Rojan Dizon 02 - Before the Fall (15 page)

The Beggar’s Roost had seen better days. A rathole of a pub, right down in the scabby heart of No-Hope with dripping walls and mouldy floors, and this was one of the upmarket places round here. Dench sat hunched over a pint of something that could loosely be called alcohol, if you were feeling generous. Citizens of Mahala could get used to crappy and almost non-existent food, but no beer was a serious matter and a few industrious souls were making a small fortune fermenting anything they could find.

I bought a pint for myself and peered into it, trying not to wonder what it was they’d fermented this week. Rats, by the smell. I put it down without drinking any.

Dench eyed me warily while pretending he was watching the Rapture addicts that passed for dancers on the stage. They moved with an odd, languorous sort of rhythm, an effect that was spoiled by the nothing behind their eyes.

“Mages,” he said at last. “You’re sure?”

“Not totally. But three of them were definitely, and a couple more we looked at were possibles. And how many people are mages? One in five, ten thousand men and boys? Less? What are the odds?”

He grunted in what could have been agreement, making his moustache flap. “Shit, this is the last thing I need right now. Half the fucking city hates mages. The other half merely loathes them. You said you had an idea or two.”

“Remember where you found them all. One was outside the temple where Guinto was preaching, one was last seen
in
his temple and Taban was less than ten minutes away. The others weren’t far either.”

“Oh, you have got to be shitting me, Rojan. Look, I know you hate the Ministry, I’m not exactly overfond myself, not with how things have been lately, but you’ve got a real thing about priests. Not content with killing the old Archdeacon, now you want to accuse the one priest who’s actually doing some good down here? You’re obsessed.”

I tried not to be offended. He was right. “You got any better ideas then?”

“Perhaps.” He took a long slug of his drink. He looked sick, but that could have just been from the beer. “I’ll talk to a few people, let you know. In return, I need you to talk to Perak, because he sure as shit isn’t listening to anyone else.”

I frowned over my own drink. “I can try. What about?”

“About the generator—I told you he’d pinned all his hopes on it, that with that going he had enough leverage to tell the Storad and Mishans to bugger off. Even now it’s destroyed, he’s
still
pinning his hopes on it, on being able to fix it. On you. Can you get him to admit he has to
try
to negotiate? Or at least talk to them? Because I think we’re screwed otherwise. No, I know we are.”

It should have struck me sooner, but it became clear as air when Dench started pleading their case. A point of view I hadn’t considered, having been too busy being up to my knees in dead bodies, pain labs and willing women. Who benefited from the generator going? The Storad and the Mishans and any cardinal on their side—or maybe just not on Perak’s side. With no power, if we were forced to capitulate, well, any cardinal that was chummy with them was going to find himself in a very nice position. Maybe even new Archdeacon. That’s a powerful incentive.

It was a pretty persuasive argument too, as long as you were one of the few prepared to believe that Outside actually existed and that people could live there. Scripture said that Mahala was the Goddess’s whole world. Scripture said. Unfortunately logic said we had to be trading with someone, though if you’ve got enough brainwashing it can replace logic. It was one of those unacknowledged dichotomies—some people firmly believed in both the scripture and Outside, in the same way you could believe in rainy days and sunshine; they both occur but not at the same time. This is because people are so screwy in the head and seem built for deluding themselves. I sometimes wondered if I was the only sane one, or if I’d already gone batshit and this was my madness.

A cynical shrug from Dench, a swig of the hooch. “Maybe they just want to use the pass without paying through the nose for us being middlemen. Or maybe they’ll wait for more mages to be born. The Storad in particular always play a long game.”

I thought back to the only Storad I’d ever seen, a granite-faced man in the Death Matches. They were a hard race, it was said. Hard like the stones they mined, and we were soft, too soft, after years of living off trade and now with no food in our bellies. Mahala might fall if they breathed hard on it.

It was a theory anyway, one I didn’t want to share just yet, in case I was wrong. Dench would undoubtedly sneer at my obsession with the turncoat nature of the Ministry.

Maybe these murders weren’t as connected as I thought—at least Dwarf’s murder. Could be someone just using the previous murders to cover up that they wanted the generator gone.

