by Simon Morden
After wandering from room to room, he eventually sourced a small piece of netting and a sharp tack that would work as a nail. On his way back to what he was already thinking of as the map room, he passed by an open window into the courtyard.
There was a trial going on.
He stopped, then got the best view he could without showing himself. Simeon was centre stage, seated at a table that had been dragged out and placed at one end. The pirate crew were arranged around the sides and the back of the yard, and Elena was on her own, in the middle. She wore a veneer of defiance which, considering Sebastian’s body had been dumped at her feet, was commendable.
If it had been Luiza, she would have spat in Simeon’s eye and damned him to do his worst. It wasn’t Luiza.
Simeon looked almost as resigned to his fate as his prisoner did. He plucked his hat from his head, placed it on the table, and turned it a few times, before looking up.
‘Elena. Did I warn you? Did I warn you both?’
She nodded stiffly.
‘Yet I’ve lost a perfectly decent sailor and a good crewman because you infected him with your particularly pestilential desire for revenge. And the charge for that is singularly unfounded. We’re pirates, if you hadn’t noticed. Lying and cheating and stealing and yes, killing, is our stock in trade – just so long as you remember that once you are taken on as crew, you do not indulge yourself in that behaviour with your fellows.’ He slapped the table top hard, and the noise cracked the hush in the courtyard. ‘That is the iron rule. You do not foul your own bed.’
There were murmurings of assent from the assembly, even from those who previously had to be dragged apart for fighting.
‘You were in no doubt of this. I told you to drop your silly grudge. Now a man, who I could ill afford to lose, is dead, and you’ve placed this whole expedition in jeopardy.’
There was no question which way he was leaning. Everyone could see it. Even Dalip.
‘If we were at sea, I’d put you ashore and give your fate no more thought. Circumstances are currently different, so we must arrive at a different solution. Before I give you your sentence, do you have anything to say in your defence?’
She didn’t. She stood, mute, surrounded by her accusers, knowing that she was guilty and there was no justice except this rough kind.
Simeon picked up his hat, inspected the brim for a moment, then positioned it deliberately on his head.
‘It is my duty to see that your contagion doesn’t spread throughout the crew. You are banished from our company forthwith. Where you go or what you do is no longer any concern of ours, save that you might cause further mischief. With that, and despite that it might be more expedient to allow that damned rifleman to waste a shot on you, you are commanded to cross the river, climb the cliffs and disappear. If we see you again, any one of us, your life is forfeit.’
Dawson stepped forward, took her arm, and started to turn her around. Dalip rushed to the window. ‘Wait.’
Simeon pushed his chair back and took off his hat again.
‘Do you have any criticism of the court, Singh, or my right to preside over it?’
That there was even a court at all had been a surprise. ‘No.’
‘Do you have any criticism of the sentence?’
Given the alternatives, he didn’t. ‘No.’
‘Down is a harsh land, with harsh rules. Perhaps if you’d remembered that earlier, Crows wouldn’t still be around to make his merry tricks.’
Dalip had voted for Crows to stay with them. Luiza had not. He’d been wrong, she’d been right, and there was a direct line between that decision and where they were now.
‘Nothing else, Singh?’
Full of regret, he could only say: ‘No, Captain. Nothing.’
He slunk back to the shadows, and Dawson led her away and out of sight.
Dalip went back to the map room, and busied himself with the light, not trusting himself to say anything. Mary was working on the first batch of inland maps. She’d already made one match, which she’d placed, numbered and drawn on to the cloth.
The ceiling was just too far away for him to reach. Although he only needed something to stand on, even that simple act of temporary failure was enough to make him well up. He wiped his face with his sleeve, and told himself to get it together. He’d behaved honourably. Mary had done nothing wrong, and what had started as the disaster of Luiza’s death had ended in the tragedy of Sebastian’s.
And still he felt responsible for it all. If he’d been wiser, or more assertive, then none of the decisions he’d had a hand in would have piled up into the train wreck of fatal consequences it had become.
A tear fell on to a map at his feet, soaking into the paper. The dark halo expanded across its surface and threatened the drawn lines.
‘Careful,’ said Mary, and looked up. ‘Fuck, Dalip. You all right?’
