Fade to Black (20 page)

“And now?”

“Now?” Pasha chuckled but it had a hard, nasty edge to it. “Now we make the most of what’s probably our last night alive. Drink?”

The bar was packed, but as soon as Jake walked in, a table was free as if by magic. I slid into the booth opposite Pasha and Jake and we sat in silence until the drinks came: the same green stuff as before. This time I wasn’t hesitant; I needed that drink, because now I knew more about what I was up against, what I was going to face come tomorrow, and I wasn’t at all sure I was up to the task. I slugged the booze back in one.

A whole fucking castle full of Ministry mages, ones who weren’t limited by the fact that their power came from their own pain. They had plenty of people there to supply it, a whole bunch of human cows. Including Amarie, who, for some reason I couldn’t quite fathom, had been specifically targeted. Perhaps to get me in there.
Perhaps
. And Pasha, Jake and I were just going to walk in. If that perhaps was right, we’d be doing just what they wanted. They’d be waiting for us. Hah! Last night alive.

Did I have a choice? Yes, yes I did. I could walk away. I could ignore what felt more and more like a summons, pull out that Ministry pin and haul my sorry arse back Upside, sit in my office and wait for a new job to come in. Wouldn’t take long, there were always jobs available, and I’d be free of this stone around my neck, free of responsibility.

Only this stone had a name, and a father who was relying on me. If I got rid of the stone, there’d be another more weighty to take its place: guilt, an emotion I’m far too familiar with. The effort of keeping myself free from it was why I hated responsibility. Too late now, though. It was one or the other. Shit.

The booze worked its magic, sending warm waves of feel-good through me. I needed more of that. A lot more. I poured myself another and it slid down smooth as you like.

“Fucking family,” I muttered, and went for the bottle again. “Fucking brothers, always getting into fucking trouble and expecting me to sort it out. Fucking pain magic, fucking Ministry, fucking
everything
.”

Someone sat down opposite me, which was odd, because the seat could only hold two and Jake and Pasha were—I looked up. Jake and Pasha weren’t there. The bar was almost empty, as was the bottle in front of me. And the face in front of me. Dog grinned like I’d just offered him a bag of sweets, and waved.

I looked round, found that everything was blurred and all the angles looked screwy, squinted and tried again. Everything
was still blurry, but I was pretty sure I couldn’t see Jake or Pasha anywhere. A slice of panic slid into my gut. On my own, down here where I knew far too little.

Fucking Downsiders.

I pushed on the table and got to my feet, which seemed to have no connection to the rest of me. I almost pitched head-first over the table, but Dog grabbed my arm and held me upright.

“Jake said I got to look after you. Have you been drinking the naughty stuff?”

I peered up, and up again, into his good-natured face and concentrated on not slurring. “Yes, the naughty stuff.”

“It’s OK. Pasha drinks too much of it sometimes. I know what to do.”

He sounded unbearably proud, like a child who has finally learned how to tie his shoelaces.

“That’s goo—” I began, and then Dog hefted me on one arm, swung me over his shoulder and left the bar. The door hit my arse as it swung shut.

“Dog, you can put me down.” It would be a damn good idea anyway, because all the blood was rushing to my head and I felt confident I was going to throw up all over him any moment.

Dog hesitated. “Are you sure? Pasha always has trouble walking when he’s drinking the green stuff. Jake said I had to look after you.”

“You can help me, all right? Only your shoulder in my stomach is making me feel sick.”

He slid me down and helped me find my feet. His arm was good and solid, just what I needed to help me keep straight. Shame the same couldn’t be said for my head.

Dog watched me, an uncertain smile twitching across his face. Probably afraid he’d done something wrong. Shit, I’ve always been crap with kids, and there was no doubt Dog was just a big kid. He chewed at his lip and followed every move with worried eyes.

“It’s all right,” I said, trying for that reassuring, almost wheedling tone parents sometimes use with their young children. “You haven’t done anything wrong. I just need to walk it off.”

His shoulders sagged with relief and the smile was back, the big, sweet-eating one.

“So, where were you taking me?”

“To the match. Pasha said you needed to drink something out of you first.”