Because if even the staunch Dench felt this way, there were bound to be others who not only thought it, but did something about it.

“Well?” asked Dench. “Will you talk to him?”

“I’ll try,” I lied, and changed the subject. “You’d know if anyone came in from Outside, wouldn’t you? Except the ambassadors, of course.”

“Ah, Rojan, not just a fucked-up face, eh? Not that I know of, but there are ways and ways. Means to communicate. You know that.”

Why was it I always got the impression he wasn’t telling me everything, but only enough to get me worried, to get me to do something? Experience, because he never gave away more than he had to. He’d given me more than he probably should have, though.

“So what are you doing about it?” I asked.

“Me? Not a lot. I don’t have time. I’ve got riots to keep down, and an Inquisition I didn’t want that I have to oversee, I’ve got people dying like flies and no more space in the Slump for the bodies. I’ve got an archdeacon who’s pissed off all the wrong people at the worst possible time, when he needs them behind him. If they get behind him now, it’ll be to knife him in the back. He’s a bit like his brother in that regard.” The sardonic look warped his moustache to new glory.

“It’s up to us, then, that’s what you’re telling me. That I can’t expect any help from you?”

“I just did help you. More than I technically should. Rojan, you’re good at finding people, better than I’ll ever be. We need them caught, whoever it is. Need
someone
in the dock, someone we can say, ‘Look, we caught the bastard’ about to all the Downsiders. Whoever it is. If the Downsiders calm down, then the Upsiders will calm down, and we’ll be back to something approaching normality. I hope. Then perhaps we can get on with surviving, on concentrating on how we’re going to get through this and what we’re going to have to give the Storad and Mishans in return for them not killing us. I’ll help you as much as I can, but I’ve got more shit going on than I can handle and my first duty is to keep your brother alive. Someone’s already tried for him once.”

He dropped that titbit in as though it was a bit of fluff, nothing of consequence but I thought it might have been the whole point of this conversation. To tell me things were worse than I’d thought, that I’d better get my arse in gear. As if the day hadn’t been bad enough.

“What? When? Why didn’t you tell me, why didn’t he tell me?”

“Yesterday, and probably because you’re his brother and he doesn’t want to worry you. Well, I
do
want to worry you. We’ve got our hands fuller than we can cope with. Talk to Perak if you can, because if you don’t…shit, I don’t know how, but things will get worse. And try to stay alive yourself. No telling who this killer might go for next. Like I said, I’ve got a couple of men quietly keeping an eye on Lise, so even if it is Guinto—not that I’m saying I believe you, because I think you’re full of shit—even if it is him, he won’t get her and neither will anyone else, like whoever it really is. I’ll set some guards about the lab, too, and another to watch your office. I’ll tell that one to help if you ask, and he’ll be one of my best, so keep an eye out for him. That’s all I can spare, but if it’s pain-mages they’re after, well, you’ve been advertising.”

He left me there, staring at what was nominally alcohol, wondering whether I dared drink it. And who was going to be left alive come tomorrow. Right then, the way things were, maybe none of us.

Dench had been pretty cagey, as usual, but he
had
given me an idea whether he’d meant to or not. Something to dig into. Who knew, maybe it would help.

Because the thought of the Storad and Mishans, that they would be the ones to benefit from the generator going, had taken hold of my head. That and the thought of a cardinal with enough desire to see himself Archdeacon by saving the city when Perak couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do what the cardinal thought necessary—negotiate, capitulate, call it what you will. Dench said no Outsiders except the ambassadors, and I believed him. Those ambassadors would have no contacts, and certainly wouldn’t be allowed out in the city. Even if they were instrumental in the why, I didn’t think they were the ones actually killing these kids, or Dwarf.

So who did have the freedom to roam anywhere they liked in a city that looked up to them, or at least obeyed everything that they ordered? Who had the powerful desire to come out on top? I could think of one or two people, and, given the way my mind works, anyone in the Ministry topped the list. Factions within factions against factions. Maybe I’d been wrong instead—maybe the murders had nothing to do with Guinto after all. I thought back to that first sermon of his I’d seen, to all the Ministry men sucking up to Perak at the back of the temple. The ones that looked at his face with nodding heads, and at his back with daggers for eyes. I’d seen one of them Under since, too. And what was a cardinal doing Under? Only one way to find out, currently, but it meant I had to take my bollocks in my hands in case they got injured along the way.

