The White City

17

It wasn’t what she expected. Even though she realised it was never going to be the city of her imagination, with palaces carved from marble, crowded streets teeming with busy people, the noise of markets and the call of traders, while kings and queens were carried aloft in curtained chairs borne by muscled, silent servants, it still should have been grand. The White City was man’s only mark on Down, the only place where buildings had both a history and a future.

After leaving the ferryman’s shack, she’d picked her way up the stony path and into a steep-sided ravine. The river ran below her between rock walls, and the path grew perilously narrow. Then it widened, and the valley with it.

The path became a road, and bowed down to run at the same level as the river. The cliffs to her right poured cones of broken taluses at their feet, and produced a series of slopes that led to the valley floor. Ahead, the valley closed up again as tightly as it was behind her. Here, then, in front of her.

This was no city. It was a collection of high stone walls◦– compounds◦– and in each, a few unimpressive buildings, sometimes set away from the walls, sometimes incorporating them in their structure. One or two seemed to have taken over the whole of their compounds, hollowing out in the middle to leave courtyards. There were no trees, and the only vegetation was down on the lowest slopes by the river.

Even at night, the place seemed thin and mean and dusty. There were lights at some of the windows, but behind their walls they were cold and aloof, not warm and welcoming. The sound of water thrummed off the stone, an unsettling bass hum that hurt her teeth and made her empty guts ache.

The buildings and the walls were cut from white stone. That, at least, was as advertised. Nothing else was. It looked a cross between a desert village and a town from the Wild West.

She had no idea where she was supposed to go next, or where she was supposed to stay. She had unimaginable wealth in her hands, yet it was only hers if she could hold on to it. Crows would be here by morning, so she had to be ready.

She walked slowly past the terraced fields that lay between the road and the river, towards the compounds, which clustered as if thrown down at the bottom of the widest part of the valley. Every single door was closed and barred and silent. If they knew she was coming, then this was a strange kind of welcome.

She knew cities. She was the street kid, wise to every scam and every opportunity. This? This was the Kensington and Chelsea end, private houses with private security, and blank-faced embassies with brass plaques by the doors. Without a doubt, she was being watched, both coming in and going out again, back up the road to the opening into the valley.

She hoped it would be different in the morning, but for now, everything was shut tight and locked down, and she was so, so weary, her bones ached. It was only when she’d gone back as far as the beginning of the narrow ravine that she spotted several blank cubes set into the rock debris. At first sight, they’d looked like random blocks of fallen stone, but with a second look, they were too regular and sharp for that. The stones she picked a path across were also sharp. Her lack of shoes was telling here in a way it wasn’t when it was sand or leaf litter, and the soles of her feet, though hard, felt every corner of the scree. She swore almost every step, and decided that she wouldn’t mind paying for a decent pair of boots.

She’d trudged her way up to the nearest. It was made of the same pale stone as the bigger buildings, broken pieces laid like little bricks in courses to make walls, larger and longer chunks to form the frame of a door.

The door had had a big iron key in a rough keyhole, and when she’d pushed on the wooden planks, the door had creaked open. Inside, it was dry, and she found that she could take the key out and lock it from the inside. There was no one else present, and she’d felt all the way around the floor and the ceiling to check before hunching up in a corner and falling instantly asleep.

In the morning, when the sun was higher in the sky than she’d wanted, she unlocked the door again and looked down over the White City.

It… She couldn’t hide her disappointment from herself any longer. There was perhaps one building that was worthy of the name city◦– a single circular building with a domed roof, all dressed in the ubiquitous pale stone that was almost but not quite white. The rest were obscured in a haze of blue woodsmoke that hung in the steep-sided valley like smog. The river rumbled along its narrow channel, looking dark and mutinous, and the cultivated terraces next to it were green and brown. Other than that, everything was the colour of old bone: the cliffs, the scree slopes, the walls and buildings. Her red dress was the only splash of colour.

She stood at the doorway for a long while, memorising the lie of the land. All the compounds sat adjacent to the single road, a road that seemed to peter out at the far end. Most squatted above the track, and only a few below, wherever the ground seemed flat enough for building. Her shelter was one of a dozen, balanced on the edge of the loose rock and built into the gradient. Each had a door, and each had a lock.

