Fade to Black (32 page)

Jake looked up from where she still hovered over Pasha. “But what—”

“Rojan will bring him when he’s done. Come
on
, I need you to show me where to find everyone. Or did you want this all to be for nothing?”

Jake was in no state to resist his bustling efficiency, but she cast me a pleading look as they left.

“I promise,” I said. “You just get them all out.”

When they were gone I heaved a big breath to try to calm myself. I had no idea what I was going to do, but I didn’t want her seeing it.

Whelar looked up from where he was tending to Pasha, his voice and face matter-of-fact, as though tending a patient while cuffed to a pipe was a usual occurrence. “He needs a hospital.”

“He’ll get one. You’re very concerned, considering.”

“I’m a doctor first. I stop people dying. It’s what we’re for. And it’s why you should listen to Azama.”

Finally I looked down at my father, slumped against the wall. I prodded at him, the same as Whelar had done to me. He still seemed a bit numb, but I gave him some more of the stuff in the syringe, just to be on the safe side.

“So what are you going to do, Roji?”

“Stop calling me that. And I don’t know yet. Come on, you’re coming with me. Whelar, you keep Pasha alive, if
you
want to stay alive. I’ll be back for him.”

I pulled Azama to his feet and we went out to the room with the Glow, echoing to the sound of far-off gunshots. Downsiders perhaps, come to try for the factory, for the Ministry. For Jake and Pasha, because matchtime was hours ago and they hadn’t come back.

It would all be for nothing, if Azama got away, if the Archdeacon stayed on his pedestal. It would probably be all for nothing anyway – the Ministry men, the fake Specials wouldn’t shirk, would delight in stopping them.

Glow was all around us, making us shadowless and bright. The glass of the tubes was slick and cool under my fingers, no tingle of magic, no hint of what was actually making the Glow.

“How many?” I asked.

“How many what?” My father pretended nonchalant ignorance, and I resisted the urge to let him drop to the floor in a crumpled heap.

“People, children, whoever you use. How many?”

“Not as many as the synth killed. Not even a tenth of the number synth killed in one year. And why do you care, Roji? They’re all from down here, the very worst of the city. The ’Pit always was full of people worth nothing, or less – the faithless, the feckless. An affront to the Goddess! Now they’re doing something useful. Someone has to, Roji. We have to have the Glow, all of us, if we want to eat. Even the children Upside, if that’s what’s sticking in your throat. Save these down here and those up there will starve, and it’ll be you that killed them.”

A man-sized tube pulsed against my hand, the Glow growing, brightening. So pretty, from such ugliness. I watched it rather than him, fascinated, repulsed by the swirl and throb of it. I let go of him, pressed my good hand into the glass, and for a heartbeat I felt it soften, mould around my fingers. “Are they worth more, then? The ones Upside. Are they worth more just because of who they are? Is Amarie worth more than the others down here because she’s my niece?”

“Roji, we’ve no choice but—”

“Stop calling me that! All right then, answer this. How is it I can do this?”

The glass was still glass, still cool and slick and solid under my fingers – around my fingers – around my wrist. I wriggled my hand inside the tube, trying to still the surge up my arm from the contact with raw Glow.

You need me, you want to use me, you want the black, you want to let it all blow through you and fall in, where there is no fear.

“Yes,” I whispered, and pulled my hand free. The echoes of the Glow lingered in my brain, lit by the leakage that made the room seem to sparkle in my head. “And no.”

My father smiled at me, as though what I’d done was something he’d made. “You can do that because you’ve got talents you don’t know about, that you’ve always been too afraid to use. You always thought it was your Minor, didn’t you? Rearranging your face to suit you, to suit the situation. Rearranging, that’s how you can do that, making things move to your will. It’s not your Minor, it never was. You can do almost anything with a talent like that, a power that big, and I saw how much power when you caught Lise. You only need to channel it, train it. Why do you think I brought you? That’s why we need you down here, helping us. We need you, Roji. The Ministry needs you, the
city
needs you.”

Rearranging. Sounds so simple when you put it like that, doesn’t it? It didn’t feel simple, and neither did the choice. Save one lot of people, condemn more. Let people starve, or help the Ministry farm humans for Glow. It wasn’t much of a choice, but then I’ve never been much of a decision maker.

