Rojan Dizon 02 - Before the Fall (26 page)

The pain lab looked different without Dwarf in it. Felt different, too. I tried not to think about him, about how I’d failed him and how I was setting myself up to fail everyone else. It was carry on or curl up and die, and fuck that.

Instead I watched Lise in the half-dark of a couple of rend-nut lamps as she scurried about the generator. Like me, I think she was trying not to think too hard about who should have been here and wasn’t while another boom-shudder reminded us all of what I would rather forget: the Storad were at the gates. Not for long—if they kept their barrage up much longer there wouldn’t be any gates left.

They hadn’t started straight away, which was luck on our part. Well, luck and Perak becoming a real hard-arse negotiator, which had surprised everyone. He’d managed to stall for ten days or so by telling the Storad powers that be that he was listening to their negotiator and was confident an accommodation could be reached, while I’d found him a really first-class forger—Dendal, who else?—for fake communications from their man inside the city. Their man who was actually in a rather nice cell. Surprisingly, given Dench had to be whispering the Goddess knew what in their ears, we’d managed to pull it off for that long, but of course they’d twigged eventually.

Another ten days of escalating threats before Perak told them to go stick their head in a pig. And all the while we’d been busy ransacking every damned thing we could find in Top of the World to trade with the Mishans for food, weapons, whatever we needed. A few cardinals had screamed about it and the news-sheets were full of vitriol and bile, along with a fair bit of scaremongering filtered through from the more upset clergy, but it was funny how they shut the fuck up in the face of the new leader of Perak’s personal guard—Jake with her swords out will do that to a person. An archdeacon who has suddenly turned out to have fangs helped, too. I wasn’t the only one seeing Perak in a new light.

And all that time, Lise and Ferret-face had been working flat out. Even Perak had rolled up his sleeves to help in the lab. The generator was just the start of it—once it was running, Lise had some plans for a weapon or two that would make the Storad piss kittens and sunbeams and possibly crap flowers. She’s a girl after my own heart. She’d also, with Jake’s help, made sure that all Whelar’s research had disappeared, along with his concoctions. Hopefully I need never fear another syringe, except that Lise had kept just the one concoction, the one that made magic bloom at the slightest hint of pain. Might come in handy.

Another boom-shudder that I felt more through my feet than heard. I concentrated on the generator. It wasn’t hard, the damn thing took up half the room. Thick twists of metal cables snaked away from it, linking it up to the old Glow network, or what Dwarf had managed to convert before he died—something about power differentials or some such. Incomprehensible knobs and dials covered the generator, and Perak smacked my hand when I went to touch one.

Finally, after a double boom-shudder that made plaster drift on to Pasha’s head, Lise pronounced it ready.

She’d cobbled together some sort of linkage to one of the chairs in the pain room and I sat down and let her plug me in. She didn’t say anything but looked me in the eye and let me have the ghost of a smile so that I squeezed her hand.

Perak, his head obscured by the guts of the generator and screwdriver in hand, said, “Try it. Not too much. Just a little to start her off.”

I nodded and shut my eyes. It was still there, the black, calling at me, laughing at the edges of my brain. It knew it would have me one day, so maybe it decided to bide its time because it faded away, lurking. Watching, waiting.

I concentrated on Lise’s hand in my good one while I closed the bad hand into a fist. Gently, not too much, I ground out a bit of pain. I almost couldn’t bear the silence that followed, wondering if it was working, what I’d see if I opened my eyes.

“Try some more,” Perak murmured and my hand closed further, became an aching throb in my head.

Come on in, Rojan, you know you want to
. Yes, oh yes. I would, I promised it
. One day. One day, when I’ve paid for all, you can have me.
Until then, the black could piss off.

A little more, then more, then a little more. A gasp from behind me—Pasha. Then an “Oh, that’s pretty!” from Dendal which might or might not have meant a damn thing.

“You can stop now,” Lise whispered and I sagged back in the chair. I didn’t open my eyes as everyone milled around. They seemed excited, so I took it things had gone well. Then Lise muttered, “Shit,” under her breath, then louder, “Perak, that coupling down to Factory Six—”

“I see it.” They left, spouting incomprehensible jargon.