She tried a few, then all of them. None were occupied, none contained anything useful. Indeed, they contained nothing at all, just a dark square space not even tall enough to stand up in.

A waterfall came off the cliffs above her, mostly turning into spray as it fell, and coalescing again in a hollow forced into the rock at its base. It seemed as good as any place to start. She retrieved her bag of honours, slid her dagger into the loop at her waist, and locked the maps inside the shelter. The key went in with the sharp metal coins.

The water blattered down on her from the waterfall, each drop like a shot and cold enough to make her squeal. At the centre of the hollow made by its falling was a pool, its surface jumping with splashes, and it appeared to drain away through the broken rock without overflowing at the margins. Before she reached the edge, she was drenched and pummelled. In the pool itself, the water seethed, as much air as there was liquid. It was numbing and exhilarating, and she dragged herself away out of range feeling washed and tumbled all at once.

The sunlight sat hidden by the cliff behind her. By the time it came to mid-afternoon, it would briefly illuminate the slope she sat on. Shortly after, it would be obscured by the other cliff. Consequently, it was always going to be cold, and she needed to remember that. There was a reason for the fires.

As she sat, shivering and drying out, she spotted her first people. They were coming down a staircase that stretched from the top of the opposite cliff to the bottom, much like the one that brought her up from the sea, though not quite as precipitous. Each carried a load of wood on their bent backs. As they came to the river, she lost sight of them. Perhaps there was a bridge there, or it was shallow enough to wade across.

It was easy enough, in the narrow ravine, to forget that Down extended in every direction, for ever. Just as easy to forget that Crows would be here soon, if he hadn’t already made the short journey from the ferry to the city.

She walked down the scree, past a few more of the stone shelters, to the road.

Mary faced the last of the compounds. The wall stretched two storeys above her, pierced on the top floor with small slit-like windows. There was a gate, too, tall and wooden and firmly shut. She frowned at it, and went to the next one. It was just as silent and forbidding as the first.

What was she supposed to do? Knock at a random door and see where that took her? There seemed nothing to choose between them.

She squared her shoulders, raised her fist.

‘No.’

She turned, and there was a man standing a little way off. He was as pale and dusty as the stone.

‘No?’

He shook his head. ‘No.’

‘Why not?’

He walked away, back towards what she’d taken to be just another shelter but was, on second look, more substantial and certainly more lived-in.

She raised her knuckles again, and hesitated. She had twenty honours. Was it worth spending one to find out why she shouldn’t? It might be a scam, a way of tricking the newcomers out of their honour and sending them back on the road again, poorer and none the wiser. She might be new to the White City, but she wasn’t new to the street, and she could work her own scams.

So she followed him back to his house. He was sitting on a stool next to his front door◦– if there’d been any sun, he’d have been sunning himself. As it was, he was just sitting outside. He glanced at her as she approached, then went back to his expression of disinterest.

‘Well?’ she said.

‘Well what?’ said the man.

Mary looked down the road. She could count a grand total of three other people. Two passed each other on opposite sides of the road, almost in opposite gutters. The other was brushing a front step in a desultory manner. She wasn’t going to be disturbed, then. She held up a coin, flicked it into the air and caught it again.

‘What’s so bad that I shouldn’t even knock?’

He snorted, but couldn’t even raise a half-smile.

‘Okay.’ She put the coin back into her honour bag and started to walk away.

He was up in an instant, reaching out for her, when he found himself with the point of a sharp blade against his wrist.

‘I’ll fucking cut you, and I know where to make it bad.’

He slowly withdrew. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.’

‘Touch me and I’ll do you. Right?’

He wasn’t scared of her. She could see no trace of it in his pale eyes. But all the same, he sat back down, and put his hands ostentatiously on his knees.

‘No harm done,’ he said.

‘You want to take my honour? Do you?’

‘Only what you’re prepared to give me.’

She sheathed her dagger again. ‘I bet you say that to all the girls.’

He half-grunted a laugh. A release of tension. Then he looked at her properly, and she at him.

‘Not that door. Not any of the doors up here. That’s not where you start, if you get my meaning.’

‘So where should I start?’

He chewed his lip for a moment, but her purse remained annoyingly closed.

‘I could have killed you,’ she said. ‘That has to be worth something.’

‘Down by the river. The one on its own. That’s where you should have gone. You’ll know it when you see it.’

