The White City

18

The coast became a line in the distance, and still Simeon fixed all his attention on it. Dalip couldn’t bear it any longer, and worked his way along the deck until he stood at the prow.

‘I’m sorry, but how? I know you told me, but I just don’t believe you.’

Simeon unplugged his eye from the telescope. ‘Can’t you just trust your captain?’

‘You said there was no magic on board.’

‘Nor is there. Filthy stuff.’ He held out the telescope to Dalip. ‘See for yourself.’

Dalip took the instrument and examined it. It seemed a perfectly normal ship’s telescope, not that he’d ever handled one before. ‘Where did this come from?’

‘That’s lost in the mists of time. It was handed to me by the last captain. I’ll pass it on when the time comes. Along with the hat.’ Simeon went to take it back, but Dalip needed one last favour.

‘Do you mind if I look through it?’

‘Will you keep quiet about what you see?’ Simeon asked, whispering.

Dalip nodded, and Simeon opened his hands to indicate the wide sea and sky were his.

At first, he could see nothing, but that was because he couldn’t make his sight lines work. Then, when he’d got flashes of waves and wood, he couldn’t hold it still long enough to focus on anything.

He braced himself against the side of the ship, and trained the telescope on the coast. The black line moved out of sight upwards, then downwards. He compensated for the movement of the boat, and finally got it under some sort of control.

He could make out some of the taller headlands, which presumably Simeon knew and could use to navigate the inshore waters. It still didn’t explain how he steered a straight course when there was no land in sight. It was just a regular telescope, a lens at either end of a collapsible tube.

He lowered it and inspected it again. He didn’t want to give it back, either, because he knew he was missing something. But he had no excuse not to, and he reluctantly gave it up.

‘What did you see?’

‘Down.’

‘Nothing else?’

Dalip pursed his lips and shook his head.

‘It’s all in the eye of the beholder, Singh.’ He gave the end of the telescope a little twist. ‘Why don’t you try again?’

He was suspicious now. What had Simeon done? He braced himself again, and raised the telescope up. A wash of colour startled him, and when he looked again, he could see that the colours, brighter than any rainbow, were arranged in broad stripes across the sky. He turned, and he moved from red through to blue. He turned back, and the colours cycled the other way.

‘Polarising filters. You’ve got polarising filters on this.’

Simeon took the telescope away and leaned in. ‘I don’t know how it works. All I know is that I can lay a course even on the cloudiest day, at twilight, and sometimes at night when the moon is full. Midday is difficult, but not impossible.’

‘Whoever made that…’

‘Knew what they were doing? Yes, by Jove. Without it we’d be reduced to following the coast all the time, and part of the beauty of being on the ship is being able to head out beyond the horizon and lie low for a while.’ He hooked his arm over the prow. ‘I could teach you. What d’you say?’

‘Yes?’

‘When we can, then. First, I have to find the right bay and the right beach. Which isn’t, I hasten to add, the damnable Bay of Bones. Horrid place. Some say it’s cursed. Some also say it’s the only way to get to the White City, but they are most definitely wrong.’

Simeon tweaked the telescope again and concentrated on the dark line ahead. Then without taking his eye off the coast, raised his hand and made a couple of gestures to the steersman.

‘Ready to come about,’ came the call.

‘Slightly to the west, but not bad, all things considered.’ Simeon’s mouth twitched into a satisfied smirk. ‘Get yourself ready, Singh. We’re going ashore.’

The bow turned to the east, and the boat heeled over as the sail ran almost parallel to the deck. The wind was against them, and they tacked hard left and right to slowly close on the palisade-like cliffs.

Ropes didn’t pull themselves, and it was hard work. But not as hard as rowing, which they had to do to stop them from going backwards, or into the rocks. They hauled themselves into the headwind, hunched over as if it would make a difference to their speed. As it was, they crawled along: individual features moved by glacially, causing the crew to mutter and curse. Some even said they should head to the Bay of Bones and be done with it.

Dalip exchanged glances with Mama across the width of the deck, and the steersman apparently thought the same.

‘Row, you dogs. You know the Bay of Bones isn’t for the likes of us.’ He spat over the side to emphasise his point.

They hauled and groaned, and finally made way around the headland. The wall of rock seemed just as impenetrable, and the wind redoubled its efforts. Dalip dug in, but it was clear that some of the other rowers were flagging, Mama included.

‘I’m not built for this,’ she said, voice quavering.

‘Ten more strokes,’ shouted the steersmen. ‘Ten is all. Come on.’

