Fade to Black (9 page)

So I reined myself in for once, tried to hide my disgust,
which would only shame her worse, let her soap my back, fed her the steak and sent her on her way. She was so grateful, I didn’t mind the loss of the meat and I made do with the vegetables and gravy. Even that was a treat, ten times better than anything I’d eaten for years.

I dressed quickly and tucked the pin inside a pocket, just in case. It wouldn’t prove popular out there, I was sure. In other circumstances I’d have gone out and lost myself in the decadence around me, found a woman or two without brand marks and a bottle of something strong and had myself a damn good time. But I had a responsibility, people depending on me, maybe for their lives. Already it seemed to stifle me, and I’d barely begun.

Three hours, and several wrong turns, later I was standing in a narrow alley between two shanty-built houses leaning out so far that they looked like two drunks supporting each other. Only a fitful oil lamp gave me any light to see by, but I was pretty sure that was a mercy, given the smell. Someone was dying of the synthtox somewhere close by. Rain dripped constantly from the roof far above, plastered my hair to my head and tingled on my face. I double-checked the address with the one Tam had given me and approached the small door, tucked away behind a stall selling some kind of food I couldn’t recall having even smelled before.

The door was unlocked, as Tam had said it would be, but that didn’t stop the hairs sticking up on the back of my neck. Under a feeble, swaying light – a rend-nut-oil lamp, not a Glow, the whole place reeked of rend-nut and poverty and synthtox – a set of wooden steps led upward, the treads
splintered and broken in places. The bottom step groaned when I trod on it, but it took my weight and I advanced gingerly. Something chimed at my nerves, made me grip the pulse pistol hard inside my pocket; but, look as I might I couldn’t see anything to alarm me.

Without warning a part of the wall came away and swung towards me. I lurched back, quickly enough to avoid the smack of the door, not nimble enough to avoid falling to one knee. Before I could bring up the pulse pistol, one of Perak’s new guns was an inch from my nose, the muzzle quivering slightly. I hadn’t seen one up close before, but there was no mistaking what it was. The face behind the dark eye of the barrel was in shadow as the light swung in a lazy arc above.

“What are you doing here, Ministry man?” he said, and a sharp fear vibrated in his voice. The finger on the trigger twitched. “Jake’ll have something to say about that. You may end up as dish of the day on that stall down there. You’ll probably taste better, too.”

The only papers I’d dared bring down were the Ministry ones, in case I was searched before they let me in. Tam had warned me: among the general population, the Ministry were less than welcome, and they were dead if they left the approved areas. I was not in an approved area by a wide margin, and I suspected the Ministry were as welcome as snot in the bathtub. “Tam sent me.”

The gun lowered a fraction, but I still couldn’t see much of the guy’s face except the hard line of his mouth. “Prove it.”

Luckily, Tam had foreseen this. Mindful of the gun in my face, I slid a hand into a pocket and took out the picture Tam had given me. It had a bland scene of one of the plusher parts of Trade painted on it. The slip was snatched out of my hand. Gun Man gave it the briefest of looks and stood to one side, gesturing me upwards with the barrel.

“In there,” he said, pointing to the doorway he’d come through. “Sit on the first chair, keep your hands on the arm-rests.”

I resisted the instinctive reaction to tell him to go screw his mother, did as I was told and entered a small, spartan room. There were two rickety chairs, a bed with a threadbare blanket and a lumpy-looking pillow, and a small desk, neat, no papers. The floor was bare boards, worn to splinters with odd stains making weird patterns. Some pictures on the wall, but I couldn’t make them out in the light from a guttering oil lamp. That was it. A room for sleeping in, working in. Not for living in. It was scrubbed so clean it could have been made yesterday, though the building that housed it was eaten away by the synth, almost to nothing in places.

I sat in the chair and put my hands on the armrests. Even without Tam’s warnings about the dangers here, the jittery twitch of the man’s finger on the trigger would have made me do it. Not just craven self-preservation: I needed to live to find Amarie. I told myself that and almost believed it.

I bit back a laugh when I saw the man who walked through the door. If I’d have seen his face before, I’d have had that gun
out of his hand in two seconds flat. He was a few years younger than me, mid-twenties I guessed, though he still had the gangliness of youth and he looked scared half to death. He was dressed in tatty black, the arms of his old-fashioned cloth shirt pulled down fastidiously to his wrists, every crease in place, all buttons done up. In contrast, his dark, collar-length hair rumpled round a face that managed to give the impression of a small wizened monkey that’s had its banana stolen. But he held the gun, even if his hand did tremble so much it was only pointing at my face half the time.