“You made fairies, Rojan!” Dendal’s papery voice, more excited than I’ve ever heard him. “Pasha, come on, let’s go and play chase the fairies.”

Pasha laughed and said, “Why not?” and then the room was silent except for the beat of my heart and the throb of my hand. I waited a while, then cracked open my eyes, unsure what I’d see.

Fairies. Oh, Dendal, you soft old bugger. Fairies indeed. I pushed myself up off the chair and caught hold of the arm to steady myself for a moment—all the time Lise had been working on the generator, me and Pasha had been flat out in the pain room and it had taken its toll. Not just on my body either, though I was feeling like a particularly frail eighty-year-old. My brain had taken to laughing at me in quiet moments.

Through the window, with its vista over Trade towards the burnt-out shell of the Sacred Goddess Hospital, fairies danced everywhere. Little golden bobs of light that seemed to twirl in my vision. Light. We’d made light for half the city, with as little power as I’d once needed for just a couple of Glow lamps. Not only light either—the boom-shudder of the Storad’s infernal machines faded away as a more familiar thump started, built, began to shudder my bones. Trade was running, and not a couple of factories. All of it, the whole blocky, ugly mess of factories was running. Not for long—I hadn’t given it enough. But it was starting, was running. Plaster floated down in a fine dust as the monster breathed again.

“We did it.” I couldn’t quite believe it—in my heart of hearts, where cynicism is written in large letters, I’d expected the generator to blow up, or catch fire or maybe fry me in my seat. I’d never expected it to work, not really.

“You did.” Jake’s voice was low, awestruck even. She stood in a shadow in the corner, looking out over the city like she’d never seen one before. She’d never seen Mahala like this, I knew that much. “I knew you would, knew you wouldn’t give in to the easy lie.”

She turned to face me and I struggled to find something to say that wouldn’t make me sound like a gibbering idiot, because she was looking at me like that again, like she believed in me.

“I wish you’d told me, because I didn’t have a clue,” was all I managed to come up with.

It got me a low chuckle and a smile and that’s about all I could have wished for. Oh all right, almost all, but I couldn’t have that so I settled for what I could get.

She moved out of the shadow, hesitant, and somehow fragile for all her swords and the new breastplate—without nipples, I noted sadly. The broken ice queen, who was trying her best to mend herself. I knew then what it was that I loved about her. She’d taken everything life could throw at her, things that could and had sent people mad, and she was fighting back, every step of the way. Looking at her now, in the light of our new fairies, I was inescapably reminded of the Downside Goddess, that the fight was the thing. Jake was her and she was Jake. It was the closest I’ve ever come to having a religious experience. Though not that close, because wanting to drag your Goddess off to bed to show her just how much you admire her rarely features in those. I think—I don’t have much experience in that area.

All of which meant that when her hand touched mine, a soft almost not there touch, when she reached up and kissed my cheek, it felt pretty much like being personally blessed by the Goddess and I stood like an idiot statue as she smiled like she believed in me and left me to myself.

The walk to Guinto’s temple was like a walk into another world. Almost every other Glow tube was lit and I’d forgotten what Under looked like in the light. Pretty shit, naturally, and the light showed all the grubby little secrets of humanity, but it felt like home again.

The streets and walkways were thronged with people. Happy people this time, and I took comfort in that. We were about to get the crap kicked out of us in a war we probably had no hope of winning but for now we had light, we had Trade running, we had heat and even some food. Still no bacon, a fact I mourned, but it was food nonetheless.

I went down another cramped stairwell to the right level and a party was in full swing between the temple and the bar opposite. Altar boys loaded a table with food while the bar owner dragged out a barrel of Goddess-knows-what alcoholic beverage. Upsiders and Down mingled with smiles on their faces, glad-handing each other. The animosity would be back tomorrow I had no doubt—hating people not like you is too much fun for many people to give it up for long. But for now, for tonight, there was a truce. They needed this night, we all did. One night where they could pretend that everything was going to be all right because the lights were on, food was on the table, because they could feel the comforting rumble of the vast machines of Trade powering up and maybe there’d be work for them in the morning.

