Rojan Dizon 02 - Before the Fall (11 page)

“I know where to go,” I said, hoping the change of subject would throw him. Fat chance. “I know where he came from, who misses him.”

“And we’ll go.” His voice was soft with pity, more than I could bear. “In the morning. When was the last time you slept?”

“Keep out of my head,” I snapped, but it was too late. He knew, I could tell by his face.

“You’ve been going to the pain room a lot more than you should, haven’t you?”

“No.” I wasn’t about to admit it, even if he knew. I had to keep some shred of my old self intact, and the old Rojan would have died before admitting to anything of the sort. He would have laughed, probably, said something short and cynically pithy, but I wasn’t laughing today and pithy was beyond me. “Pasha, we have to go now, all right? The sooner the better. These murders won’t solve themselves, and if they don’t get solved…then the Storad and Mishans will get to have the smoking remains of this city, for all the good it does them.”

“And since when did Rojan care about that? About anything but women and booze and cash?”

I glared at him. “Why do you always have to be so fucking right?”

His smile was grim and strained as he steered me towards the door. “It’s easy when you can see the answer in someone’s head. You’re doing no one any good like this. I’m under strict instruction from Dendal that you get some sleep before the black takes you. If it does when you’re like this, I don’t think even he could pull you out.
I
will go and find this place, find out about our boy. Me and Jake, any Downsider will at least listen to her. And, yes, I can see where it is in your head.”

The nurse turfed us out on to the dark and dismal walkway with a sniff of rebuke. “Pasha, I—”

“No buts, Rojan. We need you alive, and not in the black.”

And then it was too late. What I hadn’t realised until then was it wasn’t only reading minds, hearing thoughts, that Pasha could do. Oh no: when he wanted, he could sneak into your head and suggest to it that a good long sleep was just what you needed.

I remember the walkway rushing up to greet me, remember the black suddenly fading in its song, and an arm catching me. After that, the only black was sleep.

He really was a fucking bastard. It was his best quality, and I always liked him for it.

I woke up with my nose shoved into the shabby sofa behind my desk, my feet resting on Griswald’s mangy head.

Something hard—whatever it was that had woken me—prodded my shoulder. I opened one eye and thought about feigning death, again, when Lastri’s face glared back. She wielded the ruler like one of Jake’s swords and prodded harder, as though she was enjoying it.

I fumbled myself to sitting, my eyes rheumy and gritty. How long
had
it been since I’d slept? Too long, and when you considered every sleep I had was littered with dreams of a dark, dead city, of Jake watching me with reproachful eyes, of my niece saying her prayers for me, who could blame me?

“What time is it?” I asked.

“Time you sorted yourself out,” Lastri snapped. “Time you grew up and grew a pair of bollocks.” She snorted in disgust and, thankfully, left me to it.

I patted Griswald on the head and managed to get up. Dendal was in his usual position in the corner surrounded by a hundred different candles and Pasha sat, jittery all over again, on the corner of his desk, talking to Erlat. They shared a sideways look, conspirators in something and not just getting me to sleep, I was pretty sure of that. Whatever it was, they were welcome to it—I had enough screwing with my head without anything else on top.

Erlat murmured something to Pasha but all I heard was Jake’s name and that “it’s going well. Slowly, but she’ll get there.” The shoulder that was facing me seemed to do so in a very pointed way and she made a show of not looking at me as she dropped a comforting hand on to Pasha’s.

Pasha’s smile was strained, but he got up and walked her to the door. “Don’t risk it next time. Keep out of sight where you can. It’s getting dangerous out there, and…they mean business, Erlat.”

“They always do.” She flicked a glance my way. Not a nice glance, but not an “I want to strangle you” Lastri special.

I tried. I did, although I still didn’t know what I’d done to upset her. But I got as far as “Erlat—” before she shut the door on me and what was, to be fair, probably going to be something sincere but lame-arsed.

Pasha came and sat on the corner of my desk, his jitters worse even while he laughed at me. “For someone who spends as much time with women as you do, you have no understanding of them, have you?”

“I have no idea what the hell goes on in women’s minds. It’s all right for you, you can see what they’re thinking. How come
you
can tell her to be careful, but when I try, she stops talking to me?”

Another laugh that couldn’t quite cover up whatever was making him fidget like he had an infestation of insects in his underwear. “When you have the answer to that, maybe she’ll talk to you. She doesn’t hate you anyway. Not yet. You’ve still got time to really piss her off.”

He pretended not to see how relieved I was, so I pretended that I wasn’t and made a mental note to go and see her. Maybe, and this was pushing the bounds of my knowledge of social niceties, apologise. For whatever it was.

I sat opposite Pasha and tried not to wonder if my left hand was about to fall off. It felt like it and the juice that gave me fired me up, woke my brain and other things best left dormant.

“You found the woman?” I asked.

