gutting it, ripping through it like a knife through a throat. If I’d not listened, if Dendal hadn’t stopped me, I’d have appeared right in the middle of it.
Sacred Goddess was the only hospital that I’d trust enough with my sister. All the ones further down were for those with little hope and less money, run by scammers, madmen or plain quacks. All the ones further up—I needed to know where, precisely, and I didn’t. Not that they’d have let us stay. We’d be thrown out for being from Under faster than Dendal could say fairy.
Any doctoring that needed doing, we were going to have to do it. Only I’m fairly crap at even basic first aid past what I needed to know for repairing after a spell and Dendal—yeah, well, Dendal isn’t someone I’d trust with a pair of scissors.
“If I go to get someone, will you promise me you’ll look after her?” I asked. “No wandering off in your own head?”
He huffed, affronted. “Of course!”
It would have to do. I couldn’t risk my magic to get me there—for all I knew where I needed to go was on fire too—so I used the rather more mundane door.
I took a look back as I shut it. Our hope, the city’s hope. My sister. My sister in the care of Dendal. We were all depending on a man who spent ninety-nine days out of a hundred singing happy songs and playing with sparkly fairies in his head.
We were so screwed it was almost funny.
Chapter Six
It wasn’t far, almost straight down twenty levels, but that trip is one I try not to remember. Flames and heat, smoke and embers, screaming men full of hate, screaming children full of fear. Wondering whether the superstructure would hold up. They’d built for times such as these, long ago, before Ministry had taken over. A solid backbone of the city that was supposed to hold up against fire, against mages going batshit crazy, against alchemists playing with black powder and blowing up parts of the city and themselves on a regular basis. It’d worked, mostly. When it didn’t, it failed spectacularly, as it had over in the Slump.
That had been a better part of the city once, where the demi-rich used to live and stare up at Clouds and wish they were rich enough—or magic enough—to live there. Alchemists, doctors, those sorts of people. A quiet and reasonably non-shitty part of the city. Until a mage had, almost inevitably, gone totally off his tree in the incident that led to us being banned.
Now the Slump was a mess of girders and stone, great fat splinters as big as trees, mingled with dust and ghosts. It was downmarket even for rats. I tried very hard not to think about the Slump as I hurried.
Not thinking about that meant I thought about other things, like the riot around me. After the first flush of hatred, things seemed to have settled down into a more subdued grudge match and the further down I got, the quieter it got. If you were poor enough to live this far down, energy was for other people and the unrest above hadn’t reached here. Yet. It would.
I hurried as best I could, keeping to the shadows out of anyone’s way, and it wasn’t long before I stopped outside the door to my old rooms. The passageway still smelled of old socks and cabbage. This was home, or had been. I had no home now, except the sofa behind the desk at the office. I’d given these rooms away.
Pasha answered on the third knock, still buttoning his shirt, his hair awry and his face sheened with sweat. His monkey face screwed into a scowl. “It’s a hell of a time for a social call.”
The door to the bedroom was ajar and I caught a glimpse of Jake’s naked back as she lay on the bed, of the scars that marked her, inside and out. Pasha moved to block the view, and I wondered whether she was still phobic about being touched or whether Pasha was working on that. Whether perhaps I’d interrupted him working on that.
“Well?”
I pulled myself together and gave myself a mental cold bucket of water to the groin. “Haven’t you
Sacred Goddess was the only hospital that I’d trust enough with my sister. All the ones further down were for those with little hope and less money, run by scammers, madmen or plain quacks. All the ones further up—I needed to know where, precisely, and I didn’t. Not that they’d have let us stay. We’d be thrown out for being from Under faster than Dendal could say fairy.
Any doctoring that needed doing, we were going to have to do it. Only I’m fairly crap at even basic first aid past what I needed to know for repairing after a spell and Dendal—yeah, well, Dendal isn’t someone I’d trust with a pair of scissors.
“If I go to get someone, will you promise me you’ll look after her?” I asked. “No wandering off in your own head?”
He huffed, affronted. “Of course!”
It would have to do. I couldn’t risk my magic to get me there—for all I knew where I needed to go was on fire too—so I used the rather more mundane door.
I took a look back as I shut it. Our hope, the city’s hope. My sister. My sister in the care of Dendal. We were all depending on a man who spent ninety-nine days out of a hundred singing happy songs and playing with sparkly fairies in his head.
We were so screwed it was almost funny.
Chapter Six
It wasn’t far, almost straight down twenty levels, but that trip is one I try not to remember. Flames and heat, smoke and embers, screaming men full of hate, screaming children full of fear. Wondering whether the superstructure would hold up. They’d built for times such as these, long ago, before Ministry had taken over. A solid backbone of the city that was supposed to hold up against fire, against mages going batshit crazy, against alchemists playing with black powder and blowing up parts of the city and themselves on a regular basis. It’d worked, mostly. When it didn’t, it failed spectacularly, as it had over in the Slump.
That had been a better part of the city once, where the demi-rich used to live and stare up at Clouds and wish they were rich enough—or magic enough—to live there. Alchemists, doctors, those sorts of people. A quiet and reasonably non-shitty part of the city. Until a mage had, almost inevitably, gone totally off his tree in the incident that led to us being banned.
Now the Slump was a mess of girders and stone, great fat splinters as big as trees, mingled with dust and ghosts. It was downmarket even for rats. I tried very hard not to think about the Slump as I hurried.
Not thinking about that meant I thought about other things, like the riot around me. After the first flush of hatred, things seemed to have settled down into a more subdued grudge match and the further down I got, the quieter it got. If you were poor enough to live this far down, energy was for other people and the unrest above hadn’t reached here. Yet. It would.
I hurried as best I could, keeping to the shadows out of anyone’s way, and it wasn’t long before I stopped outside the door to my old rooms. The passageway still smelled of old socks and cabbage. This was home, or had been. I had no home now, except the sofa behind the desk at the office. I’d given these rooms away.
Pasha answered on the third knock, still buttoning his shirt, his hair awry and his face sheened with sweat. His monkey face screwed into a scowl. “It’s a hell of a time for a social call.”
The door to the bedroom was ajar and I caught a glimpse of Jake’s naked back as she lay on the bed, of the scars that marked her, inside and out. Pasha moved to block the view, and I wondered whether she was still phobic about being touched or whether Pasha was working on that. Whether perhaps I’d interrupted him working on that.
“Well?”
I pulled myself together and gave myself a mental cold bucket of water to the groin. “Haven’t you
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