Fade to Black (22 page)

Something seemed to break in him then, the hate dissolving into fear and shame and pity, his voice dropping so I could barely hear it. “Only I couldn’t. Not that my magic couldn’t,
I
couldn’t, because I could see it all in their heads, could feel it with them. I was twelve, and my parents were so
proud
. I’m from Upside, just like you. We lived just under Clouds, close enough to see it and want it. My parents thought that for me to serve the Ministry was an honour. It might have been. But I could hear those girls, in my head all the time, could hear all their thoughts, how they all got twisted up till they believed what they were told was true. Normality is only a matter of what you’re used to, and after a time it’s normal to them. Not as much time as you’d think, either. That’s the worst part. They think it’s normal. I couldn’t do it, and when I couldn’t, the mages, they, they… Jake saved me. She saved me from Azama and the Jorrin brothers and I’d do anything to see her safe.”

“Even use your magic to kill someone?”

He scraped at his face to scrub away tears and his eyes became cold. “Yes, oh yes. My Major, see, in the brain. See it all, feel it all, if I want, even if I don’t want. I can make it grow in them too, make it build up enough till… I’d do worse. Much, much worse.
Anything
. You have no idea what
she saved me from. No idea, and I’d kill every last person I found, if I had to, if I could save her in return. Only she won’t let me.”

We sat and stared at each other for what seemed like long, long minutes. I couldn’t imagine being beholden to someone for something that big, or ever wanting to be. Yet Pasha seemed proud of it.

When the door banged open, we both jumped. Jake strode in, blood-splattered and seriously pissed off. I could tell by the way the swords weren’t sheathed but pointed at me. It isn’t a good feeling, being at the end of a sword and knowing that the person on the other end could beat you in their sleep, and despite Pasha’s protestations that her talent was all show, all flash, she was damned well better than me. It feels even worse when you haven’t got a sword of your own, only a weapon you loathe using and is non-lethal anyway. I slid my hand into my pocket – gingerly, because it was still pretty fucked up from thumping Jake’s floor – just in case.

The swords hovered an inch from my nose as Jake looked me up and down. She cast a spare glance at Pasha, looked away and then back, staring down at his bleeding hand like she’d never seen one before. Everything seemed to drain from her face – emotion, blood, you name it. The swords dropped down to her sides.

“It was you?” She shook her head, as though trying to shake reality from her, to deny it was possible. Her lips twisted with words that couldn’t seem to make themselves heard. She
seemed to gather herself then, and the swords came back up, pointing at Pasha this time. “You killed him. It was you.”

Pasha’s face scrunched up, more monkey-like than ever. His eyes were dark with a sort of pleading, as though willing her to understand, but when the swords came up so did his temper. “I did it for you! He was going to kill you and you were going to let him. Well, I wouldn’t let him. And I won’t let you kill yourself like that. I can’t; you’ve asked it of me too long, and I can’t watch it, watch you killing yourself. Not any more.”

He staggered to his feet and took a step forward, so that Jake’s swords were just touching his shirt. She wouldn’t look at him but kept her eyes on the shaking points of her blades.

That seemed to incense Pasha even more. “I know why you do these matches. Do you know how much it
burns
me to know?” He barked a bitter laugh when she flinched at that. “You think I wouldn’t see it, know it? That you go into every match hoping this is the one that will kill you, only you’re too fucking proud to just let someone beat you? That the only reason you don’t just take your sword to your own throat is because the Goddess says it’s a sin? You’re good at hiding it, oh yes. But you can’t hide from me, Jake. Not from me. And you might just as well stick that fucking sword straight through me rather than expect me to sit back and let it happen when you won’t kill a man sent to murder you because of some fucked-up notion of what the Goddess wants from you.”

By the time he’d done, his chest was heaving with the venom in his voice or the emotion behind it. He’d kept those dark, sparking eyes on her the whole time, but bar one flinch she hadn’t moved. She didn’t look up at him, or even acknowledge his words. The only reaction was a tiny trembling of her swords’ tips and the tightness of her mouth. Until he went to move around the swords to reach for her, to touch her.

In a heartbeat one blade was flat against his throat and the other hovered between his legs.

