Three hours, and several wrong turns, later I was standing in a narrow alley between two shanty-built houses leaning out so far that they looked like two drunks supporting each other. Only a fitful oil lamp gave me any light to see by, but I was pretty sure that was a mercy, given the smell. Someone was dying of the synthtox somewhere close by. Rain dripped constantly from the roof far above, plastered my hair to my head and tingled on my face. I double-checked the address with the one Tam had given me and approached the small door, tucked away behind a stall selling some kind of food I couldn’t recall having even smelled before.
The door was unlocked, as Tam had said it would be, but that didn’t stop the hairs sticking up on the back of my neck. Under a feeble, swaying light – a rend-nut-oil lamp, not a Glow, the whole place reeked of rend-nut and poverty and synthtox – a set of wooden steps led upward, the treads splintered and broken in places. The bottom step groaned when I trod on it, but it took my weight and I advanced gingerly. Something chimed at my nerves, made me grip the pulse pistol hard inside my pocket; but, look as I might I couldn’t see anything to alarm me.
Without warning a part of the wall came away and swung towards me. I lurched back, quickly enough to avoid the smack of the door, not nimble enough to avoid falling to one knee. Before I could bring up the pulse pistol, one of Perak’s new guns was an inch from my nose, the muzzle quivering slightly. I hadn’t seen one up close before, but there was no mistaking what it was. The face behind the dark eye of the barrel was in shadow as the light swung in a lazy arc above.
“What are you doing here, Ministry man?” he said, and a sharp fear vibrated in his voice. The finger on the trigger twitched. “Jake’ll have something to say about that. You may end up as dish of the day on that stall down there. You’ll probably taste better, too.”
The only papers I’d dared bring down were the Ministry ones, in case I was searched before they let me in. Tam had warned me: among the general population, the Ministry were less than welcome, and they were dead if they left the approved areas. I was not in an approved area by a wide margin, and I suspected the Ministry were as welcome as snot in the bathtub. “Tam sent me.”
The gun lowered a fraction, but I still couldn’t see much of the guy’s face except the hard line of his mouth. “Prove it.”
Luckily, Tam had foreseen this. Mindful of the gun in my face, I slid a hand into a pocket and took out the picture Tam had given me. It had a bland scene of one of the plusher parts of Trade painted on it. The slip was snatched out of my hand. Gun Man gave it the briefest of looks and stood to one side, gesturing me upwards with the barrel.
“In there,” he said, pointing to the doorway he’d come through. “Sit on the first chair, keep your hands on the arm-rests.”
I resisted the instinctive reaction to tell him to go screw his mother, did as I was told and entered a small, spartan room. There were two rickety chairs, a bed with a threadbare blanket and a lumpy-looking pillow, and a small desk, neat, no papers. The floor was bare boards, worn to splinters with odd stains making weird patterns. Some pictures on the wall, but I couldn’t make them out in the light from a guttering oil lamp. That was it. A room for sleeping in, working in. Not for living in. It was scrubbed so clean it could have been made yesterday, though the building that housed it was eaten away by the synth, almost to nothing in places.
I sat in the chair and put my hands on the armrests. Even without Tam’s warnings about the dangers here, the jittery twitch of the man’s finger on the trigger would have made me do it. Not just craven self-preservation: I needed to live to find Amarie. I told myself that and almost believed it.
I bit back a laugh when I saw the man who walked through the door. If I’d have seen his face before, I’d have had that gun out of his hand in two seconds flat. He was a few years younger than me, mid-twenties I guessed, though he still had the gangliness of youth and he looked scared half to death. He was dressed in tatty black, the arms of his old-fashioned cloth shirt pulled down fastidiously to his wrists, every crease in place, all buttons done up. In contrast, his dark, collar-length hair rumpled round a face that managed to give the impression of a small wizened monkey that’s had its banana stolen. But he held the gun, even if his hand did tremble so much it was only pointing at my face half the time.
He stood and looked at me for a moment, his dark eyes ranging over my face uncomfortably before he relaxed, just a fraction. He took a look at the picture in his left hand and glanced my way again.
“You don’t look much like a Ministry man,” he said. “Too thin, not arrogant enough.”
“I’m not Ministry.”
“You’re from Upside, though. Accent’s wrong for a Downsider. You don’t dress like one either, that allover, the coat. The only Upsiders in this place are Ministry. Which means I will take great pleasure in shooting you. No Specials here to guard your back, not this far out. This far out, they don’t even care enough for that.” His hand tightened on the gun and his face twisted, as though gearing himself up to do it.
