Rojan Dizon 02 - Before the Fall

by Francis Knight

  I pushed myself up off the carpet and tried for sitting. I managed on the second attempt, and found Pasha doing the same next to me. He didn’t say anything but the look he shot Dench, standing next to us with my pulse pistol in one hand and a bullet gun in the other, was of pure hatred.

  Dench kept his face carefully blank and I began to wonder what was behind that mask, and who he was taking his orders from. And if he was following them or just pretending to.

  “Before we start,” Fat Guy said from the comfort of his chair, “I’d like to point out that Dench is under instruction to shoot you in the back of the head at the first hint of you using your magic. With the bullet gun, that is.” He shrugged in an oddly delicate manner. “I understand you’ve been tracking mages. Where there’s one there’s more, and more’s the pity. Well, soon enough we’ll be rid of you, whatever Perak says, no matter how he hides. No use for you now. Not now the Storad come to us with coal.”

  Resisting the urge to use the returning throb of my poor fucked hand, to use the juice I was just begging to use, may be the hardest thing I’d ever done. Instead, I said, “Coal? So?” and it came out quite well.

  Manoto shook his head sadly, as though over a child that doesn’t understand a basic lesson. “A new power. One where we wouldn’t be beholden to the unholy. And yet Perak still refuses to negotiate. Even now, with mages dying and a generator in pieces. Still relies on you and your kind. Well, there’s some of us who won’t.”

  “We’re keeping you in Glow, for now at least.” I eyed the way his jowls wobbled. “And without Glow, you’re going on one hell of a diet.”

  I didn’t like the way he smiled at that, or Dench’s awkward shuffle behind me. Had they bought Dench? How had they? Specials swore to the Goddess, not to man or Ministry. Utterly unbribable, except perhaps by her. Was he the cardinal’s man? He’d been pretty pissed off at the way things were going, but this? I couldn’t believe it of him. Not Dench, staunch and caring under that moustache.

  I thought back to the wink, and found a flicker of hope that someone up here was on our side, even if he couldn’t say so. Someone other than Perak. And where was Perak? Was he safe? Was he dead?

  “You remember Doctor Whelar?” Manoto said.

  Oh, I remembered him all right. He stepped out of the gloom in the corner, and seemed as I recalled—dishevelled, harassed, a bit smug but a good doctor nonetheless. Too fucking good. The concoction he’d invented, the one that numbed everything including my magic, had almost done for me once before. To his credit, and the only reason I hadn’t left him to his fate like my father, was that he was a doctor first and a Ministry pawn second. I suddenly wished I hadn’t been quite so lenient, especially when I saw the syringe in his hand and had to wonder whether he’d been testing things on dead people at the mortuary rather than the dead pigs he used to use.

  “Hello, Doctor. How are your bollocks?”

  I couldn’t help the grin as he instinctively curled over as though to protect them. The memory of my sharp elbow was still strong, it seemed.

  Fat Guy’s sharp tone cut through that. “You’re supposed to be dead. You and this other thing. That would have been the end of Perak’s stubborn refusals, and we could start making this city work again. Why did you come here? What did you think you’d achieve? Wasn’t the death of one archdeacon, the near destruction of our entire city, enough for you? You want to destroy the process of rebuilding, regrouping, avoiding allout war? What is it that you want, Rojan?”

  So, he had recognised me. From where I’m not sure—maybe Dench had told him, and that didn’t bode well. At all.

  Call me cynical, call me stupid, call me whatever you want, but here, this was my chance, this was—what I never got to say, because Pasha was on his wobbly feet, lip curling, eyes hot with hate.

  “I know you,” he said. “I remember you, from a long time ago. When you told my parents I had a higher calling, that I’d serve the Ministry and they were so fucking proud. They didn’t know what you were taking me to. Didn’t know I was a mage. Neither did I, at first, but I found out. And when I wouldn’t do what the mages told me, wouldn’t torture people for Glow…” His words dried up in a clamp of his lips, a scrunch of his monkey face.

  Fat Guy didn’t move for a moment, but I thought I saw a flicker of something there, of shame perhaps. Ridiculous, to think a Ministry man could have any shame left after all they’d done, and still did. Yet his voice held some sort of compassion to it when he spoke. Fake, it must be. Yet it seemed real to me.

