Down Station

26

Dalip found a stand-off at the bottom of the tower. The guards had forced the door, but those inside had barricaded the stairwell making it impossible for them to pass further.

‘Let me through,’ he said to Mama, and even though it was a squeeze to get by her on the stairs, they were both past the point of embarrassment. Elena was next, and it was no more nor less awkward. The front line consisted of Luiza and Stanislav, and Dalip peered between them over the jumble of furniture at the thwarted guards. He threw the geomancer’s broken toy into the midst of the snarling men.

‘What was that?’ asked Stanislav. He’d been cut on the forehead by some flying object, a raised lump with a gash at its centre had streamed blood down the side of his face and neck.

‘I’ve no idea what it was, but it should mean we can stop fighting for a bit.’

‘You’ve taken her, then,’ came the shouted response.

‘It’s over. She’s still alive, but she’s our prisoner now.’

‘You should have finished her,’ hissed Stanislav. ‘She is dangerous.’

‘Look, just…’ Dalip screwed his face up in concentration. ‘Shut up about that. We know what we’re doing.’ He returned his attention to the guards. ‘Leave the tower. Leave the castle if that’s what you want, we can’t stop you and we wouldn’t want to. Everything’s changed here◦– we’re not slaves anymore.’

He could see the guards individually weighing up the balance of power: one by one, they left the downstairs room. There was no door to pull shut behind them◦– it was lying flat on the floor◦– but once the last of them had gone, the only thing stealing back through was the night.

Mama huffed. ‘Well, that’s that. We’re free to go, right?’

Dalip put his shoulder to the barricade, just to see how firm it was. ‘It’s a bit more complicated than that, and I really don’t have the words to explain it. It’d all be better if you just took a look for yourself.’

Luiza offered him the long knife. He thought about declining, but he took it. It was a kirpan by any other name, and he hoped that he’d be able to get the geomancer to tell him what she’d done with his kangha and kara. And his pagh.

The two serving women came with them, up the narrow winding steps all the way to the top. Mary had heard them coming, and was sitting on the bed, still wrapped in the tapestry.

‘Hey,’ she said.

‘Everything okay?’

‘We need to clean her up. Find her some new clothes.’

‘Are you sure about that?’

‘We can’t just leave her like that.’ She gestured at the raggedy woman, who sat with her legs drawn up and knees hard against her chest. ‘Just because we won doesn’t mean we have to behave like shits.’

‘She tried to kill both of us.’ He stepped off the staircase and in to the room. Mama followed, cautiously, eyes wide.

‘So we’ll be careful. Good to see you, Mama.’

Mama slowly turned, taking in the whole room, and eventually her gaze caught the slight figure of Mary.

‘Good Lord and Sweet Jesus,’ she shrieked. ‘Where’ve you been, girl?’

‘Out and about. I’m fine.’ She smiled. ‘I’m better than fine.’

‘What happened to your clothes?’

Dalip had to stand back lest he got trampled by Mama.

‘They got wrecked. By her. When she was a dragon.’

The others emerged. Mary nodded her welcome, taking a kiss on the cheek from Luiza and Elena. Mama drew back the wall hanging to inspect Mary’s back, causing her to wail and invoke God again.

Stanislav stared for a moment at Mary, then fixed on the geomancer. He marched straight to her and grabbed her by one thin wrist, pulling her upright and leaving her legs struggling to find purchase.

He pressed her against the wall, his hand around her throat, and slapped her, forehand, backhand, her head snapping one way, then the other. His fingers tightened, and she started to scrabble at her own neck, trying to prise him off.

‘Stanislav. Stop.’ Dalip started towards him, but Luiza was already moving.

Stanislav’s hand fastened on the front of dress, hooking the cloth away from her already-bruised and blood-smeared skin and ripping it apart. Luiza jumped up on him, her momentum knocking him sideways and forcing him to let go. They landed together, all three of them: the geomancer was desperate to get away, Stanislav just as desperate to attack her, and Luiza clinging to the Slav like a burr.

Mama interposed her bulk, shielding the geomancer and shoving hard at Stanislav. Now separated from his target, he half-rose and shook Luiza clear with a shrug of his broad shoulders. She landed with a squeal and tried to scramble back into contact, but Dalip got within range and brought Stanislav down.

The man raged and frothed and bellowed, and Dalip could barely hold him, let alone control him. It was like riding a tiger, and not even his fabled grandfather had done that.

Luiza threw her club next to him. She was right: it was either that or the knife. He snatched it up, got his arm around Stanislav’s neck and smashed the club against the crown of his head. The first strike seemed to have little effect. The second knocked him back flat against the floor. The third was ill-timed and weakly done, and only the fourth, where he was able to get a better swing and connect with the wound already on Stanislav’s temple, stunned him.

