Rojan Dizon 02 - Before the Fall (23 page)

Pasha came and stood next to me, staring up at the Inquisitors with the same sort of dread that was churning my gut.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t—”

It was my turn not to let him finish. “Forget it. Tell me later. Now we have to figure out what to do. Abeya’s still out there, Fat Boy’s up to something and there’s still a Dench to see if he’s picked a side, or he’s still with the Goddess. Guinto can wait.”

“But if—”

“
Later
. We need to get out of this cell, all of us. I can’t manage that, not now. Probably not ever.” Though it was tempting to try, even if I knew I couldn’t rearrange more than me and another, even at my best. Dench knew it, too, and that I was far from at my best. The black was flapping at the edge of my vision, always calling. I wanted it like I wanted air to breathe. But not yet. Not now. Now I had things to do. Dench wanted me to do something, but what?
Why?

“Sod Guinto, we’ve got other things to do. After we get out.”

“How are we going to do that?”

I really wished he hadn’t asked. Not as much as I wished I didn’t know the answer.

The drop from the window was nauseatingly long, and I held on to the sill like grim death and tried to ignore the dizziness and the scream that seemed to build behind my eyes. In the gloom of a moon-ridden night, I could just make out the Slump below. I found a chip of stone and dropped it. As a measure of the drop it didn’t help, because I couldn’t hear when it finally hit something. I tore my gaze away, almost hypnotised, and instead tried to concentrate on what was around us at our level.

The Home of the Goddess, or what I’d left of it, wasn’t far away, but it might as well have been miles. We seemed to be near the top of a spire, and
everything
was a long way away. Mostly down. I am not a big fan of down in large doses. Still, when the Goddess has your balls in a vice, you have to take what you can get. I shut my eyes and took a deep breath. It did nothing for my vertigo, but at least my voice didn’t come out squeaky with terror.

“That way.”

It wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. It was much, much worse. Even though I doubted the Inquisition ever expected anyone to try to escape—after all, where would you escape
to
, except straight into the arms of Specials, guards and Ministry men?—there was a reason the holding cell was there, and that reason was, it was suicidal trying to climb down. The sides of the spire were almost sheer, the stone was slick marble and not even a handy gargoyle to hang on to. And there was that long, long drop to consider, though I was trying my very best not to.

I suggested an easier way, of course, one that didn’t involve me and heights, but Pasha gave me a mental slap.

“You’re too close. I don’t need to be in your head to know that. You’re on the edge of a drop worse than that. Don’t fall in.”

So I lied and said, sure, no magic and the black rubbed its hands in my head. Pasha and Jake probably never noticed how I rearranged their hands, the soles of their boots, with the little juice I had. Made them that bit sticky, all the better to grip the stone with. They might need it later, too, because I’d asked them to try to find Perak, help him any way they could. Being Archdeacon had to count for something, surely.

Pasha was as nimble as a monkey, naturally, and Jake didn’t fare too badly either. They had a few hairy moments getting around an overhang, but before long they were safely down to the lower levels of the building where the roof didn’t slope so sharply and someone had thought that fretwork and knobbly bits of stone looked good. From there, it was only a matter of leaping a nice chasm with death at the bottom, and they were out. I didn’t watch.

Guinto, despite our every effort, refused point-blank to leave. I couldn’t work out if he was irretrievably stupid or irredeemably pious. He was a pain in the buttocks, though. Whatever I said, all he would reply was, “I’m guilty, and I must atone to the Goddess for my sins.”

“That’s all very well, but if Pasha’s right, you’ll end up killing Under. Killing the city perhaps. Not a nice epitaph, is it? I should know.”

What he probably meant to be a crafty look crept over his face. In fact, it made him look like a kid who’s just figured out that, actually, there is such a thing as lying. Sad, really.

“If I’m still here,” he said, “they might not look so hard for you three. I’m the guilty one, the one they can parade and say they caught the killer.”

“Oh, yes, thank you very much, add another death to my conscience,” I snapped. “All very well for you, to choose the end you get. What about everyone else? Hmm? All your parishioners, all those Downsiders you gave hope to, who’ll burn the place down if you do this? Don’t you care?”

