Rojan Dizon 02 - Before the Fall (13 page)

Pasha held the woman’s hands and she stared at the scars that ringed his fingers, ran over his hands like vines. “You’re mages.” Her voice was full of horror and she yanked her hands away as though Pasha was infectious. “You’re mages, them that took all them girls, all them kids.”

“Not like them, no.” Pasha held on to it well, but I could sense the frustration, the furious hurt. Wherever he was, someone hated him. Upsiders hated him for being a Downsider, Downsiders hated him for being a mage.

“The opposite, in fact,” I said.

She didn’t believe us, that was plain, but I couldn’t say I blamed her.

“Where’s Jabol? What have you done to him? What? Tell me!”

Her voice took on a hysterical pitch, rising higher and higher so that even Pasha’s soft words didn’t help.

When she slapped him and spat on him, I snapped and grabbed her by one shoulder. What sympathy I had for her was cold and hard now. “He’s dead, that’s where he is. And we didn’t take him, or kill him. We want to find out who did so we can stop them killing anyone else, and for that we need your help. I know you’re scared, I know that pain-mages did some terrible things, but we aren’t them and if you touch Pasha like that again you’ll never find out what happened to Jabol. Pasha suffered more at mages’ hands than you can possibly know, so you leave him be and look at him like the man he is, not what your mind tells you he is.”

She stood quiet in my hand, aghast at my words. Pasha looked just as shocked.

“What?” I said it more to myself than anything. Where had that come from? Not my cynical soul, surely. “And if you ever tell anyone I said that, I will pull your ears off, roll them up and stick them up your nostrils.”

Pasha grinned his monkey grin, but my glare stopped whatever he was about to say.

The woman sat down abruptly. “Dead, he’s dead, then. I thought he must be, to not come home for so long, but I always hoped, always. All we ever had in the ’Pit. Hope and faith.” She started crying again, not quietly now but great heaving sobs that seemed they might pull her inside out.

I crouched down in front of her, waited till the sobs tailed off into a more desperate kind of blank grief, and at least attempted some tact. It was quite hard. “I know that, I do. But whoever killed Jabol, he’s killed at least twelve others, Downsiders mostly. We need to stop him. I need you to help us.” I thought it went quite well. Pasha certainly looked at me as though I’d had a personality transplant.

The woman looked down at the ring, stroked it with one forefinger, before she looked at Pasha from under shame-filled lashes. Her voice was thick with the tears she was going to shed, later and perhaps for months to come. “You brought me this back. I suppose…He left for temple, six days ago. He’d been a bit withdrawn, but boys are that way at his age, aren’t they? Lucky to get two words out of him some days.”

“Anything else? Anything happen earlier? Anything, well, odd?” Because I had a suspicion of our link and I needed her to confirm it.

She looked between the two of us, confused. “I don’t think so.”

Pasha clearly had the same suspicion as me, because he asked, “Did he have any kind of accident?”

“Accident? Oh, you mean when he slipped on the stairwell? A fortnight or so ago. Had a bruise the size of a dinner plate on his back, but other than that he was fine.”

“And nothing odd happened after that?”

“Odd? Well, someone stole my best dress and at the same time left a lot of frogs on my bed. The lady next door ran naked down the street screaming, but we’re not sure why. That’s all. Not really
odd
, any more than everything is odd up here.”

Me and Pasha shared a look. We had our link, and all that was left was one last question. “What temple did he go to?”

“Father Guinto’s. Where else? None of the others let us in.”

“But
why
would Guinto want to kill pain-mages? It doesn’t make sense, especially when he offered to help. He got us into the mortuary, got us to the bodies, remember? Without that we’d never have found Jabol’s mother.”

Pasha was upset, pacing across the threadbare rug of the office. I sat at the desk, mindful of the drawers, and tried to talk to him but it was hard with Dendal butting in every few seconds. It would have been easier if the comments were relevant.

