Tempting, so very tempting. Only two things stopped me. Just two, but I’m not sure now whether the two I thought of were the real ones. Perak and Jake were up there, that’s what the small rational part of my brain said. You can’t do it with them up there. You can’t. You can’t do it at all. No matter how much pain you suck in, you’re not going to be able to take it all out, not all of it, and what about the Storad at the gates? The machines even now inching their way over the mountains? Think, for once in your life. Plan.
Whatever we were going to do, it had to be now, before the whole city fell apart and buried us, leaving the remaining Storad to do what the hell they wanted with what was left.
In retrospect it was only the second worst moment of my life, but at the time it was as bad as I thought it could get. Dendal, Allit, Erlat, the rest, they were all looking at me. Perak and Jake were above us, fighting for their lives, and option one – fight on up, take the bastards at their own game – just wasn’t going to cut it no matter how I tried to spin it. We had men willing to fight, sure, but not enough and poorly armed, and only trained in staying the hell alive. We’d be hard-pressed to win over the Storad that were in the city now, never mind the rest that were on their way, almost here.
Instead we had option two, Plan B, the thing I had been trying not to contemplate because I couldn’t be sure I wasn’t going to do it out of personal satisfaction rather than because it needed doing. Because maybe I would, again, make everything worse, which has always been my signature move.
Fucking Dendal and his fanciful notions of what the Goddess wanted from me. That thought of course meant I was going to do it, even if just to stop him looking at me like that.
“All right, Dendal. Tell Perak to get everyone away from Top of the World. Retreat, look like they’re running away. Let the Storad in.”
His smile was almost worth it. I say almost, because this was going to hurt like a bitch.
Chapter Twenty-six
It took a while, because Yagin and all the rest had been fired up for a fight and all that aggression had to go somewhere. Most of it was aimed at me. But Quillan and Guinto managed to calm them some, mainly by promising them that they’d still have plenty of Storad to batter the crap out of down by the gates, when they got there. The magelets helped more, all bright-eyed and full of hope, saying how they could help, showing Yagin what they could do and giving him a few nasty ideas that made him grin like a shark.
My main problem was Jake.
“What do you mean, she refuses to go?”
The squeak of Dendal’s knuckle twisting in its socket as we huddled by the pillar accompanied Perak’s faint answer, sounding tinny when channelled through Dendal. I wasn’t too keen on the amount of gunfire coming through, either.
“She just won’t,” he said. “She’s like a woman possessed, and there’s no arguing with her. Goddess knows how long we’d have lasted without her, but now she says she’ll cover our retreat but she’s staying.”
Women and my love for them will be the death of me.
“All right, I’ll think of something. Just hold on, as long as you can. If it comes to it, you leave, all right? Let the bastards have Top of the World – it’s not going to do them any good, not if I have anything to do with it. You just find somewhere safe and try to keep Jake out of it. Remind her she’s your bodyguard so she should be guarding your body or something.”
I got him to promise, and then Dendal’s conduit snapped off and he shoved his knuckle back home.
“Well?” asked Erlat.
“Well…” I sucked it up, everything I was about to say, changed the habits of a lifetime and got serious. “You get this lot going. Down to the gates. Those machines will be here soon, and we’re going to need all the men we can get down there.” Just in case I can’t do what I’m planning.
“But Top of the World? The Storad?”
“Let me worry about that.”
Erlat sat back, her lips pressed thin. “Jake. Always Jake. You’re going to swan in and rescue her, be her dashing hero – or try to be.” I’m fairly sure the snort was of the derisive kind.
“And that’s wrong, is it? Trying to put right what I fucked up by letting Pasha get on that machine, which he did because I wouldn’t let him kill himself trying to rescue her? Stopping her killing herself, or at least letting herself be killed? That’s a bad thing, is it?”
At about this point, several things that probably should have been obvious much, much earlier struck me – I am not the sharpest blade in the drawer, especially when my magic kept nagging at me to be used, when I hadn’t slept since who-knows-when and I couldn’t recall what real food, or indeed anything remotely edible, looked like. Erlat opened her mouth to say something else, but I got in first.