“I’m looking for Pasha. I need his help,” I snapped. I wanted to be back Upside, where I knew the rules, where I didn’t need this kind of help, any help, where my life was contained to a nicety. I wanted to be in the bed of one of my girls, or drinking at home with barely a thought to the people I looked for, apart from the cash finding them would bring me. Where I could do as I pleased, within reason, and didn’t have this duty weighing on my every thought. Or synth on my boots.
The name seemed to startle him out of shooting me. For a while, anyway. “Help with what?” He moved across to the bed and sat down, the gun still pointing my way. He seemed to have got his nerves under control, because it wasn’t waving about any more. The picture flipped over and over in his other hand.
It was bad enough that I had to ask for help, but this was getting irritating. “For fuck’s sake, are you Pasha? Yes or no? If yes, stop pissing about; if no, where is he? I haven’t got time to dick around.”
He gave me a shame-faced grin and laughed a little. “You don’t sound much like a Ministry man, for all your accent. Let’s see.”
He reached down, still pointing the gun my way, and felt under the bed. When his hand returned he was holding what looked like a lamp, but the glass was black. He laid the picture on the covers of the bed and held the lamp over it, flicking a switch with his thumb. No light shone that I could see, but the picture changed in some indefinable way. He laid the gun on his leg, though he didn’t take his hand off the butt, and grinned, making him look more monkey-like than ever. “I’m Pasha. What is it you want, Mr Dizon?”
I relaxed a little in the chair. “I’m looking for a girl.”
He shrugged in a poor attempt at nonchalance. “Aren’t we all? But I’m not a pimp.”
I refused to give in to the sharp retort and kept my voice level. He had a point. “My niece. She was kidnapped. She’s down here.”
His raised his eyebrows. “From Upside? And the kidnappers? You’re sure?”
I shut my eyes against Amarie’s sobbing, the growl in the background. Then I lied a bit. Lying about my magic was second nature, and probably why I wasn’t yet dead. “Tam seemed to think so, from the little descriptions we had.”
“Which were?”
I ran through the brief details I’d found out: the scarred man and his lookalike companion, the way they were dressed, and how they’d disappeared. I didn’t like the hard glint that leapt into Pasha’s eye, at odds with his impish face, or the way he was chewing his lip. Or, indeed, the way his hand tightened on the trigger of the gun, because it was still pointing my way. “Why should I help you? What’s one girl when all the ’Pit needs help?”
“Tam said you would. I’m happy to pay,” I said, hoping he would refuse the money. I’d paid too much to Tam already.
“I don’t need your money.” His face flushed as though he was affronted by the offer. “Tam’s never sent anyone down here before. What’s so special about you, or this girl, that he’d risk it?”
“She’s my niece. I want to get her back.”
He gave me a pitying look but said nothing. My temper started to get the better of me but I resisted the urge to thump him. Tam had warned me this man was my only hope. I didn’t stand a chance down here without him. I didn’t quite manage the diplomacy I’d hoped for; the words fell out of my mouth before I could stop them. “How are you going to help anyway? You can barely even hold a gun straight.”
He raised the gun and hefted it as though testing its weight, or its ability to blow my head clean off. He didn’t look quite so monkey-like now. “You’ll see.”
Pasha splashed through the streets and I followed. It wasn’t long before I was wishing I had a hat like everyone else, to keep the constant drizzle off. Every drop felt like another nail in my coffin. It might be laced with synth, might be working its way into my blood and bones right now. Which kind of offset the pleasure of being able to walk on solid ground and not have the niggle of a long drop to chew my nerves.
We passed through a large and thriving trade district, so different to Upside. The windows were full of things I hadn’t seen in years, banned by the Ministry for being seditious: gramophones, both wind-up and powered by some mysterious source, and the records to go with them; instruments – brass, woodwind, even a twelve-string guitar. Music vibrated along the streets, blaring out of windows, songs and bands competing with each other, mingling together, but somehow it never became discordant.
Whole shops were devoted to books. I don’t mean factual books – even the Ministry allows them, after they’re vetted carefully for anything they don’t like. I mean stories. The sort that my mother used to read to us, that make you think there’s hope yet for people. That something better exists, even if it isn’t here or you’ll never experience it for yourself. Unicorns, dragons, myths and legends, noble warriors, dread mages, you know the sort of thing. I’d forgotten about those stories she’d read. I’d forgotten the sentiment too, and I itched to dive in among them, try to regain some of that wonder. It was probably a good thing I didn’t, because I suspected any wonder in me was long gone.
