The White City

by Simon Morden

  She passed up the map, and he took it reluctantly, inspecting it almost sideways, as if to give himself an excuse for not resolving the lines and marks.

  ‘This,’ he began, ‘is not straightforward. There are inlets and promontories, bays and islands. The shape and nature of the land is complicated.’

  ‘We know,’ she said. ‘But we have no idea what we’re doing here. Dalip’s right: if you want this finished, we need someone who can at least give us a start.’

  ‘The reason,’ said Simeon, ‘I keep all this knowledge in my head is so the geomancers can never take advantage of it. A drawn map of it all? By God, I hadn’t thought about the implications of this.’

  She stood before him. She didn’t know what else to do. It didn’t seem right to bat her eyelids or wheedle. Her pitch had to stand on its own two feet or fall under its own weight. ‘This is the way we break the geomancers, or not. If it doesn’t work, we can have a big bonfire of it all.’

  The decision appeared to almost break him. He shuddered and squirmed, turning away and turning back. In the end, he said, ‘Very well.’ He got down on his hands and knees, and silently started to order the fragments to make a seamless whole.

  Not quite seamless. As he worked, he pushed pieces of paper this way and that, creating gaps where there was missing coastline, and overlapping some where there was continuity. When he’d done that, he turned whole sections to represent the actual geography of Down.

  It was, Mary guessed, the first time this had ever happened, and she was a witness to it.

  While Simeon was still working, she looked for her own map, and finally spotted it, right at the centre of what was emerging: a block of land thrust out into the sea. To the east and west, the land retreated – to the east, a long, finger-like bay, studded with islands, to the west, the open ocean.

  ‘Is this what it looks like?’

  ‘I suppose it does,’ said Simeon. He stepped back and raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘From the sea, you’re presented with a line, cliffs or hills or dunes or estuaries, and you make sense of it that way. You know what’s before you, and what’s to port and starboard, where the safe havens are and where the dangerous coasts lie.’

  ‘This is where we started,’ she said, and she pointed. ‘Here. We walked inland along the river to about here. Crows’ castle is over here. Bell’s, up here, between the two mountains.’

  ‘We found you, Singh, just here.’

  ‘There’s a portal on this island. Opens up during the plague.’

  ‘And I started over here.’ Simeon dabbed his finger down on the far side of the landmass. ‘My lodgings were in Guildford Street.’

  Dalip squeezed in between them. ‘We were in Down Street. That’s only a couple of miles away.’

  ‘And yet here that is a distance of some hundred miles.’

  ‘If you controlled the portals, you could cover that in half an hour. You’d not even have to break into a run.’

  ‘Such is the power offered by this prize.’ He gave the maps one last look. ‘You’ve plenty more work ahead, so I’ll take my leave. When we can source the materials to aid you, I’ll send them along. My first priority is to deal with that damnable rifleman.’

  He left them, with Mary squinting at the outline, trying to see a pattern.

  ‘I don’t get it.’

  ‘I don’t think we’re meant to yet.’ Dalip looked at the unsorted maps. ‘We have to try and make a record of what we have so far, even if it’s rough.’

  ‘We’ve got no paper, no cloth, no pens and no pencils.’

  ‘There’s a pen and ink back on the ship.’

  ‘Everything we need is back on your ship or mine.’ She pressed her lips together. ‘This is stupid. There’s one rifle in the whole of Down and it’s pointing at us. We have to be able to do something about that. I mean, we’ve done plenty of stupid shit already.’

  ‘You can’t turn into a giant bird,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to think of something else.’

  ‘All we need is a fucking pencil and paper. How hard can that be? Anywhere else and we’d nip round the shops. Here, we have to make it our fucking selves.’ Her gaze fell on the bag she’d made for the maps. ‘Open that up. Cut the thread until it goes flat.’ It was her turn to say: ‘I’ll be right back.’

