Guinto moved between the groups and something came in his wake, ripples of feel-good that had Upsider and Down looking warily, but, importantly, not angrily, at each other. After a word from Guinto, one Downsider even offered a hand to an Upsider, and it was accepted. Animosity seemed to drain from the air. Yet there was something about Guinto that made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck, something just that touch creepy. He was smooth, too damned smooth, and I never have been able to trust a man who smiles that much. Perhaps that says more about me than it does about Guinto, but I kept expecting to find out that his benevolence was a trick, a veneer to fool us all before he had everyone at each other’s throats even worse than before. The old bait and switch that Ministry have used so well. I hoped not, but it wouldn’t have surprised me.
“Amazing how he does it, isn’t it?” The soft voice startled me from my thoughts. The girl from the temple, looking even more angelic and ethereal today in a soft white dress that flowed and clung and made some very naughty thoughts pop into my head. I know I’d sworn off women only the day before but, hell, promises are made to be broken, especially given that my chances with Jake were less than bugger all.
A guy’s got to take his fun when he can, right?
Besides, I seriously needed some distraction from thinking about Lise. There’s nothing like a pretty woman to distract me from something, anything, so I cranked up the smile. “Nowhere near as astonishing as you look in that dress.” Cheesy, yes, but that kind of stuff really works if you sound like you mean it, and I always do mean it. That’s my trouble.
It worked this time, too, because she blushed prettily and tried to hide a smile behind her hand.
I took the other, kissed the back of her fingers the old-fashioned way, and her blush deepened. ‘A pleasure, I’m sure. I’m—”
“Maki, yes, I know. I’ve heard a lot about you. None of it good. My father says you’re a terror with women, but he hopes to lure you to the way of the Goddess.”
Good luck to him with that. At least she was helping take my mind off Pasha, whether he’d got there yet, whether Lise was still alive…I wanted to grab Jake and run after Pasha, but I’d be worse than useless in the mobs above, no real help to Lise, and the girl’s hand on my arm felt good. It kept me there, for now, that and a sense of something wrong down here, somewhere. Something subtle, but there.
I might not be able to rummage in people’s heads like Pasha, but there are some fringe perks to being a mage. My perk was telling me I needed to stay, find out what was lurking underneath here, that it would help later. Help find whoever had done that to Lise and Dwarf. Dendal had said, and I believed him, that all of this was linked. Getting the power back on, the boys being murdered. A riot had kicked off over the last of those, and now here was Guinto soothing it all like he had magic of his own.
Or maybe that was just my excuse for a quick flirt. Guinto repelled and fascinated me in equal measure, and anything I could find out about him would perhaps help stop the creeping up my back every time I looked at him.
“Your father?”
“Guinto. Adopted, of course,” she said, probably because I looked sceptical. He was an Upsider through and through and there was no doubting she’d come from the ’Pit. “I’m one of his good deeds. Abeya.”
“Charmed, I’m sure.” See, I can be nice, too, when I want. Usually only when I’ve got a chance with a pretty woman smiling at me, true, but it’s better than nothing and it kept my mind off everything else.
I would have followed up with something better—resolutions be damned—but Guinto came and put rather a crimp on the moment. A disapproving priest will do that to flirting.
He eyed me somewhat suspiciously but with a hint of challenge, as though I was a dare, something for him to overcome. There was something else, too, something that I’d tried to pretend I hadn’t seen in his temple, in these mobsters-turned-people by his smile. Something that I couldn’t share, that seemed fake to me, and anyway was certainly crushed by these riots. Hope. As far as I’m concerned hope is a rude word.
Guinto inclined his head in a paternal fashion that irked me no end and held an arm out to indicate the walkway and stairwell. I glanced round to Jake, and she was by my elbow. Close enough to touch and worlds away, but when she nodded I grudgingly followed Guinto.