Someone had managed to scrub most of the scorch marks off the walls of Erlat’s house, but that didn’t help much because someone else had scrawled a lot of anatomically incorrect drawings on the clean patch.

Inside was still the oasis of calm it always had been but Kersan, normally so serene, was noticeably keyed up. He kept glancing over his shoulder though there was nothing new to see there, just the same arty nudes and velvet drapes. When I asked to see Erlat, he positively flinched.

“Kersan, it’s important. Really.”

“I’ll ask,” he said eventually and slipped through the door.

I fidgeted my way around the room, not really looking at the pictures, wondering if perhaps I’d gone just slightly mad. A cardinal murdering boys. Dench was right, I was obsessed with it being someone in the Ministry. But what if I
was
right?

Kersan came back and silently led me down red-draped corridors to Erlat’s room. She stood in the centre of it, the centre of her world, and arched an eyebrow at me like I was a cockroach in her bed. All polished stone today, all gleaming jade. That’s not what made me stop dead before I was two steps into the room. No, that would be the gun she had in her hand. It wasn’t pointing at me, but still she was pissed off at me and she had a gun—never a good combination. My only—small—consolation was she wasn’t an ex. After my plentiful experience of them, if any had a gun in the same room as me, I’d make a jump for it out of the window and any long drop be damned.

Erlat smiled slowly at my obvious reluctance before she shook her head and put the gun down on the table, allowing me to breathe again.

“What is it, Rojan?” A smooth, cool question, no teasing. It made my shoulders itch.

She sat on the lounger, curled her feet under and motioned me to the chair opposite. Having put me off balance, again, she seemed content to wait while I sat and gathered my jangled thoughts. It seemed best just to come out with it.

“You have a cardinal as a client?”

Her mouth twitched and a frown marred her smooth forehead. Her voice was cold as winter. “So? Are you making my business your business now? Think you have the right?”

“No! No, I just want to know how often he comes here, that’s all. What’s a cardinal doing Under?” Especially one who’d sneered at all the temple-goers, like we were beneath his contempt.

“If you’d ever taken me up on my offer, you’d know.” She stood in one elegant movement and glided towards me, all professional persona now, none of the other Erlat anywhere. Smooth and sleek and, actually, pretty fucking tempting. I stared at the table instead of giving in. I couldn’t, not with her. The blush was creeping up my neck, hot and uncomfortable.

“Erlat, how often?”

She stopped at my tone and cocked her head, but her voice was still sleek with ice. “All right, I’ll play. Cardinal Manoto. Once or twice a week, since we set up. Maybe a dozen times or so, all told. Why do you care?”

A dozen or so times. Thirteen murders.

I stood up with a jerk, startling Erlat. “Is he due again? An appointment?”

“What the hell does that have to do with you? Jealous?”

“Stop it!” I grabbed her by one shoulder, worried and angry both. “Stop trying all that seduction on me, and stop all this. I don’t know what the fuck I’ve done to piss you off, but I wish I hadn’t. All right? I’m not asking because your business is mine, or because I’m poking my nose in. I’m asking because someone’s killing people, because Dwarf is dead and Lise almost was too and I don’t know who’s next. Now tell me, is he due again?”

She pulled away from my grip, and I couldn’t tell now if she was pissed off or what. All I could tell was that I’d probably just fucked over a good thing, same as I always did. She wouldn’t look at me as she sat down again, kept one shoulder my way.

When she finally spoke, her voice sounded blurred, but at least she’d stopped with her act. “He comes when he feels like it, no appointment. Could be next week. Could be tonight.”

Dendal was waiting for me when I got back to the office, dog-tired, with the rank taste of rat hooch on my tongue and Erlat’s door slam in my face, the sound of something solid hitting the back of the door as I left ringing in my ears. I hoped whatever it was he wanted, Dendal would be quick about it.

