they were below the lip of the abyss, the wind dropped noticeably. In the amber gloom down here, the air simmered with the heat of the recent fires. Ash smothered the walkway planks and crumbled away from the support ropes whenever Rachel gripped them. Agitated by the party’s progress, the stinking dust soon engulfed them like a veil. The charred remains of shacks and platforms hung from the web of ropes on all sides, their vague dark shapes like insects cocooned within spider’s silk.
Captain Clay matched pace with Rachel. “We sprayed the whole neighborhood with water from the Dawn Pipes to keep the fires here under control,” he said to her in a low voice. “We were trying to preserve at least one route out of the city.” He pointed across the city. “The Spine tried the same thing on the other side, but they didn’t have enough water. So they sprayed those districts with effluence from the sewage pipes. Kept the fires from taking hold, I’m told, though I wouldn’t want to go for a stroll there right now.” He grunted. “Trust the Spine to ruin a perfectly good slum. I wonder what would have happened if the flames had reached the temple. Would they have doused it with water, or with-”
“Thanks,” Rachel said, “for trying to get us away.”
Clay shot a glance at the Adept two paces ahead of him, then whispered quickly, “The bastards have been tempering everyone who flees the city. It’s martial law here.” He shook his head. “We do what we can, try to get the women and the kids out, but it’s becoming difficult now. They don’t trust us, and I sure as hell-goddamn it!” He tripped and lurched forward as a plank broke under his armoured boot.
Rachel caught him just in time.
Clay hissed. “The whole city’s falling apart. The temple…gods below, you should see it up close! It’s hanging upside down like a goddamn stalactite. Every time I look at it, another spire or tower has fallen off. I don’t know how it’s survived for so long.”
“The stone and mortar came from Blackthrone,” Rachel replied, “which makes them unnaturally strong. Devon once said that the mountain doesn’t belong in this world. He believed it fell from the sky.” She shrugged. “But then, he was mad.”
“Rock and ore from Heaven?” The temple guard whistled. “It’s strong, aye, but not that strong. The rest of the building is going to fall sooner or later. You don’t want to be stuck in there while you’re waiting-I mean…” He looked peevish. “I’m sorry, lass. We’d have got you away from them if we could. Our barracks aren’t much…pretty crowded, and I wasn’t lying about the food situation, but there’s enough fresh water and we’ve a couple of priests on loan from the Spine. Nobody’s comfortable, but at least the floor’s not likely to suddenly fall away under our feet.”
His mention of priests struck her as odd: Why would they need holy men in the temple guard barracks? “It’s not your fault,” she said. “I should have foreseen this.”
“The
She nodded. “They fired it from high altitude so we wouldn’t hear the warship’s engines. We were staying at Olirind Meer’s tavern down by the harbor. I thought we’d be safe there for a while.” She shrugged. “But I was wrong.”
Clay nodded. “Sandporters,” he said. “You can’t trust those bastards. What happened to Carnival?”
“She abandoned us.”
“Sounds like her. Did you see any Spine recruiters in Sandport?”
“They were everywhere.”
“They’re keeping it subtle just now,” Clay said, “disguising their recruitment drive as a form of law enforcement. You commit a crime, they drag you to the temple, break your mind, and then enlist you as a Cutter. That’s how it works here anyway. But they’re becoming increasingly stringent, tempering folks for all manner of alleged sins. Soon there won’t be anyone left in Deepgate but Spine.”
“I thought the refugee camp looked quiet.”
“Refugee camp?” Clay gave her a grim look. “Hell, lass, that isn’t a
Rachel’s fists balled. “They’re saving the Codex?” she hissed. “Why am I not surprised? They force the people back to the temple, and then save a pile of old-”
The sound of cracking, splintering wood interrupted her. To their left, a sunken mass of fire-blackened shacks collapsed in on itself, before crumbling into the abyss below. The walkway they were on lurched suddenly as a ball of dust rolled up out of the newly made gap beside it.
Rachel coughed, and squinted back through the dust. The two Cutters had dropped Dill’s limp body like a sack and now stood over him, gripping the street ropes for support. Fortunately no one had fallen. “We’ll be lucky to get to the temple at all,” she said, “assuming it’s still there when we arrive.”
The walkway dipped and rose as they followed a zigzag course through smashed acres of burnt pulpboard and tin sheets, through nests of ash-black chains. The sound of pinging metal and cracking wood accompanied their footsteps, while deeper booms and clangs resounded from the industrial heart of the city to the northwest. The air grew steadily thicker and fouler as they marched onwards. Gusts of wind rattled the shacks around them, carrying the smell of airship fuel. Crimson and black clouds continued to unfurl across the heavens, now dappled in places with lozenges of yellow.
Beyond the League of Rope the party reached the more substantial districts of the Workers’ Warrens. Most of the tenements here had already been gutted by fire; for the most part they were roofless and windowless: naught but black shells, empty but for pockets of rubble. Smoke drifted in greasy brown layers between them. Minnow Street and Pullow’s Row had fallen away completely, leaving gulfs of dark abyss with tangled masses of chains and iron girders lining their banks.
The stink of soot pervaded everything. Rachel tasted it with every breath. It stung their eyes and gathered in the creases on Captain Clay’s brow. Trickles of sweat left black lines down his stubbled jaw.
On Candlemaker Row the path narrowed and wove between great tumbles of stone that had once been glue stores and workhouses. Rivulets of milky gel had oozed from doorways and set in hard pools that tugged at the soles of their boots.
Rachel glanced back at the Cutters carrying Dill. There was something almost mechanical about the way these lower-rank assassins moved, lacking the grace of their Adept master. They even looked like automatons in their identical bug-eyed masks, their heads turning constantly as they studied the rubble on either side of the path.
Studied the rubble?
The Spine Adept stopped suddenly and raised a hand, signaling his men to halt. Clay shifted position, taking a firmer grip of his pike, and glanced at the shadows nearby.
A peal of manic laughter came from somewhere nearby.
Clay stared hard in the direction of the sound for a long moment, then relaxed his hold on the pike.
“What was that?” Rachel said.
“The Spine don’t like us talking about them,” he muttered.
“Them?”
The captain shrugged. “Manifestations,” he said. “We’ve been seeing a lot of them since all the troubles began. They’re drawn to the dead like flies, and we have streets full of corpses in this city. You’ll be safer when we get to the temple.” He gestured towards the source of the laughter. “Safe enough from them, at any rate.”
“Now I see why you need priests in your barracks.”
“Our guard dogs,” Clay explained. “We’ve been allocated two of them-nice fellows, but they’ve been struggling to keep these damned shades out. This perpetual gloom is bad enough, but it gets worse at night. Even the Spine don’t dare leave the temple after dark without a priest to accompany them.”
“Have you noticed anything else unusual?”
“Like what?”
“Someone brought a demon into Sandport-a shape-shifter. She claimed it had been found here.”
The captain shook his head. “I haven’t seen nothing like that,” he said. “But then I don’t go strolling about the city if I can otherwise avoid it. What did it look like?”
“Like a chair,” she said, walking on ahead of the captain’s bemused expression.
They smelled the Poison Kitchens before they saw the huge funnels and iron spines looming over the
