Last to Rise(74)

“A weapon. Actually, shit. Lots of it.”



“You wanted… oh.” She laughed at that, a snide, cynical laugh touched with glee. “You know, I find I like the way you think, at least on some things. Well, I can get you the Stenchers, and the shit. Those scummy bastards will do what I tell them, or they’ll feel the slap of my magic. But that won’t be enough on its own. What else? Who else?”



The answer was, of course, simple.



Everyone.





Chapter Twenty-one





Under wasn’t the same place that it had been even a few weeks ago. The snow kept on coming, but by the time it got to No-Hope it wasn’t white any more. It picked up all the dirt it could find on its way down, maybe sucked out the corruption of Clouds, the avarice of Heights, so by the time the No-Hopers saw it, it was streaky grey flakes that slapped wetly against the skin before they melted and dribbled down the back of my coat. Even with no rain, my neck got wet.



The streets and walkways were dark, as most of the Glow got siphoned to the factories, and what was left, people were hoarding to keep themselves warm. The walkways were empty too, a watchful, pensive kind of silent that I’d never experienced before, even during curfews and on the brink of riots, when everyone was too damned angry to be quiet. Now the air was like a bowstring stretched beyond all normal tolerance, and it thrummed with fear.



Down here, if the Storad came in, there was no place to run, no place to hide that they couldn’t find us in the end. Over wasn’t much better but at least there were the gates towards the Mishans for the people with the right connections, the right amount of money. Only someone from Over had any of those things. A chance to beg asylum, to sell yourself off into servitude perhaps, buy your way out. This far down, all there was to look forward to was Namrat silently stalking you, and he might be quick and come by a Storad gun, or he might be slow and let you starve to death, but he was coming and there was no escape.



I hunched my shoulders against it, against the fatalistic feel, and the way my own mind tried to tell me that that was as it should be, because we’d always been told we were worth nothing and sometimes we believed it. I found myself turning to say something to Pasha, faced only snow-swirled air, snapped my mouth shut and carried on.



One building stood out among the rest, and I could see the glow of its lights even from two levels up. Guinto’s temple. I hesitated – priests and I have a less than happy history. Basically I loathe them, and they aren’t so fond of me, but Guinto and I had come to an uneasy truce. He didn’t try to convert me, I didn’t tell him he was full of shit. As truces go, it was sort of working. Again, I turned to say something to Pasha, and couldn’t, and couldn’t bear the crushing weight on my chest either.



Right then, even talking to a priest was better than what was going on in my head, so I made my way to his temple and, after only a small internal rant about fucking Ministry and sodding priests, went in. If I had something to hate, right there in front of me, I might feel better. Besides, Halina was off firing up the Stenchers, Dendal was away with the fairies again, and Perak was busy with a plan he wouldn’t tell me about. I had work to do too, and Guinto might be my best asset.



The temple was packed to bursting, fuller than I’d ever seen it so that it was hard to see the statues of the saints and martyrs, and the murals of the Goddess were lost in a haze of people. A quick inspection showed why – a table with a vat of something that smelled suspiciously like hot water that had once seen a cabbage, somewhere far back in its history. It was doing duty as “soup” for the people who crowded round, thin hands offering up a cup or bowl.



Guinto presided over the squirming, pushing mass of people with his usual – and to me infuriating – serenity. He blessed people, comforted them, told them to have faith, the Goddess would protect her own.



What a crock of shit, but he was doing more than most anyone else, just with the “soup”.



He caught sight of me, cocked a questioning eyebrow, and made his way through the hordes of hungry parishioners.



“I won’t say it’s a pleasure,” he said, but he was smiling his superior smile, the one that made me want to zap him with a bit of magic, just to see what he would do. “But you’re always welcome, you know that.”



I wanted to say something sharp and cutting, wanted to rant till steam came out of my ears and my head stopped thinking all these stupid thoughts, but all I could see was the drip-drip-drip of Pasha’s blood on the floor, all I could hear were gunshots and screams. I opened my mouth to tell him why I was here, what Halina and I had decided, and nothing came out.