Last to Rise(5)
When we crossed over up into No-Hope and she broached the mage subject, Halina stopped dead halfway across a walkway so that it jiggled and swayed and I almost had a heart attack.
“Is it true, then? About the mages? I thought it was just me,” she said while I hung on surreptitiously and tried not to look like I was about to cry. It was a long way down from there, even at the arse end of No-Hope. Long enough for some serious screaming before I hit the bottom. Maybe I’d rattle around a few of the safety nets first but I didn’t trust them to save me. They were old and frayed and had never been efficient to start with because people had a tendency to bounce. They’d just give me more time to scream.
“Which bit? Look, can we get across?” I inched my way forward, but she made a grab for me that had the walkway lurching under my feet. My initial reaction – a yelp of terror I kept clenched behind my teeth – wasn’t helped by another boom-shudder from the gates, or the fact that the walkway was black at one end from the fires that had raged here during the recent riots. For the second time that day I was glad I hadn’t managed breakfast. I stopped with the surreptitious and just hung on, acutely aware that hanging on would do me no good whatsoever if the walkway decided to become detached from the scabby buildings it linked.
Halina raised an eyebrow and a corner of her mouth into a sneer. With a quick twist of something I couldn’t see, she levitated off the walkway. That was rubbing it in. I ignored her, took the deepest breath I could manage and got across to a more solid-seeming stairwell, where I waited for the world to stop swimming in front of my eyes and be sensible.
She floated over to me with a grin that would have floored me if I’d been in any proper state to appreciate it. Made funny things happen to my stomach too, or maybe that was still the thought of the drop that had so very nearly been mine.
“What’s the matter with you? And you didn’t answer my question.” She landed lightly on the stair above me. What I wouldn’t have given for that ability – I’d never have had to fear a long drop ever again.
“Nothing. What was the question again?”
“I see the news-sheets, you know. Even down in the Stench we see them, once everyone else is done with them. I can read too. Is it true, about the mages?”
She sounded unbearably proud of that reading, but hey, why not? Few enough Under could read anything other than their own name, if that – that’s how my colleague Dendal made his living: reading and writing for those who couldn’t. The news-sheets were sponsored mostly by the cardinals and therefore spouting their own rather individual versions of events. Facts weren’t important; simple words for the simple readers to recite to those who couldn’t manage were. Mages had, well, a pretty shit reputation in the sheets. We were legal, most of them said, because the Archdeacon was too pure and holy to understand how evil we were, and also he was cursed with a merciful nature and a mage for a brother. Actually, that was true enough, Perak was of a very merciful nature, and I probably did curse him by being both his brother and a mage. The sheets, though, often went on into glorious detail about just how evil we were. Are.
“Some of it’s true,” I started, wary of going too far because, well, because some mages had been very evil indeed. “The sheets don’t mention who’s supplying the Glow though, do they? Or much at all about the Storad, which seems both odd and stupid to me. Why’s that, do you think? I mean, Storad at the gate, trying to get in, everyone wants to know why, right?”
She laughed at that, and it made my stomach go flippy-flop all over again. “Because of the mages, that’s what everyone says. Mages and Downsiders. And you want me to go with you? Set myself up as a fall-girl perhaps? Well maybe I want to leave the Stench anyway – who wouldn’t? And maybe this is far enough before you tell me what I’m letting myself in for.”
My stomach went flippy-flop for an entirely different reason – she’d managed to manoeuvre herself so that one quick shove and I was over the edge. I tried my best smile and shuffled over a bit so my back was to a wall.
“Look, now…” Stammering is not a good way to flirt, so I tried not to look down and pulled myself together. “How about I show you? Then you can make up your mind. And even if you say no, you get one free meal.”
She regarded me appraisingly, looking me up and down real slow with a raised eyebrow that seemed to say, You have got to be kidding me. I straightened up, ran a hand through my hair and tried to look like I was good boyfriend material – not easy, all things considered, but heck, you have to try.