‘That’s why you stick around. And you thought I was one of them. That’s why you helped me.’
‘I would have helped you anyway, Mary. Slavery is not our natural state. We were born free, and we are no one’s when we die. Why should we live in bondage between times?’ He shrugged shoulders that were like bony wings. ‘This is not your fight. You should go◦– no, I should take you to the edge of this land and see you safely away◦– and look for somewhere where you can settle, and prosper.’
He was right, she should. She didn’t owe Mama, or any of the others, anything at all. They were accidental acquaintances, people who’d washed up on the same beach as her. She had no ties of family or friendship to them.
So why did she feel the need to rush in and save them from the geomancer and her wolfman? It wasn’t like she’d ever felt that way about anyone at all ever. Where she lived, it was every man, woman and child for themselves. Everyone knew that.
‘You said you’d show me how to do that magic trick,’ she said. She saw that he was watching her, and she didn’t look away.
‘If you have the knack. Only some do.’ He flexed his fingers and dragged them through the air in front of her face. They trailed darkness, which he wiped away as he moved his hand back. ‘And I never said I would show you: I said I could teach you.’
‘Crows,’ she said. ‘Will you teach me?’
She was never very good at lessons, but this: this was different.
‘Let us say I teach you everything I know: what then? What will you use it for? Will you go out and conquer yourself a kingdom, and rule it as the Red Queen? Or will you be Mary and help protect the weak from the strong?’
‘Can’t I be both?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Crows. ‘Can you?’
He jumped up and walked into the ruined hall behind them.
‘But an empty belly has no ears. You cannot learn if you are hungry.’
She followed him in, avoiding the bird droppings by skirting around the edges of the room. She looked up: the crows had gone, and presumably they’d be back at nightfall. Sky showed through the broken beams above her head, and it didn’t seem safe.
Crows lit a candle◦– no matches, he just clicked his fingers at the wick until it caught◦– and rummaged through the meagre stores he had. His back was to her, curved in the act of searching, and she bent down to look at the candle flame.
It was warm against her face, and when she held her hand over it, she could feel the heat build until it was almost, but not quite, burning. It began to hurt, but she didn’t snatch her hand away. There was another way to stop the pain.
The candle flickered. She didn’t know if that was her breath or not. It flickered again, blown ragged, and she knew for certain it wasn’t.
Then the flame went out, the last gasp of the wick a tiny red coal in the darkness before it too winked out.
‘I…’ She sat back and fell over something. ‘Fuck. I did it.’
Crows snapped his fingers again and his serious face loomed. ‘Eat first.’
‘But magic,’ she said, scrambling to her feet. ‘I can do fucking magic.’
‘A child can blow out a candle, Mary.’
‘But you don’t understand. I’ve never been able to do anything. No one ever wanted me. Everything I touched turned to shit. My life was one big fuck-up, and whatever I did, I was always going to fuck it up further. I was trying, all right? I was trying to be better. I was trying so fucking hard, and there were always people like Nicholls with his fucking clipboard, ready to knock me back.’
She was crying. She didn’t know why. Just that everything she had inside was emptying out, spilling on to the floor, draining away. Bile, bitterness, guilt, shame, rage, fear, hate. She was sobbing and shaking, and Crows was content to let her. He placed one of his hands on her shoulder, just to let her know he was still there, and he was waiting.
‘Sorry,’ she said eventually. ‘I must sound fucking nuts.’
‘When I came here, I was a sailor, a stoker, working below decks, a man who fed the boilers and oiled the machines. I sweated while the Chief got drunk and got paid a hundred times what I did. I was chased here, to Down, by a gang of knife-wielding men who wanted to carve their names on my belly, to see if I bled black.’
He reached down and lifted her up. Easily. She would remember that moment, of being picked up and set on her feet.
‘I have scars, like you,’ said Crows. ‘But that was from then. You are here now, and Down welcomes everyone equally. The magic is not in what you do, it is in what you become. Down changes everyone according to their nature: the good become saints. The wise become sages. The compassionate become healers. The strong become heroes. But it also turns the greedy rapacious, the liars into traitors and the genuinely wicked, oh, you must watch out for them…’
14
Down. She’d called it Down. That was all she gave away. Dalip had given more in exchange, much more.
The guard who’d shown him in had dragged the dog out by its hind legs, leaving a trail of shining blood from the wounds that Dalip had made. The biggest thing he’d killed up to that point had been a fish, and that had been the day before yesterday. And fish were different: cold blooded, scaly, slippery and a source of food. He was used to seeing it on his plate in a variety of guises. Dogs were different. His next-door neighbours in Southall had two pugs, ugly but endearing little things. While people had fish as pets, the quality of the relationship they had with dogs made knife-fighting with one, even one as dementedly angry as his opponent, a different prospect entirely.
He’d first kept it at bay, turning and keeping the blade-point at its muzzle as it circled him, looking for an opening. Then as it lunged at him one more time, he caught it on the nose. What had happened after that hadn’t been pretty, but at least it had been relatively quick.
Its claws couldn’t get to him through the tough material of his boilersuit, but its teeth had been a different matter. Dalip knew that if it had bitten him on his face or his hands or his feet, he’d need antibiotics that probably didn’t exist, and he’d also be bleeding heavily with a dog chewing on part of him.
He’d bunched the material on his arm, and offered that instead. It had clamped on, vice-like jaws closing hard, and he’d stabbed it. In the back, in the sides, and when it wouldn’t let go, the back of its neck.
The actual fight, from first nick to final, fatal blow had taken mere seconds. He’d left the knife in the dog, assuming he was still a prisoner, and wasn’t going to be allowed to keep a weapon.
She’d applauded him politely. Told him that Down was his true home. Then she’d left, taking the man with the silver cane with her.
That was all. Dalip had sat down in the centre of the circular floor and started to shake, the dog still and bleeding next to him. Then the guard had re-entered through the small door and taken the dog away. He’d left the door open, though. The invitation was obvious, one Dalip wasn’t quite ready to accept.
He pulled his sleeve back slowly, uncertain as to what he was going to see. Standing at the crease while some six-foot-tall fast bowler, only twenty-two yards away, launched a small hard ball at ninety miles an hour? Sometimes there were injuries: big, fat circular bruises, and once, a broken rib.
The skin on his forearm was torn, but only in a couple of places, and more shallow grazes than deep cuts. He could move his fingers and turn his wrist. The dark mottled arcs, top and bottom, showed where the teeth had dug in. It wasn’t that bad, but he might not be able to move it come the morning. And he’d had to kill the stupid dog, too.