The White City

25

She stopped when she became too tired to keep her eyes open. He, driven by a force greater than exhaustion, wanted to carry on and she hadn’t the energy to stop him.

At some point, Simeon poked his head around the door frame to see how they were getting on, and at another, Dawson appeared with two bowls of boiled vegetables and little puffy grains.

She’d asked: ‘What are the green bits?’

Dawson had replied: ‘Seaweed, I suppose.’

She’d eaten it all, every last scrap, and despite the urgings of her stomach, made sure that Dalip ate his too. It had tasted slightly salty, and of very little else. It could have been utterly bland, and she’d have still wolfed it down.

And when she slept, she slept hard and deep, exhausted both physically and mentally. She’d turned her back on the bright light now fixed in the middle of the room, and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, Dalip was slumped on the floor. Still kneeling, but with his forehead resting on the boards, his hands invisible in his lap.

She was about to wake him, because sleeping like that? He was going to be so stiff, she’d need an actual iron to straighten him out again. Then she noticed the position of the maps around him, and she pulled back.

To his right, there was a small stack of paper and parchment, some dozen fragments he either couldn’t place or hadn’t quite got around to. The rest of the maps were placed in a way that suggested order, not chaos.

She stepped between them, her bare feet falling softly, taking it all in. The scale◦– it was the scale that had defeated her, how one map of the same physical length could represent a journey of ten miles or a hundred. Dalip had broken that code. This line here was a part of that line there. He’d marked them all on the cloth, too: not the features on the map, but rather sketched outlines of the coverage of the map. Little rectangular boxes, with tiny numbers, were scattered over the sailcloth like ghosts.

The charcoal was half gone already, and the fragment increasingly difficult to hold. She gripped it as tightly as she dared between her finger and thumb, and started to transfer what was on the maps into their marked areas.

What had been obscure before started to become clear. Rivers now flowed from the distant mountains to the sea, jagged through the highlands and sinuous on the plains. Broad lakes nestled in the lows, and everywhere there was a portal, she drew a little doorframe, two uprights and a crosspiece. Villages became pointy-roofed houses, and castles, tall stone towers like chess pieces.

Down took shape, was given form, and became whole. Some of the detail she omitted, because it wouldn’t show on the map. If she couldn’t imagine seeing it, flying over the land and looking down, it didn’t go on.

As she worked next to the sleeping Dalip, making lines and symbols on the cloth, she realised that she was fulfilling her destiny. She was a Beast. A geomancer. She was revealing the position of the portals across the face of Down. Her breathing became ragged. The portals were joined to other portals by lines of power◦– no more than three, Crows had said. Or had it been Bell? Villages lay along the lines, castles where they crossed.

She could draw those lines. She could actually draw them. She could fill in the areas of the map for which they had no information. Geography didn’t matter. What was important was the lines, and that she could predict hidden portals, unknown castle-seeds, and boat-birthing points.

She was, momentarily, the most powerful person on Down. She could roll up the map, leave the building on some excuse, and run. Once out of range of the White City, she could fly anywhere, raise a fortress, gather an army and go forth to conquer. The Red Queen needed soldiers, and she’d recruit them from the slave quarters of every geomancer she overthrew.

It wouldn’t even mean stealing anything. All she’d be taking was a copy, just like they said they would when they were bargaining with Crows in the forest. The originals would stay right there, with Dalip.

If she stayed, then she couldn’t keep the map. Simeon’s pirates were stronger than she was. They could do whatever they wanted with it.

‘My lady?’

She gasped and turned around. Simeon stood in the doorway, and she couldn’t help but blush. A wave of guilty heat washed over her and left her nervous and blinking. If he could read her mind, she’d be in real trouble.

‘Captain.’

‘Did I startle you?’

‘I… yes. And he’s asleep, so keep it down.’

‘Then we will repair to an adjacent room.’ His gaze rested on the sailcloth. ‘Bring that with you.’

‘It’s not finished,’ she said, starting to blush all over again. ‘And I don’t want to smudge it. Everything’s going to rub off if we fuck around with it.’

‘Then carry it carefully,’ he said.

She put down the charcoal and picked up her former cloak along one edge, bringing it with her. Simeon stepped through to the next room, and she joined him. He opened the shuttered windows overlooking the courtyard, and weak light filtered in. It had become morning, and she hadn’t noticed.

‘Show me,’ he said.

She laid the cloth down carefully, straightening the edges and tugging out the wrinkles. No one but her had seen it, and she felt she was betraying a confidence by not sharing it with Dalip first.

Simeon’s face set in a mask of concentration. He said nothing for a long while, only shifting his stance slightly as he examined different portions of the map. He made little motions with the tip of his finger, as if he were tracing his own imaginary lines over the top of what Mary had drawn.

