‘How far away is Crows’ castle?’ asked Dalip.
‘A day’s walk. Down the river, turn towards the rising sun. Keep going. We can get there no problem, but we can’t just leave Stanislav as he is. Can we?’
‘You can. You can go. Seriously, that makes sense. Take the others and go to Crows’ castle; yes, it’s not the best of weather, but it’s not like before in London. It’s not going to kill us.’
‘Don’t be too sure of that,’ said Bell.
Mary gazed at the ceiling. ‘Go on, then. Tell us.’
‘The storm, like so many other things on Down, is alive. It’s not just wind and rain, thunder and lightning. It’s spiteful. It’ll change direction just to hunt you down. It’ll find you and be fiercest where you are.’
‘Terrific. Why the fuck would it want to do that? I thought Down liked us.’
‘Do I look like I’m in charge?’ Bell shrugged. ‘It’s having a tantrum. You should know what that’s like.’
Thunder rolled down the mountainside, close and loud.
‘It’s just taking the piss now.’ Mary stared at Dalip. ‘What do we do?’
‘I really don’t know.’ He held his hands out to show he had nothing. Nothing but a knife, which was all but useless. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Anyone? Anything?’
No one had.
‘Fuck it,’ she said. ‘We need a better plan than waiting for Stanislav to come crawling up the stairs and cut us into little bits.’
‘You arm yourselves with the bottles. I’m going to try to talk to him,’ said Dalip. ‘That’s all I’ve got left, and I’d rather do that down there than up here. If it all goes wrong, then we’re trapped.’
‘We’re trapped anyway by a storm that actually hates us and wants us to die. Which means you can’t go out.’
‘I’ll risk it. Take one for the team.’ He even smiled as he said it.
‘That’s just stupid. We have to do better.’ Mary balled her fists. ‘Come on! This is not how it’s supposed to end.’
Any reply he might have made was lost in a deep bass rumble that shook the tower to its foundations.
‘Do you want me to come with you?’ she asked.
‘You might want to put on some more clothes first.’
‘I’m not distracting you, am I?’
‘I’m just worried you’ll catch a cold.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘I’m starting to sound like my mother.’
‘Right, people. Find me something to wear. It might be something I’m going to be seen dead in, so let’s make it good.’
After their previous search of the room, Elena knew where the clothes were stored. She heaved open the lid of the trunk and started to hold shirts and skirts up. The choice was poor◦– closing time at a jumble sale poor◦– and she was about to settle for a set of cast-offs that had come from the backs of those born centuries earlier, when Elena showed her something different.
It was rich and heavy and long, a bright red shot through with gold thread, like something a Spanish princess would wear while escaping from her evil uncle. It was gloriously impractical, with heavy skirt and laced-up bodice, sleeves that started just below the shoulders and a neckline that would get her arrested back in London.
‘That one.’
‘Seriously?’ said Dalip.
‘Oh, come on. It’s gorgeous.’ She held her arms out wide as Elena held it up against her. ‘I’d never be able to afford anything like this, ever. And I can just put it on: it doesn’t matter if it fits perfectly, or whose it really is.’
Dalip shook his head, which just made Mary all the more determined.
‘Go and find your turban, or something. This might take a while.’
Elena gathered up the skirts, and Mary all but crawled inside. Mama padded the wounds on her back with murmurs of concern and squares of torn-up shirt. Luiza pulled the laces tight to hold everything in place, shortening and lengthening them to fit the curve of her back.
She suddenly had shape and form. She stood up straighter and held her shoulders back, instead of in their customary slouch. She dragged her fingers through her hair and away from her face, the oily spirals slipping across the skin at her knuckles.
She was the Red Queen at last, terrible and beautiful, even with◦– or because of◦– the bruises and scrapes and cuts that marked and mottled her.
Dalip had found a plain scarf and fashioned a bandanna-style turban out of it, drawing it tight across his forehead and covering his hair. He, still in the dirty orange boilersuit: she, radiant in her finery. He had to turn away, and she felt… She didn’t know what she felt. Pride? Confidence? Something like that. It wasn’t the dress. It wasn’t the way he looked at her. They were simply two signposts to the destination. Part of her, which had always been missing, had snapped into place.
‘Wish us luck,’ she said. Her skirts swished against the floor as she walked to the top of the steps. She’d never had anything that had swished before.
Dalip picked up the knife and followed her. To Mary, the blade seemed hopelessly short for the task, but he clutched at it anyway. It was his strength, and she wasn’t going to point out its inadequacies. In order to take the stairs, she had to hold her skirts up, grabbing a handful of cloth at each side and lifting to reveal her bare feet.
Dalip snagged the lantern to hold over her head. The shadows leapt and flowed, and they made her feel less brave with every foot forward. The dark, the noise, the wind: Stanislav could be anywhere in the castle, in any form, hiding deliberately or actively seeking them out.
The stairs unwound to the bottom. The storm howled at the doorway, sucking at the air inside one moment, blustering it back in the next. Lightning crackled, tearing thunder from the clouds and rolling it around the natural bowl of rock that was outside the walls.
‘Back to where we saw him before?’ she asked◦– shouted at◦– Dalip.
‘It’s where we start.’
The lantern, despite its cover, guttered and died. The liminal light in the sky was insufficient to make out detail, but when the lightning flickered and stabbed at the mountain-top, it was enough to show that the guard house, and part of the wall beyond, had collapsed into ruin.
‘Stanislav?’
They approached slowly. Mary’s skirts threatened to turn into a sail and carry her away, and Dalip was bent over against the swirling wind that tried to rob the words from their mouths.
The building was blown down, or out. Loose blocks of stone lay in a heap, and wooden beams stuck out of the remains of the sagging roof like broken ribs.
‘Do you suppose he’s under there?’ she said to Dalip’s ear.
It took him a moment to parse the words, then put his mouth to her ear. ‘We can’t dig. Not by ourselves.’
They reversed positions again. ‘It’d be easier for us if he was.’
He took a step back, nothing but darker black against the night. When the lightning flashed◦– close, so close that the concussion was almost simultaneous. ‘I owe him,’ he said in the silence afterwards.
‘So let’s keep looking.’
They moved unsteadily towards the partly fallen wall. Debris was both inside and out, and Mary suddenly realised what this was. She beckoned Dalip down to her height.
‘The castle is being reburied. With so few people here now, it’s sinking back into the ground. It grows, it dies.’
She’d thought that Crows’ castle had been a ruin when she’d first arrived. It hadn’t: it had been sprouting, new growth despite the appearance of age. There’d been no piles of stones, no ragged beams, no mounds of cracked roofing slates to see. Those were the signs of a dying building, not one rising from the ground. She had so much to learn, and she’d do it, assuming she lived long enough.