Read Online Rojan Dizon 02 - Before the Fall by Francis Knight - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Francis Knight
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think I have too little support among my cardinals. I think most of the cardinals I have make me sick. I think I wish I had no faith, like Rojan, so it wouldn’t be such a shock. I think what the mages down in the ’Pit did made the Goddess turn her back on us, and it’s only priests such as Guinto, people who are willing to believe, who will bring her back. I think I’ll be dead soon, that this city will tear itself apart, if you don’t get the power back on.”
The pleading look had me swearing in my head, because this was how it always started with Perak. It always ended with me in the shit.
It was like that time when I was twelve and he was ten and he’d somehow managed to piss off every single bully within a half-mile radius of our crumbling house. He was small for his age, and they were hulking great brutes. They’d have killed him if they’d found him. So who took the kicking of a lifetime? Who spent a month pretending he didn’t have broken ribs and accidentally firing off random spells every time he breathed too hard? Ma never did work out what had happened to her saucepans or why the bedroom suddenly turned blue.
Yet Perak wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know, couldn’t see on the street. We needed power and we needed it right now. We needed more mages, and I was the one who had to find them because that’s how my magic runs. When I looked back at him, I realised that there was more he wanted to load on to big brother’s shoulders.
“Go on, out with it.”
“The Storad, the Mishans…you know they’re outside the gates?”
“Perak, even Dendal knows they’re outside the gates.”
Perak’s smile was most peculiar—almost world-weary, cynical. Not what I’d associate with my dreamer of a little brother. “I don’t suppose he knows how many there are. Not very many people do, but I can see them from up in Top of the World. Not just a few. An army each. The Mishans perhaps we could manage, if we got some power back soon. Note the perhaps and the if. Not a straightforward people, though, all backwards and forwards and no telling what they’ll take as an insult. Sneezing at the wrong time might be enough to set them against us in earnest. And the Storad…the Storad are hard men. Their ambassador in particular, and a man with a secret, I think. They’re all men with secrets. But, of the two, I fear them the most.”
“Hard fighters,” Jake said suddenly, and Perak shot her an enquiring look. “Some of them, the mountain tribes. It’s, I don’t know, like a religious thing with them.”
I thought back to a Death Match I’d watched, one where I’d been certain she was outclassed against a Storad who was slick with his sword; obviously not quite slick enough. I noticed she neglected to say that fighting was a religious thing for her, too.
Perak inclined his head. “So I hear. On the one hand, we have a temperamental lot of loosely joined tribes that outnumber us ten to one, but are hot-headed, volatile perhaps, prone to fighting among themselves. I can arrange that they do just that. On the other…the Storad. I’m doing my best to stall them, placate them, deal with them, both the Mishans and Storad. But they know we’re weak. I think they’re waiting for something, but I don’t know what. I do know we haven’t got long. The ambassadors have both said as much in roundabout, diplomatic terms. Five days. At best. That’s how long we’ve got.”
I opened my mouth to say something really smart and cutting, about how he didn’t want much, did he? He didn’t give me the chance. The utter defeat in his voice caught me off balance, and made me notice the new lines on his forehead, the first touch of grey in his hair.
“And just to top it all off, we’ve got someone murdering Downsiders, we’ve got Downsiders up in arms and Upsiders hating them just for being here. We’ve got anarchy just waiting for one more spark to make it explode. And I don’t think
The pleading look had me swearing in my head, because this was how it always started with Perak. It always ended with me in the shit.
It was like that time when I was twelve and he was ten and he’d somehow managed to piss off every single bully within a half-mile radius of our crumbling house. He was small for his age, and they were hulking great brutes. They’d have killed him if they’d found him. So who took the kicking of a lifetime? Who spent a month pretending he didn’t have broken ribs and accidentally firing off random spells every time he breathed too hard? Ma never did work out what had happened to her saucepans or why the bedroom suddenly turned blue.
Yet Perak wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know, couldn’t see on the street. We needed power and we needed it right now. We needed more mages, and I was the one who had to find them because that’s how my magic runs. When I looked back at him, I realised that there was more he wanted to load on to big brother’s shoulders.
“Go on, out with it.”
“The Storad, the Mishans…you know they’re outside the gates?”
“Perak, even Dendal knows they’re outside the gates.”
Perak’s smile was most peculiar—almost world-weary, cynical. Not what I’d associate with my dreamer of a little brother. “I don’t suppose he knows how many there are. Not very many people do, but I can see them from up in Top of the World. Not just a few. An army each. The Mishans perhaps we could manage, if we got some power back soon. Note the perhaps and the if. Not a straightforward people, though, all backwards and forwards and no telling what they’ll take as an insult. Sneezing at the wrong time might be enough to set them against us in earnest. And the Storad…the Storad are hard men. Their ambassador in particular, and a man with a secret, I think. They’re all men with secrets. But, of the two, I fear them the most.”
“Hard fighters,” Jake said suddenly, and Perak shot her an enquiring look. “Some of them, the mountain tribes. It’s, I don’t know, like a religious thing with them.”
I thought back to a Death Match I’d watched, one where I’d been certain she was outclassed against a Storad who was slick with his sword; obviously not quite slick enough. I noticed she neglected to say that fighting was a religious thing for her, too.
Perak inclined his head. “So I hear. On the one hand, we have a temperamental lot of loosely joined tribes that outnumber us ten to one, but are hot-headed, volatile perhaps, prone to fighting among themselves. I can arrange that they do just that. On the other…the Storad. I’m doing my best to stall them, placate them, deal with them, both the Mishans and Storad. But they know we’re weak. I think they’re waiting for something, but I don’t know what. I do know we haven’t got long. The ambassadors have both said as much in roundabout, diplomatic terms. Five days. At best. That’s how long we’ve got.”
I opened my mouth to say something really smart and cutting, about how he didn’t want much, did he? He didn’t give me the chance. The utter defeat in his voice caught me off balance, and made me notice the new lines on his forehead, the first touch of grey in his hair.
“And just to top it all off, we’ve got someone murdering Downsiders, we’ve got Downsiders up in arms and Upsiders hating them just for being here. We’ve got anarchy just waiting for one more spark to make it explode. And I don’t think
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