Rojan Dizon 03 - Last to Rise

by Francis Knight

  All that stuff I said about women and what I like about them? Jake was like all of that rolled up into one glorious package that made me go all tingly in diverse parts of my anatomy. Which was a shame, because she was in love with Pasha and he was in love with her and… yeah, I didn’t have so many friends I could afford to screw them over.

  So I dragged my eyes away from her, to Perak as he inclined his head in a come-with-me manner and went to stand by the window. I followed and together we looked out across Trade, which shuddered with its own kind of boom – I could feel it as a hum through my feet. Trade was working again, properly, at last. It had taken a lot, a lot of pain – a lot of blood – to get it going again. It wasn’t going to be enough. Not for the machines that camped outside our gates.

  We stared out over the backs of the hulking factories, the boutiques and arcades, the once-teeming shops of Trade that could sell you anything you could think of and a few things you couldn’t. I let my gaze follow the Spine up, Over, on towards Heights, where the aspiring classes lived, looking up and wishing that they too could afford to live in Clouds – vast platforms that lurked over the city, stole the sun from underneath. Just visible above them in the dusk was Top of the World, now Perak’s domain. Where Ministry had long ruled with a jackboot and a prayer. It was changing, but too slowly.

  Another boom drew our gaze northwards, over the bulk of Trade where they’d never build. There were mountains over there, which had hemmed our city in, made us grow up rather than out. There were Storad there too now.

  “How long, do you think?” I didn’t need to say what I meant; it was all anyone thought about, the question on everyone’s lips. How long until we starved or they broke the gates down, whichever came first.

  Perak stared out, his face a study in misery, in the responsibility I tried – and failed – to avoid. I had a sinking feeling in my stomach that he was here to do his usual trick of “dump Rojan in the shit”. He never meant to. But he did it just the same. And just the same, no matter how much I ran from responsibility – and believe me, I tended to run like fuck – when little brother came asking, big brother didn’t, couldn’t, turn him down. I was too tired to run any more.

  “Not long enough,” he said.

  “It was me they wanted handed over, I take it?”

  “Hmm? Oh, yes. The Storad made a list of demands. That we open the gates, that we let them in peaceably, dismantle the factories, neutralise the mages, and also that we first hand over you for public execution as an indication of our good faith. In return they won’t completely destroy the city. I think Dench is going to hold a grudge until the day he dies.”

  Ah, yes, the redoubtable Dench, he of the careworn face and the drooping moustache. Ex-head of the Specials, ex-right-hand man of Perak. Ex-friend of mine, I think it was safe to assume, partly because I’d dumped the bastard right into the Storad camp he was working with anyway. No real loss, except… except he’d have been a handy guy to have around right now because he was a sneaky, devious and downright underhand fighter. The kind that’s great to have on your side, but not on theirs.

  “But I told them, again, that we aren’t negotiating,” Perak said. “Not on any of it. The cardinals thought we could maybe appease them with you and talk about the rest. I said no. I don’t think they’re going to let it rest there, though. I think you need to be careful, Rojan.”

  “When don’t I? But you’ve got a plan, right?”

  It probably came out more sarcastic than I intended, because Perak always had plans, which was part of the trouble. Like the time he spent days “planning” a firecracker display that ended up taking out the front of the house, part of the walkway in front of it and the façade of the shop opposite. Having successfully scared the crap out of himself and everyone within about a mile’s radius, he’d promptly fainted. Which left me, dazed and confused, to take the tongue-lashing of a lifetime from said shop’s owner and, later, Ma. At first I’d been too groggy to protest, and by the time I wasn’t it didn’t matter – the shopkeeper thought I was guilty, so I was. Ma was too sick from the synthtox by then to disagree, and I didn’t want to make things any worse for her than they already were.

  So I spent six weeks refurbishing that sodding shop in payment, repairing things that had been broken even before Perak’s little escapade. That shopkeeper really laid the screws on me, threatening to go back to Ma if I looked like I was slacking, threatening to make up all sorts of shit. Ma couldn’t take it, so I did. And Perak? Perak said he was sorry, and meant it, and then went back to daydreaming about what other chemicals he could mix together to explode.

