Rojan Dizon 02 - Before the Fall (16 page)

The cut to Pasha’s arm wasn’t as bad as the blood had suggested, so it didn’t take too long to get him stitched. I was even getting pretty good at it, what with all the practice I’d had stitching Jake up after her Matches. The argument after took longer, but I won in the end for once. My name next or not, if whoever was doing all this was getting this close to us, I wasn’t leaving Dendal on his own, especially given the would-be killer’s thought “It wasn’t supposed to be him”. Who else was supposed to be there? Who else had a reason to go and see Pasha right then? Dendal, with his message from up high. Fair enough, Lastri was enough to frighten the most crazed serial killer—she scared the living crap out of me—but it was the middle of the night and she wasn’t at the office. And the office was where anyone would go to find me, mister-next-on-the-list. They’d find Dendal, too, and another mage might be a temptation too far.

That was the reason I gave, anyway, and I meant it. I didn’t voice the thought that that message had just been too nicely timed. Someone knew about Pasha trying to find his parents, about Dendal and how insistent he got about delivering his messages. Maybe a ruse to get Dendal and Pasha together and kill two mages with one big knife, which I’d thwarted by being there and being big enough to knock the door down before they got the chance to finish off Pasha. Goddess knows what they’d had planned to keep Jake out of the way.

Anyway, added bonus to me checking on Dendal was that I didn’t want to stay at Pasha and Jake’s place. I couldn’t, not with her so close. Because I would have caved in, and Pasha didn’t deserve that. Pasha didn’t deserve any of what happened, then or later. Besides, he’d be safe enough because there was as much chance of Jake leaving him alone as me becoming Archdeacon, and she was a mean fighter, all the meaner when it was Pasha at stake, and she’d got Pasha to call to Dog, too. Between the two of them, they could probably take on a whole battalion of elephants armed with guns.

So I was pretty jittery as I made my way back to the office. I kept my good hand on the pulse pistol in my pocket, just in case, and jumped at every moving shadow, every noise. Which meant I was jumping a lot because, if there’s one thing Mahala does well, it’s shadows. The moon was up there, somewhere. Every now and again, a faint silver shaft would appear, reflected a hundred times before it reached this low, growing weaker each time. A few windows had flickering lights in them, but the quiet light just seemed to make the shadows worse. For the first time, I was truly afraid in my own city.

The office was dark when I got there, and that was odd. Odder still was that when I sidled my way in with my pulse pistol out and ready, Dendal wasn’t there. Dendal was
always
there, scritch-scratching away with his pen, surrounded by his candles. Not now, though. His corner was empty, his candles unlit. It really creeped me out, especially given my earlier thoughts regarding ruses and big knives. If there was one thing in this crappy city I could rely on, it was Dendal being there, in body if not in mind. I tried not to imagine the possibilities and failed, badly.

So I was feeling like throwing up as I edged into the room. Tripping over any dead body would be bad enough, but Dendal’s? That would be like tripping over a dead puppy.

No dead body and no one trying to kill me by the time I got to the candles, so I took my life in my hands, lit a few and took one over to my desk. He’d left a note in his spidery hand.
At
Lastri’s, all sick—bacon was off. Took boy with me. Back in the morning.

I tried to restrain the smile, then realised no one was watching and let it loose. The only thing better than me eating bacon was using it in the escalating war between me and Lastri. I felt a twinge of guilt and told myself not to be so soppy—only last week Lastri had “accidentally” laced my tea with laxative. A shame that Dendal and Allit had got sick too, but better than the alternatives that had been playing across my mind.

I flopped down on the sofa and put my feet up on Griswald. If anyone—whoever the hell it was, and I had less idea now than I did when I started—was after Dendal they’d look here first, so he should be safe enough, the boy too. Not to mention I happened to know Lastri’s place was situated between the rooms of two very well-built guards, heavy, gnarled men who were surprisingly protective of her. Dendal was safer than I was. Especially given that my name was next on the list.

By the time I’d done my best with all the locks, rearranging the one on the main door so that even Dendal with his key wouldn’t be able to get in, the clock showed after three in the morning and I was pretty sure I’d think straighter after some sleep. I needed to think straight if I was going to untangle the mess we were in. I was asleep as I thought it. Sadly, not the black and dreamless kind.

A sound, close and furtive, dragged me back awake and thankfully out of the dream. I lay there, a sweaty mess with dream-visions dancing in my head, of Jake and blood and a boy with his throat cut, of Pasha driven to his knees by all the voices he could hear in his head, each of them lit by the Glow we couldn’t provide.

All the candles were out again except the one I’d left on my desk. It didn’t show me much, except that I wasn’t alone. Something, someone, moved in the darkness beyond. I had a bad feeling that they had a big knife with them, and groped for the pulse pistol in the pocket of my jacket where I’d slung it over the back of the sofa. I hoped I’d have a chance to use it.

