The bottom really fell out of my world when Dench said, “I knew he’d end up here, after her. Can’t keep it in his trousers for more than two minutes together. Well, about time. Rojan, you really are an arse about fucking with my day. You know that?”
Even if I could have spoken around the lump of meat my numb tongue had become, I’d have been speechless. Instead I lay there like a slab of stone and stared uselessly at him as he strode over to me and hunkered down. He looked almost sorrowful, and his moustache drooped as if in sympathy with me.
“You were supposed to stay Under, idiot.” He smiled when I twitched at that. “I tried to help you, I really did. But now you’re here…it’s too late. For both of us. I only wanted to help Mahala, for the Goddess. I wanted Perak to negotiate, I wanted us to start using coal and the city to live. Coal that no one need hurt for, die for. Negotiations, that’s all I thought it was. Clearing up that last mess you made for me. Now here we are with another mess. Can’t even blame you for it, either.”
“Generous. For a murderer,” I managed to mangle out.
Dench grabbed the front of my allover. “I murdered no one. No one. Certainly not Dwarf. Even the Inquisition…Manoto ordered it, and my men, well, they have their own prejudices, and their orders. I’m more forgiving of heresy than they are. But to start with, before all that, it was just negotiations, I thought. A little deal when Perak was being too damned blind about you and that fucking generator. A little shuffle of goods and services, and the city would live. Thousands of people would live who might otherwise die. Worth a few shady deals, right? By the time I found out, about the Storad and Manoto using Abeya to kill those boys, about the Storad killing Dwarf and Manoto’s plans for the Inquisition…it was too late. By then I was already involved, whether I wanted to be or not. So now it’s just a matter of when, not if, we sign with the Storad, and making sure as few people as possible die in the meantime. I swore a holy oath to the Goddess, to protect Mahala to the best of my ability. So I took a little sin on my soul, for the good of the city. Now, well, now we don’t need you, or your Glow. Because the Glow can’t sustain us, not with so few mages and that generator was never going to work. So now our negotiations with this gentleman here can proceed apace. Think of it, Rojan. No more pain, for anyone, not to power the city.”
He pulled something out of his pocket, black and rough looking. Nothing special.
“Coal, remember? Coal to drive steam-powered factories, carriages, lights, heat. War engines that rumble towards our gates even now. But Perak wouldn’t hear of negotiating—you were going to persuade him for me, but you didn’t, did you? If you had…If we stall much longer, the Storad and Mishans, well, they’re sitting pretty outside the city. War, Rojan. But Manoto, he’s reached an agreement with our nice Storad ambassador here. With no Glow, and Perak out of the way, we can have peace. A few lives are worth that, don’t you think? Manoto thinks it’s all we can do, if we want to live, and I agree with him. Be good for once in your life, and stay out of trouble until it’s done. Don’t make me do something we’ll both regret. Because I will if I have to.”
He stood up and shook his head sorrowfully over me, like I was a child who’d deeply disappointed him. The Storad said something in a language that sounded like two rocks being banged together. It startled Dench, but he stared down at me and said a few words back. I didn’t like the feeling that they were discussing my fate, but there wasn’t much I could do about it.
“Abeya, you stay and make sure he stays numb. Same for Pasha when the guards bring him, and yes, Rojan, of course I knew you’d escape. I planned for it, hoping you’d lead me to Perak. Abeya, sadly, shot the wrong man.”
My relief and confusion must have shown, though I couldn’t get a word out.
“She shot a decoy, I think. Perak’s around somewhere, hiding, planning something and I hoped you knew where he was, that you’d take me to him. Sadly, it appears not. If it helps, I’m glad that it wasn’t him. If he wasn’t so stubborn, he might make a good Archdeacon. Maybe if he’s seen the light, he still can be. Maybe with you here and in the shit, he’ll let himself be drawn out. Abeya, no killing any of them.” But his eyes added “yet” to that. Keeping me alive, in case his plans didn’t work out perhaps, in case he needed a mage or two. But if his plans went well…I didn’t rate my chances, to be honest. I’d make a nice handy scapegoat.
