‘There is a problem,’ said Luiza. She pointed at Crows. ‘Him.’
Crows pressed his hand against his chest. ‘Me?’
‘Yes. Water is where you are strongest, and we are weakest. I do not believe you when you say you will guide us to the White City. You say that to make us think we need you. But I say we can find our own way, with the maps.’
Luiza fixed Crows with a glare that would have sent most recipients scurrying, but he sat there with a subtle smile on his face.
‘This is true. Water is my element, where I can manifest my most obvious power. And yes, with the maps, you ought to be able to find the White City on your own.’ He rubbed his palms together, sand trickling out like rain, and said nothing else.
Mary wanted to trust Crows. She didn’t, but she wanted to. She’d known a lot of people like that. She was probably one herself.
‘We’ve already agreed,’ she said. ‘Crows comes with us, and he gets the maps once we’ve copied them.’
‘He gets a free ride,’ said Luiza.
‘He helps protect us from Down.’
‘And who will protect us from him?’
‘Oh you two, hush.’ Mama glowered at them. Elena was looking into her lap, and Dalip was pressing his fingers into his temples, trying to massage the stress away. ‘How much time will crossing the sea save us?’
Crows was quick with the answer. ‘Many months of travel and hundreds of miles walking.’
‘That’s settled, then. If Down can magic us up a boat, that’s what we’ll do.’
Mary looked around the circle. ‘Dalip?’
‘Out on the open sea, in a boat none of us is familiar with, let alone able to steer, with a massive sea serpent for company? If we get into difficulty, and we probably will, Crows could be the only one who could save us. Or he could dispose of us as he saw fit, and keep the maps. Which is what he was doing when he left us to face Bell.’ He sighed and let his head fall forward. ‘On the other hand, it’s a very long way across the bay, if that’s where the White City really is.’
Crows had never mentioned boats, or the sea, when he’d promised to behave himself. Mary’s eyes narrowed as she pulled at a spiral of hair. ‘You only said it was a long way. You didn’t tell us what we had to do to get there.’
‘I can do nothing about the distance, Mary.’ Crows looked up at Mama, standing right behind him, over him almost. ‘And it is your choice how you cover it. If you wish to walk, I will walk with you. If you wish to sail, then I will sail with you. I have some modest experience that might help.’
He settled himself into the sand, leaning forward to rest his forearms on his long, folded legs.
‘So?’ said Mary. ‘We don’t even know if this boat thing will work.’
Mama flicked her fingers at Dalip. ‘Get the maps out. Let’s see.’
Dalip waited for a moment, and when no objections came, he undid the clasps on the lid. ‘We’ll need to find some stones to weigh the maps down, hold them in place.’
Luiza looked mutinous, but she nudged Elena with her foot, and they went off together down the beach.
‘She doesn’t like you,’ said Mary.
‘Sometimes even I do not like myself,’ said Crows.
Mary took the first map from Dalip◦– the one that she’d drawn herself, and the one they were going to use to orientate all the other maps. She’d made those scratches, marked in the coast, the river, the island with its closed portal.
‘Are these going to be, you know…’
‘Accurate?’ said Dalip. He lifted another grubby piece of parchment out into the light of day and squinted at it. ‘No. They might even be deliberately misleading. We have no way of knowing. But it’s all we have.’
‘It’s a jigsaw,’ said Mama. ‘And I’m good at them. Why don’t we look for the edges first?’
‘Good lady, Down has no edges.’ Crows was bowed over the open trunk, seemingly inhaling the aroma rising from it.
‘It has a coastline, though, and that’s what we need to look for.’
There’d been jigsaws in the homes Mary had grown up in, and out of sheer boredom, she’d joined in completing them. But they’d always had the picture on the box to go by. It had always seemed like a massive cheat to her: where was the challenge in mere recreation?
This, though: they didn’t even know if they had enough, let alone all, of the pieces to reveal a clear picture.
‘Okay, let’s do it.’
The four of them sifted through the trunk, looking for maps that showed, or conceivably could show, the coastline. It didn’t matter where on the map it might be, because very few of them had north marked, and they were all different scales. It was a jumble of inaccuracies and wishful thinking.
After a while, Mama raised her eyes. ‘This isn’t working.’
‘It has to,’ said Dalip. ‘We’re just not doing it right.’
‘Well, now. If you’ve any suggestions, don’t keep them to yourself.’
He pursed his lips and scratched under his hair cover.
‘Crows,’ said Mary, ‘how’s this supposed to fit together? We’ve got all these maps, and some of them have to join on to each other. It’s like we’ve got too many. How would a geomancer make sense of all this?’
Luiza and Elena returned, pockets full of stones, which they turned out on to the sand.
‘Where are we?’ Luiza asked.
‘Lost,’ said Mama, frowning. ‘We could be anywhere on any of these.’
‘That is not true. We might be on none of them.’
Mary wound a curl of hair up and down again. ‘No, hang on. Crows. You’ve been this way before, right?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘How did you get to the White City?’
‘I swam.’
‘Of course you did. So where’s the map that shows where you swam from? Where’s the map that shows your route from your portal, to the sea?’
Crows was silent for a moment, then held out his hands for the sorted pile of maps. He leafed through them one by one until he grunted.
‘This one, I think.’
‘You think?’
‘It was a very long time ago, Mary. Would you recognise your own hand from even five years ago?’ He passed her a long strip of paper, marked with tiny, indistinct scratches along its length.
‘You know what, Crows? This is crap.’
‘I was young when I made the journey, and older when I made the map. This is what I could remember, imperfectly.’ He shrugged theatrically. ‘If I had known how important it was, I would have paid more attention.’
She handed the strip to Dalip, who knelt on the soft sand and laid the map in front of him, weighing it down against the breeze with a stone.
‘Put it the right way,’ said Mama.
‘It… doesn’t matter?’ he said, looking up at her stern face.
‘Just like a man.’
Dalip lifted the stone, turned the fragment until the coast part of it pointed towards the coast. Then he took Mary’s map when proffered and placed it below, again orientated to fit with the landscape. He squinted at it and saw that Bell’s castle was a fixed point on both.
‘Okay.’ He dabbed his finger at the Down Street portal, and traced it up the river, through where they’d found the abandoned houses, to Bell’s castle. ‘Another portal has to lie on this line, to the north.’
‘And another so it makes a line with Crows’ castle,’ said Mary. ‘But if you draw a line from the nineteen thirties’ portal, does that go through Crows’ or Bell’s?’
‘It could go through both. You said yourself that some of this is crap.’
Mary looked up and down the coast. The beach sloped towards the sea, and all she could see of the land were the lines of marching dunes. But if she stood at the top◦– or if she took off and gained height, because she was an idiot and still not used to thinking like that when she was in human form◦– she’d be able to see the distinctive twin mountain peaks.