‘Get him out of here,’ demanded Mama. ‘Just get him out before he does that again. And when he comes to his senses, tell him we do not do that◦– to anyone! That man is becoming too much of a liability to have around.’

Dalip threw the club aside and dragged Stanislav by his collar to the stairs, then bundled him down them and into the room he’d first entered via the window. He slammed the door shut and put his back against it, bracing himself upright. He swung wildly between shock and fury.

‘What was that? What did you think you were doing?’

Stanislav, sprawling half under the table that still held the specimen tray, groggily put his hand to his head where Dalip had coshed him.

‘Answer me!’ He thought of all the words that the other boys at school used, openly, between themselves. ‘You were… you were…’

‘You don’t understand,’ slurred Stanislav.

‘That, at least, is right. Mary◦– Mary can do magic now. The geomancer wasn’t a threat any more. She was beaten. She was our prisoner.’

‘She is still dangerous—’

‘No. She isn’t. It’s you who’s too dangerous. You’ve already killed two people tonight. One of them in cold blood. And then you want to kill the steward, and the geomancer, and then you, you were tearing her clothes off. That’s just not…’ All the long words had failed him. ‘That’s just not right.’

‘She is dangerous,’ roared Stanislav. ‘She needs to be, needs to be◦– subdued. Conquered. Looted. Like a city. Her walls must come down, yes? It is not enough to force her to her knees, she needs to remember why she is there.’

‘That’s—’

‘She was using you to fight animals to the death. Have you forgotten that?’

‘No, I haven’t, but—’

‘She deserves to be trampled into the dust. We were slaves! We were owned! She is beaten, but she is not humiliated like we were. Make her cower. Make her flinch when we raise our hand to her. That is all she understands, that the strong do what they want, and the weak have to suffer what they will.’ Stanislav sat up, back to the table. ‘She will try to kill us if we do not do these things. Break her will, and we will be safe.’

‘I can’t go along with that.’

‘Then you are one of the weak, and you will always be a slave.’

Dalip stared at the man, who’d he’d spent hours with. He knew Stanislav was hard, driven, and unsympathetic, but as long as he’d worked hard and not spared his effort, his teacher had seemed not just satisfied, but actually pleased. Yes, he’d had moments where he’d disliked the man, but they were fleeting, because he could see the point to his training◦– staying alive long enough to escape.

It had turned out that Stanislav wasn’t putting on an act, and that he was actually like that.

‘Mary had it all under control, and look, I’m not the only one who thinks you went too far.’

‘Not far enough, I say.’

‘You were trying to rape her in front of everyone! What the hell did you expect us to do? Watch?’

‘That is how humiliation works.’

Now Dalip slipped into despair. ‘Where did you learn this stuff, Stanislav? Normal people don’t think like this. They don’t. They just don’t.’

‘This is war, you stupid boy. This is anarchy. This is all the places you read about in the newspapers and see on the television and are glad that you do not live there. Do you think normal, civilised, nice people live in such places? No, only two sorts of creatures: wolves and sheep. No shepherds. The wolves eat the sheep whenever and wherever they like.’ He snorted. ‘And now the sheep have the chance to kill one of the wolves and still they bleat.’

‘So which are you?’

‘I had to become a wolf because I did not want to be a sheep. You, you were becoming a wolf too, but no. The sheep have dragged you back into their fold.’ Stanislav screwed his face up in disgust. ‘Baaaaa.’

Dalip slid down the door, still barring the man opposite from leaving.

‘Where were you?’

Stanislav equivocated for a moment, pressing at the various lumps on his head.

‘Bosnia.’

Dalip had heard about it, briefly and in passing, but it had started before he was born, and ended when he was still a baby. That some of those responsible had gone on trial later was the only reason he knew there’d even been a war. His parents had been uncomfortable enough about what had gone on that they’d talk over the reporting, exchanging family gossip until the report had finished.

The images, however, remained: mass graves, shattered buildings, haunted people in the backs of cars and trucks piled high with their belongings.

Stanislav had been there. More than been there: had fought there, and it didn’t really matter for who, or why. What was important was that he’d brought that war with him to Down; in the same way, Dalip supposed, that everyone who came to Down brought only what they were with them. Their hopes and dreams, their fears and nightmares, the past they’d lived and the future they were destined to live.

‘You have to leave that behind,’ said Dalip. ‘It’s destroying you, and us.’

‘Do you know what it is like, to be weak?’ asked Stanislav.

