Rojan Dizon 03 - Last to Rise (3 page)

I sighed inwardly – I had the feeling I knew what was coming, that I’d already lost this battle. I skipped over the predictable argument and went straight to the “What is it you want me to do?”

Perak’s smile became more genuine, and he looked less tired. “Go to the ’Pit. Find whatever tunnels you can, so we can have them blocked up. Lise has a plan in mind for one of them, if you can find one that opens out near where the Storad are camped. With a bit of luck, getting you out of the cardinals’ sight for a while may help too.”

“When you say ‘find whatever tunnels’, can I take it this means even you don’t know where they are?”

“Not all of them, no.”

“Perak, I really don’t know if I’m the best guy for this job. A structural engineer would be better, surely?”

“I need you out of the way
right now
, before you get bundled off and sent to Dench. It might give me some time to smooth things over with the cardinals, especially if I can tell them the tunnels aren’t a problem any more. Where better to be out of the way than the ’Pit?”

“Surely you’ve got men down there already? Men who’d be better at it than me?”

“Look, those tunnels are our weakest point bar the gates. I want to be
sure
, and for that I need to use someone I can trust. I wouldn’t trust a guard further than I could spit him, and the Specials… well, after Dench, trust isn’t something I have in them. You, Pasha, Dendal, Lise, Jake… you’re all I’ve got that I can truly rely on. It was Dendal’s idea. He said the thought of bacon would be enough to persuade you, and it’d make a handy training exercise for some of the younger mages.”

There was that word again, “rely”. Much as I hated it, it was flattering in a way.

“Well, I suppose – Wait, did you say bacon?” If there is one thing in this world that may, perhaps, persuade me there is a Goddess and she looks down on us with something approaching kindness, it’s bacon. Hot, crispy, fat bacon, all golden and crunchy around the edges. My stomach contracted painfully at the thought, and the remembrance of what I was actually going to be eating later – half a bowl of mouldy-looking mush, if I was lucky. If I wasn’t lucky, it would have weevils in it.

“The Storad had a supply train in yesterday. It brought about a hundred pigs, among other things.” Perak tried to suppress a smile. This was his big persuading move. Which was annoying, especially when you considered that it was, in fact, persuading me.

I stared at him while my mouth daydreamed. A hundred pigs. A
hundred
. That was a lot of bacon, and I’d have forked my own eye out just for one measly, glorious rasher. So it was my stomach rather than my brain that said, “All right, we’ll do it.”

It needed a bit of arranging, so I was left to my own devices for a while. Black shapes kept swimming past my eyes, the voice kept on in my head. I needed sleep, but my stupid conscience would give me lots of lovely dreams that I didn’t want to think about. It was starting to get dark, and that meant that at least one person of my acquaintance would be around, one person who might be able to help me with those shapes.

A frigid wind swept into the city, crept through every crack and crevice so I was frozen to the bone long before I got to Erlat’s.

Erlat’s house wasn’t far away from the lab, in the area Under Trade where the rich boys came to play if they were feeling a bit adventurous but not quite so brave as to try Under proper. It’s a haven for smooth bars that sell – all right, used to sell – overpriced “authentic” beer, set to the beat of dancers that at least probably didn’t have the pox and probably weren’t out of their heads on Rapture. You know, kind of fake shabby, just so people could say they’d tried Under and lived to tell the tale. I often wanted to take one of the patrons down to the real Under, but I suspected they’d last about half a heartbeat before they had no clothes on their backs, and possibly no lips to brag with.

Erlat’s place isn’t a bar, but home to one of the other reasons the rich boys came down to play – women. Over Trade, well, it’s all pious and Ministry-run, the Goddess looking over everyone’s shoulder to make sure they behave. Not exactly conducive to Erlat’s business. Frankly, I’m surprised the Buzz didn’t get more trade than it did, given that. But it got enough and Erlat’s house, being fairly new and full of “exotic” ladies from the ’Pit with that blue-white undertone to their skin and oddly alluring accent, had been a hit.

