The White City

31

If she dropped the rifle, and they found it, they’d know that she didn’t have it any more. If she kept it, the size and weight of it might mean they’d capture her, rather than losing her. On top of which, she wasn’t sure if getting caught would give Dalip more time, or less.

All very different from the every-girl-for-herself, run-like-fuck code she was used to. She needed to keep them on her tail, to tie up as many of their resources as possible, and keep them guessing to the last moment as to how many of her there were.

She could do this, if it wasn’t for one problem: she couldn’t see where she was going. It wasn’t even like when she found her way to the White City, compass in hand. It was so dark, she didn’t dare move.

The way up to the plateau had been difficult in the last of the daylight. The way down would be very much simpler, quicker and entirely fatal. If she managed to stay away from the edge, if she could even tell which direction the edge lay, then she could head inland and disappear. Literally disappear, too, but currently no matter how hard she wanted to snap her fingers and see a spark of flame, she could make precisely nothing appear out of thin air.

The rock and scrub near the gorge had given way to a thin, weak forest. She had known which way to go, and which way definitely not to go◦– had it all mapped out◦– then night had fallen and made a mockery of her plans.

No one wanted to get shot. That was a given. Her pursuers shielded their lights the best they could as they spread out in a line, to both search for her, and drive her on, assuming that instinct would make her break cover at some point. They didn’t seem to realise she was smarter than that, but the ground gave her very few places to hide, even when she could see them.

Everything had to be done by touch and sound. The bobbing row of pale shadows didn’t give her much to go on, but moving away from them was the best and only thing she could do. Why did they fight for the Lords? The same reason a geomancer had followers, she supposed: each geomancer was just imitating the things in the robes. The law of the street prevailed. What was it that Crows had said? That the strong did what they wanted, and the weak suffered what they must. That. Hardly a cheery thought.

She couldn’t walk forward with both hands in front of her holding the rifle. What was she even thinking? She laid it down on the ground and stepped over it, feeling her way between the sharp, springy branches, making enough noise, she thought, to raise the dead. The lights behind didn’t speed up, though. Perhaps she was just imagining that she was being stupidly loud.

The glowing egg would have been useful right now. It would have painted a target on her not even an idiot could miss, but running and being chased would be better than this slow-motion charade. It was going to be better in every sense, leading the men behind her further and further away from the valley.

So now the obvious thing, since she didn’t have a light, was to steal one of the searchers’. One of the ones on the end, it didn’t matter which, so she chose left, and felt her way in that direction, testing each footstep in turn in case the next sent her plummeting to her death.

Then she crouched low, and waited for them to catch up.

They were widely spaced, the circle of light from each lantern barely overlapping. They’d never find her, she realised. It was a fool’s errand, something you’d send the makeweights and the misfits on to make it look like you knew what you were doing. These men weren’t fooled, though. Every step they took, lantern held down near the ground, sword, dagger or club ready, reeked of fear and trepidation.

If she’d had enough bullets, she still wouldn’t have wasted any on this crowd. Maybe one, to send them scurrying back to the stairs, but no more. They weren’t worth her worry.

She scooped up a handful of debris: dust, dried twigs and leaves, a couple of sharp-sided pebbles. She sorted out the stones, and just when she was in danger of being illuminated, she threw one over to the far side of the last man in the line. It clattered, his head snapped round, and he stopped.

‘Over there,’ he said. ‘Right next to you.’

‘I can’t see nothing.’

She lobbed the other, high and underarm, so that it took an age to fall back to earth.

‘There. Five yards ahead.’

She walked out of the gloom, completely blind-siding the man, who was still gesturing and shouting in the direction of a phantom. He only noticed her when she plunged her new little dagger, a broad blade no longer than her finger, into the meaty part of his sword arm.

He dropped both his sword, and the lantern. She already had her hand through the carrying handle, and it fell no further than into her grasp. Then she was off, running before the line, the lantern rattling away like a cow bell. It could hardly be more obvious, yet it was what she’d wanted. She could see where she was going, dimly and sometimes a little too late as she crashed through obstacles she’d have rather avoided, but this was a proper, honest chase, like the old days. Yes, her current pursuers could choose to kill her, but falling through roofs, entangled on razor wire, getting hit by cars… it was an occupational hazard, and it always felt like running for her life anyway.