Some of the goods hadn’t been banned Upside but they might as well have been, considering how long it had been since I’d seen any. Big, fat pork chops, a brace of game-birds, beef enough to keep me stuffed for a week with prices so cheap any low-life in Boundary could have afforded at least one meat meal a week. We walked past a shop that baked and sold pies, and my stomach rumbled audibly at the aroma that wafted along the street.
There were other differences from Boundary and the rest of Upside too. I hadn’t seen one Rapture addict, not a single working girl, or if I had they were being exceptionally discreet. Yet, for all their food and the apparent lack of the flaws of Upside, there was an undercurrent, something raw and visceral that vibrated my bones almost as hard as the music. Anger and hopelessness flowed through the crowds just as it did in Boundary or anywhere below Trade. The only difference was that here they hid it better, because it wasn’t directed at each other in brawls or knife fights. It was here, but I got the feeling they kept it all inside, brewing, waiting to escape in a violent explosion. It made me shiver and hurry after Pasha.
He led me further in, passing no comment and answering none of my questions except with an offhand shrug. The undercurrent was affecting him, I think. Once he’d stepped outside his door, his shoulders had hunched into his jacket, his mouth had hardened. He no longer looked like a little monkey but like a vicious, if skinny, ape. I could be wrong – I’ve only ever seen monkeys or apes in books when I was a boy. However, putting on a different face when you step out of the door, that I know.
Buildings towered over us, hemming us and our sightline in. I was used to that, to the crumbling façades, the blank-eyed windows. What I wasn’t used to was the constant rain, the occasional glimpse of someone half dead from synthtox, or the thought that, no matter the time, I wouldn’t get to see even third-hand sunlight. It would always be dark down here. The thought made me shove my hands further into my pockets and hunch away from the rain. So it wasn’t until Pasha stopped and said, “Here we are” that I noticed the building.
It wasn’t like the others, didn’t reach to the far-above Seal that divided the ’Pit from Upside. It alone looked pristine against the ravages of synth. Three storeys tall, that was all, faced with white stone and curved. If I could have seen it all, it’d probably be round. Lamps blazed from every barred window, lighting the streets and setting the shop windows into sparks and bright reflections. It looked like a temple – or a prison.
The streets were filled with people, all heading for the main entrance which opened like a dark mouth in the side of the building. Barkers wandered up and down the orderly lines shouting, “Tickets, best tickets for the match of the decade!”
“Match?” I asked Pasha. Upside there were occasional sporting events, especially in the winter. Chayl matches – a kind of organised brawl involving, at least nominally, a ball – were fun to watch and I tried to get to most of them, even if my team always lost whenever I showed up. The games were so popular, it was a wonder the Ministry hadn’t banned them yet. Only I had the feeling this wasn’t that sort of match. The people queuing looked too – not grim exactly. I’m pretty grim when I go to see a chayl match, because I’m always sure we’ll lose and too often right. With these people, it was almost as though they came to pay homage, to give solemn thanks. They looked like temple-goers on holy days. Well, from what I remember of going to temple, anyway. It’s been a while, but these people had an added something that rang familiar to me when talking about temple. An added – I don’t know what; that brewing anger, perhaps, just waiting to explode, or be released somehow.
Pasha looked out over the crowd with me, but didn’t seem to see anything he liked, if the way his lips thinned was anything to go by.
“Come on.” He nodded his head to indicate where he wanted to go. “We can get in the other way, away from these carrion birds.”
He pushed through the orderly crowds and I followed. There were one or two murmurs, but it seemed people knew who Pasha was because no one gave any trouble. Before long we’d skirted the round building and were at the back. No crowds here, though a knot of teenage girls, wearing not a whole hell of a lot, giggled across the street under the protection of a shop’s awning. Pasha ignored them and led the way to a small door that was almost hidden in stone scroll-work and shadows.
He knocked, a patterned rapping that was obviously some sort of code. After a few heartbeats, the door cracked open. It was dark in the gap, and for a moment all I could see was an olive-skinned face and a black eye. When the opener saw Pasha, though, the door swung wide, revealing a man clad only in short breeches and a sword, which had the girls squealing with delight behind us. I was distracted from the door by the sight of one of them very nearly falling out of her top. Until the voice that felt like it shattered one of my eardrums.
“Pasha!” The behemoth of a man enveloped Pasha in a hug that might break ribs. Every muscle was sculpted to perfection, a stomach to die for, a flow of thick glossy black hair – and a face with no more sense in it than a five-year-old’s. But a five-year-old with a large sword at his waist, who looked like he could use it if someone stole his lollipop. He waved at me, happy to meet me, which was a new experience. I tried to act as if I was allergic to lollipops.