“Didn’t get the chance.” His voice worried me, jittery as he was. His glance flicked to Dendal and back again. “Do you want to go and see how Lise is?”

I took my own, thoughtful look at the oblivious Dendal as he bent over his papers, his scratching pen the only noise other than his faint, cheery hum.

“Of course I do.”

By the look of the grey light that was bouncing down off all the cunningly concealed mirrors and through grubby light wells, I took it to be mid-morning which meant we could see where we were going. The streets were empty, too silent, too still. Too dead. We found a stairwell and headed down.

“I got us special passes in case any guards ask us why we’re out,” Pasha said and handed one over. On Official Special Business, it said, and that sent a shiver down me.

“What was it you didn’t want Dendal to know?”

“Inquisition. That’s why it’s so quiet, why I told Erlat to be careful.”

He didn’t have to say anything else; that was quite enough to put the fear of anything you care to name up me. “Perak—”

“Hasn’t got complete control. He said as much. Plenty of factions within the Ministry, all wanting their own thing. All wanting to save their own arses, their own everything. Well, one of them has called an Inquisition.”

Which probably meant everyone was in even bigger shit than before. No one had called an Inquisition since, well, since the last time a mage had gone batshit. It was the Inquisition that had decided we were unholy, agents against the will of the Goddess. Ministry had fallen on that with glee and dropped on us the edict that made us illegal. The Inquisition had rounded up all the mages they could find, and no one knew
exactly
what had happened to them. There were plenty of less than savoury rumours though, ones that I didn’t care to contemplate. Of course, they’d probably regretted that later when the synthtox kicked in, but by then mages were secret which was helpful when they started rounding them up again, as they had with Pasha, to help with pain-farming for Glow.

Thing was, from all I’d read and heard about the Inquisition, they weren’t bound to follow Ministry. Once they were let loose, anyone in contravention of their orders was fair game. Before, they’d been sent after mages, and it didn’t matter what lofty position they held, how much money they had—the Inquisition didn’t care. They’d taken mages, heretics, unbelievers, people who complained about the Inquisition, people who looked funny…anyone they thought was an affront to the Goddess. Hence my keeping my feelings about religion to myself for the most part. The Inquisition were a law unto themselves and the Goddess.

So who would dare order one? Someone very sure indeed they wouldn’t be rounded up in the general “Inquisition everyone first, ask questions of the widespread bodily parts afterwards” mood.

Alchemical Research was the biggest, and most powerful, department. Perak had a few friends there, from his time working with them. But the new head was an ambitious man, and wasn’t above a bit of backstabbing. An Inquisition didn’t sound his sort of thing, though. I knew the rest of the departments—Theology, Law and so on—but not much about the individuals who led them, and even that little was more than most people knew. Ministry liked to hide who they were, which person did what, the details of those whats. Liked to keep everyone Under in their place through ignorance. It had worked pretty well, right up till the Downsiders started telling everyone a few truths, but Ministry were past masters at misinformation and starting the wrong rumour to counter the right one, so maybe only the Downsiders really believed it, and not all of them.

So who would dare order the Inquisition out?

“They started last night,” Pasha said. “Down in Boundary. Picked up a load of people, all Downsiders of course, in the name of finding the murderer. And any heretics while they’re about it, naturally.”

“But the guards—”

“The Downsiders don’t trust them. A guard was killed the other night—most Downsiders reckon it’s the guards that are doing the murdering. A fair few Upsiders feel the same, from what Guinto tells me. That’s just an excuse though.”

The muscles in his jaw worked as he tried not to spit it out, tried to keep his tone level. “I couldn’t get down to where that woman was, not unless I wanted to be picked up too, and I almost was.” Shame radiated off him, perhaps because he hadn’t stayed to get rounded up like the rest. Had an odd sort of honour like that, Pasha. “It’s not really the murderer they’re after, though that seems part of their orders. Heresy, that’s what they’re looking for. Us Downsiders are all heretics, because of the devotional.”

Blood and ashes, the old way, as it had been Upside before Ministry sanitised worship, made it “better”, “less violent”, and, incidentally, stripped it of anything remotely majestic. No music except on holy days, and then all you got were vacuous hymns waffling on about how lovely and nice the Goddess was. No stained glass to wash you with coloured light. No hellfire and damnation in the sermons. No blood in the devotional, just a nice little promise to be a good boy, thank you, Goddess. The Ministry had no romance in its soul, and it had sucked the soul from the city, too, made it a bland and tasteless thing.

Now here were the Downsiders with their raucous music, their vibrant belief, their blood and ashes and anger. Their knowledge of the truth. Too many for the Ministry to delete from their precious city. Someone had been waiting their chance, though, that was plain. An Inquisition to find the murderer and, while they were at it, quietly denounce any Downsiders they picked up as heretics, and a few more bodies made it to the Slump.

