by Simon Morden
She forced Bell out, deeper and deeper, until only the woman’s head and shoulders were visible.
‘During. It was during. I was supposed to go through and sign the register, and the door opened and there was Down.’ For the first and only time, the tears were no longer an act. ‘I ran.’
Mary remembered her own escape. The terrible fire, the heat and the smoke, followed by the unexpected, delicious coldness of the sea. Down had decided, for reasons of its own, that the two situations were equally awful, and she relented.
‘What am I going to do with you? Do you want me to kill you? Do you want me to hold you under until it’s over? Is that what you want? Do you hate yourself that much?’
‘Why?’ said Bell, her voice reduced to a childish whine. ‘Why won’t you let me win?’
‘Because you did a bad thing to us, and you need to be punished for it. Your punishment is all around you. It’s your dead guards, your burnt castle, your broken arm, your bruises, your messed-up plans and your missing maps. You need to learn that you don’t fuck around with people’s lives. Okay, you get away with it sometimes. But not this time. Just … just stay out of our way. We’ll go in the morning. You don’t follow us, you don’t try and stop us. That’s it. That’s all we want.’
Mary waded ashore and set off after Dalip. There was no pursuit, not this time.
32
He was only a man, and he was spent like the empty bullet cases that had belonged to his grandfather, and now, in another world, belonged to him.
She was not only a woman, and perhaps that was how she was able to catch him up and pull him to his feet, look hard and deep into his face, then drag his arm over her shoulder so that she could take some of his weight.
He was grateful, and not a little confused. It wasn’t how it was supposed to be – not how he’d been taught it was supposed to be – but perhaps he’d left all that behind along with so much else.
‘Thanks,’ he said.
‘Stupid bitch,’ she said, not at him. ‘I don’t know: she’s got her reasons, but not her excuses.’ She growled deep in her throat.
‘You all right?’
‘Just … you learn stuff about someone, and it makes it more difficult to hate them despite what they’ve done.’ She told him about Bell’s interrupted wedding. He listened carefully, and when she was done, he twisted his head around to look at the lake.
‘She’s gone.’
‘Do you think I’m going to regret it?’ she asked.
‘What?’
‘Not, you know: not killing her.’
He shrugged, not that he had much strength left to do even that. ‘Ask me if I regret killing Stanislav.’
‘The storm killed him.’
‘Oh, come on. I knew what I was doing, luring him to the top of the mountain, using the knife to attract the lightning. He was human just enough to feel hate, but not enough to realise the danger. I killed him for certain.’
‘Do you regret it?’
‘Not now. Not today, and probably not tomorrow. Ask me next week, next month, next year if either of us is still around by then. My grandfather – have I told you about my grandfather?’
‘A bit, but go on.’
‘He was too young to join the army in the Second World War, but he did it anyway, lied about his age, fought for six years against the Japanese, got a chestful of medals, came home and …’ Communal violence, neighbour turning on neighbour. Partition, fleeing in the dark with his parents, aunts and uncles, nephews and nieces, brothers and sisters, and when the light of that first day dawned, it rose on fewer of them than had left. Refugees, relying on the kindness of strangers. Immigrants, in what should have been the Mother Country, but it was a cold love. ‘Eventually I happened. I remember him as this fiercely proud, deeply religious, honourable, dependable man, that even when it took all his strength to get up out of his wheelchair, he’d stand to attention as if he was still a child playing at soldiers.’
‘He sounds like a right handful.’
‘He was – drove my mum mad. If you’d asked him if it had all been worth it, he would have said yes. But he would have said it while remembering all the friends he’d lost, all the men he’d killed, all the suffering, all the fear, all the cruelty and callousness. I never said anything to him, but I did used to wonder if he really thought it had been worth it. He had nightmares, not every night; enough of them, though, that I knew about them. Stanislav? It was a thing that had to be done. Bell? Better leave it undone and make a mistake. We’re talking about killing: you can’t take it back.’
When his grandfather had died, those few of his compatriots left, who’d served with him and who’d also made their homes in Britain, gathered together at his house. They’d made a curious group, telling their stories, moustaches bristling, beards white as snow, turbans bright and tall. For brief moments, they shifted from little old men, coloured ribbons signifying past battles, to lions, fierce and terrifying, kirpans like claws, banners held high. The little children running around their legs knew nothing of war but its glamour and finery, even though they were both war’s legacy and its future combatants.
‘Bell’s going to hate me, that’s for sure.’ They’d reached the collapsed gatehouse, and together they slowly, carefully, climbed up the broken blocks to the top. He noticed the way she unselfconsciously waited for him to raise his foot to the next step before helping him up.
The tower was burning itself out. The roof had collapsed into the room below – whatever had been there, be it treasure or merely mundane, was lost for certain.
‘Do you think they made it out?’
‘Mama’s a tough old girl,’ said Mary. ‘She doesn’t take any messing, and it’s not like we don’t know how to run from fire.’
Flames were flickering behind the slits in the next storey down. It would all burn by morning, leaving nothing but a fragile, baked shell. The guardhouse? No. Not there. The only other substantial building still standing was the prison and the adjacent pit. As long as a stray spark didn’t carry, it was as safe as anywhere.
