Weaveworld

2

There was still no sign of morning, when – hours later, it seemed – the door opened.

There was only blackness beyond. Out of it, Immacolata said:

‘Come and see.’

He stood up, his limbs stiff, and hobbled to the door.

A wave of heat met him at the threshold. It was like stepping into an oven in which cakes of human dirt and blood had been cooking.

Dimly, he could see Immacolata, standing – floating, perhaps – a little way from him. The air pressed against his throat: he badly wanted to retreat. But she beckoned.

‘Look,’ she instructed him, staring off into the darkness. ‘Our assassin came. This is the Rake.’

Shadwell could see nothing at first. Then a shred of fugitive energy skittered up the wall and upon contact with the ceiling threw down a wash of cankered light.

By it, he saw the thing she called the Rake.

Had this once been a man? It was difficult to believe. The Surgeons Immacolata had spoken of had re-invented his anatomy. He hung in the air like a slashed coat left on a hook, his body somehow drawn out to superhuman height. Then, as though a breeze had gusted up from the earth, the body moved, swelling and rising. Its upper limbs – pieces of what might once have been human tissue held in an uneasy alliance by threads of mercurial cartilage – were raised, as if it were about to be crucified. The gesture unwound the matter that blinded its head. They fell away, and Shadwell could not prevent a cry from escaping him, as he understood what surgery had been performed upon the Rake.

They’d filleted him. They’d taken every bone from his body and left a thing more fit for the ocean-bed than the breathing world, a wretched echo of humanity, fuelled by the raptures the sisters had devised to bring it from Limbo. It swayed and swelled, its skull-less head taking on a dozen shapes as Shadwell watched. One moment it was all bulging eyes, the next only a maw, which howled its displeasure at waking to this condition.

‘Hush …’ Immacolata told it.

The Rake shuddered and its arms grew longer, as if it wanted to kill the woman that had done this to it. But it fell silent nevertheless.

‘Domville,’ Immacolata said. ‘You once professed love for me.’

It threw back its head then, as if despairing of what desire had brought it to.

‘Are you afraid, my Rake?’

It looked at her, its eyes like blood blisters close to bursting.

‘We’ve given you a little life,’ she said. ‘And enough power to turn these streets upside down. I want you to use it.’

The sight of the thing made Shadwell nervous.

‘Is he in control of himself?’ he whispered. ‘Suppose he goes berserk?’

‘Let him,’ she said. ‘I hate this city. Let him burn it up. As long as he kills the Seerkind, I don’t care what he does. He knows he won’t be allowed to rest until he’s done as I ask. And Death’s the best promise he’s ever had.’

The blisters were still fixed on Immacolata, and the look in them confirmed her words.

‘Very well,’ Shadwell said, and turned away, heading back into the adjoining room. There was only so much of this magic a man could take.

The sisters had an appetite for it. They liked to immerse themselves in these rites. For himself, he was content to be human.

Well, almost content.