Fade to Black (31 page)

“Pasha, I have to—” She looked at him, slumped on the floor. I never thought I’d ever see her cry, but she was, great silent tears that she scrubbed away with a vicious hand. I wasn’t sure Pasha was breathing any more, could barely feel the trace of him. I needed to get her away, get her mind on something, anything else while my own mind raced over what I could do.

“Azama first. Quick, before he comes to.” Just in case, I ripped off a part of my jacket and shoved it in his mouth. At least I wouldn’t be able to hear that voice, those vile words making sense, trying to tell me I was like him. “Once I’ve dealt with him, I can help Pasha, but if he comes round I can’t do a damned thing.”

She dithered for long moments, but in the end she stood up. “Be careful,” Jake said. “Other mages, more of Azama’s men.” With a last, despairing glance at Pasha, Jake ran. Then I had Dench on his own, without Jake to hear what I needed to ask him, needed to know.

Dench paced up and down thoughtfully, watching the face of the Goddess. He cast me a sharp look, and then it all came out.

“Didn’t think I might have more than one key for the cuffs, did you? You’d have made a really crap Special, Rojan, if that helps.”

“A bit. You going to tell me what the fuck you’re up to?” I mentally checked Pasha again. Slipping further and further away. We had to do something, and quickly. Or rather
I
did, but I needed to know too.

“I had to see which way you’d go. Thought you’d probably end up on your father’s side. They all do, in the end. Or almost all. Fuck, Rojan, you just shot the Archdeacon! We are in so much shit, I’m surprised we haven’t drowned in it. We still might. Ministry are on their way, and they’ll be here any minute, and then you’re dead. We all are.”

It seemed like a couple of years before Jake got back, but it couldn’t have been longer than a minute. Azama was just starting to groan his way back to wakefulness, and the words “you just shot the Archdeacon” were swimming round my head, pursued by sharks, but that wasn’t at the forefront.

Jake handed me the syringe and a vial. I filled the syringe with clumsy hands and slid it under the skin of Azama’s elbow. The way he struggled, the wide stare of his eyes, was more satisfaction than I ever thought I’d get out of bed.

“We’re not in as much shit as we’re going to be, Dench. And I still want an explanation. But first things first. Pasha needs a doctor, and Whelar will do.” He needed more than a doctor, but I wasn’t going to say that in front of Jake.

“You get Pasha there, and I’ll see what I can do to hold everything off. This uniform is good for that.” Dench strode off into the darkness, and I held back a twinge of misgiving. I had no idea whether he was Azama’s man or not. Specials swore to the Goddess, not any man, but the Archdeacon was the mouth of the Goddess, and Azama was Archdeacon, if Dench was telling the truth. He
was
the Ministry. But I was too fucked up to stop Dench, or even demand any answers. He was gone, we were alone and that was the best I could hope for. A chance to get out, get everyone out. Maybe.

First Pasha. I had to get him somewhere safer, because mages, goons, Ministry men, everyone was going to be here very soon. It was a struggle, but I managed to pick him up without my hand screaming too hard. When I had him, he
seemed too light, too insubstantial. I led the way back to the room where the good doctor was still cuffed to the pipe. Dench didn’t trust him either then. Good. The doctor might come in handy. In the meantime, Jake didn’t need to see this.

“Jake, find all the girls you can, get them all out, all right?”

“But—”

“No buts, that’s the deal. You find them, as many as you can, and get them back to where we were, that secret room outside the keep. Find Amarie for me, and Lise. All of them, and get them out as fast as you can.”

I don’t know whether she answered, because I was already sinking, flowing after Pasha. Into the black.

I’ve said that the black is different for all of us, that it relieves you of what you most want to be rid of. For me, the black has no fear in it. I am not afraid there, except of it, of falling further than I can dig myself out of, of it persuading me to stay. For Pasha it was different. His black was silence, the dead quiet of no overheard words or thoughts, no screams or cries of pain, no desperate prayers.

When I’d skimmed the surface of Dendal’s black before, to pull him out when he went on one of his little trips, he’d been a bright, brilliant presence. Even in my own personal heaven and hell of it, I could see my own light. Pasha was just a flicker, a tiny shining thread leading through a quietness that unnerved me. I tried to call out, to call Pasha back like I did with Dendal, but no sound came out; my words were dead in my mouth.