  At the time it made me want to strangle him, made me desperate not to be the adult in that family when I was barely in my teens. Made me desperate to run away from my responsibilities, which I duly did just as soon as Ma died. Looking at Perak now though, I thought that his daydreams were just his escape from what was happening to us, to Ma, same as running away from responsibility was mine. Because he wasn’t dreaming any more.

  “I have a plan, or rather Lise does,” he said now.

  “That explains the smell in the lab.”

  Lise’s speciality was chemicals, and the stench of whatever she was brewing up pervaded the lab, the pain room and our offices. The colours were quite pretty, if you didn’t mind an accompanying whiff that could make your eyeballs pop out of their head. Today’s brew had been a particularly acrid-smelling choke that threatened to make my throat close up. Hell only knew what she meant to do with it.

  Perak’s smile was thin, like he was, like we all were. “But that’s not why I’m here. Or maybe partly. I need you to go to the ’Pit.”

  “What? What for? I’ve got enough to deal with, what with trying to find mages, trying to keep them fed, everything else, without traipsing off to the ’Pit.” That wasn’t why I didn’t want to go, naturally. The ’Pit held memories I wasn’t sure I wanted to revisit but I wasn’t about to say that out loud, especially not with Jake within earshot. I like to at least pretend I’m heroic in front of her.

  “Look at me, Rojan. I’ve got a city load of starving people, Outside I’ve got Storad trying to batter their way in; inside I’ve got a load of cardinals that are worse than useless, they’re actively trying to counteract everything I do. I’m fairly sure half of them are trying to work out how to bribe their way out of the Mishan gate on the other side. They pretty much all want to hand you over to buy some time. I’ve got guards who are afraid to guard anything, Specials who are still smarting over what you did to Dench, and Dench telling the Storad all our little secrets. And down in the ’Pit I have tunnels. I don’t know how many, or where most of them are, but I do know that if we don’t find them the Storad will, and they’ll use them, because that’ll be one of the secrets Dench will have mentioned. Storad have been poring over the mountainsides; I’ve been watching them. So have the cardinals, and they’re panicking. The Storad are going to find those tunnels eventually and I want to be prepared for when Dench uses them.”

  A long time ago, when we were just a castle in a handy pass through the mountains with a warlord who could serve as the definition of “sneaky”, he’d had a load of tunnels made. Devious tunnels that you wouldn’t find unless you fell into them, tunnels that not coincidentally led straight from the keep of the castle to the rear of where any army stupid enough to try to siege us would camp. Which would be great, if we knew where they all were.

  I sighed inwardly – I had the feeling I knew what was coming, that I’d already lost this battle. I skipped over the predictable argument and went straight to the “What is it you want me to do?”

  Perak’s smile became more genuine, and he looked less tired. “Go to the ’Pit. Find whatever tunnels you can, so we can have them blocked up. Lise has a plan in mind for one of them, if you can find one that opens out near where the Storad are camped. With a bit of luck, getting you out of the cardinals’ sight for a while may help too.”

  “When you say ‘find wha
tever tunnels’, can I take it this means even you don’t know where they are?”

  “Not all of them, no.”

  “Perak, I really don’t know if I’m the best guy for this job. A structural engineer would be better, surely?”

  “I need you out of the way right now, before you get bundled off and sent to Dench. It might give me some time to smooth things over with the cardinals, especially if I can tell them the tunnels aren’t a problem any more. Where better to be out of the way than the ’Pit?”

  “Surely you’ve got men down there already? Men who’d be better at it than me?”

  “Look, those tunnels are our weakest point bar the gates. I want to be sure, and for that I need to use someone I can trust. I wouldn’t trust a guard further than I could spit him, and the Specials… well, after Dench, trust isn’t something I have in them. You, Pasha, Dendal, Lise, Jake… you’re all I’ve got that I can truly rely on. It was Dendal’s idea. He said the thought of bacon would be enough to persuade you, and it’d make a handy training exercise for some of the younger mages.”

