Scar Night Page 0,87

make?” he snapped. “Devon is the only man with the audacity to see something like this through. He loathes the Church!”

“You’d make him a god?”

“Not him, you fool! One sip of angelwine and he’d have turned as mad as a broom. We would have soon taken the elixir from him.”

Not you, Sypes…Darkness take me…Did you think you could hold madness at bay?

“Look around you, Adjunct!” Sypes lashed his stick at the Codex pillars. “Is there verity here? What truths are mouldering, buried under all these lies?” He hobbled over to the nearest pillar, unlocked a grate, and pulled out one of the volumes. “Blackcake. Cannon. Forgotten words.” He began ripping out pages. “No meaning here! And here…”—another grate, another book—“…Heathen cults. Barrows near Loom. What does that mean?” He threw the book to the floor, pulled out another. “Ha! An account of the Battle of the Tooth. Lies!” The old man tore more pages free, tossed them into the air. “All lies! It means nothing.”

The Presbyter stood, chest heaving, among the tumbling pages. Thin ink-stained fingers curled around his walking stick. “The oldest books are dust, Fogwill. And there’s the only verity. Time subjugates everything. Truth and lies become synonymous. In the end, nothing we think or do matters.”

“But you can’t believe that. You’d oppose your own god, take angelwine, and suffer madness? You’d risk the wrath of the Spine—to save us all.”

The old priest sighed deeply. “The elixir was meant for Carnival. A restorative to end her suffering. With angelwine we…” He leaned heavily on his stick. “It was the only thing with which we might have bought her aid.”

You wanted Carnival as an ally? Barely an hour earlier the Adjunct would have found such blasphemy staggering. But now? A tower of cards, this plan. One enemy employed to fashion the means by which we might recruit a second foe, the second to oppose the most dangerous of them all .

Our own god?

The Presbyter must have caught Fogwill’s expression, for he said, “The god of chains is furious, Fogwill. He’s coming for our souls, a dead army at his command, all mindless prisoners of his will. Who but Carnival could stand against him?” He rubbed his face, let out a long breath. “The angelwine…? Devon must be found.”

Fogwill nodded slowly. “Our forces?”

“Recall them,” Sypes said. “We need them here…ready.”

“What will we tell them?”

Sypes shrugged. “I haven’t the faintest idea.”

* * * *

Something strange was happening. For two days Dill had noticed the change, but as usual no one bothered to explain what was going on. Warships were returning from the outposts, more than he had ever seen gathering before. The Deepgate skies were full of them. And soldiers: units of men assembled in the Gatebridge courtyard each morning before marching into the city. Overheard snippets of kitchen staff conversation suggested some form of military manoeuvre was under way. The priests were rushing around, grim-faced, no time to speak to Dill. Even the mourners at the Sending appeared more agitated than usual and, in the Sanctum, both the Presbyter and Adjunct Crumb were wrapped in separate clouds of gloom.

The angel began to wonder if everyone in the city except him was privy to some secret. Was Deepgate expecting an attack from the heathens?

No doubt Rachel had been busy with her Spine duties, for he hadn’t seen her since their tour of the Poison Kitchens. Yesterday, just as the sun broke through the crown of spires, he’d climbed the stairwells and ladders to emerge on the tower roof where she’d convinced him to fly. But she hadn’t appeared. Not that he’d gone there to look for her; it was just that he had rather more time on his hands than usual, and he enjoyed the feeling of the breeze on his feathers, and the chance to get away from the close-lipped priests who shouldered by him on some important errand or other.

The snails were becoming more of a problem too. More of them than ever had been finding their way into his cell, and lately he’d taken to releasing them further afield. He walked for miles throughout the temple, planting one here, one there. He left them outside the priests’ cells, one at each door, and in the Sanctum Corridor; he placed them on steps and on window ledges, and outside the schoolroom. Once he went to the Spine Halls with half a bucket of them, but it was dark down there, so he changed his mind and put them in