Last to Rise(38)

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.





Chapter Ten





By the time we got back to the office, I was ready to fall on the sofa behind my recalcitrant desk, nurse my hand with a shot of something medicinal and perhaps sleep for Mahala. Sadly, I wasn’t going to get the chance. Again.



The office was looking the worse for wear. Soot stained the glass of the single window. Even Griswald the tiger, battered and grey with age and moths, looked tattier than normal.



Dendal sat in his usual spot in the corner and Pasha slumped behind his desk, looking even shittier than I felt. It been a long, hard week and it was only going to get longer and harder. We were living on the edge of the worst thing ever to happen to this city, and I think we all just wanted it over with. The Storad making it into the city might even be a relief. At least it would end this feeling of dangling over a precipice with nothing but sharp rocks to fall on to.



A single boom-shudder, weaker than the others. We’d taken out one machine but the other, further away up the little valley where I didn’t have a hope of reaching it, was still going. The only consolation was that the extra distance made the shots weaker. The narrowness of the valley meant that if they wanted to move it nearer, they’d have to dump the closer one over the lip of the valley. Time, we’d gained a little time. How long till they fixed the closer machine or gave it up as a bad job and dumped it? Who knew? Maybe a day. Maybe a week. Without a plan, it didn’t matter because we were going to be screwed.