And though these men outnumbered her ten to one, they weren’t really trying. The hired help rarely did. Occasionally she’d encountered some mad fucker who’d decided that going full Terminator on her was an appropriate response to finding someone on enclosed premises, but mostly they’d go for the easy way out: get her off the site, follow her to the end of the street, then stop, honour satisfied.

At the speed they were going, she could keep this up for a little while.

But apparently, her pursuers hadn’t read the script.

That was one of the things about Down, then. By walking everywhere, doing manual labour, eating no burgers or drinking fizzy pop: if you weren’t dead, you were as fit as fuck. She’d been here a few weeks. The blokes behind her could have been here for years.

She started to fade. Slowly at first, because she couldn’t quite believe they were still right on her tail, and that gave her extra impetus to carry on. Then increasingly struggling, even as the candle in her lantern shrank to a guttering stub. If they wanted her alive, they were going to have to carry her back, because her legs and her lungs burned white-hot and acid-etched. If they wanted to kill her, then at least the pain would stop.

The endless miniature forest, with its spindly trees, too narrow to provide cover, too dense to give her a free run, always changing course, thrashing her face and arms with whip-like branches, sapped what was left of her energy. She couldn’t continue, she was faltering, running entirely on empty. She’d fold in another few steps, just the other side of that dip, against that thicker trunk. She kept finding reasons to dig deeper, keep on going, another yard, another two. She cycled between determination and despair.

Then her legs went. Not tripped up or misstepped, but properly failed like they were suddenly boneless. She sank to the ground like she was wading into quicksand, and she couldn’t get up again.

She’d done what she’d intended. She’d provided a distraction. She’d given it everything.

The other lights converged on her solitary one, forming a ring around her that precluded further flight. She was gasping for air, lathered in sweat, quite unable to stand, and still they were reluctant to approach her in case she had something else up her sleeve.

Like this.

She wearily raised a hand over her head, pressed her middle finger to her thumb, and clicked.

A bright yellow flame sprang up, plain for all to see.

The circle stopped contracting, and started expanding, losing its form and breaking apart, the ordered constellation of lights sliding into chaotic motion.

That was all it took, one trivial display of power, to send them all into retreat. If they’d not seen magic at all, or for a long time, they were probably wondering what else she could do.

Currently, not much, and she hadn’t even known she could do that. She was too exhausted to fly, or to batter them with sticks and rocks, or even wreathe the area in fog and make her escape. What she could do was take herself out of the picture. She smeared the air with darkness, painting a barrier between her and the dwindling lights, and cut herself off completely in a cocoon of night while she recovered.

The question was, had she managed to run far and fast enough to leave the anti-magic zone, or had Dalip done what he thought he was setting out to do? She hadn’t felt Down’s influence return any more than she’d felt it leave, yet if she tried she could taste it on the wind. There was, she supposed, only one way to find out, and that was to head back to the White City, clicking her fingers as she went, and seeing how far she got.

Not just yet, though. She stretched out on the ground and stared at the top of her dark shelter, feeling her body sag into every hollow under her, as if she was made of wax. When she was done with all this, she was going to take a holiday. In a different world, a lifetime ago, she’d seen an advert: a lithe, tanned woman was running through the surf on a white-sand beach, while a warm blue sea beckoned her further in. So◦– that. That’s what she would do. She would camp, and swim, and build fires every night, and catch and cook her own food, and she’d be alone. No Mama fretting to go home, no Dalip worrying about tides, no Crows whispering his poison in her ear. No Luiza, or Stanislav, or Grace. No Elena.

She was up here, somewhere. Maybe there was a chance for forgiving and forgetting, because Elena didn’t seem the sort of woman who’d last long on her own. If Simeon had died◦– died giving her long enough to escape◦– then Dawson would be wearing the captain’s hat now, and it’d be up to him if she could rejoin the ship. Otherwise, Down was big enough that they’d never run into each other again, as long as any of them would live.

