Before the Fall (A Rojan Dizon Novel, 2, Band 2) - Softcover

Knight, Francis

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0316217700 ISBN 13: 9780316217705

Verlag: Orbit, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

MAHALA IS A CITY OF CONTRASTS: LIGHT AND DARK. HOPE AND DESPAIR.
Rojan Dizon just wants to keep his head down. But his worst nightmare is around the corner.

With the destruction of their power source, his city is in crisis: riots are breaking out, mages are being murdered, and the city is divided. But Rojan's hunt for the killers will make him responsible for all-out anarchy. Either that, or an all-out war.

And there's nothing Rojan hates more than being responsible.

The fantastic follow-up to FADE TO BLACK!

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

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Before the Fall

By Francis Knight

Orbit

Copyright © 2013 Francis Knight
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-316-21770-5

CHAPTER 1

No-Hope-Shitty: the name says it all really. This particular part of the city,so far down it was almost the even-worse Boundary, was one of the crappier shit-pits. The smell of hopelessness, fear and the sweat of too many people seemedground into the dank buildings that crammed every available space.

I made my way along a swaying walkway that was only nominally attached to theclutch of gently mouldering boxes they called houses down here and tried not tothink how far down the gap underneath went. To keep my mind off the drop, Iswore at Dendal in my head. Some damn-fool notion he'd had was why I was here inthe arse end of the city. Trying to find someone I wasn't even sure existed in amaze of synth-ridden houses and rotting walkways that looked as though they'dturn on me at any time and dump me down twenty, thirty, floors to the bottom ofBoundary, or even further to the newly opened 'Pit–to Downside.

Heights, or, rather, depths, make me nervous and nervous makes me cranky, so Ikept on swearing at Dendal in my head. Downsider music, all wailing voices andthumping drums, rattled crumbling walls unused to anything more raucous than theoccasional bland hymn. Wary eyes peered out at me from cracked windows. Here wassomewhere I really didn't want to be, not an Upsider like me. The whole area wascrammed with recent Downsider refugees, fearful, and not without cause.

I'd ditched my usual outfit: the leather allover and the flapping jacket thatmade me look like a Special. It was handy for scaring the crap out of people,but Downsiders had a particular hatred for the elite guards and that hatred wasjust as likely to overcome the fear that was radiating through the thin walls. Iam many things but suicidal isn't one of them, so I'd dressed to blend in withan old-fashioned button-up shirt and a pair of tatty trousers I'd found thatdidn't quite fit. Just another guy feeling his way in this new and strange partof a city most of the Downsiders hadn't even seen before a couple of months ago.To them, the Upside of Mahala was the mythical come true, the alien place wherethings and people were weird. I kept having to remind myself of that. I'd eventried my best with my face, tried to give myself that Downsider blue-whiteundertone to my skin, rearranged things so I didn't look as threatening.

That disguise had its drawbacks, though. I'd been scowled at, sniffed at, spaton and sworn at on my way here. The sudden influx of refugees intoUpside–only into the less salubrious areas such as No-Hope, butstill–on top of the demise of our major power source and the resultingloss of trade, jobs, food and everything else, had made everyone, Upsider andDown, tense. There had been incidents all over just lately, from both sides,events that made parts of No-Hope a dangerous place for someone like me, foranyone not a Downsider. They'd also made other places just as dangerous for therefugees. If I showed my real face here, if they knew it was me who had causedall those things, I'd have been pitched over the side of the walkway before I'dtaken half a dozen steps from the office.

I stopped on a corner between a boarded-up apothecary and a little grocery storethat had run out of even really crappy food, wishing I'd brought a light of somekind, but candles were scarcer than food then, and I don't like to use rend-nutoil. The mingled smell of rotting fish and day-old farts wasn't a nice kind ofaftershave and doesn't pull in the chicks. Sadly, it was that or nothing, so Iwent with nothing.

Since the Glow had been destroyed by yours truly, power was at a premium. Downthis far in the city sun was a rumour. It wasn't much past noon up in therarefied air of Over Trade. In Heights and Clouds and Top of the World, Ministrylived in the sun, shielding it, stealing it from us dregs. That much hadn'tchanged–yet. It might never. Down here in Under, beneath the factories andwarehouses of Trade that were eerily silent now, it might as well have beenmidnight. Even the cunning network of mirrors and twisted light wells that gavemy office a shred of real, actual sunlight for about three minutes around noonand an almost constant dusk for the rest of the day, failed this far down.

I told myself that I didn't need light for what I was here for. True, I didn't.Rather, what I needed was pain, my pain. Which was a bitch, but I'd triedeverything else, and everything else hadn't worked. Dendal was waiting and Ididn't like to disappoint, and not just because he's my landlord and boss. He'smy boss because if he concentrated he could spread me over a large portion ofthe city. He could do it accidentally too, which was more likely, but I alwaysfound it best not to make him wait. He gets all insistent about his littleobsessions and it's easiest just to go along. Besides, I owe him a couple oflegs, in that without his help I probably would have blown mine off long sincewhile I learnt my magic. So, here I was.

The boy Dendal was after was a Downsider refugee; no records, no known address,not even a name to go on. All I had was a scrap of cloth and a hunch ofDendal's. It was magic, or nothing.

Left to my own devices, I'd have said screw the little sod and abandoned him tofend for himself, no better or worse off than thousands of others quietlystarving to death in the dark down here. Responsible isn't high on my list ofqualities. In fact, I usually try to make sure it doesn't even appear on thelist. But Dendal's persuasive, and also really good at guilt-tripping me even ifhe doesn't mean to. I hoped he would appreciate it, because this was going tohurt, and I don't like to hurt.

With my good hand, I rummaged in my pocket for the scrap of cloth Dendal hadgiven me. There wasn't anywhere to sit that didn't involve what was probablysynth-tainted water. The damn stuff still lingered, still made people sick fromthe inside out even now, so I crouched down and leant back against a ricketywall that I hoped would take my weight. I was getting better at this, but stillhad a tendency to end up on my knees when I tried because it usually felt asthough I was about to pop an eyeball, or perhaps a bollock.

I laid the scrap of cloth on my lap and stroked it with my good hand. My anchor,that cloth, the little bit of someone that would help me find them, in this casea boy. If I didn't know someone well then I needed a prop to help me findthem–something of theirs usually, something intimate to them.

On the plus side, I didn't need to dislocate my thumb to power up my magictoday. On the minus side, that was because I'd fucked up my whole left hand inthe incident that had led to all the Glow disappearing. The hand was stillhealing and all I needed to do was try to make a tight fist to have white spotsrun in front of my eyes and power run through my veins. There has to be a betterway to cast a find spell–any kind of spell–but I haven't figured outwhat it is yet. When I do, they'll hear the halle-fucking-lujah from Top of theWorld all the way down to the bottom of the 'Pit.

I made a fist and pain spiked through me along with magic, sweet and alluring,and oh so dangerous. It spun around me, through me, calling, always calling. Inand out, quick as I could, that was the best way. Before it tempted me, beforethe black rushed up to claim me. I'd beaten the black before, once, but I wasn'tso sure I could do it again. It was always there, waiting to trap the unwary,seductive and tempting. The price of my magic wasn't pain, it was the threat offalling into the black and never coming...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Orbit
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0316217700
• ISBN 13: 9780316217705
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 384
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland