Last to Rise(88)

I was kind of hoping for a bit of sympathy perhaps, her to say, “No, no,” or because that wasn’t really likely, “Yes but you did it for good reasons.” Instead I got the full force of her glare and “Yes. You started all this, and I know why, and I think you did the right thing, but it remains that you started all this and Pasha’s gone, Jake’s sort of… shrivelled up inside and won’t let anyone see it. But the Rojan I know, or used to, wouldn’t be standing here whining about it. He’d be hating everything and everyone and he’d be swearing fit to bust, but he’d be doing something rather than feeling sorry for himself. Because this” – she waved her hand at Quillan and his friends as they bickered quietly and not so quietly – “anyone can do that, and yes it needs doing but you aren’t even doing anything with them.”



She pulled herself up straight and got me right in the eye with her glare. “So what are you going to do, Rojan?”



Sometimes it takes a good verbal slap from someone to really clear the crap out of your eyes. I counted myself lucky she hadn’t followed it with a real slap, restrained the urge to kiss her and pulled myself together because she was right. She always was, and it annoyed the crap out of me. Besides which, I have this in-built wish to not look like a complete chicken in front of ladies.



“Firstly, we’re going to find that telescope,” I said. “Then we’re going to listen to what Yagin’s scouts have to say. Then we’re going to storm Top of the World. I think.”



I was rewarded with a firm nod and a hint of her teasing smile. It was enough, more than enough because I felt a new surge of energy, of hate, like she said. Not for anyone in particular – all right, perhaps Dench but I couldn’t even muster much for him – but for the sheer futility of everything, the stupidity of it all.



This was my chance to stop the stupidity, maybe for good, but I needed to know what I was up against first, so Erlat and I went to listen in at the bench where the scouts were reporting back.



“Looks like the Storad are determined to make a go for Top of the World. Bunched up at the top of Clouds for now, and it seems like they’re being held off. That’s where all the other roads stop, and it’s just the Spine, so a narrow place to defend. But the guards won’t last for ever. They know it too – they’re defending just below the cut-off, and getting out as many people as they can down the side roads.”



“Who’s defending?” I asked.



Yagin still scared the crap out of me, but I tried not to let it show. “What’s left of the guards and Specials. None of the cardinals, obviously, nor any of their men. But the Archdeacon —”



“Perak’s fighting?” My stomach went cold at that. Perak wasn’t a fighter; he’d get himself creamed.



“We think so – hard to tell without getting close. What I can tell you is there is some woman dressed in a uniform we’ve never seen before and she’s laying into those Storad like a drunk lays into a barrel of beer. No guns, but she’s got two swords she knows how to use. She’s fast and she’s devious, coming up on them from the back, the side, any way they aren’t looking for her. She’s making them pretty jittery.”



And messy, with all probability. Jake never killed, or hadn’t before. Just enough to wound, to stop them being a threat. But now, without Pasha around, with her comfort gone, all bets were off. I was glad I wasn’t a Storad.



“Between us and them?”



Quillan shrugged. “Seems pretty clear on the Spine. Our lot trying to escape, a few of theirs cutting down anyone they find.”



“And Top of the World?”



“Emptying fast, and Clouds, though that’s been emptying for a while. Pretty good time to kill any cardinals we find, if there are any left,” Yagin said, and his men grinned behind him. Men after my own heart, really. Possibly in more than one sense, so I kept my distance. “Why, you got something in mind?”



My mind clicked over everything, all I knew, all that had happened, every corner of me that wanted to blow the whole Ministry to hell and send the Storad after them.



“You know, I think I just might.”





Chapter Twenty-five





By the time we left the lab the snow had finally stopped, though the grey clouds lingered and lowered like they wanted to come and play. The light made Clouds into indistinct humps in the greyness, and the snow had turned even the shabby houses we could see Under into magical cottages. Well, magical cottages that some giant baby had decided to stack up like so many toy bricks before it’d got bored and started kicking them about. Underfoot, the passage of the Storad had made the road slippery with slush which had re-frozen into a slick, rumpled sheet, but at least it wasn’t rain. Instead it was cold enough to make your knackers clank.