My father was still talking behind me, but it was a buzzing drone next to what was inside me. I was black inside, I always had been black inside, not with magic, black with fear. Fear of pain, fear of magic, fear of being responsible, of having anyone rely on me because I would always let them down. Fear of being with someone, fear of being alone.

I realised that Jake had been right – all these kids probably had families, people who loved them, wanted them back even if they were too afraid to say anything against the Ministry. Amarie wasn’t worth more than any of them just because she was my niece. Just because it was my father doing this. Somehow we had to stop this. For good.

Then my role in history could go down as the person who starved a whole city. At least I’d
have
a role in history.

In the end, one thing decided me. Not Amarie, not my father, not the thought of all the hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people Upside who’d starve, or all the girls down here who were worth as much as anyone else. It was Pasha’s black, the utter silence of it. That it was silence he craved because he’d heard and felt too much, more than any one person should have to, and I was going to save him from having to hear it any more. For her. Always it came back to her.

I shut my eyes and stroked at the glass, sucked up all the tingle around me, and pushed my hand into the tube. It got easier each time I tried this rearranging. Easier but harder, more painful. Closer to the edge. Maybe too close, because even when I opened my eyes I could see the black flapping on the edge of my vision, hear it calling across the void to me.

You need me, you want to use me, you want the black, you want to let it all blow through you and fall in, where there is no fear. You need me. You want me.

Maybe one girl isn’t worth more than another, even if she
is my niece. But every kid down here was worth blowing this room sky-fucking-high for, and Namrat’s balls to the consequences. But in the end, I did it for one person. For Pasha – so that Jake could try to be happy, they both could. Because he was worth more to her. Shit, I’m getting soppy in my old age.

You want me, you want to use me, become me
.

”Yes, oh yes.” My voice was barely even a whisper. I fell into it, and let the warm arms of the black wrap me in fearless power.

I wish I could tell you about what happened next in clearer detail, but whilst I was there, I also wasn’t. My father screamed as the first tube smashed, I remember that, and I remember grinning at the sound, at the sheer impotent rage of it. Then, as the Glow burst over me, through me, my brain simultaneously lit up like the day and became black as night. Tubes around me smashed, melted, exploded into a million sparking dots. Glow ran everywhere, flashed through the air like Lise’s electricity, ran about my feet like thick, hot blood, seeped into every part of me, became me. I may have screamed myself, I’m not sure, but it wasn’t with impotence. It was with knowing that now, finally, I had found something to believe in. Not the Goddess, not Namrat or any of the gods, not magic, not other people. Me.

When it finally stopped, when the last tinkle of shattered glass had finished echoing around the chamber and the last
remnant of Glow had disappeared into nothingness and the only light was coming through the door from the lamps in the office, I was on my knees. Not sick this time. No, this time I had lightning for bones, electricity for blood. I staggered to my feet, looking for, hoping for someone,
anyone
, to come against me.

There was no one. Except my father, who slumped on the floor and looked at me with a sick, stunned amazement. “What did you do?”

I wished people would stop asking that because I didn’t know, not exactly, not yet. I yanked him to his feet, and had to resist the urge to throttle the life out of him one inch at a time. Everything was becoming clear to me now. “No, the question is, what did
you
do? I know why. Why you did this, and it wasn’t to save the city, or anyone from starving or dying of synth, was it? No, it was so you could feel like this, because you were greedy and you wanted to feel like the Goddess flowed through your veins and anything was worth that, even torture and murder. Am I right?”

“No, Roji, I—”

“I told you not to call me that. Ma called me that, not you, and you left because you didn’t have the guts to stay. Didn’t have the guts for anything, without it. Without this.”

I could see how to do it, in my head. All too clear, and tempting, to rearrange
him
. My fingers started to sink into his skin and it took an effort of will, a conscious pulling back, to stop them. I didn’t want to be like him, and maybe there
wasn’t much choice about that, but not now. Not yet. “I was like that too. No guts. Like you, afraid without it, but I was afraid
of
it too. Not any more. I am not like you any more.”

