Luckily the map showed us the route to get there too, because the castle was a maze of squares and alleys that looked like they went in the right direction before they doubled back on themselves. When the mages had been based here, it had all been closed off, and things added to make getting in, or around, harder – doorways bricked up, false doorways added, alleys that led to nowhere.
Halina’s silky shirt, and the way it was moving over the more obvious parts of her anatomy, was doing very strange things to me. To distract me, and in the interests of knowing who the hell you’re working with, and maybe having them not hate your guts for threatening them, and not just because she looked stupendous, I got talking to her. I had a hope that if I was at least nominally nice, maybe she wouldn’t think of taking those cardinals’ flunkies up on their offer. I was even fairly gentlemanly and asked her about herself, which earned me a knowing raised eyebrow from Pasha.
“I’d never been out of the Stench before you came,” she said in answer to my question. She kept looking at me askance, as though I wasn’t what she’d expected or the wastrel she’d been told about. She got over it. “Most of us never leave – never get the chance, which is pretty much the only reason I came with you. You didn’t tell me I’d be working for Ministry though.”
“Would it have made a difference? I mean, for the chance to get out, do something. Eat, for example.”
She cast me a sharp glance and thought about it for a while. “Maybe not. Pasha’s already taught me more about using magic than I’d managed to teach myself over the years.” She even managed to keep the sneer at him being a Downsider out of her voice.
“For someone who taught herself, you’re pretty good,” he said. He hadn’t seemed to notice her antipathy, though I knew he had, that it burned him inside, but he never let it colour his words. He wasn’t that kind of guy. “Wonder why we haven’t found any more women mages?”
A softening of her sneer at the compliment, and then a wry laugh from Halina. “I expect there have been more of us, but maybe they all fall into the black.”
“I’m not sure —” I said.
“Well, women tend to have more pain in their lives as a matter of course.” She laughed at what was probably a comical look of confusion on my face. “You know, monthlies and such. Don’t cross me then, I warn you, because that constant ache makes me formidable, not to mention touchy. You may not survive the encounter, for all your super-duper magic power. Then there’s childbirth. I mean, sure, the doctors have painkillers, but no reputable doctor would come Under, and especially not to the Stench. And there’s ways and ways of not going through it, but all the docs give you is something for the guy to take, and who’s going to believe them when they say, ‘Hey, babe, I’m safe’? Not me, that’s for damned sure. I’ve seen too many girls caught out by that one.”
I was pretty sure she didn’t see my guilty flinch – I’d been known to use those words myself in the, ahem, heat of the moment.
“I figured out about the black fairly early on,” Halina continued, “and no way am I going to just take some guy’s word for it. So, I got pretty good at fending off attention. I don’t want to go crazy popping out a baby. Dendal said he thinks that’s what happens to women mages, or perhaps that’s why we’re rarer, because we’re more likely to fall in. Best way to avoid that is to avoid men, the way I look at it.”
My first thought was, naturally, What a waste, followed by Well, that explains it. Then I gave myself a mental slap, because she was the most experienced of the mages we’d found, and we needed her. Which was quickly followed by the thought that she’d be one hell of a challenge, and that’s what I live for.
I must have given it away somehow, because she fixed me with a glare that promised I’d find out just how good she was at her magic if I tried anything. A reply to my own little threat earlier, and she meant it just as I had. So I didn’t try a damn thing. I certainly thought about it though.
By the time we reached the inner gate to the keep – as hideously decorated with faceless statues, and as black with synth as the outer gate – and the guards that Perak had left there, I was impressed by more than just her shirt and what filled it. She was sharp, very sharp, and she had a firm grip on just what she could and couldn’t do with magic. She also had a caustic tongue that made me feel like an optimist in comparison. In other words, I liked her – opinions about Downsiders excepted, and maybe that was just a matter of time – even if she didn’t like me. I felt pretty confident that she was going to be a great addition to our little gang of mages. Maybe that would be enough, but I doubted it. Even down here, we could feel the boom-shudders as a tremor through our feet, a slight shaking of the walls around us that made my shoulder blades itch.