Pasha extricated himself from the hug and grinned up at Muscle Boy. “Hey, Dog. Got someone to see Jake. OK?”
Dog nodded with an exaggerated movement as though it was something he needed to think long and hard about. He stepped back to give us space and I found myself in the sort of room that typifies any sporting endeavour. Grey walls, the smell of sweat, abandoned socks and jockstraps, damp towels, and people – generally athletic men who made me briefly promise to exercise more – wandering around in their underwear. In the background, a crowd roared and cheered and stamped, blowing off their anger in an outpouring of noise.
The difference in this arena was that the towels were spotted with blood and all the players had at least one sword somewhere about their person. I got the feeling that a “match” wasn’t a friendly thing, a game to be played. It was serious. Yet the people were welcoming enough. Several men nodded at Pasha, one or two waved or called out.
Pasha ignored them and wove his way through a throng of people and the aroma of unwashed socks. He stopped by a nondescript door – grey wood with a cheap handle. The look he gave me, just a flick of the eyes and a small, twitching little grin that could easily be missed, made me think of someone who’s about to get one over on someone else. The kind of look that I love to give out, but am not so keen to get.
The door wasn’t locked and after that look Pasha went straight in, with me close behind. I was quite glad to have some wood between me and the bemuscled specimens of manhood in the hall, bristling with sharp things and making me feel inadequate.
The room inside wasn’t at all what I’d expected – I’d thought a changing room or maybe a sparring area. Instead, I was met with functional, tasteful luxury. Thick carpet the colour of muted gold on the floor, two chairs upholstered in leather – real leather, I could tell by the smell. A sideboard along one wall was choked with bottles of all different colours and sizes. Booze for every taste and appetite. A rack of crystal glasses to drink it from. But that wasn’t what made my jaw drop.
That was what I could see through the smoked glass that took up the whole of the far wall. Two men, two swords and a whole lot of muscles, sweat and blood. One of the men was big and beefy, blond hair rumpled and sweaty, stuck to a face that, whilst not handsome, was striking in its purposefulness, its intensity. The other was more like me: tall but not especially broad, dark skin, hair and eyes. Quicker than the blond, but not as strong, that was obvious from a glance.
Both had more than one slash across their chest or arm, blood soaking into their armour, dripping to the sand of the arena. I could see every bead of sweat that broke on the combatants’ brows as they slashed and kicked and crunched. Two men in close-fitting leather armour, hacking away in a brutal ballet of swords. Not what I’d expected.
Around the two men, the cheers and howls of the crowd blocked out any other sound. Viewing-boxes like this one, with blackened one-way glass, almost surrounded the arena at ground level, leaving only an entrance ramp that sloped up to a stage. Above the boxes the stands shook to the stomp of ten thousand feet. It was primal: the fight, the noise, the crowd, the blood. I loved it and feared it all at the same time.
Pasha poured himself a stiff drink and swallowed it down in one. He didn’t look at the fight. “Welcome to the death match.” He poured another shot and knocked it back with a shudder and a grimace.
The blond aimed an overhand slice at the dark guy and the sword bit in. Blood streaked the window and the crowd screamed its approval. I turned to the sideboard, grabbed the first bottle that came to hand and poured. I don’t know what it was, and it burned the shit out of my throat, but it was better than watching that.
“Why did you bring me here?”
Pasha stared straight ahead at the greyed plaster of the wall and ran a lazy finger around the edge of his glass. “Because. Because you need help, and Jake is the one who’ll give it. Because matchers have power here, more than anyone who isn’t Ministry, and you’ll need that too. Because you needed to know what life Downside is, and this shows it better than anything. Ministry controlling from behind you, pretending to give the people what they want, and pretending it isn’t them running it. But while they give with one hand, give blood to the bloodthirsty, sate the hunger, the anger of the crowd to keep them pliable – while you’re watching them give, they take double the blood with the other hand behind your back. If you’re lucky that other hand won’t have a knife in it. But most of all, because Jake is like a god here, and you need all the damn help you can get.”
“OK, that’s the third time you’ve mentioned Jake. Who is he and what can he do to help?”
Pasha’s low laugh made me shiver. “What can anyone do against the Ministry? But Jake will help. We both will, where we can and for our own reasons. Just don’t ask what they are.”
