The White City

24

It hadn’t taken him long. Once he’d loosened all the cords and opened the cloak out, there wasn’t much left to do. He’d work a seam loose to the point where he could nick the thread with the edge of his machete, and gradually pull the pieces apart, stopping every so often to cut the thread again. He was left with the long back panel and the sides, which eventually lay flat on the floor like a flayed white skin.

When he heard footsteps, he thought it was her. He looked up, and saw that it wasn’t.

Perhaps, if he hadn’t already had his machete in his hand, it would have ended very quickly and very differently.

The sword came down towards his head. He raised his own arm and just about deflected the blow down to his left. His hand went numb with the shock of impact and he knew he wouldn’t be able to block again, so he threw himself at his attacker.

Dalip’s head caught him square in the ribs, lifting him off his feet and spilling him backwards into an unforgiving wall. Dazed, they fell together, and Dalip clamped his good hand around Sebastian’s wrist.

From then on, it was down to two factors: brute strength and who was willing to fight dirtiest. They were evenly matched on the first. Dalip was hopelessly outclassed on the second. He endured the punches, gouges, kicks, and bites, and simply hung on, making sure that whatever happened, Sebastian couldn’t use his sword.

He was aware that maps were getting crushed and muddled as they struggled. If he’d have had the time, he would have suggested they take their disagreement to a different room. But, however worried he was about redoing the work, he was more worried about keeping his guts inside his skin.

He managed to spread his legs wide, brace himself against the floorboards, and tuck his head tight up under Sebastian’s chin. He stretched, forcing the other man’s neck into an unnatural angle, and gradually he felt the attacks lessen and the defensive twisting and prising increase.

Then Sebastian was abruptly limp underneath Dalip. At first, he thought it might be a ruse, some trick to get him to give up the slight advantage he’d gained. Then, that it was something he’d done, but couldn’t figure out what.

‘S’over.’

‘Dawson?’

Dalip shook Sebastian’s pinned hand and rattled the sword free, then levered himself up on his hands and knees. A fat, short dagger, much like Dawson himself, protruded from Sebastian’s right eye.

‘He’s bleeding on the maps,’ was Dalip’s instinctive response. He pushed the nearest pieces of paper away, but there was one under Sebastian’s head. He shoved the body over and freed it, plucking it away with a drop of crimson clinging to one edge.

‘All right?’ asked Dawson, almost conversationally.

Dalip checked himself. He didn’t feel as bad as when he’d gone three rounds with Bell, so he thought he was definitely going to live. Scratched, bruised and sore, yes, but his orange overall had saved him from the worst of the damage.

‘Yes. I’ll◦– I’ll be fine.’

There was another man behind Dawson. Together they lifted Sebastian’s body up, paused as Dalip checked for any scrap of paper that might have got stuck, then carried it away.

He allowed himself a moment’s rest, before gathering together the spilled maps and storing them safely away from the blood. He picked up his machete, and Sebastian’s sabre. His heavier weapon didn’t look to have suffered, but the sword was bent out of true. No wonder his hand still hurt.

Lighter footsteps hurried closer. ‘Are you…?’

He was still holding both swords when he turned towards her. ‘I’m mostly okay. And the maps are, too. A couple of them are a bit foxed, but I don’t think we disturbed any of the ones Simeon laid out.’

‘You killed…’

‘Dawson intervened. I wasn’t losing, but I wasn’t winning either. How did he know to come and rescue me?’

Mary held out her hands and showed him the charcoal. ‘I was getting this. Elena started talking, and she just let it slip, in a room full of people.’

‘Whatever happened, I’m grateful. Grateful I didn’t die, at least.’

‘And you saved the maps.’ She pressed a sooty hand against his breastbone, leaving a dark smudge after the momentary contact. ‘Fuck. That was close.’

‘Just when you think you’ve made progress, something like this knocks you back.’ He threw Sebastian’s sword into a corner. ‘What’s going to happen to her?’

‘Elena? I don’t know. Depends, doesn’t it?’ Mary bent down and straightened some of the maps. ‘If you want, one of us can go and stick her with a shiv.’

‘What? No!’

‘Or we can let Captain Simeon handle it. I mean, that’s what used to happen at the homes I was in.’

‘You let a pirate deal with any fights?’

She shrugged. ‘That would probably have worked out better.’

‘We can’t just leave her to…’ And now it was his turn. Simeon was going to do whatever it was he usually did, and no special pleading on his part was going to change that. Sebastian was dead, Dawson had killed him, and that was that part over. The captain might consider it to be the end of the matter. He might want to◦– banish? maroon?◦– her. He might want to tie her to the mast and give her a lick of the cat-o’-nine-tails. Or something equally piratical. Expediency was going to win out over mercy: keeping the crew working together was going to be the most important consideration, not any pleas for clemency.

