And though these men outnumbered her ten to one, they weren’t really trying. The hired help rarely did. Occasionally she’d encountered some mad fucker who’d decided that going full Terminator on her was an appropriate response to finding someone on enclosed premises, but mostly they’d go for the easy way out: get her off the site, follow her to the end of the street, then stop, honour satisfied.
At the speed they were going, she could keep this up for a little while.
But apparently, her pursuers hadn’t read the script.
That was one of the things about Down, then. By walking everywhere, doing manual labour, eating no burgers or drinking fizzy pop: if you weren’t dead, you were as fit as fuck. She’d been here a few weeks. The blokes behind her could have been here for years.
She started to fade. Slowly at first, because she couldn’t quite believe they were still right on her tail, and that gave her extra impetus to carry on. Then increasingly struggling, even as the candle in her lantern shrank to a guttering stub. If they wanted her alive, they were going to have to carry her back, because her legs and her lungs burned white-hot and acid-etched. If they wanted to kill her, then at least the pain would stop.
The endless miniature forest, with its spindly trees, too narrow to provide cover, too dense to give her a free run, always changing course, thrashing her face and arms with whip-like branches, sapped what was left of her energy. She couldn’t continue, she was faltering, running entirely on empty. She’d fold in another few steps, just the other side of that dip, against that thicker trunk. She kept finding reasons to dig deeper, keep on going, another yard, another two. She cycled between determination and despair.
Then her legs went. Not tripped up or misstepped, but properly failed like they were suddenly boneless. She sank to the ground like she was wading into quicksand, and she couldn’t get up again.
She’d done what she’d intended. She’d provided a distraction. She’d given it everything.
The other lights converged on her solitary one, forming a ring around her that precluded further flight. She was gasping for air, lathered in sweat, quite unable to stand, and still they were reluctant to approach her in case she had something else up her sleeve.
Like this.
She wearily raised a hand over her head, pressed her middle finger to her thumb, and clicked.
A bright yellow flame sprang up, plain for all to see.
The circle stopped contracting, and started expanding, losing its form and breaking apart, the ordered constellation of lights sliding into chaotic motion.
That was all it took, one trivial display of power, to send them all into retreat. If they’d not seen magic at all, or for a long time, they were probably wondering what else she could do.
Currently, not much, and she hadn’t even known she could do that. She was too exhausted to fly, or to batter them with sticks and rocks, or even wreathe the area in fog and make her escape. What she could do was take herself out of the picture. She smeared the air with darkness, painting a barrier between her and the dwindling lights, and cut herself off completely in a cocoon of night while she recovered.
The question was, had she managed to run far and fast enough to leave the anti-magic zone, or had Dalip done what he thought he was setting out to do? She hadn’t felt Down’s influence return any more than she’d felt it leave, yet if she tried she could taste it on the wind. There was, she supposed, only one way to find out, and that was to head back to the White City, clicking her fingers as she went, and seeing how far she got.
Not just yet, though. She stretched out on the ground and stared at the top of her dark shelter, feeling her body sag into every hollow under her, as if she was made of wax. When she was done with all this, she was going to take a holiday. In a different world, a lifetime ago, she’d seen an advert: a lithe, tanned woman was running through the surf on a white-sand beach, while a warm blue sea beckoned her further in. So◦– that. That’s what she would do. She would camp, and swim, and build fires every night, and catch and cook her own food, and she’d be alone. No Mama fretting to go home, no Dalip worrying about tides, no Crows whispering his poison in her ear. No Luiza, or Stanislav, or Grace. No Elena.
She was up here, somewhere. Maybe there was a chance for forgiving and forgetting, because Elena didn’t seem the sort of woman who’d last long on her own. If Simeon had died◦– died giving her long enough to escape◦– then Dawson would be wearing the captain’s hat now, and it’d be up to him if she could rejoin the ship. Otherwise, Down was big enough that they’d never run into each other again, as long as any of them would live.
One thing was absolutely certain: no matter what happened next, whether the portals were open to traffic both ways, whether her London was still intact, she wasn’t going back. She was not exactly enjoying it, but she was appreciating the novelty of being able to speak and act and have people pay attention to her, take her seriously, even fear her. She belonged in Down.
If that was the case, of course, she needed to make sure that it was going to survive. Time to go.
She hauled her aching self off the ground, brushed herself down, and wiped away the darkness. She sheathed her little dagger at her side and picked up the lantern, now barely lit, and realised that she had no idea in which direction to go.
The compass would have been useful, but she didn’t have it. If she could change to bird form, fly up, look for lights, fix the direction and land, that would also be acceptable. But if she blundered into the anti-magic zone, she’d fall to her death. So, not that.
If she simply started walking to see where she ended up, then she’d waste time, which she didn’t have, and energy, which she didn’t have either.
There was an alternative, but could she, should she? It wasn’t like anyone was going to stop her from trying.
She settled the lantern at her feet and took its thin, feeble flame. She gathered it up, breathed life into it, cradled it and brought it to a radiant perfection. Then she launched it upwards. It burned its way high into the night sky, and exploded like a second sun. The flash of light was soundless, but the shadows fled before it all the same.
In the moment between first ignition and last dying ember, the landscape was laid bare. Not only the plateau, but everything. The coast, the sea, the forests, even the distant hills glimmered with reflected glory. The Lords of the White City would know she was coming now, coming for them, and that was good because, like their servants, she wanted them to be afraid of her.
She scooped up the lantern, and set off, the clicking of her fingers a beat in common time. Each spark was a fresh revelation, and each step back towards the valley territory regained. She realised as she walked just how far she’d managed to run, even in the dark. There was no sign of her erstwhile pursuers, which was just as well, because she was both weary and pissed off.
She launched two more air-burst rockets, just to keep her on the right path, and she found herself back at the valley’s edge, looking out over the drop-off at the buildings below. She still had magic, this close to the city. So Dalip had succeeded, one way or another. She needed to see whether he’d survived the encounter, but was also wary. Just because she’d run out of bullets didn’t mean the guns they’d offered Simeon were useless.
Even presenting them with a target could encourage them to take potshots at her. She lifted up the lantern, the candle no more than a piece of string floating in a puddle of wax, and puffed it out.
There was movement down below, lights skittering in and out of view, inside buildings and behind walls. She could hear voices, but not what they said. The tone, however, was unmistakable: panic.
As she watched, she realised that one of the buildings was flickering, becoming more solid even as the orange glow visible in the windows started to break out through the roof. Puffs of flame spiralled into the sky from between the tiles until it became a mosaic of fire. The sound of the roof trusses snapping was a series of sharp retorts, and the resultant rush of air into the space below made the conflagration roar.