‘They’ve sent Elena away,’ he said.
‘Not a lot we could’ve done about that.’ She stood up under his arms, brushing them aside. ‘You’re not to blame.’
‘Thing is, I think I am. And I can’t change that.’
She reached up and used her thumb to rub away the line of moisture on his left cheek. He turned his head aside, and she dragged it back.
‘I’ve lived my whole life fucking it up,’ she said. ‘I still am. But here’s the secret: everybody’s doing it. Fucking it up, getting over it, maybe learning from it, maybe not. We’ve got a job to do, possibly the most important job ever, and it’d be really fucking it up if we didn’t give that everything, right now.’
‘How? How can you … ?’
‘Bitter experience. We’re not superheroes. We can’t do it all. This,’ she said, pointing at the floor, ‘this we can do. So let’s get on with it.’
He nodded in acquiescence, and went to find a box to stand on.
25
She stopped when she became too tired to keep her eyes open. He, driven by a force greater than exhaustion, wanted to carry on and she hadn’t the energy to stop him.
At some point, Simeon poked his head around the door frame to see how they were getting on, and at another, Dawson appeared with two bowls of boiled vegetables and little puffy grains.
She’d asked: ‘What are the green bits?’
Dawson had replied: ‘Seaweed, I suppose.’
She’d eaten it all, every last scrap, and despite the urgings of her stomach, made sure that Dalip ate his too. It had tasted slightly salty, and of very little else. It could have been utterly bland, and she’d have still wolfed it down.
And when she slept, she slept hard and deep, exhausted both physically and mentally. She’d turned her back on the bright light now fixed in the middle of the room, and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, Dalip was slumped on the floor. Still kneeling, but with his forehead resting on the boards, his hands invisible in his lap.
She was about to wake him, because sleeping like that? He was going to be so stiff, she’d need an actual iron to straighten him out again. Then she noticed the position of the maps around him, and she pulled back.
To his right, there was a small stack of paper and parchment, some dozen fragments he either couldn’t place or hadn’t quite got around to. The rest of the maps were placed in a way that suggested order, not chaos.
She stepped between them, her bare feet falling softly, taking it all in. The scale – it was the scale that had defeated her, how one map of the same physical length could represent a journey of ten miles or a hundred. Dalip had broken that code. This line here was a part of that line there. He’d marked them all on the cloth, too: not the features on the map, but rather sketched outlines of the coverage of the map. Little rectangular boxes, with tiny numbers, were scattered over the sailcloth like ghosts.
The charcoal was half gone already, and the fragment increasingly dif
ficult to hold. She gripped it as tightly as she dared between her finger and thumb, and started to transfer what was on the maps into their marked areas.
What had been obscure before started to become clear. Rivers now flowed from the distant mountains to the sea, jagged through the highlands and sinuous on the plains. Broad lakes nestled in the lows, and everywhere there was a portal, she drew a little doorframe, two uprights and a crosspiece. Villages became pointy-roofed houses, and castles, tall stone towers like chess pieces.
Down took shape, was given form, and became whole. Some of the detail she omitted, because it wouldn’t show on the map. If she couldn’t imagine seeing it, flying over the land and looking down, it didn’t go on.
As she worked next to the sleeping Dalip, making lines and symbols on the cloth, she realised that she was fulfilling her destiny. She was a Beast. A geomancer. She was revealing the position of the portals across the face of Down. Her breathing became ragged. The portals were joined to other portals by lines of power – no more than three, Crows had said. Or had it been Bell? Villages lay along the lines, castles where they crossed.
She could draw those lines. She could actually draw them. She could fill in the areas of the map for which they had no information. Geography didn’t matter. What was important was the lines, and that she could predict hidden portals, unknown castle-seeds, and boat-birthing points.
She was, momentarily, the most powerful person on Down. She could roll up the map, leave the building on some excuse, and run. Once out of range of the White City, she could fly anywhere, raise a fortress, gather an army and go forth to conquer. The Red Queen needed soldiers, and she’d recruit them from the slave quarters of every geomancer she overthrew.
It wouldn’t even mean stealing anything. All she’d be taking was a copy, just like they said they would when they were bargaining with Crows in the forest. The originals would stay right there, with Dalip.
