Last to Rise - Brossura

Knight, Francis

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0316217743 ISBN 13: 9780316217743

Casa editrice: Orbit, 2013

Riassunto

The towering vertical city of Mahala is on the brink of war with its neighboring countries. It might be his worst nightmare, but Rojan and the few remaining pain mages have been drafted in to help.

The city needs power in whatever form they can get it -- and fast. With alchemists readying a prototype electricity generator, and factories producing guns faster than ever, the city's best advantage is still the mages. Tapping their power is a risky plan, but with food in the city running out, and a battle brimming that no one is ready for, risky is the best they've got. . .

The spectacular conclusion to the adventures of Rojan Dizon, which began with the thrilling fantasy debut Fade to Black.

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Last to Rise

By Francis F. Knight

Orbit

Copyright © 2013 Francis F. Knight
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-316-21774-3

CHAPTER 1

There is, perhaps, some universal truth that no one has seen fit to tell meabout. Namely that if I have to find someone they are always in the shittiestplace I can imagine, and I can imagine a lot of shit.

This place had to take the prize though. Right down in the bowels of Mahala,where the sun never shone. It didn't get much of a breeze either, which was apity because it could have used one.

Down past No-Hope-Shitty, on into even-worse Boundary and across towards thebase of the Slump, its mangled remains reminding everyone what can happen when amage goes batshit crazy. That was where you'd find the Stench–it's abovethe 'Pit but not by much–and the people who made sure we didn't drown inour own waste. There's a few people who might say that I belonged there too.

I picked my way carefully past the dripping girders, under the newly lit Glowlights that still gave me a thrill to look at. Their light didn't pierce much ofthe darkness–down here wasn't considered priority for Glow, and the lightswere sparse–but at least I could see where I was going and what not tostep in, which was most of it.

I moved past vast, evil-smelling vats of who-knew-what except that it was lumpy,a gruesome brown-green that was bright even in the gloom, and was giving offfumes that smelled like they could kill at ten yards. I was grateful I didn'thave a curious bone in my body, because nobody wanted to know what wasin them, surely. Guessing would be enough.

Water kept on drip-drip-dripping from the ceiling, filtered down through ahundred or more levels of city above us, through cracks and crevices and light-wells. At least, I hoped it was only water, because it sidled down the collar ofmy coat like it had found a home. The faint chemical tang of synth overrodeother, more earthy smells, and I wondered how many of the Stenchers hadsuccumbed to the synthtox.

There didn't seem to be anyone about but I knew my man was down here somewhere.Since the Glow had come back on, mages were needed to power it rather than behunted down and executed for being unholy (among other things). So now we werefree to get killed for more prosaic reasons, though mages were still pretty shyabout coming forward. After all, it might have been a bluff–the Ministryhad tried that one before, and no one Under Trade trusted the Ministry, evenwhen they were in temple, praying the proper, sanitised prayers.

With mages actually needed now, the new archdeacon had issued a notice of rewardfor anyone coming forward with information on ... unusual occurrences. So now wehad people falling over themselves to offer up their fellow man. Mostly it wasout of petty vengeance of some sort or another–men dobbing in someone theythought was having an affair with their wife, or a professional rival, or justthat snobby bastard from the next level up who kept dumping his rubbish over thewalkway instead of sending it down the bucket lifts to the Stench. Often thedobbers-in did it for the money too–money meant food, and food was hard tocome by, what with the siege on one side of the city and neighbours of doubtfulintent on the other, with nothing much in between except level upon level ofstarving people all hemmed in by the ring of mountains that kept us safe, or haddone up till now.

Given that siege, any food was difficult to find. Good food, somethingedible that wasn't watery mush or riddled with beetles, was almost mythical. Bythis point, when we'd been under siege for long enough that rats were lookingmighty tasty, I'd have sold my soul for bacon and my left arm for anything thatdidn't taste like sawdust and mouse droppings. Except my soul wasn't worth abent copper in the state it was in, and, due to a small incident involving howmy magic works and me feeling rather vengeful, my left arm wasn't up to mucheither; at least my hand wasn't. What it was, was screwed.

Of course, everyone was trying to take advantage of the money the Archdeacon hadoffered by reporting each other for such things as "looking funny", "walkingstrange", "having a wart" or, on one memorable occasion, "talking shit". A lotof more serious accusations flew about as well, but I didn't care about thembecause some pretty serious allegations can be laid at my feet too.

But in among all that, we'd had a few useful reports. Yesterday a man, thin as astick and still with the stink of this place on him, had sidled into the office,looking askance at the sign on the door:

LICENSED MAGES, ALL MAGICAL THINGS ATTEMPTED. SPECIALITIES INCLUDE INSTANTCOMMUNICATION, MIND-READING, PEOPLE FOUND AND THINGS REARRANGED. FEES AVAILABLEON REQUEST.

It was a good sign, all the better because now we were legal and casting a spellno longer meant getting arrested, a term that had long been a euphemism for"dying messily". Still, the Ministry had spent a couple of decades tellingeveryone how evil and unholy we were, and it was taking time for people toadjust.