His eyes were fixed on a crack in the plaster but I got the feeling he wasn’t seeing anything. His hand gripped his glass almost as though he was trying to choke it. But whatever his reasons were, frankly I didn’t care. I didn’t care if he thought I was made of cheese, as long as I got Amarie out of that damn hole. I could hear that growl as a subtle background to every thought, and Pasha’s cryptic offer of help was sent from the gods I don’t believe in.
“So what now?”
Pasha looked down blindly at his glass, seemed to realise it was empty again and sloshed a good slug of something blue into it. “First, we behave like good little Downsiders and watch.”
He slumped into one of the leather-covered chairs just as Blondie brought his sword down to rest on Dark Guy’s throat, one foot casually keeping him on the ground. Dark Guy’s sword lay on the other side of the arena. The match was over. The crowd went berserk, shouting, cheering, stomping. Money rained down into the sand and a young boy scampered round, picking it up. Some thumping music started and Blondie strutted round the arena, sword held over his head in victory as he lapped up the adoration. He didn’t seem to notice the blood running down his upstretched arm.
“So this is a death match?” I asked. “How is it that the dark guy’s still alive?”
Blondie swaggered up the ramp and two men hurried to help Dark Guy to his feet. They each took one arm over a shoulder and half helped, half carried him up the ramp.
Pasha kept his eyes on the arena, scanning the crowd with a curled lip. “Because if they died too often, we’d have no one left to stage the matches, and the Ministry would have nothing to offer the people who watch, no sop to keep the people quiet except religion – and that’s not enough, not down here. People need somewhere to vent their anger, safely, not against the Ministry, and this is it. The matchers die often enough as it is, without anyone trying too hard. Gregor, the dark guy as you call him, may yet die from his injuries or infection. But it’s mostly a sham, Mr Dizon. A pretence to feed the crowd what they want; that’s what the men who run it say. The crowd think it’s real, but they love a matcher who shows a bit of mercy. Though, as it’s the Ministry that started it up, and say it’s for the people, I don’t believe this is for the crowd’s benefit. Azama thought of it, and he’s one devious bastard. There are other reasons, I’m sure of it. Azama never does anything for only one reason.”
A couple more men were clearing the worst of the blood from the sand and the windows. A damp cloth squeaked on the glass and the streaks of blood disappeared. “And those reasons are?”
A wail of music drowned out the crowd for a moment and then a roar that made the previous chants seem like whispers almost deafened me. Pasha straightened in his seat.
The crowd calmed a little, but there was a buzz in the air as they waited for something, someone.
They didn’t have to wait long. A shout went up as music started up properly. A heavy throb of it preceded the man who stepped down the ramp. He swung his sword flashily in time to the beat, his black leather-armoured allover gleaming, matching the hair slicked back into an oily ponytail and the eyes that flashed with life. There were scattered cheers but some of those at the front of the crowd spat on him as he paraded down to the ring. He seemed not to notice, his eyes sharp and focused on something internal. He looked ablaze with confidence, as though he couldn’t imagine how anyone could ever seek to beat him.
“That’s Jake?” I asked, though I couldn’t see how it could be anyone else from what Pasha had said. I was surprised when he laughed.
“Oh no, that’s not Jake. That’s the Storad. He’s just here for the one fight.”
A Storad? They supposedly came from outside Mahala, from a hard country to the north, one that had no love for us, for the way Mahala controlled its trade through the mountain pass. How did he get into the city, let alone down here?
“Got some name no one can pronounce,” Pasha went on. “He’s the best from the north. Killed the last fifteen men in his fights. Three from poison, or so the rumour goes. He’s come because he thinks he has a chance to beat Jake.”
“Poison? They poison the blades?”
“Not here, no, and he’s not supposed to where he’s from either. But then, the Ministry doesn’t run things there. They fight because they’ve always fought, because the mountain tribes think that’s what they were born to do. Some religious thing, though luckily it’s only a few small tribes, or Mahala would be in trouble.” He shrugged, but there was a pinched look to his face. “Maybe he uses poison, maybe he doesn’t, there’s no way to know for sure. I’d plug your ears now if I were you: here comes Jake. Two hundred fights and not lost one of them, and never killed anyone, by accident or on purpose.”
There was a blast of music again, more melodious yet just as loud as before. A figure appeared at the top of the ramp, and if I’d thought the crowd had been thunderous before, they were deafening now. Pasha said something and though he was right next to me as we watched, I couldn’t hear any of what he said. And not just from the noise.