What could I say to Pasha? Nothing. Nothing that wouldn’t have sounded trite, insincere or worse, because I wasn’t a Downsider. I didn’t have to put up with the spits and insults and the fear of being picked up because of how I looked and sounded. I could never really know what it was like for him, same as no one can ever really know what it’s like for anyone but themselves and that’s a blessing and a curse, I’ve always thought.

Usually I’d have said the insincerity anyway because I’m all charm that way, but not to Pasha. Not today. A sudden attack of tact, perhaps, but I was sure I’d get over it.

We reached a stretch of walkway that passed under the lab. The stench of wet smoke curled around us and made me cough as I wondered if any of the machinery we needed had survived. It was almost time for our daily session, and we needed Glow now more than ever, but it wouldn’t do much without Dwarf’s magnifying gizmo.

Pasha stopped suddenly, startled, his eyes wide, mouth open. Then he ran along the swaying walkway, not towards the temple where we’d left Lise but towards the stairwell that led to the lab. When he got his gun out, I ran after him.

I’d thought he was running for the lab, but we hadn’t got there before he suddenly stopped. A dim landing where clanking walkways twisted off into darkness. A dim landing and, oh shit, a body I recognised. Taban from the lab, fellow pain-mage, with his throat cut back to his spine. So much blood. It robbed me of my voice, as though I was the one with his throat cut.

“Did you hear?” I managed to ask Pasha as we stared down, and wondered how I’d managed to go all these weeks working with Taban, passing the time while waiting for Dwarf to hook us up, taking our minds off what was to come by sharing a morbid joke on the nature of what we were doing, and I knew nothing about him other than he was a pain-mage and knew some seriously filthy jokes. Had been a pain-mage.

“The killer?” Pasha said. “No. No, just Taban. I—he was thinking of his wife, how he wouldn’t get to see her again.”

I’d never even known he was married, never asked, too damned obsessed with magic, with pain and the lab, with righting my mistakes. I blinked hard and stared up, and up, past labyrinths of walkways that staggered drunkenly between houses, a never-ending net that had me caught. Up past looming buildings that stole the sun, past the vast seem-to-float estates of Clouds. Top of the World was up there somewhere in the gloom, full of ministers, cardinals, priests, arseholes and maybe a good man or two. Maybe.

I didn’t really see any of that—I was listening to a voice, not any voice but a Voice, my father and his hypnotic magic, explaining to me how he was doing it for good reasons, that it was right, it was in praise of the Goddess. How I’d hated him for treating people like fucking cows, milking their pain, and now I knew for certain I wasn’t much different. That had always been my fear, that I’d be like him. Only I was—it had snuck up on me without detection, a small decision here, an overlooked detail there, an unnoticed person, only wanted for their pain...

Fuck that. I’d climb Top of the World and face the height, or, rather, depth, from its lip, stare at it full on and scream in defiance as I dropped into the Slump before I became another him.

I looked down at Taban, a smudge of extinct life surrounded by greyness, a sucking blandness that seemed to eat at your soul if you looked too long. Bizarrely, I wished I was back in the hellhole of the ’Pit. It had been a shitty place in a world of shitty places, dark and violent and so grim it made me want to fork my eyes out, but it had been noise and colour and a vibrant, fervent grasp at life, at wrenching every last drop out of it and feeling it drip into your mouth. The ’Pit had been
alive
. And I’d destroyed it as surely as I had the Glow, and let the Downsiders out of slavery into this—into a long slow sucking of the soul, and probably a grisly death at the end. Go me.

It took a while to get everything done—call the guards, tell them the fuck all we knew, have the body taken to the mortuary. When we were finally free to go—the passes worked wonders—and I turned towards Guinto’s temple and Lise, something else stopped me in my tracks. Or, rather, a few someones.

As I said, there hadn’t been an Inquisition in years but I knew trouble when I saw it. Perhaps that uniform was seared into the group consciousness or something, because all of a sudden my bollocks seemed to be making a bid to hide under my shirt.

Specials induced a kind of sweating dread whenever they appeared anywhere, the mere sight of the uniform making guilty thoughts appear in the heads of even the most blameless. They were pussycats next to these guys.

Ministry set a lot of store by uniforms, and it made sense. A guard’s uniform wasn’t much different from anyone’s normal clothes, but they were all the same colour, and had a tabard over that that designated them as guards. The uniform said, to the law abiding at least, “Just your regular guy, who’ll help you out if you need it. I’m an
officially
regular guy, you’re safe with me.” Wasn’t strictly true, of course, but the uniform gave that impression to your man on the street.

A Specials’ uniform was made for stealthy combat—a hand-me-down from the assassins of the old warlord who’d founded Mahala. A leather allover with subtle armour, inserted plates of metal that you couldn’t see but could stop a blade dead, hidden knives that could whip out and take you in the eye or heart before you could say “shit”. Understated, silent and scary with it. The uniform said: “Hey, I’m quiet and soft and could kill you in an eye blink, and no one will see, or care, so do as you’re damn well told.”