The thought of mages had made the thin man pause. The sight of Pasha, with hisDownsider pallor under dusky skin that to an Upsider meant "heretic" or worse,had him running away like Namrat himself was chasing him, wanting to eat hissoul before he crapped it into hell. The man hadn't escaped before Pasha hadused his magic to lift the information from the man's mind–a series ofinexplicable events down here in the Stench. Inexplicable was what we wereafter, hence why I was down here trying not to breathe, in case it was possibleto die from inhaling the smell.

I didn't have much to go on–an image that Pasha had given me of the youngman in the office, boy even. Dusky yet paler than he could have been, shouldhave been, not unlike myself or a thousand others. Not the blue-white undertonesof a Downsider who'd spent his life in the dark, but more like an Upsider fromthe wrong side of Trade, who saw the sun perhaps for a few minutes a day as itstood at noon and shone straight down, and for the rest of the time saw it onlysecond- or third-hand, bounced down on mirrors and through cobwebbed light-wells. He'd been thin too, like we all were, and getting thinner. A man likethousands Under Trade–except for the smell of the Stench on him and in hismind the inexplicable events he'd seen–perhaps inadvertently caused.

A boom-shudder rattled the walls, made dust drift on to my face and stick to theclammy sweat there. Another reminder of why I needed to find this man, and soon.The sound had become part of the city over the last days, echoing along thewalkways and haunting every level from the darkest depths of Boundary right upto the rarefied and sun-drenched air of Top of the World to rattle even theMinistry. And with every boom-shudder, you could almost see the thought runthrough the heads of everyone, Upsider and Downsider alike.

The Storad were at the gates.

The Storad were lurking Outside, waiting for their chance, and they had a paradeof big, smoking machines that were making a creditable attempt at blasting thecrap out of said gates. The boom was the machine firing what looked likeenormous bullets. The shudder was what happened when the bullets struck thegates, a tremor and terror that vibrated through the whole city.

I reached the end of the vats with relief and, hoping I might be able to take adeep breath without throwing up, braved the echoing cavern at the end. The smelldidn't get any better. Instead it got worse so that my eyes watered. I'd havehappily killed any number of people for a fresh breeze. Where the hell was thisguy? Where was anyone?

A series of smaller tanks and vats filled the cavern, larger feeding intosmaller, overspill running into a channel that carved its way down the centre.Greenish froth bubbled and steamed on the surfaces of some of the tanks, but therun-off looked surprisingly clear. The liquid–I hesitate to call it waterexcept in the most generous sense–splashed down the channel with acheerful prattle until it slid over a lip and out of sight.

I still hadn't seen anyone and I was starting to get cranky. We had no time tospare, not with the Storad Outside, wearing down the gates a chunk at a time.Churning out Glow was wearing Pasha and me down a chunk at a time too. No timeto spare and we needed every mage we could find, whether they knew they weremages or not. I tried calling out, tried poking around, but all I got for mytrouble was more smell and green stuff on my coat. It was hovering around noonup at Top of the World, and I needed to be somewhere else as soon as I could. Notime to mess about, and that made me swear because it meant I had to use mymagic. I'd been hoping I'd get away with it. No such luck.

I found a wall that wasn't dripping too badly, leaned against it for support andhoped like hell that this time I wouldn't end up on my knees, because a ruinedpair of boots was enough without ruining my allover too. I shut my eyes andpulled my nicely buggered hand out of my pocket. Usually I needed a prop of somekind, a link to whoever I was going to find, unless I knew them well. A lock ofhair, a scrap of clothing, a picture. This time all I had was the face thatPasha had shown me, a picture in my head if you will, along with a name andbeing fairly certain the guy was down here. It might work. I hoped it would,because this was going to hurt and I don't like to hurt, especially for nopurpose.

My hand was slowly getting better since I'd completely screwed it, but pumpingout enough magic to run the Glow lights and everything else over the last fewweeks hadn't really made it easier. The generator was helping, taking the magicand magnifying it, but Trade is a hungry beast. Purple-blue and swollen doesn'teven begin to cover how damaged my hand was, but it was a fact of my life. If Iwas lucky the hand wouldn't drop off any time soon.

I took a deep breath and clenched my fist. First the pain came, familiar andunwanted, a silver-red line of agony in my hand, my arm, my head. After that,from the pain came the juice, the surge of magic that would show me the way, andthat also tempted me, taunted me. Pain was the least of my worries when I cast aspell, because the black was always waiting, watching, hoping I'd fall in andnever get back out. It scared the crap out of me, if I'm honest, because part ofme wanted to fall in, into warm comfort and fearless wonder, to be freeof everything, to care about nothing.

The face, I concentrated on the face. I'd been getting a fair bit of practice atfind-spells just lately, cast more in the last week than I'd done in theprevious decade, as my poor hand could attest, and I was getting better, honingit. A face wasn't much to go on, but I could feel a pull, a tug on my arm. Araised voice echoing in my head, another against it, though I couldn't tell ifit was the guy I was after, not yet. Better than nothing though, so I followedthe tug of my throbbing arm, the pulse of the juice and the knowledge in my headthat this way was the way to go. My magic, at least this part of it, hadrarely steered me wrong before–it was almost the only thing I could relyon.