The Storad ground out a few words to Abeya, and then he and Dench departed. Leaving me alone with a serial mage killer. Just when I thought my day couldn’t get any worse.
I contemplated getting up, doing something, anything, but my legs were like dishrags and I had enough trouble lying there without dribbling. The only part of me that wasn’t numb was my brain, so I tried to use that. It became quite difficult when Abeya slunk over and sat next to me. Partly because it seemed she’d finally snapped in two. Part innocent seductress, part raging killer. She kept wavering between the two halves so I wasn’t sure which was her any more.
Mainly the trouble I was having was because she’d decided to take her dress off, and naked women have always been a big distraction. Especially when they do that with their hands, even if I couldn’t feel it. My head knew what was going on, and there was a kind of warm pressure that was enough to stop almost any coherent thought.
She leant over me, close enough that her hair fell over my cheeks. The face of an angel, I thought again, and then wondered why I hadn’t twigged before. As you can imagine, I’ve never believed angels are all sweet and kind, so why would I think that of her because of how she looked? She’d suckered me in by my own weakness for a pretty face. Her eyes seemed to pull part of me out of myself and drink me into her, and her soft voice was hypnotic as her free hand stroked my cheek.
“He wants to keep you as a pet, the Storad does.” The luscious curve of her smile was enough to make grown men weep. I would have done, but I kept reminding myself that she was a killer. It didn’t stop all those very distracting thoughts. “Keep you numb like this, a trophy of how it was him who finally bested Mahala. Bested the mages. Keep you like this for ever.”
Her fingers trailed across my cheek and on to my lips. I couldn’t feel it, but I could imagine it, remember when she’d done that before, and wished I couldn’t. My brain’s never been good at doing what it’s told, especially when naked women are involved.
“Shame really.” She came in even closer, and all I could see was her, the smile that could curse a man to never wanting another. She kissed me, slowly, and sat back with a sigh. “Such a shame that I’m not going to be allowed to kill you.”
Who knows what she might have done then—I’m never sure whether I regret not finding out or not—if the door hadn’t opened and two Inquisitors shoved a limp Pasha through before they slammed the door behind them? Pasha fell in a heap, but he was awake because his eyes flickered and he tried to say something. All that came out was a garbled sort of grunt. Amazing how we take our tongue for granted really. Poor Pasha couldn’t even fall back on mind talk, because no juice, no rummaging in heads.
I wanted to ask, find out if Jake was safe, if they’d found Perak, but I had no way.
Pasha’s eyes almost fell out of his head at the sight of Abeya sitting next to him in her naked glory. She seemed proud of her brands now, flaunting them at Pasha as though to show him why she’d done what she had. Why she hated mages like us, why she wanted to kill us, had been such an easy pawn for Fat Boy and the Storad to turn to their own ends.
Pasha fumbled about and Abeya shot back when he finally managed to free a sleeve, roll it up and show her—an identical brand. Proof that not every mage was a torturer, that at least one had been a victim.
“Bastard,” Abeya hissed, and cracked off a slap at Pasha that knocked his head a whole half-turn. “Fake bastard. You never had to take it, I bet. Those are fake brands.” She slapped him again, and again, her angelic face twisted into something more demonic as she let out her rage and hate. I could hardly blame her either—m
ages had taken her and, over who knew how much time and lovingly applied pain, turned her into this.
I tried to say something, some words that would make her see, but it came out a garbled mess, though slightly more coherent than I’d dreaded. Still, she wasn’t having any of it. She leapt from crouching over Pasha and on to me, her arm swinging and swinging, hard enough that I was briefly glad I was numb. Finally, after what seemed an age, and when some small feeling started to come back, making her slaps and punches start to sting, she stopped. She seemed breathless but calmer, purged for a time, perhaps. If that had helped her, in any way, then a few bruises and what was starting to feel like a new shiner were the least I could offer.
“Fake,” she whispered.
