Fade to Black (2 page)

I dumped her in the back of the carriage, behind the metal grille I’d had installed for just this sort of thing. She tried to bite my hand when I threw in her bag and slammed the door in her face. I suppressed a smile as she shrieked with rage, and used my spare juice for a little more magic. If you know what you’re about you can store it, for a while anyway. It didn’t take much to mould my face into an approximation of her father’s – one of my talents, my Minor, to change the way I look. Not for long, or very much, which
makes it fairly useless most of the time, but handy for getting a rise out of people when I’m feeling, shall we say, less than well disposed towards them?

She spat through the grille. “You bloody bastard!”

“Technically, no. But I can understand why you might think so.” I wiped the spit off my cheek and her father’s face off mine. Moulding my features like that always gave me a banging headache, and I soon regretted using it to satisfy my little urge for revenge.

I fiddled with the valves and flicked the glass vial with the Glow in it. Should be enough left to get her home, and me home after without going to the expense of getting another. That wouldn’t stop me charging her father for a new vial. I started up the engine with a yank on the frayed cord, wincing at the grind of metal as the gears mashed. I’d never quite got the hang of carriages, or getting them started anyway.

The Glow doesn’t work as well as the synth did, not on carriage engines. The synth had been engineered for this sort of thing, brewed up in an alchemist’s tubes to power the city, the factories, carriages, everything. Cheap and easy to make. A glorious achievement for Mahala and the Ministry which ran Alchemical Research along with everything else. Also a handy way to get rid of the mages who’d powered everything before, and had thus had way too much power for the Ministry’s liking. Shame synth turned out to poison people too. Glow was the replacement: clean, just as cheap and not given to killing anyone. They said.

The newer carriages managed the switch from synth to Glow better of course, but this one was old when they stopped the synth, and the conversion from one fuel to another had been a rush job. It made for a clunky ride, not helped by the fact I was too stingy to sort out the springs in the suspension; the upholstery, which had long since got ripped out in the back there; and the general dents, gouges and what-not from unhappy passengers. Not much of a ride, my carriage, but at least there
was
a ride. I took us out into the choking flow of rattling, creaking traffic that surged through Boundary and on towards the more exalted areas where her parents lived.

“Why are you taking me back?” She’d settled down into a morose, accepting huddle.

“Because I was paid to.” I thought about the electrified doorway. “Not for fun, I can assure you.”

“I’ll pay you,” she said, and I wasn’t surprised. It was a usual tactic.

I shook my head. “They’re paying me more than a young girl with no income could afford to match.”

“I’m shocked they even noticed I wasn’t there.” Her voice was quiet, suddenly sullen. All the fight had gone out of her. It usually did when they realised it was a lost cause, but the look on her face as I glanced backwards before I overtook a lumbering beer wagon made me pause in my standard responses. There was a panicked look to her, a thoughtful desperation behind her eyes. She turned away, maybe angry that she’d been caught feeling something.

“Your father was very concerned,” I managed to lie; though I was pretty sure it was the fact that he wanted to avoid any gossip or scandal that had prompted his concern. I’d half expected him to say, “What will the neighbours think?”, though he’d fallen just short of that.

“Concerned he won’t have anyone to blame now,” Lise said. “Concerned he’s lost his personal punchbag and scapegoat. Concerned he’s lost the money he paid to you.”

It took a tricky bit of manoeuvring to get us on to the road through the slaughterhouse district, which these days had nothing much to slaughter, and on to the ramp that led up to No-Hope and beyond, past the thundering factories of Trade, up to where the sun actually shone on people, to Heights and Clouds and beyond. The slaughterhouse was almost empty of any animals, and full of people making use of the space anyway. You could no longer tell where you were from the waft of blood and the stench of the tannery’s main consumable as you headed down Pigeon Shit Lane. Nothing much to slaughter meant nothing much to tan either.

Once we turned the corner on to the Spine, the twisting road that led from the rarefied heights of Top of the World right down to the sunless depths of Boundary, adverts shrieked from every shop, the little blinking Glow lights that powered them shining red and yellow against the planking. We got caught up in a snarl of wagons, carriages and walkers so I was pushed to find a way through. I managed by not caring about scraping the shit out of my carriage – it was too
screwed to worry about, with every last scrap of decorative brass rubbed or gouged off years ago. Other people did care, and when they saw I wouldn’t give way they usually made a hasty swerve to save their paintwork and the little brass icons of the Goddess, saints and martyrs that were so in fashion in these days. I took particular pleasure in knocking them off.