Then I looked a bit harder. Dendal kept hopping from foot to foot and he had a piece of paper in his hand that was crumpled from the way he clutched it. It wasn’t going to be good news.

“Go on.” My voice sounded weary and petulant even to me. Everyone seemed to be dumping responsibility on me from a great height. Why should Dendal be different?

He didn’t say anything, but held out the paper. It didn’t say much. Just one sentence.
Our son is dead.

I sank down to the sofa. Another murder. It had been too much to hope I could sleep first.

“I’ll go to the mortuary first thing.” Oh goody, something to look forward to.

“No, no.” Dendal did another little hop. “Their son isn’t dead. They only wish he was.”

I watched him closely—something bothering him, something close. Something I was missing. I needed about a week’s sleep, but it didn’t look as though I’d be getting it any time soon, so I said, “Start at the beginning.”

“It’s Pasha’s parents,” he blurted out, and that was all I needed to know. Which didn’t stop Dendal blathering on. “I, well, the
tone
, you know?”

I did know. Dendal’s speciality, his Major, is communication. He takes and sends messages in his head. Not like Pasha, he can’t read a mind as such. Instead, he acts like a conduit for messages. And being such a gentle soul, he was pretty good at picking up tone, or emotional backlog or call it what you will. If he said they knew Pasha wasn’t dead but hoped he was, then they did. It was the last thing Pasha needed right now. It would be like ripping up his dreams while jumping up and down on his heart.

“We don’t have to give him this. Not now, not yet.’ Maybe in a year’s time, if we were all still alive, when he’d got some sort of life back and he’d unfucked his head a bit. “We’ve all got other things to worry about.” Like, was Erlat going to be safe if Manoto came back? At least she had a gun, which gave me a small bit of comfort. She was pissed enough to use it on me, though, which wasn’t. Goddess’s tits, I even managed to fuck it up when I
wasn’t
sleeping with them.

Dendal hopped again, back and forth, till my eyes went all screwy. “I promised, Rojan. I can’t not send on a message. It’s what I do.”

“Seriously, now is not the time. The generator is all but dead with fuck all hope of fixing it, we’re hip deep in dead mages, Pasha’s already strung out by—” Discretion became the better part of valour as I decided not to tell him what Guinto had said to Pasha, about the Inquisition and how Pasha was feeling about being a mage. “Now isn’t the time, believe me.”

“Don’t say fuck, it’s not nice. We have to tell him.”

I fought the urge to tear some hair out. Living around Dendal, it’s a wonder I’m not bald. “What you mean is, you want
me
to tell him.”

He beamed at me in that vague way that always meant I ended up doing what he wanted. It’s really difficult to argue with a man who’s only half here. “Yes, that’s right.”

“Dendal—”

“You have to. I…I don’t know why, exactly. But you have to, and you have to go
now
. Please.”

“I’m not going to hear the end of it if I don’t, am I?”

Too late—he’d wandered back to his pile of papers and was humming a happy fairy song, smug in the knowledge that I’d do what he asked. What really fucking grated was that he was right.

I owed Pasha, more than I wanted to, and I couldn’t keep this from him. I stared down at the paper. So
bald
, so fucking cold. Pasha had said to me once how proud they’d been when the Ministry had recruited him. Not so proud now, when it was fast becoming common rumour what pain-mages in the ’Pit had been up to. He’d been from somewhere up high, I knew that. Heights or Clouds. For people like that…I knew he’d spent a lot of time looking for them, spending hours with Dendal trying to remember his real name. Jake had done, too, but with less luck. She’d been small when they’d taken her. Not so Pasha: he’d been old enough to remember bits and pieces. Heights or Clouds. Respectable, wealthy. Keenly aware of appearances, particularly now. Everyone else had rejected him, spat on him, hated him. Downsiders, Upsiders, Ministry, priests, and now even his own parents. All he had was Jake, and that relationship seemed fraught with some difficulty I only barely comprehended. He had her, and me.