‘Thanks. I… look: I’m not like that◦– or maybe I am, but I’m trying not to be like that. Is this your house, your shop, whatever?’

He settled back further, leaning against the wall behind him, which was as white as his hair. ‘I’m here when I’m needed.’

‘You’ll get your honour, at some point. I just need to work out the system before I start handing it out for every little favour and I’m left with nothing.’

‘You’d better go. Remember which door you need to be at.’

She nodded, still uncertain what horrible fate she’d avoided. The road bent towards the west cliff, but the detail was obscured by the compounds to either side. Seeing around them was impossible, looking over them showed only towering rock. There were a few more people out, half a dozen and no more, all as individuals heading somewhere with hurried purposefulness. They stared at her when they thought she wasn’t looking at them. As soon as she locked eyes with them, they looked away. No one spoke, either to each other or her. Not even an acknowledgement, a raising of the hand, a tipping of the hat. Mary walked down the middle of the scuffed road itself: everyone gave her a wide berth. At first she thought it might be her, but those who could conceivably be fellow townspeople tended to avoid each other, even to the point of crossing the road.

Only once was there anything resembling a side-street. She peered up it, to see a fraction of the dome-roofed building staring back down at her. That it was different made her want to explore it, which was probably reason enough to leave it alone. She had a destination: better she stuck to it than get distracted.

She worked her way down the road, past yet more anonymous compounds, paying full attention to all the details, until she reached the right-angled turn. Between her and the river, all the way to the narrow entrance of the ravine, were the terraced fields. Above the road, buildings.

And at the point of the turn, a track that ran down the slope to the river itself, where there were stepping stones, and on the other side, the steep stairs she’d seen the wood-carriers descend. There was one building, all on its own, next to the water’s edge. Like the rest of the White City, it was a block made out of smaller blocks, and as welcoming as a gun emplacement, but she assumed that was her destination.

A few of the fields were under cultivation: there were backs bent over neat rows of green leaves, and feet in the thin soil. But the majority were wild, and the terraces were breaking down, spilling stones and earth downhill into the river and away.

She eyed the decay. It was reminiscent of Crows’ castle, before she’d moved in, even if everything here had to be maintained by hand, not by magic. Things were falling apart, and for the same reason: not enough people to keep it running.

The track ended. The stepping stones across the river were tall pillars, thinner than she expected. To cross would require both confidence and skill to avoid pitching into the running river below. She looked across and up to where Down started again, at the top of the cliff. It would be easy to grab the maps and scale the cliff, but everyone seemed so sure that the answers were here. Now that she’d seen it for herself, she wasn’t so convinced.

But she was still going to have to chance it. She turned her gaze down to the building next to her. No windows in the ground floor again. It struck her that there had to be something to be afraid of, to design it like that.

There was only one door◦– she checked by walking all the way around the outside◦– so she reached up and rapped hard on it with her knuckles. If this was the wrong decision, she was going to look a right idiot.

She waited, long enough to think she was going to have to knock again. Doors which presented a blank face to her made her feel like she was in a cell, even when she was outside. It was worrying, and made her wonder if what lay on the other side was better◦– safer◦– than where she stood. She’d spent half her life looking over her shoulder.

Just as she was going to pound again, she heard noises from inside. She stepped back, and the door swung open towards her.

‘What?’ said the woman who wore a face that simultaneously startled and intrigued Mary.

‘What do you mean, what?’

‘Why are you here?’

‘Fucked if I know. Some bloke back there told me that the door I was going to knock on was going to get me killed or something, and that I should try this one instead.’ Mary shrugged. ‘Was he telling me the truth? Is this somewhere I should be?’

The woman folded her arms in a way that reminded her of Mama. ‘What have you got?’

‘Depends what you’re offering. That’s how it works, right? I have to decide how much I think it’s worth, then we argue about it, then shake on a deal.’ She was guessing, but she’d done this on market stalls and street corners for years. All she was doing was letting the other woman know she wasn’t about to be taken for a ride.

The woman leaned around the door, and saw that Mary was alone. ‘You’d better come inside,’ she said. Her voice was no less distrustful than before. ‘We’ll talk.’

‘I’d rather eat, then talk.’

‘We’ll see.’ She stood aside, and Mary slipped into the cool darkness beyond.