Rojan Dizon 02 - Before the Fall

by Francis Knight

  “I—” I started to come out with something glib, some lie to cover up the fact I was totally clueless, but something about the way she arched an elegant eyebrow stopped me. “No, not really.”

  Her laugh threw me even further off balance, and I blushed, again, when she said, “Oh, Rojan, you’re the funniest thing that’s happened all week. Come back when you know. Now excuse me, I have an appointment.”

  I blushed even harder when I turned to see Jake behind me, witness to my embarrassment.

  “Come on in, Jake,” Erlat said. “I’m ready for you.”

  I hurried away from the laughter that followed me out, and only later wondered why the hell Jake was going to see Erlat as a client.

  Thankful that the darkness hid my flaming face, I shoved my memory of the episode to the back of my mind where I hoped it would die a lingering death and made my way straight to the pain lab to meet Pasha.

  It wasn’t far, but far enough for me to notice the atmosphere of caged resentment, of hate and fear. It would only take one more thing to set it all off again, and then maybe nothing could stop it. And when that happened, our circling neighbours, who sat waiting and watching as close as they dared, would fall on us. We’d kept the thumbscrews of trade on them for so long, they’d be fools not to.

  The stairwell that led to the lab was fire-blackened but the damage seemed fairly superficial. I hoped so—I didn’t fancy the whole place collapsing. I hesitated before I opened the door, remembering the way it had looked the last time I’d been here. Blood and bits of machines, Dwarf’s body looking even more twisted in death than it had in life. I made a mental note to go to the mortuary, make sure he got a proper sendoff rather than dumped into the Slump. I dreaded telling Lise that he was dead, and was surprised to find a Dwarf-shaped hole inside me.

  It wasn’t the remembrance of the blood that made me hesitate, but the knowledge that he wouldn’t greet me like a long lost friend, wouldn’t grab me and start showing me some new technical marvel he’d come up with, waggle his eyebrows over his abused-doll face in a way that always made me grin.

  I sucked it up and opened the door. Given the choice, I’d have slunk off to the nearest bar and drunk hooch brewed from whatever scraps they’d found this week. I didn’t have that choice, and, Namrat’s arse, didn’t I hate that.

  The lab wasn’t much better than when we’d found Dwarf and Lise, but someone had made an effort to tidy up, and the blood was mostly gone. No one was there just then, and I took my time going over what was missing, and what was still there. The spare pulse pistols were gone, leaving only the one in my pocket. The prototype portable magic enhancer, the one that Dwarf had hoped meant we could capture magic in Glow tubes at home, or wherever we were, that’d gone, too. All the little electrical gizmos, the practice sessions for what they wanted to incorporate into the generator and electrical magic enhancer, they were there but in more bits than there are stars. They’d even taken Dwarf’s pride and joy—the detesticliser. Very useful for intimidation, Dwarf had always said, and I believed him. A serial killer in a pacifist’s body, that’s what he’d been, the gruff old bastard. I was going to miss him something chronic.

  The door to the pain room opened as I stood looking at all the gaps on the benches, the mangled bits of metal where there weren’t gaps, trying to work out if we had anything helpful left.

  Dench came in, his moustache drooping with worry. Perak followed, and behind them came a man I’d not yet met, a furtive looking ferret of a man in a lab coat who instinctively made me check that my wallet was still there. Right at the back, Allit stood with round wide eyes and a fearful look. At least he’d not been murdered yet.

  Dench and I looked at each other without speaking for long moments, before he shook his head and said, “How screwed are we?”

  “More than just screwed. The generator’s had it, the machine in the pain room is a mess of wires and someone’s offing pain-mages.” It probably came out harsher than I’d intended, but all in all it’d been a crap day. I glanced at Perak. “The Inquisition isn’t really helping either.”

  Perak looked guilty at that. “I wish that I could say I could stop it.” He glanced sideways at the man in the lab coat, and I understood immediately that he couldn’t say all he wanted. Where was Pasha when you needed him to rummage in someone’s head? “They’ll finish when their orders are complete. You’re sure about the mages?”

