Fade to Black (24 page)

Specials, the face, sword and swift knife in the back of the Ministry, and unturnable, unbribable, even by Ministry, or so rumour went. They swore to the Goddess, not any man.
While in
theory
that made them of and for the people, in practice, because the Archdeacon was the mouth of said Goddess, it made them the Ministry’s hunting-dogs. Not to be messed with if you like all your bits and pieces attached. On the meaner streets of Upside the merest hint of a Specials uniform could create a mass panic. Even in Clouds or Heights, the appearance of a Special might cause sweaty palms and clenching hearts.

The uniforms weren’t the worst part, the part that made my balls shrivel, my heart stutter and my mind go utterly blank in panic. Most of these were shabby replicas, covering men who from their pallor were obviously Downsiders, hired thugs pretending they were somebody. No, the thing that really made me want to panic was the one genuine uniform, and the face of the man wearing it.

Dench, my Upside informant in the guards. There was no mistaking that drooping face or moustache. What was he doing down here? More specifically, what was he doing in the Specials? Maybe he was the one who’d known I’d come down here, had brought the Ministry on my tail and a prisoner to murder Jake. Maybe. It didn’t really matter. The Ministry knew I was down here, and what I was after. If any one of those men knew an Upsider was here, I was dead. Actually, worse than dead. Yes, there are things that are worse. I did not want to be Azama’s new source of power for his pain magic. Nuh-uh.

I shuffled on the bench and lowered my head so that the
guy sitting next to me partially obscured my face. I should have brought a hat. Or been sensible and not come down here in the first place, or not let my hormones get the better of me when I let Jake talk me into this damn fool idea or… The cart rattled to a stop.

Dench and one of the fake Specials stepped forward and I huddled down, hiding my face with my benchmate. It wasn’t going to be enough. Dench had the driver bring the cart forward under the brighter lights by the entrance to the passageway.

“Get down, one at a time,” Dench snapped at the stock-men. They began to file out of the cart and drop to the flagstones where Dench got each of them under a brighter Glow light and inspected their faces. With each one, he gave a curt nod once satisfied. Azama, or the Ministry – and I couldn’t be sure whether they were the same or not – was taking no chances, but checking everyone trying to gain access to the castle.

Oh shit, oh shit, oh
shit
. It wasn’t just me I had to worry about either: Jake had one of the most recognisable faces Downside, and someone was going to know it was her just as soon as she got under that light. As for me, I was surprised Dench hadn’t picked me out already. The cart was almost empty of men. My turn soon. It was now or never.

I grabbed for my left hand, the one still swollen and bruised from trying to track Amarie, gripped the index and middle fingers and twisted hard. The fingers came out of their sockets
with a pair of crackling pops that sent shudders of pain up my arm, into my brain. I couldn’t keep it all behind my clenched teeth and a hiss escaped. It might be enough, I hoped to fuck that it would be, because I hardly ever used my Minor, the one thing my father had given me, a talent for disguise. In fact, I’d used it less than a dozen times all told, mostly when drunk or trying to piss someone off, and one of those times I’d almost popped an eyeball.

With the pain came the power, swelling up through me like a malignant tumour, forcing every thought that wasn’t about the spell out of my head. I let it grow and spread further than I ever had before, let it take me till it wasn’t pain any more but sweet, delicious magic. Until I saw why Dendal lived for it, why he loved it, why I’d always been afraid to use it, afraid I’d want it too much. It was everything,
I
was everything.

The pain, the magic, began to fade. Just a little. The world flapped at the edges of me, and a last fragment of sanity made a determined bid to keep me alive. I didn’t have long, only seconds. It’d have to be a makeshift job. Just enough so they wouldn’t recognise us, that was all.

I shut my eyes, took the thing in my head and squeezed. Not too hard, just right. Lengthen the nose, lighten the skin, compress the line of the jaw into a narrower shape. It would have to do. The magic faded, bleeding out of me, leaving me drained. I needed more: Jake, I had to do Jake too.

