The White City

by Simon Morden

  ‘I’m not everyone else.’ She was pleased with that, and now the woman’s expression softened slightly.

  ‘What do you want from me, girl?’

  Mary took the opportunity to ask the most pressing thing on her mind: ‘Who do I have to kill round here to get some food? You?’

  The woman looked pointedly around the room. ‘You’ll find me singularly indigestible.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that. Though, do they do that here?’

  ‘Not … not here.’ She equivocated. ‘What happens in the rest of Down isn’t my concern.’

  ‘Oh, well that makes it so much better.’ Mary put her full purse on the table in front of her, and opened it up. Fortunately, the iron key had worked its way down, and stayed hidden. ‘So how much is this going to cost me? And what exactly’s on offer here? If it’s not answers or food, or both, I’m going somewhere else.’

  ‘There is nowhere else. It’s here or the road.’

  ‘There are plenty of other doors to try.’

  ‘You can try them all, but none of the others will open to you. You want to talk to someone, you have to talk to me.’

  Mary dipped her hand into her honours and skimmed some off the top. She let them fall back into the pile, one at a time. ‘If that’s the case, why do I have these?’

  ‘Tradition.’

  ‘I think you’re lying. I think if I walk out of here and ask around, I can get a better deal.’

  ‘You want food?’

  ‘I want food.’

  ‘Wait here.’ The woman stood up and went to the door.

  Mary stayed precisely where she was just long enough for the woman’s footsteps to echo away, then sprung from her seat to explore the room.

  It didn’t take her long: what little there was was on view. There was no clutter, no debris, nothing of normal life, just the dust of age. There should have been something, though, in a corner or under a shelf. But the room had been picked clean long before she’d got there. She eyed the ceiling hooks suspiciously and went to the window, to peer out across the courtyard.

  Nothing else stirred. She could hear the river’s deep rumble, and that was all. Which was why, when she turned her head and saw another man leaning out of the next room along, doing the same as her, she gave an involuntary squeak.

  He stared at her without blinking, his wide, dark-ringed eyes full of desperation and regret.

  ‘What?’ she said, recovering. ‘Seriously, what? You’re giving me the fear.’

  ‘You’re not one of them,’ he finally managed.

  ‘One of them?’

  ‘A Lord or Lady,’ said the man, scraping his long, thinning hair up over the top of his head.

  ‘Are you saying I’ve got no manners?’

  ‘The rulers of the White City, I mean. You must have seen them.’

  ‘I’ve not met any kings or queens, if that’s what you mean.’

  The man leaned forward, gripping the window frame. ‘You should get yourself away,’ he said to Mary. ‘Refuse to give them anything. This place. This whole place. It’s nothing but a trap.’

  ‘But I’m here for answers!’

  ‘That’s what they want you to think.’ He was leaning so far out of the window he was almost falling into the courtyard. ‘They put this rumour about that they can answer all your questions, and maybe they can, but what they do is take everything that you know and give you back nowt. A little bit here, a little bit there, but it doesn’t make anything clearer.’ He nervously glanced behind him, then at Mary. ‘We come from all over Down, fight our way here, die on our way here, and for what? I had a friend. A good pal. He … changed. Couldn’t help him. I’m left wondering when it’ll be my turn.’

  They stared at each other in silence for a moment.

  ‘Go,’ he urged. ‘While you still can.’

  Then he was jerked away, dragged back in to his room by unseen hands. She spun around and found that she was being watched from the doorway. The woman, now carrying a steaming bowl, narrowed her eyes.

  ‘What did I tell you?’

  Her tone was perilously close to that of a school teacher, but Mary was sufficiently alarmed not to rise to the obvious bait. ‘To wait here. And I did. Who was that? And what did he mean, this place is a trap?’

  ‘Don’t concern yourself about him. He ran out of honour, and has to leave. That’s all.’ She put the bowl on the table, and shoved it in Mary’s direction. The smell was slight, but it triggered all of Mary’s hunger.

  What it was exactly was difficult to identify – some sort of stew. But as she was having to focus on not dribbling, she realised she didn’t care. Even with the man’s warning ringing in her ears, she was drawn towards the bowl, and the crudely carved spoon protruding from the brown mess.

  A few minutes later, she glanced up. The woman was watching her with amused detachment.

  ‘What? I’m fucking starving.’

  She scraped the edge of the spoon across the grain of the wood and thought about picking it up to lick it clean. She just about stopped herself. She pushed the bowl away, and hoped there’d be an offer of seconds, but there was none forthcoming.

  The woman started to circle the table, and Mary kept a wary eye on her, her hand resting on the dagger.

  ‘Why don’t we start with your name?’

  ‘Why don’t we start with yours?’

  ‘You’ve nothing to bargain with, girl.’

  ‘So what are these for?’ Mary threw a handful of honour on to the table, where they rattled and rolled. ‘I came for answers, not questions.’

  ‘You’re just another squib. Come back when you know something.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere. I’ve done things you wouldn’t even believe, that I couldn’t imagine anyone doing, let alone me. Now I’m finally here, in what’s supposed to be Down’s only city.’ She pushed her seat back and brandished her dagger. ‘I’ve had enough. If you know what the fuck’s going on, you’re going to tell me.’

