Iron Angel

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.”

“That’s reassuring,” Rachel said. “But where’s Dill?”

“Oh, they’ve already started on him,” he said. “My Cutters brought him up here an hour ago. He’ll be nicely doped by now.”

An hour ago? Rachel tried to suppress a rising tide of fear. The whole excruciating process took days, sometimes weeks, and yet the earliest stages were often the most dangerous. Many Spine had been broken by the initial drug shock. She picked up her pace.

Pallets had been laid out in cells and passageways alike to accommodate those men or women who were undergoing the tempering procedure. Spine masters in cowls and leather aprons strung with vials of poison moved silently through the dungeon, overseeing everything, while the needlework was carried out by acolytes. A fat priest in a red cassock murmured prayers while attending to a smouldering censer.

Culver dragged her before this man and said, “Bless her.”

The priest turned from his censer. Without as much as a glance at Rachel, he pressed his sweaty fingers against her neck, and droned out a long, tedious verse. When he was finished, his bored eyes slid back to the censer.

“Now it’s safe for you to bleed,” Culver remarked. “For a short while, at any rate. The temple’s full of cracks, and we can’t have any ghosts coming in to sniff around you, can we?” Cradling his crossbow in the crook of his arm, he unloaded the bone-breaker, and swapped it for a bolt with a wicked steel tip. Then, confident with this more deadly ordnance, he unlocked Rachel’s manacles and shoved her roughly into a nearby cell.

Two pallets had been laid out at opposite ends of the floor. Three acolytes in blood-soaked leathers had already lashed Dill to one of them. They were crouching over him, busy doing something with his hands.

Rachel’s heart clenched. But then something about him struck her as strange: The angel’s eyes were black as hell. He wasn’t scared, he was furious, kicking and spitting and gnashing his teeth, twisting and bucking against his restraints. Foam bubbled at the corners of his lips. Arcs of blood spattered the floor around him.

She heard a snap.

Dill roared in pain. The power and harshness of his voice struck an uneasy chord within Rachel. It didn’t sound like him at all. Even here, in a Spine torture cell, she could hardly reconcile that voice with the angel she knew.

What had they done?

An acolyte muttered something, and then all three stood back. One of them, a small toothless old man, was holding a pair of iron shears. His sleeves were bloody to the elbows. Rachel gave an involuntary gasp.

Gods below, they’re not tempering him…

The Spine master stood to one side, silently observing the proceedings, his pale hands clasped together in front of a greasy black apron. Hundreds of tiny pockets lined the front of this garment, each containing a vial of poison to be used in the tempering procedure. And yet none of it, it seemed, had been used. He pulled back his cowl, revealing a hollow face that tapered to a hornlike jaw. He looked remarkably frail, more like a skeleton than a man, his aged skin blanched and sagging under watery eyes.

“Why are you doing this to him?” Rachel yelled.

“It is most unusual,” the Master said quietly. His gaze flicked between her and the convulsing angel. “The dogweed is having a milder effect on him than we expected.”

Dogweed was an intoxicant used to prepare the mind for tempering.

“So you decided to do that to him?” she hissed.

“There is evidence of mental schism,” the old man went on. “His ocular responses are incoherent.”

The dead-eyed Adept who had escorted Rachel spoke up. “A personality disorder?”

“I think not,” the Master replied. “Such an illness would already have become evident in his youth. There is no mention of it in our records. Note the eyes…” He made a gesture. “Their colour does not reflect the emotions we would expect to induce through the applied stimuli. It is a paradox, then, for the archon’s consciousness is dissociated from his physical form, and yet he is clearly aware.” He thought for a moment. “A second force of will may therefore be present: a confluence of souls in the blood.”

“He is possessed?” the Adept asked.

“Possibly.”

The angelwine! Rachel now thought she understood what was happening. When Dill had died in the abyss, she herself had used the Poisoner’s elixir to resurrect him. The angelwine had contained a distillation of thirteen spirits taken from the Poisoner’s victims. Could one of these have now taken control of him, forcing Dill’s true consciousness down into the shadows of his own mind?

“This phenomenon must be investigated further,” the Master remarked to the acolytes. “Remove another one of his fingers.”

“You will not,” Rachel said.

Without turning, the Master added, “And tie her down.”

Two of the acolytes came for Rachel, their faces as lifeless and pale as those of drowned men, while the third stooped over Dill again, brandishing his shears. At this Dill screamed and threw his head back, screwing his eyes shut. Culver moved back against the chamber wall. Dill’s sword was still lashed to the Adept’s belt, but he favored the crossbow he now trained on her.

They had taken her glass knives, of course. She needed a new weapon.

Gods, I’m going to have to be quick.

She focused.

She had only managed this once before, but the Spine technique had already saved their lives in the tunnels under Deep. She had focused then to evade the scarred angel Carnival and to find her friend in utter darkness. And now she attempted to use the skill again, to sharpen her senses and speed the flow of blood to her muscles, to quicken her mind. To make herself fast. The other assassins would surely notice the momentary flicker of her eyes, and realize what she was trying to do. But then they also knew that she was untempered and therefore incapable of such a feat.

Their presumptions saved her life.

Culver hesitated for an instant before shooting his crossbow, but by then it was already too late.