“Why would anyone want to kill us?” I asked. “Because the reminder is an embarrassment to Ministry, even if we are the only power source they have. Some of them don’t care about that. Most of them don’t even know we’re making the Glow—Perak’s keeping that as quiet as he can. I suspect most that do know, don’t care except we’re still around. Because a lot of mages have been right bastards to a lot of people. Because we’re unholy. Because, because, I don’t know!”

Because Guinto made my shoulder blades itch something fierce would be my answer, but I probably wasn’t the best person to ask. Priests have this tendency to bring me out in a rash. “Look, I’m not even saying it is him.” Though he was my first choice. One boy dies outside the temple he’s preaching at, one boy after going to his temple, Taban not more than ten minutes’ walk from him…And Lise was in his care, a fact that made this all the more urgent for me. “We should talk to him, see what he has to say. You can take a peek, see what you find.”

Pasha stopped pacing and stared at me, horrified. “Look inside a priest’s mind? I—I couldn’t. No, I couldn’t.”

“If you can’t be good, be careful,” Dendal said.

I ignored him. “Even after everything? You know, better than anyone, what people are capable of. Even those who say they serve the Goddess.”

“But Guinto’s not like them. He—he’s the only one, only priest in the whole damned city, who doesn’t spit on Downsiders, call us heretics. He’s a good priest, a good man. It doesn’t make
sense
.”

“Hide in plain sight,” Dendal said, and that was almost relevant.

“Yes, but if it’s him…”

I didn’t need to be able to see into Pasha’s head to guess what he was thinking. Jake and Guinto—she was fierce in her belief, and she believed in him. All the Downsiders did. Pasha, I think, depended on the fact that at least one person who wasn’t a mage or Jake didn’t think he was an abomination, treated him as though he was a person, not a thing to be despised. If it turned out Guinto was killing these boys…I didn’t want to be the one to tell Jake. I didn’t want to see what that would do to Pasha, or think about the riot Guinto’s arrest would cause. But people were dying,
mages
were dying. Without them we were sunk, every last one of us, and Pasha knew that as well as I did.

“We’ll just talk to him for now, all right? You could take a look in some of the others’ heads, couldn’t you?”

Pasha stared at the ceiling, as though praying for guidance. I don’t think he got any, but he nodded in the end, tight-lipped and furious.

“Picnic time!” Dendal said, and we left him to his own head.

Pasha was jittery all the way, tense and fidgety. He kept glancing up at the windows we passed, his hands twisting in front of him. Smudged faces looked down at us through the gloom, wary eyes following our progress. I wondered what they were thinking, but I couldn’t quite pluck up the nerve to ask Pasha. He looked as though he’d burst if I said one word.

The temple was quiet when we entered; the curfew was still in effect, and not many were risking breaking it, not with an Inquisition around. A few brave souls had come, or maybe they’d been caught here when the curfew came in. They sat on the pews, heads down, and the murmur of useless prayers washed over me. The plaster saints and martyrs lined the aisle. Pasha stopped by each one to make the proper devotion but I headed straight for the altar, and the door behind it that led to where Lise was being nursed. Where Guinto should be.

Abeya slipped out of the door before I reached it and when she saw me, she dimpled nicely and ducked her head. Shame I’d sworn off women. But, screw it, I needed something to take my mind off what I couldn’t have, and if I was going to do that I should do it properly.

I cranked up my best smile and took her hand to kiss it. When I made to let go, she kept hold of my hand and her smile was brighter than Glow. Made me feel all tingly, and pushed thoughts of Jake into a deep dark corner where I hoped they’d stay.

Pasha caught up, muttering darkly under his breath. Abeya ignored him and pulled me through the door. “I suppose you’re here to see Lise?”

“Not only Lise, no.”

She gave me an amused, sideways glance and blushed, but didn’t stop until we got to Lise’s bedside. “She’s much better, but we don’t know when she’ll wake up. Or even if. It’s always hard to tell with head injuries, the nurse says.”

