The White City

3

Mary flew in over the beach, over the heads of the others, checking one last time that they were alone and nothing was going to sneak up on them. There was no sign of anyone, just their own filling footprints in the soft white sands of the dunes.

She turned back, feathered her wings, and touched down just below the still-wet strand line. The seagulls, scarce and scared, wheeled around to mob her◦– but she changed and left them without a target, just a young woman in a red dress, toes flexing and digging into the cold, gritty sand beneath her. She walked up the beach, stopping to collect a long length of driftwood in each hand to add to the already-smouldering fire.

‘Does anyone know what a coffee plant looks like?’ She cast the wood across the burning pile, and sat down with a thump. ‘I suddenly miss it.’

‘I thought…?’ said Dalip, sitting cross-legged to her left. He stopped, and inspected the soles of his feet.

‘I just fancied a cup, okay?’ She knew what she’d said, that night in the dark of Bell’s broken castle, how she didn’t want drink or cigarettes any more. And she didn’t, but her habits had a tendency to creep up on her when she wasn’t looking and mug her with need. ‘Anyone?’

‘The coffee of my homeland was the finest in the world,’ said Crows. ‘Rich and flavoursome, dark and strong. Once roasted to perfection over an open fire, the beans would be worth more than gold.’ He stared into the heart of the fire. ‘If there is coffee, then it lies far to the south. It is too cold here.’

‘I guess that goes for tea, too.’ Mama tutted. ‘I do like a nice cup of tea.’

‘We do not even have cups,’ said Luiza, ‘and Dalip has more important things to say.’

‘Do you?’ Mary felt aggrieved. He should be telling her his ideas first. Luiza had Elena.

‘I don’t know,’ he said, and carried on picking debris from the deep, leathery creases in his feet. ‘It’s a bit of a long shot.’

Mary glanced again at Luiza. ‘You going to share it with the rest of us, or…?’

Dalip got up and dragged the map trunk across the sand until it took his place in the circle.

‘It seems◦– Crows tells me, at least◦– that magic has its limits, and we can’t just wish ourselves across the bay. Magic, however, also has its rules: the most important one being that power, for the want of a better word, leaks out of portals. If you draw a line between portals, the power flows down that line, and if you stop on one, a house grows. Where the lines between pairs of portals cross, you get a castle. If you’ve a big enough map, you can predict where all these things are: portals, castles, villages. With me so far?’

Mary knew that maps were like bank notes, and what was in the trunk made them rich. She’d never been rich before, but now she was, she had nothing to spend it on. She fingered the tattered hem of her dress and waited for him to continue.

Dalip continued. ‘Okay. Now, given that all the portals from all the past Londons—’

‘And future ones too,’ said Luiza.

‘Wait.’ Mary held up her hand. ‘What?’

‘We’re from Crows’ future. We’re from Bell’s future. We have to assume that there are people here from our future too.’ Dalip laid his hands on the lid of the trunk, fingers splayed wide. ‘All of the Londons connect to now. So, even though the numbers coming are low for each portal, the overall count has to be the sum of all the portals, and therefore not insignificant.’

It took Mary a moment to work out what he was saying. ‘So where are all these people, then?’

‘The attrition rate’s high. We’ve lost Grace, and Stanislav. If seven of us hadn’t came through at once, we’d have been carved up and spat out by Bell. However safe Down is, people make it dangerous. Despite that, we can and will survive here. So where did everyone else go?’

‘Wherever they wanted?’

‘And where do they want to go?’

Mary stared at Dalip, and he stared back.

‘The White City,’ said Crows. ‘At some point, everyone goes to the White City.’

‘Is that actually true?’

Dalip shrugged. ‘Let’s say it is. Everyone goes, or tries to go, to the White City while they’re here. They learn that there aren’t any answers there and they go away disappointed. Maybe some people go more than once, just to make sure. Whichever it is, if you have enough people going to one place, across a natural landscape like this, where there are routes that are easier to walk than others, what are you going to get?’

‘Fuck, I don’t know.’

‘Roads,’ said Mama. ‘He’s talking about roads.’

‘More well-trodden paths, but yes. Roads.’

‘We’ve been walking for weeks, Dalip,’ said Mama. ‘There are no roads hereabouts.’

‘No. Which means something else, for us, here, specifically.’

‘Does it? Lord, but I’m tired.’

Mary stole a look at Crows. He’d never mentioned roads. She wondered why not.

‘We know that if you stop on a line, you get a house. We also know that houses are no use under the sea. So I’m willing to bet that at the point where a line crosses the coast, you don’t get a house.’

‘You get a boat?’

