as this, the burden had to be unbelievably heavy or impossibly buoyant. Either way, how could Anchor heave such a rope up another flight of steps? The hemp would snag, or break…
…or tear the building apart.
A loud snap made the cutthroat flinch. The rope jerked violently as the banister corner post broke like a twig. Below them, the ceiling joists had begun to crack, and cries of alarm came from the broth shop clientele. Caulker glanced back down the stairs to see a panicked crowd clogging the door, brawling to get outside.
Clothed in his snapping red tide of claws and shells, the giant ploughed on up the second flight of steps. Caulker followed with mounting astonishment, cautious but curious now to see how much further Anchor could pull this huge rope. The whole building seemed to buckle under the upwards pressure. Could this stranger really kill six Spine? And would he be prepared to share his wealth for more knowledge?
“The assassins will have heard you,” he warned. “Spine sleep lightly. It will be dark in their room, as they shun daylight.” He tried to think of something else helpful to say, some insight the big man might pay for. “Don’t underestimate Ichin Tell,” he blurted out at last. “The man is a demon.”
Before Anchor reached the top of the second flight of stairs, the ground-floor ceiling joists parted with a sequence of thunderous booms. Caulker watched the rope rip a vertical scar through eight feet of stairwell wall, and thump against the underside of the second-floor ceiling. He heard debris crashing into the room below. Crabs tumbled from Anchor’s legs, then shot after him with renewed frenzy. But the big man didn’t hurry. He opened the landing door and lumbered along the corridor beyond.
Breathless, the cutthroat scrambled after him. Anchor’s strength seemed limitless-might he be a match for Ichin Tell? After all, Spine weapons and heads could be sold in the tribal bazaars; their poisons could be traded on the black market in Clune. Pearls or no pearls, Jack Caulker might still be able to make a handsome profit from this.
Gritty light seeped through a window at the far end of the passageway, illuminating four doors along the interior wall, which led into the Hook’s rented rooms. The stink of old seafood clung to the plaster. Anchor marched on along the narrow space, dripping crabs and still towing his rope behind him. And when he reached a point halfway down the corridor, the joists supporting the second floor also began to break. The stressed hemp ripped through one, two, three beams, tearing a jagged scar right through the corridor floorboards. Splinters leapt like fleas. A deep moan came from the walls, and Caulker felt the building begin to list. The Widow’s Hook was falling apart.
In his living armour, John Anchor arrived at the last door. He opened the door, and then stepped inside the Spine assassins’ room. “My name is John Anchor,” he said.
There was a heartbeat of silence.
And then Caulker heard a flurry of slaps, like steel striking leather. But any further sounds of combat there might have been were drowned out by a series of violent concussions from below. Anchor’s great rope, which had so thoroughly sliced through the interior of the broth shop, abruptly severed the remaining joists. The taut hemp shot skywards, opening up the wall to the right, and sliced right through the roof. Caulker spied a crooked line of grey sky among flying rafters and spinning shingles before the entire building collapsed.
The cutthroat opened his eyes and groaned. His mouth and nose felt clogged with dirt. He sneezed, then winced in agony. Something heavy was pressing down on his legs. For a long moment he gazed up into the fog, dizzy and confused, wondering who had beaten him so badly, and whether or not he had been robbed. And then he lifted his head and saw that he was lying half buried in a great heap of sodden timbers and impacted mud. Suddenly he remembered what had happened, and his head sank back into the rubble.
Thank the gods he had been on the top floor, and not down among the brawling rabble below. He must have fallen all of two storeys, and at least the building had collapsed underneath him rather than on top of him. He was lucky even to be alive. Faint moans and cries came from somewhere amid the rubble below him. Gods, where was his stuff? His money? Caulker fumbled for his purse, then yelped as the back of his hand scraped against a protruding nail.
Slowly, the cutthroat heaved himself up into a sitting position and surveyed the scene. The broth shop had crumpled inwards, its innards ripped out by the giant’s rope. Broken beams jutted from the mud-brown hovels on either side, while the collapsed floors slumped in a shallow valley between them. A heap of shingles and floorboards covered Caulker’s legs, but he appeared to have escaped the worst of the falling debris. Only one of the heavier rafters had landed on him. He heaved it aside, ignoring the sudden ache in his shoulders and arms, and struggled to his feet.
John Anchor was busy further down the mound of debris, pulling timbers and sections of mud wall from the wreckage and tossing them aside. The crabs were nowhere to be seen. Now that the rope had ripped itself free of the building, it rose unchallenged from the harness on the giant’s back and shot straight up into the muggy sky. Caulker’s gaze followed it up, but he could spot nothing through the dense fog above.
The giant was humming a tune while he worked. Suddenly he let out an exclamation, reached down, and dragged something free-the corpse of a pale woman clad in leather armour. Anchor held the cadaver up by its ankle, frowned, then flung it down into the lane below as easily as if it had been a dead cat. Five more corpses had already been heaped there, all of them Spine.
Caulker picked his way down through the wreckage towards them. All of the dead assassins’ heads appeared to be intact, he noted. Maybe the day wouldn’t be a total loss after all.
Down in the lane, John Anchor joined him beside the pile of corpses and folded his arms across his harness. “I wished only to speak with them.” He shook his head. “Had they not attacked me, they would still be alive.”
Caulker examined the bodies. None of them had visible wounds. He turned one over with his foot and recognized it as Ichin Samuel Tell. Somehow, the Avulsior looked healthier dead. “They must have been crushed when the building collapsed,” he said.
“No,” Anchor said. “I think they would have escaped. This house is not so much to fall on their heads. They were quick enough, like little white cats.” He nodded solemnly. “But not quick enough for John Anchor.”
“You killed them all?” the cutthroat asked. “Before the building collapsed?”
Anchor looked suddenly peevish. “They attacked me,” he grumbled. “I meant them no harm. Do you think they were afraid of crabs?”
“I suppose,” Caulker muttered.
“No matter.” Anchor smacked his big hands together. “Souls is souls, eh?” He flexed his shoulders, took hold of the rope which rose into the sky behind him, and began to haul it down towards him.
5
The final journey Rachel Hael would ever make through the Church of Ulcis involved much climbing up and down ladders. This had always been a place of echoes: of lofty hallways, passages, and countless doorways which, since the building had flipped over, were now to be found high up in the walls, abutting flagstones over which the cassocks of priests had once glided. To provide access to chambers which would otherwise have been unreachable, the Spine had constructed a network of ladders, catwalks, and scaffolds. Knotted ropes had been fixed in place to assist those who wished to ascend or descend the underside of stairwells. Rachel had to give the temple assassins credit for their unflinching persistence: They had created a labyrinth of hemp and boards within this crumbling stone shell. The insanity of it all both appalled and amazed her.
The original torture chambers had been extended to encompass the whole of the temple dungeons, a warren of low-ceilinged passages and dank grated cells. Evidently the Spine intended to swell their numbers on a grand scale, for tempering was under way in every dark and rusty corner. Torches blazed, fixed on rock walls. Shadows moved and convulsed behind iron bars. Screams echoed among the stone chambers. An atmosphere of sweat and pain suffused the place, so tangible Rachel could almost taste it.
Culver was having difficulty stifling his grin. “The same master will temper both of you,” he said. “He’s one of the best; not many of his subjects die.”