  ‘If we gave you the dagger,’ she said, ‘what makes you think it can be used against me?’

  ‘You bleed the same as me.’

  She didn’t confirm or deny that, just continued circling and moving out of Mary’s immediate range. ‘Can you use magic?’ she asked.

  Mary wondered what Dalip would say. ‘Why don’t you tell me what magic is and where it comes from, and I’ll tell you if I can use it.’

  Another question was poised on the woman’s lips, but she instead sat down opposite Mary. ‘We’ve started off on the wrong foot,’ she said. ‘I know you’ve come here looking for answers. We’re looking for answers too. Think of it as pooling our information. We stay here, and we record what travellers tell us about what’s happening in Down. We try and make sense of this world, so we can help those who come to us.’

  ‘That man next door: did you help him? Or did you do a number on him, slap him around a bit, work him over for what he knows? Because he didn’t look very helped.’

  ‘Some people expect us to have all the answers, and are disappointed when we don’t.’ She gave a theatrical shrug. ‘Coming to Down doesn’t appear to require any sort of test of intelligence or wisdom.’

  ‘Well, you got here,’ said Mary, and saw that she’d momentarily got to the woman. But rather than annoyance, there was blank-faced confusion that flicked on, then off. Something was definitely going on, and she didn’t know what. One last try, then. ‘That bloke: the one I talked to, the one who was telling me to run. I want to see him again.’

  ‘And what good would that do? He doesn’t have any answers.’

  ‘Neither do you, it seems. For all this “let’s hold hands and share everything” patter, you’re not giving anything away, are you? He was right. This is … fake.’

  ‘Sit down, girl.’

  ‘Fuck you.’ />
  ‘You know this isn’t how it’s supposed to work, don’t you? You’re supposed to come here, and tell us your stories of where you came from, and what you’ve seen, and then we send you back out, just as ignorant as when you arrived, to get more information for us. Sometimes you even come back, you’re that pliable. That gullible.’

  The door was the other side of the table, and the woman between it and Mary. But there was always the window at her back, and Mary was no stranger to using one as an exit.

  ‘For those who see through the charade, it’s a little different. We make you tell us. We make you tell us everything.’ The woman reached up and peeled her face away, dragging it off like it was a scab. The skull underneath was moist and running with a pink fluid. She gasped like she was coming up for air as her exposed white bone started to dry.

  ‘Fuck.’

  It wasn’t a skull. It was a mask. White, porcelain, oddly beautiful; anorexic-model beautiful, with immobile features, huge dark eyes, and cheekbones like knife-blades. She pulled her hand down across her forehead, her nose, her chin, and flicked the last of the slime on to the floor. Her pale, matt features were almost, but not quite, human. Then she pulled her hair off her egg-like head and held it nonchalantly in her hand.

  Mary grabbed her bag of honours, and was up and over the windowsill before anyone could stop her. Now, if only she could remember the way out.

  No, she was good at this: she knew which door to run for, how to barge through it without stopping, how to scan the corridor ahead for obstacles and threats. She was already at the outer door by the time the first figure blocked out the light at the other end.

  ‘There’s no need for this,’ called the woman. ‘You won’t get away.’

  ‘The fuck I won’t,’ said Mary to herself. Her heart was banging its way out of her chest, just like the old days when she was dodging the foot traffic on Oxford Street, uniforms a distant second. It took her a moment to wrestle with the unfamiliar door mechanism, and she was outside, looking around and panting.

  Except she still wasn’t alone.

  Coming down the dirt road was a loose knot of people. Two wore long, floor-length electric-blue robes, with white masks peering out from under their hoods. Two were just men, grey and dirty-looking. And one was Crows.

  It was the colour that startled her most. Where did they get the material from? She’d seen nothing like it so far in all of Down: they were like parakeets in the park, in amongst the browns and greys and blacks of the other birds. The fact that Crows was with them dragged her mind back to the moment.

  He looked no different from when she’d last seen him, climbing up the cliff. The same serious smile, the same self-deprecating manner.

  ‘What have you done?’ she snapped at him. ‘You didn’t tell them, did you? Say you didn’t tell them.’

  There was movement behind her, and she swung around, backing into the road, standing between the two groups. The woman stepped out just beyond the threshold, and two more men were behind her. At least, she assumed it was the woman from the clothing. The white mask she showed was identical to those the two in blue wore.

  Mary was confused. And scared. And angry.

  Crows edged forward, not wishing to leave his … friends? Allies? Shit. This was why he’d wanted to bring the maps to the White City.

  ‘They are not yours, Mary. It is time to give them up.’

  ‘They’re not here, and I’ll never tell you where they are.’

  ‘They know they’re in the valley, Mary. They know. The ferryman is one of them, and he saw you with a sack of what could only be the maps.’

  ‘What do you get, Crows? What do you get in return?’

  ‘Down.’ He looked almost embarrassed as he said it. ‘I get Down. These good people: they will rule here. And I will rule the rest.’

  ‘Is that what they told you? You think that’s what they’ll do?’