And there it was. I wasn’t like him, or afraid, any more. Dendal might have banged on about mastery a bit too much and I hadn’t listened, but maybe some had sunk in. Now I could see how he managed to skim the black, barring a few accidents. I’d accepted, as he had, that the black was part of me, the sum of my fears, my dreads, my nightmares, and now it was a part of all of me, not feared but accepted, not a separate place in my head I tried to keep out of, and I could stretch further than I’d ever thought possible.

I was the black and the black was me.

I dropped Azama and wiped my hand on my chest, like he was something dirty. Fuck, he was the dirtiest of all, and he was part of me too, but not a part I was willing to follow. He lay on the floor, looking up at me as though I’d betrayed him. Maybe I had.

He tried the Voice, one last time. “Rojan, you’ve killed everyone, but you’ll be the first to die, you know that? Not by me: by the Ministry, or maybe by the people Upside, when they find out what you’ve done. Give up, give in, help me make the Glow again, and you can live. You can atone to the Goddess for what you’ve done.”

Oh, he was good; I’ll give him that. The Voice dragged up deeply buried memories, pulled at long-forgotten strings in my soul. To be someone my father was proud of, to be
someone he wouldn’t leave. That wasn’t enough, not any more. Not for my new faith in me.

“I don’t believe in the Goddess, and even if I did, I don’t think she’d want me to atone for this. I used to believe in cash and that men aren’t made for monogamy, that there isn’t a woman alive I can’t get into bed if I try hard enough, shit like that. I
used
to believe them like crazy. Now I believe that, sometimes, one person is worth more than another. That these people down here, these poor shits you’ve been farming for Glow, are worth any amount of you, or me. Just one of them is worth ten of you, or your Glow. That’s what I believe in.”

A crunch behind me, boots on broken glass. Dench. He looked around him with wide-eyed wonder, turning and turning, looking up and down at what was now just a huge room with a floor full of glass. No magic, no Glow, no vibrant energy. No pain either.

Finally he pulled himself together. Azama tried to speak, to use the Voice on him no doubt, but I leaned down and clamped my hand over his mouth. “Keep quiet, before I make silence a permanent thing for you. I can do that now, you know. If I have to thank you for anything, it’s that.”

“Shit, Rojan.” Dench stared at us both, his face grey under the astonishment. “They’ll kill you. Ministry – you’ll be dead as last week’s news.”

The last vestige of the Glow ran from me then: the lightning left my bones, the electricity drained from my blood, and all I felt was tired, stupid and utterly heartsick. I found I
didn’t really care whether the Ministry killed me or not. I’d had the feeling for some time now, since before we’d got into the castle, that Amarie wasn’t why I was here, that I was here for another reason. Well, I’d found it all right, and now I’d done it, I didn’t have the energy to care about much else, except one thing: “Did you find them all? Is she safe?”

“I think we got them all. Got some of my lads from Upside scouring the place too. Found a bunch of mages – trying to run, though that concoction of Whelar’s came in very handy. And Jake’s safe enough for now.”

“I sense a ‘but’ in this.”

Dench’s lips lifted at the corners in what might have been a tired smile. “But Ministry are coming, between us and the exits. I can get by all right, and so can my men, I can talk us out of this. Following orders is a wonderful thing. But you need to get out quick – your name is going to be mud just as soon as they realise what you’ve done, and they are going to know it’s you. This little shit,” he kicked at Azama, “told everyone to leave you be, kept you alive, but now… now you are dead meat. You didn’t kill all his goons in the temple, and they’re talking like it’s the last thing they’ll do. I’ve sent all the kids Up with some of my men, and Jake, though she fought me tooth and nail, but there’s you and Pasha… I can’t get you out, Rojan. Not past Ministry, not yet. Maybe not at all. They’re killing everyone they can find that isn’t Ministry. And they’ll be looking for you in particular when they see this. Your face is quite well known –
your father’s been flashing your picture everywhere, trying to find you.”

Sudden exhaustion dragged me to the floor. Pasha – I’d promised Jake I’d get Pasha out. But Azama – I wasn’t leaving him for his Ministry friends to find. That way we could never be sure he wouldn’t just start up again, in the time-honoured manner of Mahalian sneaky bastards. And while there was a glimmer of hope I could get one out other than me, two was beyond me. I flexed my crumpled hand and smiled at the tingle, the surge. Two was beyond me, but there was something I could do. With a grunt, I staggered to my feet.