Read Online Rojan Dizon 02 - Before the Fall by Francis Knight - Free Book Online

again and I was acutely aware she was wishing I was Pasha, which did my ego no good whatsoever.
    Perak’s entrance calmed me—a bit. At least he didn’t have his little entourage of cardinals this time but he had that faraway look in his eyes, the one that generally meant I was going to get dropped in the shit and have to take responsibility. I’d rather take the Specials.
    He smiled at me, perhaps not even noticing how I looked, and wandered over to the generator. “Will it be long, do you think?”
    I mustered up the spit to speak, which is hard when you’ve got a Special glaring at you as though he wants to arrest you for being alive with intent. “Dwarf says a few days, but he’s been saying that for weeks.”
    Perak nodded as if that was what he expected and twiddled a knob. It came off in his hands. “Oh. Well.” He blinked hard and looked round at his Specials. “It’s all right, you can go.”
    I let out breath I wasn’t aware I’d been holding as they shut the door behind them.
    “Rojan, I—I’m in trouble,” Perak said. He didn’t look at me but kept fiddling with the generator. “No one—I mean, Ministry—is what I thought. Not at all.”
    I pinched at the bridge of my nose. Probably only Perak, and maybe Dendal, had ever been under any illusions about the Ministry. I wondered how he had taken it when he’d finally realised that Ministry wasn’t about faith but control. Badly, I suspected.
    “I don’t suppose they are. Question is, what are you going to do about it?” Not a lot would have been my answer, except maybe raze the whole of Top of the World where Ministry reigned, let everyone from Under come up to Heights and Clouds and look at the sun, share it, share everything. I was more likely to spontaneously turn into a woman than that happen any time soon.
    Perak didn’t see it that way. When we were growing up, I used to wonder if we had the same father, because, while I’m the ultimate cynic, Perak is the opposite. He is hope. It gave him a certain, and incredibly annoying, optimism that everything would turn out all right.
    Now his eyebrows plaited together in thought and he took on a determined look, almost as though he was paying attention. Wonders will never cease. “I’m going to change it,” he said. “Make it what it was always supposed to be. You know some of them even want to recreate the ’Pit, the, the…you know.”
    “The torture, Perak.”
    He grimaced at that word; his daughter had almost become a victim herself as the mages tried to force me to join them.
    “They say it’s the only way, that the ends justify the means. That people will die if we don’t. What’s worse is they’re right, people are dying. Starvation, cold, fighting…Other cardinals are convinced that all this is a plot to undermine them, discredit the Ministry. They don’t believe it is true, it’s just some Downsider plan, misinformation, the start of a coup perhaps. All of them, almost every last cardinal, see the people from Under as nothing but a means to provide labour, and Downsiders as vermin who only know how to fight and kill each other. The Death Matches—” He cut off at that and glanced at Jake and Dog. “I’m sorry, but they use that as an excuse, to show what barbarians you are. I’m trying to put things right, to how they should be, but that only makes the cardinals hate me more because that way they’ll end up with less than ultimate wealth. You know, I had three delegations yesterday. One of them outlined ways we could discreetly dispose of Downsiders, hell, anyone from Under who looks too uppity, so that the rest of us can survive, another quoted scripture to show that Downsiders are heretics, agents of Namrat and should all be burnt, and the third—I’m not even going to tell you that.”
    “What do you think, Perak?” Jake was wound up tighter than one of Dwarf’s springs, but her voice was soft.
    Perak tried a smile, but it came out wrong, frazzled. “I