He smoothed the way through crowds of angry Downsiders in a manner that had me almost admiring him. It certainly saved my backside, if some of the looks were anything to go by. I got away with a couple of spits and a few snarled not very complimentary names that made me wonder what Pasha had to put up with every day from Upsiders. With Guinto leading, passing out blessings and feel-good like crumbs for birds and Jake watching my back, it didn’t take us long to get to his temple a few levels under the pain lab.
He led us through the main temple, though he had to stop every few paces as someone else clasped his hand, asked for a blessing, thanked him. Upsiders and Downsiders both. He glad-handed them, blessed them, smiled over them, and finally we were through to the rooms at the back.
A woman ran up to him and whispered in his ear. He thanked her before she darted off again. Blood stained the cuffs of her crisp shirt, making my heart stutter.
“Lise? Is she…”
A kindly smile that I didn’t believe for a heartbeat, and then Guinto said, “She’s steady. You can’t see her just yet, they’re still working on her, but she’s out of immediate danger. Please, let me be the gracious host.”
I’ll give him this: his room was spartan in a way Ministry’s never were. No luxurious carpets, no expensive wines in crystal decanters, no candles scented with herbs instead of the fish-guts smell of a rend-nut lamp, no grinding wealth and status into the faces of the poor bastards who lived down here. Whitewashed walls, a wooden floor polished to gleaming, a simple dark wood desk. I bet he didn’t argue with his desk. Not Guinto the tranquil, who looked like nothing short of the end of the world would faze him, and maybe not even that.
There’s a lot I could say about Guinto, but while I don’t believe and never will, his faith was…reassuring. The solidity of his belief was like one of the safety nets under the walkways for the fallers and jumpers; I’d never had need of it, or wanted to, but it was nice to know it was there for those that did. Of course, those nets failed pretty often. So did the priests the Ministry sent down here.
He sat behind the desk and smoothed his hands over the worn wood. “A lot of priests have sat here before me, and will after me. The Goddess is our link to each other.”
I refrained from mentioning that his predecessor in this particular temple had been so depressed at the state of things Under that he’d become a Rapture addict and thrown himself off a walkway. One of the better ones, he’d been, the ones who hadn’t a clue how bad it really was till they got here. The priest before that used to steal all the alms and spend it on working girls, and he was a better one, too, at least compared to the one before him. Didn’t seem polite to bring it up somehow. Especially given the way Abeya was looking at me.
Time for rule five. I have my own carefully honed set of rules that keep me in one piece. Rule one states mine is not to do and die, mine is to do the job and take the cash. Rule two is don’t mess with Ministry unless you like being dead. Among others, rule five states always look respectable in front of their relatives.
Given that, what Guinto actually said threw me: “I believe we may have got you here under false pretences.”
“What? Lise—”
“Is, as I said, steady and being looked after perfectly well by Pasha and one of my worshippers who is also a nurse. But this, you turning up, is a message from the Goddess, I think. You find things out, so I hear. So do I, as a priest. People tell me things, and, besides, Lise is a frequent visitor so naturally I was concerned when Jake told me what had happened. That isn’t quite what I meant, though it was a convenient excuse to talk to you without any suspicion falling on me. Dendal tells me you find people, and Jake here seems t
o believe in you, despite rather…contrary reports.”
“Contrary?” Actually, I kind of liked that.
Guinto’s smile set to work again, but it was lost on me. “Yesterday was the first time I’ve seen you in a temple.”
“Are you going to turn me in?”
“No, no. I believe faith should be willing, not forced. Well, we have faith aplenty,” his mouth said, though I’m pretty sure I saw a “we’ll convert you yet” in his eyes. “What we don’t have is an answer.”
“To what?” Though I had one of those sinking feelings I knew, and that it would involve me being responsible and shit. And also that I’d do it, purely because of how Jake had recommended me, how she was looking at me. Time to get that tattoo artist on standby for my forehead. Maybe it should just read “Sucker”.
“You know what started tonight’s unpleasantness? What started the unrest that led ultimately to your sister’s injuries?”
I had my own suspicions about what had happened to Lise, and it wasn’t rioters, but I let that slide for now. “The murders.”