‘Not until recently. I only got through that because of you.’

‘Do you want to be that weak ever again?’

‘No, of course not—’

‘Can you not see that if we fail to act now, then we are condemning ourselves to always being that weak?’

After everything that had gone on that night, Dalip was abruptly exhausted. He’d done everything asked of him, and more. His head sagged, and he gathered up his loose hair and dragged it over one shoulder.

‘We cannot do a deal with our former owners,’ said Stanislav. ‘They are not people we can trust. They will seek to own us again, and they must be stopped.’

‘We have stopped them.’

‘For now. When they regroup, they will try again.’

‘Then we’ll fight them again. Stanislav, it doesn’t have to be like this.’

‘Tell them that and see if they agree with you. They did not have to take us as slaves, but they did. They did not have to make you fight in the pit, but they did. They will do it again unless we◦– you and me◦– finish it now. There is no one else: even if we walk out of here, they will take others. Do you want that? Do you want to say to yourself, “We let the slavers go”, knowing that you have condemned others to the same state as you were?’

‘I know we have to do something.’

‘You know what you have to do. You know!’

Dalip scrubbed his face with his fingers. ‘We don’t have to do that. We don’t. We just don’t.’

‘You know the right thing to do. You refuse to do it.’ Stanislav pulled himself up by the table-top. ‘I will have to do it myself. To protect the sheep.’

‘You’re staying here. The others don’t trust you for the moment.’ He got to his feet too, and they were both as uncertain of vertical as each other. ‘Give it time, and we’ll work something out.’

He left him there, and closed the door. Stanislav wasn’t a prisoner, and there was nothing but words keeping him in the store room. Dalip hoped all the same that he’d stay there.

Truth be told, the man had a point. They’d been tricked and trapped and enslaved, and they had a moral duty to make sure that it didn’t happen to anyone else. There was no justice in Down, no higher authority to appeal to. It was the strong against the weak, or the strong for the weak: what other way was there?

Dalip climbed up the steps to the top floor. Mama was seeing to the geomancer’s wounds, while Luiza and Elena were carefully checking the contents of each box, each drawer. Mary had moved on to the bed, and lay there against the headboard, still wrapped up in the tapestry.

‘What are they looking for?’ he asked her.

‘Maps,’ she said. ‘She should have lots of maps, but there don’t seem to be many at all.’

‘And why maps?’

‘Because,’ she said, ‘maps are power and wealth. It’s what geomancers need to… Look, this is fucking complicated and I can barely get my head round it myself, let alone explain it. She should have a fuck-ton of maps somewhere in this tower, and they’re like gold, so I’m guessing that they’re somewhere here, in this room.’

‘Have you asked her where they are?’

‘She’s not exactly in an answering mood: between me and your mate, we’ve terrified her into silence.’ She shifted uncomfortably on the bed, and sat up, revealing her scars as she slid her hands down to her shins.

‘Who, what happened?’ The wounds were new, barely healing, wide and glistening.

‘She did. She happened. A few days ago now. She would have killed me if she could.’

Dalip sat on the edge of the bed, his back to her. He watched while the two Romanian women systematically went through everything, lifting things up, moving them around, checking behind them.

‘What are we going to do with her?’

‘I don’t know. I thought I was coming here to kill her. It turned out I didn’t need to.’

‘I thought we were going to have to kill her too. But I didn’t have the stomach for it. I wanted to see if I could reason with her instead.’ He looked at her over his shoulder, her coiled-spring hair, her skin opened up in broad red trenches. ‘Was that a mistake? Stanislav seems to think so. He says if we leave her alive, then either us or someone else will become her victims. We have to remember what sort of person she is.’

‘She’s no saint. Neither am I. You might be, I guess. What do you think we should do?’ She drew up her legs and hugged her knees.

‘That the only way to stop her may be to kill her. And that I’m not going to be the one to do it.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t know if that makes me a coward or not.’

‘A lot depends on her. If she even looks at me funny, I’ll have her.’ Mary pointed down behind her neck. ‘The last time I turned my back on her, I got these.’

‘I’m supposed to protect the weak◦– that’s what the gurus say. I don’t know who the weak are any more.’ Dalip reached into his pocket for Pigface’s knife, and considered his distorted, dim reflection in the blade. ‘This isn’t over yet, is it?’

‘No way. But at least we can do what we came here for◦– ask some questions of her, and work out if we can go home or not.’

Dalip caught her gaze, and held it. ‘Do you think we can?’

‘I’m told if we do, we’d be the first.’ She blinked her big brown eyes. ‘We might have to stay.’

He didn’t know what he thought about that, and looked away.