A faded sort of smile. “When you destroyed the Glow, when you destroyed everything this city was built on, condemned a city to starve, did you pause to wonder? Did you care about them then? Or did you do what you thought was right?”

I hate it when people throw things back in your face. I tried, I swear I did. I cajoled and wheedled and threatened but all he would say was, “Abeya is my daughter. I have to do this, for her.”

I tried swearing a blue streak at him but he wouldn’t reply, only smiled at me with that beatific smile that I knew,
knew
, would haunt me. He was doing it because he was good and noble, and saving a Goddess-denying wretch like me. Maybe converting me in the process, though good luck to him on that point.

“I still won’t believe in her, you know that?”

“Oh, you will in the end. They always do. You go, and may the Goddess bless your steps.”

I kept my response shut down behind locked lips, because if I’d let it out they’d have heard me down in No-Hope.

Why we’d been allowed to come to, wake up enough that I could use the juice flowing through me, I had no idea, but I thought I detected Dench’s hand in the proceedings. But for what reason, I was only guessing. How far in that cardinal’s pocket was he, or was he playing the long game, pretending to follow when really he was planning to arrest? Was he helping, or setting me up?

Whatever, there was no point being too obvious. Instead, and it wasn’t a much better prospect, I stood by the window and looked out. No way, no way in the
world
, was I climbing down there, not with a long entrenched terror of heights and a buggered hand. But feeling was coming back. Pain was lurking. Juice was waiting.

I clenched my fist with a moan, and laid my head against the cool stone of the wall. The stone ran with blackness, a river, a tide of it swarming towards me. Not yet, I couldn’t succumb yet. Later, I promised myself. Later I would, and everything would go away. Now, I had things to do. Without Pasha and Jake to worry about. With any luck, he’d get her out and safe, keep them both safe and Perak, too, I hoped. Because I thought that this was going to end only one way, and it was the least I could do for both of them, for believing in me when I was about to betray that belief. Because I had the funniest feeling I’d worked a few things out, and it didn’t look good. If everything went tits up, and on previous experience I fully expected it to, at least they’d be out of it, maybe could keep Lise safe for me, too.

Because this was all just that bit too close together. The cardinal guiding Abeya, getting Dench in his pocket, having Perak shot. Whelar had given him a great way to keep us under control. Manoto had destroyed mages and the lab so that either Perak had to negotiate with the Storad or he could step in and say, “I have a deal already”, perhaps.

Whatever, it was all tied up together in knots, I was sure of it, and if I pulled one thread maybe it’d all come tumbling down.
He
would come tumbling down, and wouldn’t that make a great splash?

Then perhaps we could get on and get the damn power on, save the city without having my brain zapped. Much. As an added bonus, maybe I could stymie the whole damned Ministry, bring the smug bastards to their knees, a thought which made me smile and ignore the laughter in the back of my head.

With my good hand, I rummaged in a pocket and found the envelope containing Abeya’s hairs nestling next to the little vial Lise had given me. And was that a clue to what Dench wanted me to do? Why hadn’t they confiscated it? What
did
he want me to do? Or had they just thought it was one of Whelar’s syringes? They looked the same, and I suppose no one would think I’d willingly inject myself with one of his jabs.

I pushed that away—my brain would just go round in circles, with no answers. I needed to do something, that was for sure. It didn’t take much—Abeya was close, very close. Twenty yards south-west, fifty down. Not far. Fat Boy was keeping her close, for who knows what reason. Maybe she’d been the one to fire the shot at Perak. Didn’t matter. All that mattered was she was close and I could find her, get out of here and stop Manoto and Abeya and the Storad they were plotting with. Perhaps. If they really were.

Two things followed me in and through as I melted from one place to another—a thought from Pasha, quite a rude one asking what the fuck I thought I was doing, and, worse, a murmured prayer from Guinto for the Goddess to watch over me, because I was a good man really, even if I didn’t know it. Shows what he knew, right?

I probably should have looked a bit before I jumped in with both hoofing great feet, but my mind wasn’t really thinking very clearly at that point. Mostly I wanted to get away from Guinto and his prayers. I found Abeya all right. Unfortunately I found someone else too: a big, mean Storad and he was pissed as hell when I landed on top of him.

