The White City

22

Did he regret it? Had he given in to anger, and hate? Or had he been trying to dispense some small measure of justice in a world caught up in an age of darkness? Did his motives even matter, when the end result was one less monster?

Any doubt he’d had that the robed figure wasn’t human had been dispelled the instant he’d charged it. He’d hit it with everything he had, and it had been like striking a brick wall. If it hadn’t been so close to the edge, it would never have fallen. He alone wasn’t surprised that it hadn’t come up again. It might have had the form of a man, but what lay beneath the cloth and skin was far removed from flesh and blood.

He held out his hand and reached out over the chasm towards Mary. She sheathed her dagger, and jumped deftly from pillar to pillar, catching his fingers over the final gap and landing safely on the bank.

‘What now?’ she asked.

He looked around. The fight had moved on, up the road, where the tail end of the servants, those who were bravest and had fought longest, were finally scattering, running from locked door to locked door and finding no safety. They’d been abandoned by their masters and mistresses, and the pirates were in no mood for clemency. There were bodies lying on the hard-packed dirt, and between the plants in the fields. The bloodstains looked like evening shadows in the noonday light.

‘We do what we came here to do. Try to put all the maps together.’ Dalip wanted to get away from the scene of carnage, and eyed up the pale walls of the structure closest to the river. ‘What’s in this building here?’

‘It’s◦– it’s the only place apart from the stone hut thing I’ve been in. It’s a big house, square, open yard in the middle of it.’

‘Anyone live there?’

‘I don’t know if anybody lives anywhere, as such. It was where I was told to go, and someone gave me the third degree in there. I thought she was like us, right up until she peeled her face off halfway through our chat and thought I’d be cool with it. It’s not a mansion, just a lot of empty rooms.’

‘I could really do with knowing where Crows has gone. I don’t trust him when I can’t see him.’ Dalip steered Mary towards the building, and stood outside, staring up at the narrow windows. He wouldn’t be able to get through them, but if there was a courtyard he could climb over the roof and drop down inside. The stones in the wall were tightly packed, but there were gaps between them.

On the off chance, and just so he could say he’d tried, he nudged the door with his foot. It moved a fraction. He pushed it harder, and it swung inwards, banging against the jamb. Inside it was gloomy and bare, a corridor with rough limed walls, and doors all the way down.

‘Why don’t we wait for backup,’ he said. ‘There’s no point in getting ambushed.’

She seemed to accept that and sat with her back to the wall. The big canvas bag she carried went seamlessly on to her lap.

‘The maps are in there, aren’t they?’

‘One lie at a time is enough for me.’ She opened the top of the bag and hauled out a brass tin. ‘This came with the boat. Our boat. What should have been our boat.’

He took it from her and turned it over, before propping his machete up and easing the lid off. It looked like a compass, but with only one direction◦– west◦– marked on it. The disc swung aimlessly about, then slowly settled down. He checked the position of the sun, which was past midday and behind one cliff, but illuminating the upper scree slopes and the wall of rock on the other. That was west, and that was where the W pointed.

‘It didn’t work when I used it,’ she said.

‘Seems to be working now.’ He bent down to show her.

‘When I say “didn’t work” I mean the direction was wrong, but it led me here anyway.’

‘That’s definitely west, over there.’ He walked a little way away, sighted down the cardinal, then walked back and did it again. He frowned. ‘Simeon would hang me from the yardarm if anything happened to you, or the maps.’

‘Do you want me to come with you?’

‘If that’s okay.’

Dalip slid his machete through the hole in his waistband, and carried the compass over the field boundary. The needle swung about, and pointed in a subtly different direction than before. He watched it carefully as he walked, aware of Mary stalking behind him, trying to see what he was seeing.

He wasn’t mistaken. The disc was gradually turning, tracking not some distant pole, but something very close by. When he judged that the W was no longer pointing west, but mostly north, he stopped and sighted along it again.

‘That dome: what is that?’

‘I know it hasn’t got a door.’ She looked at her feet. ‘I tried to hide from you in there.’

‘That’s okay.’

‘It was stupid.’

‘It’s fine.’ He squinted at the brass tin, but there was no writing on it. The only clue was the single letter on the compass card. ‘You found this on the boat?’

‘It was in a locker. There was sailcloth and needles and thread, enough to repair stuff if it went wrong. Down’s generous like that. You could have sailed it just great.’

‘W is for White City, not west. That building is where this compass points: no matter where you are on Down, you can always find your way here. It’s like a homing beacon.’

‘No shit. How does it do that without magic?’

‘Because,’ he started, but he didn’t know how to finish. How could a boat that had grown out of a sand dune hold a compass that still worked as surely as a satnav inside a magicless area? ‘I don’t know. Maybe there’s something really magnetic in there.’