I held my breath and twisted the fingers again, shoving
them back into their sockets. I fought against the urge to sink into the pain, to let the magic take over and make me forget it, make me forget fear and sweat and blood and kidnapped girls, and concentrated. Somewhere out there, back in the real world, Jake swore, vicious words that were nothing to what was inside me. Her cherry-red hair; that was the first giveaway. I deepened it to a dark nut brown with a thought, a silver spike through the blackness in my brain. Now the face: dull the cheekbones, spread the nose, thin the lips.

The magic drained again, and seemed to take a part of me with it, strength leaking out through every pore. The urge to feel that again, to fill myself with magic, to let go of my fear, had my good hand on my bad, ready to twist my fingers again, and again if I had to. It wasn’t the pain I was afraid of, it never really had been. It was the feeling that the magic controlled me rather than the other way around, the thought of wanting something so badly I’d be prepared to give myself who knew what pain to get it. Now I’d delved in properly, now I knew the insistent knock in the brain of my magic trying to take me over, telling me how easy it would be to know it again, whenever I wanted, I wasn’t afraid. I was fucking shit-scared.

The worst part of it was, the black was everything you didn’t want in your life, gone, poof, just like that. Whatever it was about your life you hated the most, in the black it didn’t exist. For me, in the black there is no fear, and that was the part that called to me, the part that scared me the most,
because I wanted it the most. A day without fear would be all the heaven I’d ever need.

“Hey, you, get off the fucking cart.”

I raised my head and looked around blearily. Dench beckoned me, a scowling sneer twisting his drooping moustache into an odd shape. Someone was next to me but when I looked it wasn’t anyone I knew, just some ugly boy. Only – it was Jake. No mistaking those eyes, the swift calculation behind them, nor the subtle tilt of her lips when she spoke.

“I don’t know what the fuck you’ve done,” she whispered, “but you’ve got to get up.”

“I don’t think I can.” My whole body felt rubbery, as though my bones had been taken out. My hand throbbed like a bastard, and all I could think was, if I did it again, everything would fade away into the blackness in me. I couldn’t do that, I had Amarie to find, Jake to win over – fuck, I had a life to live. If I let myself be tempted, I’d be lost for ever. But I wanted to, more than I’d ever wanted anything. I took a deep, shuddering breath. “I need a minute.”

“We don’t have a minute.”

“Hey.” Dench stepped up on to the footboard at the back of the cart. “You two, out. Now. Or we come in.”

“We’re coming.” Jake called, then quieter, to me, “You have to, or you’re dead.”

I tried. I did. But the effects of magic don’t go away quickly. I got to my feet and stumbled, almost falling on to the bench opposite. Only Jake’s hand on my arm stopped me.

She got me upright and helped me to the step. “You owe me.”

When I glanced her way her face was twisted into a grimace, and the moment I was down off the cart she let go and wiped her hand on her blood-splattered suit. Luckily, by then some strength had come back to my legs and I managed to stand, although I needed to steady myself with my good hand on the cart.

Dench peered at me, a little too carefully for comfort. His moustache was really quite impressive up close. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Felt a bit faint.”

“Well get your arse over here so I can look at you.”

I managed to get to where he wanted me without falling over. Dench grabbed my chin and tilted my face into the light, all but blinding me. It seemed to take years of bone-aching tension before he let go and I blinked away the dark splotches from my vision.

When I could see properly again, he was grabbing for Jake’s chin. She jerked away from him and her hand reflexively went for where she usually kept her sword.
No, Jake, don’t. Don’t.
I wished I could do what Pasha did – read minds, maybe send thoughts. I knew she didn’t like to be touched, that even Pasha was careful not to touch her, how she flinched away if anyone looked like they’d brush against her, even her grimace of distaste and that wipe of the hand when she’d helped me on the cart. Now that would be a disaster.

Dench didn’t miss a beat. His hand shot out and gripped her chin hard enough that her mouth scrunched into a puckered O. Her eyes flew wide and her hands fluttered uselessly. For only the second time, I saw real fear in her. There was something about the way she stood, the way she cringed her body away from Dench, together with the few things I knew about her just from watching, that made me think it wasn’t the situation that had her scared. Not the fact that if discovered, we’d likely be dead. She didn’t care, Pasha was right about that. It was that Dench had laid his hand on her, as though that was the worst thing that could happen to her.

