Fade to Black (25 page)

These men weren’t even pain-magicians. It brought them no benefit.

Pain magic. Power from pain, and it need not be your own.
It crawled over my skin, burrowed in like woodworms in oak. It made me want to use it, to raze this squalid place to the ground, to twist my hand to shreds bringing this castle down stone by stone. I hung by a thread. Now I’d dug the depths, now it knew me, all my fears came true. It called to me, sang my name in sweet black tones, a lover, a goddess, a pleading girl. To give in would be to die, unless I could master it. Dendal was always banging on about mastery. I’d never really listened, and now I struggled to remember the lessons.

All I could recall were the tales of before the synth, when pain magic was all the power we had, what set Mahala apart from the hordes at either side. What gave us the edge. Yet that edge came at a price. More than three in ten mages were destroyed by the magic, fell into it until they couldn’t think any more, couldn’t feel, knew only that they had to hurt themselves more and more to keep the pain at bay, to feel the surge they craved – a never-ending circle that would kill them if they let it.

Even that was preferable to this. That was voluntary; this was… this was
inhuman
. I took refuge in my only protection. “Fuck this for a game of patooty. Let’s go. Please?”

Jake’s bowed head snapped up. Her eyes were hollow, shrunken things that couldn’t even seem to conjure anger. She shut them with a look of pained control and nodded jerkily.

We watched from our hidey-hole in a narrow alley that pinched my shoulders while the other stockmen back in the square moved towards the passage, ready for the ride home. I
followed Jake through a doorway half hidden in a corner. She shut the door behind us and leaned against it. Her breathing was halting, stilted somehow, so I thought she couldn’t be getting enough air in her lungs. Surely she’d faint, but when I held out a hand she slapped it away. I couldn’t tell what it was with her, whether it was anger and pity, like me, whether it was disgust or what. All I knew was that she wasn’t the same woman who’d started out on this, who’d been so adamant we’d come here, that we’d do this. The wall of protection – the swords, the flashy pretence at violence, Pasha’s acceptance, his presence – it had all come tumbling down, and now she was just a girl, younger than I’d first thought, up to her eyebrows and sinking.

She wouldn’t take the comfort of a hand so I said, “Are you OK?” A peace offering, but she didn’t take it.

The slightest shake of her head in return, the grip of her hands on the door handle, as though that was all that kept her upright. Then a deep breath, rasping in and out, a few determined, muttered words. When she raised her head, she was Jake again. Cool, calculating, eyes flat and chill, full of cold grace. Her wall was back, but it was shiny and slick with fakery, brittle as glass, so it might take just the wrong word to break it and lay a bleeding soul bare. She stepped forward in a smooth movement belied by the grit of her teeth and pulled off the protective suit. With a nod she indicated I should do the same.

“Where to now?” I asked.

She avoided my eyes and got her swords arranged to her
satisfaction. She concentrated on that rather than look at me when she spoke. “To the keep. Any way we can. You ready?”

She looked up at that, and I saw it there. Maybe it was the magic leaking into me from what was going on around. Maybe it was just obvious, but I was sure that she was regretting it being me and not Pasha. They’d planned this long ago, waiting for the opportunity. Planned it and yet, when they got the chance, one of them wasn’t here. All she had was me instead, and I was a poor consolation. That look was a slice to the stomach from one of her swords. Well, I’d show her, show her I was worth two of him when it came to it.

“I’m ready. Are you?”

She fielded my question with a contemptuous look and headed to the far end of the room we found ourselves in, towards a door that looked semi-solid. “This way. I don’t know how we’ll get there, but the keep’s this way. We’d best get going before the Specials notice they’re two short.”

I asked the irritating tingle that was numbing my arm, and the pull of Amarie raised my hand a touch in the direction Jake was headed. Lessened the tingle too, an added bonus. The thought of how the ability came to me made my balls itch. I wanted it to stop. I wanted it all to stop, the power leakage, the screams. All of it. The only way that was going to happen was through me and Jake. If we were incredibly lucky and didn’t get ourselves killed first.

I followed her through the door and out into the twisting back-streets.

