Fade to Black (26 page)

I looked around for the other two. A trail of bloody footprints led away, but I couldn’t know whose, whether they belonged to the guard or Pasha, and I had no power, or inclination, to use any magic for quite some time. That took care of one of them, but what about—

Click.

A cold, round hardness at the side of my neck, a shadow looming over me. I kept very still and risked a sideways glance.

“Stay right there. Don’t move or your head will be a big mess.”

Not Pasha. My only advantage: not another mage. Probably. I was in no shape for this, no shape at all. I wanted sleep, preferably with some booze first. I wanted my own bed and a friendly girl to share it with. I wanted to be out of this hellhole and home, where I knew how it all worked and I didn’t have to do this shit any more. I wanted to forget my magic.

“Stand up. Slowly, hands out.”

I stood, slowly as asked, my hands out, palms up. The Special moved round in front of me, but the gun stayed planted firmly in my neck. His face was hard to read beneath the blood from a cut to his cheek and a rapidly darkening bruise around his jaw. His eyes were steady as he looked me over, and then his mouth lifted in a grim little smile.

“I think Azama will be very pleased to see what I bring him.”

I tried to keep my eyes on him as the rubbish moved to our
side, tried to keep him distracted, cover the noise with my voice. “Not so pleased when I blow his sorry arse up.”

The smile turned to a grin and the Special jabbed the gun harder into my neck. “You think people haven’t tried before? Turn around and put your hands on the wall. Good. Now stay there while I deal with the matcher.” He said that last with a kind of relish, as though he looked forward to it. Maybe so he could boast to his friends about the day he killed one. “I want you in one piece if I can, but one move and I’ll blow your brains out.”

I did what he said. There wasn’t anything else for it, because I could hardly keep my feet for exhaustion. The gun left my neck and I turned, not sure what I was going to do, if there was anything I
could
do. Just in time to see Jake take him across the face with one sword while the other hovered near his stomach.

The Special staggered back into me with a scream and his gun went off, the shot wild but not wild enough. The bullet punched straight through Jake’s upper arm in a spray of blood and the force knocked her back into the wall. The weight of the Special was enough to bring me to my knees, but I had just enough presence of mind to grab the gun and smack him with it, right in the wound Jake had made. He slumped to the cobbles, unconscious, his face a bloody mess. I turned away, sick to my stomach and glad I’d already brought it all up so I wouldn’t vomit again with Jake to see.

She had her hand clamped over the wound in her arm, but
blood seeped freely between her fingers. Her face was deathly pale, her mouth agape as she looked at what she’d done to the Special’s face, none of her cool composure left. I could almost see the way her whole world was falling apart, everything she’d known and trusted slipping away, with only me to replace it. Fat lot of good I was doing her, too.

I took a step towards her but she backed away with a shake of her head. Her hair had come completely free and straggled over her shoulders and face as she hunkered down. Her legs gave way before she could sit and she sprawled forward on her knees, trailing blood.

I took another step and she snapped, “Haven’t you done enough?”

I winced at that. “No, not yet, because I haven’t found Amarie, and I haven’t set things right.”

She stared round at the alley, the ruined cobbles, the rubbish piled in one corner by the wind I’d made, the chunks of stone that had come loose from one of the walls. “How did you
do
that? I’ve never seen or heard of a mage that could do half of that. What are you?”

I crouched down next to her, careful, because she was skittish, on the edge of something – her sanity maybe – and she still had those swords. “Just a guy, that’s all, looking for his niece and finding too much else. Just a guy who hates using magic because of what it does to you. And now I’ve used it, I’ve gone too deep and it’s started.”

Her eyes narrowed, calculating again, but she still had a
jittery air to her as she sat back up and tried to bring herself under control. “What’s started?”

I rocked back on my heels, reluctant to put it into words, because that would make it real. But I owed her that much, the truth, as much of it as I knew myself. “I’m falling into the black.” Her blank look prompted me further. “Pain-mages, if they aren’t careful… well, they don’t use magic. It uses them, drags them into the black and in time crushes them. I used it when I shouldn’t, and went too deep. Further than I’ve gone before, way too far. I think Pasha’s doing the same, worse than me. I think he’s not in charge of Pasha any more.”