A dim shape moved out of the shadows and I swung the pistol. Luckily I didn’t fire it off willy-nilly, because an ethereal face appeared in the gloom, dark hair fluttering round her face and she smelled of angels.

I sat up and stuffed the pulse pistol back where it had come from. “Abeya, you scared the—” I restrained myself from saying something very rude indeed. She was a priest’s daughter after all. “What are you doing here? How did you get in?”

Her mouth twitched in a hesitant smile. “I came to see you.”

“That’s—” I didn’t get a chance to say anything else before she kissed me. I was impressed; normally I have to do a bit of chasing at least. Maybe this new face was good for something after all. Then I realised I’d just woken up. I didn’t—couldn’t—keep up my disguise when I was asleep. And then I stopped thinking with my brain entirely as she pressed into me, all soft and willing, with tongue and hands and…Other parts of me started thinking, if you can call it that, very rapidly.

Was it fair? No. No, it wasn’t fair to her, or to me much either, but I was lonely and in love with someone who I couldn’t have. Abeya was there, lonely, too, I suspected, and warm and kissing me as though there was no tomorrow. In my defence, I’d have made every go of it, I’d have tried, though I suspected my Kiss of Death tendencies would have screwed it around the two-week mark as usual. So I protested, but not much, and we…had a nice time. Twice. Still, it wasn’t fair of me.

Then again, it wasn’t very fair of her to try to kill me afterwards.

There are moments in a man’s life when he’s particularly vulnerable. That has to be the worst of them. Naked, as I was, and in that little fluffy, contented world that inhabits your brain after such happy activity. I was warm and she was soft against me with her head on my shoulder, smelling like angels and if all wasn’t right with the world, it was a damn sight better than usual and with a great view, too. Those are about the only brief moments in my life I don’t hate everything, am not angry at anything or afraid of anything, and I savour them. A few brief moments of belonging with the world,
in
it rather than being outside and hating it.

Which made the big fucking knife one hell of a shock, not to mention it shattered all my nicely thought-out theories about who was killing mages.

One minute warm and fluffy with an angel on my shoulder and the next, said angel is an avenging harpy with a knife heading for my throat. In instinctive self-defence I fell off the sofa next to the desk, which decided now was a good time to end our truce and shoot out a drawer straight into the side of my face. Handy, as it happened, because it gave me a jolt of juice. I only had to try to decide what to do with it.

Rearranging is my Major but I was pretty new at it, and it usually took a bit of time. Still, a sodding great knife going for your throat at speed concentrates the mind wonderfully. I managed to grab her wrist and slow the knife down, enough so that maybe I could do something about the sharpness of the blade. It was only when I caught her that I saw what the dim light and my own lusty shallowness had made me miss before: the brand burnt there in the tender skin under the thumb. Why she was killing pain-mages was clear now. It didn’t explain why she’d jumped me first, though, and it didn’t stop the knife.

I pulled in the pain from the smack to my face, let it flow through, welcomed the flutter of the black, the song of it. It wouldn’t take much, soften the metal, dull the edge. I rather overdid it—the knife hit me in the side of the throat and bent like a rotten banana.

Lastri always said I’d get my comeuppance for my womanising ways, that one day I’d push some poor woman too far, over the edge. Sickening to think she was right.

When Abeya saw the knife was doing no good, she threw it across the room with a snarl, grabbed my throat with both hands and squeezed. I tried to ignore the burn of my lungs, my brain’s increasingly frantic calls for air. Instead I shut my eyes and fell backwards into the black, let it well through me, not too much now, not too long, however tempting, or I’d never come out, and then blew it all out again. At least I managed to control it, well partly, this time. Dendal’s interminable sermons on control and mastery seemed to be paying off.

When I struggled back up again, not without a longing backward glance at the calling black I’d skimmed, opened my eyes and started rasping in lungfuls of crappy but oh-so-sweet air, Abeya was slumped at the bottom of the wall.

“Lastri always said any woman would be nuts to end up with me, but I never thought I’d get a real loony.” My voice was croaky and it hurt to speak, but I had to say something. “You could have just killed me rather than taking me to bed first. I wouldn’t have minded.”

“I didn’t know you were a mage at first. I only knew Father didn’t approve and that was enough. I
liked
you. You didn’t care that I was Downside, didn’t spit on me for it. You liked me anyway, I thought. Then I found out what you are, all of you, you, Pasha, Dendal and…” Weird how her face changed, from angelic and innocent to psychotic. Those brands—what must it be like to think you like someone and then realise they’re exactly what you hate, exactly the sort of man who made your life a tortuous misery? How would that break a mind that was fragile to start with?

Her face kept flickering between the two extremes, angelic to hatred and back. I don’t think even she knew which was her. “You weren’t supposed to be still alive, but as you were, I took the opportunity.”

Nice, and then what she’d just said popped something into my brain—not supposed to be
still
alive. The bacon, the damned bacon.

