All of those boats, sailed or rowed into the bay, abandoned and left to be dismembered by time and tide. It was… real? The White City was actually real?
The boat slowed, began to bob with the waves, then started to drift towards the sheer cliff.
‘Crows? Not so close.’
He tutted, and kicked the ship’s mast and tackle aside to reveal broad-bladed paddles. He passed one to her, and took the other himself. He took a position on the rear left, and indicated she needed to hang over the front right.
Her strokes were fast and ineffective to start with, and the rock shelf was just off the side, near enough that she could almost use the paddle to push against it.
‘From here, we must do this for ourselves. Long, slow and steady,’ Crows directed. He leaned over and in, and the bow inched over. She reached down and tried it. Her arms pulled and her muscles burned.
The boat seemed to hang in space, not moving away, held by some invisible force. She pulled again and, gradually, they broke free.
It was cold, and still, and it grew colder and more still the deeper into the bay they drove. The sound of the moving water echoed off the rock and made her want to whisper. There were ghosts here, and she didn’t want to disturb them.
‘How long has this been going on?’
‘For as long as there has been time here.’ Crows pointed towards an almost-empty spot between wrecks. ‘From the founding of Down to its end, this bay, this beach: this is the way to the White City.’
She looked down through the reflecting surface of the water to the sea bed. It was littered with the disarticulated remains of many more vessels, planks and masks and keels, encrusted with weed and shells.
‘Stroke hard,’ said Crows. They were heading straight for the gap on the beach, and he clearly intended to strand the boat as far up as possible.
The hull scraped, and she caught hold of the side, bent her legs and braced. The whole boat roared and rattled. Then it tipped, spilling her against the side, and her thread and needles on top of her. The box of maps slid slowly against the same side, and she put out a hand to steady it, making certain that it wasn’t going to pitch over and out into the surf.
Crows walked over it, over her, and jumped the short distance to the cobbles. He straightened himself up and placed his hands in the hollow of his back, staring at the back wall of the bay.
Mary looked up from amongst the debris and followed the direction of his gaze. There was a notch at the base of the cliff, little more than a dark smudge. She stared harder, and finally saw it. Obscured by the shadow was the start of a staircase, barely more than steps crudely cut into the rock.
‘Up there?’
He nodded.
‘Fucking hell. They don’t make it easy, do they?’
‘No. Not easy at all.’
She gathered up her strewn sewing, and everything else she thought she might need from the forward locker. She hid the compass in the folds of a spare square of canvas, and piled it all next to her. Righting the map box, she unclasped it.
Crows watched her as she carefully placed the cloth and tools on top of the maps, and just as carefully closed the lid again.
‘Why are we adding to our load?’ he asked.
‘Because I want to.’
‘You may change your mind.’ He stepped closer and reached into the boat for the nearest of the rope handles.
She pushed the box up and along the top rail, so that Crows could drag it out above the surf line. She jumped over the side after him, and clattered wearily up the beach. Her dress was the only splash of colour in the graveyard of ships.
Looking back at their boat, she asked: ‘What’s going to happen to it now?’
‘It falls apart. It has outlived its purpose. Houses without people, castles without kings, boats without crew. They all decay.’
Mary picked up the other handle, and made they their awkward way to the base of the cliff.
‘But these haven’t rotted, have they? They’re not being sucked back into the ground, they’re being broken up. What is it that’s different here?’
‘There is no magic.’
‘Down’s blind spot.’ She remembered what Dalip had said, though it felt like years ago. ‘But I thought that was just something Dalip made up.’
‘Yes. Dalip Singh, for all his protestations, understands Down better than most. So, from now on, we cannot rely on our other abilities: just on our wits and our luck.’ He pursed his lips. ‘We do not travel to the White City because it is safe. We travel because it is necessary. I thought you understood that.’
They were at the bottom of the steps, and Mary was able to comprehend their full terror in one sweeping look. They were carved, one tread at a time, into a fold in the cliff face. The narrow crevasse was angled only slightly away from the vertical, and in places seemed to be little more than a ladder with nowhere to cling.
‘You have got to be fucking kidding me.’ The height didn’t scare her, rather it was the utter ridiculousness of it. ‘Someone made that?’
‘Most likely many someones.’
‘I can’t climb that.’
‘We have to. Together. You cannot fly to the top◦– and I cannot support the weight of the box on my own. Not all the way up.’
‘Is this it? Can’t we sail around the coast until we find an easier way? Because this is fucking nuts.’
She couldn’t see the top, even though she knew it was there.
‘If we want to get to the White City from here, we must use this stairway.’
She was dizzy, and on the verge of agreeing with him, when she realised she wasn’t in any fit state to do what he wanted.
‘No,’ she said. She turned her back on him and sat down on the cobbles. She could hear his weight shift on the stones behind her as he considered his options. Perhaps he really couldn’t climb with the box. Perhaps it was a trap◦– another one◦– for her. It was probably both. ‘I didn’t come all this way to be shafted by you now.’
‘I understand,’ he said. He wasn’t going to let it stop him, of course. He was Crows, and it was his nature.
She could sulk all day if she had to, and the silence thickened about them.
‘How are we to do this, then?’ he finally asked.
‘Find me something to eat and something to drink, and then, if I feel strong enough, I’ll help you.’
‘But there is nothing here, Mary.’
‘You should have thought of that before bringing me to the one place on Down where I could find myself a thousand feet up without wings. Or is that what you wanted? Rather than having to push me off the cliff yourself, you get to watch me fall off it instead? Well, fuck you.’
She reached down for a fragment of bleached wood and held it up in front of her. She snapped her fingers at it, and nothing happened. She tried again, because just once was never going to be enough. The wood was dry and brittle, and should have caught alight easily, but it wasn’t happening.
‘What we want is at the top,’ he said.
‘Then go and get it for me. I’ll wait here and look after the box.’
‘This is not unfolding how I imagined it would.’
‘What? You with the maps at the top of the cliff, and me at the bottom, broken as these boats?’ She threw the wood away and hugged her knees. ‘I’m not stupid, Crows.’
‘I had better begin, then.’
‘Yes. You’ll be back sooner that way.’
She listened carefully. He didn’t move for a while, and it was just the sound of his breathing. Then the cobbles creaked and clacked as he went to the bottom of the first step. The slight grunts he made as he climbed faded, and after a while, she looked surreptitiously over her shoulder.
Crows was perhaps a quarter of the way up. It looked for all the world like he was just hanging in the air, the steps indistinguishable from the rock face they were carved from.