This was more than a skim of the surface, this was a visit to the worst reaches of another man’s mind, and the thought of that made the flesh creep almost off my back. I tried again, tried to call out while I followed the thread, and there he was, a sad, fading light huddled at the bottom of a vast ocean of silence.

I’d never been this far in, not even in my own black, and my mind flailed around, trying to work out what to do, how to pull him back. In the end, instinct – fear – took over and I pulled at him with hands that didn’t exist, talked to him with words even I couldn’t hear. I had to, for him, but more for Jake. I was doing this for her, because I wanted her to be happy and screw everything else. At that moment, it was all I cared about.

The silence pressed in on me, muffled my thoughts as well as my tongue, and panic was a sour taste in my mouth as I wondered whether it was possible to get lost in another mage’s black. Panic brought with it its own danger – my own magic, fighting to break free, fighting to
do…
and I wasn’t strong enough, because I let it.

The next I knew, I was hunched over Pasha on the floor, something light and fragile caged in my hand. Without knowing what I was doing, or why, I pressed it into Pasha’s chest and sat back, drained of all thought or feeling.

When I raised my head, Jake, Whelar and Dench were staring at me as though I was a ghost, or maybe just something really weird that had dropped out of their nose.

“What
are
you?” Dench’s voice was barely a murmur. Not the first time I’d been asked that today, and I still didn’t have an answer.

“My son, finding out just how powerful he is, how powerful he could be if he stopped this and joined me. When he sees that it’s necessary,” Azama said behind me. There was no power to his voice now, still recovering from the numbness, though the memory of it made me itch.

“Shut the fuck up,” I said, but without much force. Pasha’s eyelids flickered as he came back to the now, to the here. His breathing was laboured, and he’d begun to twitch again, but he managed a puzzled look my way.

I wish I knew
, I thought at him, and I did. Something was happening to me, something twisting and changing inside, and it was scaring the crap out of me. But I was going to use it.

“He needs a doctor.” Stating the obvious, but my brain wasn’t up for much more. “Whelar?”

To give him some credit, Whelar never hesitated but pulled the cuff chain as far as he could from the pipe and began to look Pasha over.

I struggled to think logically, and turned to Jake. I really wished she hadn’t seen that, because it seemed to have shaken her, badly. Her lips were white and trembling, her hands flexing into fists and then splaying helplessly. I had to help her, get her mind away. Besides, I needed
her
help. “You were going to get everyone out?”

She barely looked up from hovering over Pasha, and her voice was faint and trembling when it finally came. “Not on my own. There’s too many, of them and his goons, his mages. I can’t.”

“Yes you can, you have to. And quickly. Don’t try to take out all his men, just get the girls, get them out somewhere safe.” The only way I could think of to get her out, to get
her
safe, by making it about the girls she’d spent all this time trying to find and save. She’d never leave otherwise, and I needed her to. Selfish thought, but if I got nothing else from this day, I wanted her and Amarie safe. They were part of every thought. I wanted, very badly, to hold on to her and tell her it would be all right, and maybe convince myself that I’d be all right too. I knew that for a bad idea, so this was all I could do, for her and myself both.

Jake rocked back on her heels, her hands rubbing at her wrists, harder now, almost scrubbing at them as though trying to get rid of some filth. She didn’t seem to notice what she was doing as she glared a flat, dead stare at my father. I couldn’t even look in his direction.

“I’ll help.” The last voice I expected to chime in. Dench.

I ground the heel of my good hand into an eye, to see if that helped make more sense of everything. “I don’t think so.”

“I do. I’ve been a Special a long time, Rojan, longer than I’ve known you. I never told you because – well, Specials are about as welcome as a fart in a temple. More feared than pain-mages even, because people know we exist. But it’s changing.
I can remember what we used to be, what we
should
be. I’m not the only one, either. We swore to the Goddess, every last one of us. We swore to serve her, not the Ministry. Mostly everyone thinks it’s the same thing, and mostly they’re right, but like I say, some of us remember. We’ve been guarding the entrances here for years, ever since it was sealed, but we didn’t know what was going on. They never let us in, they just told us this was where they made the Glow, so we had to keep it safe. And we did, and we didn’t question it much, though there’s some of us been feeling uneasy about it, about them. So we watched and waited. Until you came down here. I knew there was something up then, for you to risk your arse like that. So I followed, and I’m not sure if I’m glad I did or not.”

