“But why would Guinto want to kill pain-mages? It doesn’t make sense, especially when he offered to help. He got us into the mortuary, got us to the bodies, remember? Without that we’d never have found Jabol’s mother.”
Pasha was upset, pacing across the threadbare rug of the office. I sat at the desk, mindful of the drawers, and tried to talk to him but it was hard with Dendal butting in every few seconds. It would have been easier if the comments were relevant.
“Why would anyone want to kill us?” I asked. “Because the reminder is an embarrassment to Ministry, even if we are the only power source they have. Some of them don’t care about that. Most of them don’t even know we’re making the Glow–Perak’s keeping that as quiet as he can. I suspect most that do know, don’t care except we’re still around. Because a lot of mages have been right bastards to a lot of people. Because we’re unholy. Because, because, I don’t know!”
Because Guinto made my shoulder blades itch something fierce would be my answer, but I probably wasn’t the best person to ask. Priests have this tendency to bring me out in a rash. “Look, I’m not even saying it is him.” Though he was my first choice. One boy dies outside the temple he’s preaching at, one boy after going to his temple, Taban not more than ten minutes’ walk from him… And Lise was in his care, a fact that made this all the more urgent for me. “We should talk to him, see what he has to say. You can take a peek, see what you find.”
Pasha stopped pacing and stared at me, horrified. “Look inside a priest’s mind? I–I couldn’t. No, I couldn’t.”
“If you can’t be good, be careful,” Dendal said.
I ignored him. “Even after everything? You know, better than anyone, what people are capable of. Even those who say they serve the Goddess.”
“But Guinto’s not like them. He–he’s the only one, only priest in the whole damned city, who doesn’t spit on Downsiders, call us heretics. He’s a good priest, a good man. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Hide in plain sight,” Dendal said, and that was almost relevant.
“Yes, but if it’s him…”
I didn’t need to be able to see into Pasha’s head to guess what he was thinking. Jake and Guinto–she was fierce in her belief, and she believed in him. All the Downsiders did. Pasha, I think, depended on the fact that at least one person who wasn’t a mage or Jake didn’t think he was an abomination, treated him as though he was a person, not a thing to be despised. If it turned out Guinto was killing these boys… I didn’t want to be the one to tell Jake. I didn’t want to see what that would do to Pasha, or think about the riot Guinto’s arrest would cause. But people were dying, mages were dying. Without them we were sunk, every last one of us, and Pasha knew that as well as I did.
“We’ll just talk to him for now, all right? You could take a look in some of the others’ heads, couldn’t you?”
Pasha stared at the ceiling, as though praying for guidance. I don’t think he got any, but he nodded in the end, tight-lipped and furious.
“Picnic time!” Dendal said, and we left him to his own head.
Pasha was jittery all the way, tense and fidgety. He kept glancing up at the windows we passed, his hands twisting in front of him. Smudged faces looked down at us through the gloom, wary eyes following our progress. I wondered what they were thinking, but I couldn’t quite pluck up the nerve to ask Pasha. He looked as though he’d burst if I said one word.
The temple was quiet when we entered; the curfew was still in effect, and not many were risking breaking it, not with an Inquisition around. A few brave souls had come, or maybe they’d been caught here when the curfew came in. They sat on the pews, heads down, and the murmur of useless prayers washed over me. The plaster saints and martyrs lined the aisle. Pasha stopped by each one to make the proper devotion but I headed straight for the altar, and the door behind it that led to where Lise was being nursed. Where Guinto should be.
Abeya slipped out of the door before I reached it and when she saw me, she dimpled nicely and ducked her head. Shame I’d sworn off women. But, screw it, I needed something to take my mind off what I couldn’t have, and if I was going to do that I should do it properly.
I cranked up my best smile and took her hand to kiss it. When I made to let go, she kept hold of my hand and her smile was brighter than Glow. Made me feel all tingly, and pushed thoughts of Jake into a deep dark corner where I hoped they’d stay.
Pasha caught up, muttering darkly under his breath. Abeya ignored him and pulled me through the door. “I suppose you’re here to see Lise?”