Jake stood for a moment before she descended the ramp, a lithe figure in black leather and steel with a shock of hair dyed cherry red pulled back from her face. Where the Storad had been confident and showy, she looked absolutely calm and collected, as though every movement was smoothly calculated. Her face showed nothing as she looked down at him and her eyes held only a wary reckoning. As the cheers and screams peaked she began a measured, graceful walk down the ramp; fluid, confident and sexy as all hell.
She reached the sand and the Storad gave her a small mocking bow before he raised his sword with both hands. It was almost as big as she was. She stood looking at him as the music tailed away, her eyes flicking between his face and the tip of his sword, then to his feet. The noise of the crowd above me subsided to a dull roar. He didn’t wait for her to pull a weapon but attacked with a blinding thrust and a twist of his body.
Before I’d even realised she’d moved, she had a sword in each hand. She parried his thrust and made one of her own with her left hand, and they were away, into a world of their own. We didn’t matter, I could see it in both of them. They weren’t aware the crowd was there as they slashed and parried and danced around each other, Jake always that little bit quicker, more nimble than him.
When I tore myself away for a moment, Pasha’s face was set in a grimace and the skin stretched over his knuckles as he grasped at the arm of his chair. He was breathing oddly, as though it was him that fought. A shout from the crowd drew me back into the fight.
I could see why she was so good, why the crowd loved her. She didn’t just use her swords, she wasn’t just fighting; she was entertaining. Every part of her was a weapon. The Storad seemed restricted to his blade, with little use for anything else, and if he hit with it he wouldn’t need anything else. But she dodged every blow with a swirl of panache that made the crowd chant her name, and when she did he felt the smack of her elbow or a foot would come up and crunch into his knee before she spun out of his reach. It was almost as though she was toying with him, playing up to the howls of the crowd, giving them what they wanted. The bewilderment on his face was in stark contrast to the confident swagger of five minutes ago.
He threw out a sudden roar that made me jump and Pasha almost come out of his chair beside me, then the Storad was on the attack. His blade moved smoothly in a well-practised series of manoeuvres that I was sure would have taken the head off any other person in the place. Jake fell back before him, her swords glittering as she blocked and dodged, but she seemed beaten at last, her speed nothing before his power. I felt sure I imagined the little twitch at the corner of her mouth.
She hesitated a split second too long as his sword swept round at waist height. Pasha let out a panicked “Shit!” and dropped his glass. But she bent backwards at the waist, like a reed in water, just enough so the sword passed her. The Storad, sure he had her at last, was left off balance and she wasted no time now. She seemed to run up his body; a foot blasted into his groin followed by a straight-legged kick to his nose that spread it over his face before she flipped herself over and landed lightly, crouched on the sand.
He let out a bellow of rage, lost among the roar of the crowd, as he flew backwards, blood spraying, to land on his back, hand loose on his sword. A foot landed on his right arm with the slap of stiff leather on skin. Her other foot landed no more than half an inch from his head in a puff of sand. When he looked up through pain-filled eyes there were two sword-tips touching his cheeks. Jake’s mouth was hooked up in a grin, her face alight with some emotion, pride maybe, or just the sheer rush of not being sliced to ribbons.
The Storad glared upwards and the muscles in his arms moved as though he would try to raise his weapon, but the tips of Jake’s swords moved almost imperceptibly forwards, the points pricking his skin. Then she leapt up and brought both feet down on his right arm. Bone broke with a sick, wet crack and he lost his grip on his sword altogether. An instant later the blades rested on his skin again. One of them trailed its way down his cheek towards his unprotected throat, a silent, potent threat.
With a look of intense hatred and humiliation, and with what I could only assume was some curse in his native tongue, he held his good hand away from its sword. She looked down at him and from this close I could see a blank calculation, backlit with a little flame of that pride.
She spun away from him and the noise from the crowd rammed into my ears, vibrated in my bones until being shouted to death became a distinct possibility. Jake didn’t parade in victory like Blondie had, just raised one arm briefly and held her bloodied sword aloft. It was only then that I saw what I’d missed in the rush of the fight. Blood trickled slowly down across her forehead from a gash among her hair. She held the arm by her side stiffly and there was a bloody rent in her armour. With a quick, blank glance at the box where Pasha and I sat and watched, she turned on her heel and stalked up the ramp, past a band that was setting up on the stage, and out of the arena.
Pasha sat back in his chair, shaking and sweaty, and murmured a few relieved swearwords. He got up and made his way to the drinks, poured himself a stiff shot and drank it down. The band started up a raucous tune that had the crowd stamping their feet in time and singing along.
“Must be tough,” I said. “Watching your girlfriend do that.”