To the match. The last place I wanted to go, to watch Jake risk her neck, watch her move with a deadly grace that would not be mine. To watch Pasha watch her and try to pretend it didn’t matter. I don’t know why it had got under my skin so much. She was an emotionally dead bitch who had a way with swords, and Pasha was a fucked-up little monkey with a good line in intimidation, when he had a gun to hand.

I didn’t want to see them; I didn’t want to be down here, being rained on with what was probably contaminated water, talking to a man who could snap me in half without breaking
a sweat but who probably had trouble grasping any word over two syllables long. I didn’t want to be in this dark, damp, rotten place any more, and I knew why, too, which was worse. And I even lied to myself about that.

Jealousy, I told myself, plain and simple. Not fear, no, not me. It was jealousy, of course it was. I’d fallen for Jake, bad. Worse, I liked Pasha, most of the time, and I knew damn well how he felt about her. It was in the way their hands never
quite
touched, the way they seemed to communicate without speaking. It was in Pasha’s eyes and the twitch of Jake’s mouth and I didn’t want to have to see it. I’d rather go into the castle alone than see it. Well, maybe that was going too far, but I didn’t want to go to the match. It had absolutely nothing to do with fear of being found wanting in the courage department.

“Dog, do you know where the Ministry men come down?”

He looked around quickly, as though afraid we’d be caught talking about it. “Yes, but Jake says I’m not allowed there. Bad men, she says. Bad men are looking for you too, all over. Have to keep you away, but they won’t come in this far. Jake made sure.”

I looked up at his earnest face, scrubbed and ruddy. Bad men. “Yes, they are, only that’s my way home. I – I don’t want to go to the match, Dog. I need somewhere to get my head straight, do you understand? Somewhere to think.”

A smile split his face. “Dog knows just the place. Oh yes, a grand place for thinking. Come on.”

For a moment I thought he was going to run, but he seemed to remember himself just before he took me off my feet and we made our way along the slippery cobbles, through rain that dazzled in the lights, dripped down my neck, cold as my heart. Dog chattered contentedly about the matches, and Jake, and how he’d once found a puppy and wanted to keep it. “And they said that puppy was with me just how I am with Jake. That’s why I’m Dog. I like the name. It’s mine. The puppy is called Freckles. She’s my friend, and she’s so fluffy and Jake said I could keep her if I fed her and looked after her, and I do…”

I let his words fade into the background and tried to concentrate on which way we were going. I thought I recognised a shop, then a corner. The match arena bulked behind the ramshackle rooftops, but we moved at an angle to it, so I was confident Dog wasn’t leading me astray.

Right up to the point when he stopped outside a temple. Its whitewashed walls were a dingy grey, streaked from the rain. The door was open and Dog moved towards it, but I stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Not here.”

Dog’s brow furrowed. “Why not? Good place to think, nice and quiet. I come here all the time, to think. I think better in the temple. The Goddess helps me.” He hulked over me and I could sense disapproval in the set of his rather large shoulders.

“Fine. It’ll be quiet, as you say.”

The doorway enveloped me in silky darkness punctuated by
a beam of light bringing sparks from dust particles. Dog had to bend almost double to get through the opening across the lobby. I followed, ducking somewhat less, and entered the temple. Instantly I was taken back to my boyhood. To hours spent kneeling next to my mother as she prayed, priests and acolytes gliding silently along the aisles, offering practical help and impractical prayer. The sounds, the velvety shushes as feet shuffled over the embroidered runner, the murmurs of a priest imparting advice, the mutter of someone’s desperate prayer. The smell of the burning herbs, a mellow scent as if the herbs’ sole purpose in growing was to be burned and smell sweet. The way the scent could stamp a picture in your heart when you smelled it again. The way light slanted through the dark from the old-fashioned flame lanterns, cunningly directed by covers to pick out the face of the Goddess on the mural, and the faces of the statues. The statues themselves, of the three martyrs and the four saints, whose feet I should kiss in turn, each with their own chant attached. Chant the chant, pray for their souls before I prayed for myself. Nican, patron saint of many things, including lost children, stared down at me with stony eyes. I stopped in front of him, wishing beyond wishing that I believed in him, that he could help me find Amarie. The words to his prayer that my mother had taught me came back, unbidden, unwanted, unbelieved in.
Nican, see me here at your feet, help me find what I have lost, both in my heart and soul and in my life. By losing you I have lost myself, and I would come back to you now.

