Caulker nodded.
“But if I am to eat any souls, I must then kill
“And if Cospinol is freed, then you are, too?”
“This is the truth.” Anchor extended his big black hand. “So we make deal? You lead me through this desert to Deepgate. Help me find me the one called Carnival, and I forget the soul you owe me. We become good friends. Agreed?”
What choice did the cutthroat have? He was indebted to a man who’d killed six Spine Adepts with his bare hands, and then brought a building down on top of them all. Caulker would have to lure Anchor into a trap before he could steal his treasure. Yet even that prospect was beginning to lose its allure. If this floating god, Cospinol, really heard and saw everything, he might not look favorably upon the murder of his servant-not to mention his only means of locomotion.
Caulker shook Anchor’s hand.
Gulliver Fank appeared and cleared away the bowls, stacking them against his chest, while still studiously keeping his eyes averted from the giant’s rope. “Can I get you anything else, sirs?” he muttered. “No? I imagine you’ll be keen to get on your way. May I say what a pleasure it has been to have you both here?”
“How much is the price for this meal?” Anchor asked.
“Two doubles, sir.”
“I have no coin,” Anchor said. “You accept salt, yes? Good RiotCoast salt.” He scraped back his stool and rose, flexing his huge shoulders, then began to drag down his rope from the sky. “It is up here somewhere.”
“No!” the broth shop boss squawked. He waved his free hand frantically while clutching the tower of bowls with his other. “I mean…please accept the meal for free, on the house, no charge. Really, it’s the least I can do!”
Anchor grinned. “Ah!” he exclaimed. “Everywhere I find the same generosity! He is a good man this one, Jack Caulker. Without men like this I would go hungry for sure.” His huge chest heaved with laughter. “Now I must make piss. Where is the privy?”
“Broken, sir,” Fank said. “The drain is blocked.”
The giant’s brow furrowed. “Same problem everywhere.” He swept an arm to indicate the world at large. “Bad plumbing, always bad plumbing. Same on CogIsland and the Merian ports, Coreollis and Oxos. All the drains blocked. One day I find a plumbing man and ask him why this happens.”
Caulker couldn’t decide if the giant was serious or not.
The broth shop proprietor brightened a little. “You could try the facilities at the Cockle Scunny,” he said, pointing down the lane and nodding eagerly. “That place on the corner. I know the gentleman who runs it quite well, and he’s just had his pipes overhauled. I’m sure he won’t mind if you make use of them.”
“So be it,” Anchor said, turning to Caulker. “Come, my friend, we go now.” He slapped his hands together and flashed his broad smile. “I make piss, and then we go to kill an angel.”
9
Silister Trench, the soul in possession of Dill’s body, remained surly and irritable during their trek from the temple, flapping his injured wings occasionally and moaning about the incessant pain in his shoulders. Rachel ignored him. She had other things to worry about. It was dark, they were in the Warrens, and the entire district was seething with the dead. Phantasms crawled through the shadows of derelict tenements all around them, half-seen figures in queer dark raiment. The air felt damp and had a vague red tinge to it, as though a fog of blood had settled upon the city. Faint voices drifted from the empty shells of buildings like the last bounce of an echo, but Rachel could not hear their words clearly. Sometimes she thought she heard growling, and occasionally sobbing.
A canopy of smoke blanketed the sky, its underbelly lit by colourful fires from the industrial districts. Angry red, yellow, and black streaks fumed and tumbled between the towering silhouettes of tenement blocks. Now and then a concussion rang out, shaking ash from the chains on which the buildings were suspended. The air reeked of sulphur and fuel, and other bitter chemicals Rachel couldn’t identify. She tried not to breathe in deeply, but her lungs soon began to sting.
They trudged up Lye Street, where the crumpled remains of Barraby’s watchtower stood silent and shuttered at the top of the hill, stark against the turbulent sky; then they turned left onto the narrow lanes around Farrow Wynd, scaling a heap of rubble and shattered barrels blocking Candlemaker Row. To the north, blue and green lights flashed across the heavens, followed by an upwards rush of dazzling silver stars, and moments later Rachel heard the boom and crackle of another poison cache exploding.
“What is this infernal labyrinth?” Trench said.
“You don’t remember?”
“Why should I remember?” he snapped. “I’ve never been here before.”
“It’s the Workers’ Warrens,” she explained, but his ignorance didn’t surprise her. Devon had taken souls for his elixir from all over the city. If this displaced soul had come from a noble family, he would scarcely have ever ventured down here. She watched him scowling up at the heavens, where the sky still churned with ash and smoke and tiny smouldering particles. Black shapes flitted through the widespread destruction around them.
Something odd then occurred to Rachel.
Were the ghosts actually keeping their distance from them?
Deepgate’s priests had long regarded phantasms as dangerous, there having been too many stories of citizens who had been possessed or driven to madness by such spectres. Yet these spectres seemed content to leave Rachel and Trench alone. She spied them constantly out of the corner of her eye, and heard their strange whispered chatter, but they had so far not ventured close.
Eventually the pair reached a granite and iron-link bridge, which spanned a gap of thirty yards between Ivygarths in the north and Summergarden to the south. Flint pendulum houses surrounded them at all heights, all hanging cradled within a confusion of metal ropes below two massive foundation chains. A hard white deposit crusted everything; it creaked beneath their boots and formed pale clumps on the chains themselves. Rachel could almost imagine she was wandering through a winter forest. To the east of the bridge, a vast section of the city had fallen entirely from its foundation chains and sloped away into the red haze, suspended now only by the thinnest lacework of iron and cracked sapperbane. This, she knew, was the Taptack Acres, a district of Summergarden where tenements had been heaped one upon the other to house factory workers. On the opposite side, the nearest pendulum house hung directly from one of the links that still supported the bulk of this quarter. It was a dwelling of a style common among the industrial elite: in each case a vulgar mass of flint which tapered towards the top like a teardrop. Thin steel-link bridges connected the master’s and the servants’ doors to a network of intervening walkways which disappeared off into the gloom.
Trench was by now walking several yards ahead of her, his cassock starkly black against the pale surroundings. Still grumbling and cursing to himself, he remained heedless of his surroundings-until a crossbow bolt thudded into the ground just two inches from his feet, and stopped him in his tracks.
They were there among the pendulum houses: twenty or more assassins that Rachel could see, and only the gods knew how many more she couldn’t yet spot. The crossbow, that weapon of choice for Spine, was naturally much in evidence.
Rachel cursed herself for not pushing on faster. The route they had been forced to take through the city had been tortuous, unfamiliar to her, yet the Spine themselves would be well acquainted with the extent of Deepgate’s destruction. Now this exposed bridge made a perfect place for an ambush. If she tried to run, they would shoot her