Not off, poisoned. Only it had been shared among three rather than one, so maybe the dose was weaker. I hoped that Dendal hadn’t pigged it all.

Abeya got up into a crouch, like a tiger waiting to spring. Her face twisted into a rage so deep it seemed bottomless, and I didn’t blame her. Be nice if she took it out on whoever had given her the brands instead of me, though.

“You look different.” Her head cocked to one side and her lip curled. “You look like
him
.”

It didn’t take a genius to realise she’d spotted how like my father I looked. She couldn’t take everything out on him; as I’ve said, he was dead, but it seemed maybe I was the next best thing, me and any other pain-mage available. She was on me again before I could get to my feet, clubbing me over the head with something, shouting formless words of hate, sobbing as she did it.

She’d lost whatever reason she’d had, clearly, because she was only making it easier for me to cast a spell. Even under that provocation, I couldn’t bring myself to hurt her. I’m such a gent.

I got her off me, making her swear as she hit the floor, and legged it to the door on to the street, rearranging the lock as I went, then slamming the door behind me. It didn’t take long to ensure the lock would no longer work, a moment’s rearrangement of the tumblers. She thudded into the door and banged at it from the other side, her voice a thin screech of hatred so vitriolic I took a step back, just in case she could break the door down.

Someone sniggered behind me, and that’s when I realised I was out on the street, stark bollock naked. Not only that, I still had Rojan’s face on, and if I didn’t change it quick smart, I’d have no face at all. That wasn’t too much of a problem; I could do the face from memory. Nakedness was another matter entirely. As was the problem of a murderous Abeya in the office. At least I was still alive. Always a plus.

I gave rearranging myself some clothes a go, but with nothing to work with it was tricky. I even tried just making it look as though I was covered up, but no dice. Still starkers.

The sniggerer turned out to be the Special that Dench had arranged, Tabil. He tried to hide the snigger behind a hand and a bitten lip, but the laughter kept snorting out of his nose. “Did your date not go very well then?” he asked in between giggles.

I could hear Abeya through the door, faint but unmistakeable. “Bastard, fucking bastard.”

Not the first time I’d been in this situation, or similar. Normally it was the husband on the other side of the door, though.

I glared at Tabil, but that only reduced him to a smirk. “How did you know I had a date?
I
didn’t know until she turned up.”

“I didn’t see her go in, but when I checked on you, you seemed to be enjoying yourself. Super-int—er, Dench said I was to ignore all your antics with the ladies. He said whoever it was wouldn’t last long and anyway, we didn’t have much choice.”

“I seemed to be enjoying myself? Were you watching?”

That wiped the smirk off. “Only the kissing part. Once I realised it was, you know, I stood over the walkway.” He pointed to the dark doorway of an abandoned apothecary.

Abeya stopped thumping on the door, and I was glad. It was giving me a headache, between that and Tabil.

All right, now that explained it—if she’d known he was keeping an eye on the place, she’d have lulled everyone into thinking just a date and then…and then bye-bye Rojan, hello death. By bacon or by knife. Loony she might be, but she wasn’t stupid. And she’d seemed so angelic, so
normal
. Shows what I know.

“Look, Tabil, I need your lot down here straight away. I’m pretty sure we’ve got a killer trapped in there.”

Only, by the time he’d lent me his coat and we’d peered in through the window, we hadn’t. There were no other exits but somehow she’d escaped.

Twice in one night, the killer—Abeya, I corrected myself, angelic, beautiful, soft, warm, psychotic Abeya-of-the-bacon—had got away from me. Twice she’d not quite managed to finish the job. I wondered if she’d try a third, to make the evening worthwhile. If so…

The note lay on my desk, but not where I’d left it. She’d spiked it on the nail I use for old receipts. She’d also left something else behind in her hurry. No exits, I’d thought, though in reality there were no exits me and Dendal knew about or used. She’d found one, though.

A neat little doorway behind a behemoth of a wardrobe we’d not bothered trying to shift when we moved in. If we had, we’d have noticed that the wardrobe moved on rusty rails, and seen the hidden doorway. I thought back to the hidden door in Guinto’s temple. Maybe they all had one, because this doorway led to a room behind the altar in the neighbouring temple. Or maybe it was just a handy bolthole for the drug-dealing ex-owners of the office. Abeya was, of course, long gone when we checked.

I thought about it as quickly as my knackered mind would let me. First, I sent Tabil off to Lastri’s to make sure Dendal was safe, telling him to get some more Specials down to Guinto’s temple quick smart, especially given that Lise was there, too. I was taking no chances. Tabil bitched about it, told me how much Dench would create, but I told him he’d fucked up once and not to make the same mistake twice, so he went, moaning all the way.

On my part, I scoured the office for something, some trace of Abeya that I could use. It took a while, because candlelight isn’t good for searching, but in the end I had it. Or, rather, them. Two dark hairs on the sofa, too long to be mine.

Two hairs to tell me where she was, whenever I liked.