Last to Rise (A Rojan Dizon Novel, 3) - Softcover

Knight, Francis

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0316217743 ISBN 13: 9780316217743

Verlag: Orbit, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

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.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

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...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Orbit
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0316217743
• ISBN 13: 9780316217743
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 384
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland