Scar Night Page 0,70
hastily. “She had a good eye.”
“Penny apiece.”
Fogwill wondered if he should buy one to help smooth things over, before he remembered that he’d left all his money back at the temple, so decided to change the subject. “Mr. Nettle, do you know exactly where your daughter was when she disappeared?”
In answer, Mr. Nettle reached behind him and pulled out a ragged square of pulpboard. Fogwill saw it was an incomplete work, a first sketch, and quite as awful as the others. Nevertheless, there could be no doubt of the subject represented.
“She was working on this?”
“Found it in the nets down there. I searched there first.”
Fogwill studied the sketch. He recognized the neighbourhood. The chimneys and funnels of the Poison Kitchens rising in the background were unmistakable. This wasn’t proof, of course. The implications were there, but it wasn’t enough to warrant accusing Devon, even with Fogwill’s existing suspicions. Carnival had killed in every part of the city. He had to ask next: “Did she have bruises on both arms?”
The scrounger’s eyes narrowed.
“Were her arms bruised?” Fogwill repeated.
Mr. Nettle studied him for a moment. “Aye.”
Our murderer. The scrounger hadn’t kept her on ice all this time. Fogwill cast his gaze over the other paintings: different scenes from the city in the same few gaudy colours. Obviously the girl had had a weird affection for red and yellow, as they were the only colours used, whatever the subject. “We’ve found others,” he explained. “The puncture wounds are the same, but the bruises…Those are not Carnival’s work. Carnival suspends her victims by the feet.”
“Who did it?”
“We don’t know.”
The scrounger pushed his face even closer to Fogwill’s. “But you suspect someone?” His tone was a threat.
Fogwill saw that the muscles on Mr. Nettle’s arms had become as taut as the street-rope holding a house. He squirmed inwardly, but forced himself to meet the man’s gaze. “No.”
The scrounger’s eyes stayed locked on Fogwill’s for a long moment, the bruises on his face seeming to pulse.
Fogwill struggled to appear calm. He smelled whisky on the man’s breath, and felt a trickle of sweat run beneath his own ear. Why had he dismissed Clay so readily?
At last Mr. Nettle stepped back. “Get out,” he said.
Fogwill crossed the plank in two strides and raced back in the direction of the temple, robe fluttering. The walkway buckled and tipped beneath his feet but he didn’t slow. He didn’t slow down at all.
* * * *
Mr. Nettle dressed quickly. He stuffed his scrounging tools into a backpack: rope, grapple, hammer, spikes, a small pulley, storm lantern, and flints. He grabbed his water flask, a disc of hardbread, a pouch of raisins, and a cord of pigskin, and threw them in with the tools. Then he tucked his cleaver in his belt, wheeled Smith’s trolley out to the walkway, and began loading it with pig iron. The help he needed would be expensive. Maybe the iron would cover it, maybe not. It might cost him a lot more.
While he worked, a gust of cold air blew from the abyss and shook the League of Rope. Shanties swung and knocked together. Timbers boomed on pulpboard walls and nails scratched tin roofs. Even the Warrens were moving, down below. Gaslights shivered among the chains. Only the temple stood motionless, black and immense, windows like a jet of embers frozen high above the heart of the city.
The fat little priest had lied. Mr. Nettle knew it in his gut. The Church suspected someone. He rubbed a hand over his sweating face, sighed slowly. Not Carnival? Maybe the priests would do something about it, maybe not. Didn’t matter. Mr. Nettle planned to do something first, whatever the cost.
Sorcery didn’t exist. Everybody knew that. In taverns and grogholes throughout the Warrens, folk dismissed the idea loudly, laughed heartily at the merest suggestion. But a careful listener might note how they dismissed the idea a little too loudly, laughed a little too heartily.
When the trolley was fully loaded, Mr. Nettle spat on the ground, steeled himself, and set off to meet the only man in Deepgate who could speak to hell.
* * * *
The further Fogwill got from Mr. Nettle’s house, the more his nausea and vertigo returned. Here, as in all areas on the outskirts of the city, the distance between the great chains was at its widest; more of each neighbourhood being supported by a less substantial web of chain, cable, and rope.
Everything wobbled, shook, and groaned. Wood sweated. The smell was frightful. Like a