Rojan Dizon 03 - Last to Rise (8 page)

“So what you’re saying is, yes, he can farsee, but then again, it might not be now that he’s seeing?” Perak asked.

“That’s about it,” I said, though the latest boom-shudder almost drowned me out.

We were holed up in the lab again, and Perak kept fiddling with the pain rig as we talked – he might be Archdeacon but he was always going to be an engineer first. I was beginning to wonder when he was sleeping, when he was doing anything at all except be Archdeacon. He had a daughter, a niece I’d still not met, and I had to wonder if he ever saw her either.

I was pleased to see this news energised him though, brought a bit of life back to his eyes. “So those machines are definitely on their way, or will be, but we can’t say for sure when? They might be further away, but then again they might be closer?”

He stopped fiddling and started to pace, his hands gripping his hair like he was trying to pull the answer out of his head.

“Namrat’s bollocks, Rojan.” When the Archdeacon uses words like that, you know you’re in trouble. “All right. This can still work – mine and Lise’s little plan. We need to be sure how close the machines are. Is there any way Allit or anyone else can pin it down? Are they coming over the pass now, next week, or did they come yesterday?”

“We can’t give you anything reliable,” Pasha said from where he was leaning up against the pain rig and watching Jake with that contented smile on his face. She caught him watching and there was a hint of a blush on her cool façade, which just made him smile more. At least someone was happy. “I can’t reach that far, I’ve tried. Allit – maybe in time he’ll be able to be more precise. For the moment, he
thinks
it’s either now, or very close to. Things seem to get blurry and vague when they’re too far forward, from what I can tell.”

“Right. OK. Whatever, wherever they are, we still need more
time
. More – well, more everything. Glow, mages, information. Some cardinals to help – you know more than a quarter have left the city? Bribed their way through the Mishan gate and taken what they could with them? The rest, well… they want volunteers for down by the Storad gate, for when, inevitably, they finally batter it down. Only despite the fact we’re pumping out guns as fast as we can, they won’t let just anyone have them. One cardinal has a man down there checking everyone with a gun, giving them an informal inquisition. Testing their faith. Just in case they might use that gun on anyone other than Storad. Ridiculous.” Perak stopped pacing and took a deep breath. “Sorry. The cardinals are my problem, one I’m hoping will be sorted soon, at least as far as them wanting to hand you over goes. As for this problem… Jake, we found another tunnel, we think it comes out up by the pass. Can you —”

Jake cocked her head, cool as ice despite what Perak was asking of her. I wouldn’t have done it. “Of course. I’ll see what I can do.”

“
Carefully
.”

A cryptic smile, a shrug as she smoothed her hands over the scabbards of her swords.

“Thank you. Because we need information,” Perak said. “And because we’ve got a little plan, or rather Lise has. Even more urgent now, if Allit is right. Take as many men as you think you’ll need. Specials, the rest of my guard, whatever you need. I’d rather you came back with nothing than didn’t come back.”

Jake didn’t waste time or words, just cast a glance at Pasha – a glance full of words I was sure were being spoken in their heads – and left.

“Right then,” Perak went on. “Let’s see… we need to assume it’s now Allit saw, to be on the safe side. Lise and I had this plan… yes. Yes, it should still help, might give us time at least. Wherever those machines are, it won’t hurt and might help. I’ll see what Lise has ready. In the morning we’ll try it, or rather you will. A bit of rearrangement, if you’re up to it?”

I’ll give him this – he could have laid it all out, laid it all on thick. How ultimately it was my actions that had led us to this mess, when I’d shut down the pain factories that were supplying all our Glow. But he didn’t. He never did. He was never one to hold a grudge – that was me, but even I couldn’t this time. I did suppress a big-arsed sigh though.

“What do you need me to do?”

When Perak told me the reason for our previous little escapade into the tunnel and how it worked so very well with what he wanted to try, I didn’t hesitate to say yes. It could hardly be worse than being shot at.