  She climbed down the nearest ladder, not particularly caring if anyone was at the bottom. She ran out into the courtyard, where some of the pirates lazed and played dice. It had gone dark again, and she hadn’t even noticed. The sky was a deep, dark blue, while the square yard was lit with lanterns. It looked, for a moment, like one of those classical paintings they’d shown her to try and interest her in something, anything, other than getting into trouble. The light was warm, illuminating the crew’s faces and casting soaring shadows against the pale stone walls.

  And she stood in the middle of it, a girl in a red dress.

  It wasn’t what she was here for. She oriented herself, and headed for the place where she’d eaten her bowl of food, and the woman had pulled her face away.

  When she found it, she saw that the fireplace, far from being cold, was blazing away, flickering bright flames from the pile of wood that was burning.

  To the half-dozen people present she said: ‘What did you do with the ashes?’

  They hadn’t done anything with the ashes. They’d just knocked them to one side, and built a new fire. She could feel the heat on her face and arms as she approached and crouched down. The logs crackled and spat, and the pops they made startled her, making her jerk back, much to everyone’s amusement.

  She wasn’t with them, even though Simeon had extended some sort of protection over her. With the fire in her face, she was intensely aware that she was blind behind her. She ignored the feeling, got out her dagger, and started gingerly fishing around in the white ash. She’d scrape around for as long as she could, then pull her hand back to cool off.

  She had retrieved a few small pieces of charcoal, and was in the middle of recovering the mother lode, a piece the length of her finger, when she realised the laughing had stopped and apart from the spitting fire, the room had grown quiet.

  ‘Whatever you think I’ve done, you’re wrong,’ she said. She didn’t turn around.

  ‘She is dead,’ said Elena.

  ‘I know. I was there. If I could’ve stopped it, I would.’

  ‘You made a deal with Crows.’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘You betrayed him like you betrayed Luiza.’

  ‘I lied to him because I didn’t want him to get away with it. I never lied to you. I’ve never lied to you.’ That was probably a lie, too, but she had her fingers on the precious stick. She dragged it back and let it lie on the hearthstone. She was sweating, and not just because of the heat.

  ‘You are being protected because of the maps you stole. The maps Luiza died over.’

  Mary straightened up, dagger in hand.

  ‘Elena, have you done something we’re all going to regret?’

  Elena, white and pinch-faced, said nothing.

  ‘Those maps are your ticket out of here. What kind of fucking idiot would destroy that, just to get back at me, over something I haven’t even done?’

  Still nothing.

  ‘Where’s Sebastian?’

  The other people in the room had silently travelled from being neutral observers to being actively interested in the outcome of the confrontation playing out in front of them. One of them scraped a chair as he rose, and headed out into the night. Another quickly followed. The rest moved to block the doorway.

  ‘If anything’s happened to Dalip, I’ll run you through myself,’ she said. She was trembling. But there was nothing she could do.

  24

  It hadn’t taken him long. Once he’d loosened all the cords and opened the cloak out, there wasn’t much left to
do. He’d work a seam loose to the point where he could nick the thread with the edge of his machete, and gradually pull the pieces apart, stopping every so often to cut the thread again. He was left with the long back panel and the sides, which eventually lay flat on the floor like a flayed white skin.

  When he heard footsteps, he thought it was her. He looked up, and saw that it wasn’t.

  Perhaps, if he hadn’t already had his machete in his hand, it would have ended very quickly and very differently.

  The sword came down towards his head. He raised his own arm and just about deflected the blow down to his left. His hand went numb with the shock of impact and he knew he wouldn’t be able to block again, so he threw himself at his attacker.

  Dalip’s head caught him square in the ribs, lifting him off his feet and spilling him backwards into an unforgiving wall. Dazed, they fell together, and Dalip clamped his good hand around Sebastian’s wrist.

  From then on, it was down to two factors: brute strength and who was willing to fight dirtiest. They were evenly matched on the first. Dalip was hopelessly outclassed on the second. He endured the punches, gouges, kicks, and bites, and simply hung on, making sure that whatever happened, Sebastian couldn’t use his sword.

