He scrambled down and dusted himself off, quickly kicking the sack into a dark corner. He stood away from the door: he genuinely wanted to do the question and answer thing, not fight. Not this time, at least.
Something slid aside, and the door opened outwards into the corridor. The guard was holding a lantern, a crude black iron cage, pierced with holes to let the light out. There was no point in trying to trick him by pretending he was still tied up; Dalip showed him his hands, and the guard reached for his knife.
‘I’ll come quietly,’ he said. That was what all the criminals in the TV shows said, and they were treated reasonably. He didn’t know if it would work here, but it was worth a shot. ‘You have my word.’
And that, strangely, seemed to have the desired effect.
‘A knife in the back if you break that. Out, then.’
It was the first time he’d seen the corridor. It was mean and narrow, just wide enough for one. There were doors all the way down, both left and right, but there was no way of being able to tell what was behind any of them.
At the far end was a T-junction. The finger in his back told him he was going left, though he was able to steal a glance the other way. A bigger door, better made. That way, then, was out.
The way he was facing was a short blank-walled corridor, with just one small door at the end to go through. There were bolts, and a bar, but they were pulled back.
‘Through here?’
‘Through there. Whatever you’re asked, you answer, right? Whatever you’re asked to do, you do it.’
‘I’ve got the idea. Now I have, anyway.’
‘Don’t you forget it. In.’
Dalip lifted the latch, pushed, and the door swung open. It was as light inside as when he’d left it, with all the candles ringing the various balconies in the drum-shaped room.
No chair, though. Not this time.
The door closed behind him, and he looked up to see the woman in white and gold, seated behind the balustrade, and standing next to her, the man with the silver-tipped cane.
‘I never give second chances,’ she said. ‘Tell me why I should make an exception for you.’
‘I’m more likely to tell you the truth now, than later, when I’ll tell you whatever I think you want to hear, just so you might stop hurting me.’
She frowned, a shadow on her pale forehead. ‘A good answer. But I have all the answers I need for now, and I’m disappointed that it was you who prevented me from taking the coloured girl. So now you have to make amends.’
She nodded, and the man with the cane threw something at his feet. It bounced and clattered, making Dalip jump back. When it had stopped moving, he could see it was a knife, with a long blade and a short crossguard. Not a kitchen knife, but a combat knife.
He looked down at it, but didn’t pick it up.
‘What am I supposed to do with that?’
‘You’re not a child, are you?’ said the man. ‘Do we need a wet-nurse to flop her teat out and suckle you?’
Dalip had done Shakespeare. He knew what those terms meant, but he wondered why the man would use them as insults.
‘I’m not here to fight.’
‘Then why are you here?’
Dalip thought that a very good question.
The door opened again. No one stepped through, but Dalip turned and saw something crouching there, two eyes reflecting the golden light back at him. A dog. Not a good dog for certain, he could tell by the way its hackles were up and its teeth were slowly becoming bared.
The geomancer gave an open-handed gesture towards the knife. ‘Take the knife. Show me how brave you really are. Or,’ she seemed amused by the idea, ‘fail and have your throat ripped out.’
Dalip slowly bent down and his hand felt for the knife’s handle. The dog started growling, deep in the back of its throat. He pulled his hand back, and it stopped. He reached forward again; it began snarling again, and took one step forward. This time, when he eased his hand away, the animal took another step. Closer, always closer.
Dalip curled his fingers into a fist, feeling the weight of the blade for the first time. This was his new reality and he needed to embrace it fully.
13
If Crows had slept at all, she didn’t know where or when. The tumbledown ruin◦– perhaps a victim of the same wars that had claimed the riverside village◦– still had a couple of rooms that were mostly weatherproof. The blankets she’d found smelled of cold air and flowers, and despite the terrors of the night and the uncertain quality of her saviour, she’d not woken once.
She found him on his doorstep-without-a-door, hunched over, staring over the woodland beyond. The castle had been set on a rock outcrop, on the highest point of a ridge, and the trees swept away like a carpet before them.
‘Does the wolfman know we’re here?’ she asked. She leaned against the stonework, watching the sun cut away the early-morning mist.
‘He knows nothing of this place, so both you and I are safe here. He knows I come and go into his mistress’ domain, but he cannot catch me.’ His words were accented but precise, his voice pitched higher than hers. ‘I have places to hide, and ways to hide those places. Sit, Mary. Drink in the view, for there are few sights finer.’
She sat beside him. ‘So what am I looking at?’
‘Down,’ he said. ‘Whoever first named it, named it right. Down is where we are: it is both a destination and a direction, it is how we fall and where we land.’
‘And how did I get here?’
‘Like everyone else. You needed it to be there. I take it you had reason enough?’
She remembered the heat and the noise. ‘I thought I was going to die.’
‘Down is a gift of grace, a last-minute mercy, unlooked for and unheralded. You do not find it: it finds you, when you least expect it but want it the most.’
‘I don’t get it, though. Why us? Why me? Almost everyone else I was with that night died.’ She remembered, and shuddered.
‘You are asking if you have been especially chosen. Hmm.’ Crows steepled his long fingers in front of his face. ‘I have thought long and hard over this. Is there a thread of meaning, linking all those who have come to Down, marking us out like gold amongst the dross?’
She huffed. ‘Is there a reason why, then? Why us and not others? Why it didn’t appear sooner and save more of us?’
‘If there is an answer to those questions,’ he shrugged, ‘I cannot find them. Why you, why me? You may as well ask the moon, Mary. What makes us special is that we are here, Mary, not the why or the where or the when of it. We were granted an unexpected second chance, but it is a blank sheet, a tabula rasa as the Romans say.’
Crows paused, as if to contemplate his own words, and Mary grew restless again.
‘Crows…’
‘Can you write, Mary?’ he asked, pre-empting any more questions.
Not often, not well. ‘Sure.’
‘Have you ever written your own destiny?’
‘I don’t even know what that means.’
‘What were you, on the other side of the door? Did you give orders, or take them?’ Crows turned his head resting his cheek on his hands, staring at her intently with his wide eyes.
She had to look away. ‘You can probably guess.’
‘I was a sailor,’ he said. ‘Far away from home. London was the centre of the world, but that did not mean its streets were paved with gold. I took some dark turns, for certain, and I was not much older than you then. And here I am, now, the King of Crows in his own castle. What about you?’
‘I…’ She may as well say it. It wasn’t like Crows could do anything with the information. ‘I was in care.’
‘Care?’
‘You know. In a home.’ She watched his eyebrows knit together. ‘For kids. A kids’ home.’