Rojan Dizon 02 - Before the Fall (8 page)

There: I had admitted it. That was why I’d come, a confession that didn’t come easily, wouldn’t have come at all if it had been anyone else. Erlat’s house wasn’t just full of working girls; it was a refuge for all sorts of waifs and strays, mostly Little Whores who didn’t have anywhere else safe to be. I thought back to the new splodges of paint around her door. “More careful. Maybe shut up shop for a while. That riot outside the temple was just the start.”

A thumb pressed right on a nerve. It didn’t hurt but it did make my arm spasm so that my good hand splashed about in the water to no command of mine. “I don’t need you to tell me how to run my business, mister playboy fancy pants mage. I’ve weathered worse than a bit of paint and I don’t need you to play the dashing hero.”

I sat up in the bath and turned to face her, splashing water over her best rug. “I know that. Just be careful, all right? Please?”

Her look was brittle, sharp, as if she was about to say something caustic, a look I’d never seen on her before. I had no idea why what I’d said had upset her. Whatever was on her mind, she didn’t say it. She didn’t say anything else at all, not even to tease, which bothered me all the way to the office.

I kept to the edge of the buildings as I hurried along the rickety walkway towards the office, my coat collar flipped up against the drizzle that dripped from every eave for fifty or more levels above me. It was heading towards dusk somewhere up there, but the only way to tell down here was a chill in the air as the sun left. A hint of the winter that was fast approaching.

Dendal was still in his corner, scratching away with a pen by the light of his candles. A comforting sight, familiar, so that I could almost imagine that the last weeks hadn’t happened. I patted Griswald’s moth-eaten head and fell into my chair.

I shook my head and tried to shake the weariness from me and the growing fear that I was going to lose my shit, any day now. Fall right in and never come back. Maybe take out some part of the city when I went—Top of the World, perhaps, or Clouds. Then Under could see the sun again with the added bonus that up there was where all the Ministry men lived. I could make them have to live in No-Hope. It sounded very tempting.

“You can do this, Rojan.” Dendal’s soft, papery voice right by my ear.

I fell out of the chair and my heart near enough hammered through my ribs. “Namrat’s fucking balls, Dendal, stop doing that!”

He stood looking down at me as I picked myself up, his hair a wispy cloud around his head. Back from the fairies for once, I could tell by the sharpness of his gaze. And the fact he’d got my name right.

He sat in the wonky chair on the other side of the desk. “Well, you can. We’ll find enough mages, power up the city. That’s what the Goddess wants us to do, and she’s given us what we need to do it. That’s why she sent you to me all that time ago, for all this.”

His mouth set in a determined line and his watery eyes were certain.

Again, I wished that I could believe like that, that I could be so sure. “I hope so, Dendal, I really do.” But hope was hard to come by.

“Told you before, you need a little faith, a bit of belief.”

“And I told you—” I didn’t repeat myself, because I didn’t think I believed in all those things any more. Except the part about not crossing the Ministry, and I can talk
almost
any woman alive into bed if I put my mind to it. The
almost
is the real kicker.

Anyway, we had more pressing problems such as piss all power and not much time to find it in. A pain-mage who could have really helped, the same fucked-up sort of boy I’d once been, was dead with no chance of unfucking himself, and this pain-mage, me, was too strung out to be much good despite Erlat’s massage. Oh, yes, and I needed to stop a serial killer before the city exploded in righteous indignation. “The boy was murdered.”

Dendal muttered a prayer, the usual bullshit about how the boy would have a nice time now he was dead. I resisted the urge to say if the Goddess was so nice, how come we all lived in a shithole having shit lives? Couldn’t we have a bit of heaven before we died? Maybe some nice food rather than the reconstituted grey mush that seemed to be all we ever got. I’d have sold my soul, yes even worshipped the Goddess, for another taste of the bacon I’d only ever seen in the ’Pit and which had disappeared like smoke once we’d opened that ’Pit up. Disappeared straight into the guts of the Ministry men up in Clouds and Top of the World, I had no doubt.

But Dendal believed, and I owed him a lot, so I kept my mouth shut on the bitter bile that threatened.

“It’s all part of the same thing,” Dendal said after a moment. “The murders, the power. But you can do it. I know you can.”