The room was filled with makeshift beds and patients and nurses—with the Sacred Goddess Hospital gone, and no one really trusting the quacks from Under if they had any brains, the temples had become temporary hospitals. At least doctors and nurses were spared the curfew, a small mercy and one in which I detected Perak’s hand. The crowd made me feel at least a little better about Lise being here—if it really was Guinto murdering people, then he’d have to kill a dozen other witnesses too before he could get to Lise. Even so, I made a mental note to ask Dench to send a Special down here, just in case.

Lise did look much better. The lump on her head had gone down, the cuts were healing nicely and she had some colour in her cheeks. I extricated my hand from Abeya’s and sat down beside my sister. “Hey, Lise, come on, time to wake up.”

I sat and talked to her for a time, while Pasha paced like a tiger and Abeya watched me with an approving smile, but Lise never stirred. I left her with a kiss on her forehead, and a fervent wish she’d wake up, and soon.

Before I could ask Abeya if Guinto was there, he appeared in the doorway, looking soft-eyed and benign and a bit creepy to my mind. No one is that nice, not all the time, not even part of the time if experience was anything to go by, and it made me suspicious.

I nodded a brief greeting. “Just the man we wanted to see.”

“Perhaps you’ve been persuaded to see the light of the Goddess?” The corner of his mouth curled and maybe he was making a joke, but it seemed pretty poor to me.

“When people stop starving, or trying to kill each other, or arresting people for being different, when we get the promise of a nicer time in this life rather than in some hypothetical next one, I might be persuaded. Until then, think of me as a challenge. A really
big
one.”

The smile seemed utterly genuine, but I’ve always suspected the art of the fake smile was something they taught in the seminary. Priests
always
look genuine, even when they’re creaming the alms and spending it all in whorehouses. Looking genuine is part of the job description.

Guinto motioned for Abeya to go and she did, not without a regretful glance in my direction. Definitely a promise there, and one I might have to follow up, even if only to get some more information on Guinto.

When she’d gone, Guinto’s demeanour changed. Not so benign now, I thought. More guarded perhaps, making me ever surer he was hiding something. What, that was the question. If he was as good a man as Pasha and Jake seemed to think, maybe all he had on his guilty conscience was overindulging on sherry.

Guinto led us to his office, sat at his desk and arranged his robes, neat and precise. “Well then, if not for salvation, what do you want to see me for? Have you any news on the murders?”

Pasha beat me to it by half a heartbeat and that was probably just as well, as I’d likely have dropped out something savage. The bodies were haunting me. Just boys, who were discovering they were pain-mages, which was a difficult enough thing at the best of times.

“We thought you might be able to shed some light on a few things.” Pasha shot me a meaningful glance, a “shut the fuck up and let me do the talking” look.

“For you, Pasha, of course.” Guinto favoured me with a wry look before he turned back to Pasha. “For my flock, my most devout parishioners, anything. How is Jake?”

“Well, thank you, Father. If—”

“And how goes things between you? After everything you’ve been through, the fire of the Goddess, the road is slow and tough, I know. But a union of two souls, in every way, is a blessing, a prayer to the Goddess.”

Pasha blushed brick-red. “We’re…working on it. Do you—”

“Good. You know I pray for you both daily, that you find what solace you can with each other.”

Pasha looked utterly stricken, like a boy singled out by an overly harsh teacher in front of the class. “Yes, Father.”

This had gone far enough. You may have gathered I’m not overly enamoured of the priestly profession. I have my reasons; years of experience of less than faithful priests, of those more corrupt than the worst pimp, of seeing the Ministry turn Mahala into a soulless place full of greed and the very worst that man could do to man. Of seeing my mother die from the synthtox, a disease both caused and denied by the Ministry, a long slow agony and not a breath of kindness or mercy from any of them, or from the Goddess. This was almost worse, worse than ignorance of what was going on, this was purposeful, and it made me want to slap the good and virtuous Guinto round the side of the head. Besides, it was reminding me that Pasha had everything I wanted, and yet I wouldn’t have traded places with him for a second.