At the back of the boat, Dalip couldn’t see why, but as he ground out those last few strokes, the first hint of lower land and a shelving beach showed themselves. The boat leaned to port, and suddenly they were in clear water.

‘Ship oars. Raise the sail.’

Uncertain if he had the strength to stand, Dalip dragged his oar back in and rested for a moment, elbows on his thighs and his head almost at his knees.

‘We need sail! ’Ware the rocks!’

The rope party lurched into action, already exhausted, and managed to get half the sail unfurled. On Dalip’s side of the boat, a line had seized in the block, and half a sail clearly wasn’t going to be enough.

It was three steps away. Then two, as he barged through the middle of the men. He held the line taut and brought his machete down on the braided cord. It twanged away, and the rest of the sail fell into place. The severed line snaked and cracked, and someone else caught it.

Dalip’s guts had knotted from the effort, and at that moment, he neither knew nor cared whether they were going to avoid the submerged rocks on the port side. The boat rocked and pitched, then surged away as the steersman leaned hard into his tiller.

Mama caught him and dragged him into the clear aisle between the sea-chests.

‘We’re fine, we’re fine,’ she said. ‘You did good.’

Dalip swallowed hard against the acid fire in his throat and tried to breathe. ‘As long,’ he gasped, ‘as long as they don’t make me splice that rope back up again.’

‘I’m sure they have someone who can do that.’ She patted his arm and sat him up so he could see that they’d steered away from the rocks and were heading smoothly towards the back of the bay and the shingle beach there.

Rather than landing the ship, Simeon ordered the anchor dropped and the mast unstepped. They sat offshore while they recovered◦– water and food were passed around, and some measure of good humour mixed with relief was restored to the crew. Dalip took some time to look at the bay surrounding them: a river ran into it, a shingle beach gave way to a salt marsh, and further inland, a forest. The land rose up and became a hard-edged plateau some miles distant.

‘So the White City is over there?’

‘This river runs through it. It’s not an easy journey, nor is it short, but it’s more certain than others.’ Simeon stowed the telescope in his sea-chest. ‘Down’s magic still holds sway out this far, so be on your guard.’

Then Simeon reached past the telescope and started to assemble what Dalip thought was going to be a crude firearm. Certainly the first piece was a stock with a trigger, but the next wasn’t a barrel, but a guide, and the third a steel crosspiece.

‘A crossbow.’

‘An arbalest.’ He lifted up the winding mechanism and screwed it into place with his thumbs. ‘There are things out there you don’t want to have at with a sword.’

‘I know.’

‘Oh-oh? That story’s one for the fireside, I’ll wager.’ He hooked a bag of crossbow bolts at his waist and attached a strap on to the iron rings front and back on the arbalest. ‘Break out the boat. Volunteers for guard duty, see Dawson.’

He adjusted his hat firmly on his head, and Dalip went to find Mama.

‘Stay or go?’ he asked her.

‘You have to go,’ she said. ‘That is, you wouldn’t be happy if you stayed. Me, I’m not so sure, what with all that walking, and the clambering down to the rowing boat. That’s not what I enjoy.’

‘You have to see the White City. Just once.’

‘Dalip, I’m not cut out for adventures. For sure, I’ll stand up for myself if trouble comes my way, but I’m not going looking for it. I’ve found somewhere safe to stay for the while, and if I’m a fool for not leaving it, no better place than a Ship of Fools to be.’ She saw Dalip’s disappointment. ‘I’m not young, not like you. You need to do these things, to see what you’re made of, to prove to yourself that you’re a man and not a boy. I know what I’m made of, and some bloodthirsty pirate is not it.’

She was right. Right for her, anyway. She went to find Dawson, and Dalip joined the queue for the boat trip ashore.

It inevitably took a long time, at four passengers a journey, to decant the raiding party to dry land. Some of the crew drifted away from the beach and into the forest◦– there seemed to be no reason not to follow them, so Dalip did the same.

It was similar to the landscape they’d first washed up in. Virgin forest, patterned in light and dark, with clearings of saplings centred around one or more rotting trunks of the fallen. The birds swooped and flitted between the branches, and it was cool and still under the canopy. After the constant movement of the ship’s deck, it was strangely static.

Which might have been why it took him a while to realise that the ground was oddly stepped. Though the ubiquitous trees cared little about where they sprouted, the land itself was divided up into platforms, with their edges softened with age.