  “I didn’t know. None of us did, not then. Mages! Scripture is quite clear on them. Later…later we found out what the Archdeacon was doing, but he persuaded us. We had no other choice, or so he said, and we believed him. We wanted to. Wanted to ignore it, or maybe that was his magic, using his voice the way he did. He said it was the unholy killing the unwanted, the unfaithful, or converting them, for the survival of the faithful. The Archdeacon said so, and we…we believed him. His voice, no one could resist when he used the voice, and that’s when we knew he was a mage, too.”

  He turned a speculative eye on me, the twitch of his lip disdainful. “When Rojan destroyed all that, when he killed the old Archdeacon and Perak came into power, then it was pick a side or die, and those on Perak’s side, those who’d keep the mages as useful pets—we didn’t want that, them. Not any more, but it was only days before the Storad and Mishans realised we were all but helpless. We had to be strong, or appear to be, or we would be lost. All of it, every part of the city would die. We did what we had to do, always. And he wouldn’t even try to negotiate, because he had his mages, he had his stupid generator that wouldn’t work. That was why I had Perak shot. So I could bargain with the Storad, Mahala could live, even if the life was different. For the Goddess. Always for the Goddess.”

  For themselves more like. I’d long since given up the notion that any Ministry man did anything other than for his own comfort or wealth, and I wanted not to think of Perak, of whether he was alive or dead, so I let my mouth flap. “Does that include murdering boys who you think are becoming pain-mages?”

  The confusion seemed real enough. “No. No, of course not. Dench?”

  It didn’t help that Dench side-stepped the question. “You’re not as cynical as you seem, Rojan, I know that, and I knew you’d take it to heart. I had to keep you searching. Otherwise you’d be under my feet worrying about Perak, poking that nose about up here.”

  “And what would I have found?”

  Fat Guy smiled, a patronising smirk that made me want to smack it off his face. “Dench knows you well enough, Rojan. Well enough to know you’d have found things that would hurt your cynical soul, and that you’d interfere with.”

  Again, Dench’s face was carefully blank when I looked. Far too carefully. In the thorn bed of my heart, a little flower of hope. Always played very close to his chest, Dench. A cynic as much as I was, and as hopeful. He’d helped me and Pasha before, against all expectation. He wasn’t a Ministry man, not really. He was the Goddess’s man. A small hope but, hey, I’m from Under. We take any damned hope we can get.

  He watched me watching him, and his moustache twitched a fraction. There was more to this than it seemed, that twitch said and my nerves settled, just a bit. Not enough to forgive him pulsing me, but a bit.

  “Politics,” the cardinal said. A word that brings a nasty taste to my mouth. “I want you to understand. We want what’s best for the city, truly we do. Perak and a few of his sycophants still think mages can save Mahala, can be relied upon, aren’t unholy. The rest…the rest mostly are thinking of their own skins by allying with the strongest faction—the one that wants all Downsiders dead, and mages, too. The one that thinks they should ally with the Storad and use their idea for steam-driven machines, using Storad coal. But Perak insists, oh he insists that he has the answer, that we need only to wait. In the meantime, I’ve had Doctor Whelar make a few modifications to his little invention. Numbs the local area—the brain.
Pain receptors still work, even if thought doesn’t. While the brain is out, we can make and take as much pain from the mage as we want. Falling into the black won’t be a problem—Whelar’s concoction is like…an artificial black. You’ll never know. Pain-free. A perfect, if temporary, solution.”

  I let my smile ratchet up a notch as Manoto fidgeted. “So, you wouldn’t be interested in knowing that the murderer is almost certainly up here somewhere, then? That maybe she’s got other people in mind to kill, other people she blames for what happened to her Downside? That I think that perhaps the Storad put her up to it, or at least helped her?” Because all this talk of them and their coal, I’d remembered where I’d seen Abeya and who with—and where I’d seen a guy like that before. In a Death Match against Jake, a Storad with jet hair and pale skin and a look as hard as mountains.

