Down Station

by Simon Morden

  ‘Me? What did I do?’

  ‘You do not have to do anything. You just have to be.’ Crows tapped his foot on the boards, and they sounded hollowly back.

  Mary looked around her with wonder. ‘This grew, out of nothing?’

  ‘Again, not out of nothing. Out of the ground. It rises and falls with the power of the men or women under its roof.’

  She pressed her hand against the wall, where the individual stones fitted with each other in blocks and courses, like a gigantic jigsaw. ‘That is still fucking nuts. So how do you find these lines of energy?’

  ‘You search for them. Tease them out. Remember how I told you that maps were powerful things? This is why: if you have a map, you can start to find the lines. Once you have drawn the lines, you can find where they cross. Where they cross is where castles rise. And sometimes, you can, if you are clever and you have more complete maps than anyone else, you can find a place that no one else knows of.’

  ‘Do you?’ she asked.

  ‘Do I what?’

  ‘Have maps?’

  Crows pursed his lips. ‘I might.’

  ‘Can I see them?’

  ‘Mary,’ he said. ‘They are fragile, and very precious. They are not objects to be idly toyed with. But perhaps … yes. You must start a map of your own, and mark everything you know of so far on to it. Come, and eat, and then while it is still light, we can make a start.’

  Crows wasn’t much of a cook, Mary decided, not that she could do better with the ingredients to hand. There was steamed fish – bony and tasting oddly of weeds – and boiled grain that was a step firmer than porridge. He thought it was fine: he extracted every last morsel of grey flesh from the skeleton, scooping out the difficult to reach bits near the head with one of his long fingers, and sucking the juices from the tail, all the while using the same fingers to cup small balls of grain and feed them past his white teeth.

  If she didn’t eat, she’d be too weak to walk to all the places that Crows thought it necessary to take her to, and too weak to weave fog from the air she breathed and darkness from the shadows she cast.

  She could do magic. If that wasn’t astounding enough, the very land itself was magical, with castles springing up from the ground at her unspoken command. Eating some mediocre meals was a small price to pay for such wonders, and she’d do it without complaint.

  Then when they’d finished, and she’d washed her face and hands and bowls in what had been that morning, a stream, and was now a stone arch sluicing water down a trough before it turned into a stream, she sat on the still-open doorstep while Crows fetched a sheet of paper and some ink.

  She wasn’t sure where he’d get paper from, or pens. They spoke of being manufactured, while everything about Down was crafted – handmade, bespoke, using only raw materials.

  The ink was made from soot and oils, the pens from strippeddown feathers, and the paper, she was both fascinated and disgusted to learn, was actually a scraped-clean square of animal skin, the size of a school exercise book.

  She’d always been an inveterate doodler, tagging everything with the art she saw on the street. This was different. Even the ink was rare and precious, delicate and worryingly permanent. No hesitation, no erasing.

  ‘How do I do this?’ she asked.

  ‘You mark down everything you’ve seen, as accurately as possible. Mark where you have walked, the mountains you saw in the distance, the curve of the rivers, the lines of the hills. Guess the distances if you cannot measure them. Start where you started, finish where you are.’

  ‘And what do I do with it when I’m done?’

  ‘You keep it,’ said Crows. ‘This is the beginning of your wealth here in Down.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, looking at the blank parchment. ‘Okay.’

  She looked out over the land from the doorstep and the newly restored pavement, and the sun that was sliding around to her right. The long ridge that made the headland was a dark smudge.

  ‘Everything?’

  ‘It is most important that you put in every last detail, while you still remember it.’

  She’d never used a quill pen before: she dipped the nib in the little pot of ink tentatively, before making an equally uncertain mark on the parchment at the top and right of the page. That was to mark the door they’d come through. Then another, bottom left, to indicate Crow’s castle. What she knew of Down would fit somewhere in between.

  She scratched out the lines to represent the bay and the estuary, the river and the lake they’d completely missed because they were on the wrong bank. She added dots for where they camped and the village they’d found.

  She was concentrating so hard on getting it as right as she could make it, it was only when she looked up did she see Crows staring intently at the picture she’d drawn.

  ‘How does it look?’ she asked him.

  ‘Carefully done. When it is dry, we will put it some place safe.’ He bent low to blow softly on it. ‘The portal is on the beach itself?’

  ‘It’s in the sea, facing the beach, set in a big rock that stands on its own. I could show you if you want.’

  ‘No need. I know where you mean. There used to be an arch there, but it collapsed in a storm.’

  ‘Crows, will I ever get back home?’

  He sat back on his haunches. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘The wolfman told us that going home was impossible. Was he lying?’

  ‘He was telling the truth, as far as he knows it.’

  ‘But does that mean he’s wrong?’ She held her map up to the reddening sun, watching how the light played through the thin sheet and emboldened the black lines she’d made.

  ‘That is a geomancer’s great dream, the grand project, to discover whether or not those in Down can pass through the portals to London.’

  ‘No one has, then.’ She didn’t know how to feel about that. She was trapped, but the prison was far bigger than the freedom she’d previously taken for granted.