  He was aware that maps were getting crushed and muddled as they struggled. If he’d have had the time, he would have suggested they take their disagreement to a different room. But, however worried he was about redoing the work, he was more worried about keeping his guts inside his skin.

  He managed to spread his legs wide, brace himself against the floorboards, and tuck his head tight up under Sebastian’s chin. He stretched, forcing the other man’s neck into an unnatural angle, and gradually he felt the attacks lessen and the defensive twisting and prising increase.

  Then Sebastian was abruptly limp underneath Dalip. At first, he thought it might be a ruse, some trick to get him to give up the slight advantage he’d gained. Then, that it was something he’d done, but couldn’t figure out what.

  ‘S’over.’

  ‘Dawson?’

  Dalip shook Sebastian’s pinned hand and rattled the sword free, then levered himself up on his hands and knees. A fat, short dagger, much like Dawson himself, protruded from Sebastian’s right eye.

  ‘He’s bleeding on the maps,’ was Dalip’s instinctive response. He pushed the nearest pieces of paper away, but there was one under Sebastian’s head. He shoved the body over and freed it, plucking it away with a drop of crimson clinging to one edge.

  ‘All right?’ asked Dawson, almost conversationally.

  Dalip checked himself. He didn’t feel as bad as when he’d gone three rounds with Bell, so he thought he was definitely going to live. Scratched, bruised and sore, yes, but his orange overall had saved him from the worst of the damage.

  ‘Yes. I’ll – I’ll be fine.’

  There was another man behind Dawson. Together they lifted Sebastian’s body up, paused as Dalip checked for any scrap of paper that might have got stuck, then carried it away.

  He allowed himself a moment’s rest, before gathering together the spilled maps and storing them safely away from the blood. He picked up his machete, and Sebastian’s sabre. His heavier weapon didn’t look to have suffered, but the sword was bent out of true. No wonder his hand still hurt.

  Lighter footsteps hurried closer. ‘Are you … ?’

  He was still holding both swords when he turned towards her. ‘I’m mostly okay. And the maps are, too. A couple of them are a bit foxed, but I don’t think we disturbed any of the ones Simeon laid out.’

  ‘You killed …’

  ‘Dawson intervened. I wasn’t losing, but I wasn’t winning either. How did he know to come and rescue me?’

  Mary held out her hands and showed him the charcoal. ‘I was getting this. Elena started talking, and she just let it slip, in a room full of people.’

  ‘Whatever happened, I’m grateful. Grateful I didn’t die, at least.’

  ‘And you saved the maps.’ She pressed a sooty hand against his breastbone, leaving a dark smudge after the momentary contact. ‘Fuck. That was close.’

  ‘Just when you think you’ve made progress, something like this knocks you back.’ He threw Sebastian’s sword into a corner. ‘What’s going to happen to her?’

  ‘Elena? I don’t know. Depends, doesn’t it?’ Mary bent down and straightened some of the maps. ‘If you want, one of us can go and stick her with a shiv.’

  ‘What? No!’

  ‘Or we can let Captain Simeon handle it. I mean, that’s what used to happen at the homes I was in.’

  ‘You let a pirate deal with any fights?’

  She shrugged. ‘That would probably have worked out better.’

  ‘We can’t just leave her to …’ And now it was his turn. Simeon was going to do whatever it was he usually did, and no special pleading on his part was going to change that. Sebastian was dead, Dawson had killed him, and that was that part over. The captain might consider it to be the end of the matter. He might want to – banish? maroon? – her. He might want to tie her to the mast and give her a lick of the cat-o’-nine-tails. Or something equally piratical. Expediency was going to win out over mercy: keeping the crew working together was going to be the most important consideration, not any pleas for clemency.

  ‘Can’t leave her to what?’

  ‘Maybe we have to leave her after all.’

