He avoided Pasha’s look with a sideways hunch of his shoulders. “I suspected something, but not that. Abeya was—she’d suffered very much, and it affected her in odd ways. I wanted to help her. I did help her, she was getting better. Only she became odd, distant. Then the boys started turning up dead, and she was her old self again. It made me wonder, but I pushed that thought away. Not my poor, dear Abeya. So sweet a child under it all. Until the day you came to the temple.”
“The boy at the end of the street?”
He nodded miserably, and I was surprised to see tears dripping from his chin.
“I knew then. After you left, I found her with blood on her dress and she was so happy. I tried to get her to pray with me, but she wouldn’t. She used the blood to make the devotional, said the Goddess was guiding her. Told me they were all mages, and hadn’t I always said they were unholy? She was doing the Goddess’s work.”
“And you believed that?”
His eyes grew haunted as he looked up at me. “Yes. No. I—I thought I could help her still, could stop her. She was clearly in some sort of mania, and who could blame her? Who could blame her for her hate after all she’s suffered? I thought I could confine her to her rooms, until her mind became more balanced. Then he came.”
“Who?”
“Cardinal Manoto.” Guinto gave a thin smile at what was probably a snarl on my face. “Yes. He didn’t say much, only a few words, but he came with some present for her—that bacon—and it all changed. She changed.” The way he looked at me, pleading as though he wanted me to tell him it wasn’t true, none of it, that Ministry wasn’t corrupt, made me want to shake him again.
“So what changed? She was already murdering people.”
“Everything. After I threw you out, she kept asking about you and Pasha, about what you did, where you worked. Kept needling and needling for answers. I told her nothing, until I found you in her rooms. I had to warn her, or she would have…I told her what you were. I thought it would help her to know what you were doing, the pain lab, the Glow, that you were helping the city, us, even if I don’t approve of the methods. So I told her.”
He told her. And how the fuck did he know what we were doing? We’d taken pains to keep ourselves and what we did under wraps—too many people wouldn’t like it. For wouldn’t like it, read probably kill us. It was bad enough that Dendal had insisted on that damned sign to advertise we were mages, but to Downsiders the news we were producing Glow, well…Only Guinto wasn’t high up enough in the Ministry to be in on that secret. Perak had told me he’d kept it down to maybe five or six people, all the highest rankers. So how did Guinto know what to tell her other than that we were mages? Only then I caught Pasha’s eye and I knew.
Pasha and Jake at the temple, telling all their souls to their priest. Because they believed he was a good man. So they’d told him what we were doing at the lab, Pasha had confessed he was using his magic to make Glow. Guinto had given him a nice guilt trip about it, and then spilled it all to Abeya to “help” her.
“And then she tried to kill both me and Pasha, tried to lure Dendal in too, I think.” Maybe she hadn’t known the bacon was poisoned, but afterwards it didn’t matter—what had mattered was that we were mages and we were making Glow.
“I didn’t think she’d go that far! She liked you, I thought. Too much. I thought if she knew why you were doing it, that the only pain you inflicted was on yourselves, that she might take pity on you. As I did. I can’t condone your magic, but at least you’re using it for the right reasons, and so I don’t hate, I pity. I hoped I might get you to see the light, in time. I had hopes for you both, Pasha especially. But you, I hoped to bring you to the Goddess, you see?”
“Shame it didn’t work out that way, isn’t it?” I couldn’t keep the venom out of my voice, but Guinto hung his head like a penitent child. “And this is your way of making up for it, right? You’re going to confess to all those murders?”
“I am to blame. I suspected…and I did nothing except make everything worse. I am guilty.”
I said a very rude word indeed and, unable to watch his guilt-stricken face, went to stare at the statues. The implacable faces of the helmets, the thought of the inevitability of Inquisition, didn’t help one little bit. Worse, when I was pretty sure if I used my magic again any time soon I wouldn’t be coming back. That was looking more and more tempting. Maybe if I went totally batshit, I could take out Top of the World, like those long-ago mages had made the Slump out of a perfectly respectable area. Now that was tempting.