“Do you pray for all the boys killed, too, Father? For the people taken by the Inquisition for the crime of worshipping like a Downsider?”

There, that scrubbed the smile off his face. “Of course. I pray the Goddess embraces them, that their next life will be better than this.”

“Well, it could hardly be worse, could it?”

He merely inclined his head and that infuriated me more, that he accepted it. That he seemed to have no burning need, no flame to put that right and only depended on the next life being better. I’d thought differently of him when he’d preached, but this was another side to him, one that left a sour taste and reminded me that, no matter what, he was part of Ministry with all that entailed.

“Did you know any of the boys?” I tried to keep the bile out of my voice, I really did, but some must have leaked through because he looked as though he’d been slapped. “Any of them come here to worship?”

“I don’t know, how could I when no one seems to know, or care, who they were?”

“A boy called Jabol, did you know him?”

“I—yes, there was a boy by that name. He came to see me. He was worried that he was a pain-mage, that he’d be taken and made to do things he didn’t want to. Made to torture people.”

Pasha flinched at that, and Guinto spared him a sympathetic look. “I told him as I told you, Pasha. That he shouldn’t use it, that it’s an unholy thing, and has been used to do unholy work. That he should strive to overcome it and never to use it, even if it seems for good. He should forbear to use it for the peace of his soul. To give in is to be damned. If you would do that, Pasha, would give it up, beg forgiveness, then your path would no longer be full of the obstacles you insist on putting between you and Jake.”

By this point, I was hard pressed not to pick Guinto up and give him a good shake. The only way I managed not to was knowing that he’d say: see, this is what using pain magic does to you. I’d heard this all too often over the last years, while pain magic was banned. It’s unholy,
mages
are unholy, unclean, not fit to join the rest of the city, and all the while Ministry had been saying that, they’d secretly been using it in ways more unholy than I liked to think of. That Guinto should say that to Pasha of all people, to a man who’d spent his life fighting that usage, who had such a fierce belief in the Goddess—it rendered me almost speechless with rage.

“Damned, my bollocks,” I said when I could. “Was Jabol alive when you last saw him?”

Guinto put out a hand, as though to bless me against what I’d said, then seemed to think better of it. Probably very wise of him. I might have bitten his fingers off. “Well, yes. I had him go to each saint and martyr to beg forgiveness, and then before the Goddess. He promised to try to resist, to do as the Goddess wanted, as scripture demands. I last saw him before her mural, on his knees. A devout boy.”

I made sure not to catch Pasha’s eye. He stood, hunched and twisted against what Guinto had said, and I thought that you don’t need to touch someone to inflict pain on them, to torture them. Soft words were enough, if they were the right words.

“Taban, he worshipped here, too? You gave him all this shit as well?”

Guinto’s face hardened then and I saw some of the fire of his speech fill his eyes. He believed this, he really did. “He worships here, yes. And, yes, I talk to him about using his magic, about what it will do to his soul.”

“Did he talk to you about how if he didn’t, if we gave it up, we’d probably all have died of starvation by now?”

“As the Goddess wills. It’s unholy. And so are you if you embrace it, if you can’t see that it goes against all the Goddess is.”

It was probably a good thing that Pasha grabbed my arm then, a good thing for Guinto at least, if not for my temper. Pasha got me out of the door before I said, or did, anything too rash.

I managed to hold it in until we made it out of the temple, and spilled my bile all over the street.

“Unctuous, snot-wiping, pig-fucking toad! Why do you go there if this is what you get? Temple is supposed to be about—”

“What do you know about temple?” Pasha’s voice was quiet, crushed so that it made me want to shout all over again. “Nothing, that’s what. He’s right. The Goddess—”

“Fuck the Goddess!” Didn’t look like it was our day for finishing sentences. “Pasha, you are, you and Jake—you’re the reason I found anything to have faith in, made me have at least a little faith in myself, what I can do. That I should use it for more than earning cash and getting women into bed. You can’t believe this, that you should deny what you are because
She
said so. And what was all that obstacles between you and Jake shit?”