He frowned in deep thought, and I had to wonder if he
knew
this. Part of his magic, his Minor, was just…knowing things sometimes. Not very useful things usually, like what colour socks someone was wearing. Did he know it, or was he just guessing like I was? Asking him wasn’t much use, because he’d just shrug and change the subject.

“Can I do it in time?”

He smiled, all beatific and angelic so it made me sick. “If the Goddess wills it. I know it burns you, I know. I’ve always known that about you, that you aren’t who you pretend to be.” He held up a hand to stop my sharp retort and I found myself wishing the fairies would come and take him away to play again. He’s not here in mind and spirit very often, our Dendal, but when he is, it’s uncomfortable for everyone else. He sees too much truth. Maybe that’s why he’s away so much—there’s only so much truth one brain can handle.

He opened his mouth to say something else, and I steeled myself for a small sermon on self-belief or the Goddess or possibly something about controlling myself, my magic—he’s very big on that, is our Dendal—when it came.

It started off small, a whooshing noise that crept up on us as we talked. What stopped Dendal mid-sermon was the sound of glass shattering, the muted roar of a thousand pissed-off people that, with that smash, grew to a scream, a howl.

While Dendal twisted a finger, drew on his magic, I ran to the window and pressed my face against the glass. Light greeted me, in a street that had rarely known it. The light of fire, of half the buildings in the street ablaze or just now catching, sending whirls of embers and smoke upwards, a prayer to the Ministry.

“Another murder,” Dendal said behind me. “And a guard murdered in return. There’s—”

I turned from the window and made a grab for him. His eyes were shut so he didn’t see what I’d seen. “There’s no time for that, because there’s a mob out there baying for blood too.”

Something shattered against the door and I wished, not for the first time, that Dendal hadn’t won the argument about the sign. The baying mob were Downsiders mostly, with a powerful hatred of mages more than likely. Upsiders wouldn’t have been much better. Guards and fear and confusion had mostly kept them from us up till now, but this had tipped them over into not giving a crap about any of that.

Another thud on the door, a whoomph of flames and a senseless, formless screaming outside. This was past just a murder, or even a dozen murders. This was all their fears spilling out into hate, one that might ignite the whole city—Upsiders had plenty of hate to let loose, too, and I didn’t fancy any Ministry man’s chances down here today.

I didn’t fancy our chances much either, unless we got out, right now. The word mage was all over the front door and that would be enough for many of those people out there to try to murder these people in here. I kept a tight hold of Dendal and bunched my bad hand.

“Rojan, no—”

I didn’t reply, I couldn’t. Words were beyond me. I’m pretty sure I fell, and that Dendal held me up. I held an image in my head, the safest place I could think of. The pain room. Hardly anyone even knew it was there, and it was buried beyond locked doors and some out-of-uniform Specials who lurked in the street outside. Besides, anyone would have to get through Dwarf and his lab. I wouldn’t have tried it, even with a mob at my back. Dwarf’s contraptions were his babies, and he’d defend them as viciously as any mother.

I landed on my knees and threw up all over the floor. Dendal helped me up and on to a chair. I looked down at my hand, my poor hand. I was going to lose it if I kept this up, but that wouldn’t be a problem because I was pretty sure my sanity would be way ahead of it.

“Rojan, is the generator supposed to look like that?”

With the sound of rioting echoing outside—screams, shouts, calls to “murder the bastards!”, though they were vague on which particular bastards they wanted murdering—I ground the heel of my good hand into an eye, tried to grind a bit of reality back into my head and looked over at the generator, our hope.

Our hope, the city’s hope for power, for warmth and light and food and not getting fucked over by our neighbourly Storad and Mishans, lay black and smoking, surrounded by a thousand little cogs and other bits of metal I had no name for. I blinked hard, hoping it was just my eyes, but it was still the same when I looked again. That’s when I noticed the rest of it—the dented door off its hinges, the smashed glass all over the floor mingled with tiny cogs. The pool of blood the other side of the doorway.

I made myself get up and look though my heart was telling me to run, far away, this wasn’t my problem, not really, and if I looked I’d be lost. I didn’t want to look, to know, but I had to. The first thing I saw was a pair of feet, Dwarf’s boots sticky with blood. Then his body, the throat slashed back to the spine, his face more a mess now than it had ever been. I couldn’t seem to move for what felt like for ever, until my brain managed to garble out a single coherent thought.

