgers. Racks and racks of stoppered glass tubes filled an enormous wooden carousel positioned in the middle of the room.

Dill approached the carousel and noticed that each tube held a few drops of red liquid.

“What are those?” Rachel asked, a moment later.

“Diseases,” Devon said.

Dill held his breath.

“Some induce fevers, rashes, influenza, jaundice, anaemia. We have solutions here to encourage infection, weaken bones, elicit welts and sores, or even precipitate sterility and hereditary mutation.”

“Sterility?” Rachel stood wide-eyed. “Hereditary mutation?”

“This is still a new science, and mostly we use poisons. But some derivatives of what you see here have already been tested in the field.”

“Against the tribes?”

“The idea appals you?”

Her gaze moved across the racks. “I knew about the poisons, but these diseases…they seem cruel, unnatural.”

Devon laughed behind his mask. “Nature is cruel—and are we not part of nature? Nothing we do can ever be unnatural, because our will is a product of nature, and thus natural.” He turned to Dill. “What do you think? Do you object to the use of our knowledge in this manner?”

Dill said, “I think that some things are best left to God.”

The Poisoner clapped his hands together. “Of course,” he said, tipping his head. “You are quite correct. Now, please, let me show you the core of my work.” He pulled some gloves from a drawer, similar to those the workers wore, and handed them to Rachel and Dill. “If you would be kind enough to put these on, we will proceed to the poison rooms.”

The first room was not what Dill had expected. The smell of brine hung heavy in the air. Pale green light rippled across the floor from banks of aquariums set into the walls. Devon removed his breathing mask, as did Dill and Rachel after a moment’s hesitation. They wandered before the tanks and gaped at the monsters behind the glass.

“The most deadly poisons,” Devon explained, “are harvested from those creatures found in the seas of this world.” He stopped before a tank. Yellow and green banded serpents writhed within. “Tap snakes, from the Ordan reef. One bite contains enough poison to kill half a hundred men.”

Dill watched the sea snakes wiggle back and forth above the sand. Unconsciously, he pressed a gloved hand against the glass. One of the snakes struck at it and he snatched his hand away.

“Here”—Devon pointed to the next tank—“among this coral, if you look closely you might be able to discern a parrot octopus. He is watching us now.”

A large black eye, ringed with blue, peered unblinking from the coral.

“More intelligent than cats,” Devon said, “and able to survive outside of water for