‘Can’t leave her to what?’

‘Maybe we have to leave her after all.’

‘She tried to have what’s-his-face kill you and destroy the maps, so that no one would mind when he came for me. That’s seriously fucked up, and I don’t know where she’s going to go after that.’ Mary spread the sailcloth cloak out on the ground, and laid the charcoal on the floor next to it. Her tongue went between her teeth as she concentrated. ‘At least the rest of the crew seem to be on our side.’

Dalip squatted down next to her, still breathing heavily. ‘Can you do this? Can you still do this, after everything that just happened?’

‘Art was about the only thing I was ever better at than the other kids. I graffitied a few walls in my time, and stuff like that. I’m not fucking Leonardo, but I can draw what’s in front of me.’

‘That’s not what I meant,’ he said.

She took a deep breath and picked up the burnt stick. ‘I don’t have a choice. Pull the cloth. Not so tight it wrinkles, but it mustn’t move.’

He shuffled around so he could do that without impeding her movement.

‘This isn’t what I thought I’d be doing this morning,’ he said.

‘Me neither.’ She started the line on her left, slowly, deliberately, moving to her right in one continuous movement. The coast of Down◦– a small part of the vastness of a different world◦– appeared.

Sometimes she would stop and squint at the maps that Simeon had laid out, the end of the charcoal stick hovering over the unfinished line. Sometimes she would tut and scowl at the marks she’d just made. But she never went back. She drew the massive thrust of land projecting southwards, that contained the promontory they had first arrived on, the estuary where they’d first caught fish and encountered Crows and the Wolfman. Then back out into uncharted territory. The deep intrusion of water, that had to be a hundred miles long, twenty wide. And another block of land, its sea-face heading north-north-west, before being broken by another long inlet, and the end of Simeon’s knowledge.

She went back along the line, marking in the portals and the castles. Some were on the coast, like theirs. Many were not and, by making the dots inland, she pushed back the boundary of unknown territory. There didn’t seem to be a pattern to it, at least for now, but Dalip was hopeful. All the other maps would go north of the coastline. Some would be duplicates, some would be impossible to place because they didn’t relate to any other part of the map. Either they had all the information they needed, or not enough. There was still room for educated guesses to fill that gap.

‘How does it look?’ she asked.

‘Like an actual map.’ It did too. It looked like a real map, with names, and a history.

‘That’s a start, I suppose.’ Her voice was slightly huffy.

‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ said Dalip. ‘I meant it looks like a place that exists.’

‘You shouldn’t act all surprised by that. It does exist. Otherwise it wouldn’t hurt so much.’

‘I should know all about that. But I still struggle. Here, not so much. It feels like it’s real here. Out there, it’s… the magic. I still baulk at accepting it.’

‘Even when you know it’s changed you?’ She looked up from the map for a moment.

‘And where magic doesn’t work, I change back. I realised when I went for the hooded… thing down by the river. I should have just knocked him off his feet. It was like hitting the side of a truck. I kept on going, and I gave it everything I had, and it almost wasn’t enough. I discovered I’ve lost whatever it is I’d gained, and I never felt more human.’

‘Then the fight between you and Sebastian…?’

‘Was just me against him. Away from the White City, I could probably have disarmed him and let him live. Here, it was all I could do to get him to the ground and keep him there. And he died not because I was strong, but because I was weak. I needed Dawson to help me. I needed help.’ He picked up the egg and held it cool in his hand. ‘I have to face facts. I don’t want to be a hero. I don’t want to be a warrior. I’m not my grandfather. I’m a better person when I’m weak and vulnerable and scared.’ He blew out a stream of air, and changed the subject. ‘This would still be much better hanging from the ceiling, like a light bulb.’

Mary punched his arm. ‘You do all right.’

‘You concentrate on the maps. I’ll be back with something. At least, now we should be able to move around the building without worrying about getting stabbed.’

He left her with the egg, marking the coastline maps with consecutive numbers, copying those same numbers on to the cloth to show where the information had come from. It was meticulous: something he’d never thought of her as being.

After wandering from room to room, he eventually sourced a small piece of netting and a sharp tack that would work as a nail. On his way back to what he was already thinking of as the map room, he passed by an open window into the courtyard.

There was a trial going on.

He stopped, then got the best view he could without showing himself. Simeon was centre stage, seated at a table that had been dragged out and placed at one end. The pirate crew were arranged around the sides and the back of the yard, and Elena was on her own, in the middle. She wore a veneer of defiance which, considering Sebastian’s body had been dumped at her feet, was commendable.