She looked round wildly, as if noticing for the first time that Pasha wasn’t here. I picked up the Special’s gun, but without bullets it was useless. Jake’s gaze stopped on the trail of blood, splotches of it blooming on the shattered cobbles like red flowers, leading away. To the keep.

The room was a dark and fetid mess, full of rat droppings and odd rustles in the shadows, but it was secret and no one followed us there that we could see. We holed up for a time, while Jake sorted out the wound to her arm by the light of a candle she found in a cupboard and I tried to sort out the mess in my head.

I’d always sworn it wouldn’t happen to me. I wasn’t ever going to use my magic past the superficial stuff: a quick track here, a subtle alteration to my face there. I think I’d worked out what maybe I’d always known instinctively, and Dendal
had hinted at. It wasn’t the magic, as such, that was the danger. It was using it out of emotion. Jealousy, hatred, love. Fear. The magic mingled with the feeling, each magnifying the other. So I’d kept myself apart – hadn’t I? – and not even realised why, not anywhere except at the back of my mind, where even I fear to tread. There are nasty things back there.

Jake found some tattered cloth, grimy with Goddess-knew-what. I don’t think she noticed. I don’t think she cared either. Her face was set into rigid planes as she tried to keep her cool, tried for the same level of control that had so impressed me when I’d first met her. An ice queen, I’d thought then, with hopes of a volcano underneath.

A volcano that seemed on the verge of eruption now. She wouldn’t talk, she didn’t seem to hear anything I said to her. Her eyes were turned inward on to some private hell, her face harsh with lines beyond her years. Finally, she was done with the bandage and eased the sleeve of the allover back on, over old scars and newer stitches.

She looked out of the small window, streaked with grime, that opened on to a view of the castle keep, the tower squat and forbidding. It was a long time before she moved or spoke, but I let her be, even though we didn’t have the time. Everything that I was and knew was sloughing away, just like it was for her. I didn’t want to be the prick that Pasha thought me, not around her. I didn’t want to be the cynic any more. So I watched her, and realised that it was her that had driven me to the magic. Not Amarie, and I dare say I’ll be damned to
Namrat’s hell for that. Not Pasha, or the hell around me, or the hope I saw in faces like Dog’s, in Dendal, even in Pasha before he’d gone into the black.

I’d done it for Jake, because she had a powerful need to do this, because I wanted it to be me that made it possible for her. Amarie was in there too, don’t get me wrong. I wanted to stop this for her, for the girls I’d seen in the hole. For Erlat, so she needn’t be ashamed of what she’d been. I wanted to stop it because it made me sick to my stomach. But mostly it was for Jake, for the way she’d smiled at me and let me in, however briefly.

Her head dipped from the smeared view of the castle. “Rojan.” She halted, her voice rasping, but caught herself and carried on. “Why did you? Why did he?”

She didn’t say what she meant, but I knew. I stood behind her and resisted the urge to lay a hand on her shoulder or run a finger along her neck. With a sudden, blinding clarity I saw what Pasha had meant. Would I forgo touching her? He had, and then I’d blundered in with my hoofing great feet and smashed it all for him.

Her back was straight and stiff, proud, with a hint of fear in the tremble of the shoulders.

“You don’t know?”

Deep breaths shuddered the contours of her allover and she shook her head. “No, no I don’t. It – I never—” She broke off and hunched over her crossed arms. “I don’t know anything since you got here. You changed everything, and not for the
better. Pasha said you were all right, he talked me into it, into letting you help, and now – I wish you’d never come.”

“So do I. But the reason I’m here hasn’t changed. Amarie is still in there. I still need to find her. I still need your help.”

“No, your niece needs my help, and so does Pasha. Which way?”

“Jake, I don’t—” I cut myself off. If I went in again, into the blackness inside, I might not come out. It was pulling me even now, a subtle ache of every muscle, a constant niggle in the brain. It wanted me. I wanted it. This wasn’t going to end well, but I had no choice. The remembrance of Amarie cold and alone, hunched into herself in the same posture as Jake now. The knowledge that I could help her. Maybe help them both, if only I had the guts.

I turned away from the window, from Jake and her request. It could be the end. It was all I could do to help. Shit, I hate when I have to stop pretending to be a cynic.

