Last to Rise(73)

At the mention of my name, they turned to look at me, and I couldn’t bear it. All young kids, all half starved, half scared to death with not just the siege, the threat of the Storad, but with half-formed magical urges. And with hope. That was the worst. They looked at me like I was giving them hope.



Cabe was there, the boy who’d cut his hand in the Slump, and his look was the worst. “They all rise,” Allit had said, and hadn’t known what he meant. What Perak had told me to concentrate on, because I was damn-all use for anything else right now. Was this it? These kids, were they going to rise? It didn’t seem possible, and even if it was, I wasn’t going to be the one at their head.



It was the oddest thing: until a few months before I’d been untroubled by family or friends, except for Dendal, who barely counted as he was away in his head so often. I’d liked it that way too – no one to worry over, or to worry over me. No one to be responsible for, or care about and then see them die, like Ma. Only now I had family, I had friends. Pasha had been right – they were my way back into the world rather than being apart from it. I had these kids, who were almost like a second family because I saw myself in them at every turn, wanted to make sure they didn’t make my mistakes. My family, and a weight on my heart, on a conscience that wanted so very badly to be feckless and free. And still I couldn’t do that to them, not to these kids who were just trying to figure out what they could do, how they fitted in. Boys like I once was, full of fear. I was still full of fear. I think I always will be.



Cabe said something to me, I don’t know what. I couldn’t listen. I didn’t care if Allit had seen them rising, had seen them going up to take on the Storad at Top of the World. I didn’t care what he’d seen, because I wasn’t going to let it happen. Not to these kids, my kids.



If it wasn’t going to be them, it had to be something else, something I hadn’t thought of, someone I hadn’t thought of, and it had to be me doing the thinking because Pasha was gone and Perak had his hands full.



It was down to me.



The thought crushed the breath from my chest like a tombstone had landed on it. If it was down to me, we were screwed and I couldn’t look at that damned hope any more.



I made for the door, ran into Cabe’s father, Quillan, pushed past him and out.



It was down to me.



There had to be something I wasn’t thinking of, someone. There had to be a different way. Goddess’s tits, I would have given over a fair part of my anatomy to have Pasha back, just there, showing me how to be the good guy. I had a funny feeling I was going to make a right cock-up of it on my own. I usually did.



The cold air outside slapped a bit of sense into me, but not much. Snow drifted down in little clumps through the mesh of walkways, a dollop here, a cluster there, a blob to wriggle its chill way down my back. It dusted the walkways so that they looked like icing on a fancy cake.



There had to be something. All I had to do was think of it.



Someone came out after me and I whipped round, ready to snap them in two with words, but I came up short when Halina looked at me with half-closed, appraising eyes.



“Running out on them already?” she asked, as though she already knew the answer. “Why am I not surprised?”



“No!” I shut my eyes for a heartbeat, because actually, yes. Until then, until she asked me so baldly. “No. Did Dendal tell you Perak thinks these kids are the answer, the only answer he’s got? That we can use their magic, send them down to the gates, only he doesn’t know what it’s like, how most of them probably haven’t a clue what their Major is yet, and would probably kill themselves if they tried anything. Only there has to be something – Allit saw, or rather heard. ‘They all rise.’ What does that even mean? Perak thought maybe mages, but it’s not, it can’t be. Or not these mages anyway. And the Storad are almost through, and if we don’t figure it out now it’ll be too damned late and Pasha will have died for nothing. All that sacrifice, all that hurt, wasted, and I can’t let that happen. I have to do something, only I can’t use my magic unless I want to make another Slump, and what good am I at anything without it? I’m a fair bounty hunter and a world-class flirt. That’s about it.”



For a moment there, I thought Halina was going to slap me and tell me to pull myself together. I probably deserved it too. She looked out into the deepening snow for a while, and then seemed to come to a decision.



“When you went to the Stench without me – what was it you were really after?”