I turned away from his plaster face, the way his eyes seemed to accuse me; ignored the rest of the statues, to Dog’s consternation; and made straight for a pew. My head was clearing, but that didn’t help. Nothing helped, or was likely to. I looked ahead to the blocky altar and the painting that dominated the wall above. The Goddess, looking down on us.

All temples have a painting of her inside their domes, but this one was different from all those I’d seen growing up. Usually she’s looking benign and a bit constipated, surrounded by flowers and birds and pretty things. In this one she was anything but benign, and there was nothing pretty about any of it. It was primal, raw. Maybe what the Goddess had stood for before the Ministry had sanitised her, I’m not sure. The story of the Goddess and the tiger. It had been one of Ma’s favourites, but had fallen out of favour among the priests.

Sacrifice, that’s what Ma always said the story was about. The Goddess sacrificed part of herself to the tiger to save us. Fed him her hand to appease him, to sate his hunger so he wouldn’t hunt us. I never saw that; what I saw and heard was the guilt I was supposed to feel about it, drummed into me, into everyone. Besides, her hand didn’t sate the tiger. He still stalks us, only now we call him Death, or Namrat. As a sacrifice, pretty useless. Why should I feel guilty, or grateful, that the Goddess had done it?

Ma’s death had made it worse. I was too angry with the
Goddess to even glance at a temple as I passed. That death had changed my beliefs, the faith I’d been brought up with. Sacrifice became guilt, goodness became cupidity, faith became stupidity. It still was. Faith didn’t stop bad things or help good things to happen. It was brainwashing, just as Azama was doing to those girls. If you believe, if you’re good, never mind how crap this life is, you’ll get a nice one after you die. It was a sop, a cosh to keep the underclasses manageable.

I stared at the painting a while longer, at the vivid colours, the look on the Goddess’s face as the tiger bit off her hand. As a boy I’d always felt such guilt. Now all I felt was a dull fury, that this load of lies was used to keep people from seeing what was going on around them, that the Ministry used it to try to keep everyone in line. To ignore what was going on around them.

When people are satisfied things will improve, even if it’s only after they’re dead, they tend not to rebel as much. So the Ministry had changed the story, changed the message. The Goddess was no longer about sacrificing herself so our lives would be better, now religion was about behaving well so she’d greet you with a pat on the head after Namrat paid his call.

I stood up abruptly, banging my knees on part of the pew, and hurried outside. The temple had been a bad idea. It always was, always left a bitter taste of bile and betrayal in my mouth. Even the matches would be better than this. Besides, I had someplace to be.

The temple, the painting full of life and death and visceral pain, had decided me. Not for the Goddess, but for me, for Perak and the promise I’d made Ma to look after him. I could go back to a lifetime of gentle reproach in Dendal’s face, to knowing I’d let my brother’s daughter stay down here, but if I did, I’d be dead of drink pretty soon.

So I went to find Jake and Pasha. Braced myself to go into the castle and face magic, my own and others’. Not for goodness, or the Goddess, not even for Perak or Amarie or because it was the right thing to do.

I went for the sake of my liver.

I got Dog to lead the way to the arena. He wasn’t happy with me, I could tell. The chatter had stopped and he wouldn’t look at me. That was fine: I wasn’t much in the mood for talking myself. Being backed into a corner will do that to me. The steady drip of rain, the black streets and Dog’s sullen air suited my mood to perfection.

The thump and thud of the crowd stomping reverberated through my feet and chest long before we arrived. By the time we got there the noise was indescribable, even outside. Dog left me by Jake’s door with a morose, pathetic look, like one of his heroes had just let him down, but it wasn’t Dog I was here to save.

I didn’t bother to knock but strode straight in, and wished I hadn’t. I had clearly interrupted something. An argument by the look of things. Jake’s jaw was clenched tight as she leaned
on the sideboard that held the booze. She pinched her lips together and squeezed her eyes shut. My entrance cut Pasha off in mid-something. Not a tirade exactly, because his voice was soft. He stood behind her, one hand reaching for her shoulder. All I heard was “Jake, for the Goddess’s sake, won’t you just—” and then he saw me and snapped his mouth shut. By the time I was fully through the door, he’d thrown himself into a chair and was studying the fight through the glass with infinite and exaggerated care.