I waited till I couldn’t wait any longer then signalled to the walkways that criss-crossed the little square.
There’s one thing about living in a city like Mahala, one that grows more upwards than it does outwards. It gives you a real sense of the possibilities of threats from above and below as well as those on your level – the ever-present threat of being mugged from overhead will do wonders for that. Something these Storad were about to find out.
A series of wild, blood-curdling screams echoed round the square and something very like heavy rain poured down over the Storad. Very like rain in that it was wet, but not like it at all because rain doesn’t usually stink that badly, or have lumps in it. The Stenchers kept on whooping and pouring the contents of their reeking vats to the last drop, leaving Storad blind, choking and probably unable to work out which way was up as several were knocked from their feet by the deluge. It was suddenly slippery underfoot, and getting back up seemed to pose them a few problems. If I hadn’t been so stomach-clenchingly scared, I’d have laughed till I had no breath left.
As it was, I pulled the gun and as one man we leapt into the fray.
The thing about episodes like that is you can never remember them clearly. That battle flashes across my mind in a series of moving portraits with occasional thoughts as a running commentary. The only things those flashes share are the stench of shit and the gentle fall of snow.
I recall pulling my gun and hoping I didn’t need to use it, all while knowing I was going to have to. I kept groping for my pulse pistol on instinct, then remembering: no magic, not if I wanted to stay sane and alive, no matter that the black was whispering to me, the shadowy tiger was stalking across the snow-ridden square, the throb of my hand was filling me up with juice I couldn’t afford to spend.
A Storad turned his flamer my way, snow hissing and popping from the heat, and I only just got away in time – half my jacket went up in flames and I had to roll to put the fire out before I started burning too. Rolling in a mixture of snow and shit isn’t pleasant, you can trust me on this, but at least I wasn’t burning any more.
Halina acquitted herself far better than I did – she didn’t seem to give a steaming pile of what she’d just dumped on the Storad who knew she was a mage. Her wild laugh punctuated the gloom like lightning as she used her magic to pick up Storad and bash them into other Storad, to lob the now-empty barrels down an alley to bowl over men and just generally cause mayhem. She hovered above us, just out of range of the flamers and hard to see in the swirl of snow, and seemed to be enjoying herself immensely. I wished I was.
Gunshots went off all around, the flash of the muzzles searingly bright in the darkness, the sound of the shots deafening, echoing round and round the square, over and through each other till I thought I’d happily go deaf. Other noises – thuds, screams, gurgles. Men and women with no guns doing what they could with what they had. I can clearly recall a man whose ancestors must have been butchers, back when we had animals to slaughter, because he was brandishing two old and rusted meat cleavers like he was Namrat and they were his teeth. Others used kitchen knives or rough clubs made out of whatever they’d had to hand. Swear to the Goddess, I saw a man take out two Storad from behind with a chair leg. It snapped across the back of the head of the first, and then the man used the jagged end to stab the next in the side of the neck.
No one gave a shit who was Downsider and who was Upsider: it was us, Mahalians, against Storad and that was all that mattered. I like to think maybe, after all this, they’ll remember that: that when it came to it, when they had to, they fought together and battered the crap out of a common enemy. I don’t hold out much hope, but I have some.
But my clearest memory – I hesitate to think on it even now. My clearest memory is when I knowingly killed a man for the first time. I’d let off wild shots before, down at the gates, but apart from one lucky shot to the shoulder, had never known whether they’d hit. I’d once left a man – my father – knowing that if I did he’d die. But never like this. I’d never knowingly shoved a gun in a guy’s face and pulled the trigger. How far would you go?
He came at me with a flamer and I had nowhere left to turn, nowhere left to run, stuck in a corner between the bar and a neighbouring shop. Even with the heat of the flames singeing my eyebrows I hesitated, but instinct, craven self-preservation took over. I raised the gun, shut my eyes and shot him. A messy wound in the side of his head when I opened my eyes again, surprised I was still in one piece. It didn’t kill him straight away, oh no. He had time to stare at me with an almost comical look of surprise before he slid to the ground and bled his life out into the snow and shit. And all I could think was, Why does death have to be so stupid?