  There was that word again, “rely”. Much as I hated it, it was flattering in a way.

  “Well, I suppose – Wait, did you say bacon?” If there is one thing in this world that may, perhaps, persuade me there is a Goddess and she looks down on us with something approaching kindness, it’s bacon. Hot, crispy, fat bacon, all golden and crunchy around the edges. My stomach contracted painfully at the thought, and the remembrance of what I was actually going to be eating later – half a bowl of mouldy-looking mush, if I was lucky. If I wasn’t lucky, it would have weevils in it.

  “The Storad had a supply train in yesterday. It brought about a hundred pigs, among other things.” Perak tried to suppress a smile. This was his big persuading move. Which was annoying, especially when you considered that it was, in fact, persuading me.

  I stared at him while my mouth daydreamed. A hundred pigs. A hundred. That was a lot of bacon, and I’d have forked my own eye out just for one measly, glorious rasher. So it was my stomach rather than my brain that said, “All right, we’ll do it.”

  It needed a bit of arranging, so I was left to my own devices for a while. Black shapes kept swimming past my eyes, the voice kept on in my head. I needed sleep, but my stupid conscience would give me lots of lovely dreams that I didn’t want to think about. It was starting to get dark, and that meant that at least one person of my acquaintance would be around, one person who might be able to help me with those shapes.

  A frigid wind swept into the city, crept through every crack and crevice so I was frozen to the bone long before I got to Erlat’s.

  Erlat’s house wasn’t far away from the lab, in the area Under Trade where the rich boys came to play if they were feeling a bit adventurous but not quite so brave as to try Under proper. It’s a haven for smooth bars that sell – all right, used to sell – overpriced “authentic” beer, set to the beat of dancers that at least probably didn’t have the pox and probably weren’t out of their heads on Rapture. You know, kind of fake shabby, just so people could say they’d tried Under and lived to tell the tale. I often wanted to take one of the patrons down to the real Under, but I suspected they’d last about half a heartbeat before they had no clothes on their backs, and possibly no lips to brag with.

  Erlat’s place isn’t a bar, but home to one of the other reasons the rich boys came down to play – women. Over Trade, well, it’s all pious and Ministry-run, the Goddess looking over everyone’s shoulder to make sure they behave. Not exactly conducive to Erlat’s business. Frankly, I’m surprised the Buzz didn’t get more trade than it did, given that. But it got enough and Erlat’s house, being fairly new and full of “exotic” ladies from the ’Pit with that blue-white undertone to their skin and oddly alluring accent, had been a hit.

  Kersan met me at the door with the news that Erlat wasn’t in, but also told me where she was and that he was sure she would be pleased to see me. So I took myself off to a small and discreet bar not far into the Buzz proper. Not too bad, this one: it had actual carpet on the floor, even if was so stained I couldn’t tell the colour. Or maybe that was the “discreet” lighting that meant I had to grope my way to the bar to find a drink.

  I sat at the bar, tried to look into murky corners without seeming obvious about it, and wished Erlat had been at home instead.

  The place wasn’t full, unsurprisingly. They didn’t have much behind the bar that didn’t have a good chance of making me blind, even in a place as up-market as this. Shortages were really starting to bite. For most of us anyway – Ministry men still had money, food, probably whatever they wanted. They were conspicuous down here the same way a slug is conspicuous in your dinner. Chubby soft hands waved money, more money that I’d seen in months, perhaps even years. The girls – classy and tastefully dressed but still working, and still wanting to get themselves fed – clustered round them.

  A boom-shudder made the barman hang on to his glasses. One escaped and flew off a shelf to shatter on the floor. By the look of things, it wasn’t the first. One of the girls let out a little scream of surprise at the noise, but the drunken Ministry boys laughed and groped and promised them the world, promised them a way out of this, out of Mahala. The girls laughed in return but there was no mistaking the fear in their eyes – that this was the only way out they had, sucking up to smug pricks like this.