Glancing in the mirror, I saw what should have been obvious from the start. The fading yellow bruise, a sallower counterpoint to her dusky skin, all along the whole of the left side of her face, half covered by her dark swing of hair. She fiddled with her sleeves, ensuring they were pulled well down over her wrists, making me wonder what could be worse to see under the cloth than was apparent on her face. “Your mother?”

She laughed, a short snatch of cynical wretchedness. “She wouldn’t notice if the world ended, as long as she could keep finding new boy toys to play with. She doesn’t notice half the things
he
does, or if she does she doesn’t care.”

Somehow that didn’t surprise me. These days, not much does. I miss it sometimes. “So, just wait three months, till you’re sixteen, and then go. There won’t be a damn thing they can do.”

“I won’t last that long. It was only luck that I managed to get away this time. He can make me stay, if he doesn’t finish me off by then. There’s a lot he can do. He’s in the Ministry. If I don’t stay, I’ll end up in the ’Pit, dead first or not.”

That made me suppress a shudder. The Ministry were sticklers for appearances, that everything should be seen to be
perfect. They ran the guards, were experts in making people disappear, usually sending their corpses to the ’Pit to save their precious crime statistics, or so rumour had it. It would never be common knowledge: they ran the news-sheets too and guarded that privilege jealously. The Ministry ran
everything
, and had done since well before I was born, though Dendal says they didn’t used to be as paranoid. That had started around the same time as the synthtox, when they began slowly and subtly drawing the strings ever tighter round us, till now you hardly dared breathe without permission.

I wasn’t surprised that my background check into her father hadn’t turned this Ministry connection up. It was standard practice among Ministry men to hide who they were, even when someone probed as thoroughly as I did. Secrecy was almost like a second religion for them.

I should take her home. My personal motto runs: Mine is not to do and die, mine is to find the warm body and take the money. Motto number two is: Don’t mess with the Ministry, it’s bad for your health.

We all have our off-days.

Maybe it was the soft pinging noise inside my head – Dendal trying to get hold of me. Maybe it was the name that accompanied the pinging, one I never wanted to hear again. Or maybe I have a rebellious streak a mile wide. Never fails to get me into trouble. I swung the carriage round with a crunch of gears and headed back down the ramp, making a dray almost crash into the back of me in a welter of swearing
and skid marks. We headed for some of the less salubrious addresses, like mine. I liked the lower-rent places; it meant I could save more money for when I got out of this trade. Plus, people in those areas tended to mind their own business, if they liked their ears where they were. I wasn’t about to lose the cash for this job, but, contrary to popular opinion, I’m not completely heartless – provided it doesn’t cost me anything.

I glanced in the mirror again; Lise’s eyes were wide and wet with surprise. I coaxed the Glow to churn faster, skittering the carriage round corners, turning always downwards, towards the workshop of the little man who had made my pulse pistol. Dwarf ran a business making outlandish, and ever-so-slightly-illegal, instruments for a hefty price. He could use an alchemy-student apprentice with a talent for booby traps. I slowed the carriage to a crawl as we passed his workshop. I couldn’t afford to give up the cash for this job, and I really didn’t want to piss off her Ministry dad by not taking her back, but I could make sure she had somewhere safe to run to next time.

“I’ve got no choice but to take you home. I don’t mess with the Ministry, they don’t break my door down and drag me off to the ’Pit. But a girl with your talents should be able to blow a damn big hole in her father’s house to escape, right?”

She looked thoughtful, and I detected a hint of deviousness about the quick smile. Good – she was going to need it, but I reckoned she had the brains to figure it out.

“Next time you run away,” I said. “Come here.”

