Rojan Dizon 03 - Last to Rise

by Francis Knight

  I opened my eyes a crack, and Dendal was there, saying, “You can do this, if you try, Rojan.” I had just enough time to be gobsmacked that he got my name right three times in a row, which meant things must be getting serious. Then he was fading, I was fading, bleeding through reality, rearranging it around me, a push here, a swift alteration there, swirling the world like dragging my hand through water. Easy when you know how and so, so hard. And then I was right next to Perak at Top of the World and blood was everywhere. My blood.

  I threw up a whole load of it, wiped more from my nose and when I could focus again everything was tinged a pinky red. Everything being the inside of a vaguely familiar room up in Top of the World, a cell of sorts, which was plusher than any place I’d ever lived. Or had been till I puked blood all over the carpet, but I didn’t think that would be a problem for long. A little Glow-moth, as delicate and rare as the real thing, fluttered sadly around my head, its bright colours dim. No backing out now, no talking myself out if it. All or nothing.

  Perak helped me up, looking panicked so I wondered just how bad the blood was. Pretty bad, by the way his hand was shaking and he looked like I wasn’t going to be the only one throwing up. “Rojan – I thought – oh, Goddess, Rojan, what are you doing?”

  “Never mind that,” I managed to wheeze out. “You had a plan?”

  “Yes, but…” He stared at me like I was a surprise naked lady in his bed and absent-mindedly wiped my face with the sleeve of his official archdeacon robes. I kind of liked the pattern my blood made on the cloth, in a funny, dreaming kind of way.

  He pulled himself together. “I did have a plan, only it required this being in one piece.”

  I looked at the mangled mess of wires and metal gizmos he held out, but I didn’t have a clue what it was supposed to be. All this new-fangled mechanics was starting to make me feel old.

  “Simple words, please. And where the hell is Jake?”

  Perak helped me to a chair and I managed to get my breath back properly. “I told her, like you said. To be my bodyguard. This section is locked off – cells for unbelievers. Easy to defend.”

  “Yes, I recall. Tell me.”

  “I did what you said. I couldn’t see anything else to do, so I sent all the guards to retreat, but I couldn’t because I had to set this. Only a bullet got it, and now it’s no use. So the Storad have Top of the World and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

  “Yes, but what was it?”

  “An ignition switch,” and then, because I probably looked confused, or perhaps because he was surprised I needed to ask, “a trigger. For everything I’ve rigged. All the black-powder traps.”

  I thought back to the sunny-faced boy Perak used to be, wandering around in his own head. A boy who’d blown up the shop opposite by accident, and a guard station accidentally-on-purpose. Who’d invented the concept of using black powder to power a bullet because it had seemed an interesting exercise in applied alchemy, plus it involved a small explosion and hey, who doesn’t like an explosion? Perak may have been Archdeacon, but he’d always been a pyromaniac at heart.

  Despite everything, or maybe because of it, a laugh forced its way out through a bubble of blood in my throat.

  “Well, may the Goddess spank me bandy. You were going to blow up Top of the World, and all the Storad in it. You were!” That struck me as so funny, I’d have laughed my socks off if I hadn’t been in danger of choking.

  “Well, er, yes. It seemed like the best idea, really, when Allit said the Storad would get here, and… and hell’s teeth, I’m sick of it, of them, of Ministry. Of my own damned cardinals! I was going to blow it all into the Slump – I made sure of where the charges were placed, simple physics really. I was going to blow it all and then we could start again, properly this time. All the charges are in place. Only now I can’t, and the Storad have everything up here, and more on the way. And now we’re trapped too.”

  Funny how you can know a person their whole life, and still they can just turn around and surprise the air right out of your lungs. Perak, most devout archdeacon and unrepentant daydreamer, who saw the best in everything and everyone, had been about to blow the whole damned place. Blow up the Ministry. It made my head whirl, and then everything became very clear. The whole world was like glass, so I finally understood it. All of it, and what I had to do shone out as clear as a flaming brand in my head. I wanted to be sick all over again, wanted to run away and hide somewhere, be someone else, but I couldn’t. Not this time.