We couldn’t start Perak’s plan right away because it was getting dark and we were going to need light, so when he left I headed for the office and settled down at my desk to contemplate a new note Lastri had left about another possible mage. It might make a nice distraction and, with more cardinals having left, there were fewer to try to drag me off. Hopefully. I intended to be careful anyway, but by now the thought of any young mage left to do himself a mischief was just another thing taking chunks out of my stupid new conscience. I couldn’t leave him to blow himself up, and it’d stop me having to think too much and end up choking on my own bile.

To sleep first, or not? My brain said, Yes, sleep, if you don’t you’ll be batshit any time now and the city doesn’t need another Slump, especially given what you’re going to be doing come sun-up. My poor purple hand said, Hah, fat chance, I’m going to keep you up all night; and the black chimed in and said, Yes, might as well use that juice, twist your hand some more, fall in, come back…

I came to with a start when Pasha sauntered in, whistling. Whistling? Normally he was a bunch of jittered nerves, burning anger and electric energy just waiting to get out. Not today. He looked… relaxed, which, all things considered – like Jake was off into who knew what kind of shitstorm – was surprising. Then again, Pasha always did tend to surprise me.

Like I said, he was usually burning up with anger at some injustice somewhere, but today his eyes didn’t have their normal smoulder. And come to think of it, Jake had looked unusually relaxed too. Usually she was buttoned up tighter than a virgin’s knickers, ice queen all the way. Yet despite the seriousness of what Perak and I had been talking about, the seriousness of everything, of tunnels, slabs of rock, Storad and massive machines blowing the crap out of our gates, there had been a soft little smile and a faraway look to her, to them both. I could imagine a few reasons for that, but in the interests of not getting an ulcer I decided not to think of them.

They may have made me a little sharp though – that or the lack of sleep; or Perak’s plan, which was
bound
to involve me hurting myself; or perhaps it was just my natural charm. “What the fuck are you so happy about?”

Even that couldn’t dim his stupid smile. He cocked his head, made to twist a finger in its socket – all the better to peer inside my head – but my glare stopped him. In the end he grinned his monkey grin, shrugged and said, “And who twisted your nipples today?”

He was such a dick, but my peeved anger evaporated. “No one, that’s the problem.”

Another boom-shudder rattled the door, but couldn’t rattle his laugh. I’d never really heard him laugh before, not like that, like he was happy, and the last of my resentment vanished.

While we were waiting for Jake to come back, or at least for Pasha to be able to hear what she’d seen, Perak had asked us to concentrate our efforts on Allit. Being able to see the future had to be an advantage somehow, but he needed to learn to focus, to decipher what he was seeing, and not drive himself doolally while he was doing it.

So Pasha and I spent a less heavy-minded hour watching Allit go through his paces, twisting a finger then lifting small objects about an inch off my desk, floating them across and getting them to land gently on the blotter among my doodles. Doodles that, when Allit saw them, made him blush redder than brick.

After those few small exercises, we started on what we needed.

“OK,” Pasha said. “We’re going to start small, and I’m going to watch where you are, where you go in your head, all right? We know where Jake is, sort of. See if you can find her. If a focus helps. If not, just show me what you can see.”

Allit nodded, his face screwed up, half scared shitless, half determined to prove he could do this, and twisted a finger. It came out of its socket with a pop that seemed very loud, and his face lost everything but a grimace of pain.

I felt left out, to be honest, with Allit concentrating on what his head was showing him and Pasha keeping an eye on that. Nothing really happened for a minute or two except Allit went red in the face and Pasha put an encouraging hand on his shoulder.

A sudden gasp – not from Allit, which I was expecting, but from Pasha. His dark face drained of all colour until he looked as grey as the mush we’d had for breakfast and he stepped back from Allit.

“What?”

“I – wait, wait a minute.”

Pasha took a few deep breaths and shut his eyes against what he’d seen. Allit came back from wherever he’d been, looking embarrassed and scared. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” Pasha managed. “But I’m not sure what it means. Not what I think, I hope.”

“Is someone going to tell me?” I asked. “Or do I have to guess? Allit, what did you see?”

Allit tried to pull himself together, but he looked pretty shaky. “I saw Jake.”

“Well then, that’s good? Right?” I looked at Pasha’s stricken face. “Right?”