“Not only Lise, no.”
She gave me an amused, sideways glance and blushed, but didn’t stop until we got to Lise’s bedside. “She’s much better, but we don’t know when she’ll wake up. Or even if. It’s always hard to tell with head injuries, the nurse says.”
The room was filled with makeshift beds and patients and nurses–with the Sacred Goddess Hospital gone, and no one really trusting the quacks from Under if they had any brains, the temples had become temporary hospitals. At least doctors and nurses were spared the curfew, a small mercy and one in which I detected Perak’s hand. The crowd made me feel at least a little better about Lise being here–if it really was Guinto murdering people, then he’d have to kill a dozen other witnesses too before he could get to Lise. Even so, I made a mental note to ask Dench to send a Special down here, just in case.
Lise did look much better. The lump on her head had gone down, the cuts were healing nicely and she had some colour in her cheeks. I extricated my hand from Abeya’s and sat down beside my sister. “Hey, Lise, come on, time to wake up.”
I sat and talked to her for a time, while Pasha paced like a tiger and Abeya watched me with an approving smile, but Lise never stirred. I left her with a kiss on her forehead, and a fervent wish she’d wake up, and soon.
Before I could ask Abeya if Guinto was there, he appeared in the doorway, looking soft-eyed and benign and a bit creepy to my mind. No one is that nice, not all the time, not even part of the time if experience was anything to go by, and it made me suspicious.
I nodded a brief greeting. “Just the man we wanted to see.”
“Perhaps you’ve been persuaded to see the light of the Goddess?” The corner of his mouth curled and maybe he was making a joke, but it seemed pretty poor to me.
“When people stop starving, or trying to kill each other, or arresting people for being different, when we get the promise of a nicer time in this life rather than in some hypothetical next one, I might be persuaded. Until then, think of me as a challenge. A really big one.”
The smile seemed utterly genuine, but I’ve always suspected the art of the fake smile was something they taught in the seminary. Priests always look genuine, even when they’re creaming the alms and spending it all in whorehouses. Looking genuine is part of the job description.
Guinto motioned for Abeya to go and she did, not without a regretful glance in my direction. Definitely a promise there, and one I might have to follow up, even if only to get some more information on Guinto.
When she’d gone, Guinto’s demeanour changed. Not so benign now, I thought. More guarded perhaps, making me ever surer he was hiding something. What, that was the question. If he was as good a man as Pasha and Jake seemed to think, maybe all he had on his guilty conscience was overindulging on sherry.
Guinto led us to his office, sat at his desk and arranged his robes, neat and precise. “Well then, if not for salvation, what do you want to see me for? Have you any news on the murders?”
Pasha beat me to it by half a heartbeat and that was probably just as well, as I’d likely have dropped out something savage. The bodies were haunting me. Just boys, who were discovering they were pain-mages, which was a difficult enough thing at the best of times.
“We thought you might be able to shed some light on a few things.” Pasha shot me a meaningful glance, a “shut the fuck up and let me do the talking” look.
“For you, Pasha, of course.” Guinto favoured me with a wry look before he turned back to Pasha. “For my flock, my most devout parishioners, anything. How is Jake?”
“Well, thank you, Father. If—”
“And how goes things between you? After everything you’ve been through, the fire of the Goddess, the road is slow and tough, I know. But a union of two souls, in every way, is a blessing, a prayer to the Goddess.”
Pasha blushed brick-red. “We’re… working on it. Do you—”
“Good. You know I pray for you both daily, that you find what solace you can with each other.”
Pasha looked utterly stricken, like a boy singled out by an overly harsh teacher in front of the class. “Yes, Father.”
This had gone far enough. You may have gathered I’m not overly enamoured of the priestly profession. I have my reasons; years of experience of less than faithful priests, of those more corrupt than the worst pimp, of seeing the Ministry turn Mahala into a soulless place full of greed and the very worst that man could do to man. Of seeing my mother die from the synthtox, a disease both caused and denied by the Ministry, a long slow agony and not a breath of kindness or mercy from any of them, or from the Goddess. This was almost worse, worse than ignorance of what was going on, this was purposeful, and it made me want to slap the good and virtuous Guinto round the side of the head. Besides, it was reminding me that Pasha had everything I wanted, and yet I wouldn’t have traded places with him for a second.