Time stretched for Rachel. She was no longer breathing. She felt a sudden cool rush across her skin and then the deep, slow thump of her heart. At the edge of her vision the acolytes had stopped moving, as though the air had frozen around them. She could afford to ignore them for now. She considered the space between Culver and herself, glittering with suspended dust particles, and then she studied the glint at the tip of the man’s crossbow bolt. Muscles were now bunching in his shoulders and neck; his irises dilated a fraction. His finger tightened around the weapon’s trigger. She saw the latch rise, the bowstring and bastard strings quiver. A puff of dust from the strings, and the bolt flew forward out of its track.

Now she moved.

The pain of forcing her muscles to move at such reckless speeds wouldn’t reach her for many heartbeats. She watched the bolt fly towards her, and snatched it out of the air. Then she leapt and drove the shaft up under Culver’s jaw, forcing the tip into his brain.

She turned her head.

Behind her, the Adept was already dead. He would crumple to the floor in a moment. She had time to decide her next move. Could she take his crossbow and reload it while focused? Shoot it again? Doubtful. The weapon was too heavy to be handled at such speeds. She might break her arms in the attempt. Instead she ripped the bolt back out of the assassin’s jaw and spun a kick towards the nearest acolyte. This man had not been combat-trained; his neck broke before he knew had been murdered. The momentum of Rachel’s kick carried her around. She went with it, crouching as she controlled the spin, moving her body to where she needed it to be. A gut stab with the bolt finished the second acolyte, but the shaft snapped in her hand.

Too fast.

Two opponents left. She had time.

But Rachel had understimated the Master. She did not see his dagger until it flashed close to her face. She moved, but not fast enough to stop the blade nicking her shoulder. The wound would begin to bleed soon. The pain would arrive much later. Right now, the old man was focusing, moving at a speed equivalent to hers. Dust roiled sluggishly around him, disturbed by his blow.

He lunged.

Rachel was unarmed. She turned into him, seizing his arm, and drove her elbow into his chest. Vials of poison shattered in his apron. Now she dragged him round with her, throwing him off balance. Droplets of poison and fragments of glass spun from him, all sparkling. She felt a jerk as his humerus popped out of his shoulder, then she turned him against the wall. Not too hard. She knew she had to judge the maneuver precisely. He was heavy; too much force and she would injure herself. The Spine master had the advantage of experience, yet his old bones would break more easily. The increased speed that came with focus would work against him during such physical combat. He knew enough not to resist, but to turn along with Rachel-yet he had neglected to consider his proximity to the wall. His face left a bloody smear on the bare rock.

She had underestimated him, but not by much.

One acolyte left: the old man with the shears. Rachel turned to face him.

But then the cost of her exertions caught up with her. Her body could no longer continue to function at such an unnatural speed. It began to shut down. Time slowed for Rachel, and with it her heart began to quicken, and quicken more. A thundering pain rose in her chest. She fell to her knees, shuddering in agony as her muscles paid the price she had exacted from them. Her limbs burned, turned as limp and useless as sleeves of skin. Her head swam. She inhaled great gulps of rank dungeon air.

The old acolyte gaped at the dead assassin next to him. Then he stared at Rachel, then at the Spine master, still sliding down the torture room wall. To his eyes, the battle must have been little more than a blur.

“You ghilled them?” he said, his toothless maw slurring. “How did you ghill them?”

Had he genuinely never seen a Spine focus before?

Rachel gasped. She struggled to move, but found the effort beyond her, and collapsed instead. Drool trickled from her slack lips. “I…”

“Stay where you are,” the acolyte said. “I summon the Masters.” He hurried for the door.

Rachel balled her fists and tried to crawl. One lousy acolyte. He would spoil everything she’d achieved. She managed to drag herself two feet across the torture room, and then slumped back down in agonized exhaustion.

The acolyte was in too much of a rush. On a floor slick with poison and blood, he slipped, not badly enough to make him fall, but enough to make him stagger. From somewhere Rachel found a last reserve of energy. Yelling, she lashed out a kick. Her boot struck him in the shin-a feeble blow, but strong enough to unbalance her opponent. The man fell backwards, arms flailing, and his head struck the floor with a crack. His shears clattered away into the shadows. Rachel could hardly believe it. She forced herself to move, heaving her limp body across the wet floor towards the fallen man. The acolyte groaned. Then, dazed but unharmed, he tried to stand.

But Rachel had already reached him. She dragged herself halfway onto his chest.

“What-?” The Spine torturer seemed confused. “Let go of me. You stay.”

Rachel’s lungs burned. The torutre room whirled around her. She couldn’t speak, and she lacked the strength to effectively pin him down. Her fingers scrabbled on the floor for something to use as a weapon. His shears? Too far away. There was nothing but fragments of broken glass and puddles of greasy liquid.

Poison?

She forced her wet fingers into his mouth, and heard him gag. Then she scooped up more poison and pressed it into his eyes. He struggled and bucked against her, crying out in agony. Again Rachel slid her hand across the floor, soaking her palm, and then smeared the toxic liquid across his lips, into his gums.

The whole world spun. Screams resounded through the torture chamber. Rachel couldn’t tell if they were nearby or from far away. She felt the acolyte convulse one last time beneath her before he finally went still.

When the pain passed at last, Rachel staggered to her feet. She retrieved the Spine master’s dagger and cut Dill’s bonds. He’d had his eyes closed the whole time, but when he opened them she saw that they were still black with rage. Rachel didn’t recognize who she was looking at.

The angel sneered, then lifted his mutilated hand and ran it roughly down the side of her face. “Aren’t you a pretty one?” he said.