It wasn’t what worried me most, though—that was, why had Dench left us here, not numb? Or not as numb as we could have been? I didn’t have all my feeling back, not a lot of juice, but I had some and he had to know it. He was up to something, expecting me to do…something. What?
“So, where precisely are we? Are there Inquisitors out there? Maybe we’re just waiting for the goat? Have you actually confessed yet?”
“A holding cell, they said.” Jake’s voice was taut with disapproval, though I couldn’t tell who for. “We told the guards we had special information. Seems Cardinal Manoto had left instructions that Guinto be let in.”
“Oh, I bet he did.”
“Dendal got this too, just before we left,” she said and handed over a slip of paper. I recognised Perak’s neat, precise handwriting, though it seemed dashed off.
Ministers found out about pain lab, and that generator is destroyed. All hell broken loose. At least one minister working with Storad, possibly involved in murders, including Dwarf’s. No one to trust except personal guard. Even Dench… I can’t be sure about him. He thinks we should ally with Storad and maybe he’s right, but is he involved? Hope not, but must be sure. Pasha’s parents—the message from them was a lure to get you and Pasha together to murder you. His mother confessed. Only hope you are all still alive to get this.
Am lying low, using decoy, three attempts on life already. Please, send Rojan. No one else to trust.
I shut my eyes for a second, wanting this to be a sign he was still alive, but Jake had received it before we’d even got to the temple by the sounds of it. All I could say for sure was he had been alive.
Things were starting to make a bit of sense, though. Kind of. But I still didn’t know where Abeya was, what she was doing up here, and how she fitted into everything except as a puppet of some kind. But who was pulling the strings? Manoto, or the Storad? Both? Someone else? Were they pulling Dench’s strings, too?
Pasha came and stood next to me, staring up at the Inquisitors with the same sort of dread that was churning my gut.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t—”
It was my turn not to let him finish. “Forget it. Tell me later. Now we have to figure out what to do. Abeya’s still out there, Fat Boy’s up to something and there’s still a Dench to see if he’s picked a side, or he’s still with the Goddess. Guinto can wait.”
“But if—”
“Later. We need to get out of this cell, all of us. I can’t manage that, not now. Probably not ever.” Though it was tempting to try, even if I knew I couldn’t rearrange more than me and another, even at my best. Dench knew it, too, and that I was far from at my best. The black was flapping at the edge of my vision, always calling. I wanted it like I wanted air to breathe. But not yet. Not now. Now I had things to do. Dench wanted me to do something, but what? Why?
“Sod Guinto, we’ve got other things to do. After we get out.”
“How are we going to do that?”
I really wished he hadn’t asked. Not as much as I wished I didn’t know the answer.
The drop from the window was nauseatingly long, and I held on to the sill like grim death and tried to ignore the dizziness and the scream that seemed to build behind my eyes. In the gloom of a moon-ridden night, I could just make out the Slump below. I found a chip of stone and dropped it. As a measure of the drop it didn’t help, because I couldn’t hear when it finally hit something. I tore my gaze away, almost
hypnotised, and instead tried to concentrate on what was around us at our level.
The Home of the Goddess, or what I’d left of it, wasn’t far away, but it might as well have been miles. We seemed to be near the top of a spire, and everything was a long way away. Mostly down. I am not a big fan of down in large doses. Still, when the Goddess has your balls in a vice, you have to take what you can get. I shut my eyes and took a deep breath. It did nothing for my vertigo, but at least my voice didn’t come out squeaky with terror.
“That way.”
Chapter Twenty-three
It wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. It was much, much worse. Even though I doubted the Inquisition ever expected anyone to try to escape—after all, where would you escape to, except straight into the arms of Specials, guards and Ministry men?—there was a reason the holding cell was there, and that reason was, it was suicidal trying to climb down. The sides of the spire were almost sheer, the stone was slick marble and not even a handy gargoyle to hang on to. And there was that long, long drop to consider, though I was trying my very best not to.