Pasha shot me an alarmed look but another voice answered before he could say anything. A curious tone to it, half amused warmth, half deadly warning. “I don’t do relationships. I don’t do boyfriends. I don’t do flings, or one-night stands. I don’t do friends. I barely even manage acquaintances. Pasha is my employee, that’s all. And if he doesn’t stop snorting my booze we’re going to have words.” Pasha laughed and brought out another glass.
The singer in the arena wailed that he was suffer, he was smite, he was hope. I turned my head, very slowly. I didn’t know about the singer, but the woman sliding a swordpoint towards my eye – well, she was at least two of those things. I couldn’t be sure about the hope.
The sword stopped a scant half-inch from my eyelid and I kept very still. She looked me up and down without a flicker of interest and I regarded her carefully in return. Normally I’d have liked what I saw. Just slim enough while still going in and out in all the best places. In and outs all snugly cased in leather. Soft, slippery leather that made naughty thoughts appear like a rash in my imagination. A smooth face that might be pretty behind the blood.
I don’t go for looks as a rule. Don’t get me wrong, I like a pretty face as much as anyone. But it’s the way they walk that always gets to me, the way they carry themselves. Jake walked as though she owned the place, with an unconscious grace that made me tingle. An ice queen, untouchable, just how I like them. A challenge, and there’s normally such a volcano underneath. The only difference here was she looked like she meant it; the ice went all the way through.
So, she ticked all my boxes. Over eighteen, female, still breathing, a challenge. Unfortunately she ticked the “not on your fucking life” box too. Maybe it was the swords, or maybe it was her eyes. Those calm, dead eyes talked to me, told me she could slice me limb from limb and not worry about it, but there was something else, deeper, darker, and even now I couldn’t tell you what it was. What I can tell you is that she scared the crap out of me. That I liked it and wasn’t about to let that stop me. I was just going to have to be a bit more careful than usual.
Then she gave an easy grin that didn’t quite warm up the deadness behind her eyes, flicked the sword away and dropped it and its twin on a table. Pasha handed her a shot of the liquor and she drained it. “What’s the Upsider doing here?”
“Looking for someone, a girl gone missing,” Pasha said, and gave me a look that meant “Let me do the talking”. I was happy to leave him to it, because a stammer rarely comes across as professional.
Jake pulled off her gauntlets and peeled back the armour-clad allover down to her waist, revealing a sweat-soaked undershirt that clung to her and almost ensured I didn’t see anything else for a while. I dragged my eyes away, to soft leather strips that wound around her hands and arms to her elbows. Her upper arms and shoulders, what I could see, were covered in a tracery of old scars, and a gash split the skin on her left arm near the shoulder.
She sank into a chair and grinned up at Pasha as he hurried over with a small medic kit.
“Any poison, do you think?” Pasha asked, his face scrunched and monkey-like again.
Jake looked my way and shrugged. “Who can tell? We’ll find out when I keel over, eh? So, Upsider, who are you looking for and how’d you get down here?”
I stared in horrified fascination as Pasha got out a needle, thread and tweezers. Without pausing for anything other than sterilising the needle in the flame of an oil lamp, he began stitching the wound in Jake’s head. He seemed very careful not to touch her with anything other than the needle or tweezers. Jake barely flinched. By the looks of the scars, she’d been through this a fair few times before. Pasha opened his mouth to answer her question for me, but she waved his words away and asked me again.
“Tam sent me,” I managed after a moment. “He said Pasha could help.”
“And? There’s thousands of girls missing down here. Why should we worry about finding one when we could be finding dozens?”
“She’s my niece.”
Her eyes stayed steady on mine and there was a hint of something there, deep down, too deep to know if it was really there or only my imagination, but her lips smiled sadly and I think she actually meant her words. “Sorry to hear that. Any proof you aren’t Ministry?”
Pasha stopped his stitching a moment and fished out the picture that Tam had given me. Jake looked at it with a frown. “You checked this out, Pasha?”
“Of course. Right message. And an extra.” Pasha finished with the gash on her head and moved down to her arm.
“An extra?” She hissed quietly as the needle dug in, but there was no doubt about the warmth in her voice. When she spoke to Pasha, anyway. “Careful, you great lug.”
“Sorry. A possible name.” Pasha’s voice tightened and Jake gave him a wary look. Pasha kept his eyes on his stitching. “Azama. Tam’s sure he’s back.”
Jake’s arm jerked and pulled the stitches tight in her skin. She didn’t seem to notice. Some meaningful look passed between them but it was difficult to say why, or even what sort of look. Weighing up whether to help me tackle someone they clearly knew something about, perhaps.