By the time I reached the shabby little rooms in No-Hope that Dendal laughably called his offices, it was mid-afternoon. The brief minutes when real, actual daylight shone through the windows were long gone, and the tatty signs proclaiming our business looked forlorn in the almost perpetual half-light of dim Glow globes that had seen better days. Dendal’s sign said
MESSAGES SENT IN MAHALA,
6
M. MESSAGES FURTHER AFIELD,
6
M
+ 1
M PER MILE. OTHER SERVICES ON REQUEST.
He’d left out the part about magical services only after a long and detailed argument. Mainly about how I didn’t want to be arrested for being a mage. It’s the only argument I’ve ever won against him. My sign said simply,
PEOPLE FOUND, REASONABLE DAILY RATES, DISCRETION GUARANTEED.
Both the signs were rather incongruous, as Dendal had never got round to replacing the bright red flashing sign over the door that stated brazenly,
MA’S KNOCKING SHOP,
CHEAP BUT CHEERFUL.
We still got the occasional confused customer.

Still, in my rather shady line of work, an address to work from got you out of hired-thug territory and into the licensed-bounty-hunter area. There isn’t much difference, I’ll grant, except you tend not to get arrested so much in the second category. Being arrested was a somewhat permanent position in this city. Basically, it often meant you were dead. I didn’t want to be dead. I still don’t.

Dendal was happily absorbed in his work, surrounded by candles of every size and colour. Not to mention a few shapes that would make an acolyte blush. If he’d used his magic he could have lit the room up brighter than noon at Top of the World, that rarefied place at the pinnacle of the city that soaked up sunlight and blocked it for us lesser mortals. Unfortunately for him, and me, our magic wasn’t something you spent lightly. Unless you were kinky that way. Instead, he was busy writing, probably a missive for someone who’d not learned their letters, which was most people down here. That’s how he earns most of his cash. The magic is a sideline, and one we have to be both discreet and careful about using.

I handed the pay-purse to our secretary, Lastri, and considered asking her to make me some tea, but changed my mind. Lastri always answered the request with a look that seemed to intimate she’d rather stab me.

She raised a cool, dark eyebrow my way and the corner of her mouth slid up in that superior smile that always made me
wonder why Dendal kept her on. She must be one of the few attractive women I’ve met that I’ve never tried to talk into bed. She’d eat me alive and spit out the bones to use as toothpicks.

“You have a message,” she said with a pleased purr that I didn’t like one little bit. “Several, actually.”

I waited for her to carry on, but she pinched her lips together and wrinkled her nose. Not out of reluctance to share bad news, of that I was sure. Lastri had never quite approved of me. I felt a need to twist her a bit, make her say it when she so obviously wanted to string it out and make me squirm. “If you’d care to share?”

“Message number one is from Val.” Ah, yes, the delectable but not exactly bright Val. Nice line in massages, great pair of legs and tonight’s lucky lady. I had the whole thing planned, the food specially smuggled in from the takeaway down the road, the wine that was stronger than it appeared, even had a scented candle I’d pilfered from Dendal’s collection. Not that I’d need those things, but you had to make it look right.

“It reads, ‘Screw you’.”

Ah. Well, not entirely unexpected. At least there was still Nirma—

“Message number two is from Nirmala.” Lastri was trying hard not to grin by now. “It also reads, ‘Screw you’.”

Sela wouldn’t let me down. Long-term girlfriend, for me that is: must be at least two weeks. Only Lastri looked insufferably smug. She calls me the Kiss of Death, and I am that
to any fledgling relationship. Any hint of it taking wing, I kill it. Not intentionally, not even consciously, but I manage it just the same. My trouble isn’t that I dislike women or enjoy messing them around. It’s just I like them
all
, and the chance to flirt is one I can never pass up. Except with Lastri. I’m not irretrievably stupid or suicidal. “Message number three?”

“Message from Sela reads, ‘Screw you sideways’. The PS reads, ‘Hope you like how we decorated your rooms. I’m sure you’ll like the abstract art. Blobs of red paint are very in this season, but may clash with the curtains’. Seems like your diary is suddenly free, Rojan.” Lastri was openly grinning now.

“Anything else?” I kept myself as still as I could, given the circumstances. One hint of weakness and Lastri would never let me forget it. Besides, no point dwelling on it. Only I would, if I didn’t do something to take my mind off them. All of them. How the fuck did they find out about each other? It didn’t matter. What mattered was that my rooms were splattered in paint and lonely time stretched ahead with little to fill it but work. I was going to miss them. All of them.