Dalip nodded, and Mama’s weariness suddenly left her.

‘Where then?’

‘We have absolutely no idea. But,’ and he tapped the trunk, ‘we might be able to work it out.’

‘What are we waiting for? Get them out and we can start putting them together.’ She lumbered to her feet and worked her way around the circle.

‘There is a problem,’ said Luiza. She pointed at Crows. ‘Him.’

Crows pressed his hand against his chest. ‘Me?’

‘Yes. Water is where you are strongest, and we are weakest. I do not believe you when you say you will guide us to the White City. You say that to make us think we need you. But I say we can find our own way, with the maps.’

Luiza fixed Crows with a glare that would have sent most recipients scurrying, but he sat there with a subtle smile on his face.

‘This is true. Water is my element, where I can manifest my most obvious power. And yes, with the maps, you ought to be able to find the White City on your own.’ He rubbed his palms together, sand trickling out like rain, and said nothing else.

Mary wanted to trust Crows. She didn’t, but she wanted to. She’d known a lot of people like that. She was probably one herself.

‘We’ve already agreed,’ she said. ‘Crows comes with us, and he gets the maps once we’ve copied them.’

‘He gets a free ride,’ said Luiza.

‘He helps protect us from Down.’

‘And who will protect us from him?’

‘Oh you two, hush.’ Mama glowered at them. Elena was looking into her lap, and Dalip was pressing his fingers into his temples, trying to massage the stress away. ‘How much time will crossing the sea save us?’

Crows was quick with the answer. ‘Many months of travel and hundreds of miles walking.’

‘That’s settled, then. If Down can magic us up a boat, that’s what we’ll do.’

Mary looked around the circle. ‘Dalip?’

‘Out on the open sea, in a boat none of us is familiar with, let alone able to steer, with a massive sea serpent for company? If we get into difficulty, and we probably will, Crows could be the only one who could save us. Or he could dispose of us as he saw fit, and keep the maps. Which is what he was doing when he left us to face Bell.’ He sighed and let his head fall forward. ‘On the other hand, it’s a very long way across the bay, if that’s where the White City really is.’

Crows had never mentioned boats, or the sea, when he’d promised to behave himself. Mary’s eyes narrowed as she pulled at a spiral of hair. ‘You only said it was a long way. You didn’t tell us what we had to do to get there.’

‘I can do nothing about the distance, Mary.’ Crows looked up at Mama, standing right behind him, over him almost. ‘And it is your choice how you cover it. If you wish to walk, I will walk with you. If you wish to sail, then I will sail with you. I have some modest experience that might help.’

He settled himself into the sand, leaning forward to rest his forearms on his long, folded legs.

‘So?’ said Mary. ‘We don’t even know if this boat thing will work.’

Mama flicked her fingers at Dalip. ‘Get the maps out. Let’s see.’

Dalip waited for a moment, and when no objections came, he undid the clasps on the lid. ‘We’ll need to find some stones to weigh the maps down, hold them in place.’

Luiza looked mutinous, but she nudged Elena with her foot, and they went off together down the beach.

‘She doesn’t like you,’ said Mary.

‘Sometimes even I do not like myself,’ said Crows.

Mary took the first map from Dalip◦– the one that she’d drawn herself, and the one they were going to use to orientate all the other maps. She’d made those scratches, marked in the coast, the river, the island with its closed portal.

‘Are these going to be, you know…’

‘Accurate?’ said Dalip. He lifted another grubby piece of parchment out into the light of day and squinted at it. ‘No. They might even be deliberately misleading. We have no way of knowing. But it’s all we have.’

‘It’s a jigsaw,’ said Mama. ‘And I’m good at them. Why don’t we look for the edges first?’

‘Good lady, Down has no edges.’ Crows was bowed over the open trunk, seemingly inhaling the aroma rising from it.

‘It has a coastline, though, and that’s what we need to look for.’

There’d been jigsaws in the homes Mary had grown up in, and out of sheer boredom, she’d joined in completing them. But they’d always had the picture on the box to go by. It had always seemed like a massive cheat to her: where was the challenge in mere recreation?

This, though: they didn’t even know if they had enough, let alone all, of the pieces to reveal a clear picture.

‘Okay, let’s do it.’

The four of them sifted through the trunk, looking for maps that showed, or conceivably could show, the coastline. It didn’t matter where on the map it might be, because very few of them had north marked, and they were all different scales. It was a jumble of inaccuracies and wishful thinking.

After a while, Mama raised her eyes. ‘This isn’t working.’

‘It has to,’ said Dalip. ‘We’re just not doing it right.’

‘Well, now. If you’ve any suggestions, don’t keep them to yourself.’