Eventually, he stepped back and walked the length of the dusty room and back.

‘Is this what you make of it?’ he asked.

‘It’s the best we can do, given what we’ve got. What d’you think? Is it, I don’t know, right?’

‘The coastline is what I know best. That, I think, we can agree is done with some fair degree of accuracy. There are some islands offshore we can append, though I don’t know what the import of them will be.’

‘One of them has a portal. And the plague. There are skulls along the beach as a warning.’

‘I know it. Here-ish.’ He pointed to a blank portion of cloth. ‘A portal, you say?’

‘Opens up in the middle of the Black Death. Almost everyone who comes through is dying. They burn the bodies so that they don’t infect the rest of Down.’

‘Never had the nerve to go ashore, and calculated there were fairer, altogether less doom-laden isles to visit.’ He made a little bow. ‘Yet you did. I take it you have no symptoms?’

‘Where I come from, we know what caused the plague◦– fleas. I didn’t get close to anyone. I flew in, and out.’

‘I had heard rumours about your abilities. You’re a Beast?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can you also do other magics?’

‘Yes.’

‘You should realise that you would normally be our enemy.’

‘I know. Geomancers don’t have a great rep, what with all the kidnapping, slaving and killing. But I figured a geomancer doesn’t have to do any of that. It’s tempting. Fuck knows that’s true. To have all that power to make people do what you want. Especially for someone like me who never had shit. There’s nothing I should want more.’

‘And yet?’

‘That’s not going to change anything, is it? It’s not sticking it to the Man if I become part of that gang. So let’s find out what happens when we smash the system. It might turn out to be more broken than before, but it can hardly be worse, can it?’

‘In other words, a geomancer is defined by the madness they embrace. And you alone reject that delusion of control?’

Mary jutted her chin. ‘You either believe me or you don’t. I’m still here.’

‘’Tis strange,’ said Simeon. ‘I’m the captain of a vessel named the Ship of Fools, and though fools we were for ever entering this benighted land, it is not often we are still taken for fools.’

He raised his eyebrows at her and she felt his forensic gaze uncover her guilt, even though she’d not done anything wrong. Yet. Could she resist the thoughts she was having? She’d had the maps to herself, so it wasn’t just the lack of opportunity. Perhaps she really was going to see this through to the bitter end.

‘I won’t let you down.’

‘You don’t get to be in charge of a band of pirates by taking anyone at their word, my good woman. Which leaves us caught between the Scylla of blind naivety and the Charybdis of unwarranted suspicion. Steering a course between those two monsters is not an easy task.’

‘But I don’t want to let people down. I don’t want to let Dalip or Mama down: if there’s any chance of getting them back home, I don’t want to fuck it up for them.’

‘Which is commendable. That does not, however, preclude you from rash actions that might harm my domain. If this has not been impressed on you already, allow me to be the first: this is the greatest treasure on Down, and must be treated as such. All men will desire it. All men will kill to possess it.’

‘I’d figured that out.’

‘Very perspicacious of you.’

‘There is a way around it, though.’

‘Oh?’

‘We make copies of it. As many as possible. Give them to whoever wants one.’

Simeon was momentarily taken aback. ‘Audacious.’

‘We promised Crows he could have all the maps as soon as we’d copied them.’ She held up her hand. ‘I know, I know. But he was horrified by the idea of even one copy. So fuck him. Let’s make lots.’

‘Your plan has merit, though it’s not without its own dangers. I’ll ponder the matter for a while. However, we must return to the present. For as surely as we have bottled up the Lords of the White City in their palaces, so are we also confined, and this valley is as much a gaol for the gaolers as it is for the gaoled.’ He took off his hat and ran his hand through his thinning hair. ‘I can no more order a half-dozen men to their deaths than I can a single one. I understand you had sight of this weapon?’

‘If you’re asking about how many bullets it has or its range or anything like that, I don’t know◦– children’s homes were rough, but not that rough. But just going on what it looked like, it was a rifle a soldier would take to war, maybe fifty, a hundred years ago.’

‘Or two hundred years hence. You understand my reluctance to confront the threat head-on. The defile is narrow, and as easily defended as Leonides’ Thermopylae. Alas, it now only takes one Spartan with a futuristic powder gun where previously it would have taken three hundred with pikes. Can this map solve any of our current travails, or offer us guidance as to our next move?’

Mary looked down at the map. How could it possibly help? ‘I don’t know. I just don’t. Don’t make any of your decisions in the hope that something will come up. It might, but…’

‘No, that’s wise counsel. We have what we came for. Scouts have been sent to the valley head, and up the steps to the plateau: the moment we have a way back to the ship, we leave.’ He laid his hat back on, and rubbed the side of his nose. ‘You have that long until we depart, and I’m afraid I must insist on the maps accompanying us, even if you choose to stay here.’