  Manoto’s mouth fell open, but neither he nor Dench had a chance to say anything. Pasha had fallen back behind me and maybe Dench had been concentrating too hard on pointing the gun at the back of my head.

  “Guinto,” Pasha said in a moan. “Guinto, Inquisition arrested him, he’s here and…and, oh Goddess, and he’s going to confess to the Inquisitors.”

  All eyes turned to him, where he stood in a corner twisting his fingers. “Only he didn’t, he didn’t. And this man, this cardinal”—Manoto flinched—“he knows more. Not what he says. I see in his head. All twisted in, Rojan. Knots on knots. But Ministry is rotten. All of it, you were right. Only Guinto…and Jake. Jake’s here, too, and oh shit is she pissed.”

  That last, and he looked right at me. I knew what he was doing, making me do this because of her. If she was up here, she was as good as dead, and, let’s face it, so were we. The gun cocked behind me, but I ignored it. Instead I let myself wallow in the throb of my hand, in the juice that had been building, slowly, all this time.

  “Rojan, don’t make me.” Dench, giving me a chance. It didn’t matter, because he’d shoot me if he had to, if he thought it was his duty. “I did what I had to, not what I wanted to. And I will again, if I have to, if it means this city lives.”

  I wanted to go, right there and then. My hand clenched into a fist without me telling it to and the sweet throb of pain filled me, made lights run in my eyes and lightning in my heart. I could feel Jake, somehow, through Pasha in my head. I knew where she was, I could find her with my eyes shut. I let the knowledge of where she was seep into me and squeezed my hand some more, let the black talk me into just doing it.

  Right up until Whelar jabbed me with his syringe and my brain went bye-byes.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Seriously, if I ever find the bastard who invented the syringe, I will not be held responsible for my actions. I may, however, stab the fucker in the eye with one.

  I woke when I landed with a jolt of half-numbed pain as my bad hand hit a stone floor. I tried not to scream because Jake’s boots were in front of me. Tried not to throw up, too, but didn’t manage that. I lay there, panting, the taste of stale bile filling my mouth and the vague imitation of pain filling my head, making it twist, wondering what the fuck I was doing. I couldn’t be sure any more because it was all too much, and I wanted to rest, somewhere quiet. In the black. I wanted to forget everything else, wanted it very badly indeed.

  A flicker of movement in front of me resolved into Jake, who seemed torn between worry and spitting-blood-angry if the way she clenched her jaw was anything to go by. I fought to stop the shudders and only partially succeeded. She held out a hesitant hand, let it waver by my shoulder. Hated to touch, be touched, she always had, though she managed with Pasha now. And with me, because the hand fell soft on my shoulder and she helped me to sitting before she turned away to Pasha as he struggled upright. The warmth of that hand stayed long after it had gone.

  Two Inquisitors in front of me got me on my feet pretty damn quick, had me clenching my fist to squeeze out some juice in a panic, almost forgetting I was still half numb and wouldn’t have enough juice to squish a rat. But they weren’t paying any attention to me, or to Pasha. They were, in fact, only statues. Very lifelike ones, sure, but no people inside the uniform, just stone.

  I let my heart settle a bit before I tried saying anything. Mainly because whatever I wanted to say was going to be full of swearwords. Instead I took a look around. Square room, bare floor, whitewashed walls, two candles that guttered in the breeze from the open windows. No easy escape out of those windows either, even though they were big enough to fit through and had no bars. Outside it was a fuck of a long way down to a big splat, and I backed away hurriedly so I couldn’t see the drop. One door, slamming behind us.

  Guinto sat hunched in the corner, though I almost didn’t recognise him at first. He seemed like a ghost of himself, pale and drawn, his lips trembling but determined as he glared at me.

  Pasha and Jake argued quietly behind me, and I caught snatches.

  “They came, and I couldn’t stop them, not me and Dog on our own. Guinto said…he said it would be all right, that we should come with them. Besides—”

  Pasha’s voice, hot and angry but a worried angry. “This is the last place you want to be. I can see—they knew. They all knew, and they let it go on anyway. You can’t kill all of them.”

  “Why not? And you can’t protect me from everything. I can look after myself, remember? I wasn’t leaving you up here, without even trying to help.”