“Indeed. I want you to find the murderer.”
“Listen, Father—”
“Please, call me Guinto. I’m Father only to those who believe.”
I wasn’t going down that road. There are limits. “Father, don’t you think that if I had any idea how to track them, I would have by now?”
The laugh was genuine, I was sure. A full-throated guffaw that made Jake frown and fiddle with her swords.
“No, I don’t,” Guinto said when his laughter subsided. “But maybe you’ll be more inclined when you hear everything.”
“Inclination isn’t the problem.” It wasn’t either—I was already trying to find out who this killer was, though I’d be damned if I’d tell Guinto that. I had other pressing things to contemplate, too, like Perak pleading with me to get the power going, quick, and the two people who could help the best were now dead or injured. Which left me with some nasty, nasty choices. Carry on as we were, which meant the Storad and the Mishans walking right on in, which didn’t appeal. Screwing as much magic out of as many mages as we could find, which might get the power going but would probably mean several lunatic mages, me included. Not much better. Or the third option, which wasn’t even an option—carry on where my father had left off and start torturing people. I felt grubby even thinking it.
Jake nudged me with the hilt of a sword and I realised Guinto had said something.
“These aren’t random murders,” he said again. “I don’t think it’s only someone taking things out on Downsiders. Someone is purposefully trying to stir up trouble. I’m sure of it.”
Which had been along the line of my own, and Dench’s, thoughts. The only question was: “Why?”
Guinto shrugged elegantly. “I’m not certain, but think on it. With each murder, even the ‘unofficial’ ones that not many Upsiders know about, with each one, unrest grows, until this one. This explosion of hatred—it was waiting to happen, and so someone made it happen. On purpose. Yet what does it gain anyone? Who knows? Maybe…” He shut his eyes with a pained look, and when he opened them it seemed as though he was making a confession that ate his soul. “Maybe even the Ministry, may the Goddess forgive me. I can—well, I can get into Ministry in a way you can’t, find out what people are saying that even Perak—especially Perak—wouldn’t know.”
Even I, with my ingrained hatred of everything Ministry, couldn’t quite see how they’d benefit from wholesale riot, and I said so. “Maybe you’re right, though I don’t know why. Besides, you’re forgetting something. I can’t find one person in a city just like that. I need something to focus on. Dench couldn’t find me anything, and without that…” I can find people I know well without a prop, but a random somebody? I need something of theirs to focus on, something to link me to them.
“We thought, well, Dendal thought—” What was it with Dendal being coherent all of a sudden? And landing me right in it, too? Just when you want him to be playing fairy hide and seek, he turns up lucid as you please. “Dendal thought maybe the bodies would give you something. I can arrange for the mortuary to let you have access. I often go to make a final blessing on those that have died untimely. I can get you in, and not many can give you that.”
Bodies. Some of them a couple of weeks old. Oh, yeah, great. Thanks, Dendal.
“I tried it,” I said. “Boy I was tracking was the one that died outside the temple.”
That was when Jake sealed my fate for me. “If you’d give us a moment?” she said.
Guinto stood with a benign smile and left.
“Lise?” was all Jake had to say. “Dwarf?”
“I don’t know, I really don’t. It could have been rioters.”
“You don’t really think that,” Jake said, and her voice made me jump, the force of it, the hate that had shone through every rioter we’d seen. She wasn’t like me, had seen and experienced more than I’ll ever want to and that means I’ll never know her, not truly. Never really understand what it is that drives her. All I can do is imagine, and sympathise. It’s not enough.
Her stance changed, became a challenge, a threat almost. Anger bubbled just underneath the ice of her tone. “Do you?”
What was it about her that made me want to tell the truth when my whole life had been lies?
“No, I don’t.” And I didn’t even think it was anyone in Ministry either, or at least officially—most of them knew nothing about the lab. Someone did, though. I blinked against the recollection of Dwarf’s face, of his throat cut back to the spine. Just like the others. Dendal was right, this was all linked together. The destruction of the generator put a whole new spin on that idea. Perhaps the earlier murders had been nothing but a smokescreen to cover this particular attack, and the destruction of the generator. Or, as Guinto said, to stir up unrest. Or, perhaps, both. Either way, I had to find out who was doing it and stop them, quick.