I didn’t think it for long, because there was always another Storad with a gun or a flamer, so I fumbled another bullet into the gun and on we went. The battle – if you could call it that, it was more a protracted brawl with added guns – seemed to last a lifetime, but I don’t suppose it was more than fifteen minutes before the square was quiet. Or quieter at least – plenty of moans from the wounded, the occasional scream as someone set a bone or finished somebody off. Bodies all over, slumped and humped shapes on the ground, snow falling again now to cover them over decently, like shrouds. Mostly Storad bodies, but a fair few of ours. I couldn’t seem to think, except, They all rise. For good or ill, we were rising. All I could do was stare through the whispering snow.
I was still staring when a man ran into the square. He almost got a face full of bullets, but he stopped with his hands up and a startled look and I recognised the Specials uniform. So did everyone else, and the sound of multiple guns being cocked echoed around us.
“Wait!” the Special said, and they did, thankfully. “On the Spine. They’re… too many of them. We’re getting massacred. The Archdeacon ordered me to come and find you. Please.”
Funny, how human he looked. Specials had always seemed so, well, untouchable, imperturbable, like nothing could shake them if they didn’t want to be shaken. That was part of why they scared the crap out of everyone – they, and the fear they inspired, were the rock we were built on. But this one, the tone of pleading in his voice, the sweat and blood drying in his hair, the wild stare of his eyes – he was a man first. The rest saw it too. They didn’t see the uniform, or at least didn’t let it blind them to the fact that the man wearing it was desperate. Or most of them didn’t.
“Why should we help you?” a voice growled out. “Who cares if Top of the World goes? I might even give them a hand.”
“Wait a minute,” someone else said behind me. “How does the Archdeacon know where we are and what we’re doing?”
All heads turned to me. They didn’t look very happy, so I tried a grin that probably came out sickly and weak.
“That’s how you had that permission for the guns,” one of the gang leaders said. “You didn’t steal that order like you said. You’re Ministry. You conned us.”
That stung me into speaking. “I never said a damned thing that wasn’t true.” For once in my life.
“Maybe. But you didn’t tell us a lot that was.”
I was in fear for my life again, only this time from the men and women who were supposed to be on my side. I have such a way with people.
“No, I didn’t. But then you wouldn’t have helped, and these Storad here” – I kicked at a body within reach – “would right now be murdering their way through Under. Murdering and raping you and your families, and you’d have no guns. You want to hate me, fine, join the queue. I loathe what the Ministry stands for as much as you do. I’ll join you shooting a few cardinals when this is over. But that doesn’t mean I’ll let these fuckers into my city.”
It was touch-and-go there for a few moments, but in the end Quillan said under his breath, just to me, “You did me a favour, so fair’s fair.” And then louder, “All right. But don’t think I’ll let you off later.”
Not everyone agreed, but there wasn’t much I could do about
it. At least there’d be men left in the square should the Storad try that way again. The rest of us followed the Special out on to the Spine.
The waft of cooking bacon wove its way up through the walkways, and I could almost see it in the air. It made me sick, and, a split second later, made all the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. They were burning pigs again. In the tunnels. Trying to crack one, trying to find another way in. I wondered if the Storad in the city realised that no one on the Outside gave a crap whether the city fell with them in it. Because I wondered if the city could stand any more cracks, or whether one burning pig in the right place could make the whole city into one big Slump. They say the superstructure is built to withstand anything. They say… I’m pretty sure I only imagined the lurch under my feet, the faint rumble of masonry. Must have done, because no one else seemed to notice.
I kept my mouth shut and followed the Special to the Spine, aware that at my back were many men with guns, and now they had a reason to hate me. To them, I was Ministry. To anyone from Under – hell, to me – anyone Ministry wasn’t worth shit.