Kersan met me at the door with the news that Erlat wasn’t in, but also told me where she was and that he was sure she would be pleased to see me. So I took myself off to a small and discreet bar not far into the Buzz proper. Not too bad, this one: it had actual carpet on the floor, even if was so stained I couldn’t tell the colour. Or maybe that was the “discreet” lighting that meant I had to grope my way to the bar to find a drink.

I sat at the bar, tried to look into murky corners without seeming obvious about it, and wished Erlat had been at home instead.

The place wasn’t full, unsurprisingly. They didn’t have much behind the bar that didn’t have a good chance of making me blind, even in a place as up-market as this. Shortages were really starting to bite. For most of us anyway – Ministry men still had money, food, probably whatever they wanted. They were conspicuous down here the same way a slug is conspicuous in your dinner. Chubby soft hands waved money, more money that I’d seen in months, perhaps even years. The girls – classy and tastefully dressed but still working, and still wanting to get themselves fed – clustered round them.

A boom-shudder made the barman hang on to his glasses. One escaped and flew off a shelf to shatter on the floor. By the look of things, it wasn’t the first. One of the girls let out a little scream of surprise at the noise, but the drunken Ministry boys laughed and groped and promised them the world, promised them a way out of this, out of Mahala. The girls laughed in return but there was no mistaking the fear in their eyes – that this was the only way out they had, sucking up to smug pricks like this.

The barman finished sweeping up the glass and came over. He checked me out, took in the imitation-Specials look with an air that said he didn’t believe it for a second, before he raised an eyebrow inviting me to state my drink. I considered my finances, and what he had behind the bar. Screw it, you only live once. “Whatever won’t kill me.”

A conspiratorial wink, a quick check to make sure the Ministry boys weren’t watching, and the barman slid out a bottle. Something brown and rich-looking flowed into the glasses.

“I’m shutting up after tonight,” he said, as though to thin air. “Got nothing left to sell any more. Except moonshine that’d take the varnish off the saints and martyrs, and this one bottle. Fed up with Ministry coming to rub our faces in it, even more than usual too. Been promising the girls everything – not just money, no, the chance to get out, the chance to live. They don’t actually follow through, naturally. They’re just using it for a chance at free girls. And the girls are desperate enough to take a gamble that they might come through. Some of them, anyway.”

We raised a glass each, and I savoured the taste of real, good booze. It’d been a while. Then I saw where the barman was looking.

A far dark corner. Erlat was sitting with a guy, Ministry perhaps because he was smooth and fat and smug as hell. He patted her hand and she laughed, and she looked like she meant it too. I turned back to my glass of heaven and left her to it.

Erlat is… I find it hard to say what Erlat is, or was. One of the most beautiful women I’d never tried to take to bed. Not because of what she did for a living – I was no better and the only difference was I didn’t charge – but because of the way she had of unbalancing me, taking what I thought I knew about myself and the world around me and turning it on its head.

After a second swig, the barman and I weren’t alone as Erlat joined us, but he knew his job well enough and went off to count the pieces of glass left on the floor or something.

Erlat looked tired today, but still had the serene grace that I so admired in her. She’d seen more, endured more than I’ll ever have to and she took it all with barely a ripple in her calm – a smooth and polished piece of jade, reflecting you back at yourself.

I often thought she was the strongest woman I knew. No, she didn’t have Jake’s swords or the ability to slice a man to ribbons, but it was there, none the less. A strength that sometimes was hidden, but was even stronger because of it. Which was why, when my brain wanted to rebel, run amok and perhaps eat me alive, it was Erlat I turned to.

The basis of my and Erlat’s relationship was simple. No, I was not and never had been a customer. The thought of it made me itch, somehow, though she’d offered me freebies often enough, probably because it made her laugh when I stumbled out a “No thanks.” No, the basis of it all was that she could be herself with me, and I could be myself with her. We didn’t need to pretend, though we often did anyway.

I never heard the black at Erlat’s house, I didn’t know why, but we weren’t at her house today, and she was – I don’t know. Perhaps seeing her somewhere else, seeing her laughing at someone else like she did with me… the black was bad, a constant seething in my head, and it wasn’t going away, it was getting worse.

“Rojan, how surprising to see you in a bar.” Her mouth taunted me with an impish grin and she smoothed the dark hair elegantly coiled at the nape of her neck. “What brings you here?”