“Not fake.” My voice wasn’t quite right, but the words were at least recognisable and I needed, please any deity that might exist, to keep her on this, on hating me, mages, everything, make all her delusions worse, throw her already unbalanced mind even further out of whack. Or perhaps persuade her that we were the good guys, honest, but I didn’t think I had a hope in hell of that. But anything so she didn’t remember the syringe glinting on the table, didn’t remember to use it. I felt like a real shit doing it, but I didn’t seem to have much choice. The only thing that made me feel any better was that it wasn’t a lie.
“Not every mage helped Azama. Pasha was as much his victim as you. And I killed him. For you, Abeya, and all the people like you.”
The truth, sort of, though I buffed up my reasons to look a bit shinier. I’d killed him because I couldn’t bear the thought that my own father had twisted his mind that far to think torture was the good thing to do. Because I was afraid I might be too like him. Because it was the only way to make Jake happy, and I’d wanted to give her that—peace from the demons in her head, and the largest was Azama.
“No.” She spat the words with a vigorous shake of her head. “Dench killed him. He told me. He killed Azama, for the Goddess. For me. His Specials, they came and took us away. He took me to Guinto.”
“Not Dench. He helped you after. But he didn’t kill Azama.”
She launched into a kind of frenzy at that, as though I’d destroyed any last sane part of her. She wasn’t thinking with her head if she ever had been because she was, quite clearly, batshit crazy. She was thinking with her heart, with her scarred soul, and just then I think I loved her a little bit. Broken, inside and out, like Jake. But unlike the object of my innermost desires, Abeya had stayed broken, couldn’t quite bring herself to try to heal but had festered her hate into madness. Maybe she didn’t want to get better, maybe she just couldn’t. Maybe she would never be anything else, but I couldn’t help her because I had to help everyone else, all those people relying on me, shadows at my back, on my wished-I-could-be-feckless heart.
At least she seemed to have forgotten about the syringe, about keeping us numb. The slaps and punches started to hurt now, but I held still. Let her power up my juice. Until she grabbed up a knife and came for me with it, a scream on her lips and quite possibly a long and messy murder in her heart. I didn’t try the same trick as before—she may have been batshit, but crazy isn’t the same as stupid, or Dendal would be a drooling idiot. I still didn’t have much juice. Not much, not really enough, and I needed to keep it, so I played my strongest card and lied through my conniving, womanising teeth.
She was fast, but movement was easier and she was as unstable as black powder and flame mixed together. I caught her off guard, good hand on a wrist thin and fragile, the other pulling her into me so I could kiss her. She struggled for a moment, but not for long. Like I said before, I can talk almost any woman into bed, the exception being the one I want to most. What can I say? It’s a gift.
I put everything I had into that kiss—the wish that things were different, a hope that Abeya could be saved, at least from being used as some killer pawn in Manoto’s game, maybe even from her own broken mind. A hope that maybe I could be saved from loving an impossibility, that Abeya would be the one to save me from that. That we could save each other. For those few moments, I really meant that kiss. I always do, that’s half my problem.
Then she pulled away, stared at me for long, long moments and I wondered, perhaps, if it could happen. I let go of the arm that held the knife, and that was my mistake. Women and how I love them: always and to the end of the world my downfall. She smiled like fallen angels and went for me.
It probably would have ended messily one way or another and I’d have regretted a lot more than I already do, but Pasha put a stop to it by lurching to his feet and whacking her round the back of the head with a vase. Even crumpling to the floor, she was graceful as angels. I wished, very hard, that I had anything that could help her, save her, and as usual came up wanting.
“You’re a real piece of work, you know that?” Pasha mumbled past his numb tongue.
Feeling was definitely starting to come back, though we still sounded like a pair of drunks. “I’m not the one who just hit a lady.”
“You are such a fuck. I’ve got no idea why that makes me like you.”
“Because I’m a god with women and you wish you were like me? Don’t just stand there, help me up.”
He snorted derision and held out a hand. We were both still as wobbly as day-old kittens, but at least we could stand up. In my case, if I leant against the table.
“How much feeling have you got back?” I asked, though I was pretty sure I knew the answer because I could only feel bits of me.
“Not enough to do much. Something small perhaps. You?”