Jake was a natural at moving silently. Me, not so much. I’d never in my life felt this much ambient magic, this much raw power, and this was just leakage. The thought of how much power was milling around, how much must be making it into the Glow vials, gave me the creeps. By the time the keep loomed over us, only two crumbling streets away, every nerve-ending was stretched tight, every muscle vibrated with it, every hair stood straight out from my body. It was all I could do not to sink into it. Or maybe, rather than wallow, take out this whole place in one glorious blast, me and Jake and Amarie with it. Anything to be rid of the power that stalked my bones.

I was beginning to think I could actually do it, blow the whole place. But then the city would fall too. This castle, this keep, was its main root, the tap that everything had sprung from. I might be a bastard, but even I’m not up for genocide,
so I kept a tight lid on it and hoped for something else to earth my magic on.

Jake motioned me to stay where I was and edged forward to check the street that crossed our path. We’d managed to keep out of the way of the people roaming about, though a ruckus behind us told me they knew we were missing by now. They’d be looking, and they were bound to have someone like me, a tracker. It was only a matter of time before they found us.

More to release some of the power than from any thought of actually helping, I clenched my fists and sank, very briefly, into the black, just a skim across the surface. I didn’t dare go further, but it was enough. When I looked again, Jake waved me forwards and started to step into the street. Bad idea. Bad,
bad
idea, because I knew what she didn’t. That there was a fake Special not two steps away, hidden in a dilapidated doorway. His gun was cocked and ready, but he didn’t know we were here. Yet.

Instinct took over. I grabbed her arm, slapped a hand over her mouth and yanked her back into the alley and against the wall. I knew right away that my idea might be as bad as hers. She went still as stone, her eyes bright above my hand. I thought she’d struggle, that she’d at least try to kick me in the nuts. She didn’t do anything except stand there and stare at me in horror.

I couldn’t seem to move, or think. I could only look at her. At the way a tendril of her hair had fallen free from its
binding and curled around her cheek. The little flecks of brown in her blue eyes that were no longer calculating but radiated some deep, inner terror. We were pressed up tight against the alley wall. Where I wanted her at last, and she wasn’t fighting me. I took that as encouragement, but I didn’t talk. Instead I slid my hand down from her mouth and replaced it with my lips. Just a touch, a taste. Not exactly the optimum moment, maybe, but it could be my best chance.

She tasted sweet yet tart and she trembled against me at that first touch. My hand found hers and twined in it, her cold fingers in mine. I leaned in, tasting her, drawing in the scent of her, of leather, clean hair, oil and a hint underneath of her, really her.

She didn’t move, not to return the kiss or to pull away. My cynicism is what keeps me sane, false though it may be, and the last person to see beneath it had been Ma all that time ago. I’d slough it off like dead skin in a heartbeat. For her, because her shell was harder and more brittle than mine and probably forged in hotter places. I hurt for her, because I’d seen what softness could lurk underneath. All of that I’d tried to communicate with one brief, butterfly touch of the lips. Mainly because the thought of having to say it brought me out in a rash.

She slid out from beneath me, all trembling and strange. I signed for her to be quiet and pointed, and got a nod in return. But there was something odd about her. Not like a
woman who’s been kissed by someone she likes, which was bad. Not even like a woman who’s been kissed by someone she doesn’t like, which was better. More like a woman who had previously had no idea what a kiss was like. Her mouth opened and closed before she turned away with a wipe to her lips. She kept quiet, but her hand shook hard enough on the doorframe it rested on that I began to worry the wood might give way.

That was when everything turned to shit.

Something smacked me in the back and I smashed face-first into the wall, hard enough that I tasted blood. My first thought was that the Special had seen Jake, or had heard our movement, but he wouldn’t have hit me, he’d have shot me; and besides, it had come from the wrong direction.

I whirled round and tried to ignore what the pain was doing to my thoughts, the surge of power through me. Whoever it was, they had no idea about fighting a pain-magician. Don’t hit, kill, because the more you hit, the more powerful they get. I wiped blood from my mouth and nose and came face to face with Pasha.

