Lye Street by Alan Campbell, Dave McKean Page A

inside, the shadow of a murderer who had stolen her memories and who roamed the city while the angel slept.
    Now this ghost had brought her to Lye Street, to murder someone the angel didn't know: Sal Greene, a man innocent of his ancestor's crime yet doomed to die for it. Who had Flora Whitten been? Had Carnival known her? Or had the scarred angel just happened to find the girl's diary all those years ago?
    She pulled out her knife and studied the hilt, the circle marking she had drawn on so many walls throughout the city. Then she brought out the crumpled flowers and ribbons she'd taken from the witch. For a long moment she looked at what she held in each scarred hand.
    I can make all that is ugly about you beautiful.
    Carnival threw the knife away, and heard it skitter across the rooftops. Then she tied the flowers and ribbons into her hair.
    The sound of crashing timbers came from the street below.
    From the lye tower window, Carnival watched six temple assassins drag Sal Greene out of his house and then herd him up Lye Street towards Barraby's watchtower. The thump of blood rose in her ears and soon drowned out his curses. She could suddenly smell the building around her, the stench of ash and rainwater and brick. A sharp pain in her fist made her gasp. She was clutching a shard of broken mirror in her bloodied fingers. Dark, terrible eyes peered back at her from the glass. She did not recognise the face in the reflection, but the face clearly recognised her. She stifled a scream.
    Was this insanity?
    Carnival met that lunatic gaze for as long as she could bear, then flung the piece of mirror away and heard it shatter against the wall.
    She sucked in a deep breath, and another. And then she concentrated, squeezing the window ledge until the sound of howling faded from her veins.
    Quickly, she climbed through a hatch in the floor, down the ladder into the dark belly of the tower. Huge vats loomed under a canopy of rusted pipes. Water dripped, striking eerie, soulless notes in the gloom. The heartbeat of the building itself. Beside the vats she found a stone trough full of brown liquid.
    Carnival slid Flora's diary into the caustic solution and watched it sink from sight.
    She left through the front door.
    A blow punched air from her lungs, pitching her backwards. She crashed against the door frame, the impact jarring her newly-healed wing. When she opened her eyes she saw that she had been engulfed in a chain-mesh net. Carnival hissed and ripped the fine metal links apart, shedding the remains of the net like a flimsy cocoon.
    She looked up.
    Temple assassins swarmed over the rooftops on both sides of the street, more Spine than she'd ever seen together before. She heard the whisper of steel, the click of bow latches, the squeal of windlass coils being rewound. Six of the assassins were spinning metal nets around their heads, while a score of others loaded bolts and harpoons into their crossbows.
    With a powerful thump of her wings she took to the air. She dragged herself skywards, skirting laundry lines, until she came almost level with the tenement roofs. Here her enemies surrounded her.
    They loosed their weapons.
    She dived below a thrown net, banking and weaving through a flight of harpoons, but then an impact spun her around in the air. Lye Street reeled, and suddenly she was falling. Her foot snagged one of the laundry lines, which stretched and snapped. She hit the ground and rolled, both wings crumpling under her back. Her head struck something hard, metallic. A plate bolted to the street? For a heartbeat her thoughts spun in confusion.
    Where was she? Why had she come here?
    A harpoon jutted from Carnival's shoulder. She noticed a slender cable, attached to the missile's shaft, rising up towards the roof of the building in front of her. From above came the sound of winches turning. The cable drew taut, then Carnival felt herself being dragged rapidly across the cobbled ground.
    Fury bucked inside her.
    Snarling,