One thing was absolutely certain: no matter what happened next, whether the portals were open to traffic both ways, whether her London was still intact, she wasn’t going back. She was not exactly enjoying it, but she was appreciating the novelty of being able to speak and act and have people pay attention to her, take her seriously, even fear her. She belonged in Down.

If that was the case, of course, she needed to make sure that it was going to survive. Time to go.

She hauled her aching self off the ground, brushed herself down, and wiped away the darkness. She sheathed her little dagger at her side and picked up the lantern, now barely lit, and realised that she had no idea in which direction to go.

The compass would have been useful, but she didn’t have it. If she could change to bird form, fly up, look for lights, fix the direction and land, that would also be acceptable. But if she blundered into the anti-magic zone, she’d fall to her death. So, not that.

If she simply started walking to see where she ended up, then she’d waste time, which she didn’t have, and energy, which she didn’t have either.

There was an alternative, but could she, should she? It wasn’t like anyone was going to stop her from trying.

She settled the lantern at her feet and took its thin, feeble flame. She gathered it up, breathed life into it, cradled it and brought it to a radiant perfection. Then she launched it upwards. It burned its way high into the night sky, and exploded like a second sun. The flash of light was soundless, but the shadows fled before it all the same.

In the moment between first ignition and last dying ember, the landscape was laid bare. Not only the plateau, but everything. The coast, the sea, the forests, even the distant hills glimmered with reflected glory. The Lords of the White City would know she was coming now, coming for them, and that was good because, like their servants, she wanted them to be afraid of her.

She scooped up the lantern, and set off, the clicking of her fingers a beat in common time. Each spark was a fresh revelation, and each step back towards the valley territory regained. She realised as she walked just how far she’d managed to run, even in the dark. There was no sign of her erstwhile pursuers, which was just as well, because she was both weary and pissed off.

She launched two more air-burst rockets, just to keep her on the right path, and she found herself back at the valley’s edge, looking out over the drop-off at the buildings below. She still had magic, this close to the city. So Dalip had succeeded, one way or another. She needed to see whether he’d survived the encounter, but was also wary. Just because she’d run out of bullets didn’t mean the guns they’d offered Simeon were useless.

Even presenting them with a target could encourage them to take potshots at her. She lifted up the lantern, the candle no more than a piece of string floating in a puddle of wax, and puffed it out.

There was movement down below, lights skittering in and out of view, inside buildings and behind walls. She could hear voices, but not what they said. The tone, however, was unmistakable: panic.

As she watched, she realised that one of the buildings was flickering, becoming more solid even as the orange glow visible in the windows started to break out through the roof. Puffs of flame spiralled into the sky from between the tiles until it became a mosaic of fire. The sound of the roof trusses snapping was a series of sharp retorts, and the resultant rush of air into the space below made the conflagration roar.

Burning timbers were thrown clear by the collapse, but they didn’t appear responsible for the spread of the flames. The servants had gone on the rampage. Too numerous to stop, too fleet to catch, they went from compound to compound, pillaging and setting fires, taking everything they could carry and destroying everything else.

The Lords could no longer protect them, feed them, and no longer needed them for their games in trapping travellers and extracting information from them. If Dalip’s calculations were correct, then all the portals, the lines of power, the places where villages and castles grew, had all just changed. Across the face of Down, geomancers would realise that their own manors had become unremarkable plots of land, and that their castles would inexorably sink back into the ground. Good luck to them trying to hold their little empires together.

She decided that no one was looking for her, or at her. It was time to descend into the valley and see what she could find. She remembered what it was like to change, and in doing so, changed. She perched on the precipice, the fires below reflecting in her black, glassy eyes. She leaned forward, and dropped down, spreading her wings as she drifted silently over the burning buildings, feeling the hot air rise and buoy her up.

She flew the length of the valley, banked and turned. About the only building that wasn’t on fire was the round one. Which was something, she supposed. She flapped and settled on the scree slope behind it, and changed back with a shiver.

It was chaos. Everything that could burn was burning. She supposed, with a twinge, that the maps would also be only so much ash by now, but they had at least served their purpose. She watched the flames a little longer, then started down towards the road. Away from the main buildings, there was no one, though by firelight she could see people in ones and twos, their arms laden with looted gear, heading out of the valley towards the gorge.