Guinto stood at the top of the temple steps, staring out over his domain with a smug look. I still didn’t like him, was still suspicious. But I didn’t want to slap him any more, which I took as a sign I was becoming more mature. Or something.

He caught my eye and his smile slipped, but he waited for me and offered his hand when I reached him. I didn’t take it—I’m not that mature yet. That only brought a tiny snort of laughter and then he gestured for me to enter the temple.

We ended up in his room again, him behind his dark wood desk, me casually draped over a chair, going for nonchalance.

“A drink?” he asked. “I promise it’s not made of rats.”

“It would be churlish of me to refuse.”

He poured out some liquid the colour of blood into two glasses and we sat and sipped for a while in silence. I don’t think either of us knew quite where to start, so I took a deep breath and said, “How’s Abeya?”

He took another slow sip, considering. “Better. I don’t think she’ll ever be cured.”

I thought of Jake and how she hated to be touched, but was trying to get over it. How she was fighting back against everything her life had been. “I don’t think it’s a cure she needs, or that anyone who’s been through that can be cured of it. They need to learn how to live with it, if that’s possible.”

“Maybe. Or maybe the Goddess will help her.”

“Bet you ten she doesn’t.”

He set his glass down on the desk, prim and precise. “Why do you hate the Goddess so much?”

Ah, now that was a question. And an answer I wasn’t going to get drawn into. I lied a bit. “It’s not her that’s the problem. It’s what people do in the name of her that bothers me. Do this, be that or get damned for eternity. If you let us brainwash you into behaving how we want, we promise you’ll get biscuits and ice cream in the afterlife. It doesn’t allow for people to be
people
. And that bothers me a lot.”

“I noticed that.” He was still smiling that unctuous little smile, but there was something maybe just a bit less oily about him. More real, perhaps. “You’re still unholy.”

“I’ve never denied that. And I’m proud of it.”

He spread his hands in a gesture of giving up. “No, that’s true. And sometimes…sometimes even unholy men can do good things. I wanted to thank you—”

“Please don’t. A priest, liking me? I couldn’t live with myself. I’d have to go and kick some children or something just to redress the balance.”

Ah, now that smile was genuine, I was sure of it. Without any further words, we both stood and went to watch the party that was just getting going outside. Someone had started singing, one of the old songs, the ones Ministry banned years ago. A few wavering voices joined in, maybe fearful that even now they’d get it in the neck for knowing the words. Guinto pretended not to notice.

The altar boys leapt away from the barrel, looking guilty as hell. One of them still had a froth moustache on his top lip. Guinto pretended not to notice that either.

When I gave him a sideways look, he shrugged. “No-Hope-Shitty needs a night of hope. Just one night—it might be all any of them ever gets. I’m not so Ministry I can’t see that.”

He was right, too. In a place where hope was something that happened to other people, there was plenty of it about tonight. Irrational, yes, considering, but also needed, wanted. A hope that tomorrow might be better than today. A fool’s hope perhaps. It was all we had.

“In life, it’s always best to take the small consolations wherever you can.” Mainly, in my case, because there weren’t any bigger ones.

We both watched as the party progressed—Downsiders fired up their drums and the wailing, throbbing beat of anger in their music echoed across the walkway and far beyond, bringing in more and more party-goers. Some of the younger crowd began to dance, furtively at first. But when the guards at the end of the walkway took no notice and Guinto only smiled at them, their movements became more hurried, more frenzied.

Dendal appeared at the bottom of the steps looking happy and confused, with Allit in tow. Luckily he hadn’t brought Lastri. I wasn’t sure I could have coped with her just then, or I might have contemplated suicide-by-asking-her-todance. Erlat was with them, and that wouldn’t be much better, though she didn’t completely ignore me. I found myself wanting her to say something, anything. Even if it did make me blush in public.

“Pasha!” Dendal said to me. “Did you see the fairies? Aren’t they pretty?”

“Yes, I did, and yes, they are.” Looking at his wide-eyed wonder always helped dissolve a part of my cynical shell, and tonight was no different. It was impossible to be anywhere near him and not feel the hope, the wonder. I even smiled.