“Do you pray for all the boys killed, too, Father? For the people taken by the Inquisition for the crime of worshipping like a Downsider?”
There, that scrubbed the smile off his face. “Of course. I pray the Goddess embraces them, that their next life will be better than this.”
“Well, it could hardly be worse, could it?”
He merely inclined his head and that infuriated me more, that he accepted it. That he seemed to have no burning need, no flame to put that right and only depended on the next life being better. I’d thought differently of him when he’d preached, but this was another side to him, one that left a sour taste and reminded me that, no matter what, he was part of Ministry with all that entailed.
“Did you know any of the boys?” I tried to keep the bile out of my voice, I really did, but some must have leaked through because he looked as though he’d been slapped. “Any of them come here to worship?”
“I don’t know, how could I when no one seems to know, or care, who they were?”
“A boy called Jabol, did you know him?”
“I–yes, there was a boy by that name. He came to see me. He was worried that he was a pain-mage, that he’d be taken and made to do things he didn’t want to. Made to torture people.”
Pasha flinched at that, and Guinto spared him a sympathetic look. “I told him as I told you, Pasha. That he shouldn’t use it, that it’s an unholy thing, and has been used to do unholy work. That he should strive to overcome it and never to use it, even if it seems for good. He should forbear to use it for the peace of his soul. To give in is to be damned. If you would do that, Pasha, would give it up, beg forgiveness, then your path would no longer be full of the obstacles you insist on putting between you and Jake.”
By this point, I was hard pressed not to pick Guinto up and give him a good shake. The only way I managed not to was knowing that he’d say: see, this is what using pain magic does to you. I’d heard this all too often over the last years, while pain magic was banned. It’s unholy, mages are unholy, unclean, not fit to join the rest of the city, and all the while Ministry had been saying that, they’d secretly been using it in ways more unholy than I liked to think of. That Guinto should say that to Pasha of all people, to a man who’d spent his life fighting that usage, who had such a fierce belief in the Goddess–it rendered me almost speechless with rage.
“Damned, my bollocks,” I said when I could. “Was Jabol alive when you last saw him?”
Guinto put out a hand, as though to bless me against what I’d said, then seemed to think better of it. Probably very wise of him. I might have bitten his fingers off. “Well, yes. I had him go to each saint and martyr to beg forgiveness, and then before the Goddess. He promised to try to resist, to do as the Goddess wanted, as scripture demands. I last saw him before her mural, on his knees. A devout boy.”
I made sure not to catch Pasha’s eye. He stood, hunched and twisted against what Guinto had said, and I thought that you don’t need to touch someone to inflict pain on them, to torture them. Soft words were enough, if they were the right words.
“Taban, he worshipped here, too? You gave him all this shit as well?”
Guinto’s face hardened then and I saw some of the fire of his speech fill his eyes. He believed this, he really did. “He worships here, yes. And, yes, I talk to him about using his magic, about what it will do to his soul.”
“Did he talk to you about how if he didn’t, if we gave it up, we’d probably all have died of starvation by now?”
“As the Goddess wills. It’s unholy. And so are you if you embrace it, if you can’t see that it goes against all the Goddess is.”
It was probably a good thing that Pasha grabbed my arm then, a good thing for Guinto at least, if not for my temper. Pasha got me out of the door before I said, or did, anything too rash.
I managed to hold it in until we made it out of the temple, and spilled my bile all over the street.
“Unctuous, snot-wiping, pig-fucking toad! Why do you go there if this is what you get? Temple is supposed to be about—”
“What do you know about temple?” Pasha’s voice was quiet, crushed so that it made me want to shout all over again. “Nothing, that’s what. He’s right. The Goddess—”
“Fuck the Goddess!” Didn’t look like it was our day for finishing sentences. “Pasha, you are, you and Jake–you’re the reason I found anything to have faith in, made me have at least a little faith in myself, what I can do. That I should use it for more than earning cash and getting women into bed. You can’t believe this, that you should deny what you are because She said so. And what was all that obstacles between you and Jake shit?”
