Rojan Dizon 03 - Last to Rise (10 page)

The spell was going to be something small but impressive. I’d discovered that rearranging air could have some pretty spectacular effects and it was just a little thing – use a blast of air to push him away, maybe rearrange my face from my disguise to look like his for a moment. Nothing much, just enough to show him what I was about, and perhaps shut him up about how mages were dirty.

I’ve never been one for restraint, though, and Dendal’s sermons on mastery and control couldn’t quite overcome my stinging ego, so what
actually
happened was he ended up blasted into the other wall, bringing down a shower of damp plaster and knocking a small and badly done picture of the Goddess face-first on to the pile of rat bones. The lack of restraint hadn’t done wonders for my head either. Little black spots kept swimming past my eyes on their way to somewhere.

The father glared up at me with his mouth open, and looked at his own face on mine. It’s handy for freaking people out, satisfying if petty. Another boom-shudder pierced the sudden silence, brought another shower of plaster raining on his head and made the hovel shiver like an old man with ague. A chunk of ceiling made a bid for freedom, smashed the picture of the Goddess through the rat bones, and I wondered just how safe this building was. The superstructure should be all right – barring a catastrophe such as me going batshit, it had been built to withstand a lot. But individual buildings, bolted on an age ago, bolts probably rusty, or synth-eaten… maybe not so much. I began a swift calculation of how far it would be to fall if the floor gave way. Too far for my liking.

But after a few heart-stopping moments of absolute terror, everything settled back to almost normal. The boy sat, gobsmacked and speechless, his gaze pinging between me and his father. I had less luck with the father as he got up.

I used my best weapon: my oversized mouth. “Yes, I think he’s a mage, and no, we aren’t dirty, or unholy or any of those other things Ministry told you to believe. We’re men and women who can… do a little extra. Bet you get a bit of work in Trade when you can, right?”

A moody shrug, wary but belligerent still. Then again, I was feeling pretty belligerent myself.

“Who do you think got the factories running again so you
could
work? So you could earn a pittance, yes, I know, but better than the fuck-all you earned while they weren’t running. Who do you think is lighting the streets? Helping heat this place so we don’t all freeze our bollocks off? It’s not much, but it’s something. I don’t know how much you know about what happened with the Glow, with the ’Pit, but most of it’s probably crap. The news-sheets print what their patron cardinals tell them to, and it’s bullshit. What isn’t bullshit is: mages make Glow. Mages power Trade. Mages might be all we’ve got to beat the Storad off and we need them.
Need
. Right now. So are you going to tell me how dirty I am, in which case I shall showcase some of my better spells, which you will regret, quite possibly over a protracted period of time? Or will you let me train your son so he can help us all out of this mess? If not, you let the Storad just walk in and fuck us all over, worse than even Ministry. Because they will if they get the chance. They care about Trade, about machines, and factories. Maybe they don’t eat babies, but they don’t give a shit about what’s down here, or who, and while they may not come down and kill us outright, I don’t see them coming over all charitable and feeding us.”

This little speech seemed to terrify the boy even more, but the father beetled his brows like he was really thinking. Another boom-shudder that rattled the walls – they were definitely getting closer together – gave a bit of added weight to what I’d just said.

The father’s fists clenched and unclenched a few times and his face creased but I got the impression it wasn’t me especially that he was pissed off with. Made a change anyway, and a good job too, because using my magic had made me a bit light-headed, except in the places it was very dark indeed. Things seemed to swim in and out, up and down, and I was very nearly sick on the floor. I tried to get a grip on myself, but only partially managed it. Something big and black swam past my vision and I was sure only that it had glowing eyes, striped skin and big, hungry teeth.

Concentrate, for fuck’s sake. Hold on, because the last thing we need is to demolish anything.
 

It took a few minutes, but given my state of mind I was happy to wait. The father finally seemed to come to a decision and I braced myself. It didn’t really help against what he said.

“Beat the Storad.” He snorted in disgust. “Yeah, that’s what they
say
. We all need to beat the Storad to survive, ‘our patriotic duty’, do what the Goddess tells us – what the priests want us to do, more like, save their skins for them. Cardinals are sending everything they can out through the Mishan gate, getting themselves out too because they can. Because they can pay and the Mishans aren’t taking anyone who can’t. Storad are coming, got to be strong, keep our heads down, pray for help, that’s what the priests are saying. The Goddess will help. But who else is helping?