The tug led me down a leprous gap between two vats, one I'd never have noticedon my own. I'd never have gone down there even if I had noticed, if notfor the pull, because being sandwiched between two of the vats, sideways becausemy shoulders wouldn't fit, gave me an extra special blast of stench. Probably agood job I'd not been able to find any food for breakfast. I held my breath andsqueezed through.

The other side opened out into a dark and grimly dripping tunnel that perhapshad once been an alley before someone built over the top. That was the thingwith Mahala: someone always built over the top–there wasn't anywhere elseto build, not any more. The tunnel wasn't much wider than the gapbetween the vats, but at least the smell faded a touch as I went in. I kept mygood hand on the butt of my pulse pistol, just in case.

The echoing voices became louder and I was thankful I'd not have to use any moremagic for now, though the aching throb of my hand meant at least I'd have plentyof spare juice if I needed it. The tunnel wound on, a glow flickering along thedamp walls. Not Glow, but the subtler light of a rend-nut-oil lamp, last chanceof the poorest of the poor–the smell of day-old farts and rotting fishmingled with the more pervasive smell from behind.

I was getting close, the tug told me. A last corner and the tunnel opened out,became a wide corridor, well lit by stinking lamps and with walls that lookedlike patches of damp held together by mould. A series of doorways lined withragged drapes opened off the right-hand side.

Stenchers lived whole lives down here, rarely ventured anywhere outside theirlittle domain. The voices became clearer–a man and a woman arguingviolently, though their words were still indecipherable. I didn't need to knowwhat they were saying to get the gist though. Things seemed to be at the"Bitch!", "Bastard!", "My mother always said—", "Your mother is a—"phase, and I hesitated to intervene. Caught in domestic crossfire is never agood place to be, because like as not they'll both turn on you. I havethe scars to prove it.

My hesitation–all right, craven sense of self-preservation–flew outof the window at the unmistakable sound of an open hand cracking against acheek. The woman screamed like hell had just opened up a portal at her feet andNamrat had leapt out and started eating her face. I had my pulse pistol out andwas round the corner of the doorway before the scream had a chance to die away.I may be self-serving, and I may try to avoid responsibility at all costs, willdo almost anything to outrun it, but I have this other little failing, one thatannoys Erlat no end.

I was round the corner in a heartbeat, pulse pistol out and ready to zap the guyin the head, short-circuit his brain with a concentrated blast of magic. Hemight be a mage, might be the guy I was after, but even so—

I didn't get any further than that thought before he slammed into me, knockingus both out into the corridor and up against the wall in a tangle of limbs andknocked heads. I landed on my bad hand, naturally, and bit back a scream. Bitback too the surge of juice that rattled my brain and made me want to flailaround with my magic. I didn't quite hold on to all of it and it went wild.Without direction it did what it wanted to. A pair of rags serving as curtainsin the doorway morphed into two rippling puddles of brown gloop on the floorbefore they grew stubby, gooey wings and half flew, half flopped off down thecorridor. Oops.

When my head cleared a little, I realised that it hadn't been the guy attackingme as I'd thought. He'd been thrown against the wall, had hit me instead, andnow lay dazed and confused on the floor.

In the room opposite us, clearly visible because some idiot had rearranged hercurtains, a woman stood in utter outrage, fists clenched, eyes hot, a curving,satisfied smile on her lips. It might seem odd that the first thing I noticedabout her wasn't that she was flying, or rather hovering a foot above the floor.Given that it's me we're talking about here, the first thing I noticedwas that the shapeless rag of a tunic she wore couldn't hide the fact she had astupendous figure, all round and curvy in the best places, and some of thoseplaces were heaving in a very distracting manner. Noticing the hovering onlycame quite far after that, and smacked me in the head with the thought. Itwasn't the guy with the thin face, crumpled at the bottom of the wall, that Iwas looking for.

He wasn't the mage.

She glared at me, one side of her face red with a handprint, her head held highand her chin almost regal in the way it lifted, as though she was goading me.Try it, go on, I dare you, that look said. You try it and I'll slam you too.Just you see if I don't.

I lived for this kind of challenge–that is, ones involving women.

I got slowly to my feet, trying my best to look as non-threatening as possible.It was hard when, even with her hovering, I was still a touch taller. I was alsosubstantially broader across the shoulders and dressed in a black allover thatpurposely mimicked the uniforms of the deadly Ministry Specials. It's helpful inputting the fear of the Goddess into my more usual clients–runaways, menwith a bounty on their heads, small-timers for the most part, nothing toodangerous because I liked my face where it was. Tracking down possible mages wasa new sideline, and I wasn't even getting paid for it.

It was pretty hard not to stare at all the heaving, but I made a valiant effortto roll my tongue back in.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Last to Rise by Francis F. Knight. Copyright © 2013 Francis F. Knight. Excerpted by permission of Orbit.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Dettagli dell'edizione

• Editore: Orbit
• Data di pubblicazione: 2013
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0316217743
• ISBN 13: 9780316217743
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 376
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: non disponibile