Only this wasn’t Pasha, mild-mannered, monkey-like and a bit timid, or Pasha putting on a front to scare a farmer into helping us. This wasn’t even Pasha killing a man to protect Jake. This was a Pasha with hard eyes and a scornful sneer, twisting his fingers further than they had any right to go, and for no reason other than he wanted me to suffer. This was Pasha without the heart that had made him who he was, a
man pushed to the edge by what he’d just seen. What I’d just done.

There was a possibility I was completely fucked.

Before I could speak or move, his good hand shot out and clamped round my throat. Power surged along his fingers, thick enough I could watch it wriggle along his arm like black snakes. I managed a brief, mangled thought, that he could pick up on the stray power here too, and then it hit me.

The snakes leapt and I could no longer breathe. I don’t mean I had trouble drawing breath, I mean my throat was completely shut off. No air. Not a single puff. My hands instinctively scrabbled at my throat, trying to rid myself of whatever had me in its noose, but all I found was my own skin. I sank down to the cobbles and tried to think. Tried not to give in to the blackness in my head that was tempting me, telling me I could do it, could kill Pasha and live. That the pain in my throat and lungs was enough to light up half the city with fire, if I could only work out how, and work up the nerve to do it.

Pasha turned his back, done with me it seemed, and faced Jake as she stood thunderstruck. His face didn’t soften as it once might have done. His voice didn’t hold the tender tones he used to use with her. Everything about him was hate, from the set of his mouth to the way he stood.

“That was all it took, was it?” He grabbed her arm and in the instant had her up against the wall, much as I had, only his hand grasped her wrist tight enough that her fingers went
white. “All it took was some random Upsider with a slick manner. If only I’d known. Was this it, what you wanted? Like this?” He shook her, his face twisted and I would have sworn there were tears in his eyes, but my vision was hazy by now. Purple splotches ranged across the world and then blackness fell with a thump. All I knew was what I could hear, and that I was going to die if I didn’t think of something. I focused on his voice.

“Was it? Like this? Is this all I had to do, be a prick like him instead of looking after you?”

Scuffed steps on stone. Jake, in a voice that wasn’t hers, saying, “Please, not you, please. You were the only one who didn’t. Please, Pasha, you’re scaring me.”

A halting sob, surely not hers. Leather squeaking in friction, a pained gasp. A murmured “I only ever wanted to—”

A separate sound: a metallic click. The Special with his gun, alerted by the noise. Little white lights spun in my head. Pain, bringing up the black, making it swell through me, giving me the means to stop this. I couldn’t hear anything now; my world was reduced to the pain in my lungs, the useless working of my throat and my magic, a sick tide through me. All I could do was use it, yet in using it I might lose myself, who I was. There was no choice. It wasn’t just me. If it was I might have just lain back and died, anything rather than what awaited if the magic took me. Not just me, it was Jake and Amarie, and yes, even Pasha.

I let the black in. Then I let it out again, pushed it through
every pore in one big, disorganised rush. Not fire, no; even so far gone, I knew that for a mistake. Not fire but the air I couldn’t breathe, a storm of it, a hurricane. I was in no state for finesse, even if I knew how. Fuck, I wasn’t even sure how I managed the hurricane, because it wasn’t my kind of magic, not really. This level of power was alien to me; I’d only dabbled before, because I was afraid, and rightly so. But now wasn’t the time for fear, now was the time to try to live.

It all blew out of me and my mind – and my breath – were my own again. I heaved myself on to my front and pushed up on shaking arms before I retched the meagre contents of my stomach up on to the cobbles. There was nothing left in my head, no tingle, no black, no nothing. I stayed on all fours for a few heartbeats, and hoped I wasn’t the only one completely fucked. Or that, if everyone else felt like I did, I’d recover first.

The wall was a handy climbing-frame to help get me upright. When I looked round, I almost fell to my knees again. There wasn’t much left of the alley. The walls were still fairly solid; there was a reason they’d stood the test of a thousand years. The rest was… gone. All the rubbish in the alley lay piled up at the end, twisted into a mangled mess. Jake lay half in and half out of it, with blood running from a cut to her temple. I staggered over, crouched down beside her and ran a hand over her cheek. Still breathing, thank anyone who might be listening, I hadn’t killed her. Yet another reason not to use my magic; when things got out of control, other people got hurt.