“I volunteered, you know. Went up far as they’d let me, said I’d fight. And they said, ‘Sure, you can fight.’ Wouldn’t give me no weapon though. All the guards and Specials,
they
got guns. And I know we’ve got guns and to spare – I did a couple of days’ work next to one of the factories that’s making them. Saw some get shipped out to – well, not to
our
guards, let’s put it like that. But give a gun to a man from Under? No. They don’t know who we might shoot. They want us to fight, but those same cardinals, they aren’t letting us, except as the poor bastards that’ll be first to die. Well they’re going to find out, oh yes, sure as shit stinks, because I’m not the only one thinking this way: that this could be an opportunity. All right, so you’re a mage. And the boy too. You mages fighting for them, for Ministry? Or for us?”

I opened my mouth to say, “Not for Ministry, are you crazy?”, and then had to stop. Because I was, in a way. Perak
was
Ministry, Archdeacon, Mouth of the Goddess, though he wasn’t representative of all those cardinals. He had pretty much the same opinion of them as I did. I was still working for Ministry. When had I gone from hating them so bad I’d happily kill them all, to this? When it was my brother. It made this tricky though, so I did the best I could. My best is usually lying, so I went with that.

“Not for them, for everyone. Without Glow, you’re dead, and so am I, from the damned cold if nothing else. We beat the Storad,
then
we can fuck over every cardinal we can find, and I promise you I’ll take great pleasure in it. But will you let me take the boy? Even if I don’t, he’ll still be a mage and without knowing what he’s doing… it could be messy.”

A look passed between father and son, and it was hard to say what kind of look Perhaps a regret on the father’s part – that he thought he had more time before his boy made his way into the world, and that this wasn’t what he’d hoped for. On the boy’s part, it was part dread, part hope perhaps. I remembered the feeling vividly – knowing there was something different about me, something awful and wonderful, and not knowing how to control it, or even what it was. At least he didn’t have to hide it, not as I had when mages were illegal. A small consolation perhaps.

“All right,” the father said at last. “Cabe, you go with him. He screws you over, you come back home.” Then to me, “You’ll look after him, right? You said food too. Proper food.”

“Proper food. It’s not much, but it isn’t rats.”

Not yet anyway – it might come to that, but there wasn’t any point saying that part. And then, because I couldn’t get the thought of those rat bones out of my head, and because my conscience was getting to be a pain in the arse just lately, “Look, what’s your name? Quillan, all right. You take him there, say I sent you. And if you get hungry, you come visit your boy and maybe I can squeeze an extra place at the table.”

Simple as that, I had yet another poor sap roped into a life of hurting themselves for the good of everyone else.

Clearly, we were up to our necks in shit. Given that we were a hundred levels above the bottom of Mahala, that’s a lot of shit.

It was the next morning, though you wouldn’t have been able to tell from me sleeping or anything so sensible. Instead I was perched on a stupid rock far too high up for my liking, and trying not to look down, with varying success.

This city outgrew its walls a long time ago. What we had was mountains. Mahala had grown to fit the space in between like a fungus, spilled out over the top in a welter of concrete and steel. I wasn’t looking out over walls, and glad of it.

Outside, a pair of machines were firing out smoke and missiles. They were taking it in turns to pound out what looked like very big bullets. Each salvo began with a hollow boom as the engines geared up and ended with a shudder as the projectiles battered into the stone gates, and each time more of that stone chipped away. The machines belched out black smoke which twined among the buildings close by the gates, made every breath a choke and left its mark in sooty smudges over everything.

From where I stood – OK, crouched behind a handy outcrop, hanging on for dear life – I was almost directly above one of only two identical concessions to the truth that Outside did, in fact, exist despite Ministry’s protestations and probably disgust. Under the platforms of Clouds and Top of the World, just above Heights and Trade and tucked out of the way so it couldn’t be seen unless you were looking for it, there
was
a small wall. Small but very, very thick, between two arms of a mountain where they ran down to meet each other, making a natural chasm that just begged for a wall. On this side of it lay a wide space filled with abandoned crates and Glow-driven machines for moving cargo that sat dead and sad-looking in the rain. The remnants of the life-blood of Mahala, trade. Below us, in that small wall, a set of gates. Fifty feet high and maybe three or four thick, they sat at the end of a short tunnel, almost an arch, to keep them from prying eyes. From inside the city, anyway. On the other side of the wall and gate, further up a small valley that seemed it could barely contain them, was an army.

If it had just been men, we’d have been laughing. Mahala, with her coat of mountains, was nigh-on impregnable, and where the structure was weak, like the tunnels, we were sneaky. Sneaky was no damned good against what the Storad had brought with them.

I lowered the telescope. “How long, do you think?” The question on everyone’s lips.

