In the morning, when the sun was higher in the sky than she’d wanted, she unlocked the door again and looked down over the White City.
It… She couldn’t hide her disappointment from herself any longer. There was perhaps one building that was worthy of the name city◦– a single circular building with a domed roof, all dressed in the ubiquitous pale stone that was almost but not quite white. The rest were obscured in a haze of blue woodsmoke that hung in the steep-sided valley like smog. The river rumbled along its narrow channel, looking dark and mutinous, and the cultivated terraces next to it were green and brown. Other than that, everything was the colour of old bone: the cliffs, the scree slopes, the walls and buildings. Her red dress was the only splash of colour.
She stood at the doorway for a long while, memorising the lie of the land. All the compounds sat adjacent to the single road, a road that seemed to peter out at the far end. Most squatted above the track, and only a few below, wherever the ground seemed flat enough for building. Her shelter was one of a dozen, balanced on the edge of the loose rock and built into the gradient. Each had a door, and each had a lock.
She tried a few, then all of them. None were occupied, none contained anything useful. Indeed, they contained nothing at all, just a dark square space not even tall enough to stand up in.
A waterfall came off the cliffs above her, mostly turning into spray as it fell, and coalescing again in a hollow forced into the rock at its base. It seemed as good as any place to start. She retrieved her bag of honours, slid her dagger into the loop at her waist, and locked the maps inside the shelter. The key went in with the sharp metal coins.
The water blattered down on her from the waterfall, each drop like a shot and cold enough to make her squeal. At the centre of the hollow made by its falling was a pool, its surface jumping with splashes, and it appeared to drain away through the broken rock without overflowing at the margins. Before she reached the edge, she was drenched and pummelled. In the pool itself, the water seethed, as much air as there was liquid. It was numbing and exhilarating, and she dragged herself away out of range feeling washed and tumbled all at once.
The sunlight sat hidden by the cliff behind her. By the time it came to mid-afternoon, it would briefly illuminate the slope she sat on. Shortly after, it would be obscured by the other cliff. Consequently, it was always going to be cold, and she needed to remember that. There was a reason for the fires.
As she sat, shivering and drying out, she spotted her first people. They were coming down a staircase that stretched from the top of the opposite cliff to the bottom, much like the one that brought her up from the sea, though not quite as precipitous. Each carried a load of wood on their bent backs. As they came to the river, she lost sight of them. Perhaps there was a bridge there, or it was shallow enough to wade across.
It was easy enough, in the narrow ravine, to forget that Down extended in every direction, for ever. Just as easy to forget that Crows would be here soon, if he hadn’t already made the short journey from the ferry to the city.
She walked down the scree, past a few more of the stone shelters, to the road.
Mary faced the last of the compounds. The wall stretched two storeys above her, pierced on the top floor with small slit-like windows. There was a gate, too, tall and wooden and firmly shut. She frowned at it, and went to the next one. It was just as silent and forbidding as the first.
What was she supposed to do? Knock at a random door and see where that took her? There seemed nothing to choose between them.
She squared her shoulders, raised her fist.
‘No.’
She turned, and there was a man standing a little way off. He was as pale and dusty as the stone.
‘No?’
He shook his head. ‘No.’
‘Why not?’
He walked away, back towards what she’d taken to be just another shelter but was, on second look, more substantial and certainly more lived-in.
She raised her knuckles again, and hesitated. She had twenty honours. Was it worth spending one to find out why she shouldn’t? It might be a scam, a way of tricking the newcomers out of their honour and sending them back on the road again, poorer and none the wiser. She might be new to the White City, but she wasn’t new to the street, and she could work her own scams.
So she followed him back to his house. He was sitting on a stool next to his front door◦– if there’d been any sun, he’d have been sunning himself. As it was, he was just sitting outside. He glanced at her as she approached, then went back to his expression of disinterest.
‘Well?’ she said.
‘Well what?’ said the man.
Mary looked down the road. She could count a grand total of three other people. Two passed each other on opposite sides of the road, almost in opposite gutters. The other was brushing a front step in a desultory manner. She wasn’t going to be disturbed, then. She held up a coin, flicked it into the air and caught it again.
‘What’s so bad that I shouldn’t even knock?’
He snorted, but couldn’t even raise a half-smile.
‘Okay.’ She put the coin back into her honour bag and started to walk away.
He was up in an instant, reaching out for her, when he found himself with the point of a sharp blade against his wrist.
‘I’ll fucking cut you, and I know where to make it bad.’
He slowly withdrew. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.’
‘Touch me and I’ll do you. Right?’
He wasn’t scared of her. She could see no trace of it in his pale eyes. But all the same, he sat back down, and put his hands ostentatiously on his knees.
‘No harm done,’ he said.
‘You want to take my honour? Do you?’
‘Only what you’re prepared to give me.’
She sheathed her dagger again. ‘I bet you say that to all the girls.’
He half-grunted a laugh. A release of tension. Then he looked at her properly, and she at him.
‘Not that door. Not any of the doors up here. That’s not where you start, if you get my meaning.’
‘So where should I start?’
He chewed his lip for a moment, but her purse remained annoyingly closed.
‘I could have killed you,’ she said. ‘That has to be worth something.’
‘Down by the river. The one on its own. That’s where you should have gone. You’ll know it when you see it.’
‘Thanks. I… look: I’m not like that◦– or maybe I am, but I’m trying not to be like that. Is this your house, your shop, whatever?’
He settled back further, leaning against the wall behind him, which was as white as his hair. ‘I’m here when I’m needed.’
‘You’ll get your honour, at some point. I just need to work out the system before I start handing it out for every little favour and I’m left with nothing.’
‘You’d better go. Remember which door you need to be at.’
She nodded, still uncertain what horrible fate she’d avoided. The road bent towards the west cliff, but the detail was obscured by the compounds to either side. Seeing around them was impossible, looking over them showed only towering rock. There were a few more people out, half a dozen and no more, all as individuals heading somewhere with hurried purposefulness. They stared at her when they thought she wasn’t looking at them. As soon as she locked eyes with them, they looked away. No one spoke, either to each other or her. Not even an acknowledgement, a raising of the hand, a tipping of the hat. Mary walked down the middle of the scuffed road itself: everyone gave her a wide berth. At first she thought it might be her, but those who could conceivably be fellow townspeople tended to avoid each other, even to the point of crossing the road.