Pasha looked surprised when I offered to go first, but that was purely a face-saving move. I’d have at least five minutes to have a little gibber of terror and relief at the bottom while the lift fetched the next person. I managed to pull myself together by the time Halina stepped out and looked round with a wide-eyed stare and a wrinkled nose. The smell of synth was pretty strong down there, enough that it felt like it was stripping the inside of my throat of its skin.
While we were on our own, as Pasha came down in the jolting lift, Halina gave me a sideways glance that spoke volumes, mostly of a series of books called “You Look Like Something That Just Dropped Out Of My Nose, Only With Less Charm”.
She was looking pretty fine. Lastri had dug out some of her old clothes, or so she said. I really couldn’t imagine Lastri in this little number though – a clingy shirt in a blue bright enough to have an eye out, cinched at the waist to show off Halina’s figure in all the very best ways, and a pair of close-fitting trousers that brought me out in a sweat.
She’d not forgiven me for luring her away from the Stench under false food pretences; at least I assumed that’s why she kept giving me the old side-eye. Then again, she and Lastri had been very chatty, and no doubt Lastri had given her a highly colourful and probably not especially accurate character assassination of me and my ways. I say inaccurate – Lastri only knew the half of what I got up to, so any assassination attempt would be manslaughter at best.
What Halina said in the end, given that, came as a surprise. “Dendal says you’re pretty good at this magic. Says I should look at what you and Pasha do, and try to follow it. But he said a lot of stuff, and not all of it made sense.”
“That sounds like Dendal. I —”
“He also said I should ignore any of your attempts to take me out or sweet-talk me. I’m inclined to agree with him on that point. So no funny business, all right?”
I tried the old faithful, never-fails smile. “Business will be strictly unfunny, I guarantee. I have sworn off women.” I tried to intimate with only facial gestures that I would fall off that wagon at the first hint of provocation.
My smile failed: she looked distinctly underwhelmed by my promise.
“And don’t you forget it,” she snapped. “I’ve had two cardinals have their flunkies ask me to lure you somewhere dark and out-of-the-way already. I’m no fan of the Ministry but I’m not beyond actually doing it, if you piss me off.”
It looked like I was behaving for the time being, which was a shame because there’s nothing like a flirt to take your mind off the damnfool thing you’re about to do.
We made our way out into the ’Pit proper, a maze of streets and scrunched-up buildings that hid behind a curtain of the constant rain – run-off from above which never stopped, which ran and dripped and pooled in glorious decay among the roots of Mahala. Towers loomed over us, dark and forbidding now, just shells that held up the rest of the city above, with girders criss-crossing, buttressing. No one manned the cages that dangled uselessly above us, which had once whirled and clanked in a complicated dance as they took people where they needed to go. The ’Pit was a husk, empty of life and sound and all the vibrancy that had once made me think I could quite enjoy life down here, even if said life was cheaper than shit.
Pasha didn’t say anything – this was home to him, or had been, and now it was nothing. His face lost that contented, secret little grin I’d got used to just lately and he looked sallow and gaunt under the sparse rend-nut-oil lamps that lit the street. He took out a floppy old hat I recognised, slapped it on to protect him from whatever the hell was in the water that dripped on us, then shoved his hands in his pockets, hunched his shoulders and went on.
Halina had no such qualms. She looked about with calculating eyes, maybe assessing the value of everything she saw. What she did see wasn’t much – the Downsiders had abandoned their homes when the ’Pit was unsealed, gladly, but they’d brought everything that they could up with them. All that was left was what even they didn’t think was worth anything.
We trudged the streets, heading for the tunnels, the few that we knew of. For the castle that lay at the heart of them, at the heart of Mahala. Halina stopped dead when the castle loomed out from behind a huge tower that supported the weight of the city above it. From here, mostly all you could see was the curtain wall, with the keep rising up out of the top like some demented bread that had been overloaded with yeast, but the sheer size of it was enough to batter the brain into submission. I’d seen the castle before, and wished I hadn’t, so Pasha and I merely carried on. Halina ran to catch up after a while.