  “Big brother will take care of it. Always big brother, whether I like it or not. No time now,” I said in the end. “Get Jake.”

  “But she —”

  “Get Jake.”

  As if she’d heard me, a scream echoed through the doorway, and it wasn’t hers. No, her sound was harsh breath that hid everything, a clenched-teeth grunt, a vicious swearing. She was killing herself, suicide by battle, I had no doubt on that. Well, she could if she wanted – I wasn’t one to stop her – but not yet. Still, maybe discretion is the better part of staying the hell alive, especially when Jake was pissed off and had swords to hand, so I got to my feet on the third try and we went to her.

  I left a sticky trail of blood behind me and walking wasn’t easy what with my whole body feeling like a very painful wet noodle, but luckily I didn’t have to worry about that for much longer. Through the door into a corridor that ended in another, narrower doorway. A whirl of black hair, a flash of sword, the crunch of bone. She was slicked in blood, her own and others’, but she didn’t seem to notice. She didn’t notice anything, I don’t think, except the Storad the other side of that door. Didn’t notice, didn’t care.

  Pasha had once said about her, what seemed like decades ago, before they got a little happiness, that she wanted to die on a sword but was too proud to let anyone beat her. That Jake was back, as though the other, happy one had never been. Closed off, dead-eyed, an ice queen but no volcano underneath – the ice went all the way through. She was still glorious, graceful as a cat, but I could see now what I couldn’t before, not properly. How could I not have understood?

  A lull, a gap between attacks and Perak left me slumped against a wall to insert himself between her and the door. She stopped just short of taking his face off with a sword and blinked back to here and now. It didn’t seem to make much difference, because she shoved him back behind her and scanned the outer room for more Storad. There were going to be a lot more.

  Perak spoke to her but I couldn’t hear what he said because an odd ringing had started in my ears. If I was of a fanciful nature, I’d have said it sounded like temple bells calling me, but that was ridiculous.

  She didn’t want to leave the door, the certain death that was sure to come through it and soon, that was plain. But Perak talked and cajoled and when that didn’t work his face hardened and he ordered. It had much the same effect as the cajoling, to start with. Then he said something that made her flinch back, so I thought she’d just let loose with that sword and hack his face off right there and then. He stood, never wavering, and finally her hand dropped.

  Perak took a quick look through the door, slammed it shut and bolted it.

  “Rojan? Rojan, can you hear me?”

  I was almost beyond talking, but I had a lot to do and I needed to keep my breath for when it mattered, so I just nodded.

  “What now?”

  Funny how I managed to smile, even then. I beckoned them closer, as though I was about to impart some great plan. Then I grabbed them by the wrists and did the second stupidest thing of my life. It was going to screw me worse even than I imagined, but sometimes you have to say what the hell and do it anyway.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  By the time I came to, back in Guinto’s temple under the pain lab, I’d managed to make an impressive pool of blood on the floor, the walls were woozing in and out of focus and shadows were stalking me from every corner. Jake swore somewhere off to the left, but her voice had a hitch of tears in it. Perak h
elped me up, shaking his head like he couldn’t understand what I was doing, why I was pushing myself like that. I would have explained, but I wasn’t sure I understood it, not then.

  He helped me to a pew and I rested there a moment, my head on my arms across the back of the pew in front, almost like I was praying. Maybe I was, but it wasn’t to her. Not to the Goddess.

  “Rojan…” Perak’s voice trailed off into a look of worry that screwed his face up like a paper ball.

  Had to look strong even if I felt weak as a kitten, had to be big brother, so I forced myself up. There were still things to do and this was no time to be weak. The plaster statues of the saints and martyrs stared at me, but I didn’t have the energy to hate them.

  Jake stood glaring up at the two murals of the Goddess, the Upside one, all flowers and happiness and fluffy Namrat and all that happy horseshit, and the Downside one, blood and death and Namrat with his big, hungry teeth just waiting to eat us all up, knowing he would win in the end. Jake had always fought because she wanted the Goddess to love her, because she’d spent half her life being told she wasn’t loved, that the Goddess expected more. For the longest time, I’d thought Jake was like that Downside Goddess, had admired her for the way she fought, because for a Downsider it wasn’t about shiny promises of an afterlife. No, the fight was the thing, fight with everything you have, even when you know you’re going to lose, that Namrat will get you in the end.