He stood and looked at me for a moment, his dark eyes ranging over my face uncomfortably before he relaxed, just a fraction. He took a look at the picture in his left hand and glanced my way again.

“You don’t look much like a Ministry man,” he said. “Too thin, not arrogant enough.”

“I’m not Ministry.”

“You’re from Upside, though. Accent’s wrong for a Downsider. You don’t dress like one either, that allover, the coat. The only Upsiders in this place are Ministry. Which means I will take great pleasure in shooting you. No Specials here to guard your back, not this far out. This far out, they don’t even care enough for that.” His hand tightened on the gun and his face twisted, as though gearing himself up to do it.

“I’m looking for Pasha. I need his help,” I snapped. I wanted to be back Upside, where I knew the rules, where I
didn’t need this kind of help, any help, where my life was contained to a nicety. I wanted to be in the bed of one of my girls, or drinking at home with barely a thought to the people I looked for, apart from the cash finding them would bring me. Where I could do as I pleased, within reason, and didn’t have this duty weighing on my every thought. Or synth on my boots.

The name seemed to startle him out of shooting me. For a while, anyway. “Help with what?” He moved across to the bed and sat down, the gun still pointing my way. He seemed to have got his nerves under control, because it wasn’t waving about any more. The picture flipped over and over in his other hand.

It was bad enough that I had to ask for help, but this was getting irritating. “For fuck’s sake, are you Pasha? Yes or no? If yes, stop pissing about; if no, where is he? I haven’t got time to dick around.”

He gave me a shame-faced grin and laughed a little. “You don’t sound much like a Ministry man, for all your accent. Let’s see.”

He reached down, still pointing the gun my way, and felt under the bed. When his hand returned he was holding what looked like a lamp, but the glass was black. He laid the picture on the covers of the bed and held the lamp over it, flicking a switch with his thumb. No light shone that I could see, but the picture changed in some indefinable way. He laid the gun on his leg, though he didn’t take his hand off the
butt, and grinned, making him look more monkey-like than ever. “I’m Pasha. What is it you want, Mr Dizon?”

I relaxed a little in the chair. “I’m looking for a girl.”

He shrugged in a poor attempt at nonchalance. “Aren’t we all? But I’m not a pimp.”

I refused to give in to the sharp retort and kept my voice level. He had a point. “My niece. She was kidnapped. She’s down here.”

His raised his eyebrows. “From Upside? And the kidnappers? You’re sure?”

I shut my eyes against Amarie’s sobbing, the growl in the background. Then I lied a bit. Lying about my magic was second nature, and probably why I wasn’t yet dead. “Tam seemed to think so, from the little descriptions we had.”

“Which were?”

I ran through the brief details I’d found out: the scarred man and his lookalike companion, the way they were dressed, and how they’d disappeared. I didn’t like the hard glint that leapt into Pasha’s eye, at odds with his impish face, or the way he was chewing his lip. Or, indeed, the way his hand tightened on the trigger of the gun, because it was still pointing my way. “Why should I help you? What’s one girl when all the ’Pit needs help?”

“Tam said you would. I’m happy to pay,” I said, hoping he would refuse the money. I’d paid too much to Tam already.

“I don’t need your money.” His face flushed as though he was affronted by the offer. “Tam’s never sent anyone down here
before. What’s so special about you, or this girl, that he’d risk it?”

“She’s my niece. I want to get her back.”

He gave me a pitying look but said nothing. My temper started to get the better of me but I resisted the urge to thump him. Tam had warned me this man was my only hope. I didn’t stand a chance down here without him. I didn’t quite manage the diplomacy I’d hoped for; the words fell out of my mouth before I could stop them. “How are you going to help anyway? You can barely even hold a gun straight.”

He raised the gun and hefted it as though testing its weight, or its ability to blow my head clean off. He didn’t look quite so monkey-like now. “You’ll see.”

Pasha splashed through the streets and I followed. It wasn’t long before I was wishing I had a hat like everyone else, to keep the constant drizzle off. Every drop felt like another nail in my coffin. It might be laced with synth, might be working its way into my blood and bones right now. Which kind of offset the pleasure of being able to walk on solid ground and not have the niggle of a long drop to chew my nerves.