It had looked so substantial as to be timelessly permanent. Yet it had grown from the ground, and to the ground it would return. Down was capriciously generous, its gifts more often than not coming with a double edge.
Mary squinted against the brightness of the fire, peering into the shadows. ‘I can’t see them.’
The tower rumbled, and a fresh halo of smoke puffed out. The flames shifted and rose higher.
‘Try there.’ He indicated the door he’d once run out of, in the hope of escape. ‘We barred it before we got into the tower, but if they’re there, they can unblock it.’
‘The guards broke it down,’ she said. ‘Getting in shouldn’t be too hard.’
‘If not—’ He stopped himself. If the others were dead, and it was just him and Mary, then he was never going to be able to climb up to the bridge. He’d have to – again – leave it to Mary: she could fly up to the parapet, fearlessly navigate the unfamiliar dark, drag the furniture away from the door and finally appear smiling at the opening.
They started the slow descent from the gatehouse to the courtyard below. The wind was blowing north, chasing the storm away, and the pit lay to the south and west of the tower, so that even though the fire was intense, its worst effects were kept away from the squat building’s roof: scorched, yes, but not quite hot enough to cause ignition.
Dalip could feel the heat on his skin, though, as hot as it had been on the Underground. He knew that she felt it too, in her slowly increasing unwillingness to get closer. The guard-house door had been splintered and the pieces pushed back together again hard against the frame. There was hope.
He raised his fist and banged it ineffectually against the wood.
‘That’s not going to get anyone’s attention,’ she said, and used her own hand to batter at it. ‘
Hey! Hey, it’s Mary and Dalip. Open up. Mama? Elena? Luiza?’
She propped Dalip against the doorstep, and moved back to shout into the night.
‘Mama? Mama?’
Then he thought he heard something from inside, close by rather than the cracking and roaring of burning.
‘Dalip?’
‘We’re here,’ he called. ‘Let us in.’
After a while, when he felt as baked as a bread, the door edged back.
‘Are you sure it’s you?’ asked Mama’s voice.
‘As sure as I can be,’ said Dalip, and Mary scowled at the opening.
‘Just open the fucking door.’
‘You have a bad mouth on you, girl,’ said Mama. She reached out and caught Dalip as he started to slide around the opening, resting him against her for a moment and beckoning for a chair.
It was mercifully cool inside, protected from the heat by the thick stone walls. Though it was dark, reflected red light shifted through the narrow window openings.
‘What happened to Stanislav?’ Luiza waited for Mary, then pushed the door closed. She started to shift the furniture back across the gap.
‘It’s … We dealt with it.’ He was very tired, very bruised, and felt as if his skeleton had been liquidised.
‘Did you kill him?’ She was very direct, and he did her the courtesy of doing the same.
‘Yes. Or at least, if he’s not, then it’s beyond me and probably anyone else.’
‘And Bell? Did you see her?’
‘Yes, we saw her. She attacked us, tried to kill us.’
‘So she is dead too?’
He looked at Mary, who turned instead to stare intently around the room.
‘No. But she won’t trouble us again. She knows she can’t beat—’ Us, he was about to say, but it wasn’t him Bell was afraid of. ‘Not while we have Mary.’
Luiza glanced at her, started to form an objection, then shrugged. ‘Just as long as we are safe.’
It was a strange kind of safe: sheltering in his former prison, while the tower next door burnt to the ground, the dead lying both inside and out while the castle collapsed around them. But safe nevertheless: they weren’t going to come to any further harm, at least for that night.
‘Bell,’ said Mary. ‘We could have done without her. You were supposed to keep an eye on her.’
‘Oh hush, girl,’ said Mama. ‘She changed, right there in that room. How were we supposed to stop her from just flying away? One moment, she’s this tattered princess, the next she’s a dragon, all claws and teeth, knocking things over and sending us running. Dalip’s right: we can’t fight her – but you can.’
She thought about that for a while, finally concluding, ‘Whatever.’
‘So what do we do now?’ said Elena quietly. ‘We still cannot go back.’
‘What were we going to do?’ Dalip found enough strength to scrub his face with his fingers. ‘Find the geomancer and ask her to tell us more about the world. You can’t say we haven’t learnt more, more than we wanted to. We’ve lost Grace, we’ve … lost Stanislav.’ Lost was the appropriate word to use: they’d lost her because she’d gone on alone, without them, and they’d lost him because he’d lost himself, given himself up to his base instincts. ‘We know that the door we came through has gone, possibly destroyed by the fire that pushed us here in the first place. But there are other doors, which still work, and there are people this side trying to open them. We need to find out where they are, and maybe try something different. We know we can’t really trust anyone else, so we have to trust each other.’