The heat grew, and became fierce, but it was cooler inside the long, low building with the broken-down door. The floor angled downwards, and just a little way in, there was a hole in the roof. She looked up through it and at the drifts of orange-tinged smoke that drifted by.

She clicked her fingers to raise a light, and slowly made her way in. The walls were made of the same rough stonework as everything else, but there was a cable tacked to the wall down the left-hand side. It was something so familiar, and yet so very out of place.

At the end, the tunnel◦– she had to be underground by now◦– turned a sharp left into a doorway, where only one door of a pair was left hanging. She held up her hand and tried to illuminate the dark space beyond.

‘Dalip?’

‘Just step in. The lights will come on on their own. Cover your eyes.’

She extinguished her flame, and eased around the door. The room, vast and cold, was flooded with light.

‘Fuck. That’s bright.’

‘You forget, don’t you?’

Most of the lights seemed to be high up, so she held her hand to her forehead to give her some shade.

Dalip was sitting on a raised circular plinth in the centre of the floor. It took her a moment to recognise him, dressed in black and not orange, and a moment longer to realise that there were one, two, three bodies on the ground in front of him.

‘Shit. You all right?’

Then she noticed the way he was sitting, slightly forward, slightly to one side, his left hand held across his body and buried deep in his flank.

‘I’ve felt better,’ he said. He screwed his face up, and tried a smile. He failed.

‘Let me see.’ She ran forward a few steps, and he waved her back.

‘I don’t think you can help.’ His eyes were closed, his skin sweaty, his breath deliberate.

‘Fuck off. I’m having a look.’ She knelt down in front of him and tried to move his hand. All of the cloth there was glistening. If hadn’t been black, it would have been red.

‘I’m serious. I think I’m holding my guts in.’ He grunted. ‘It… was worth it. The more complicated the mechanism, the less you have to break to stop it working.’

‘Lie down on the floor, or something.’ She saw for the first time that the whole expanse of the floor was smooth, slightly rubbery, like a hospital ward. ‘I don’t know what to do!’

‘Don’t do anything. It’s fine. It’s fine that you don’t do anything.’ He slid from sitting to lying, and he tried to lift his legs up on to the plinth. When he couldn’t, she did it for him and gently set them down.

There was a thick, sticky pool of blood now smeared across the whiteness of the plinth.

‘I need to find someone. You need… someone.’

‘Stay. Stay with me.’

‘Dalip. Dalip, no.’

He opened his eyes. They were milky white, and she gasped.

‘What the fuck happened?’

‘Crows happened. But it doesn’t matter, not now. Tell me what’s going on outside. You can use your magic, right?’

‘Yes, yes. It’s all fixed. The city’s on fire. The people are stealing everything and burning the rest down. It’s a proper riot out there.’

‘Never been in a riot.’

‘You had parents to stop you joining in.’ She looked around at the room, the bodies, the exotic machinery. ‘You did it, then.’

‘Yes. Take a look behind me.’ He rolled his head towards the centre of the plinth.

There was a lip, then a hole. In the middle of the hole was an intricately woven ball of metal strands, the size of a beach ball. It was now distorted, and Dalip’s machete was still sticking out of it, wedged between the severed wires.

‘That was it?’

‘That was it. I don’t think they’ve got a spare. At least.’ He stopped, grimaced, and continued. ‘They gave up at that point. The experiment is over.’

Blood was dribbling over the edge of the plinth, a moving red line, straight and awful.

‘I need to go and get help,’ she said. ‘That’s not good.’

‘I won’t be here when you get back.’

‘Where’re you going?’

‘I don’t know. I can, hope, I suppose.’

‘You’re not going to die.’

‘I don’t think I’ve got much choice.’

His eyelids fluttered.

‘You have to hold on.’

He sighed.

‘It’s fine. I have been holding on. I was waiting for you. Now I can go.’

His hand dropped, and she pressed her own in its place, feeling the warm, slippery ooze of blood coat her fingers.

‘You’re not going to die. You’re not going to die, you hear me?’

He didn’t hear her.