The Spine was empty here, unnaturally quiet. Before I’d buggered everything up, way back a whole few months ago, the Spine had been a bustle of carriages and people, hustling, jostling, Glow-powered adverts blaring out over everything. It had been nothing but noise and light. Since we’d got the Glow back on, it’d got back some of its life, but now, nothing. Unless you counted the corpses, but, except in very special and probably mythical circumstances, corpses do not count as life.
“Goddess’s tits,” Quillan whispered, and I didn’t blame him. Just on this one small section of the Spine, on this one little twist of the huge spiral, there must have been two, three hundred dead men gradually getting their fresh new shrouds of snow. Mostly bodies in Specials’ or guards’ uniforms. The Special who’d brought us here looked sick to his eyebrows.
A murmur ran through the men and women who’d followed, though it was hard to tell if it was shock, sympathy or a small and savage glee that finally the guards and Specials had got back what they’d dished out for so long. Probably a mix of all three.
I tried to think, but my brain seemed to be misfiring like my old carriage had a tendency to do. I wasn’t running on all cylinders, because everything kept swirling in my head, a black mass of Oh fuck.
I thought of Perak, of where all these Storad were heading, and who’d be top of their list to kill, and that jolted me back into thinking. For a bit, anyway. But not rationally, otherwise I wouldn’t have dropped myself right in it.
“Where’s Perak?” I asked the Special.
“Wait, you’re on first-name terms with the Archdeacon?” Quillan said, and they all took a step away from me.
“Yes,” I snapped back, throwing caution to the long drop underneath the walkway. “I am, because he’s my brother, my family – just like your family we all just fought for back there. And he’s from Under too, like me, and you, and if he gets the chance he’s going to change things – but he needs to live first. You,” I said again to the Special. “Where is he?”
“They were retreating up towards the lab, but the Archdeacon went up to Top of the World.”
The lab – shit, Lise was in the lab. Or had been. Maybe Erlat, if she’d actually listened to me, which I doubted. And the machines – the Storad knew all about the machines, thanks to Dench. Not a chance in hell they’d leave them untouched if they could get to them. I’d have rather blown them up myself than let him get his hands on them. So would Lise, which was my only consolation and no consolation at all.
Quillan came to my rescue then. “I say,” he said, slow and thoughtful as though feeling his way through his words. “I say we loot the bodies for any guns and weapons we can, then come up behind and break them from both sides.” He gave me the old side-eye. “And I say we keep on eye on this bugger too, just in case. No offence.”
“None taken.” And I didn’t take any, because I don’t have to be told when the wind changes. I’m no leader, never have been, never wanted to be, because leadership equals responsibility and we all know how I feel about that. Besides, those men and women were gravitating to him like flies round shit and he seemed a solid enough guy. “As long as we go.”
So we rifled through the bodies, which was just as delicious as it sounds, and if nothing else we were better prepared. Had more people too when it came to it, because more and more were creeping along walkways to join us. Never did take long for word to get around in Under, and a loose crowd jostled behind, asking what was happening, or just joining in with getting guns. No doubt some were only nicking them, but by the end we had a decent-sized mob, and Quillan led us on and up.
Chapter Twenty-four
We got to the level under the lab before we encountered any kind of resistance. By the looks of it, the Storad were arrowing straight for Top of the World. Take that and they had the city, or all the parts that mattered to them. Just as Allit had seen – Storad in Top of the World. And here I was, with the rising. That boy had a talent he didn’t appreciate, because it was what he’d seen that had given me the idea to try to gather Under together. Perak too, perhaps, though who knew what thoughts it had conjured in his twisting brain?