He pursed his lips and scratched under his hair cover.

‘Crows,’ said Mary, ‘how’s this supposed to fit together? We’ve got all these maps, and some of them have to join on to each other. It’s like we’ve got too many. How would a geomancer make sense of all this?’

Luiza and Elena returned, pockets full of stones, which they turned out on to the sand.

‘Where are we?’ Luiza asked.

‘Lost,’ said Mama, frowning. ‘We could be anywhere on any of these.’

‘That is not true. We might be on none of them.’

Mary wound a curl of hair up and down again. ‘No, hang on. Crows. You’ve been this way before, right?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘How did you get to the White City?’

‘I swam.’

‘Of course you did. So where’s the map that shows where you swam from? Where’s the map that shows your route from your portal, to the sea?’

Crows was silent for a moment, then held out his hands for the sorted pile of maps. He leafed through them one by one until he grunted.

‘This one, I think.’

‘You think?’

‘It was a very long time ago, Mary. Would you recognise your own hand from even five years ago?’ He passed her a long strip of paper, marked with tiny, indistinct scratches along its length.

‘You know what, Crows? This is crap.’

‘I was young when I made the journey, and older when I made the map. This is what I could remember, imperfectly.’ He shrugged theatrically. ‘If I had known how important it was, I would have paid more attention.’

She handed the strip to Dalip, who knelt on the soft sand and laid the map in front of him, weighing it down against the breeze with a stone.

‘Put it the right way,’ said Mama.

‘It… doesn’t matter?’ he said, looking up at her stern face.

‘Just like a man.’

Dalip lifted the stone, turned the fragment until the coast part of it pointed towards the coast. Then he took Mary’s map when proffered and placed it below, again orientated to fit with the landscape. He squinted at it and saw that Bell’s castle was a fixed point on both.

‘Okay.’ He dabbed his finger at the Down Street portal, and traced it up the river, through where they’d found the abandoned houses, to Bell’s castle. ‘Another portal has to lie on this line, to the north.’

‘And another so it makes a line with Crows’ castle,’ said Mary. ‘But if you draw a line from the nineteen thirties’ portal, does that go through Crows’ or Bell’s?’

‘It could go through both. You said yourself that some of this is crap.’

Mary looked up and down the coast. The beach sloped towards the sea, and all she could see of the land were the lines of marching dunes. But if she stood at the top◦– or if she took off and gained height, because she was an idiot and still not used to thinking like that when she was in human form◦– she’d be able to see the distinctive twin mountain peaks.

‘The line should cross the coast just up from here.’ She pointed around the bay. ‘Or even here. Actually here.’

Her eyes narrowed at Crows.

The man seemed unperturbed. ‘Without the maps, without your insight, we would never have guessed.’

‘Says you.’

Dalip held out his hands for the collection of maps that Crows still held. He gave them up with only the merest hint of reluctance.

Mary watched as the boy slowly leafed through them one by one. He was looking at them with his eyes almost closed.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Just,’ he said, and then nothing more as he continued his search. He looked down at two maps already positioned, then back at the one in his hands. ‘It’s not here.’

‘What isn’t?’

‘If Crows made this one, then he made another one, from where he made landfall to the White City. But we don’t have it. Or if we do, I don’t recognise it.’

Luiza went to the trunk and seized the larger pile of discards and gave half to Elena. ‘We can check through all these, or you can tell us the truth.’

Mary clenched her jaw and felt her temper begin to rise. Visions of the Red Queen started to blot out rational thought and she had to turn away, stamping her way down to the wash of the waves. When she was ankle-deep and the biting water tugged this way and that at her, she let out a noise that started as a moan and ended up a shriek.

When she stopped, and was resting herself, leaning forward, hands on her knees, she heard someone else wade up behind her.

‘He’s never been to the White City, has he? Not even close.’ Her throat was raw, and her voice hoarse. ‘We don’t even know if it fucking exists. He could have heard someone say it, and he believed it. Or thought that we’d believe it.’

‘It could be a myth, like Shangri-La or R’Lyeh.’ Dalip had waded next to her, staring out to sea. ‘I don’t know if anything he’s ever told us can be trusted.’

‘Of course it fucking can’t. But he does tell the truth. Sometimes. Mostly. Fucking chancer.’

She kicked at the water, and found the effect unsatisfying. She wanted it to be Crows’ head. Or his balls.

‘We still have the maps.’

‘They might be lying too. We’ve no way of telling.’ She subsided. ‘Is this better than being burned to death?’

‘On balance?’ He wiped spray off his face with his lean fingers. ‘Yes.’