“Dench had her,” Pasha said in a whisper, but some colour had come back to his face. “He caught her and he was about to – But he
hasn’t
caught her. I can hear her right now, I shot off a question and she’s telling me not to be so stupid, of course she’s fine, she’s having a damned ball. I think she’s even hoping to run into a Storad or two, just for practice.”

My heart had almost stopped at the first part, and I could only imagine what that had done to Pasha. The relief at the second part made me giddy and the third made my heart falter again.

Pasha sat down and ran a relieved hand through his mess of hair. “Allit saw her in a death match – you remember the one you watched, against the Storad? Just a glimpse of her there, like he did the first time. That was his focus. And he saw her in the tunnel too, that one was clear as anything, in the tunnel like I know she is in right now with half of Perak’s guard with her.
Safe
. Well, safe for now anyway. Only Allit saw her with Dench too, in the Storad camp, I’m sure of it. He was going to —” Pasha shook his head as though trying to shake out the memory. “Never mind, she’s not there. It was, I don’t know, sort of fuzzy compared to the others.”

“Like it was less real,” Allit said. “And behind it I could see something else – see Jake somewhere else at the same time. It was like a possibility, in my head.” He struggled to say more, but in the end gave up – it was all too new for him. I remembered how that felt.

“Well, it isn’t real as far as we know. Yet. Is it?” I asked.

“No!” Pasha said, almost like he was trying to convince himself, and perhaps he was.

“Blurred, like when Allit saw me do all those different things in the ’Pit?”

Allit nodded, looking relieved as he saw what I meant.

“All right then. So let’s make sure it doesn’t happen. Any ideas? Where’s Jake now?”

Pasha shot me a relieved look. “In the tunnel – they haven’t had time to get far. We’re pretty sure that tunnel comes out near the pass. And that’s a fair way to travel.”

“Well, tell her to be extra careful when she gets to the end.”

That made him laugh, though there was a harsh edge to it. “You think she’ll listen to me? That’s what worries me. You know what she’s like – caution is for other people.”

“No, that’s what she used to be like, back when she didn’t care if she lived or died. She cares now. You made her care.” I thought back to that soft little smile of hers when she looked at Pasha, at how the two of them seemed to be growing into each other, being happy together for once in their screwed-up lives. It hurt me to watch it, but I couldn’t begrudge it to either of them.

He opened his mouth to say something, but I caught the whiff of gratitude in the offing so I cut him off.

“Right, so, Allit, you work on this as best you can. Keep practising and tell us if you find anything else. Try to concentrate on the clearer things if you can, but if you see anything blurry that might help us, tell us.”

Pasha grinned at the way I neatly sidestepped any chance of a thank you, but didn’t mention it. “And Rojan, if we’re going early tomorrow, you need to get something to eat and some sleep. I don’t want you wigging out on me. Time for dinner and bed.”

All very well for him to say – he had a nice warm bed, usually with a nice warm Jake in it. I had a lumpy sofa, and Griswald the stuffed tiger, but I nodded like I was going to do either of those things. He didn’t believe me. He knew me far too well.

“Come on, why don’t you go and see if Erlat’s got a bed free? You’re always in a better mood after you go and see her.” He laughed again, for no reason that I could see, almost like he knew something about me that I didn’t know myself.

“Maybe.” It was tempting, and he was right – I always did feel better after I saw Erlat – but I had other things to do. I should have slept, really, but my sleep was littered with things I didn’t want to revisit if I could help it. “I’ll go later. Really.”

He still didn’t believe me, but shrugged and left with Allit, whistling. That happy sound could really get on a guy’s tits.

At a loose end, with too much to think about, I wandered through to the lab, where Lise started in on me, but at a shake of my head at least she left me alone. With something like relief, she started work on her machines. Being kept in the lab by Perak for her safety didn’t seem to bother her too much; it was driving me stir-crazy.

“For the Goddess’s sake, will you stop pacing?” she said now. “It’s like being trapped with a tiger.”

I sat down with bad grace and watched her as she tinkered. “You don’t mind being cooped up, do you?”