Even as he said it, he didn’t believe it. If it was that magnetic, every piece of iron for a mile around would be stuck to the building. There was something else at work. Something he thought he ought to be able to explain, but couldn’t.

‘Whatever is in there, it’s so important to Down you need to be able to find it half a world away. So at some point, we need to get in there and find out what it is.’ He put the lid back on the device, and handed it to Mary. ‘It’s yours. You should keep it. I… Bell’s machines: did Down make those too?’

‘That’s what I’m thinking. Which is seriously fucking mad.’

The horn was sounding again and the pirates were assembling at the junction. They came down the road to find Dalip and Mary by the open front door.

‘That’s most of their human lackeys seen to, by God. But whatever those things are, they won’t face us like men. The dastards used their slaves as shields, to get back inside their bunkers without engaging with good, honest steel. Door to door it’ll have to be.’ Simeon spat on the ground and looked up at the building. ‘So what’s this place?’

‘It’s big enough for our needs, and a decent enough barracks for those not on duty.’

‘Right,’ said Simeon. ‘Search the place, room by room. Break things if you have to. Look for trapdoors, secret passages. Let’s have no surprises.’

Two dozen pirates piled through the doorway, and their voices could be heard, shouting as they banged about, checking every last space.

Elena didn’t join them, and she had Sebastian behind her. Dalip saw, and stepped between them and Mary. He held Sebastian’s gaze for longer than was normally necessary and inclined his head slightly.

‘This isn’t your fight,’ he said.

‘Are you sure?’

Here they were, squaring up to each other like fighting cocks. Considering everything else that had gone on, the situation was verging on the ridiculous, if only they hadn’t both been armed.

‘Mary had nothing to do with Luiza’s death,’ said Dalip, loudly enough so that everyone present could hear.

Then Mary pushed past him. ‘You can’t believe I did. Elena?’

‘You went with Crows,’ she said.

‘I stole the maps back.’ She shook the bag of them at her. ‘Look. Here they are.’

‘You have no honour,’ said Elena.

‘I have plenty of honour.’ Mary threw a cloth bag down at her feet. Worn metal coins spilled out across the dirt.

‘What, what are these?’

‘My honour. They give them to you, and a weapon, at the ferry. It’s all a con, though. Like one of those fairs where all the stalls are fixed, but you never realise until all your money’s gone.’

‘But you worked with Crows, yes?’

‘No. I pretended to work with Crows.’

‘You wanted the maps for yourself. You tried to run off with them when we got here. You cannot be trusted in anything.’ Elena pushed Sebastian forward, towards Mary, presumably assuming that he’d go for her. Dalip could tell he was beginning to see that the situation previously presented to him as clear-cut was anything but.

‘Mary was only doing what she thought was right. The maps don’t belong to us,’ said Dalip. ‘Or rather, they belong to everyone: it doesn’t really matter who owns them. What matters is what we do with them. Crows is working for the White City, whatever that means. He was going to give them, or sell them, to the Lords and Ladies in return for who knows what. We do know that once they had them, that’d be the last we ever saw of them. We have Mary to thank for saving them from Crows. Not so we can sell them ourselves, but so we can use them.’

‘If I may,’ said Simeon. He ambled lazily across in front of them, and then back again. ‘It is abundantly clear that Mary would make an admirable pirate lady. She is a liar and a thief, and probably not averse to a bit of the claret, but also she’s brave to boot, and loyal to her crew. Her quick-thinking salvaged a tragic situation and wrested control from our enemy. She is to be commended.’

He leaned his sword over his shoulder and dared anyone to gainsay him.

Elena stepped back, her lips thin and her face white. Then she turned and walked away. Sebastian swiped at the ground with his blade and made to follow her.

‘Sebastian,’ said Simeon. ‘Sometimes dipping your wick makes a man lose his head. If you get my meaning.’

Sebastian worked his jaw, said nothing, and trotted to catch up with Elena. Simeon turned to Mary.

‘Don’t find yourself alone with either of them. I have a premonition of woe regarding that pair.’

‘I didn’t go with Crows because I… Oh, what’s the point?’

‘The maps were the point. I would have done the same: I have, however, learnt through long and bitter experience that the dead stay dead, and that a man can only mourn so many times before he becomes inured. Singh, I charge you with the most solemn duty of keeping Mary alive.’ He pushed his hat up. ‘Can you manage that?’

‘Aye aye, Captain.’

‘We’ll make a sailor of you yet.’

One of the crew emerged from the building, giving the all-clear, and Simeon ushered Mary and Dalip inside. They followed the corridor to the courtyard.

‘What do you need?’ Simeon asked them.

