Last to Rise(55)

“Well?” I asked in the end, when it was clear she wasn’t going to say anything without me prodding.



She wouldn’t look at me while she said it, and instead turned back to fiddle with the stupid cup. “Lise got what you sent her. Not all the engine, but enough to stop that machine from working. She says it might be enough metal to get another batch of guns, but… but that’s not going to help much.”



“Why not?”



Erlat concentrated on blowing steam from her tea. “After you came back, well, the Storad attacked the inner gate. They’ve got more than just guns, they’ve got things that will burn a man where he stands, or so Pasha said. It – we could hear the screams even from here.”



That explained the odd smell of roasting meat, and what Pasha had persuaded the guards into doing – turning on each other, burning each other. Turned my stomach too.



“Did they get inside?”



“Not yet. Or not there. But we lost a lot of guards, a lot of Specials. They sent a load of their men up the tunnel too. And not just that one either, all the tunnels they could find. But there weren’t enough men left to defend the gate and the tunnels, even with them mostly blocked, so Perak sent in his personal guard. Jake knows the ’Pit better than any of Perak’s men, and she leads his guards, so…”



She clutched her teacup like her life depended on it and I was surprised to see she was holding back tears. Surprised and afraid.



“So?” I prompted as gently as I could, given the ice-pick that had just made a hole in my heart.



“I shouldn’t be telling you this. Dendal said not to, that you should be resting, that you’ll overdo it otherwise. He said if you fall into the black properly, even he can’t save you. That you’ll die if you stay in there too long.”



“Erlat, please. What about Jake?”



She pressed her lips together as though she was desperately holding in some irrepressible thought, some vicious word, but finally she put the cup down and looked me in the eye at last. “Jake took Perak’s guards into the tunnels to stop any Storad coming through. She stopped them all right, but…”



The hesitation almost had me screaming. I bit down on it – it wasn’t Erlat I wanted to scream at. “But what?”



“Pigs. Pasha said the Storad have brought some with them, that they must have been planning this awhile, or why bring pigs, or have the machines ready? Sorry, I…They filled the tunnels with wood. Then they sent in the pigs and blocked them in and set fire to it all. Lise says pig fat burns at higher temperatures, higher than wood on its own. High enough to crack stone. Crack the tunnels.”



“They burned pigs?” It explained why that was all I could smell though, why my stomach was doing back-flips at the thought of food, real food, dammit. Then a more sobering thought. “The tunnels – will they hold up? If they’re cracked, right under the castle, and the city is built over the castle…” Ridiculous as it might seem, the floor seemed to sway under me, as though the city was ready to fall down right now, crumple up like a rotten concertina. Going to the ’Pit in the lift had been bad enough. Going to it via several thousand tons of falling masonry and girders – I was very nearly sick again.



“I… I don’t know.” There was something worse to come, I could feel it. “But that’s not – I mean, the tunnel collapsed behind Jake, behind all the guards. She’s trapped Outside, and there’s no way for her to get back in until we stop the Storad. And not just stop them, beat them.”





Chapter Fourteen





Erlat tried to stop me, but I wasn’t having any of it. My allover was still wet, but Kersan managed to find a pair of trousers that one of Erlat’s clients had, bizarrely, left behind, presumably while in a bliss-like trance. The trousers were too short and way too big at the waist, but I was covered, which was the main thing, especially in the face of Erlat’s raised eyebrow.



At least my coat had proved easier to clean. I needed it because night was falling, making the Buzz even darker than usual and dropping the temperature to somewhere around nose-hair-freezing levels. Snow had begun to dust its way down through the walkways. It made a change from rain anyway, made even Under look magical. Mainly because all the crap was covered up.



It didn’t take long before I was holding myself up on a handrail. Dendal and Erlat had been right about me needing to rest, but I couldn’t. Jake was Outside, trapped there with a few thousand Storad who’d be more than happy to see her dead, actively searching for her, almost certainly. It was odd though. I wasn’t struggling my weak-kneed way along a swaying walkway freezing my knackers off for her, or not just for her. What really spurred me on was the remembered sound of Pasha’s worried murmur while I’d been out of it, of Perak’s shouted “I absolutely forbid it!” I had sudden visions of Pasha the mouse going all lion at the worst possible moment, of him going off on some damnfool suicide run to get her. And he would, I had no doubt, because he was that kind of guy, the kind that heroics come easy to.