‘Could you?’ she blurted. Magic: actual magic. ‘Will you? Teach me, I mean.’
‘Teach you?’ he said, unfolding himself further, and spidering down the rock towards her. ‘I do not even know your name, girl.’
He wore darkness like a cloak, but it really was a cloak, black and ragged, voluminous and flowing. When he stood over her, he seemed impossibly tall and thin, like a lamppost draped with wind-blown plastic.
He held out his hand for her, and it was like the rest of him: hard, bony, spare. He had no problem hauling her to her feet, though. The top of her head came somewhere below his jutting chin.
‘It is usual, when you save someone from their enemies, to be thanked,’ he said.
‘Are they? My enemies, I mean.’ Mary didn’t know. She’d run anyway. ‘Yeah, okay: thanks,’ she added.
‘My pleasure,’ said the man. ‘And yes. At least, they are my enemies, and we still need to have our wits about us. Stay close.’
It was difficult, as he moved like a stain, visible when slipping from cover to cover, vanishing when stationary. And he moved so quickly, climbing and jumping and crouching, that she, already exhausted, could barely keep up.
When he finally stopped, she slumped to the ground and lay there. The burning in her legs was exquisite, the taste of blood in her throat less so.
‘You have determination,’ he said. She weakly acknowledged the compliment with a raised middle finger.
She became dimly aware of a floor that wasn’t leaves, and walls that weren’t wood. She coughed and choked on what came up, and coughed again, hollow and barking. The sound echoed away.
There was stone under her face, flat, worn and dirty, like a pavement. She got her hands down and raised her head. They were in some sort of building: behind her was a wide arched doorway that led directly into the forest, and the forest seemed to be creeping in through it, along with the moonglow that gave the only illumination. She could hear her own panting, the man’s footsteps in the dark corners of the room, padding about, and above her, the soft mutterings of roosting birds.
He set a bowl in front of her that reflected moonlight off its trembling surface. She unceremoniously plunged her face into the bowl and started sucking. It wasn’t water, but some sort of beer, and she didn’t care. It was as far removed as possible from the cans of cheap lager she’d beg, buy or steal, but she picked up the bowl when she couldn’t empty it any other way. Yeasty froth stuck to her upper lip.
‘Finished dying?’
She coughed one last time. ‘Where am I?’
‘My castle,’ he said.
‘Does that make you a king?’
He laughed. ‘The King of Crows, if anything.’
‘You could do with a new front door.’
‘I will tell my craftsmen to saw the timber first thing in the morning.’
Mary drew herself shakily to her feet, peering around her in the gloom. It was a ruin. If she looked up, she could see the sky through the ragged rafters and birds’ wings. Dark doorways led further in. The man took the bowl from her, and disappeared into one of the rooms beyond.
‘What do I call you?’ she asked. He might have rescued her from one set of dangers, but that didn’t mean he was safe.
‘Your Majesty?’ came his disembodied voice.
‘Fuck off.’
‘Crows, then. Call me Crows. You know about names, do you? What they mean?’
‘I know that the wolfman wouldn’t tell us his. He said others should give us our names.’
Crows returned holding the bowl. He’d pulled his hood back to reveal his face, a fine black face with a long oval head shaved close. ‘So what should your name be? What are you famous for?’
‘I’m…’ and she trailed off. She ended up shrugging. ‘Nothing really.’
‘That is a poor title,’ said Crows. He handed her the bowl, and she drank deeply, almost greedily. ‘What do you call yourself, when the lights go out and all is dark and quiet, in those moments between waking and sleeping when you dream and can still remember?’
‘I can’t tell you.’ She stopped drinking, and looked at him over the rim of the bowl.
‘Cannot or will not?’
‘It sounds stupid.’
‘Others should be the judge of that.’
She muttered it into the bowl, and he cupped his long fingers around his ear.
‘Too soft. Louder, so all the crows can hear.’
‘The Red Queen.’ Her face burned.
‘Oh, oh oh.’ He laughed, and all she could see of him were his fine white teeth. ‘The King of Crows and his Red Queen it shall be. But you’re not a queen yet, are you? What shall we call you in the time before you claim your throne?’
‘Mary,’ said Mary. ‘When do we start?’
12
When they dragged Dalip’s hood off, he was sitting in a chair, wrists tied awkwardly behind his back by someone who enjoyed their work just a little too much. There was also a rope around his neck, a noose that would tighten when jerked.
That was all there was. Him, in his chair, and on the stone floor in front of him, a single candle. The light barely reached him, let alone the walls. He was inside, he could tell that much, and he’d passed through a corridor and another room to get where he was. Beyond that? He’d been force-marched, blind and bound, for a night and a day, along with the others.
Everything hurt. He was bruised and battered. They’d taken his kirpan, his kara and his kangha. They’d taken his turban and his patka, leaving his hair to tumble, sweaty and knotted, over his shoulders.
They’d all but stripped him of everything that made him who he was and set him apart, and the only thing that stopped him from slumping to the flags were the last vestiges of his pride. Whoever had hold of his hood now was walking away into the darkness, leaving him alone.
He tried to pull his hands apart. The cord used to tie them was stiff and strong, and all his struggling seemed to do was make the bindings dig deeper into his skin and threaten to cut off his circulation.
That he couldn’t see the knots made it impossible to even try and undo them. If he could bring his arms down under his body, and slip his legs through◦– he’d seen it done once, but the escape artist had limbs seemingly made of rubber.
He forced his shoulders down and tried to straighten his arms, but his wrists had been held parallel and in opposition to each other before they were bound. There was no slack to take up, and he didn’t think he could physically do it, even if he could stand the pain. He stopped and waited for his muscles to uncramp.
He had, as far as he knew, done nothing to deserve this. He had been the one to offer the wolfman hospitality, and he’d been repaid with violence and betrayal. The ember of anger burning inside ignited into righteous fury.
Dalip stood up, deliberately knocking the chair over on to its back.
‘How dare you treat us like this! How dare you! Untie us at once and let us all go.’
His voice rang out, and came back to him distorted and hollow. A big room, then. If he had the patience, he could work out just how big merely by listening to his words return to him.
‘Show yourselves. I know you’re watching. Come out where I can see you, or do you just hide in the shadows? You can’t be scared of me, not like this. Come on!’
He was panting with effort. He knew it was dangerous, trying to goad whoever had taken him into action, but he’d had enough. Dangerous and stupid: there were far worse indignities they could heap on him◦– rape, torture, slavery, execution◦– but he wanted to see his captors, look them in the eye and spit in their faces before they did any of that to him.
He circumnavigated the circle of light provided by the candle, stepping around the fallen chair, searching the darkness for a sign that he’d been heard.