‘And what do I do with it when I’m done?’
‘You keep it,’ said Crows. ‘This is the beginning of your wealth here in Down.’
‘Oh,’ she said, looking at the blank parchment. ‘Okay.’
She looked out over the land from the doorstep and the newly restored pavement, and the sun that was sliding around to her right. The long ridge that made the headland was a dark smudge.
‘Everything?’
‘It is most important that you put in every last detail, while you still remember it.’
She’d never used a quill pen before: she dipped the nib in the little pot of ink tentatively, before making an equally uncertain mark on the parchment at the top and right of the page. That was to mark the door they’d come through. Then another, bottom left, to indicate Crow’s castle. What she knew of Down would fit somewhere in between.
She scratched out the lines to represent the bay and the estuary, the river and the lake they’d completely missed because they were on the wrong bank. She added dots for where they camped and the village they’d found.
She was concentrating so hard on getting it as right as she could make it, it was only when she looked up did she see Crows staring intently at the picture she’d drawn.
‘How does it look?’ she asked him.
‘Carefully done. When it is dry, we will put it some place safe.’ He bent low to blow softly on it. ‘The portal is on the beach itself?’
‘It’s in the sea, facing the beach, set in a big rock that stands on its own. I could show you if you want.’
‘No need. I know where you mean. There used to be an arch there, but it collapsed in a storm.’
‘Crows, will I ever get back home?’
He sat back on his haunches. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘The wolfman told us that going home was impossible. Was he lying?’
‘He was telling the truth, as far as he knows it.’
‘But does that mean he’s wrong?’ She held her map up to the reddening sun, watching how the light played through the thin sheet and emboldened the black lines she’d made.
‘That is a geomancer’s great dream, the grand project, to discover whether or not those in Down can pass through the portals to London.’
‘No one has, then.’ She didn’t know how to feel about that. She was trapped, but the prison was far bigger than the freedom she’d previously taken for granted.
‘Yet,’ said Crows. ‘Geomancers fight for control over land, over castles, over portals. Your friends have been taken in case they know something about how the portals work: even the smallest clue might help open the way.’
‘What’s going to happen to them?’
‘If I know her, she will never let them go: what they know will be useful to others and part of being a good geomancer is to deny knowledge to other geomancers. She will force them to work for her, like she did the villagers under my protection.’
‘Slave labour.’
‘Yes.’ Crows sagged at the thought. ‘I wish I could do more.’
‘Has she got a castle?’
‘Hers is large, with high walls and a commanding view over the land. She has soldiers at her beck and call, and workers in her fields. She does not have to worry about finding food, or keeping warm. She spends her whole day in study. I was no match for her, and I barely escaped her myself.’ He curled in on himself further, and worried at his thumb with his teeth. ‘She shamed me.’
‘We can get them back.’
‘We are not enough,’ said Crows. ‘We would need an army to take her castle, and we are not going to find one. This part of Down is empty.’
‘Maybe we should just go somewhere where there are more people and, I don’t know, hire an army. Can we do that?’
‘The only city I know of is hundreds of miles away. There are people here and there in the hills to the east, but they enjoy their peace, and it is not their quarrel. We cannot make them fight for us, and we will not be able to persuade them either.’
Mary looked again at her map, at the tiny amount of land it actually covered. There was so much more to explore, but she still felt the urge to at least try and rescue the others.
‘Can we go and look at her castle? Just to see what it’s like?’
Crows looked up. It was clear he didn’t want to.
‘You know where it is, right?’ she asked.
‘Yes, yes. I know it, but it is too dangerous. If she catches us, then she will kill me and enslave you.’
‘Crows, my friends need me to help them.’ She felt the first stirrings of irritation. ‘And I need you. You can’t say no.’
‘It is too dangerous,’ he repeated. ‘There is nothing to gain by going, and everything to lose.’
‘You’re scared.’
‘Yes, and you should be too. Her power is terrible. She is far stronger than me, and that is that. I have run from her once, and I am not so great a fool as to confront her again. I will do what I can around the margins, saving those who escape from her, but if they are within her walls, I can do nothing.’
‘I can’t do anything, either.’ She let the map drift to the floor. ‘I’ve only just got here, I don’t know how anything works. I thought,’ she said, ‘you were going to help me.’
‘I am helping you. And I am helping you by telling you that we cannot stand against her. We would be throwing our lives away, and in doing so make her stronger still.’ Crows shied away from her, rising on his thin legs and going out on to the pavement. ‘There is a time to fight and a time to hide. Perhaps when her fortunes are reversed, we can help your friends. Until then, they will come to no real harm◦– they are too valuable alive.’
‘They’re fucking slaves, Crows! It’s not the fucking Ritz they’re staying in. If it was the other way around, and they’d got me instead of Dalip, I bet he’d be thinking up some sort of way to get us out of there, no matter how long it took.’ She looked up at the man, how his black skin glowed with the orange of sunset, and remembered the fire of the tunnels. Yes, she’d been terrified, but that had been no reason to abandon everyone else. They’d saved each other once before, the best they could. ‘We have to try.’
‘We do not “have to try”. No one is forcing you to do anything. No one will think better of you for failing. Those few people who know you will soon forget. Nothing you have done will be written down. Even if you succeed, who will thank you? There is no reward to gain, no medals to win, no one will make you queen.’ He waved his hand at the darkening land. ‘If you want to be queen, then be one here. This is your country. Rule it how you see fit.’
Her fingers and toes were tingling. The end of her nose. Her ears. This was what she was like just before she blew. The rage growled like a trapped animal, desperate to escape. The only way it could go was out of her throat.
Crows was right, and yet he was so very wrong. If Down meant she could walk away and begin again where no one had ever heard of her, it also had to mean that she could stay and work out a way to save those she came here with. No one was forcing her: she wanted to do it. Win, lose, medals, empty hands. It didn’t matter. She was going to save them all, with or without Crows, because that was the task she’d set herself.
Her anger slid through her like fog through her fingers. And she felt calm and strong.
‘I’ll find her myself,’ she said. ‘You can come if you want, but I’ll go alone if I have to.’
He had all manner of objections, but they seemed to die on his tongue.
‘I rescue you and yet you are determined to go back and throw yourself into her shackles. So be it.’ He threw up his hands at the futility of it all. ‘I will take you only close enough for you to see her castle. After that, you may do as you wish. A waste, I tell you. A waste.’