  “Two of the boys were just discovering their magic, like Allit here. A third was Taban. And this…” I gestured round the lab. “This wasn’t rioters. This was deliberate. Someone really doesn’t want us up and running.”

  Dench didn’t look too surprised about the mages, I noted. No, not surprised at all. “Any ideas?”

  “One or two. You?”

  “One or two.” His gaze was steady, but it gave nothing away. Guarded to the end, was Dench. Probably why he was in charge of the Specials. Speaking of which. “Your Specials, I know you don’t have much magic, but could they help out? Until we get things back up and running?”

  He chewed his moustache thoughtfully. “Don’t see why not. You could do with a guard here, anyway, and I’ve got a few men making sure no one tries for Lise again. Discreetly, of course. I’ll think on it. This is Bulahan. He’s from Alchemical Research, here to see what he can do to help.” The look of disgust that Dench tried and failed to hide indicated the Specials might be a good idea for more than we’d said aloud. Ferret-face was going to be a problem.

  Bulahan stepped forwards, neat and precise. A pair of glasses kept slipping down his nose and he’d twitch it to push them back up, reinforcing the ferrety nature of his sharp face.

  “I’ve done what I can with the collectors in the pain room. That seemed most sensible to start with. It’s a bit of a rush job, so they won’t be very efficient, but they will work for now. The generator, well, I don’t even know where to start. The way it’s wired—it shouldn’t work. At all. It won’t work, I can guarantee it. I’m surprised that anyone thought it would be good to go anytime soon. But given the…less experienced nature of the people you had working on it—”

  “I’d be careful how you carry on that sentence,” Perak said and the harshness of his voice surprised me. Perak didn’t get angry, ever. He barely even got a bit miffed. “One of those people is my sister, and Dwarf—Dwarf was more a genius than you could ever comprehend.”

  Ferret-face blinked rapidly, but the recovery was masterful. “Well, yes, of course. I mean to come up with the concept of the generator is obviously superb, and, and…”

  “And you will continue the work to the best of your ability. If necessary, I will assist.”

  The threat of the Archdeacon lowering himself to something so mundane as using a screwdriver shocked Ferret-face into silence. Perak winked at me. Who was this person, and what had he done with my head-in-the-clouds brother?

  “Um, maybe we should get started for the day, um, Your Grace, if it pleases you?”

  “Certainly.” Perak raised an eyebrow at me. “Where’s Pasha?”

  “He’ll be here soon enough. Let’s get started,” I said. Get it over with more like. It was simultaneously the best and worst part of my day.

  Perak left, in the company of a phalanx of Specials. Dench hesitated at the doorway and gave me a grave look. “Usual place?”

  “Good enough,” I said. “You’re paying.”

  He snorted in disgust at that and went, leaving me with Ferret-face and Allit. The boy looked utterly petrified, though it could be for any number of reasons—the pain magic he was getting used to, the thought he might have to work in the pain room though it was far too soon for that. Maybe because Ferret-face was Ministry, and that made me itch, too. I wished Pasha would hurry up.

  But the pain was waiting, so I got down to it. Ferret’s rush job seemed to hold up well enough, though I couldn’t get as much into the Glow tubes as usual and what I could seemed dim somehow. But painwise it was no better or worse than usual. Fer
ret-face didn’t have Dwarf’s sense of knowing when to make me stop and I almost tipped over the edge and into the black. What stopped me was the smallest of noises—a whimper from the other chair. Not Pasha, but someone else. Allit. When I forced my eyes open, Ferret-face had got him strapped into the chair opposite and he was trying to dislocate his fingers as he’d seen Pasha do.

  I stood up and almost fell getting to him.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I whispered to Ferrety. “He’s not—he only found out he was a mage a couple of days ago.”

  I attempted to disconnect Allit, but he kept shaking his head and pulling away, all the while trying to dislocate that finger. Ferrety tried to stop me, too, muttering about “all the Glow we can get”, but I snarled at him and he backed off.

  I finally got the boy out and he fell into me, sobbing so hard his lungs must surely ache. “I wanted to help,” he said at last. “Dwarf—he was kind to me and so was Lise, and you and Pasha, you’re helping everyone. And I wanted to help as well, like you.”