Pasha twisted his fingers beside me, hissed in pain and screwed up his eyes. “They think a week, maybe less. So do I. That’s if the rest don’t turn up too soon.”

Pasha looked a bit sick, but determined all the same. I was pretty impressed by him being able to rummage in heads over that distance, and said so.

“Not so hard – it’s all they’re thinking about. That and, well, I know Dench so it’s easier to get a fix on him.”

We waited a while in the freezing dawn rain – the Storad had certainly picked their time, and I didn’t envy those men out there under canvas with sleet slicing down at odd angles so that it got under even the best coat. Under usual circumstances, just before winter set in would be a stupid time for a siege, but they had to strike while we were weak. If they waited till spring, when the snow melted off the pass, we might have built our strength back up. A risk for them but frankly, at that point, my money was on them. The really heavy snow of true winter wasn’t due for a month or more, and Pasha was right – it wouldn’t be a week before those gates were down. Not unless we did something about it.

I flipped up my coat collar, but as was usual the bastard rain managed to sneak its way in and down my back. As the day grew greyer and colder and the rainclouds thicker, what we were waiting for came.

Dench’s men hadn’t come back from their little sortie down in the tunnels, and he must be wondering why, or where, exactly – or maybe he knew
exactly
where. Maybe he was planning another attack, only it would be careful and precise if I knew Dench. We were hoping to beat him to it.

We weren’t using that tunnel we’d discovered, or rather not in the way Dench would expect. Because he knew about them and he wasn’t daft, so he’d have them covered if he knew where the entrances were, and I was sure he knew where the entrance to that one was because his men had been down it once already. Jake had been lucky – Pasha had talked to her before we’d made the climb up here. Dench hadn’t found the tunnel she was currently in as she looked for Allit’s machines. It was too far up the pass perhaps. That was the good news. The bad news was that not only were the new machines really real and really coming over the pass, they were closer than we’d hoped too. Jake had been all gung-ho about trying a bit of sabotage and mayhem, but Pasha had managed to talk her out if it. For now. He’d managed by telling her that if, or more like when, it all went tits-up she could use her swords as much as she liked.

Back down by the gates, Dench would have the tunnels he knew about covered against attack, by people waving weapons at least.

Pasha muttered under his breath as we waited, and waited. “Come on, come on, what’s keeping them?”

“I know this sounds like a stupid question, but can you smell bacon?” I could, again, but I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t my shrivelled stomach playing tricks on me.

I used the telescope to look out over the camp. Behind the nearest machine belching out missiles, behind the swathe of tents that might have been white once but were now a uniform mud-grey, there was definitely some sort of corral arrangement. It had some animals in it, I couldn’t really tell what – most animals I had only seen in books – but perhaps even pigs. Goddess’s tits, I’d have sold my soul to have just one, crisping nicely. I swallowed a mouthful of drool and told my stomach to shut the hell up.

Pasha gave me a funny look, but he sniffed and shook his head. “You’re imagining it. I wish you weren’t though.”

Another salvo, another boom-shudder that made me drop the telescope and hang on to the outcrop with my good hand. It really was a long way down. I tried not to look, but it was like telling yourself not to think about marshmallows – suddenly that’s all you can think about. The rock we were sitting on wasn’t very wide. It was also steeply sloping, and slippery, the freezing rain turning to slushy ice as it hit the rock, which wasn’t ideal for holding-on purposes. And there was me with only one hand that worked. Down there, where I was sure I’d drop, were a lot more rocks. Eventually, anyway.

So I was glad when it all kicked off – took my mind off a messy death. Lise’s cunning little plan started with what looked like mist drifting across the narrow valley the Storad were camped in. Only mist isn’t usually green. It didn’t take long for the gas to plume out of the tunnel, and we could hear the sudden choking faintly from here. Not lethal, the gas, but nasty, with a horrendous stench that seemed to coat all your airways. An invention of Lise’s and one she’d used on me once upon a time, in a different life.

I picked up the telescope from where it had rolled, balanced it on the outcrop and, taking my life in my one working hand, looked through it. Took me a minute to find the right place, but then Dench staggered out of his muddy tent, his moustache stiff with anger before he clamped a cloth over his nose and mouth. He waved his free arm about and men staggered to obey whatever orders he’d just given. They found it hard, because coughing so much you feel like your guts are going to come up does that to a person. Good luck to them fighting that gas, because that was all they would find.

“Well?” I laid the telescope down and grabbed back hold of the mountain.

