‘He goes by the name of Crows.’
Simeon said nothing, but his eyelid twitched.
Dalip bowed his head, but he shouldn’t have been surprised. Even here, Crows was known and hated. ‘I’m sorry for wasting your time, Captain. I’ll go and find someone to teach me their job.’ He started to retreat, but there were words thrown at his back.
‘D’you know where Crows is now?’
‘He’s out here somewhere, heading for the White City. If it exists. If he knows how to find it.’
Simeon beckoned him closer again. ‘What’s his plan?’
‘He stole our boat, and our maps, and left us for dead. He didn’t share his plans, I…’ Dalip shook his head. ‘I think he wants to sell them, or use them to buy influence, or something. I don’t know how it works.’
‘And what was your plan, Singh?’
‘We were going to put the maps together. They were all fragments: mostly of one portal and one castle. But there were, I don’t know, hints, that we could join them up and finally reveal the shape of where the portals are across Down. Even then, we don’t know how to open any of them and make them go in reverse. It was a hope, that somehow the answers would fall out of a completed map. That was it. That was what we were going to do.’ He shrugged. ‘Out loud, like that: it sounds pathetic. You get caught up in the madness of it. No wonder the geomancers are all so…’
‘Unhinged?’ offered Simeon, and Dalip nodded.
‘It’s cost us too much already. We need to give it up.’
‘But part of you wishes that this dastard Crows pays through the nose for his murder and rapine?’
Clenching his fists, Dalip said: ‘I’d kill him if I could.’
‘Oh, there’s quite a queue ahead of you.’ Simeon fiddled with the brim of his hat before setting it back on his head. ‘So he’s heading for the White City◦– yes, he knows where it is, have no fear on that score◦– and with a king’s ransom of maps? Well, now. That is interesting.’
‘He can turn into a giant sea snake. He’d sink the Fool and kill everyone on board if he thought you were going to try to take the maps. I’m not asking that of you: in fact, I’m begging you to forget the whole idea and I’m regretting I ever mentioned it.’
‘He can do that now, can he? A bit different from when we were lowly mates together, back in the day. He had no ambitions then, save survival◦– same as the rest of us poor dogs.’ The captain put his foot up on the side and stared out to the north-west. ‘Have no fear, Singh, old chap. It’s perfectly right and proper that you’ve told me all this. Lots to think about.’
‘I’ll go and do something useful,’ said Dalip.
‘Yes, it’s good to keep busy.’ Simeon seemed overly distracted by something in the far blue distance. ‘The Devil makes work, eh?’
Dalip wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but he took it as a dismissal. Many of the sleeping crew were now stirring, but even so the deck seemed too large, and too empty. There weren’t enough of them to make it look full. It could easily have held twice their number.
And yet, if everything he knew about Down was true, these few were the only truly free people. Everyone else, all the refugees from disasters and dilemmas, were either held in thrall by the geomancers, living secretly and desperately, or dead.
It was pitiful. Down was a way out, a fresh start, and it had been corrupted by the very people it had saved. Rather than living lives of duty and honour, enough had chosen the way of selfishness, greed and violence to poison the land for all. The sea only remained pure because it had no portals.
If that was the way it had to be, then he would accept it. The maps were lost, Grace was lost, Stanislav dead, Luiza dead, Mary gone. He’d accepted life as a pit fighter. Why not a sailor? He was young and strong and, apparently, brave. Neither was he afraid of hard work.
Two men were starting to unfurl the gathered sail. Dalip took a position behind them and gathered a length of the loose rope in his hands. His fingers, already calloused, gripped the damp fibres, and waited for instruction.
13
Crows controlled the boat’s speed and course, and guarded the trick of creating a standing wave closely. Mary had seen him do it often enough to think she could probably crack it on her own without accidentally summoning some nameless creature from the deep, given some practice, but he never left her alone for long or ranged far enough for her to do so in secret. She had her sewing to keep her occupied during his fishing trips, and she was learning patience. She was certainly learning how to ignore the hollow feeling in her stomach and the increasing thirst that was drying her throat to a croak.
‘How much further?’
It could be a way of forcing her off the boat and away from the maps. He could simply circle the same patch of empty ocean until she was compelled to take to the air to search for water and food. Could she find him after that? She didn’t know how far away the nearest land was◦– or rather she did, and it was infested with plague. She’d have to find somewhere on the mainland, or another island in the bay which had fresh water, and then hunt for something raw and bloody and substantial.
‘A way,’ he said.
Fine. That was how he was going to play it. He underestimated her resolve to stick to him like glue.
‘Then next time, bring me some fucking fish, okay?’
‘A simple enough request, but we have no fire to cook them. I do not think—’
‘Look, what’s that stuff the Japanese eat? It’s fish, right? And it’s not cooked. So it’s either that, or land the fucking boat somewhere.’
He spread his hands wide, fanning his fingers. She’d come to realise that the gesture meant he was giving in. ‘Perhaps by the end of the day.’
‘Or earlier? Can you manage that?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Good.’ She’d called his bluff. If he thought that she’d suffer in silence, or plead with him, then he was wrong. She bent over her work again, and pretended not to notice that the sun slid over the stern of the boat and over to her left. He’d changed course. He knew where they were going.
Facing away from the bow meant all she saw when she glanced up was Crows and, behind him, the horizon. When she next happened to glance over her shoulder, and all she saw was cliffs, she couldn’t help but stand and back away.
The rock was hard and grey and jointed. Heavy, worn blocks littered the wave-swept shelf that had formed at its base. She looked up and up, and the cliff did nothing but loom back at her. The swell rose up to the shelf, spilled white foam across it, then sucked down by her height and more. It looked lethal.
‘Is this it?’ she asked.
‘No,’ he said. The bow eased around and aimed for the next headland. ‘But it is not far now.’
She should have heard the booming of the waves against the shore◦– it was all she could hear now◦– and it both angered and worried her that she’d let herself get so distracted. If she was going to beat Crows, she needed to be sharper than that.
The bow crested the promontory, and she had her first sight of the bay beyond. It was deep, and the cliffs high like battlements. A cobble beach ran for part of its length, and on it lay the bones of boats like rotting whales, their timbers gone and only the ribs remaining. Hollow, gaunt and bleached by the salt sea.
And there were so many, of every size, from child-like rowing boats, fit only for a trip around a duck pond, to broken-back ocean-going ships, whose curved timbers reached up like praying arms to the sky.
‘Everyone comes to the White City,’ said Crows. ‘Sooner or later.’