“Best you went.” If there was a tremor in her voice I didn’t hear it. She was all ice. “Right now.”

“Jake—”

She looked at him finally, but there was nothing behind her eyes, none of the warmth that had been there before when they’d spoken. “Right. Now.”

Pasha’s jaw jutted defiantly but he moved back, soft and slow, until he was at the door. She lowered the swords, but not by much.

“Please, won’t you just—”

She turned her back on him, on his words and the look on his face, the way it crumpled when he realised she really meant it. He flicked his gaze my way, but all I could do was shrug sympathetically – and that was pretty much a lie. He knew her better than me, right? Obviously not. It was hard not to be the tiniest bit smug. I think he knew it too; his hand would still be hurting him, so if he wanted to know what I was thinking, it wouldn’t be a problem. With a last,
despairing look at Jake’s back, he left, slamming the door as he went.

As soon as the door was shut, Jake dropped her swords. They clanged against the floor. I couldn’t see her face, but her hands splayed out across the glass that looked on to the arena where another fight was already under way, to the crowd’s noisy delight. She was standing in just the spot Pasha had been and her fingers caressed the smudge-marks his hands had made.

“Jake, I—”

“Shut up.” Her voice was small and soft, almost inaudible over the roar of the crowd above. “Please, Rojan, just shut up.”

I took my life in my hands but I had no idea what to do or say, other than try to get her back to normal. Well, what normal was for her anyway. “I will, just as soon as you sit down so I can stitch that cut. You’re losing a fair bit of blood.”

She looked at me over her shoulder, surprised, and gave me a wan smile. “Not yet. Azama is going to be pissed off that I’m not dead. He had every reason to believe I would be, and I’d rather not be anywhere obvious for him to find me, us. I’m surprised he’s not here already, but maybe I caught him off guard. He almost certainly knows you’re with me – he’ll have been watching who comes in and out of the arena – which means the Ministry men looking for you know too. They’ll be crawling all over this place soon enough, and I shouldn’t have taken the time to—” She cut herself off with a grimace. “We need to go. Now. So first we need to find somewhere safe to hole up.”

She had a point, so I grabbed Pasha’s little box of sutures and dressings, she gathered all she needed and we left, being careful that no one saw us, or at least followed us.

Where we ended up was possibly the shittiest part of the ’Pit I’d seen yet.

“Alley” was too good a word for the passageway she led me down. A wall had caved in and timbers fallen, leaving a tented gap that I only just managed to squeeze through. There was no door at the other end, just a blank hole into what I suppose I must call a room. It had some crumbling walls and most of a roof, and the floor was still there, in places at least. Jake lit a small lamp, and I wished she hadn’t. A pile of gently mouldering mats lay in the corner, stinking the place up. The stains were possibly blood, or possibly weren’t.

“Nice place.”

Jake managed a tight smile but her eyes were full of bewildered hurt that she tried to cover with a breezy manner. “You think? I think it’s a shit pit, but they won’t find us here.”

She hung the lamp from a jutting piece of roof and found a rotting box to sit on, so I could reach the wound. She fumbled with the bindings for her allover, but got it finally and slid the leather down over her undershirt. The stitches I’d put in previously stood proud, but at least the cut seemed to be healing nicely. Finally she had the allover down to her waist and leaned forwards, her arms with their covering of soft leather windings dangling between her knees.

The wound ripped along her ribs and gouged a line along the side of her torso underneath. “I’ll have to cut your shirt to get at it,” I warned.

All I got in return was a terse nod, but that was enough. After a rummage through Pasha’s box, I found a pair of scissors and cut away the blood-soaked linen so I could reach the wound. I was careful not to touch her at all.

The wound was starting to clot, though it still oozed blood. Jake laid her head on her forearms as I swabbed the area clear but she didn’t flinch. I kept my silence until I had the needle and suture ready. To be frank, it was a wonder I’d managed to keep quiet till now. There were too many questions whizzing around my head, though the oddly intimate nature of what I was doing kind of distracted me for a while. When it came to actually stitching, though…

Jake hissed in a breath when I pushed the needle through, but didn’t flinch.

