Last to Rise(75)

Guinto dropped the smile, took me by the arm and led me into his office-cum-quarters behind the altar. He didn’t say anything, for which I was glad, only bustled about getting two glasses and a bottle of something pinkish and vile-smelling.



“Not much, I’m afraid,” he said, and handed me a full glass.



I put it down without drinking, and found my voice. “Pasha’s dead.”



He sat down behind his stark, darkwood desk and ran his hands over the polished surface. “I know. We held a service for him.”



I slumped into the chair opposite. “One he’d have liked, I hope.”



“Of course. A full-blown Downside service, with the blood-and-ash devotional and the choir singing one of their hymns. I’ve always quite liked the Downside hymns, so full of passion, don’t you think? Of course, don’t tell anyone I said that. But that’s not why you’re here, is it?”



I hated it when he did that – he claimed it was because the Goddess gave him insight. I say perhaps he was just a shrewd old bastard who only wore the face of a benign and holy priest.



“No, it’s not. I can’t do anything up there. Can’t use my magic, not unless I want to go batshit crazy or die, or I can’t use it until I’ve had about a week’s sleep and we haven’t got a week. Perak won’t let me even go out there with a gun. So I thought, if I can’t do anything Over, maybe I could do something Under.”



I’m sure he only smiled his smug smile just to really piss me off. Worked too. “Who says you have to do anything? I thought Rojan didn’t give a rat’s backside about anything except money and women and staying alive?”



“Yeah, well, Rojan’s changed. Not for the better, I often think – I mean, look at me, I’m talking to a priest and I haven’t once wondered what it is you’re guilty of. I’m stuck with being responsible, because I am. I’d much rather not be.”



“So what are you going to do?”



And there it was, the question that had been rattling round my brain all the way down here. Nothing wasn’t an option, not any more. Not after Pasha – it had to be worth something, what the silly sod had done. I owed him that. Without any magic it was going to be tricky, because I’d have to start using my brain. That should have been a warning really.



“You remember Allit?” I said. “The young mage? Well, he’s discovered one or two things he can do. One of them, well, we’re not sure exactly what it does, but we think perhaps… he can see what’s going to happen. Perhaps.”



“And?”



“And we’re going to do something about it. ‘They all rise,’ he said. I didn’t know what he meant at first, and I don’t think he did, but… they all rise. Under. No-Hope and Boundary, the Stench, anyone in the Slump. Malaki wouldn’t take help from Under except what he wanted to strong-arm out of people unwilling to give it. None of them want to take help from Under, except maybe as cannon fodder so they can escape. The cardinals – the ones that are left – are pitching a fit, trying to press-gang people into fighting, the sort of people they usually happily ignore. But they wouldn’t give guns to the likes of us, because who knows who we might shoot and it might be them. But I’ve seen what’s Outside, I’ve seen what’s coming and it makes what battered down our gates look like a kid’s toy. Against that, we’ve got guns and bullets and not enough guards Over. But we’ve got people down here, hordes of them. Nasty vicious people, or just people who want to live and have had to fight their whole lives to fend off the alternative, to stave off Namrat. Which is precisely what you want in a person during a war, and you want them on your side. Right?”



“I don’t think I…”



“Father, Mahala has got an army down here. They just don’t know that’s what they are, what they’re capable of, because they’ve been stomped on for too long. We’re going to wake them up.”



“‘We’?”



I allowed myself a smile. “Yes, we. Look, Perak can’t do as he wants because he’s got cardinals breathing down his neck, cardinals who’d probably keel over with outrage if he even suggested it. He didn’t say it outright, he can’t, but he’d do it if it was just that, I’m sure of it, but he needs those cardinals, and the guards and Specials. He needs them all willing and on his side if we’re to have a hope here, if he wants to come out alive whether we beat the Storad or not. But Perak’s known-full-well-to-be-a-pain-in-the-arse brother? He can do a lot of things an archdeacon can’t. And a priest who defied Ministry to allow Downsiders in his temple, who allowed the blood-and-ash devotional, who almost any man Under would listen to? Handing out soup or what passes for it is all very well, but what do you think will happen when the Storad get in? And they will get in. What will happen to Under then? I tried before, to get people Under to help, and they wouldn’t. All busy trying to get out, or believing some bullshit about how the Storad would leave them be, or, the sensible ones anyway, busy putting up what defences they could. They wouldn’t fight for Ministry, and I don’t blame them. But they’d fight for themselves. If you asked them to.”