I stared around his lab wildly, taken by panic. Lise, she should be in here somewhere—she was hardly ever anywhere else. Bloody footprints led away from Dwarf’s body and I followed them, calling for her with a voice I didn’t recognise.

The surgical precision of the damage didn’t register then—that only came later. It was eerie nonetheless. Many of Dwarf’s contraptions were intact or merely removed in one piece but everything,
everything
that we’d been working on for power, all the gizmos that he’d used to try to magnify the magic, to integrate into the generator, was either gone or lay in bits. Smashed, twisted, ruined bits. Right then, I didn’t care.

“Lise!”

She was here, I knew it. I had a bit of juice left, and I used it. There, that big cabinet in the corner. I tried not to see the bloody handprint on the handle and wrenched it open.

Once again, I was on my knees, and wishing, wishing hard that I believed in a goddess, a god, anything, so that I could pray. Instead I swore at Namrat, told him to stay the fuck away from my sister. Even I have to believe in Death, but that didn’t mean I had to let him in.

Her dark hair was matted with blood, her skin pale and clammy, but she was breathing. Just.

Her and Dwarf had been the hope, not the generator. Their brains, their way with contraptions, Lise’s alchemical genius, the way she instinctively knew how to harness electricity,
that
had been our hope.

I picked her up as gently as I could, laid her on my lap and checked her over. A sodding great lump on the side of her head with accompanying cut and blood. Blood leaking out of her nose and ears, too, and even I knew that for a bad sign. Another cut on her throat, a slash gone awry it looked like to me. Someone had aimed to do to her what they’d done to Dwarf, but hadn’t quite managed it, disturbed by me and Dendal turning up perhaps. Still, it was bad enough. Lise was losing more blood by the second.

Dendal shuffled his feet behind me. “Here, I brought this.”

The first aid kit from the pain room. Bandaging someone when only one of your hands works is tough, believe me, but Dendal helped more than he hindered for once and at least we managed to stop the throat wound bleeding. Lise never stirred, never made a sound, and I kept checking she was breathing, roughly every thirty heartbeats or so.

“We need to get her to the hospital.” Yeah, obvious, but I wasn’t thinking straight at that point. Someone trying to murder your sister will do that to you.

I went to bunch my hand again, wondered if this would be the time I lost it, when I let go of the faint thread keeping me here and let myself fall into the black. If Lise…I hesitated to think the word “died”. If Lise went, I didn’t have much left to hold me here.

That’s when Dendal came into his own. He’d certainly picked the right few hours to be in reality. His grip on my wrist was surprisingly firm.

“No, Rojan.”

I tried to shake him off, but the old fart was stronger than he looked. “Yes, Dendal. Look, she has to get to the hospital. There’s a riot going on outside in case you hadn’t noticed, and this is the only way to get her there safely.”

His smile was infuriatingly benign, as though I was some little kid he was indulging. “Look out of the window.”

“What?” For a moment, I thought he’d gone back to playing with his fairies, but I glanced up at the window and saw instantly what he meant.

Dwarf’s lab was pretty high up and it had a reasonably unimpeded view of parts of Trade and Heights and the underside of Clouds. It even got some sun, an hour or so a day, which was luxury.

No sun came through the windows now, no moon or stars. The hulking warehouses and factories of Trade were limned in firelight as No-Hope-Shitty burnt. People ran along swaying walkways, dark figures against orange flames. A phalanx of what I could only assume were guards tried their best to douse the buildings, under a steady stream of projectiles from above. A gang of rioters were working their way along the street below us, methodically breaking every window. A slim figure, hooded and indistinct, ran out of this building and headed for the stairwell that led straight down. All I could make out was the swirl of a dark cape.

But the part that made me see Dendal was right stood straight ahead, over the backs of a row of factories. The Sacred Goddess Hospital, a bright new beacon of Ministry benevolence, was ablaze. Not smouldering; the fire was gutting it, ripping through it like a knife through a throat. If I’d not listened, if Dendal hadn’t stopped me, I’d have appeared right in the middle of it.