She was in no position to argue.

‘It’s both my duty and my honour to protect the lives that serve under me. Be forewarned that those who Down has touched with the gift of magic cannot sign on as crew. We have no truck with that, being too deeply scarred by our early encounters with geomancers. Otherwise, I wish you well and, after today, hope we hail each other as fellows, not foes. I must be about my business.’

He bowed again, lower and deeper, and left her staring blindly across the courtyard at the wall opposite.

Shortly, or in a few hours, however long it took the scouts to return, she was going to lose the maps for ever. And Dalip. And Mama. She’d already lost Elena to exile, Luiza to the Wolfman, Stanislav to the storm, Grace to… whatever had taken her. Of course, Dalip and Mama could choose to stay with her, rather than Simeon, but she couldn’t even contemplate them having to make that decision, let alone its outcome.

She could force Dalip’s hand, by revealing that he, too, had been changed by Down. He’d have to leave the ship as well. But would he join her?

What should she do?

Running wasn’t an option◦– well, it was, but without the maps. No one was going to stop just her leaving. Simeon might even welcome it. And Dalip would be left with the obvious solution, which was going back to the ship, and Mama.

But the White City was where everyone needed to be. Her, him, the maps. This was somehow what Down wanted, and it might never happen again.

She carefully picked up the sailcloth again, and carried it back to the space in front of Dalip. She laid it out and teased it until it was flat, then shook him gently awake.

He came to with a start, desperately trying to work out where he was and what he was supposed to be doing.

‘It’s morning,’ she told him, ‘and we have a problem.’

He massaged his face and worked his jaw. He glanced at the cloth, and looked again, harder.

‘You finished it,’ he said.

‘Most of it, yes. That’s not the problem.’

‘But, you finished it.’

‘Dalip. You have to concentrate. Simeon, the rest of the pirates, and all the maps are leaving here, soon.’

‘What about the gun?’

‘He thinks there’s a way out over the top. I don’t know if he’s right, but there probably is. The point is, you can go with them, but I can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I can do magic. Now, listen. You have to work out how these portals join together, where the lines cross, and what the fuck it all means before we have to pack this shit up. After that, it’ll be too late to do whatever it is we’re supposed to do with them. Do you understand?’

‘I… yes.’

‘Good.’ She took one last look around the room. ‘Don’t fuck up.’

‘Wait. Where’re you going?’

‘I’m going to try and buy you some more time.’ She aimed her finger at him. ‘Stay. Work. Do what you do best.’

She ran for the nearest ladder, climbed down it quickly, then adjusted her dress and fluffed out her hair. If she was going to do this, then she had to not just act calm, but be calm.

She walked towards the front door. There was a guard posted in the corridor, lolling against the wall. He received a beatific smile. It didn’t open the door, but it got her close to it.

‘I’m not letting anyone out,’ he said.

‘That’s fine,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to go out, just to stand in the doorway and get some fresh air.’

A look of doubt crossed the man’s face.

‘Stand in the yard,’ he said.

‘I said fresh. None of those fuckers has used soap in years.’ She gave him another smile. ‘Remember soap?’

‘I can’t open this door. Captain’s orders.’

‘Okay. Can’t blame a girl for trying.’ She turned away, then turned back. ‘Although,’ she added, and slammed her hand hard against the man’s chin. His head went back and hit the wall behind him with an audible tock.

He staggered and started to fold. She could have caught him and helped him to the floor, but she was too busy wrestling with the lock. It was stiff, but she managed it. Then all she had to do was turn the huge door knob, which took both hands and even then she could barely manage it with palms already slick with sweat.

Before she bolted, she checked behind her. The guard had fallen awkwardly, and was groggily flailing around, trying to right himself again. He’d have done better shouting an alarm, but it’d only take a moment before he worked that out for himself.

She was outside, running up the slope to the road. Still no pursuit, but no reason to let up, either. Her feet kicked up the dust, and if anyone was looking, she’d be easy to spot. On the road now, arms and legs pumping, dress rising around her thighs. She was between the compounds now, high walls rising on both sides of her. She slowed down and picked a door more or less at random. It happened to be the third on the left: it could have been any of them.

‘Open this fucking door. We need to deal right now, or you’ll lose the maps for ever.’

Worryingly, the door opened almost immediately, to reveal a drab man and, behind him, a white-masked figure in scarlet. She stepped through, and the door was closed at her back.

‘Right,’ she gasped. ‘No pissing around. We tell each other the truth, or we both go home empty-handed.’

The man at the door deferred to his master.

The mask dipped. ‘The truth? Are you certain you’re ready for that?’

‘Yes.’

‘Very well, then. Follow me.’