Last to Rise(7)

Across the room, I could see Pasha struggling not to say anything. It was a struggle for me too, but Perak got in before I could unleash anything.



“I told you, it’ll take months to build a non-magic-powered electricity generator a tenth as powerful as what Rojan and Pasha can produce in half an hour on this rig. For the future, yes. But we won’t have a future if the Storad get in.”



“What about the Mishans then? We’re running out of things to trade and they’re getting ready for the day the Storad take over – maybe he’d do to trade with.” A second cardinal, not as bold as the first, with a smooth, bland sort of face, the sort used to saying what he thought people wanted to hear. A face used to weaselling around with the truth and calling it diplomacy. “Any of them, perhaps. A mage or two would be no great loss, surely?”



“The mages are the best defence we’ve got. I’m not trading them with anyone!”



Only one or two cardinals looked anywhere near agreeing with Perak. The rest, no matter how they tried to hide it, had varying degrees of mutiny in their glance.



“Perak, you don’t seem to realise that the only person who thinks we can win this is you.” The bold cardinal again. “We’re not going to stop working in the best interests of the city just because he’s your brother and you can’t – won’t – see that he’s the best bargaining chip we have if we want to survive.”



Perak drew himself up to his best, admittedly not very imposing, height. “Best interests of the city? For your own hides, that’s what you’re working for, I’m not blind to that. I’m working in the best interests of the Goddess, as the mages are, as you should be. Pray on it, why don’t you? Now, if you don’t mind…?”



They left in dribs and drabs, a good half of them giving me a wish-you-were-dead glare on the way. The bolder cardinal stopped next to me and whispered, “If you weren’t his brother, would he still defend you, do you think? Or would he throw you to the Storad? If he doesn’t tread carefully, he may not have a choice. And if you don’t, neither will you.”



He left before I had a chance to answer, or think much more than That didn’t sound good. Perak’s face when they’d gone looked like bad news too. As if to underline the trouble we were all in and bring my mind back to why Perak was here, another boom-shudder shook the room. Those boom-shudders seemed to punctuate everything, every moment, to the point where if they stopped for long my shoulder blades started to itch, wondering when the next would come.



Half a step behind Perak, a position she seemed welded to since she’d become the new captain of his personal guard, stood Jake. I tried not to stare. The uniform really suited her too – a moulded breastplate that showed off every curve, a pair of trousers that fitted her very snugly indeed, the swords that were never far from her reach and that she knew how to use with devastating and clinical effect. On the outside she was cool and collected, her glance like calculated ice. Underneath she was a volcano waiting to happen, all bubbling fervour. I lived in hope of seeing it again.



All that stuff I said about women and what I like about them? Jake was like all of that rolled up into one glorious package that made me go all tingly in diverse parts of my anatomy. Which was a shame, because she was in love with Pasha and he was in love with her and… yeah, I didn’t have so many friends I could afford to screw them over.



So I dragged my eyes away from her, to Perak as he inclined his head in a come-with-me manner and went to stand by the window. I followed and together we looked out across Trade, which shuddered with its own kind of boom – I could feel it as a hum through my feet. Trade was working again, properly, at last. It had taken a lot, a lot of pain – a lot of blood – to get it going again. It wasn’t going to be enough. Not for the machines that camped outside our gates.



We stared out over the backs of the hulking factories, the boutiques and arcades, the once-teeming shops of Trade that could sell you anything you could think of and a few things you couldn’t. I let my gaze follow the Spine up, Over, on towards Heights, where the aspiring classes lived, looking up and wishing that they too could afford to live in Clouds – vast platforms that lurked over the city, stole the sun from underneath. Just visible above them in the dusk was Top of the World, now Perak’s domain. Where Ministry had long ruled with a jackboot and a prayer. It was changing, but too slowly.



Another boom drew our gaze northwards, over the bulk of Trade where they’d never build. There were mountains over there, which had hemmed our city in, made us grow up rather than out. There were Storad there too now.