  Namrat always wins.

  But when I saw Jake staring up at that mural, I knew what drove her. Fear. Same as me. But unlike mine, her fear was that the Goddess wouldn’t love her, would turn her away unless she fought, more and more, always. Brought up in violence, that was always Jake’s first reaction to anything. Now she stood there, splashed in blood that wasn’t hers, looking more like that Downside Goddess than ever, and it was the fear that was killing her.

  She didn’t take her gaze from the mural when she spoke, and her voice seemed very small in the silence, flat and toneless. “Why didn’t you leave me up there? I wanted to stay.” She scrubbed a hand across eyes that were red-rimmed but dry. “I suppose I’ll have to go to the gates then.”

  “You don’t have to,” I said. I didn’t have time for this, not really. I didn’t have the blood for it. The Storad wouldn’t stay where we’d lured them; I had to get going, but there was always time for this. I had to, not for me or for Jake but for Pasha. “They say it’s the fight that’s the thing, for her. But you’re giving up.”

  She whirled on me, and her hand caught me a ringing slap around the side of the head, which I really could have done without. With that slap still stinging, I shook my head and spat out another mouthful of blood. I was surprised I had any left.

  “What do you know about it?” she snarled.

  “Pasha once asked me if I would let you go and dice with death every day because it made you happy. And he did, but it didn’t, it won’t make you happy because that’s not why you’re doing it. Look at her, the Goddess, who you want, always, to love you. Always trying to prove to her that you’re worthy, and she says the fight is the thing. To fight. But you’re not fighting, even if you’ve got swords in your hands and blood in your hair. You’re not fighting, because you want someone to beat you, even I can see that. You’re giving up, and do you think that’s why Pasha put himself on that machine? So that you’d die too? He told me, and I get it now, that a sacrifice has to hurt or it’s no sacrifice at all. Do you want him to have done that for nothing? Do you want to make that sacrifice useless and stupid? Because I won’t let you do that to him. Not to Pasha.”

  She stepped back and I thought then she might cry at last, but no. No tears, or not in public. Maybe she’d cry later, but not now.

  “Bastard,” she whispered at last. “What you know about it, about Pasha and me, eh? Bastard.”

  “Technically no, but I can see why you might think so. You’re probably right too. But I can’t go and do what I have to up in the lab unless I’m sure about this, about you not trying to get yourself killed. I can’t let Pasha dying mean nothing.” Or perhaps I was kidding myself, trying to put it off, and that sounded more like me.

  Jake’s glance flicked upwards, towards the lab, and she flinched. “You’re scared. I never thought you were scared. You were always Rojan, who helped us when no one else would, or could. I never thought you were scared.”

  “I’ve always been scared. Scared to be alone. Scared to be with anyone, because I’ll fuck it up. I thought I loved you once. I still do, in a way. I loved you for Pasha. I loved you because you were safe – I knew I’d never get the chance to fuck it up. I’m scared, but I’m going to do it anyway. I have to. And then I won’t have to be scared any more.”

  I hadn’t said what I was going to do yet, but I think she knew. She shut her eyes against the tears that threatened, but even then she wouldn’t cry them. “Then you and I are the same – that’s why I fight like I don’t care, because I don’t want to be scared any more.”

  I wanted to say something – that there was hope, for all of us perhaps, even her and me, screw-ups that we were. But I couldn’t because I don’t think I’ve ever really believed in hope. Hope is a crock of shit and never gave anyone a damned thing except a buffer against just throwing themselves down a gap and having done with it. Sometimes it made it more likely. Not the most helpful of things to say, so I didn’t.