He couldn’t be the first person to notice, surely? Others who’d passed this way would have seen what he was seeing, and commented on it to someone. He dropped to his knees and parted the undergrowth with his machete, cutting the roots and digging through the leaf litter until he came to something hard. Then he laid his weapon aside and used his hands to scrape what he’d found clear of debris.

It was a pavement of regular stone blocks. Most were cracked, some were missing, but there was enough left to show how the whole would have looked. He brushed his palms against his legs and picked up the machete again, holding it loosely by his side. He took in everything that he could, imagining the pavement extending from where he knelt to the next step. Beyond that, and to each side, to another pavement.

There’d been a city here once. Not a castle, or a collection of wooden huts: a city, with everything that the name entailed. A city which had fallen, and had been clawed back into the ground by Down, except that it was so vast that it still wasn’t completely consumed. The memory of it remained, buried under the rotting leaves and broken by the soaring trees.

In the distance, a horn sounded long and low. He was being summoned back to the beach, and yet he knew it was more important to investigate the ruins and find a reason for the city’s demise. When he’d uncovered those few paving stones, they were glazed white◦– and where would do that except at the site of the original White City?

The horn sounded again. He had to go. He kept looking back as he walked towards the sea. There should be towers, not trees. And if this was the White City, then where were they going?

When they formed up on the shingle bank, they numbered thirty or so. Ten had stayed aboard. It wasn’t many, considering the Ship of Fools would comfortably hold twice their current number. He wondered how few they could get away with and still crew the boat safely. If things went badly for Simeon during the next few hours and days, he might have to hang his hat up permanently.

When they were ready, there were no stirring words, just a look into each man’s or woman’s eyes, and their captain turning his back on the sea and setting off along the bank of the river.

‘Dalip?’

He stopped daydreaming and found himself walking next to Elena.

‘You are well?’

‘I… yes, fine,’ he said. ‘I just have a bad feeling about this.’

‘You think we will find Mary?’

He’d got used to the idea that he wouldn’t. Now he had to contend with the idea that he might, and what he was going to do about that.

‘I don’t know.’

‘What if she is with Crows?’ She rested her hand on the pommel of her sabre. ‘What will you do?’

‘I don’t know that either. We’ll talk, I suppose.’

‘I am sorry, Dalip. I have had much time to think, and I have decided: whatever Mary has done for us in the past, she is also responsible for Luiza. If she is still alive, then we have no choice but to take our revenge on her, too.’

‘Crows is guilty. That’s obvious. Anything else is up in the air.’ He looked down at her, small and scared and determined. ‘We have to give her a chance to speak for herself, if she’s there. Which I can’t see, myself. She went after Crows, and she never came back. If she could have, she would have.’

‘You will not kill her, even if she deserves it?’ He thought it was a question, but eventually realised it was a statement. And she was right: there was very little he could do about how he felt. ‘It won’t come to that.’

‘The Wolfman is dead. Crows is next. Sebastian will kill Mary if I do not.’ She nodded in the direction of the man who’d been giving her sword-fighting lessons.

‘Perhaps you…’

He wasn’t in charge of her. He never had been. She got to make her own choices, and it appeared that one of those was to persuade another man to fight Mary.

‘I should what?’ she asked him.

‘She’s my friend. She needs to have the chance to explain what happened. I’ll protect her, if that’s what’s necessary.’

‘You will fight me?’

‘Will I fight you?’ He chewed at his lip. He’d left this conversation far too late. If he’d said something sooner, then he might have been able to deflect her from her chosen path. As it was, they were now on a collision course. ‘I’m so very sorry about Luiza. If Mary was involved in it◦– and I don’t see how she could be◦– then okay: I’ll stand aside. But if she’s innocent, it’s my duty to help her.’

Of course she wasn’t going to fight him. But Sebastian might, if he thought the risk worth the reward. It all depended on Elena. And she’d changed, he suddenly realised. Changed from how she’d been before, and on her way to becoming… what?

She was silent for a while, just walking next to Dalip, as she had done many times before. Then she shook her head and moved away, over to the other side of the group.

He didn’t want to have to fight everyone, but it looked increasingly likely that he was going to have to. The prospect didn’t fill him with joy, and he wondered what he could do to turn his fortune around. In the absence of Mama, he could talk to Simeon, see what he said.

They were at the forest, and they instinctively turned from a loose bunch to a ragged line. The shadows by the waterside still couldn’t disguise the worn-thin structures further in. The riverbanks were thick with loose white stones, and the riverbed too, where they turned green with weed. Dalip could see it, and apparently no one else could.

There were answers here, and he knew he was missing them.