  ‘Yet,’ said Crows. ‘Geomancers fight for control over land, over castles, over portals. Your friends have been taken in case they know something about how the portals work: even the smallest clue might help open the way.’

  ‘What’s going to happen to them?’

  ‘If I know her, she will never let them go: what they know will be useful to others and part of being a good geomancer is to deny knowledge to other geomancers. She will force them to work for her, like she did the villagers under my protection.’

  ‘Slave labour.’

  ‘Yes.’ Crows sagged at the thought. ‘I wish I could do more.’

  ‘Has she got a castle?’

  ‘Hers is large, with high walls and a commanding view over the land. She has soldiers at her beck and call, and workers in her fields. She does not have to worry about finding food, or keeping warm. She spends her whole day in study. I was no match for her, and I barely escaped her myself.’ He curled in on himself further, and worried at his thumb with his teeth. ‘She shamed me.’

  ‘We can get them back.’

  ‘We are not enough,’ said Crows. ‘We would need an army to take her castle, and we are not going to find one. This part of Down is empty.’

  ‘Maybe we should just go somewhere where there are more people and, I don’t know, hire an army. Can we do that?’

  ‘The only city I know of is hundreds of miles away. There are people here and there in the hills to the east, but they enjoy their peace, and it is not their quarrel. We cannot make them fight for us, and we will not be able to persuade them either.’

  Mary looked again at her map, at the tiny amount of land it actually covered. There was so much more to explore, but she still felt the urge to at least try and rescue the others.

  ‘Can we go and look at her castle? Just to see what it’s like?’

  Crows looked up. It w
as clear he didn’t want to.

  ‘You know where it is, right?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, yes. I know it, but it is too dangerous. If she catches us, then she will kill me and enslave you.’

  ‘Crows, my friends need me to help them.’ She felt the first stirrings of irritation. ‘And I need you. You can’t say no.’

  ‘It is too dangerous,’ he repeated. ‘There is nothing to gain by going, and everything to lose.’

  ‘You’re scared.’

  ‘Yes, and you should be too. Her power is terrible. She is far stronger than me, and that is that. I have run from her once, and I am not so great a fool as to confront her again. I will do what I can around the margins, saving those who escape from her, but if they are within her walls, I can do nothing.’

  ‘I can’t do anything, either.’ She let the map drift to the floor. ‘I’ve only just got here, I don’t know how anything works. I thought,’ she said, ‘you were going to help me.’

  ‘I am helping you. And I am helping you by telling you that we cannot stand against her. We would be throwing our lives away, and in doing so make her stronger still.’ Crows shied away from her, rising on his thin legs and going out on to the pavement. ‘There is a time to fight and a time to hide. Perhaps when her fortunes are reversed, we can help your friends. Until then, they will come to no real harm – they are too valuable alive.’

  ‘They’re fucking slaves, Crows! It’s not the fucking Ritz they’re staying in. If it was the other way around, and they’d got me instead of Dalip, I bet he’d be thinking up some sort of way to get us out of there, no matter how long it took.’ She looked up at the man, how his black skin glowed with the orange of sunset, and remembered the fire of the tunnels. Yes, she’d been terrified, but that had been no reason to abandon everyone else. They’d saved each other once before, the best they could. ‘We have to try.’

  ‘We do not “have to try”. No one is forcing you to do anything. No one will think better of you for failing. Those few people who know you will soon forget. Nothing you have done will be written down. Even if you succeed, who will thank you? There is no reward to gain, no medals to win, no one will make you queen.’ He waved his hand at the darkening land. ‘If you want to be queen, then be one here. This is your country. Rule it how you see fit.’

  Her fingers and toes were tingling. The end of her nose. Her ears. This was what she was like just before she blew. The rage growled like a trapped animal, desperate to escape. The only way it could go was out of her throat.

  Crows was right, and yet he was so very wrong. If Down meant she could walk away and begin again where no one had ever heard of her, it also had to mean that she could stay and work out a way to save those she came here with. No one was forcing her: she wanted to do it. Win, lose, medals, empty hands. It didn’t matter. She was going to save them all, with or without Crows, because that was the task she’d set herself.

  Her anger slid through her like fog through her fingers. And she felt calm and strong.

  ‘I’ll find her myself,’ she said. ‘You can come if you want, but I’ll go alone if I have to.’

  He had all manner of objections, but they seemed to die on his tongue.

  ‘I rescue you and yet you are determined to go back and throw yourself into her shackles. So be it.’ He threw up his hands at the futility of it all. ‘I will take you only close enough for you to see her castle. After that, you may do as you wish. A waste, I tell you. A waste.’

  He stalked off, leaving her and her map on the ground. But at the edge of the pavement, he turned around.

  ‘You should sleep,’ he said. ‘It is a full day’s walk, and we will be up early.’

  Mary looked at her map, at the discarded ink and quills, and began to gather everything up. She’d roll the map up and keep it in her room, and return the rest to the store room. She’d light the candle there with a flick of her fingers, just like Crows, and she’d extinguish it with sheer force of will.