  She turned away, her back rigid, hands on the hilts of her swords, and made for the door. I wanted to stop her, I wanted to tell her… what? I didn’t know, only that I didn’t want it to mean nothing, any of it, Pasha, me, her, everything. But by the time I got my tongue and brain in gear, it was too late. She was gone, and I never saw her again. And funny, I didn’t mind, or not much. It wasn’t her that drove me after all. All that time, all that mooning as Erlat called it, and it wasn’t her. So funny I almost laughed, and instead choked on the blood in my throat.

  Perak stared at me, his face as pale as the snow that still piled up in the streets, wherever it could find a way through the warren of walkways and buildings and too many people squashed together. I wanted to say something to him too, but again I couldn’t think what and I needed to save my breath so all I said was, “Help me upstairs, Perak.”

  He wavered, and I looked about at the statues and wondered, were the saints ever afraid? Did the martyrs crap themselves before they did what they’d done? Did they dream of Namrat coming to eat them?

  And there, the statue of Namrat himself, his face covered with a black and gold cloth as was proper. I’m not sure what possessed me, to see the face of the thing that haunted me, but I pulled the black cloth off and let it drop. A hungry, snarling face, all eyes and teeth. Namrat always wins, in the end.

  Perak got hold of my arm and without another word we made our way out of the temple, away from the silence, from the statues’ eyes, away from Namrat. It took a while to get to the lab – walking wasn’t getting any easier, and the snow had turned to slushy ice which coated the stairwell, the walkways, every available surface. The air seemed cold enough to snap my nose hairs, but I barely noticed.

  We reached the level of the lab, the area where a huddle of dead Storad lay mercifully cloaked by the snow. It seemed quieter than graves. A faint sound echoed in the crystal air – the gates. They were fighting at the gates, in the streets, on the Spine. They’d all risen, but it wouldn’t be enough, not to beat them back for good. Because there was going to be more Storad, more machines. More everything, if we didn’t do something right now. Of that we could be sure.

  “Rojan…” Perak’s voice, worried and small, like when we were boys and he looked up to me.

  I shook my head – saving my breath, and the blood that seemed to float out in misty little droplets with it. I only wanted to say it once, and there was someone else who needed to hear it too.

  A shout went up from behind the rough barricade, the door opened and light spilled out. Warm hands grabbed me and took me inside, set me down on a
chair by Lise’s desk.

  Perak crouched opposite me, while Erlat helped me sit up. Even that little thing was hard and I leaned against her, taking a bit of strength from her while she mopped at my face with a cool cloth that seemed like bliss.

  “Rojan, what —” Perak said, but I shook my head at him. No words or breath spare to explain.

  Instead I used them for Erlat. “Lise’s desk. Bottom drawer, at the back. Green.”

  They both looked at me like I’d gone mad, and perhaps they were right, but Erlat went and got the vial and the syringe that went with it. For once I was going to voluntarily get a jab.

  “Perak, open the door.” I nodded towards the room that I didn’t really want to see again, but had to.

  “What? No, Rojan. I won’t allow it. I won’t.”

  I levered myself up, and Erlat shifted under my shoulder so I could use her as a crutch. The room swam, colours blurring into black around me, but I managed to stay upright. Just.

  “You don’t have a choice,” I said. “Why were you going to blow Top of the World?”

  He looked bewildered at the change of tack, but I needed him to understand even if I didn’t.

  “I – I —” He pulled himself together. “It’s not about the individual man. One man couldn’t change Ministry, not on his own, not for decades, unless I wanted to assassinate all the cardinals and… the opportunity presented itself. I could have sent Jake away, or tried to and then Top of the World would be empty except for me and the Storad. You gave me the idea, you and Allit when he saw them there, I knew what needed to be done. Take down the whole lot, Top of the World, Clouds, scour Ministry from the positions of power and start again. Most of the cardinals have gone to the Mishans, or tried, and frankly the tribes are welcome to them. I hope they find more use for them than I did. Top of the World is empty, Clouds is a ghost town, except for the Storad. I thought we could topple both, Ministry and Storad, only we can’t now. I thought you were going to blow it all up, not bring us down here. If you’d left me up there I could have rigged something, fixed the ignition switch. Could have blown the whole mess into the Slump. Why didn’t you leave me, why do this to yourself?”