  ‘Once the maps are assembled, and the shape of Down finally revealed, yes. They are not that interested in us. They care nothing for us. Once I have served their purposes, then I will claim my reward.’

  ‘You want the maps, Crows?’ She levelled her dagger over the distance between them, pointed directly at his heart. ‘Why don’t you come and take them?’

  ‘That is not how we do things, Mary. Come. Be reasonable.’

  ‘Reasonable? Reasonable? You killed Luiza. I’ll give you fucking reasonable.’ She lunged at him, and he retreated rapidly.

  ‘Daniel has paid for his sins.’ Crows held his hands up. ‘I work only for the greater good.’

  ‘No.’ She whirled around to address the woman. ‘If you don’t stop him, then whatever game you have here is finished. He’ll screw you over just like he screwed me.’

  The woman inclined her head. The blue-robed figures did likewise. As if they were listening to another voice. They were deciding her fate, and she couldn’t even hear what was being said.

  They were, however, busy for the moment.

  She glanced to one side: the river, and its precarious stepping stones. Up the valley side and away. She guessed that if she ran, empty-handed, they’d not follow her. On the other side, the road led back towards her locked shelter, and the maps. If she was quick – quicker than the Lords and Ladies and their servants – she could grab them. Then she just had to get past the ferryman and back out into the land of magic.

  And he had a rifle.

  No one was ever going to accuse her of making things easy for herself.

  20

  As they moved inland, the trees grew sparse and stunted: less a majestic cathedral and more an abandoned waste ground. The river cut more deeply, embedding itself between high-sided banks, until it flowed fast and deep.

  The land seemed to funnel itself towards a point in the distance, where slabs of rock reared up out of the valley floor and the river emerged from the high plateau above through a slit. They’d been walking towards it all morning, and they were close now.

  Then, rather than the constant slow rise, there was a dip, just before the river-cut. At the bottom of that bowl of land, there were two jetties facing each other across a point where the water was briefly wide and slack. On the far side, Dalip could see a little square raft of split logs tethered to the pier, and beyond that a tiny shack with the thinnest of banners of blue smoke waving above it.

  They were getting somewhere. Simeon did indeed know the way.

  The river between the piers wasn’t so deep as to prove a particular problem, and the raft looked more of a courtesy than a necessity. At the end of their jetty was a bell on a post. Their captain had already decided that a dozen trips by raft to ferry his raiding party across would go against the spirit of their endeavours. He motioned for them to stay quiet, and enter the river in groups of five.

  Because he was the captain, he was in the first group; and because Dalip was worried about Mary, he was too.

  The water was cold and heavy. He could touch the bottom almost all the way across, his feet churning up the soft silt, the colour of the water downstream becoming milky. They emerged again just below the other jetty, using its uprights to assist their climb up the bank.

  They crouched in the scrub, waiting for the others to cross. Simeon shook the water from his arbalest, and wound the string back using the cranks. The metal arms creaked slightly as they bowed, and the trigger mechanism clicked as it engaged.

  Slowly and steadily, the other groups pulled themselves up and took up positions hidden behind bushes or clumps of wiry grass.

  The inhabitant of the hut showed no sign of having spotted his unannounced visitors, and it became clear that Simeon wouldn’t make their presence known if he could avoid it. He crept forward to have clear sight – and clear aim – of the closed door, and indicated that each group should go on towards the sharp river-made scar in the wall of rock ahead.

/>   None of them used the track which ran by the side of the shack, instead creeping through the undergrowth. If anyone had looked they would have been seen, especially Dalip in his orange overalls. They were, however, quiet. No one heard them, and the sounds of their passing were easily camouflaged by the low rumble of the river and the bright hiss of the wind in the leaves.

  Simeon was the last to leave, his cocked arbalest ready to shoot as he skirted the structure. No one came out to investigate. They passed undiscovered.

  The next obstacle was the narrow path that ran by the river as it pierced the rock wall. The straight-sided slice taken out of the plateau echoed with the sound of white water below, and the wind whipped through, blustering and making it feel far more dangerous than it really was: the path was flat and dry, and the long, snaking line of pirates only had to concentrate on where they were putting their feet to come out the other side.

  The valley widened out into a long scar that followed the course of the river, and after the dim gorge, the acres of bare, pale rock were almost blindingly bright. Dalip moved up further to allow those behind him entrance. He crunched up the scree, shielding his eyes from the glare with one hand.

  He blinked as the scene slowly resolved. There was a crowd of people a little way off, in amongst a series of what looked like half-buried cubes. Beyond them were more substantial buildings, and there were fields and a waterfall and other features, but his gaze was drawn hypnotically back towards the people.

  There were at least two distinct types. One formed an outer perimeter, their pale faces at variance with the block-colour gaudiness of their robes. They seemed to be standing and silently watching as the grey-and-brown workers attempted to dismantle one of the cubes, shouting and swearing as they darted in and out to grab pieces of stone.

  The stone, inexplicably, was fighting back, judging from the number of men clutching their bloodied hands.

  Dalip drew close to Simeon, who was having equal difficulty understanding what was happening.

  ‘Are they mad? Are they taken with drink or poppy juice?’

  ‘I have absolutely no idea.’