If it had been Luiza, she would have spat in Simeon’s eye and damned him to do his worst. It wasn’t Luiza.

Simeon looked almost as resigned to his fate as his prisoner did. He plucked his hat from his head, placed it on the table, and turned it a few times, before looking up.

‘Elena. Did I warn you? Did I warn you both?’

She nodded stiffly.

‘Yet I’ve lost a perfectly decent sailor and a good crewman because you infected him with your particularly pestilential desire for revenge. And the charge for that is singularly unfounded. We’re pirates, if you hadn’t noticed. Lying and cheating and stealing and yes, killing, is our stock in trade◦– just so long as you remember that once you are taken on as crew, you do not indulge yourself in that behaviour with your fellows.’ He slapped the table top hard, and the noise cracked the hush in the courtyard. ‘That is the iron rule. You do not foul your own bed.’

There were murmurings of assent from the assembly, even from those who previously had to be dragged apart for fighting.

‘You were in no doubt of this. I told you to drop your silly grudge. Now a man, who I could ill afford to lose, is dead, and you’ve placed this whole expedition in jeopardy.’

There was no question which way he was leaning. Everyone could see it. Even Dalip.

‘If we were at sea, I’d put you ashore and give your fate no more thought. Circumstances are currently different, so we must arrive at a different solution. Before I give you your sentence, do you have anything to say in your defence?’

She didn’t. She stood, mute, surrounded by her accusers, knowing that she was guilty and there was no justice except this rough kind.

Simeon picked up his hat, inspected the brim for a moment, then positioned it deliberately on his head.

‘It is my duty to see that your contagion doesn’t spread throughout the crew. You are banished from our company forthwith. Where you go or what you do is no longer any concern of ours, save that you might cause further mischief. With that, and despite that it might be more expedient to allow that damned rifleman to waste a shot on you, you are commanded to cross the river, climb the cliffs and disappear. If we see you again, any one of us, your life is forfeit.’

Dawson stepped forward, took her arm, and started to turn her around. Dalip rushed to the window. ‘Wait.’

Simeon pushed his chair back and took off his hat again.

‘Do you have any criticism of the court, Singh, or my right to preside over it?’

That there was even a court at all had been a surprise. ‘No.’

‘Do you have any criticism of the sentence?’

Given the alternatives, he didn’t. ‘No.’

‘Down is a harsh land, with harsh rules. Perhaps if you’d remembered that earlier, Crows wouldn’t still be around to make his merry tricks.’

Dalip had voted for Crows to stay with them. Luiza had not. He’d been wrong, she’d been right, and there was a direct line between that decision and where they were now.

‘Nothing else, Singh?’

Full of regret, he could only say: ‘No, Captain. Nothing.’

He slunk back to the shadows, and Dawson led her away and out of sight.

Dalip went back to the map room, and busied himself with the light, not trusting himself to say anything. Mary was working on the first batch of inland maps. She’d already made one match, which she’d placed, numbered and drawn on to the cloth.

The ceiling was just too far away for him to reach. Although he only needed something to stand on, even that simple act of temporary failure was enough to make him well up. He wiped his face with his sleeve, and told himself to get it together. He’d behaved honourably. Mary had done nothing wrong, and what had started as the disaster of Luiza’s death had ended in the tragedy of Sebastian’s.

And still he felt responsible for it all. If he’d been wiser, or more assertive, then none of the decisions he’d had a hand in would have piled up into the train wreck of fatal consequences it had become.

A tear fell on to a map at his feet, soaking into the paper. The dark halo expanded across its surface and threatened the drawn lines.

‘Careful,’ said Mary, and looked up. ‘Fuck, Dalip. You all right?’

‘They’ve sent Elena away,’ he said.

‘Not a lot we could’ve done about that.’ She stood up under his arms, brushing them aside. ‘You’re not to blame.’

‘Thing is, I think I am. And I can’t change that.’

She reached up and used her thumb to rub away the line of moisture on his left cheek. He turned his head aside, and she dragged it back.

‘I’ve lived my whole life fucking it up,’ she said. ‘I still am. But here’s the secret: everybody’s doing it. Fucking it up, getting over it, maybe learning from it, maybe not. We’ve got a job to do, possibly the most important job ever, and it’d be really fucking it up if we didn’t give that everything, right now.’

‘How? How can you…?’

‘Bitter experience. We’re not superheroes. We can’t do it all. This,’ she said, pointing at the floor, ‘this we can do. So let’s get on with it.’

He nodded in acquiescence, and went to find a box to stand on.