  Someone wanted to be like me? That thumping sound was probably the Goddess fainting. “Too soon, Allit. You need to practise, start small before you get on the chair. Even if you practise, it’s hard, devilish hard.”

  “But I wanted to try.”

  I was really starting to like this kid. The Ferret started to say something, but I cut him off with a “Your speciality is machines, not mages, right? Go and fix something.” When he’d left, I got Allit sorted and told him to get ready to go out.

  “Where are we going?”

  I smiled, enjoying the secret. There was precious little else to enjoy that day. “To go and see a man who will teach you all you need to know about using magic. I’ll help you, too, when I get the chance. Then you can help. You’ll be no good if you kill yourself with magic. Can’t tell you how many times I almost managed that.”

  Facing Lastri with a red-eyed boy in tow was much easier when I could casually toss her some bacon and say, “I brought you and Dendal something to eat, and this boy needs keeping away from the lab now Dwarf isn’t there. I don’t have time to teach him at the moment, so Dendal will have to.”

  For a second, I really thought she’d stab me in the eye with a pen, but the bacon made her mouth drop open and I left to meet Dench, thinking I’d scored at least a little victory. It would be the last one for a while.

  Chapter Twelve

  The Beggar’s Roost had seen better days. A rathole of a pub, right down in the scabby heart of No-Hope with dripping walls and mouldy floors, and this was one of the upmarket places round here. Dench sat hunched over a pint of something that could loosely be called alcohol, if you were feeling generous. Citizens of Mahala could get used to crappy and almost non-existent food, but no beer was a serious matter and a few industrious souls were making a small fortune fermenting anything they could find.

  I bought a pint for myself and peered into it, trying not to wonder what it was they’d fermented this week. Rats, by the smell. I put it down without drinking any.

  Dench eyed me warily while pretending he was watching the Rapture addicts that passed for dancers on the stage. They moved with an odd, languorous sort of rhythm, an effect that was spoiled by the nothing behind their eyes.

  “Mages,” he said at last. “You’re sure?”

  “Not totally. But three of them were definitely, and a couple more we looked at were possibles. And how many people are mages? One in five, ten thousand men and boys? Less? What are the odds?”

  He grunted in what could have been agreement, making his moustache flap. “Shit, this is the last thing I need right now. Half the fucking city hates mages. The other half merely loathes them. You said you had an idea or two.”

  “Remember where you found them all. One was outside the temple where Guinto was preaching, one was last seen in his temple and Taban was less than ten minutes away. The others weren’t far either.”

  “Oh, you have got to be shitting me, Rojan. Look, I know you hate the Ministry, I’m not exactly overfond myself, not with how things have been lately, but you’ve got a real thing about priests. Not content with killing the old Archdeacon, now you want to accuse the one priest who’s actually doing some good down here? You’re obsessed.”

  I tried not to be offended. He was right. “You got any better ideas then?”

  “Perhaps.” He took a long slug of his drink. He looked sick, but that could have just been from the beer. “I’ll talk to a few people, let you know. In return, I need you to talk to Perak, because he sure as shit isn’t listening to anyone else.”

  I frowned over my own drink. “I can try. What about?”

  “About the generator—I told you he’d pinned all his hopes on it, that with that going he had enough leverage to tell the Storad and Mishans to bugger off. Even now it’s destroyed, he’s still pinning his hopes on it, on being able to fix it. On you. Can you get him to admit he has to try to negotiate? Or at least talk to them? Because I think we’re screwed otherwise. No, I know we are.”

  It should have struck me sooner, but it became clear as air when Dench started pleading their case. A point of view I hadn’t considered, having been too busy being up to my knees in dead bodies, pain labs and willing women. Who benefited from the generator going? The Storad and the Mishans and any cardinal on their side—or maybe just not on Perak’s side. With no power, if we were forced to capitulate, well, any cardinal that was chummy with them was going to find himself in a very nice position. Maybe even new Archdeacon. That’s a powerful incentive.