  18

  Pigface came for Dalip sooner than he’d thought. Three days of merciless physical training had left him aching in places he didn’t know he could ache. He felt all but boneless, loose and unconnected. He’d had extra food – for all he knew it was Pigface’s own rations, and Stanislav had bullied them out of him – but nowhere near enough time for anything to make a difference.

  The older man’s demeanour had changed in captivity: he was now all sharp edges and abrupt actions, as if he knew exactly what would put their gaolers on the back foot. And Dalip was afraid to ask where he’d got that knowledge.

  ‘On your feet, little lion man. She wants you.’

  Dalip raised himself from the stone floor. He’d been stretching, feet out in front of him and bending from the hips, trying to get his head as close to his knees as he could. He was, as Stanislav had told him, stiff like an old man, and he needed to be supple in order to fight.

  Despite the hours of knife-work, of slow, deliberate blocks, slices and stabs, he was certain that he didn’t know enough to defend himself yet.

  ‘No. I’m not ready.’ He stood at the back of his cell, so that Pigface would have to come all the way in and drag him out.

  ‘She doesn’t care, and I don’t care. To the pit with you.’

  ‘Where’s Stanislav? I want Stanislav.’

  ‘The Slav’s not been called for. You have.’ Pigface had armed himself with a club, as well as his knife.

  ‘I need to talk to him before I fight.’

  ‘No. Get to the pit. She’s waiting, and you don’t keep her waiting.’

  ‘Then go and get Stanislav, and you won’t keep her waiting.’ Dalip put his hands behind his back and planted his feet, and they stared at each other, both in shadow, one silhouetted by the door, the other limned with light from the window.

  Pigface took a step towards Dalip, but it was hesitant and betrayed his weakness. It would come down to whether he wanted a fight with Dalip, risking the fight he was supposed to be putting on for the geomancer, or whether he thought he’d be able to get his work done quicker by letting the prisoners dictate the terms of their imprisonment.

  He muttered something under his breath, and left, heading up the corridor to Stanislav’s cell, leaving Dalip’s door open. He wasn’t a very good gaoler at all: either that, or he was a coward and a bully, and didn’t know how to take being challenged.

  He heard voices. He hadn’t been allowed to mix with the others at all, only Stanislav. He knew from him that Mama was diagonally opposite. Elena and Luiza were further on. The women had been put to work in the kitchen gardens he’d seen on his abortive bid for freedom. As far as Stanislav could tell, they were being treated tolerably.

  Grace? No one knew where she was. She didn’t appear to be a prisoner with them, though she could have been somewhere else in the castle. Perhaps she never made it this far: taken by some creature with sharp teeth, or fallen by accident and he’d passed her by within shouting distance.

  Perhaps she was dead. It was impossible to know. Pigface seemed to not only know nothing, but also lack the curiosity to find out.

  The cell doors were barred with a plank of wood that fitted into hasps on the far side, preventing them from opening. Dalip took the bar from where Pigface had laid it against the wall and took it back into his cell. It was too wide to be useful as a weapon, difficult to grip and swing.

  He lifted it up and offered it to the window slit. It would just about fit through, and if there was a time when he’d need to conveniently lose the bar – and free the other prisoners – then he could just slide them all outside.

  He returned it, just before Pigface came back around the corner, walking behind Stanislav and tapping his cosh into the palm of his hand.

  ‘You are to fight?’

  ‘Apparently.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He hasn’t said.’<
br />
  Stanislav idly turned around, and in one fluid move, pinned Pigface’s throat and club hand to the wall. When the guard tried for his knife with his off-hand, Stanislav pushed his forearm harder against the man’s Adam’s apple.

  ‘We need to know before he goes in the pit.’

  Pigface couldn’t turn his head, couldn’t swallow, couldn’t speak. He just made a little gasping noise from somewhere inside.

  ‘What animal does the boy have to fight?’

  Pigface’s lips moved, but they were starting to turn blue.

  ‘If you kill him,’ said Dalip, ‘Actually I don’t know what’ll happen if you kill him.’

  ‘We might get someone with some balls. That would make things more difficult for us.’ Stanislav released his hold and Pigface staggered away, wheezing and cupping his neck with his hand.

  ‘You’re crazy,’ he gasped. ‘You’re mad.’

  ‘Yes, all of us,’ said Dalip. ‘We’re more trouble than we’re worth.’

  Pigface coughed and leant against the wall. ‘She’s waiting. You’re late.’

  ‘What does the boy have to fight?’ said Stanislav again. ‘Are you going to tell me, or do I beat it out of you?’

  Pigface held up his hand to ward him off. ‘Boar. There’s a boar.’

  ‘A … what?’ Dalip looked askance.

  ‘Pig. Wild pig. Strong. Dangerous.’

  ‘I know what it is. But I’m fighting a pig?’

  ‘No, a boar.’ Stanislav ignored Pigface and walked slowly back to Dalip. ‘They are difficult opponents. Their vital organs are deep in their bodies, under many layers of fat and muscle. A knife will not be enough to kill it.’

  ‘But a pig?’

  ‘It will open your belly and root around in your guts if you let it. It has teeth like razors and is angry, always angry. It is your opponent and you must treat it with respect.’