  The barman finished sweeping up the glass and came over. He checked me out, took in the imitation-Specials look with an air that said he didn’t believe it for a second, before he raised an eyebrow inviting me to state my drink. I considered my finances, and what he had behind the bar. Screw it, you only live once. “Whatever won’t kill me.”

  A conspiratorial wink, a quick check to make sure the Ministry boys weren’t watching, and the barman slid out a bottle. Something brown and rich-looking flowed into the glasses.

  “I’m shutting up after tonight,” he said, as though to thin air. “Got nothing left to sell any more. Except moonshine that’d take the varnish off the saints and martyrs, and this one bottle. Fed up with Ministry coming to rub our faces in it, even more than usual too. Been promising the girls everything – not just money, no, the chance to get out, the chance to live. They don’t actually follow through, naturally. They’re just using it for a chance at free girls. And the girls are desperate enough to take a gamble that they might come through. Some of them, anyway.”

  We raised a glass each, and I savoured the taste of real, good booze. It’d been a while. Then I saw where the barman was looking.

  A far dark corner. Erlat was sitting with a guy, Ministry perhaps because he was smooth and fat and smug as hell. He patted her hand and she laughed, and she looked like she meant it too. I turned back to my glass of heaven and left her to it.

  Erlat is… I find it hard to say what Erlat is, or was. One of the most beautiful women I’d never tried to take to bed. Not because of what she did for a living – I was no better and the only difference was I didn’t charge – but because of the way she had of unbalancing me, taking what I thought I knew about myself and the world around me and turning it on its head.

  After a second swig, the barman and I weren’t alone as Erlat joined us, but he knew his job well enough and went off to count the pieces of glass left on the floor or something.

  Erlat looked tired today, but still had the serene grace that I so admired in her. She’d seen more, endured more than I’ll ever have to and she took it all with barely a ripple in her calm – a smooth and polished piece of jade, reflecting you back at yourself.

  I often thought she was the strongest woman I knew. No, she didn’t have Jake’s swords or the ability to slice a man to ribbons, but it was there, none the less. A strength that sometimes was hidden, but was even stronger because of it. Which was why, when my brain wanted to rebel, run amok and perhaps eat me alive, it was Erlat I turned to.

  The basis of my and Erlat’s relationship was simple. No, I was not and never had b
een a customer. The thought of it made me itch, somehow, though she’d offered me freebies often enough, probably because it made her laugh when I stumbled out a “No thanks.” No, the basis of it all was that she could be herself with me, and I could be myself with her. We didn’t need to pretend, though we often did anyway.

  I never heard the black at Erlat’s house, I didn’t know why, but we weren’t at her house today, and she was – I don’t know. Perhaps seeing her somewhere else, seeing her laughing at someone else like she did with me… the black was bad, a constant seething in my head, and it wasn’t going away, it was getting worse.

  “Rojan, how surprising to see you in a bar.” Her mouth taunted me with an impish grin and she smoothed the dark hair elegantly coiled at the nape of her neck. “What brings you here?”

  I watched her client shrug an expensive-looking coat on and leave. He looked shifty, glancing all around before he braved the door.

  “You, naturally.”

  Her smile became strained. “Can I have some of that?”

  I handed over the glass and wondered what was wrong. Definitely something up. Erlat took a delicate sip, licked her lips at the taste and set the glass down. “Is he gone?”

  “Who, your friend? Yes, he’s gone.”

  A subtle alteration in her, the slight relaxation of her shoulders and her mouth didn’t look quite so set. “Good. Gives me the creeps, but luckily he’s just a talker, mostly anyway. Pays me to listen to him and laugh at his jokes. Pathetic, really. But I’m glad you came. It was you he was talking about today.”

  “Well, why not? I’m a popular man.”

  That got me a glare so I caught the barman’s eye and another glass appeared next to Erlat. The barman retired with his drink and kept an eye on the last few Ministry men down the end of the bar.

  Erlat poured herself a good slug of the booze. She seemed to be gathering herself for something, so I let her.