“You think you’re the first person the Ministry’s sent down here to try to find us, find out who it is keeps taking those girls back? Eh? Not the first, and probably not the last. The others didn’t make it back.” Her eyes and mouth were set hard now, and the way she glared at me almost robbed me of words.
“The Ministry didn’t—”
Pasha interrupted me before I could go further, his voice low so I had to strain to catch the words. “If he is Ministry, he doesn’t know it.”
Jake flicked him a quick, surprised glance before she returned to looking at me, with a hard, thoughtful stare that made me quiver.
If I couldn’t get her to help, her and Pasha, I had no hope, not down here where everything was arse about face. I knew nothing and nobody. I said the first thing that came into my head. “I can pay you.”
Jake shot out of the chair, wrenching the thread from Pasha’s hand. “You think all these girls going missing from down here don’t have family too? People who love them? Parents, sisters, uncles? Do you think your niece is worth more than they are because you can pay to try and get her back?”
I flinched back in the chair, grateful that the swords were out of reach at least, although I doubted that would help much if she decided to go for me. I gripped the butt of the pulse pistol in my pocket. It didn’t seem very reassuring. “No, that’s not what I meant at all. I’m a bounty hunter, that’s how it works Upside. Money is the grease on the squeaky wheel of life.”
She slid back into the chair and looked at me levelly. “You aren’t Upside any more.”
I relaxed my grip on the pistol, gladder than I could ever remember that I didn’t have to use it. I had my doubts it would work on her. “And don’t I know it. Look, I need your help. I’ll gladly help you in return, any way I can, pay you that way. But I have to find my niece. I can’t go back to my brother and tell him I saw where she is, but couldn’t rescue her. I need to get her out.”
One red eyebrow raised and her look sharpened. “You saw her? How? Where she is now?”
“I, er—” Damn Namrat’s fucking bollocks. I didn’t usually have a problem talking to women. To anyone. But my magic, I don’t like to talk about that. Not just because it could get me arrested and dead faster than you can say mage. It didn’t seem I had much choice, though. “It’s how I make my living, how I find people. I can see where they are. If I – er, if I use my magic.”
Pasha dropped something which bounced across the floor with a tinkle. Jake sat up straighter. She looked very interested all of a sudden. “What sort of magic?”
Normally I’d have lied. A lot. Somehow, with that disturbing gimlet gaze on me, with that soft growling marauding around my head and Amarie’s sobs a counterpoint, I couldn’t. I wanted my life back, to be back where my worst worry was what mushy crap to have for dinner or which girlfriend to see tonight. I wanted to not give a shit again. Right at that moment, I would have given my left bollock to be an only child. I hated myself for that thought.
I gave myself a mental kick and looked her in the eye when I said it. “Pain magic.”
That was the first real sign of disturbance in her – one hand flew to the other wrist and fluttered there, a strange gesture for a woman like her. She got herself under control quickly enough. More than I could say for Pasha. He looked younger than ever, his eyes wide and his mouth working as though he was trying not to – what? Cry? Shout? I was oddly disappointed in them, as though I’d hoped they’d understand. I hadn’t consciously thought that, but maybe – yeah, maybe I’d hoped. A guy can dream, right?
“You – you don’t…” Her brow creased as she trailed off from voicing the thought. Pasha put a gentle hand on the chair, a hair’s breadth from her shoulder.
“Only on myself. I swear, I keep to that code. I swear, just help me find her. Please.” I left the rest unsaid. Please, because I couldn’t bear to watch the pain on Perak’s face otherwise. Couldn’t live with myself if I fucked this up. Which might make more sense to my brain if I knew why. The emotional part of me said, Because it’s your brother and you promised Ma, and the other part, the one I’d let fester and take hold and was now a part of me, said, So what? You haven’t given a fuck about anyone in years, and you did OK. Better than OK really. Why stop now? What’s in it for you?
When I looked up from the shoes I’d contemplated while I thought this, Jake was staring at me. I couldn’t tell you what was behind that gaze. I never have been able to, not with Jake.
I expected… well, something angry, or disparaging. What I got was “Has today left you wanting a stiff drink?”
Normally I’m not one for serious drinking, but Namrat’s balls, I needed one right then. Anything to rid my mind of the growl and the sudden resurgence of a conscience. “A whole bottle. Screw it, maybe two.”
Jake stood up with a smile and shrugged her leather allover into place over the arm that was still bleeding. “I know just the place.”