I suggested an easier way, of course, one that didn’t involve me and heights, but Pasha gave me a mental slap.
“You’re too close. I don’t need to be in your head to know that. You’re on the edge of a drop worse than that. Don’t fall in.”
So I lied and said, sure, no magic and the black rubbed its hands in my head. Pasha and Jake probably never noticed how I rearranged their hands, the soles of their boots, with the little juice I had. Made them that bit sticky, all the better to grip the stone with. They might need it later, too, because I’d asked them to try to find Perak, help him any way they could. Being Archdeacon had to count for something, surely.
Pasha was as nimble as a monkey, naturally, and Jake didn’t fare too badly either. They had a few hairy moments getting around an overhang, but before long they were safely down to the lower levels of the building where the roof didn’t slope so sharply and someone had thought that fretwork and knobbly bits of stone looked good. From there, it was only a matter of leaping a nice chasm with death at the bottom, and they were out. I didn’t watch.
Guinto, despite our every effort, refused point-blank to leave. I couldn’t work out if he was irretrievably stupid or irredeemably pious. He was a pain in the buttocks, though. Whatever I said, all he would reply was, “I’m guilty, and I must atone to the Goddess for my sins.”
“That’s all very well, but if Pasha’s right, you’ll end up killing Under. Killing the city perhaps. Not a nice epitaph, is it? I should know.”
What he probably meant to be a crafty look crept over his face. In fact, it made him look like a kid who’s just figured out that, actually, there is such a thing as lying. Sad, really.
“If I’m still here,” he said, “they might not look so hard for you three. I’m the guilty one, the one they can parade and say they caught the killer.”
“Oh, yes, thank you very much, add another death to my conscience,” I snapped. “All very well for you, to choose the end you get. What about everyone else? Hmm? All your parishioners, all those Downsiders you gave hope to, who’ll burn the place down if you do this? Don’t you care?”
A faded sort of smile. “When you destroyed the Glow, when you destroyed everything this city was built on, condemned a city to starve, did you pause to wonder? Did you care about them then? Or did you do what you thought was right?”
I hate it when people throw things back in your face. I tried, I swear I did. I cajoled and wheedled and threatened but all he would say was, “Abeya is my daughter. I have to do this, for her.”
I tried swearing a blue streak at him but he wouldn’t reply, only smiled at me with that beatific smile that I knew, knew, would haunt me. He was doing it because he was good and noble, and saving a Goddess-denying wretch like me. Maybe converting me in the process, though good luck to him on that point.
“I still won’t believe in her, you know that?”
“Oh, you will in the end. They always do. You go, and may the Goddess bless your steps.”
I kept my response shut down behind locked lips, because if I’d let it out they’d have heard me down in No-Hope.
Why we’d been allowed to come to, wake up enough that I could use the juice flowing through me, I had no idea, but I thought I detected Dench’s hand in the proceedings. But for what reason, I was only guessing. How far in that cardinal’s pocket was he, or was he playing the long game, pretending to follow when really he was planning to arrest? Was he helping, or setting me up?
Whatever, there was no point being too obvious. Instead, and it wasn’t a much better prospect, I stood by the window and looked out. No way, no way in the world, was I climbing down there, not with a long entrenched terror of heights and a buggered hand. But feeling was coming back. Pain was lurking. Juice was waiting.
I clenched my fist with a moan, and laid my head against the cool stone of the wall. The stone ran with blackness, a river, a tide of it swarming towards me. Not yet, I couldn’t succumb yet. Later, I promised myself. Later I would, and everything would go away. Now, I had things to do. Without Pasha and Jake to worry about. With any luck, he’d get her out and safe, keep them both safe and Perak, too, I hoped. Because I thought that this was going to end only one way, and it was the least I could do for both of them, for believing in me when I was about to betray that belief. Because I had the funniest feeling I’d worked a few things out, and it didn’t look good. If everything went tits up, and on previous experience I fully expected it to, at least they’d be out of it, maybe could keep Lise safe for me, too.
