Rojan Dizon 03 - Last to Rise by Francis Knight Read Free Book Online

thought she was going to say something else for a moment – “Are you sure we
can
finish this?”, perhaps. She had that kind of look on her face, but not for long.
    “All right. Will it hurt?”
    “Not you,” I said, and wished I hadn’t when she flinched at the reminder of where all the juice was coming from. “Not much, no. No more pain than my hand is giving me anyway. How many warts do you want?”
    She smacked my shoulder but I got a laugh. “None! Now do it.”
    So I changed her face. Not much, but enough that she didn’t look like my sister any more. It almost certainly wouldn’t work for long, because the cardinals – hell, everybody by now – knew that I could disguise myself and other people. Then again, it wouldn’t last all that long without me concentrating on it. Long enough for Perak to sort something out, I hoped.
    Lise ran her hands over her face. “That feels really bizarre.”
    “Welcome to Rojan’s world. Now get yourself in that room. I’m going to get in touch with Perak and see what we can do.”
    I helped her get all her bits together, all the plans and tools and Goddess-only-knew-what else. She wouldn’t let me in the room though. “Not yet. The machine might not work. I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up.”
    I waited until she’d locked the door behind her, and went to find some guards to hopefully do a better job of guarding the lab before I woke Dendal and got him to contact Perak.

Chapter Four
    Another night with no sleep was just what I needed. Not. Perak hadn’t been asleep either when I’d got hold of him, but he was incandescent when he found out what had happened. That was clear despite the tinny echo of Dendal’s communication conduit, as was a bone-deep despair of ever being able to do anything, anything at all, without the cardinals trying to fuck it up.
    “But Lise is safe, you say?”
    “For now. She doesn’t look like her, and she’s locked herself in. But for anyone determined enough, that won’t be a problem.”
    I was fairly sure I heard some muffled swearing at the other end. “Fine. Leave the cardinals to me. Oh, and Erlat’s Mishan-liaison friend – I got her message a few minutes ago. I’d incur some of the Goddess’s displeasure and lie through my teeth, but they expect that. Maybe Erlat can help… yes. She’d be perfect. Listen – you need to get out of the way, even more so now. Get down to the ’Pit as soon as you can. With any luck – no, I won’t have the cardinals in line, I doubt I ever will. But I should have something worked out. Look, the sooner we get going, the sooner you two will be safe, the sooner we’ll
all
be safe. In the meantime I’ll do what I can for Lise, with what men I can spare. I’ll sort something. You know I will. But while she can stay in the lab, I need you out of the way. I’ll tell everyone… well, I’ll tell them that Lise isn’t at the lab any more, that I’ve moved her somewhere. You too. Maybe they’ll believe it, maybe they won’t. But I need you down there, finding me a tunnel I can use.”
    He was as good as his word, and Specials were swarming over the lab long before the sun rose. Lise was as safe as anyone was going to be.
    So there I was, early the next morning, cursing the stomach that had made me agree to this particular escapade, and it had a lot to answer for.
    We didn’t take most of the new mages down to the ’Pit – as nursemaids go, I am crap. After a quick run through their paces, Pasha and I decided that taking the younger ones would be madness. Half of them didn’t even know what their talents were yet, and the other half were at the perilous stage of knowing just enough to be dangerous to themselves and everyone else around them. But Halina proved to be as capable as I’d thought, and levitation might be handy when you were planning a quick pig-snatch-and-grab. So Pasha and I had asked her and she’d looked blandly curious and said OK.
    We made our way down to