Abeya screamed, and I may have done as well because the Storad’s first action was to grab my poor hand and twist it up behind my back so hard that white spots ran in front of my eyes and it was all I could do not to let all that juice out in one glorious rush that probably would have killed me, them, and anyone else in a hundred yards’ radius. Tempting, but I didn’t want to die then. I’m not all that keen on dying now.

Then a familiar and terrifying sensation—a syringe jabbing into me. I tried to struggle, tried to rip it out before whoever held it pressed the plunger, but I was too damned slow. All I could do was hope like crazy it wasn’t the new stuff the cardinal had tried on us that knocked out your brain but left your body nicely capable of producing pain, and power. Gibbering wreck isn’t a good look for me.

It wasn’t that much of a relief when numbness flowed out from the needle mark. I was still screwed seven ways from hell. No magic, and simple things like walking and talking were off the agenda for a while. My hand didn’t hurt, though. There’s always a bright side if you look hard enough. I don’t usually bother, because, as in this case, even the bright side is a bunch of shit. No painful hand, no ready juice.

It was quite a relief when the Storad took his substantial bulk off my back, though, and him being there with Abeya answered a lot of the “why?” questions in my head.

Power, it was all about power. It always was.

I took a look around. I was lying on grass, soft and fragrant, but seemed to be in a room still. The whitewashed walls were circular and the grass was dotted with comfy-looking chairs and loungers. Instead of a ceiling, glass stretched across the top of the walls. Somewhere for enjoying the sun. I kind of wished that this was happening in daylight so that I could see it.

A door opened and shut behind me, an extra pair of feet shuffled in the grass. The cardinal, bound to be. Come to check up on the Storad he was negotiating with, plotting with. Come to see if Abeya was ready to kill someone else to help his cause, perhaps, or thank her for shooting Perak.

The bottom really fell out of my world when Dench said, “I knew he’d end up here, after her. Can’t keep it in his trousers for more than two minutes together. Well, about time. Rojan, you really are an arse about fucking with my day. You know that?”

Even if I could have spoken around the lump of meat my numb tongue had become, I’d have been speechless. Instead I lay there like a slab of stone and stared uselessly at him as he strode over to me and hunkered down. He looked almost sorrowful, and his moustache drooped as if in sympathy with me.

“You were supposed to stay Under, idiot.” He smiled when I twitched at that. “I tried to help you, I really did. But now you’re here…it’s too late. For both of us. I only wanted to help Mahala, for the Goddess. I wanted Perak to negotiate, I wanted us to start using coal and the city to
live
. Coal that no one need hurt for, die for. Negotiations, that’s all I thought it was. Clearing up that last mess you made for me. Now here we are with another mess. Can’t even blame you for it, either.”

“Generous. For a murderer,” I managed to mangle out.

Dench grabbed the front of my allover. “I murdered no one.
No one.
Certainly not Dwarf. Even the Inquisition…Manoto ordered it, and my men, well, they have their own prejudices, and their orders. I’m more forgiving of heresy than they are. But to start with, before all that, it was just negotiations, I thought. A little deal when Perak was being too damned blind about you and that fucking generator. A little shuffle of goods and services, and the city would live. Thousands of people would live who might otherwise die. Worth a few shady deals, right? By the time I found out, about the Storad and Manoto using Abeya to kill those boys, about the Storad killing Dwarf and Manoto’s plans for the Inquisition…it was too late. By then I was already involved, whether I wanted to be or not. So now it’s just a matter of when, not if, we sign with the Storad, and making sure as few people as possible die in the meantime. I swore a holy oath to the Goddess, to protect Mahala to the best of my ability. So I took a little sin on my soul, for the good of the city. Now, well, now we don’t need you, or your Glow. Because the Glow can’t sustain us, not with so few mages and that generator was never going to work. So now our negotiations with this gentleman here can proceed apace. Think of it, Rojan. No more pain, for anyone, not to power the city.”

He pulled something out of his pocket, black and rough looking. Nothing special.

“Coal, remember? Coal to drive steam-powered factories, carriages, lights, heat. War engines that rumble towards our gates even now. But Perak wouldn’t hear of negotiating—you were going to persuade him for me, but you didn’t, did you? If you had…If we stall much longer, the Storad and Mishans, well, they’re sitting pretty outside the city. War, Rojan. But Manoto, he’s reached an agreement with our nice Storad ambassador here. With no Glow, and Perak out of the way, we can have peace. A few lives are worth that, don’t you think? Manoto thinks it’s all we can do, if we want to live, and I agree with him. Be good for once in your life, and stay out of trouble until it’s done. Don’t make me do something we’ll both regret. Because I will if I have to.”

He stood up and shook his head sorrowfully over me, like I was a child who’d deeply disappointed him. The Storad said something in a language that sounded like two rocks being banged together. It startled Dench, but he stared down at me and said a few words back. I didn’t like the feeling that they were discussing my fate, but there wasn’t much I could do about it.

“Abeya, you stay and make sure he stays numb. Same for Pasha when the guards bring him, and yes, Rojan, of course I knew you’d escape. I planned for it, hoping you’d lead me to Perak. Abeya, sadly, shot the wrong man.”

My relief and confusion must have shown, though I couldn’t get a word out.

“She shot a decoy, I think. Perak’s around somewhere, hiding, planning something and I hoped you knew where he was, that you’d take me to him. Sadly, it appears not. If it helps, I’m glad that it wasn’t him. If he wasn’t so stubborn, he might make a good Archdeacon. Maybe if he’s seen the light, he still can be. Maybe with you here and in the shit, he’ll let himself be drawn out. Abeya, no killing any of them.” But his eyes added “yet” to that. Keeping me alive, in case his plans didn’t work out perhaps, in case he needed a mage or two. But if his plans went well…I didn’t rate my chances, to be honest. I’d make a nice handy scapegoat.

The Storad ground out a few words to Abeya, and then he and Dench departed. Leaving me alone with a serial mage killer. Just when I thought my day couldn’t get any worse.

I contemplated getting up, doing something, anything, but my legs were like dishrags and I had enough trouble lying there without dribbling. The only part of me that wasn’t numb was my brain, so I tried to use that. It became quite difficult when Abeya slunk over and sat next to me. Partly because it seemed she’d finally snapped in two. Part innocent seductress, part raging killer. She kept wavering between the two halves so I wasn’t sure which was her any more.

Mainly the trouble I was having was because she’d decided to take her dress off, and naked women have always been a big distraction. Especially when they do that with their hands, even if I couldn’t feel it. My head knew what was going on, and there was a kind of warm pressure that was enough to stop almost any coherent thought.

She leant over me, close enough that her hair fell over my cheeks. The face of an angel, I thought again, and then wondered why I hadn’t twigged before. As you can imagine, I’ve never believed angels are all sweet and kind, so why would I think that of her because of how she looked? She’d suckered me in by my own weakness for a pretty face. Her eyes seemed to pull part of me out of myself and drink me into her, and her soft voice was hypnotic as her free hand stroked my cheek.

“He wants to keep you as a pet, the Storad does.” The luscious curve of her smile was enough to make grown men weep. I would have done, but I kept reminding myself that she was a killer. It didn’t stop all those very distracting thoughts. “Keep you numb like this, a trophy of how it was him who finally bested Mahala. Bested the mages. Keep you like this for ever.”

Her fingers trailed across my cheek and on to my lips. I couldn’t feel it, but I could imagine it, remember when she’d done that before, and wished I couldn’t. My brain’s never been good at doing what it’s told, especially when naked women are involved.

“Shame really.” She came in even closer, and all I could see was her, the smile that could curse a man to never wanting another. She kissed me, slowly, and sat back with a sigh. “Such a shame that I’m not going to be allowed to kill you.”

Who knows what she might have done then—I’m never sure whether I regret not finding out or not—if the door hadn’t opened and two Inquisitors shoved a limp Pasha through before they slammed the door behind them? Pasha fell in a heap, but he was awake because his eyes flickered and he tried to say something. All that came out was a garbled sort of grunt. Amazing how we take our tongue for granted really. Poor Pasha couldn’t even fall back on mind talk, because no juice, no rummaging in heads.

