“Well, we’ve got more guns than guards now,” Perak said. “And Factory Three should be ready with the next lot – the last lot unless we cannibalise that machine – in the next few hours. We’ve got enough bullets for now, but what we got from the engine you sent wasn’t anywhere near enough to last in any sort of sustained attack. It’s metal we need, and people.”
“Right then.” I pushed myself up off the chair. “I think it’s fairly clear. We’ve got plenty of people. You just need to arm them.”
“What?”
“You’ve got more people than you can feed, Perak. A whole teeming mass of them Under. Upsiders, Downsiders, mostly fighting each other. Make them fight something else instead.”
“But the guards were all trained and they still died, and all the cardinals will —”
“All the cardinals can kiss my rosy red butt cheeks. Perak, send someone down to No-Hope, or Boundary. I guarantee in under ten minutes you could find a hundred people who can fight just as well as any guard. Better, even. Certainly dirtier.”
Perak’s eyes were wider than the gaps in my conscience. “And you want me to give them guns?”
My brother had been living Over Trade too long. “Yes, give them guns. They’ll fight just as well as your guards. Better, maybe. Less to lose. But they live here too, and they’ll die just as quick when the Storad get in.”
“The cardinals will never agree. I mean, yes, of course, you’re right. Should have thought of it myself, but they’ll never agree.”
“Easy. Don’t tell them.”
I could see the idea turning over in his head, almost see where he was working out how to persuade all the other Ministry men this was what they needed to do. He had his work cut out there – despite everything, most of his cardinals still looked on anyone from Under as sub-human. But people from Over, well, I couldn’t see many of them fighting hand-to-hand, not unless it got right to the end. Over, life was easy and well fed, nothing much to trouble you. Under, life was one long fight from cradle to grave. It’d make a refreshing change to fight someone who wasn’t a neighbour.
“What about Jake?” Pasha asked. “I’m not just leaving her out there and hoping for the best.”
“Where is she now?”
“Hiding, but there’s two thousand men or more walking down that road right now, and that valley isn’t big. Soon there won’t be anywhere left to hide. Not that hiding comes naturally to her. You know as well as I do what’s likely to happen – the first hint of anyone finding her, she’ll take out as many as she can, while she can. All or nothing.”
He didn’t need to spell it out any plainer.
“You can talk to her?”
“Yes, of course. She’s a bit far away, so she’s faint at times, but I swear I could hear her if she was on the moon.”
“Good. OK, look, Perak, you get those guns out to people who might do us some good – vicious, underhand people are who we want right now. But not just any old gang-hand. Get someone down there asking for volunteers – I guarantee there’ll be plenty who will if you agree to let them be armed. They want to fight.”
“And then?” Pasha twitched with impatience.
“And while Perak is picking out who gets to shoot people for Mahala, you talk to Jake. Find out where the men are, where the flamey things are. Who’s in charge, apart from Dench, what tent they’re in, if she can. Where Dench is too. Anything so we’re not going in blind.”
“Going in?”
My brother can be annoyingly pacifistic at times, and when you’ve got a bloodthirsty enemy at the gate is one of those times.
“Yes, Perak. It’s too late to sit back and hope we can weather this siege. Mahala survived the last ones by being a bunch of conniving bastards, and we’re going to do the same this time. This time, we have a Jake in their midst to show Pasha what’s what. We’ve got a load of guns, and a load of bullets. We have a load of people from Under who would be more than happy to shoot a gun, as long as you make sure there aren’t any cardinals around. You may want to keep the Upsiders and Downsiders separate though. We take the fight to the Storad, before their mates turn up mob-handed, and when we’re done with them, then we bring Jake back.”
Perak went to the window, and though he stared out into snow-swirled darkness I don’t think he saw anything out there. Finally he said, “All right. All right, I’m going to have some explaining and persuading to do in Top of the World, but all right, I’ll persuade them if I can. I can’t do a damned thing without them playing merry hell about it anyway. Pasha can concentrate on finding out what he can, from Jake or whatever other way. I’ll send someone down to see who they can gather up, if anyone. And you, Rojan. You are going to be resting like you should. Aren’t you.” Not a question, an order from my archdeacon, from the Mouth of the Goddess.