A small wet crack as Pasha dislocated a finger, then a pained chuckle. “Oh yes, he’s distracted as shit. Not thinking about anything except clear the gas, check for attackers coming through it while they’re weak. He’s swearing at you too. Quite a lot.”

“Good. All right, let’s see if I can do this.”

It was a long shot, at best. I didn’t think it would work and it was going to hurt – a lot – but it had to be worth a try. Even if it only slowed the Storad down. Time was what we needed, what Lise needed to get her genius in gear and find something that would give us the edge in this war, to finish the mysterious gadget she was working on.

I let go of the outcrop – reluctantly, it has to be said – and got myself settled as best I could, leaning up against a wall of rock at my back. I kept my eyes on the Storad machines, which were quiet now, with their crews concentrating on breathing rather than firing. But the gas wouldn’t last long before it blew away, and then it would be back to blasting the shit out of the gates again. I didn’t dare try this while they were firing – crap only knows what would have happened.

It didn’t take much. With my hand as screwed as it was, I only needed a little twist for the pain to bloom, bright and large, in my head. And with the pain came power. It fizzed in my blood, sparked in my head and, as always, it brought its friend along for the ride. The black was getting harder and harder to ignore, but I did my best and concentrated on the machines.

Another twist, another burst of juice, another sing-song in my head.
Come on, Rojan, come in. Let it all go and sink into me. You know you want to.
I gritted my teeth against it, against the pull of the pain, the pull of glorious nothingness to fall into.

The machines were like nothing I’d ever seen before, but Lise had studied them as well as she could from this distance and she’d explained them to me in words of one syllable. I knew what part I had to go for, the easiest to find and rearrange. The long barrel that was pointing at the gates. Just a little rearrangement, nothing fancy. Mould the metal, pinch the barrel. Block those big-arse bullets. With any luck, it’d backfire too. Take that boom-shudder, you bastards.

I pulled the pain in, up my arm, sharpened it to a point in my head. A long way away, those guns. Maybe too far. The metal was thick too, but I started to get a feel for it, to persuade it that actually, what it
really
wanted to do was soften and bend. Using as little magic as possible, because falling over the edge into the black is not a good plan, especially when precariously perched atop a rock. Subtle stuff, and I am not noted for my subtlety.

Twist those fingers again, let the magic flow through you, take you. Make that barrel tie itself in a knot. Show everyone that you’re a god among men.
You and me, Rojan. Come on, fall in and show the world.

Sweat slicked my face, dripped unheeded into my eyes. Pain throbbed through me but I was past the point of it hurting, exactly. It was red-black warmth inside, an aching comfort, what I knew, like it or not. Pain was part of who I was, who I still am, will always be. Before, I’d always thought I was afraid of my magic because using pain was a stupid way to do things, because who wants to dislocate a thumb just to cast a simple find-spell? Not me, I was too smart, that was what I’d told myself. There watching the gates, I began to know the truth. It wasn’t the pain that had me scared. Maybe it wasn’t even the black I was afraid of, but the fact that I couldn’t give it up, any of it. That pain would become the core of me, and that I’d like it, need it.

It was Pasha who brought me back this time. It always was. His soft voice in my head, using his own pain for his own particular form of magic. I’d lost count of the times he’d pulled me back, given me a mental slap around the face and told me to stop being so stupid.

I blinked back into daylight, into grey clouds and freezing rain and sleet mingling with the sweat on my face, dribbling down my neck. Yet not fully back. Part of me stayed out there, keeping my black company. The edges of my vision were ragged with dark, tattered flaps of my sanity.

“Not yet. The sacrifice isn’t worth it, not for this,” Pasha said. I’ve often wondered since if he knew, somehow, how this would all end. His monkey face scrunched into a wry grin. “I think you screwed them good and proper though. Look.”

A glance down at the Storad camp and I didn’t need to see Dench’s face to know he was as pissed off as I’d ever seen him. He stumped around the front of the machine, jabbed his finger at the half-dozen men who worked the thing, and I could almost hear the shouts from here.

“That should give us a day or two,” Pasha said. “Might be enough.”

I didn’t care so much about that, because watching an ant-sized Dench have an apoplexy of rage was more than enough to keep me amused. I really should grow the fuck up.

Men clustered round the machine, noses and mouths covered, some with arms flailing, some stroking at a beard or with a flustered hand rubbing on the back of their neck in the attitude of stumped men everywhere.

“It’ll do,” I said, and caught Pasha’s fleeting look of worry. Not really a surprise. Laconic I am not, among many, many other things, but I was too tired, too sick with a pain that I wanted more and more, to say anything else.

There was no doubt in my mind at that point. We were screwed six ways from hell.