  A pregnant pause, but I didn’t turn because I was pretty sure what I saw would only burn a hole in my gut, especially when I could still feel her hand on my shoulder. Envy is such an ugly thing but I couldn’t stop it, couldn’t talk my way out of my feelings or even smother them with other women, though I’d tried pretty hard.

  So it came out a lot sharper than I’d intended. “What the fuck is this place? I mean, are we likely to get Inquisitioned? Don’t know about you, but I don’t want that goat’s entrails on my conscience.”

  I risked turning and got the full force of Jake in my face.

  “You have to help me stop Guinto,” she said. “He wants to confess to all those murders, but I know he didn’t do them, and so do you.”

  “Jake, I—that’s not really at the forefront of my mind at the moment. He can do what he likes, but there’s Abeya up here somewhere on the loose, Perak getting shot at and I don’t know whether he’s alive or dead. Oh, and Dench is seriously pissed with us, me, and he’s working for a cardinal now, too. A cardinal who thinks that he can zap our brains and suck our magic out and it’s a perfect solution, at least until he manages to kill Perak, ally with the Storad and be rid of us for good. One priest having a fit of idealism doesn’t figure high on my list of priorities right now.”

  Her mouth set in a determined line. Too stubborn by half, she was. Too sure that what she was doing was right. I admired that about her, even when it was being a pain in the butt.

  “It should,” was all she said before Pasha took over, his voice tight with, what? Anger, fatalism, exasperation? I couldn’t be sure, but whatever it was it clipped his words into little bombs.

  “You don’t get it, you never got it. If he confesses, Under might as well die. It will die, in flames. Everyone knows it wasn’t him, couldn’t have been. And Downsiders would kill for him. He was the only one treated us as humans, as people. Only he accepted us, made us welcome. You Upsiders think you hate Ministry. Well, we had more cause, a lot more.”

  “Us Upsiders? You were born here.”

  “And my parents are too ashamed of that, of what I am, what I’ve become. A Downsider, like all the rest. I lived there too long, suffered there too long, to be anything else now and we hate with a vengeance your Upside Goddess doesn’t know. Our Goddess knows violence and pain, death and sacrifice. She knows it because so did we, the mages taught us that well. Too many Downsiders know it can’t be Guinto. He was preaching when one boy died, and I’ve got half a dozen men say they saw another leave the temple, leave Guinto and he died on his way home. Guinto didn’t leave, and those m
en will swear to the Goddess on that. He believes in us when no one else will, when all else they get is spat in the face. If Ministry take his confession, all Under will be in flames. I’ll set the first taper myself.”

  I snatched a look at Guinto in the corner, pale but calm, his eyes steady. Waiting to do his duty. Sometimes I think I’ll never understand people.

  “You’d light Under for a man who hates you, loathes what you are, what we do?”

  “And he’s right to,” Pasha said. “I hate what I am, too, I always have, but I can deny it, control it. Not use it, at least once we’re set. But it’s not just me, Rojan. It’s all of us Downsiders. Left to fucking die, because of where we come from, what we sound like. A reminder of what was once done to us in the name of the Goddess. Except to him, and maybe you and Perak. You help us, and perhaps Under has a chance to survive.”

  I stared at Guinto again, and he looked back with serene eyes that were somehow touched with madness. Not a frothing at the mouth kind, not a laying about with any weapon to hand kind, but the quiet, determined kind of madness of a man who’s deluded himself into thinking he’s doing the right thing. For the Goddess. I wanted to pick him up and give him a damn good shake, maybe slap some sense into him, but it wouldn’t do any good. He was putting everyone’s lives on the line, directly or otherwise, but he was doing it for the Goddess, so that was all right then.

  He might be useful, though.

  “You knew she was doing it, didn’t you?” I asked him.

  His gaze flicked between me and Pasha, hunted, but he said nothing.

  “It’s all right. Pasha here feels constrained not to read the thoughts of a priest. Even you. You can lie if you want. The Goddess doesn’t look kindly on that, though, and Inquisitors have some nasty ways of making sure people are telling the truth, so I’ve heard.”