It didn’t take much. My hand was still swollen and I was fairly sure my nose was broken where Pasha had smacked me into the wall. Together with the leakage, the pain that throbbed through the whole place and made my head itch, it would be enough. I pulled out the picture of Amarie. It was tatty now, worn at the edges from the amount of times I’d run my thumb over the image, listened to the words.
Princess, Daddy
. Every time I thought I could quit, could go back Upside and pretend this never happened, that little voice
piped up. I couldn’t look at it any more. I shut my eyes and held the picture tight.

It came easier this time, slipped into me far faster than it had before. It knew the way, I’d shown it. It slid in as though it’d always been there. I suppose it had been, biding its time, waiting for when I was weak enough or desperate enough to give in. I couldn’t work out whether I’d been stupid, to use it like that, or whether I’d been a brave little boy. A fucking stupid little boy seemed about right. Too late now, though.

Not in the room any more, no guttering candle or the furtive rustle of rats on the make, no Jake at the window. There was no window. There was darkness, alleviated only by the chink of light from under a door. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t using my eyes.

The black blew through me like a midnight gale, streaming from my eyes, nose, mouth. It piled up in my head, wanting, needing,
pleading
to be used. I clamped down on it as hard as I could. A small bundle lay in the corner, a pile of rags that stirred gently then sat up. I drifted over to it.

“Are you there again?” Her voice was small, cracked from thirst or maybe fear. Odd, how she knew I was there when she shouldn’t be able to see me. “Have you come to take me home?”

“We’re close now. Very close. Hold on, Amarie. You hold on for Uncle Rojan.” She didn’t look hurt that I could see, and I took heart from that.

“I’ll try,” she whispered, and I knew then why this little
scrap had wormed her way into my heart. Not just because she was Perak’s daughter, my blood. She was a brave little thing, and she reminded me so much of Ma, who’d borne so much. I couldn’t save Ma, but I sure as shit was going to save Amarie, no matter what.

Something stirred behind me, and a growl oozed around the walls. Amarie huddled into the rags she used for blankets. One pale hand sneaked out and reached for mine but the fingers passed through my hand, leaving only the trace of a touch, like the waft of silk on skin. Footsteps sounded outside the door, accompanied by a rumble of voices.

“I have to go now, but I’ll be here, for real, soon. I promise.”

Amarie managed a nod. “If I pray to the Goddess, she’ll look after me, won’t she? I’ve been praying lots.”

“I’m sure she looks after her own.” Not really a lie. Just because I thought she was a mass hallucination didn’t mean I was right. I wasn’t going to tell Amarie my religious theories.

A key shot home in the lock and grated round. I willed myself back, away from the magic. It was harder than ever, maybe the hardest thing I’ve ever done, made worse because I had to leave Amarie alone. The heartbeat before I landed in my own body, the door opened and two men came in. The shock of who they were snapped me back with a slap to the brain.

I gingerly opened my eyes to the sound of Jake’s voice. She was prodding my shoulder with the end of one scabbard.

“Rojan, wake up, or stop casting or whatever it is you do.”

“Wzzft?” My mouth didn’t seem to want to work properly. All the muscles in my arms and legs shook as though I’d just sprinted a dozen miles. Every part of me throbbed with pain, my hand leading the orchestra with my nose as percussion. My brain didn’t want to be here, it informed me. If I just twisted my hand a little, I could fall back into the black and all would be blessedly numb, gloriously exhilarating, free of fear. It was tempting, so very tempting.

“Rojan!”

“Yes.” Agreeing seemed the best option.

“Goddess, Rojan, I thought you, I thought… I thought you weren’t coming back.” Jake twisted the scabbard in both hands, first one way, then back again. It didn’t seem a nervous thing, more like she was trying very hard not to be violent.

I picked my words with care, and was pleased when they came out ungarbled. “Sadly for us both, that is not the case.” I sat up and couldn’t quite bite back a groan. Surely fingers weren’t supposed to be purple with blue blotches? “Anyway, I wasn’t gone that long.”

Jake snorted a bitter laugh. “Not long? Look at that.” She pointed at the candle that lit our hidey-hole.

It was a good three inches shorter than it had been. I scrubbed my good hand up my face and tried to wake myself up properly. It didn’t matter, not really, though normally the thought that I’d been out three hours when it seemed like ten
minutes would have meant I needed a clean allover and a thorough scrub with disinfectant. What mattered was who I’d seen.