  ‘She tried to have what’s-his-face kill you and destroy the maps, so that no one would mind when he came for me. That’s seriously fucked up, and I don’t know where she’s going to go after that.’ Mary spread the sailcloth cloak out on the ground, and laid the charcoal on the floor next to it. Her tongue went between her teeth as she concentrated. ‘At least the rest of the crew seem to be on our side.’

  Dalip squatted down next to her, still breathing heavily. ‘Can you do this? Can you still do this, after everything that just happened?’

  ‘Art was about the only thing I was ever better at than the other kids. I graffitied a few walls in my time, and stuff like that. I’m not fucking Leonardo, but I can draw what’s in front of me.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant,’ he said.

  She took a deep breath and picked up the burnt stick. ‘I don’t have a choice. Pull the cloth. Not so tight it wrinkles, but it mustn’t move.’

  He shuffled around so he could do that without impeding her movement.

  ‘This isn’t what I thought I’d be doing this morning,’ he said.

  ‘Me neither.’ She started the line on her left, slowly, deliberately, moving to her right in one continuous movement. The coast of Down – a small part of the vastness of a different world – appeared.

  Sometimes she would stop and squint at the maps that Simeon had laid out, the end of the charcoal stick hovering over the unfinished line. Sometimes she would tut and scowl at the marks she’d just made. But she never went back. She drew the massive thrust of land projecting southwards, that contained the promontory they had first arrived on, the estuary where they’d first caught fish and encountered Crows and the Wolfman. Then back out into uncharted territory. The deep intrusion of water, that had to be a hundred miles long, twenty wide. And another block of land, its sea-face heading north-north-west, before being broken by another long inlet, and the end of Simeon’s knowledge.

  She went back along the line, marking in the portals and the castles. Some were on the coast, like theirs. Many were not and, by making the dots inland, she pushed back the boundary of unknown territory. There didn’t seem to be a pattern to it, at least for now, but Dalip was hopeful. All the other maps would go north of the coastline. Some would be duplicates, some would be impossible to place because they didn’t relate to any other part of the map. Either they had all the information they needed, or not enough. There was still room for educated guesses to fill that gap.

&n
bsp; ‘How does it look?’ she asked.

  ‘Like an actual map.’ It did too. It looked like a real map, with names, and a history.

  ‘That’s a start, I suppose.’ Her voice was slightly huffy.

  ‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ said Dalip. ‘I meant it looks like a place that exists.’

  ‘You shouldn’t act all surprised by that. It does exist. Otherwise it wouldn’t hurt so much.’

  ‘I should know all about that. But I still struggle. Here, not so much. It feels like it’s real here. Out there, it’s … the magic. I still baulk at accepting it.’

  ‘Even when you know it’s changed you?’ She looked up from the map for a moment.

  ‘And where magic doesn’t work, I change back. I realised when I went for the hooded … thing down by the river. I should have just knocked him off his feet. It was like hitting the side of a truck. I kept on going, and I gave it everything I had, and it almost wasn’t enough. I discovered I’ve lost whatever it is I’d gained, and I never felt more human.’

  ‘Then the fight between you and Sebastian … ?’

  ‘Was just me against him. Away from the White City, I could probably have disarmed him and let him live. Here, it was all I could do to get him to the ground and keep him there. And he died not because I was strong, but because I was weak. I needed Dawson to help me. I needed help.’ He picked up the egg and held it cool in his hand. ‘I have to face facts. I don’t want to be a hero. I don’t want to be a warrior. I’m not my grandfather. I’m a better person when I’m weak and vulnerable and scared.’ He blew out a stream of air, and changed the subject. ‘This would still be much better hanging from the ceiling, like a light bulb.’

  Mary punched his arm. ‘You do all right.’

  ‘You concentrate on the maps. I’ll be back with something. At least, now we should be able to move around the building without worrying about getting stabbed.’

  He left her with the egg, marking the coastline maps with consecutive numbers, copying those same numbers on to the cloth to show where the information had come from. It was meticulous: something he’d never thought of her as being.