“If I try hard enough, if I pray enough, I won’t know, won’t be able to hear… Me and her, it… I can’t. She can’t. We… I want to not hear, Rojan. I want not to know what’s in other people’s heads.”
The old me would have internally given a little whoop of joy at this news. That things weren’t all sunshine and kittens between them. The new me saw the way his face twisted, how he was being pulled in all directions and none of them good ones.
So instead I said, “It was always going to be hard. You’re both fucked up by what my father did to you. Now you’re Upside and things are different. Very different. It’s going to take time, but if you want to, you can make it work. You will. I promise. But you are a pain-mage and there’s fuck all anyone can do about that. You can’t stop being what you are.”
Then I wondered what the hell I was saying. A quick word here and Jake would have been a free agent, ready for me to swoop in. Yet somehow, this was more important. Pasha had, almost without my realising, become a friend, one of the first I’d managed in long years. Realising that made my stomach twist, and also made me see that I’d changed. The old me would have said for the worse, too, and would have sneered. The new me saw that all my cynicism was still there, but now that I saw what the world did to people I cared about, now that I let myself care about them, all those thoughts hit home a thousand times harder. Made those cynical words choke me.
Pasha rubbed a scarred hand over his face. “I’m not sure what I disbelieve more, but I think you saying that comes out a clear winner.”
“I’m not entirely sure I believe I said it myself. Look, you are what you are. You can’t change it, and I can’t change what I am.”
“A prick?”
“Thank you, yes. There’s not a man in five thousand that can do half what we do. Maybe no one else in the city who can do precisely what you do. And if you hadn’t done what you did–all those kids down there, being told they had to atone, had to hurt if they wanted the Goddess to love them, where would they be? Still believing it, like Jake? Like you?”
He flinched as though I’d slapped him and I wished I could take that last part back. To make my own small atonement without anything as tacky as an apology, I said, “Without you using your magic, me using mine, they’d still all be there. Don’t tell me that’s unholy, because I will tell you you’re full of shit.”
That brought back a trace of his monkey grin, but it soon turned wistful. “I don’t want to be different any more. I want to be like them, all the other Downsiders, even if it means the Inquisition takes me.” He waved a hand at the group of buildings ahead that looked as though they were only held up by their neighbours, with spit for mortar.
“I’m going to be, too. Just as soon as that generator is up and running and you don’t need me any more. I–I think I found my parents. I had Dendal send them a message. My whole life has been anything but normal, and that’s all I want. I want people to look at me like I’m a person, not a thing. Like this, I–I can’t. Without my magic, at least Downsiders won’t hate me any more. I’ll have somewhere to be. Me and Jake might be able to… I believe in the Goddess more than I believe in my magic.”
And I couldn’t say a damned thing to that, because who was I to deny what he wanted? Poor bastard had lived a fucked-up life, which was putting it mildly. Hell, he was so screwed up he even liked me. He deserved a bit of normality. Still didn’t stop me thinking dire swearwords at the Goddess, though. So I changed the subject.
“We need to be at the pain room soon, see if anyone’s managed to salvage any of the equipment. Perak sent to Alchem ical Research for one of their guys to come take a look.”
Pasha looked sick at the thought of anyone Ministry in the lab, but it was all the chance we had, and a slim one. No one but Dwarf and Lise knew what miracles they could do with machines, or how they worked.
“Why don’t you go and find Jake, have some dinner and I’ll meet you there.”
He nodded wearily, looking more careworn than I’d ever seen him, and I’ve seen him pretty fucked up. “What about you?”
“Couple of people to see. Maybe Dench, if I can find him. See if we can get someone to keep an eye on Guinto.”
“And Abeya? You haven’t changed that much.”
I grinned at him and was pleased when he managed a monkey grin back. “Oh yes, and Abeya.”