Poor fucker, all he had was me to believe in him and I believe in shit, in doing the job and taking the cash, in not messing with Ministry, getting the girl into bed and screw the rest. And making sure Pasha didn’t get too fucked up. Not if I could help it. I folded the paper into squares and slid it into an inside pocket.

I have never walked so slowly anywhere in my life.

It’s always weird going back to where you used to live and seeing the changes, the way the place has moved on without you. I didn’t really want to get to the rooms, or think about what I was going to say to Pasha when I got there, so instead I looked around and noticed the change.

It had never been a nice area—the lower rent had meant I could save some cash. Now it wasn’t just not nice, it was downright fuckawful. Most of the shops were boarded up, having nothing to sell. Some had been burnt out during the riots, or ransacked by the Inquisition, others had graffiti scrawled over them. Not nice graffiti either, no funny jokes, no “I was here” or “Bebbi loves Janna” or even crude anatomical diagrams that made you wonder if the people who’d drawn them were at all in proportion. There was a lot of “Downsiders fuck off”, “Pain-mage perverts”, “Little Whores must die so the Goddess can save us”, that kind of thing.

How had I not noticed that before? Because now I came to think of it, similar sentiments were scribbled all over. I’d shrugged it off because it wasn’t really relevant to me—even the pain-mage ones didn’t sting because I hadn’t been the sort of pain-mage they’d had in the ’Pit and never would be. But Pasha couldn’t shrug it off, even if he’d never joined those pain-mages, or not willingly. A Downsider, a pain-mage, a Little Whore—everything that was despised, he was. Now I had to twist that knife all the way round.

I stood outside the door a long time, unable to bring myself to knock. In the end, I didn’t have to; Pasha opened the door. Must have known I was there, heard me in his head perhaps. I hoped like crazy he hadn’t heard any more than that, but he greeted me with a puzzled grin.

He looked better, as though the time at home with Jake had done him good. More relaxed than I’d ever seen him. Jake, too, when he beckoned me in. He sat next to her on a makeshift sofa and the way she took his hand, the way she looked at him, it was obvious to me that the “obstacles” Guinto had hinted at were overcome, or at least smaller. It hurt to watch, but at the same time she was happy, happier than I could ever have made her. I have never regretted that. Saving him, pulling him out of his black so that she could be happy, so they both could be for once in their crappy fucked-up lives. If I’m wrong and there is a Goddess up there somewhere, if she ever asks what I ever did to earn those Brownie points to heaven, I’ll offer her that and be satisfied. And if she isn’t satisfied, too, well, she can go screw herself.

It made doing this even worse.

“I went to the lab, but you’d already gone,” Pasha said. “That Bulahan, he’s a real piece of work, isn’t he? Kept trying to screw more out of me, until Jake stopped him.”

“He’s temporary, I hope. But I—we—need him. Unless you suddenly know how to fix everything?” I couldn’t stop the bitterness in my voice. Why send me, Dendal? Why couldn’t you have told him yourself? Why has the message come now, not next week, or never?

My tone made them both frown and Pasha sat forward. I hoped, oh I hoped he couldn’t see in me.

“What?” Suspicious now, an edge of fear to the question. Not without cause.

Best just to come out with it. “Dendal had a message for you.” And because I couldn’t bear the sudden hope in his eyes, I said it straight out. Like ripping a bandage off quick so it’ll hurt less. Bollocks of course, but helpful to think so. “Your parents consider their son dead. Even if they know he isn’t.”

Odd, how differently people react to things. Jake shrank back, her face tight, back to her ice-queen façade. Furious on his behalf, I could tell that, her hands going to the only reassurance she had, where she’d usually wear her swords. Brought up in violence, it was always her first, gut reaction to any threat. But Pasha sat there like a man in a dream, his face slowly collapsing in on itself as he realised what I’d said. No anger, though if it’d been me I’d have shouted the place down probably. No anger but a terrible, hopeless sadness that seemed to radiate from him, to crush him.

“Pasha, I’m sorry, I—”

He stood up, slowly, dreamy still. “It’s all right. Really.” I didn’t hear his feet on the bare boards as he drifted into the bedroom and shut the door behind him on silent hinges.