Because this was all just that bit too close together. The cardinal guiding Abeya, getting Dench in his pocket, having Perak shot. Whelar had given him a great way to keep us under control. Manoto had destroyed mages and the lab so that either Perak had to negotiate with the Storad or he could step in and say, “I have a deal already”, perhaps.
Whatever, it was all tied up together in knots, I was sure of it, and if I pulled one thread maybe it’d all come tumbling down. He would come tumbling down, and wouldn’t that make a great splash?
Then perhaps we could get on and get the damn power on, save the city without having my brain zapped. Much. As an added bonus, maybe I could stymie the whole damned Ministry, bring the smug bastards to their knees, a thought which made me smile and ignore the laughter in the back of my head.
With my good hand, I rummaged in a pocket and found the envelope containing Abeya’s hairs nestling next to the little vial Lise had given me. And was that a clue to what Dench wanted me to do? Why hadn’t they confiscated it? What did he want me to do? Or had they just thought it was one of Whelar’s syringes? They looked the same, and I suppose no one would think I’d willingly inject myself with one of his jabs.
I pushed that away—my brain would just go round in circles, with no answers. I needed to do something, that was for sure. It didn’t take much—Abeya was close, very close. Twenty yards south-west, fifty down. Not far. Fat Boy was keeping her close, for who knows what reason. Maybe she’d been the one to fire the shot at Perak. Didn’t matter. All that mattered was she was close and I could find her, get out of here and stop Manoto and Abeya and the Storad they were plotting with. Perhaps. If they really were.
Two things followed me in and through as I melted from one place to another—a thought from Pasha, quite a rude one asking what the fuck I thought I was doing, and, worse, a murmured prayer from Guinto for the Goddess to watch over me, because I was a good man really, even if I didn’t know it. Shows what he knew, right?
Chapter Twenty-four
I probably should have looked a bit before I jumped in with both hoofing great feet, but my mind wasn’t really thinking very clearly at that point. Mostly I wanted to get away from Guinto and his prayers. I found Abeya all right. Unfortunately I found someone else too: a big, mean Storad and he was pissed as hell when I landed on top of him.
Abeya screamed, and I may have done as w
ell because the Storad’s first action was to grab my poor hand and twist it up behind my back so hard that white spots ran in front of my eyes and it was all I could do not to let all that juice out in one glorious rush that probably would have killed me, them, and anyone else in a hundred yards’ radius. Tempting, but I didn’t want to die then. I’m not all that keen on dying now.
Then a familiar and terrifying sensation—a syringe jabbing into me. I tried to struggle, tried to rip it out before whoever held it pressed the plunger, but I was too damned slow. All I could do was hope like crazy it wasn’t the new stuff the cardinal had tried on us that knocked out your brain but left your body nicely capable of producing pain, and power. Gibbering wreck isn’t a good look for me.
It wasn’t that much of a relief when numbness flowed out from the needle mark. I was still screwed seven ways from hell. No magic, and simple things like walking and talking were off the agenda for a while. My hand didn’t hurt, though. There’s always a bright side if you look hard enough. I don’t usually bother, because, as in this case, even the bright side is a bunch of shit. No painful hand, no ready juice.
It was quite a relief when the Storad took his substantial bulk off my back, though, and him being there with Abeya answered a lot of the “why?” questions in my head.
Power, it was all about power. It always was.
I took a look around. I was lying on grass, soft and fragrant, but seemed to be in a room still. The whitewashed walls were circular and the grass was dotted with comfy-looking chairs and loungers. Instead of a ceiling, glass stretched across the top of the walls. Somewhere for enjoying the sun. I kind of wished that this was happening in daylight so that I could see it.
A door opened and shut behind me, an extra pair of feet shuffled in the grass. The cardinal, bound to be. Come to check up on the Storad he was negotiating with, plotting with. Come to see if Abeya was ready to kill someone else to help his cause, perhaps, or thank her for shooting Perak.
Rojan Dizon 02 - Before the Fall Page 23