She tried to pull away, but Dench gripped harder, his fingers digging in. For a second, I thought she’d kill him right there, the way her eyes were, all wide and staring above his fingers. The way her hands clenched by her sides ready to punch, and I didn’t doubt she was as good at that as she was with her swords.

Then he let her go with a gruff nod, though he cast me a curious look. “I’m watching you,” that look said; “I know there’s something odd about you.”

“All right, start unloading,” Dench said, and all the stockmen leapt to obey. Jake staggered back until she hit the wall, her chest heaving and her face grey and slick with sweat. I caught her eye but she looked away swiftly, maybe embarrassed, and hurried to help.

I turned back to the cart, my strength returning now, though the urge to fall into the black remained. A half-carcass
of cow over my shoulder was enough to make me stagger under the weight but I got it centred and it wasn’t too bad as we made our way down the dark passageway. The weight was minor compared to the way Dench watched me and Jake, or the threat of Specials, however fake. They still had guns.

The passage was barely wide enough to get down with a cow on my shoulder, but I got to the end well enough and stepped through.

Into what I can only describe as Namrat’s kingdom.

By the time we’d offloaded all the carcasses, I’d managed to get myself under control. Just about. At least I hadn’t done anything totally stupid to give us away. I clenched my good hand into a fist in an attempt to stop the shaking. Not fear, not this time. This time it was anger and a raging pity that threatened my sanity. Jake wasn’t much better, a grim and even more silent than usual figure hunched in the baggy suit.

Beyond the passageway, after an alley lined with houses that leaned towards each other drunkenly over the way, lay a square that was evidently a meeting point of sorts, with the surrounding houses serving as barracks. The buildings all had a squashed look to them, as though the weight of the city above was too much, and everything seemed crammed in too close. Doorways too narrow, winding alleys that seemed no wider than a cat. Fake Specials strutted along the ancient streets, incongruous with the new-fangled guns that the officers wore,
their pretend uniforms looking shabby and false next to Dench.

The carcasses now lay in a heap in a squat stone-faced building on one corner of the square, the quartermaster’s office, pantry and butchery. Already, two young men were jointing the meat and laying the different pieces on an array of shelves in a cold store. So far, so – well, not normal, but un-alarming, except for those guns and the fact that our disguise wouldn’t last much longer. At least Dench was still at the other end of the passage.

No, none of that was what was bothering me. The problem was what faced us when we’d found a way through, out of the square and where the other stock boys never went, through a tangle of alleys so tortuous I half felt like I was following some demented worm. The fake Specials were pretty lax in here – I suppose we’d got past where they thought they needed to be vigilant – so it wasn’t too hard. What we found the other side was.

The face of a girl in an upstairs window of a house that looked like it should have been demolished a few centuries ago, windows broken, beams drooping, tiles missing, revealing mould and synth-eaten struts. The girl was only there a moment, a brief flash of a tiny face marred with shadowy bruises before she disappeared. Even that might have been OK, if I hadn’t seen with my own eyes that room outside the castle and the state of the girls there, and the black horror of the hole. If the hideous, shrill screams hadn’t reverberated
around this tiny square of hell. If any of the men had even looked up from what they were doing. If the screams hadn’t ended with the sound of flesh hitting flesh and the tingle inside me. Even I was getting some power, from this far away, not even touching her. Worse, she wasn’t alone. Not by a long stretch.

Other moans and cries, some more muffled than others, crowded my brain. Other tingles worked their way along my fingers. A long-drawn-out scream of torture from one side, from a house that had once been smart and well-to-do but was now not much more than a gently rotting shell. The scream ended in a babble of prayer, that now the Goddess would love her, would forgive her, wouldn’t she? A more rhythmic noise from across the square and, Goddess preserve me, I knew what that was. Goddess knew I loved my women, even if I couldn’t hold on to one for more than five minutes without cocking it up. But I loved them, or at least the idea of them, because they were entirely willing.

This was something else. This was an affront to the Goddess, even if I didn’t believe in her. This was an affront to people, to the city and all its teeming crowds of men and women just trying to get by. Yet the people here, the fake Specials, the quartermaster, other men haunting the slick cobbles of the square, never even flinched. To them, this was normal.