To take my mind off what I was doing, and because I had a sudden pang of guilt, I said, “Pasha was just—”

Her jerk almost pulled the needle out of my hands. Her head came up off her arms and she looked me square in the eye. “Pasha betrayed me. He interfered, he betrayed the Goddess and my –
our
beliefs. He betrayed everything our friendship was based on. Everything.”

Her eyes were red-rimmed but dry, and full of an icy anger.

I looked back down at the needle when I answered.

“He did it because he didn’t want you to die. That man was
sent to kill you. Azama arranged it, Pasha said. I’d have done what Pasha did too, if I’d had the guts.”

“Everyone tries to kill me in the arena! The matches are sham, true. But they try anyway. They all want to be the one to beat me, to get past my guard. If I’m good at one thing, it’s not letting anyone kill me. It’s not lack of guts for you to do the right thing, or to let me handle things my way. I let Pasha off easy, because it was him, and he knows it.”

I forbore to tell her what Pasha had said, about her just being flashy, that her swords were her wall against the world, against Pasha and everyone who tried to reach her. It didn’t seem prudent. But maybe by this point I had a death wish, because the next words that fell out of my mouth were “Is it true what he said, about you wanting to die?”

Luckily she didn’t go for her sword, though her tone was as sharp. “What’s it to you?”

Maybe everything. I didn’t want her to die. I wanted to make it so she wanted to live. With me. I would have rather died myself than say that out loud, so instead I said, “Because if you’re still coming with me to the castle, I’d like to know you aren’t going to take any stupid risks.”

I was another three stitches along, and waiting for the inevitable explosion, before she answered.

“I won’t take any stupid risks. I want to stop Azama. I can’t do that if I’m dead.”

“Glad to hear it. But if you won’t kill him, or let me kill him, how will you stop him?”

Her mouth curved up in a cat-like smile, as though Azama was the unsuspecting mouse she had in her sights. “Oh, there’s plenty of ways to stop him without him being dead. Death’s too quick and easy for a bastard like that anyway. I’ve got plans for Azama.”

It took me about for ever to fall asleep. Not just because of the rancid smell of the mattress either, but from too many questions crowding my brain. If Pasha had been right, how did Azama know we were planning something? Because he’d been watching the Jorrin brothers’ place? Why had he warned us he knew by sending the prisoner to kill Jake rather than just getting us all? Was he bringing me here to use me, was that why he’d targeted Amarie? Were we about to walk straight into a trap? And just why the fuck had Jake threatened Pasha for saving her life? I didn’t have any answers, but the questions kept my brain fizzing long after my body begged for sleep.

The rhythmic tap and swish of Jake’s feet on the stone floor as she went through her sword practice finally soothed me. And her: all the tension seemed to run from her muscles until her face was calm, the still mask I’d come to know. I wondered
if I’d ever really know what lay behind it. I watched her practice with lazy, half-lidded eyes. Fluid as a cat, no hint of favouring her wounds, rhythmic and hypnotic. Beautiful and deadly.

Next thing I knew, Jake was prodding at my shoulder with one of her scabbards. I don’t think she’d slept; her eyes were bloodshot and her cherry-red hair, normally impeccably bound back, now curled in loose tendrils around her face. I sat up with a grimace and scrubbed at my eyes to try to get them to open properly.

“Time to go.” She nodded at the floor beside me, to a plate piled with, oh Goddess, with
bacon
. The fat, crispy smell of it woke me fully. It was get up and eat or drown in my own drool. I got up.

Jake tapped her foot and fidgeted with her swords while I shoved the bacon in as fast as I could. I doubt the Goddess’s tits could have tasted better. The instant the last bite had passed my lips Jake was off, and I ran to catch her.

She called a cage once we were outside and we rattled off over the housetops, the chains weaving between towers and raindrops. Instead of looking down, I kept my eyes on her. She seemed to have shrunk somehow. Not in height, in personality. Before, her sheer presence was enough to stun a man stupid. Now she seemed… I don’t know, younger. Unsure of herself, almost like part of her was missing. She looked helpless. I wanted to tell her it would be all right, put a comforting arm across her shoulders.

I was a good boy and kept my hands to myself. Mainly because I’m quite fond of all my bits being in the places they’re meant to be rather than on the floor, unattached and messy with blood. So instead I said, “Are you sure just the two of us will—”