We passed through a large and thriving trade district, so different to Upside. The windows were full of things I hadn’t seen in years, banned by the Ministry for being seditious: gramophones, both wind-up and powered by some mysterious source, and the records to go with them; instruments – brass, woodwind, even a twelve-string guitar. Music vibrated
along the streets, blaring out of windows, songs and bands competing with each other, mingling together, but somehow it never became discordant.

Whole shops were devoted to books. I don’t mean factual books – even the Ministry allows them, after they’re vetted carefully for anything they don’t like. I mean
stories
. The sort that my mother used to read to us, that make you think there’s hope yet for people. That something better exists, even if it isn’t here or you’ll never experience it for yourself. Unicorns, dragons, myths and legends, noble warriors, dread mages, you know the sort of thing. I’d forgotten about those stories she’d read. I’d forgotten the sentiment too, and I itched to dive in among them, try to regain some of that wonder. It was probably a good thing I didn’t, because I suspected any wonder in me was long gone.

Some of the goods hadn’t been banned Upside but they might as well have been, considering how long it had been since I’d seen any. Big, fat pork chops, a brace of game-birds, beef enough to keep me stuffed for a week with prices so cheap any low-life in Boundary could have afforded at least one meat meal a week. We walked past a shop that baked and sold pies, and my stomach rumbled audibly at the aroma that wafted along the street.

There were other differences from Boundary and the rest of Upside too. I hadn’t seen one Rapture addict, not a single working girl, or if I had they were being exceptionally discreet. Yet, for all their food and the apparent lack of the flaws
of Upside, there was an undercurrent, something raw and visceral that vibrated my bones almost as hard as the music. Anger and hopelessness flowed through the crowds just as it did in Boundary or anywhere below Trade. The only difference was that here they hid it better, because it wasn’t directed at each other in brawls or knife fights. It was here, but I got the feeling they kept it all inside, brewing, waiting to escape in a violent explosion. It made me shiver and hurry after Pasha.

He led me further in, passing no comment and answering none of my questions except with an offhand shrug. The undercurrent was affecting him, I think. Once he’d stepped outside his door, his shoulders had hunched into his jacket, his mouth had hardened. He no longer looked like a little monkey but like a vicious, if skinny, ape. I could be wrong – I’ve only ever seen monkeys or apes in books when I was a boy. However, putting on a different face when you step out of the door, that I know.

Buildings towered over us, hemming us and our sightline in. I was used to that, to the crumbling façades, the blank-eyed windows. What I wasn’t used to was the constant rain, the occasional glimpse of someone half dead from synthtox, or the thought that, no matter the time, I wouldn’t get to see even third-hand sunlight. It would always be dark down here. The thought made me shove my hands further into my pockets and hunch away from the rain. So it wasn’t until Pasha stopped and said, “Here we are” that I noticed the building.

It wasn’t like the others, didn’t reach to the far-above Seal
that divided the ’Pit from Upside. It alone looked pristine against the ravages of synth. Three storeys tall, that was all, faced with white stone and curved. If I could have seen it all, it’d probably be round. Lamps blazed from every barred window, lighting the streets and setting the shop windows into sparks and bright reflections. It looked like a temple – or a prison.

The streets were filled with people, all heading for the main entrance which opened like a dark mouth in the side of the building. Barkers wandered up and down the orderly lines shouting, “Tickets, best tickets for the match of the decade!”

“Match?” I asked Pasha. Upside there were occasional sporting events, especially in the winter. Chayl matches – a kind of organised brawl involving, at least nominally, a ball – were fun to watch and I tried to get to most of them, even if my team always lost whenever I showed up. The games were so popular, it was a wonder the Ministry hadn’t banned them yet. Only I had the feeling this wasn’t that sort of match. The people queuing looked too – not grim exactly. I’m pretty grim when I go to see a chayl match, because I’m always sure we’ll lose and too often right. With these people, it was almost as though they came to pay homage, to give solemn thanks. They looked like temple-goers on holy days. Well, from what I remember of going to temple, anyway. It’s been a while, but these people had an added something that rang familiar to me when talking about temple. An added – I don’t know what; that brewing anger, perhaps, just waiting to explode, or be released somehow.