I watched her client shrug an expensive-looking coat on and leave. He looked shifty, glancing all around before he braved the door.

“You, naturally.”

Her smile became strained. “Can I have some of that?”

I handed over the glass and wondered what was wrong. Definitely something up. Erlat took a delicate sip, licked her lips at the taste and set the glass down. “Is he gone?”

“Who, your friend? Yes, he’s gone.”

A subtle alteration in her, the slight relaxation of her shoulders and her mouth didn’t look quite so set. “Good. Gives me the creeps, but luckily he’s just a talker, mostly anyway. Pays me to listen to him and laugh at his jokes. Pathetic, really. But I’m glad you came. It was you he was talking about today.”

“Well, why not? I’m a popular man.”

That got me a glare so I caught the barman’s eye and another glass appeared next to Erlat. The barman retired with his drink and kept an eye on the last few Ministry men down the end of the bar.

Erlat poured herself a good slug of the booze. She seemed to be gathering herself for something, so I let her.

“The Storad want you dead, you know that, of course? Of course. You stopped their previous plan, they don’t want you messing with this one. But that man, my creepy talker, isn’t Storad, and isn’t working for them either. But he still wants you dead or, if not dead, then in the hands of people you probably don’t want to be in the hands of. Good thing it’s dark in here or the evening could have ended before it’s begun.”

“He can join the queue.” I suspected I sounded far more blasé than I felt, but people wanting me dead was getting old, though no less worrying. “What’s his reason?”

One shoulder went up in a subtle shrug. “He’s not Storad; he’s Mishan. One of their ambassadors, as it happens. They’ve been coming in dribs and drabs, negotiations and so on. Ministry likes to keep them entertained, and we were hired. He’s got a fondness for my girls, me, so he’s kept on coming even though most of the rest are back the other side of their gate. This one is a liaison supposedly, between the Mishans and the Ministry. Trade, food, what we’re bartering, all that sort of thing. Including cardinals.”

“We’re bartering cardinals? I don’t suppose we get much for them.”

“For the Goddess’s sake!” Erlat slammed her glass on the bar, bringing a few drunkly interested looks from the Ministry boys down the other end. “Can’t you take this seriously?
Me
seriously? I’m trying to help you here, help us all, and all you’re doing is making fun.”

I shut my eyes and tried not to see the things swimming there before I snapped them open again and nodded a sorry. “All right. Mishan liaison wants me, dead or not so dead. What for?”

Erlat settled down again. “Some of the cardinals are, well, in talks shall we say? Not official ones either. One or two have already sneaked their families over, and they’re just waiting for the right time to run themselves, before the Storad get here. The Mishans want the best deal in return. Money, goods, guns – you name it, they’re trying to get the cardinals to pay it. But they aren’t forgetting that if the Storad win, the Mishans might well be next on the list of places and people for them to destroy. They’ve hated each other a long time, and until now Mahala has been the only thing that’s kept them from trying to rip each other’s throats out. How we made all that money, right? So one of the prices the Mishans are demanding in return for saving a few cardinal skins is you and Lise.”

“Lise? But —”

“But nothing. Lise is a damned genius and they know it as well as you do. If Perak wasn’t Archdeacon but was still inventing guns and all the rest, they’d ask for him too. As it is, he’d just be a bonus. The Mishans need someone to make things for them, or to show them how to make guns and whatever else so they can defend themselves when – and as far as they’re concerned it is a when, not an if – the Storad destroy us and start threatening them. And they want you handed over as an initial peace offering, so they can give you to the Storad if they need to.”

The only word that came to mind was “Shit.”

“Quite.”

“Does Perak know about this?”

“I suspect so, or at least he guesses. Jake’s mentioned it once or twice – I think she was hoping I’d find out what I could. I’ll tell Perak as soon as I can; at least he might be able to keep Lise safe.”

All of a sudden that bold cardinal’s snide words didn’t seem quite so much bluster, and Perak wanting me out of harm’s way made a lot more sense. So did getting out of this bar about now.

I slapped down the last of my money on the bar, took what was left of the bottle and offered my arm to Erlat.