Leaving me alone with Jake. But that was all right, because she was angry enough for four people and I wouldn’t have risked it. Not when she had those swords within reach, hung on the wall. Still, it was a guilty little pleasure to be near her without him.

As soon as Pasha shut the door she leapt up and began to pace like a tiger, kicking the sofa in frustration. Even now, all fired up and snarling, she was glorious. Graceful, furious, haunting, with a broken soul, but glorious. When she stopped pacing in front of me, I was hard put not to reach out and touch her. That’s all, a touch of her hand.

“Why would they?” she asked, her voice on the cusp of anger and hurt for Pasha. “Why would they do that? He’s their son, they should—I mean they’re his
parents
…
 
⁠
”

I thought she knew the answer well enough, but was so angry she couldn’t say anything else.

“It was all supposed to be different up here. Better. We were going to have a new life only we can’t, and they’ve screwed us and screwed us. Screwed everybody. Turned the Goddess into, into, I don’t know what and
we’re
the heretics. And everyone hates us, all those smug Upsiders, the Ministry. Rounding us up, taking us away. Even his own parents…Well, I hate the fuckers back, twice as hard.”

There wasn’t a lot I could say to that, because I agreed. I was about to reply anyway when her head came up. A muffled sound from the bedroom, a tickle of words in my head that I couldn’t quite grasp. I got up, a sudden drop in my belly of something wrong. Then the words weren’t a tickle any more but a shout, a scream of swearing, of warning.

Jake grabbed her swords and still beat me to the door, but I barged it open, left it hanging from shattered hinges and stared into the room, dimly lit from a single rend-nut lamp. I don’t know what I expected—Pasha twisting his fingers, falling into the black perhaps as he had once before, wanting to escape into pain-filled bliss. I know I didn’t expect the spray of blood on one wall, the sight of a black-clad back as it dived out of the window, or Pasha slumped on the floor clutching an arm.

Jake got to him as I raced to the window, but it was darker outside than Namrat’s heart and I couldn’t see anything. No running figure on the walkway below, no movement on the mound of rubbish in a gap opposite. Nothing and no one. I turned a leery eye on the window. Too narrow for Fat Cardinal to get through, and I couldn’t see him climbing up either. My head felt like a pendulum, swinging from one suspect to another and back again.

I turned to where Jake was frantically wrapping a ripped sheet round Pasha’s arm. His skin was pale as curdled milk, but he looked up at me with his monkey grin and his voice was all false bravado. “Shame we’re not at the lab. Got a good bit of juice.”

“What the fuck happened?”

“I’m not sure.” He rubbed at a temple and winced, and I wondered what he was hearing with all that juice running through him. Half the building probably had their thoughts in his head right now—Pasha’s own peculiar curse, and the reason why his black is silent as snowfall.

“I shut the door and leant against it. I didn’t hear them coming, not a footstep or a thought—no juice, and without it I can only hear someone real close. I didn’t even have my eyes open. I felt a kind of breeze, and when I looked this big knife was coming for me. For my throat. I managed to get an arm up, and when the knife went in I got enough to call out. Then you started on the door and they shot out of the window.”

I crouched down beside Jake and tried not to see the panic in her eyes. A big knife, going for his throat.

Don’t say it
, he thought at me.
Not in front of Jake
.

I kept my voice as steady as I could. “Jake, could you fetch the box? I’ll have a go at stitching this if you like.”

She threw me a suspicious look, but went to find the box.

“This is getting fucking serious,” I said.

Pasha raised an eyebrow. “You think?”

“Ha ha. You get anything from them?”

“Only after they cut me, and once they were outside they sort of got lost in the general noise. Mostly they were thinking ‘Shit, it wasn’t supposed to be him! I need to get out!’ when you barged the door. Two things I got. One, they were running to the temple. I don’t know which one. Sanctuary, that’s what they were thinking. A temple has to give sanctuary. Two—”

He broke off when Jake came back with the box. She rummaged around and held up the ampoule of painkiller. Pasha shook his head—it’d hurt like fuck, stitching him, but we were going to need all the juice we could get, because he thought the last at me.

Two, your name was next on the list. Your real name.