Dench’s gaze ran over Azama with a sneer. “In the name of the Goddess. This isn’t what I swore to, or all my fathers before me, back to when Mahala was just a castle and the Specials were the warlord’s sworn assassins.”

I still couldn’t look at my father, because I was pretty sure I’d punch him stupid, so I didn’t see the look on his face when he spoke. The words were bad enough. “You swore to protect the city too, and that’s what I’m doing. Protecting the people, making sure they don’t starve. Or would you go back to the synth? Would you, Rojan? Go back to people dying in the thousands? I left because I couldn’t watch your mother die, not like that, and I had to find a different way. And I did. I saved who knows how many people. I saved the city, Roji, and you and Perak. I saved everyone.”

I shut my eyes and pinched at the bridge of my nose. This was all too fucked up for words, because even without his magic powering his voice, I knew he was right. He
had
saved people from an evil, nasty death that I wouldn’t wish on anyone, even him. But. “You couldn’t watch her die. I didn’t want to either, but I did, and you weren’t there.”

“And you’ll condemn people to that, because I left, for your own selfish reasons? How many more will die like that, if we go back to synth?”

The question hung in the air like a bad smell.

Dench saved me from having to answer it, his voice low and urgent. “Rojan, look at me. I’ve known you for years. We’re all but trapped here now. Ministry men all over, Downsiders all through the keep. I don’t know how or why—”

“I told Dog where we were going, and how we planned to get here.” Jake’s voice, a whisper of what it had once been. “Told him that if we weren’t back by matchtime we wouldn’t
be
back, and to stick with Gregor – one of the other matchers. I had to tell Dog something. He’s just a big kid, and I couldn’t let him not know where we’d gone, that we might not be back, I had to make sure he’d be OK…”

Dench looked at her with pity in his eyes, and the set of his moustache. “More than OK, I think. There’s Ministry men everywhere, but without Azama they’re panicking. Downsiders running riot outside the castle, not just matchers but ordinary men and women. Matchtime was hours ago. I don’t know what you told Dog, or what he told everyone else,
but they’re going crazy. And my Specials – I called them down, thinking to help, but they’ve got their hands full with that lot. There’s blood all over, and it’s not just those girls either. Look, Rojan, I can help you, help Jake get these kids out, I can find a way, or get my Specials to make a damn way. Now.” He pulled his gun out of a pocket I hadn’t even thought to search. I really would have made a crap Special. “I could have killed her, or you, any time. But I didn’t. I used your pistol on her to keep her from getting shot by his goons, because I wanted to see what you’d do, which way you’d go. Rojan,
look at me
.”

This time I did, watched the drooping moustache, the careworn eyes, and thought about all the times he’d helped me. I slid a look at Jake and back to Dench and he got my meaning perfectly. “All right then. Jake, I need you to show me where to find all the girls we can,” he said. “It’s going to be bloody, it’s going to be hard and we can’t take Pasha.”

Jake tried to protest, but Dench cut her off with a slash of the hand holding the gun. “If we try carrying him, we won’t make it. There’s still plenty of mages down here and until – unless I can get things under control, inside and out of the castle, we can only take those who can move on their own. If we take him, we can’t take anyone else, see?”

“I’ll take him,” I said. Dench looked away at that, as though I’d let him down. “I can certainly make sure the Ministry aren’t concentrating on you. I can do both at the same time, if I’m lucky.”

“What are you going to do?”

“No fucking idea. But I’ll think of something. I’ve got him to consider too.” I nodded at Azama who, perhaps wisely, was staying quiet, for which I was thankful.

Dench considered for a few moments, until a gunshot at close range brought us all up sharp. After that, Dench was all business.

“I don’t know if I’ll make it back to you, Rojan. I’ll try, that’s all I can promise, but we’ll get the girls. Jake, you and me, we’ll find everyone we can and get them out. I know an extra exit or two that can get us Upside nice and quick, behind the Ministry men.”