“Same. Got a bit of juice, maybe enough to change my face to something less kill-worthy. That’s about it. Jake—where is she? You can talk to her, got enough for that? Can she help us out of this, because I don’t think I’m up to a couple of Inquisitors outside the door and who knows what the fuck else before we get to that stupid, backstabbing bastard Dench.”
“She’s still looking for Perak. Bastards got me, but they’ll get more than they bargained for with her. And backstabbing?”
Then followed an expletive-ridden account of what that stupid backstabbing bastard had done and was planning to do. I may have said “fuck” and “bastard” and “Namrat’s bitch” more than strictly required.
Pasha’s face wrinkled into a monkey frown. “But Dench—I thought he was your friend. He helped us, before, helped all the Little Whores.”
“You may have noticed I’m not good on the friend part. He helped before because Azama needed stopping, because Dench had been made a party to that without him knowing. He’s doing this because Manoto thinks we have no choice but to ally with the Storad, and Dench agrees.’
“But Lise, the generator…” His voice trailed off as he thought about it. “Dench doesn’t think it will work. None of them do. A false hope.”
“It’ll work, if anyone can make it work it’s Lise. But they don’t believe it will, so Manoto, or the Storad, made sure of it by using Abeya to kill more mages—I think they found out it was her to start with, then played on it. Finding the boys, telling her where and when. I don’t think Dench knew about that to start with. So, then the lab, because without the generator we’re screwed. And, of course, when it becomes clear that Perak hasn’t got anything to back up his claims that he can get the power on, then out he goes as Archdeacon, and in comes Manoto who already has a deal with the Storad. But right now, what we need to do is get the fuck out of this place.”
“Good point. What have we got?”
Not a whole hell of a lot. I patted down my jacket, in case any handy door-opening explosives had appeared in the pockets. All I found was Abeya’s hairs, the lollipops for Dog and the vial and syringe Lise had given me. I was definitely going off syringes.
“What’s that?” Pasha looked like he was feeling the same way.
“Something Lise wanted me to try, but if it’s all the same to you we’ll leave it as a last resort.”
“Coward.” Pasha’s grin was evil. “What’s a
little jab between friends?”
I looked at the vial and shuddered at the sight of the needle. But we were running out of options, and magic. If Lise made it, it was probably all right. By which I mean I expected it wouldn’t kill me. Probably.
“Any other bright ideas?”
Pasha’s evil grin deepened. “You know, I think I might.”
Chapter Twenty-five
It seemed to me that Pasha took a perverse amount of delight in it. He had ways of using his thought magic that I’d never dreamed of, and some of them were deliciously evil. I don’t suppose he’d ever have used them, being the good guy that he was, but being told you’re unholy by all the people you respect, well, if you hear it often enough, and you’re contrary enough, perhaps you want to prove them right. Pasha had a hard little grin on his face, one that didn’t bode well for anyone getting in his way. Sometimes I wish I had his talent so that I could know what people were thinking, but I was pretty sure being a good boy for the Goddess wasn’t on his mind. Maybe something a bit more visceral, like the Downside version of the Goddess. Blood and vengeance, perhaps. I had the feeling that mousy little Pasha had just turned lion again.
He didn’t have any more feeling than I did, but it had to be worth a try. The sick crack of him dislocating his fingers was followed by fruitless minutes searching for anyone outside. If there was anyone, he couldn’t hear them. Which made it a shock when the key ground in the lock and the door flew open.
Sadly, it didn’t open on to freedom but on to the pissed-off face of Dench. Well, part of his face—the rest was covered with an Inquisitor’s helm which didn’t really go with the moustache. Behind him, another two Inquisitors loomed in the doorway.
Dench smiled and in the absence of seeing anything of his eyes, my own seemed glued to the moustache.
“Think I’m that stupid, that I’d leave you with her any longer than I had to? Oh, Rojan. I thought you knew me better. Only for long enough to fetch these gents here, plenty of time before Whelar’s little concoction wore off enough for you to do anything useful.”
Rojan Dizon 02 - Before the Fall Page 24