There was something about that trip, some sort of fraternity that I’d never been part of before. Shit, I’d always kept myself apart from pretty much everyone, and my excuse had been being a mage. But then the core of us had shared things in that square in the Buzz, shared blood and death and kill-or-be-killed. Maybe it was exhaustion, or the thought of having killed a man face-to-face and wanting to know I wasn’t alone, maybe it was the black creeping up on me unawares, but it was like nothing I’d felt before and I wanted it to stay. For the first time in maybe ever I felt a part of something, part of other people, part of the city rather than apart and alone, despised. OK, I wasn’t exactly Mr Popular and, let’s face it, probably never will be. But without Pasha by my side, his solid presence, I needed something to hold on to and they were it.
At the stairwell that led to the lab, there was a knot of Storad. Quillan had taken to this like a bird to air and he knew before we got there. There were gangs that ran Under that no sane man wanted to be up against, and this was a kind of fighting they knew – quick, quiet, take them by surprise. With the men that had joined us, more and more, the gangs were an unexpected addition. Maybe only there for the looting, or perhaps the chance at Top of the World when we were done, but they came, terrifying men with tattoos ringing their faces and eyes that had seen everything and hated it. Luckily, what they were hating right then were Storad.
Guinto asked one why he’d come, and got a growled “This is my patch, and even if it’s shit, no one takes it from me without a fight.”
With the gangs came their specialists. Men who could dismember another in three easy moves with knives so sharp the point vanished into nothingness; scouts who could blend into a shadow in the wink of an eye, who could communicate with their leaders seemingly without words, just signs and low coded whistles. The gangs didn’t get too close to each other, but they were there and that was the important thing. Mahala was theirs, and they weren’t going to let her go without a fight, whether the Ministry let them or not. They weren’t exactly the sort of people who took orders well, at least not Ministry orders.
Thanks to those scouts – and Halina too, because levitating is a handy way to reconnoitre – we didn’t walk straight into the knot of Storad guarding the way towards the lab. Instead, two of the gang leaders approached each other warily, spoke together for a moment and then, with a pair of vicious grins that made me want to drop my gun and put my hands up, beg for my life if I had to, they and their men went in. Not straight in, but from above and below, using arching walkways and shadowed doorways to launch themselves on an unsuspecting enemy that was used to fighting on the flat.
It didn’t last long. They didn’t even use guns, but their own very extensive collection of knives, clubs and nasty-looking spiky thin
gs. The two leaders sauntered back our way, wiping their weapons.
“One–nil to me, I think,” the first said.
“Yeah, yeah. Just you wait. My boys’ll slice the living crap out of every Storad between here and Top of the World. Bet you ten we get more than you.”
“You’re on.”
I was really quite glad they were on our side, and therefore nominally the good guys. Otherwise I’d have just found a corner to hide in until it was all over because they scared me more than the Storad, if I’m honest. Especially when I saw the mess they’d made. So matter-of-fact about it, like they were discussing the price of pigs.
And speaking of pigs, that distinct smell of burning bacon wafted up to us again on the same breeze that took the snow and turned it into small powdery tornados. Burning pigs, in the tunnels. I didn’t imagine the lurch this time, because the men around me felt it too. A walkway ahead of us leapt free of its securing bolts and launched into the void, crashing down, smashing itself to bits as it bounced from building to walkway to building before the sound died away in the depths. No one said anything, but I was thinking, a lot. Mostly about how I’d rather be shot in the face than get dropped, screaming, down fifty levels or so when a walkway crumbled or a crack decided it didn’t like it down in the ’Pit and decided to burrow upwards.
The tremor in the city rumbled to a stop as though embarrassed, and I could breathe again. By now the sky was starting to lighten around us. Not much, because snowclouds still hovered over everything, made Top of the World a fuzzy mass above us, but enough to see by. Enough to render half the men speechless. Here we were just Over Trade. Over, and I doubted many of them had been anywhere near this far up. Even the factory workers would never usually get past the very bottom of Trade, at least outside the factories. There was always a guard ready to bounce you back down Under for looking wrong, talking funny, being in the wrong place.
Rojan Dizon 03 - Last to Rise Page 22
