Scar Night Page 0,9

was any more. Full moon or dark moon, the lad wasn’t safe. No one was safe these days.

“Ragman!” the beggar cried. “Keep your League-filth coin, you’re no better than me.” He banged his cup against the wall and began to sing. “Come out tomorrow. Come see the moon. Out tomorrow. See the moon.”

Mr. Nettle’s pace faltered for an instant. Thrashing the beggar would only delay him. He held Abigail more firmly, straightened his back, and pressed on. The city soon swallowed the boy’s lunatic song.

Dawn was close, but the districts of Deepgate still slept in frost: air held like a breath for morning. Stars glittered like spear points in a ragged strip between the eaves.

The bottle was nearly empty. He raised it to his lips, then lowered it again without taking a drink. What was he to do? He had to think. A headache was creeping into the base of his skull, and his thoughts ran like tar. Had he sleepwalked into this godforsaken maze? Where was he now? On Tapper Road, where once he’d broken an oil-seller’s jaw for weighting his barrel with stones. He was almost out of the Warrens. How much time left? Not much. He’d wasted it. He’d listened to his own footsteps and watched his breath curl up before him, and drunk his whisky. The cleaver blade felt like ice against his thigh, the bottle neck like a knot in his fist. He threw the bottle away and heard it smash.

Around the next bend, the Tapper Road plunged into deeper fog. Gas lamps bloomed in the distance: the temple districts. He was almost there.

Mr. Nettle paused by a luckhole, a gap where the street-stones had fallen through, lost to the abyss below. Someone had put down planks, but those would come up easy enough. There would still be iron down there, lots of it. Often you could remove three or more girders without weakening the street and making more holes. But sometimes you lifted too much iron and the whole lot would cave in when a loaded cart went over. It was hard to judge.

He pulled Abigail down from his shoulder so that she lay in his arms. Her face sparkled with a patina of ice, as white as the linen in which he had wrapped her. This was good linen, better than any you’d get in the League. He’d found a bolt beneath the Coalgas Bridge fourteen years ago, unsullied, for all the stink of that place, and kept it for himself. Even so, merchants sold silk out in Ivygarths, and he’d walked the miles there yesterday to price it. And walked the miles back empty-handed. It was fine enough linen.

There was nothing delicate about Abigail’s appearance. She had not been pretty: the strong jaw, wide forehead, features as blunt as his own but softer. Her too-wide shoulders and hips were now far from those of the young girl he still saw in her. Despite this, even after all this time, she weighed nothing. He could have carried her for ever.

Mr. Nettle closed his eyes and imagined Abigail opening hers. She would lift her arms around his shoulders.You don’t have to carry me, she’d say. I can walk . Then he’d lower her to the ground and they could turn round and go home. He pressed his forehead against hers. She was still cold as stone. He opened his eyes again, blinked at the gas lamps in the distance, and pushed on—crossing the Flint Bridge into Lilley.

Abigail had often come here to paint. She’d liked the crooked old townhouses with their slatted shutters and delicate iron balconies, and she’d liked to sit under a shady tree in the cobbled rounds and listen to birds chirrup while she worked. But she’d liked the gardens best.

They’d been down here together once, trying to sell a rake he’d scrounged in Ivygarths, and Abigail, being little, had done the door-knocking. An old fellow had let them in to one of the gardens and stood haggling with Mr. Nettle like a Roper, while Abigail had run in circles gawping at all the different flowers. After that, she’d wanted to go in all the gardens, but Lilley folk kept them locked tight. Still, he’d gotten eight doubles for the rake and was put in a fine mood, so he’d lifted her up on his shoulders so she could peek over the walls.

Southeast of Lilley the road veered away from Dolmen’s Chain and rose to Market Bridge, and here were the