Last to Rise(16)

“Is it true?” she asked me in a whisper, as though she didn’t want to disturb the ghosts that lay thick about us.



“Which part?”



She gave me that sideways look again, like the worth she was assessing was mine. I probably equalled half a rat, by her sneer.



“The pain factories. They were down here, right, like the sheets said? The mages? Dendal said not all of the mages, but still, enough, right? And the Downsiders helped them, and the Little Whores. And they – I mean, Pasha’s a Downsider and a mage and —”



She yelped when I gripped her wrist so hard my knuckles cracked. “Shut the fuck up. Especially shut the fuck up in front of Pasha. You don’t rate me much, I get that. But don’t talk about that in front of him, don’t even think it because he can hear that too. Don’t think of him in the same thought as them – hell, don’t even think about him at all, especially not with that sneer on your face. Or you’ll rate me much, much lower. Or higher, depending on if you’re scoring on how much I will zap your arse, because I will. You know nothing about him, all right?”



Her face looked like I already had zapped some tender part of her. “But, I —”



“You know what you think you know from the sheets you saw every day down in the Stench, when people were done with them. The sheets tell you shit, excepting what a few cardinals want you to think. You know crap-all.” I took a deep breath. “Look, I don’t really want to go in there again, and I know that Pasha doesn’t, for reasons that would blow your mind if you knew the half of them. But we have to, so we’re going to. It would help if you kept your mouth shut about the rest until you have half a clue what you’re talking about.”



I’ll give her this: she shut up, though I could tell she didn’t like it. That sideways glance fell on me more and more often as we went, the lip never ceased to curl, but she carefully avoided looking at Pasha and every now and again a frown would crease her forehead like she was really thinking.



The closer we got to the castle, the quieter Pasha got, the more his shoulders hunched. I couldn’t say I blamed him – the place didn’t exactly hold happy memories for me either. Halina walked behind us, subdued and thoughtful.



We reached the massive bulk of the outer wall. The main gate – an arching monstrosity bedecked with statues of what had presumably once been great warriors, now blank-faced with time and synth – was still blocked off, but one of the smaller ones had been freed up and two guards lounged at either side looking bored. A glance at the official pass Perak had given us and we were through into one of the closes – a series of squares surrounded by buildings that looked like they should be falling down. Houses crammed into spaces too small, bleeding into each other in an incestuous orgy of bricks, gently rusting girders and stone blocks, broken tiles and crumbling mortar. Narrow, twisting alleyways snaked between the squares, taking whichever path they could in the tangle. Cracked cobbles were slick under our feet, but the air, while harsh and ferociously cold, was mercifully free of the sounds that had long reverberated around the stone. I could see the echo of them on Pasha’s tight-lipped face none the less.



“So where are these tunnels?” Halina asked.



A fair enough question. “Most of the ones we know about lead from these squares. Some are pretty short, and now only lead out into the ’Pit, where the city grew after they were made. But some – maybe six or seven, maybe more, maybe less, maybe none – will take us Outside. If we can find them.”



“Outside,” she said. “Doesn’t seem possible. I mean, they always said there was no Outside… but it’s got to be real now, right? Where else are the Storad coming from? It just doesn’t feel real.”



“It will.” Pasha shook out the map that Perak had given us – he’d had his men scour this castle thoroughly since the ’Pit had opened up, and especially since Dench had defected, more or less willingly. The old archdeacon had kept down here a secret from all but a few Upside, and except for a couple of shorter tunnels that he’d used and those that Perak’s men had found, no one knew where they all were.



So the map was sketchy, but it was better than nothing.



“Where do we start?” Pasha asked.



A few hesitant dotted lines on the map showed where there might, possibly, be tunnels. Fewer bold lines showed where some had been found and blocked.



“Perak’s had his guards searching, and they’ve found some, but he needs most of his men up elsewhere, at the gates,” I said. “Things are getting tricky down by the Mishan gate, so I heard. Let’s just hope we don’t get another riot, because that’s all we damned well need. Perak’s left us a few men though. They’re based in the barbican.”