The cut to Pasha’s arm wasn’t as bad as the blood had suggested, so it didn’t take too long to get him stitched. I was even getting pretty good at it, what with all the practice I’d had stitching Jake up after her Matches. The argument after took longer, but I won in the end for once. My name next or not, if whoever was doing all this was getting this close to us, I wasn’t leaving Dendal on his own, especially given the would-be killer’s thought “It wasn’t supposed to be him”. Who else was supposed to be there? Who else had a reason to go and see Pasha right then? Dendal, with his message from up high. Fair enough, Lastri was enough to frighten the most crazed serial killer–she scared the living crap out of me–but it was the middle of the night and she wasn’t at the office. And the office was where anyone would go to find me, mister-next-on-the-list. They’d find Dendal, too, and another mage might be a temptation too far.
That was the reason I gave, anyway, and I meant it. I didn’t voice the thought that that message had just been too nicely timed. Someone knew about Pasha trying to find his parents, about Dendal and how insistent he got about delivering his messages. Maybe a ruse to get Dendal and Pasha together and kill two mages with one big knife, which I’d thwarted by being there and being big enough to knock the door down before they got the chance to finish off Pasha. Goddess knows what they’d had planned to keep Jake out of the way.
Anyway, added bonus to me checking on Dendal was that I didn’t want to stay at Pasha and Jake’s place. I couldn’t, not with her so close. Because I would have caved in, and Pasha didn’t deserve that. Pasha didn’t deserve any of what happened, then or later. Besides, he’d be safe enough because there was as much chance of Jake leaving him alone as me becoming Archdeacon, and she was a mean fighter, all the meaner when it was Pasha at stake, and she’d got Pasha to call to Dog, too. Between the two of them, they could probably take on a whole battalion of elephants armed with guns.
So I was pretty jittery as I made my way back to the office. I kept my good hand on the pulse pistol in my pocket, just in case, and jumped at every moving shadow, every noise. Which meant I was jumping a lot because, if there’s one thing Mahala does well, it’s shadows. The moon was up there, somewhere. Every now and again, a faint silver shaft would appear, reflected a hundred times before it reached this low, growing weaker each time. A few windows had flickering lights in them, but the quiet light just seemed to make the shadows worse. For the first time, I was truly afraid in my own city.
The office was dark when I got there, and that was odd. Odder still was that when I sidled my way in with my pulse pistol out and ready, Dendal wasn’t there. Dendal was always there, scritch-scratching away with his pen, surrounded by his candles. Not now, though. His corner was empty, his candles unlit. It really creeped me out, especially given my earlier thoughts regarding ruses and big knives. If there was one thing in this crappy city I could rely on, it was Dendal being there, in body if not in mind. I tried not to imagine the possibilities and failed, badly.
So I was feeling like throwing up as I edged into the room. Tripping over any dead body would be bad enough, but Dendal’s? That would be like tripping over a dead puppy.
No dead body and no one trying to kill me by the time I got to the candles, so I took my life in my hands, lit a few and took one over to my desk. He’d left a note in his spidery hand. At Lastri’s, all sick–bacon was off. Took boy with me. Back in the morning.
I tried to restrain the smile, then realised no one was watching and let it loose. The only thing better than me eating bacon was using it in the escalating war between me and Lastri. I felt a twinge of guilt and told myself not to be so soppy–only last week Lastri had “accidentally” laced my tea with laxative. A shame that Dendal and Allit had got sick too, but better than the alternatives that had been playing across my mind.
I flopped down on the sofa and put my feet up on Griswald. If anyone–whoever the hell it was, and I had less idea now than I did when I started–was after Dendal they’d look here first, so he should be safe enough, the boy too. Not to mention I happened to know Lastri’s place was situated between the rooms of two very well-built guards, heavy, gnarled men who were surprisingly protective of her. Dendal was safer than I was. Especially given that my name was next on the list.
By the time I’d done my best with all the locks, rearranging the one on the main door so that even Dendal with his key wouldn’t be able to get in, the clock showed after three in the morning and I was pretty sure I’d think straighter after some sleep. I needed to think straight if I was going to untangle the mess we were in. I was asleep as I thought it. Sadly, not the black and dreamless kind.
A sound, close and furtive, dragged me back awake and thankfully out of the dream. I lay there, a sweaty mess with dream-visions dancing in my head, of Jake and blood and a boy with his throat cut, of Pasha driven to his knees by all the voices he could hear in his head, each of them lit by the Glow we couldn’t provide.
All the candles were out again except the one I’d left on my desk. It didn’t show me much, except that I wasn’t alone. Something, someone, moved in the darkness beyond. I had a bad feeling that they had a big knife with them, and groped for the pulse pistol in the pocket of my jacket where I’d slung it over the back of the sofa. I hoped I’d have a chance to use it.
A dim shape moved out of the shadows and I swung the pistol. Luckily I didn’t fire it off willy-nilly, because an ethereal face appeared in the gloom, dark hair fluttering round her face and she smelled of angels.
I sat up and stuffed the pulse pistol back where it had come from. “Abeya, you scared the—” I restrained myself from saying something very rude indeed. She was a priest’s daughter after all. “What are you doing here? How did you get in?”
Her mouth twitched in a hesitant smile. “I came to see you.”
“That’s—” I didn’t get a chance to say anything else before she kissed me. I was impressed; normally I have to do a bit of chasing at least. Maybe this new face was good for something after all. Then I realised I’d just woken up. I didn’t–couldn’t–keep up my disguise when I was asleep. And then I stopped thinking with my brain entirely as she pressed into me, all soft and willing, with tongue and hands and… Other parts of me started thinking, if you can call it that, very rapidly.
Was it fair? No. No, it wasn’t fair to her, or to me much either, but I was lonely and in love with someone who I couldn’t have. Abeya was there, lonely, too, I suspected, and warm and kissing me as though there was no tomorrow. In my defence, I’d have made every go of it, I’d have tried, though I suspected my Kiss of Death tendencies would have screwed it around the two-week mark as usual. So I protested, but not much, and we… had a nice time. Twice. Still, it wasn’t fair of me.
Then again, it wasn’t very fair of her to try to kill me afterwards.