Fade to Black (33 page)

“Do what you can, all right? As many as you can. And if this doesn’t work – you look after Jake for me, for us. She’ll need it.”

Azama was a heavy weight against me, but I managed to drag him over to the office, where Pasha lay, Whelar hovering over him with an anxious frown.

“Rojan, what are you going to do?”

“Get out of here, Dench,” I muttered. “You can talk your way back Upside. Take Whelar, because doctors might come in handy. I’ll deal with this.”

A short nod, a moment to undo Whelar’s cuffs and drag him away protesting, and then it was just us three.

Pain came through my hand, my arm, pulsed through my shoulder as I flexed my fingers again. Not enough. It wouldn’t be enough, nothing would be, not now I’d got rid of the Glow.
This was just the start of how I’d fucked it for everyone. That didn’t matter. I’d promised, and whilst previously my promises were made of nothing but air and quickly forgotten intentions, I intended to keep this one.

“Bet you wish you’d still got it, don’t you?” Azama whispered. “Bet you wish you’d not destroyed it all, all that power, all that glorious want in your head.”

I glanced at him, at his hot, dark eyes, the vicious glee. “Bet you’re glad that concoction of Whelar’s started to wear off, aren’t you? Not for long.”

I punched him, hard as I could, straight in the face. My fingers, abused, bruised, broken and ready to give up, screamed at me, but that didn’t matter either. In fact it was good, it was right, it was what I needed. That and what I could suck from Azama’s pain. In fact, it felt so good that I did it again. Pain was a memory, a bright light on the edge of the black of my mind. It might be enough. I hoped to fuck it was, because I was going to be my father’s son, just the once.

First, Azama. A quick jolt from the syringe to stop him undoing what I was going to do, and then I concentrated on his face. A small rearrangement. It didn’t take much – we’d always looked alike. Then I was looking in a mirror, at my own eyes, my own face. A little ragged at the edges just now, but not bad-looking, if I say so myself. Not for long though, because just as soon as all the Ministry men saw what I’d done to the Glow, they’d be looking for a face just like this one. A
last touch, as I’d threatened, a tweak of his vocal cords so that anything much past a hiss would be beyond him. No worming his way out with the Voice.

More gunshots, closer now. Other voices, swearing when they found the Glow room a maze of broken glass, calling out, ordering. A voice above the others, strident and used to being obeyed, shouting, “If you find the bastard, kill him. You’ve all got a picture, and you’ve seen what he’s done. Azama was clear: if he won’t join us, we kill him. No fucking about, bullet to the head, a second to make sure.”

Sweat popped out on Azama’s forehead as he realised what I’d done. I patted his cheek. “The face won’t last long. But long enough, I think. A necessary evil. I bet you’re glad I’m as much a bastard as you are, aren’t you?”

He tried to talk, and I think it was “Kill you too,” but it was hard to tell.

“Probably,” I said. “But I think it’ll be worth it.”

Pasha’s face was grey and wan, slicked with cold sweat. He was barely holding on, but it was all right, because I was going to save him. I shut my eyes and concentrated on Perak, on Dendal and Upside and all that I thought I’d known before, filled my mind with the thought of being there, back in the office with the smell of Griswald and a cantankerous desk and a lonely diary with no women to fill it. I listened to the black, to the sweet song that told me what to do, and with no further thought to consequences, I let it do what it would.

When I woke up it was dark, and not just because it was night either. For a head-spinning moment, I couldn’t decide where I was, even who I was. No Glow globes lighting the room, or the walkways outside the window. A candle set on the bedside table was the only light, and someone moved in the flickering shadows. A cool hand on my wrist, another on my forehead.

“About time you woke up.” A cool voice to go with the hands. When my eyes adjusted, I saw it was the nurse. The one who, what seemed like several years ago, had flirted while she took me to see Dr Whelar and let me promise her dinner. Not flirting now, but she had kind eyes and a soft manner that was just what I needed.

“It was a long and very trying day.” I flexed my broken hand, and winced at the throb, at the pull of splints and stitches that obscured my fingers.

The smile was kind too, when it came. “That wasn’t today. Or yesterday either, for that matter.”

I sat up and found I was in a bed, but not one I knew. The room was bare, blank of any decoration, unless you count bars on the windows. Or Dench leaning against a wall. Not very decorative, but a welcome sight just the same.