He lost steam. He’d done enough for today: they were no longer slaves, the castle had fallen, their gaolers had been killed or they’d run away, the threat of the dragon had been neutralised. He was wearing a sort of patka, he’d used his kirpan to protect his friends. His bangles and his comb – that would have to wait, but he felt that the gurus would be pleased with his efforts: he’d lived up to their ideal of the warrior-priest. All he wanted to do now was sleep, and see what the next day brought. Hopefully, it’d be quieter. Bell was still out there, and he hadn’t forgotten about the wolfman. But if they all stuck together, it wasn’t beyond them to cope with Down.
‘We cannot stay here.’ Elena gestured at the darkened room. ‘This is not ours. Nothing here is.’
‘We can go to the White City,’ said Mary.
‘Do you even know where that is?’
‘I know a man who does. And that’s what we’re going to do: find him, and we’ll get not just my map, but his maps and Bell’s maps too. That’ll make us rich, at least here in Down.’
‘And just how are we going to find this Crows?’ Mama raised her gaze to the ceiling. ‘He’ll be long gone, Mary, and even if you can fly now, which is all kinds of preposterous, you’re not going to see him again.’
‘The clue’s in the name,’ said Mary, and Dalip, tired even of this slight bickering, told her plainly.
‘The wolfman has wolves in the same way Crows has crows. They’re not real crows, they’re parts of him; he uses them to see where he isn’t and they have senses that he doesn’t. Find a flock of crows, and that might well be him. Mary can search from the sky, and we’ll follow on foot. He can’t both carry his maps and get away from us.’
‘And his maps are what we need, not him.’ Mary snorted, but even if everyone else was fooled, Dalip wasn’t. He could tell she liked this Crows, even though he’d stolen what was hers and had abandoned her to her fate.
‘We leave in the morning, then,’ said Luiza, as if the matter was settled, and by saying, settled it herself. ‘We sleep here together. It will be safer.’ She didn’t want to venture further inside, any more than any of the others did. Pigface was dead in the corridor, and his colleague in one of the cells. She walked over to the fireplace, to see if she could coax some life out of it, even though it was perfectly warm.
A fire, one of human beings’ most primal enemies was also one of their most primal needs.
They agreed that someone should keep watch at all times, just because they didn’t want to be seen as stupid. The five of them would split up the remaining night easily enough, and Mama was worried about Dalip so suggested taking his shift too.
Even though he insisted, he suspected that they wouldn’t wake him when it came to his turn. There was beer in the room, weak but it still made his head spin. There was bread, from which he seemed to have the largest piece, but arguing over that seemed pointless. He ate, and he drank, and curled up in an uncomfortable corner to sleep.
Despite everything, he dropped off, and despite everything, he woke again.
It was still dark – no, it was now properly dark. The firelight glow from the burning tower had gone, and only the faint red smear of their own hearth showed. Mary sat in a chair facing it, her back bent and her elbows on her knees. Her spring-coils of hair curtained her face, and she didn’t move, didn’t even acknowledge his presence until he’d settled into a chair next to her, grunting with the effort of motion.
‘You all right?’ she asked. She spoke softly, and the three other figures in the room didn’t stir.
‘I’ll live.’ He was bruised and battered, but actually, he felt like he’d earned his stripes. Each welt was his by right.
‘You should get some more kip. We don’t know how far we’ll have to cover in the morning, and catching Crows isn’t going to be easy. You can walk right past him and not even see him, though that might only be at night. I don’t know what we’ll do if he wants to make a fight of it.’
‘Do you think he will?’ He looked at her carefully, judging her mood by how tense her body was as he couldn’t see her expression.
‘He doesn’t fight. He avoids fights. That’s what probably got him here, Down: he ran away until he couldn’t run any further. He’s got scars from when they caught him. I think he’
s as scared of Down as we are, he just hides it better.’
‘Is that what we are? Scared?’
She dragged her hair out of the way and tilted her head towards him.
‘I don’t know what’s happening to me. I can do stuff like you can only do in films, except this is real.’
‘I used to be scared of heights,’ he admitted. ‘I couldn’t even climb ladders.’
‘Fuck off,’ she said. ‘You threw yourself off a fucking cliff. You expected me to catch you.’
‘I climbed up the outside of Bell’s tower and through a window. Just hanging there, in space, only my fingers and toes in the gaps between the stones. I should’ve been terrified. I wasn’t.’ He stared into the embers. ‘You’re not the only one who’s changed.’
‘Look, Dalip. Everyone’s asleep but us. I wanted to … I …’ She couldn’t manage it, whatever it was she was trying to say. ‘Forget it.’
He genuinely didn’t know what she wanted to tell him. What if she said she liked him? Romantically? He had no experience of that sort of thing, at all, ever. Perhaps just the once, then, and he’d been too scared to act on it, even to talk to the girl in question. What would he have said to his parents afterwards? Easier by far to keep silent and not bring shame on himself or his family.
‘Go on.’ The words formed by themselves. He didn’t know where they came from.
She struggled on. ‘I’ve never had a friend that I haven’t let down. You know, badly, so they dump me like I’m a sack of shit.’ She was shaking, despite the warmth of the room. ‘When you jumped, and pulled me after you, you were going to die, and I wasn’t. But you knew I was going to catch you, even before I did. I’ve never had anyone trust me with as much as you did. I don’t … understand that.’
