“Big brother will take care of it. Always big brother, whether I like it or not. No time now,” I said in the end. “Get Jake.”
“But she —”
“Get Jake.”
As if she’d heard me, a scream echoed through the doorway, and it wasn’t hers. No, her sound was harsh breath that hid everything, a clenched-teeth grunt, a vicious swearing. She was killing herself, suicide by battle, I had no doubt on that. Well, she could if she wanted – I wasn’t one to stop her – but not yet. Still, maybe discretion is the better part of staying the hell alive, especially when Jake was pissed off and had swords to hand, so I got to my feet on the third try and we went to her.
I left a sticky trail of blood behind me and walking wasn’t easy what with my whole body feeling like a very painful wet noodle, but luckily I didn’t have to worry about that for much longer. Through the door into a corridor that ended in another, narrower doorway. A whirl of black hair, a flash of sword, the crunch of bone. She was slicked in blood, her own and others’, but she didn’t seem to notice. She didn’t notice anything, I don’t think, except the Storad the other side of that door. Didn’t notice, didn’t care.
Pasha had once said about her, what seemed like decades ago, before they got a little happiness, that she wanted to die on a sword but was too proud to let anyone beat her. That Jake was back, as though the other, happy one had never been. Closed off, dead-eyed, an ice queen but no volcano underneath – the ice went all the way through. She was still glorious, graceful as a cat, but I could see now what I couldn’t before, not properly. How could I not have understood?
A lull, a gap between attacks and Perak left me slumped against a wall to insert himself between her and the door. She stopped just short of taking his face off with a sword and blinked back to here and now. It didn’t seem to make much difference, because she shoved him back behind her and scanned the outer room for more Storad. There were going to be a lot more.
Perak spoke to her but I couldn’t hear what he said because an odd ringing had started in my ears. If I was of a fanciful nature, I’d have said it sounded like temple bells calling me, but that was ridiculous.
She didn’t want to leave the door, the certain death that was sure to come through it and soon, that was plain. But Perak talked and cajoled and when that didn’t work his face hardened and he ordered. It had much the same effect as the cajoling, to start with. Then he said something that made her flinch back, so I thought she’d just let loose with that sword and hack his face off right there and then. He stood, never wavering, and finally her hand dropped.
Perak took a quick look through the door, slammed it shut and bolted it.
“Rojan? Rojan, can you hear me?”
I was almost beyond talking, but I had a lot to do and I needed to keep my breath for when it mattered, so I just nodded.
“What now?”
Funny how I managed to smile, even then. I beckoned them closer, as though I was about to impart some great plan. Then I grabbed them by the wrists and did the second stupidest thing of my life. It was going to screw me worse even than I imagined, but sometimes you have to say what the hell and do it anyway.
Chapter Twenty-seven
By the time I came to, back in Guinto’s temple under the pain lab, I’d managed to make an impressive pool of blood on the floor, the walls were woozing in and out of focus and shadows were stalking me from every corner. Jake swore somewhere off to the left, but her voice had a hitch of tears in it. Perak helped me up, shaking his head like he couldn’t understand what I was doing, why I was pushing myself like that. I would have explained, but I wasn’t sure I understood it, not then.
He helped me to a pew and I rested there a moment, my head on my arms across the back of the pew in front, almost like I was praying. Maybe I was, but it wasn’t to her. Not to the Goddess.
“Rojan…” Perak’s voice trailed off into a look of worry that screwed his face up like a paper ball.
Had to look strong even if I felt weak as a kitten, had to be big brother, so I forced myself up. There were still things to do and this was no time to be weak. The plaster statues of the saints and martyrs stared at me, but I didn’t have the energy to hate them.
Jake stood glaring up at the two murals of the Goddess, the Upside one, all flowers and happiness and fluffy Namrat and all that happy horseshit, and the Downside one, blood and death and Namrat with his big, hungry teeth just waiting to eat us all up, knowing he would win in the end. Jake had always fought because she wanted the Goddess to love her, because she’d spent half her life being told she wasn’t loved, that the Goddess expected more. For the longest time, I’d thought Jake was like that Downside Goddess, had admired her for the way she fought, because for a Downsider it wasn’t about shiny promises of an afterlife. No, the fight was the thing, fight with everything you have, even when you know you’re going to lose, that Namrat will get you in the end.