At last it came, the sweet rush of juice, up through the black, swelling through me like wine, or sex, or… actually there’s nothing better, not even sex, and this is me saying that. Nothing better than juice. Juice is everything, and the black will give me everything I need, I’ll be nothing but juice. When I let it, and that’s not just yet.
I opened my eyes a crack, and Dendal was there, saying, “You can do this, if you try, Rojan.” I had just enough time to be gobsmacked that he got my name right three times in a row, which meant things must be getting serious. Then he was fading, I was fading, bleeding through reality, rearranging it around me, a push here, a swift alteration there, swirling the world like dragging my hand through water. Easy when you know how and so, so hard. And then I was right next to Perak at Top of the World and blood was everywhere. My blood.
I threw up a whole load of it, wiped more from my nose and when I could focus again everything was tinged a pinky red. Everything being the inside of a vaguely familiar room up in Top of the World, a cell of sorts, which was plusher than any place I’d ever lived. Or had been till I puked blood all over the carpet, but I didn’t think that would be a problem for long. A little Glow-moth, as delicate and rare as the real thing, fluttered sadly around my head, its bright colours dim. No backing out now, no talking myself out if it. All or nothing.
Perak helped me up, looking panicked so I wondered just how bad the blood was. Pretty bad, by the way his hand was shaking and he looked like I wasn’t going to be the only one throwing up. “Rojan – I thought – oh, Goddess, Rojan, what are you doing?”
“Never mind that,” I managed to wheeze out. “You had a plan?”
“Yes, but…” He stared at me like I was a surprise naked lady in his bed and absent-mindedly wiped my face with the sleeve of his official archdeacon robes. I kind of liked the pattern my blood made on the cloth, in a funny, dreaming kind of way.
He pulled himself together. “I did have a plan, only it required this being in one piece.”
I looked at the mangled mess of wires and metal gizmos he held out, but I didn’t have a clue what it was supposed to be. All this new-fangled mechanics was starting to make me feel old.
“Simple words, please. And where the hell is Jake?”
Perak helped me to a chair and I managed to get my breath back properly. “I told her, like you said. To be my bodyguard. This section is locked off – cells for unbelievers. Easy to defend.”
“Yes, I recall. Tell me.”
“I did what you said. I couldn’t see anything else to do, so I sent all the guards to retreat, but I couldn’t because I had to set this. Only a bullet got it, and now it’s no use. So the Storad have Top of the World and there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“Yes, but what was it?”
“An ignition switch,” and then, because I probably looked confused, or perhaps because he was surprised I needed to ask, “a trigger. For everything I’ve rigged. All the black-powder traps.”
I thought back to the sunny-faced boy Perak used to be, wandering around in his own head. A boy who’d blown up the shop opposite by accident, and a guard station accidentally-on-purpose. Who’d invented the concept of using black powder to power a bullet because it had seemed an interesting exercise in applied alchemy, plus it involved a small explosion and hey, who doesn’t like an explosion? Perak may have been Archdeacon, but he’d always been a pyromaniac at heart.
Despite everything, or maybe because of it, a laugh forced its way out through a bubble of blood in my throat.
“Well, may the Goddess spank me bandy. You were going to blow up Top of the World, and all the Storad in it. You were!” That struck me as so funny, I’d have laughed my socks off if I hadn’t been in danger of choking.
“Well, er, yes. It seemed like the best idea, really, when Allit said the Storad would get here, and… and hell’s teeth, I’m sick of it, of them, of Ministry. Of my own damned cardinals! I was going to blow it all into the Slump – I made sure of where the charges were placed, simple physics really. I was going to blow it all and then we could start again, properly this time. All the charges are in place. Only now I can’t, and the Storad have everything up here, and more on the way. And now we’re trapped too.”
Funny how you can know a person their whole life, and still they can just turn around and surprise the air right out of your lungs. Perak, most devout archdeacon and unrepentant daydreamer, who saw the best in everything and everyone, had been about to blow the whole damned place. Blow up the Ministry. It made my head whirl, and then everything became very clear. The whole world was like glass, so I finally understood it. All of it, and what I had to do shone out as clear as a flaming brand in my head. I wanted to be sick all over again, wanted to run away and hide somewhere, be someone else, but I couldn’t. Not this time.