  It was a pretty persuasive argument too, as long as you were one of the few prepared to believe that Outside actually existed and that people could live there. Scripture said that Mahala was the Goddess’s whole world. Scripture said. Unfortunately logic said we had to be trading with someone, though if you’ve got enough brainwashing it can replace logic. It was one of those unacknowledged dichotomies—some people firmly believed in both the scripture and Outside, in the same way you could believe in rainy days and sunshine; they both occur but not at the same time. This is because people are so screwy in the head and seem built for deluding themselves. I sometimes wondered if I was the only sane one, or if I’d already gone batshit and this was my madness.

  A cynical shrug from Dench, a swig of the hooch. “Maybe they just want to use the pass without paying through the nose for us being middlemen. Or maybe they’ll wait for more mages to be born. The Storad in particular always play a long game.”

  I thought back to the only Storad I’d ever seen, a granite-faced man in the Death Matches. They were a hard race, it was said. Hard like the stones they mined, and we were soft, too soft, after years of living off trade and now with no food in our bellies. Mahala might fall if they breathed hard on it.

  It was a theory anyway, one I didn’t want to share just yet, in case I was wrong. Dench would undoubtedly sneer at my obsession with the turncoat nature of the Ministry.

  Maybe these murders weren’t as connected as I thought—at least Dwarf’s murder. Could be someone just using the previous murders to cover up that they wanted the generator gone.

  Because if even the staunch Dench felt this way, there were bound to be others who not only thought it, but did something about it.

  “Well?” asked Dench. “Will you talk to him?”

  “I’ll try,” I lied, and changed the subject. “You’d know if anyone came in from Outside, wouldn’t you? Except the ambassadors, of course.”

  “Ah, Rojan, not just a fucked-up face, eh? Not that I know of, but there are ways and ways. Means to communicate. You know that.”

  Why was it I always got the impression he wasn’t telling me everything, but only enough to get me worried, to get me to do something? Experience, because he never gave away more than he had to. He’d given me more than he probably should have, though.

  “So what are you doing about it?” I asked.

  “Me? Not a lot. I don’t have time. I’ve got riots to k
eep down, and an Inquisition I didn’t want that I have to oversee, I’ve got people dying like flies and no more space in the Slump for the bodies. I’ve got an archdeacon who’s pissed off all the wrong people at the worst possible time, when he needs them behind him. If they get behind him now, it’ll be to knife him in the back. He’s a bit like his brother in that regard.” The sardonic look warped his moustache to new glory.

  “It’s up to us, then, that’s what you’re telling me. That I can’t expect any help from you?”

  “I just did help you. More than I technically should. Rojan, you’re good at finding people, better than I’ll ever be. We need them caught, whoever it is. Need someone in the dock, someone we can say, ‘Look, we caught the bastard’ about to all the Downsiders. Whoever it is. If the Downsiders calm down, then the Upsiders will calm down, and we’ll be back to something approaching normality. I hope. Then perhaps we can get on with surviving, on concentrating on how we’re going to get through this and what we’re going to have to give the Storad and Mishans in return for them not killing us. I’ll help you as much as I can, but I’ve got more shit going on than I can handle and my first duty is to keep your brother alive. Someone’s already tried for him once.”

  He dropped that titbit in as though it was a bit of fluff, nothing of consequence but I thought it might have been the whole point of this conversation. To tell me things were worse than I’d thought, that I’d better get my arse in gear. As if the day hadn’t been bad enough.

  “What? When? Why didn’t you tell me, why didn’t he tell me?”

  “Yesterday, and probably because you’re his brother and he doesn’t want to worry you. Well, I do want to worry you. We’ve got our hands fuller than we can cope with. Talk to Perak if you can, because if you don’t…shit, I don’t know how, but things will get worse. And try to stay alive yourself. No telling who this killer might go for next. Like I said, I’ve got a couple of men quietly keeping an eye on Lise, so even if it is Guinto—not that I’m saying I believe you, because I think you’re full of shit—even if it is him, he won’t get her and neither will anyone else, like whoever it really is. I’ll set some guards about the lab, too, and another to watch your office. I’ll tell that one to help if you ask, and he’ll be one of my best, so keep an eye out for him. That’s all I can spare, but if it’s pain-mages they’re after, well, you’ve been advertising.”