He pushed himself off the wall, away from the window where he’d been contemplating the view. “You’re looking pretty good, considering you’re dead. I was quite surprised when the news came in, that the Ministry had found and shot you, since you were already in the hospital.”

“Ah, yes, well—”

“Mind you, it stopped a lot of the talk about having you executed. Seems the Archdeacon went missing too, which helped. Funny, that.” He raised an eyebrow my way and I licked at dry lips. “But maybe not all that surprising, considering. Lots of people went missing Downside the last day or two. Might take us months to work it all out.”

The nurse glared at him and made a show of inspecting the splints on my hand. Dench paid no attention to her, but came and sat in the single chair next to the bed. His face was more careworn than ever, but the moustache bristled nicely. I think he was pleased, but trying not to show it.

“You want to tell me what happened?” he asked.

The nurse stopped fiddling with the splints, but she kept close by. I got the feeling she disapproved of Dench, or maybe of his Specials uniform. An unexpected ally. I got up, a bit
shaky on my feet, and went to look out of the window. Cold air ghosted across my bare back and chill bumps rippled down my arms. No Glow anywhere, not even at Top of the World. No lights, no carriages chuntering along the Spine, no glaring advertisements, no distant thump and rumble of the factories. No lights, no noise, no life. Just the glint of moonlight on a dark and dying city. I laid my forehead on the glass. The Kiss of Death. Way to go, Rojan. Dench might be pleased, but I couldn’t bring myself to feel anything other than disappointment, in myself and everyone. Talking further than trivialities seemed beyond me, because there was too much else I wanted to let out, and didn’t dare. “Not really. You want to tell
me
what happened? Amarie?”

“Safe and with her father, who’s on the mend. Pasha’s doing as well as can be expected.” The nurse muttered something at that, but Dench ignored her.

I stared back out of the window, not wanting to ask, but needing to know. “Jake?”

“Jittery thing, isn’t she? With Pasha – where else? That isn’t what you want to know.”

The cool hand on mine again, the nurse murmuring that I should get back to bed, that I might still lose the hand, had lost a lot of blood.

“Did I stop it?”

A pause full of something; perhaps caution, maybe regret. Maybe something else. “Yes. No more Glow. What’s left up here has been ordered to be saved for emergencies. Special
announcement by the Ministry. Along with the news that they’re deliberating which cardinal gets to be the acting archdeacon, and that Alchemy Research is working flat-out to try to find a replacement. No official news on what the Glow was, but Downsiders are everywhere. It won’t take long. My Specials are busy, along with the guards. Looting, rioting, you know the sort of thing. We need a new archdeacon fast, and a new power source faster.”

I turned back from the window, from the darkness I’d made, and let the nurse sit me on the bed. “Can I see them?”

“Who?” Dench looked sympathetic, but there was a steely bent to the way he held himself that didn’t bode well.

“All of them. Perak, Amarie – I never actually met her, you know? And Pasha, Dendal. Jake.” Especially Jake.

“Rojan, you’re dead. Officially dead; I identified the body myself. No, you’re here until we can work out what to do with you. Right now, we’ve got bigger things to worry about. Like getting people food and warmth and light. Once we’ve got that done, most of the problems will fade away. Perak’s working on it, and there’s a good chance he might make Archdeacon, in which case we might be all right. Better than a lot of the alternatives. Dendal’s helping him, but until they figure something out we’re screwed. Royally. And so are you. Make your face someone else’s, slide out into obscurity. I can get you Outside; maybe you can find another city, somewhere else to live.”

When I looked up there was something like sympathy in
his eyes, but I knew he couldn’t give in to it. I’d screwed with his city – and his Goddess too, probably. I couldn’t find anything to say, and he left without another word. I couldn’t work out whether he hated me, hence the bars on the windows, or was pleased at what I’d done, hence the fact I was still alive. Everything was a whirl inside me.

The nurse huffed about the room after Dench left, checking my pulse and my temperature with her cool hand. I remembered her name through the haze: Lilla.

When her hand rested on my forehead again, I pulled it away and held it in mine. Her eyes, the kindness in them, were all I had to hang on to, the only vestige of my former life. I needed something and I didn’t know what. “Does the hospital have a temple?”