“He’s offering to help, Rojan.”
Help, from a priest. It made me shudder just to think about it, and there was something so oily about the man I couldn’t quite bring myself to trust any offer of his.
“I’ll try the bodies,” I said. And I would, try my damnedest. Because it was Lise, and she was all I had except a brother whose every waking moment was taken up with his office and trying to stay alive long enough to make a difference, and a niece I’d spilled blood for and had never even met. Because, no matter how I try to fake it, no matter the black gloss I spin on everything, Jake’s always seen through that.
I hate it when people do that.
Chapter Seven
So that was how I found myself back in the mortuary at two o’clock in the morning, freezing all my vitals bits off. I’d satisfied myself that Lise was stable—no more bleeding and she was breathing better, had a bit of colour, and Dendal had promised to sit with her. Erlat was a worry at the back of my mind, but, as Pasha had said, the flames hadn’t got as far as the Buzz. Pasha had got Dog on checking anyway and, while he’s mostly just a big kid in a grown-up body, I’d trust him to look after anything I valued. Especially Erlat, because he’d been hit with the same sort of arrow of infatuation that I had with Jake. If anyone would look after Erlat, would bust a gut to find her and make her safe, it was Dog. I hoped that he wouldn’t need to bust a gut.
Pasha joined me on my little trip because he’d said maybe he could help, though it was more like he wanted to keep an eye on me. When they thought I wasn’t looking, he and Dendal kept exchanging knowing looks.
We’d walked to the mortuary through streets that had become suddenly, eerily, silent. No lights but rend-nut oil lamps with their fetid stench wafting over us, and the occasional building that still smouldered. It hadn’t only been Guinto who had quelled it; the streets were silent, but, if you looked hard, not empty. A few limp and bloodied bodies lay in doorways and across walkways. I couldn’t tell if they were dead or not, or who’d made them that way. Some guards mopping up the last of the
embers, and here and there, in the shadows, Specials. Every one of them with guns and a weird look to them, as though they’d been pushed too far and weren’t beyond pushing back. Maybe that would be enough to keep things quiet, for now.
I halted by a notice, hastily tacked to a still-standing wall. Two notices, when I looked closer in the gloom. The first was a proclamation that Perak had—according to Dendal—issued under duress. Ministry through and through, it read:
CURFEW ENSUES. ALL PERSONS FOUND ABROAD WITHOUT GOOD REASON TO BE ARRESTED. SPECIALS GIVEN EXTRA POWERS DURING THIS STATE OF EMERGENCY.
Short, and maybe it doesn’t really capture the horror, because everyone Under knew what arrested meant. It had meant a trip to the ’Pit, though that wasn’t an option now. The options left weren’t much better. Pissing off Ministry generally meant you got to spend a while looking for your head, in their “behave or else” form of law and order. Things had been slack of late, since Perak had taken over, but it was still there, the fear of it, in the back of people’s minds. They’d lashed out under pressure, and were now regretting it under the stern boot of the Specials, who answered only to the Goddess.
The second notice was Perak’s personal message, I was sure of it. It talked of calm, of tolerance, of peace. And of a reward for information leading to the murderer’s arrest. It might have been more impressive if someone hadn’t scrawled “Bollocks” over it in a thick black pen. We’d lived under Ministry for too long to believe it could change, except for the worse. Even I couldn’t, and I knew our new Archdeacon was a good man, though beset on all sides, and maybe he wouldn’t survive the experience. Few good men survived in the Ministry for long.
When we got to the mortuary, someone was waiting for us. I recognised her vaguely—I thought perhaps she’d been the nurse who’d overseen me identifying my own body. Well, it had already been identified as me. I’d just wanted to make sure the bastard was good and dead.
Rojan Dizon 02 - Before the Fall Page 9