I wanted to ask, find out if Jake was safe, if they’d found Perak, but I had no way.

Pasha’s eyes almost fell out of his head at the sight of Abeya sitting next to him in her naked glory. She seemed proud of her brands now, flaunting them at Pasha as though to show him why she’d done what she had. Why she hated mages like us, why she wanted to kill us, had been such an easy pawn for Fat Boy and the Storad to turn to their own ends.

Pasha fumbled about and Abeya shot back when he finally managed to free a sleeve, roll it up and show her—an identical brand. Proof that not every mage was a torturer, that at least one had been a victim.

“Bastard,” Abeya hissed, and cracked off a slap at Pasha that knocked his head a whole half-turn. “
Fake
bastard. You never had to take it, I bet. Those are fake brands.” She slapped him again, and again, her angelic face twisted into something more demonic as she let out her rage and hate. I could hardly blame her either—mages had taken her and, over who knew how much time and lovingly applied pain, turned her into this.

I tried to say something, some words that would make her see, but it came out a garbled mess, though slightly more coherent than I’d dreaded. Still, she wasn’t having any of it. She leapt from crouching over Pasha and on to me, her arm swinging and swinging, hard enough that I was briefly glad I was numb. Finally, after what seemed an age, and when some small feeling started to come back, making her slaps and punches start to sting, she stopped. She seemed breathless but calmer, purged for a time, perhaps. If that had helped her, in any way, then a few bruises and what was starting to feel like a new shiner were the least I could offer.

“Fake,” she whispered.

“Not fake.” My voice wasn’t quite right, but the words were at least recognisable and I needed, please any deity that might exist, to keep her on this, on hating me, mages, everything, make all her delusions worse, throw her already unbalanced mind even further out of whack. Or perhaps persuade her that we were the good guys, honest, but I didn’t think I had a hope in hell of that. But anything so she didn’t remember the syringe glinting on the table, didn’t remember to use it. I felt like a real shit doing it, but I didn’t seem to have much choice. The only thing that made me feel any better was that it wasn’t a lie.

“Not every mage helped Azama. Pasha was as much his victim as you. And I killed him. For you, Abeya, and all the people like you.”

The truth, sort of, though I buffed up my reasons to look a bit shinier. I’d killed him because I couldn’t bear the thought that my own father had twisted his mind that far to think torture was the good thing to do. Because I was afraid I might be too like him. Because it was the only way to make Jake happy, and I’d wanted to give her that—peace from the demons in her head, and the largest was Azama.

“No.” She spat the words with a vigorous shake of her head. “Dench killed him. He told me. He killed Azama, for the Goddess. For
me
. His Specials, they came and took us away. He took me to Guinto.”

“Not Dench. He helped you after. But he didn’t kill Azama.”

She launched into a kind of frenzy at that, as though I’d destroyed any last sane part of her. She wasn’t thinking with her head if she ever had been because she was, quite clearly, batshit crazy. She was thinking with her heart, with her scarred soul, and just then I think I loved her a little bit. Broken, inside and out, like Jake. But unlike the object of my innermost desires, Abeya had stayed broken, couldn’t quite bring herself to try to heal but had festered her hate into madness. Maybe she didn’t want to get better, maybe she just couldn’t. Maybe she would never be anything else, but I couldn’t help her because I had to help everyone else, all those people relying on me, shadows at my back, on my wished-I-could-be-feckless heart.

At least she seemed to have forgotten about the syringe, about keeping us numb. The slaps and punches started to hurt now, but I held still. Let her power up my juice. Until she grabbed up a knife and came for me with it, a scream on her lips and quite possibly a long and messy murder in her heart. I didn’t try the same trick as before—she may have been batshit, but crazy isn’t the same as stupid, or Dendal would be a drooling idiot. I still didn’t have much juice. Not much, not really enough, and I needed to keep it, so I played my strongest card and lied through my conniving, womanising teeth.

She was fast, but movement was easier and she was as unstable as black powder and flame mixed together. I caught her off guard, good hand on a wrist thin and fragile, the other pulling her into me so I could kiss her. She struggled for a moment, but not for long. Like I said before, I can talk almost any woman into bed, the exception being the one I want to most. What can I say? It’s a gift.