Lilla tilted her head, and I had to look away from her eyes, from the cool pity.

“I’ll help you get dressed,” she said, but I shook my head, oddly ashamed, and managed by myself.

The windows were barred, but the door wasn’t locked. I soon found out why, but I took Dench’s advice and changed my face, just a bit. The hallway was as dark as the room, and lined with Specials. I kept my head down and followed Lilla, past dim doorways and silent wards, past the nurses’ station, a small haven of candlelight, starched uniforms and brisk efficiency. Past sidelong stares, knowing looks and whispers behind hands – and doors with grilles on them and heavy locks. Not the Sacred Goddess Hospital.

Lilla stopped by a door like half a dozen others we’d passed. The interior was dim, as everywhere else, but a candle had been set on the altar, and the moving shadows on the mural made the Goddess look alive. Lilla went to turn away, but I grabbed for her hand. Before I’d always, consciously or unconsciously, tried to stay apart, alone, even when I feared that same aloneness. Now it was the last thing I wanted. “Stay?”

She hesitated with a frown, but in the end we walked to the altar together, past the saints and martyrs and their blind, plaster eyes. The mural was one of the pretty ones, all flowers and sodding birds and the Goddess looking sweet and a bit constipated as she offered her hand to the tiger. Guilt and sacrifice.

I looked down at the splints over my fingers. Still guilt and sacrifice, and now I couldn’t look at the mural, couldn’t look at her face without seeing the other one, down in the ’Pit, all blood and violence and contempt.

“Rojan?” Lilla’s voice was small in the space before the altar. “Rojan, forget Dench. You did the right thing. For everyone.”

“I didn’t do it because it needed to be done, or because it was right, or wrong, or for the Goddess. I did it because I was afraid.” I flexed the fingers and thrilled at the run of magic when they hurt, at the memory of it all pouring through me and knowing that I wouldn’t do it, wouldn’t be like him, even though I was. That I’d made a choice, for good or ill, and could only hope it was the right one. The words tumbled out, but I wasn’t talking to Lilla. “I’ve always been afraid, of my
magic, of what it’ll do to me, afraid since I was ten and he left us on our own. Mostly I was afraid I’d be like him. I always took after him more than I did Ma. So I made sure I couldn’t be, and became like him while I did it. I did it because I was afraid, and I’m still like him. I did the necessary evil, and made sure he died, even if I didn’t kill him myself.”

Lilla squeezed my good hand. She probably had no idea what I was talking about, but she didn’t let it show. “You got rid of it, you stopped it. You did the right thing.”

“Is it? Was it right? All these people, no Glow, I—”

Lilla cut me off with a stern nurse-in-charge-of-patient look. “You weren’t the one to get Pasha patched up, or those kids. You didn’t see…” She shook her head with a pained look to her eyes. “I don’t care about the rest, not yet. The Ministry have plenty of Glow stored, I’m sure. And plenty of everything else. Bet my boots
they’ve
got enough food for months.”

“But—”

“Enough. Sod Dench and his ‘you’re dead’. Come and see.” The smile was as dimpled as I remembered, and did nothing to me except make me want to sit here for ever, where it was quiet and no one knew who I was or what I’d done. No one except Lilla.

She led me out of the temple, and I had no strength to resist. I was sure I could feel the Goddess’s eyes on my back. Great: eyed up by a figment of my imagination. Lilla stopped at the first door and nodded her head towards the ward. A dozen beds, each with three or four small bodies curled up
under blankets. Two Specials stood silent and watchful just inside the door. As we watched, one of the kids whimpered in their sleep, and another curled into them, a soft hand comforting, understanding what only they could know, what they never should have known.

“You did that,” Lilla said. “If you hadn’t done what you did, they’d still be there.”

Because they were worth more, to me. Because
Jake
was worth more and no one should ever have to go through what she and Pasha had. Yet all these people Upside, hundreds of thousands, more maybe, without Glow, without trade or any way to make a living… were they worth less?

“Come on, you need to get back to bed.” Lilla pulled at me and I followed her, not a little bewildered and still feeling oddly floaty, as though I was no longer part of the world around me. The only solid anchor I had was Lilla’s hand in mine and I hung on to it, bizarrely afraid I might fly away otherwise.