‘Somewhere big enough to lay out all the maps, arrange them, and make sense of it all. It’ll need light, but no draughts.’ Dalip looked around at the square, trying to judge the sizes of the rooms that might lie behind them.

‘Take whatever room you want. I’ll post a guard and lookouts. Then we can start kicking down doors and hauling these dastards out, one by one.’ He reached into his jacket and pulled out the plastic egg, handing it to Dalip. ‘You might need this.’

When he’d gone, Mary leaned in. ‘What is it?’

‘Something I took from the Wolfman, along with his boots.’ He gave it to her, and she turned it over in her hand. ‘It’s a light. A little portable light.’

‘How does it work?’

‘I have no idea. I think it’s from the future too.’ He took it back and popped it into a pocket. ‘Let’s have a look around and pick somewhere.’

‘We’ll need Mama if we’re going to piece all these bits together.’ She glanced down the long corridor to the outside. ‘I know Elena’s pissed about Luiza dying, but how can she think I had anything to do with it?’

‘Because if something terrible happens, you find someone to blame.’

‘Blame the Wolfman. Blame Crows. Don’t blame me.’

Dalip shrugged. ‘You flew away. You didn’t come back. That looks a lot like guilt.’

She was quiet for a while, and Dalip studied the square of sky.

‘What did you think?’

‘I thought you were dead. That you and Crows had fought over the maps and you’d lost. Otherwise, you would’ve come back.’

He remembered what it had been like, sitting there, staring out to sea. It was only a few days ago, and he’d wondered if he’d ever get used to the hollow feeling inside. It turned out that he wouldn’t. And then on seeing her again◦– her stabbing him was forgotten◦– there was no sudden filling up again: simply confusion. How could she be alive when he’d so entirely believed her dead?

‘This isn’t making a start, is it?’ he said. ‘Let’s find some stairs.’

He was pointed to a rough wooden ladder that led up into a series of bare, dusty rooms that didn’t look like they’d been used for years. Their footprints, especially those from Mary’s bare feet, left a clear trail when they ventured beyond the search party’s tracks.

The windows were narrow, mere slits that hardly let in any light, and more like those in medieval castles than anything else. Dalip put his eye to one, and saw a section of the road and a couple of buildings. Nothing moved outside.

‘This is as good a place as any. We can even block up the windows with bits of cloth if we have to.’

‘It’s a bit, well: dark.’ She stalked around the corner room. The doorways◦– no doors◦– were adjacent to each other against the innermost wall.

‘Why don’t we see if this works?’ He put the egg in the middle of the floor, which was apparently on a slope, because the egg rolled over and he had to stop it. He frowned, then asked: ‘Give me the compass a minute.’

He wrestled it from its tin and placed it on the boards, waiting for the glass face to stop swinging before he set the egg carefully down on its dimpled end, and it settled.

‘So we just wait for it to realise it needs to work?’

‘Pretty much. It hasn’t got an on switch. It’s got no switches at all.’ He stepped back and examined the room. Yes: it would be big enough, and being on the first floor, away from any of the four ladders, meant there’d be no through traffic. They could even insist on it and have guards warning people away. Or they could have a little viewing gallery so that anyone who wanted to could see their progress. That would be far better. If they had no secrets, there’d be no conspiracy theories brewing downstairs.

Their original plan had been to copy the maps on to a single sheet of paper or parchment, which they were going to buy, or somehow trade for, at the White City. That didn’t look like it was going to happen now. It wasn’t that sort of city, and he hadn’t seen a single scrap of paper. It was, however, still a good plan.

Mary had finally put the maps down, and was looking through the windows one by one.

‘Where did the boat end up?’ he asked.

‘This creepy bay, really tall cliffs, and a ladder cut out of the rock. It was insane. And the beach was covered with old, rotting boats, just sitting there, falling apart.’

‘The Bay of Bones,’ he said. ‘We didn’t land there. There’s a much easier way here, starting further along the coast.’ He almost told her about the other White City, the one buried under the forest. Something stopped him. ‘We could use the sail. To draw on. We can spread it out over the floor and once we’ve positioned a part of the map, we can draw it on the sail underneath. That would work.’

‘I pushed the boat back out into the sea, to try and make Crows think I’d legged it. I suppose someone could go and check, see if it’s still bobbing around in the bay. But in the morning: it’s a bit of a walk and you don’t want to be doing that climb up or down at night.’

‘Probably right. No point in taking stupid risks, is there?’

She laughed, and suddenly there was no need for him to feel awkward around her any more. They’d seamlessly picked up their friendship where they’d left off. Everything was all right between them again.

‘What will you do if we work out a way of going home?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know.’ She looked round from the window. ‘Let’s worry about that later.’

The egg began to glow, a pale moon in the dark.