He lost steam. He’d done enough for today: they were no longer slaves, the castle had fallen, their gaolers had been killed or they’d run away, the threat of the dragon had been neutralised. He was wearing a sort of patka, he’d used his kirpan to protect his friends. His bangles and his comb◦– that would have to wait, but he felt that the gurus would be pleased with his efforts: he’d lived up to their ideal of the warrior-priest. All he wanted to do now was sleep, and see what the next day brought. Hopefully, it’d be quieter. Bell was still out there, and he hadn’t forgotten about the wolfman. But if they all stuck together, it wasn’t beyond them to cope with Down.
‘We cannot stay here.’ Elena gestured at the darkened room. ‘This is not ours. Nothing here is.’
‘We can go to the White City,’ said Mary.
‘Do you even know where that is?’
‘I know a man who does. And that’s what we’re going to do: find him, and we’ll get not just my map, but his maps and Bell’s maps too. That’ll make us rich, at least here in Down.’
‘And just how are we going to find this Crows?’ Mama raised her gaze to the ceiling. ‘He’ll be long gone, Mary, and even if you can fly now, which is all kinds of preposterous, you’re not going to see him again.’
‘The clue’s in the name,’ said Mary, and Dalip, tired even of this slight bickering, told her plainly.
‘The wolfman has wolves in the same way Crows has crows. They’re not real crows, they’re parts of him; he uses them to see where he isn’t and they have senses that he doesn’t. Find a flock of crows, and that might well be him. Mary can search from the sky, and we’ll follow on foot. He can’t both carry his maps and get away from us.’
‘And his maps are what we need, not him.’ Mary snorted, but even if everyone else was fooled, Dalip wasn’t. He could tell she liked this Crows, even though he’d stolen what was hers and had abandoned her to her fate.
‘We leave in the morning, then,’ said Luiza, as if the matter was settled, and by saying, settled it herself. ‘We sleep here together. It will be safer.’ She didn’t want to venture further inside, any more than any of the others did. Pigface was dead in the corridor, and his colleague in one of the cells. She walked over to the fireplace, to see if she could coax some life out of it, even though it was perfectly warm.
A fire, one of human beings’ most primal enemies was also one of their most primal needs.
They agreed that someone should keep watch at all times, just because they didn’t want to be seen as stupid. The five of them would split up the remaining night easily enough, and Mama was worried about Dalip so suggested taking his shift too.
Even though he insisted, he suspected that they wouldn’t wake him when it came to his turn. There was beer in the room, weak but it still made his head spin. There was bread, from which he seemed to have the largest piece, but arguing over that seemed pointless. He ate, and he drank, and curled up in an uncomfortable corner to sleep.
Despite everything, he dropped off, and despite everything, he woke again.
It was still dark◦– no, it was now properly dark. The firelight glow from the burning tower had gone, and only the faint red smear of their own hearth showed. Mary sat in a chair facing it, her back bent and her elbows on her knees. Her spring-coils of hair curtained her face, and she didn’t move, didn’t even acknowledge his presence until he’d settled into a chair next to her, grunting with the effort of motion.
‘You all right?’ she asked. She spoke softly, and the three other figures in the room didn’t stir.
‘I’ll live.’ He was bruised and battered, but actually, he felt like he’d earned his stripes. Each welt was his by right.
‘You should get some more kip. We don’t know how far we’ll have to cover in the morning, and catching Crows isn’t going to be easy. You can walk right past him and not even see him, though that might only be at night. I don’t know what we’ll do if he wants to make a fight of it.’
‘Do you think he will?’ He looked at her carefully, judging her mood by how tense her body was as he couldn’t see her expression.
‘He doesn’t fight. He avoids fights. That’s what probably got him here, Down: he ran away until he couldn’t run any further. He’s got scars from when they caught him. I think he’s as scared of Down as we are, he just hides it better.’
‘Is that what we are? Scared?’
She dragged her hair out of the way and tilted her head towards him.
‘I don’t know what’s happening to me. I can do stuff like you can only do in films, except this is real.’
‘I used to be scared of heights,’ he admitted. ‘I couldn’t even climb ladders.’
‘Fuck off,’ she said. ‘You threw yourself off a fucking cliff. You expected me to catch you.’
‘I climbed up the outside of Bell’s tower and through a window. Just hanging there, in space, only my fingers and toes in the gaps between the stones. I should’ve been terrified. I wasn’t.’ He stared into the embers. ‘You’re not the only one who’s changed.’
‘Look, Dalip. Everyone’s asleep but us. I wanted to… I…’ She couldn’t manage it, whatever it was she was trying to say. ‘Forget it.’
He genuinely didn’t know what she wanted to tell him. What if she said she liked him? Romantically? He had no experience of that sort of thing, at all, ever. Perhaps just the once, then, and he’d been too scared to act on it, even to talk to the girl in question. What would he have said to his parents afterwards? Easier by far to keep silent and not bring shame on himself or his family.
‘Go on.’ The words formed by themselves. He didn’t know where they came from.
She struggled on. ‘I’ve never had a friend that I haven’t let down. You know, badly, so they dump me like I’m a sack of shit.’ She was shaking, despite the warmth of the room. ‘When you jumped, and pulled me after you, you were going to die, and I wasn’t. But you knew I was going to catch you, even before I did. I’ve never had anyone trust me with as much as you did. I don’t… understand that.’
Dalip felt the low heat from the fire on his face, almost as warm as the embarrassment coming from Mary.
‘That’s what friends do. What they’re supposed to do anyway. In an ideal world.’
‘This isn’t, though, is it? This world is fucked-up big-time.’
‘It’s certainly different,’ he said, starting to smile. ‘When I jumped, I wasn’t scared. I thought you’d try and catch me, at least, but if you hadn’t? I’d still have done something brave. I fought a monster, and there were no guarantees that I’d win, let alone live. That was my choice. That I’m here to say all this is great, but it’s a bit unexpected. I heard my grandfather while I was falling.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Bole So Nihal, Sat Sri Akal.’ He looked down at his hands, which had plunged the dagger into Stanislav’s inconstant flesh. ‘It means, “He who cries ‘God is Truth’ is ever victorious.” It’s a war cry, but he’s been gone for years. I suppose I thought that meant I was already dead.’