If she stayed, then she couldn’t keep the map. Simeon’s pirates were stronger than she was. They could do whatever they wanted with it.
‘My lady?’
She gasped and turned around. Simeon stood in the doorway, and she couldn’t help but blush. A wave of guilty heat washed over her and left her nervous and blinking. If he could read her mind, she’d be in real trouble.
‘Captain.’
‘Did I startle you?’
‘I … yes. And he’s asleep, so keep it down.’
‘Then we will repair to an adjacent room.’ His gaze rested on the sailcloth. ‘Bring that with you.’
‘It’s not finished,’ she said, starting to blush all over again. ‘And I don’t want to smudge it. Everything’s going to rub off if we fuck around with it.’
‘Then carry it carefully,’ he said.
She put down the charcoal and picked up her former cloak along one edge, bringing it with her. Simeon stepped through to the next room, and she joined him. He opened the shuttered windows overlooking the courtyard, and weak light filtered in. It had become morning, and she hadn’t noticed.
‘Show me,’ he said.
She laid the cloth down carefully, straightening the edges and tugging out the wrinkles. No one but her had seen it, and she felt she was betraying a confidence by not sharing it with Dalip first.
Simeon’s face set in a mask of concentration. He said nothing for a long while, only shifting his stance slightly as he examined different portions of the map. He made little motions with the tip of his finger, as if he were tracing his own imaginary lines over the top of what Mary had drawn.
Eventually, he stepped back and walked the length of the dusty room and back.
‘Is this what you make of it?’ he asked.
‘It’s the best we can do, given what we’ve got. What d’you think? Is it, I don’t know, right?’
‘The coastline is what I know best. That, I think, we can agree is done with some fair degree of accuracy. There are some islands offshore we can append, though I don’t know what the import of them will be.’
‘One of them has a portal. And the plague. There are skulls along the beach as a warning.’
‘I know it. Here-ish.’ He pointed to a blank portion of cloth. ‘A portal, you say?’
‘Opens up in the middle of the Black Death. Almost everyone who comes through is dying. They burn the bodies so that they don’t infect the rest of Down.’
‘Never had the nerve to go ashore, and calculated there were fairer, altogether less doom-laden isles to visit.’ He made a little bow. ‘Yet you did. I take it you have no symptoms?’
‘Where I come from, we know what caused the plague – fleas. I didn’t get close to anyone. I flew in, and out.’
‘I had heard rumours about your abilities. You’re a Beast?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can you also do other magics?’
‘Yes.’
‘You should realise that you would normally be our enemy.’
‘I know. Geomancers don’t have a great rep, what with all the kidnapping, slaving and killing. But I figured a geomancer doesn’t have to do any of that. It’s tempting. Fuck knows that’s true. To have all that power to make people do what you want. Especially for someone like me who never had shit. There’s nothing I should want more.’
‘And yet?’
‘That’s not going to change anything, is it? It’s not sticking it to the Man if I become part of that gang. So let’s find out what happens when we smash the system. It might turn out to be more broken than before, but it can hardly be worse, can it?’
‘In other words, a geomancer is defined by the madness they embrace. And you alone reject that delusion of control?’
Mary jutted her chin. ‘You either believe me or you don’t. I’m still here.’
‘’Tis strange,’ said Simeon. ‘I’m the captain of a vessel named the Ship of Fools, and though fools we were for ever entering this benighted land, it is not often we are still taken for fools.’
He raised his eyebrows at her and she felt his forensic gaze uncover her guilt, even though she’d not done anything wrong. Yet. Could she resist the thoughts she was having? She’d had the maps to herself, so it wasn’t just the lack of opportunity. Perhaps she really was going to see this through to the bitter end.
‘I won’t let you down.’
‘You don’t get to be in charge of a band of pirates by taking anyone at their word, my good woman. Which leaves us caught between the Scylla of blind naivety and the Charybdis of unwarranted suspicion. Steering a course between those two monsters is not an easy task.’
‘But I don’t want to let people down. I don’t want to let Dalip or Mama down: if there’s any chance of getting them back home, I don’t want to fuck it up for them.’
‘Which is commendable. That does not, however, preclude you from rash actions that might harm my domain. If this has not been impressed on you already, allow me to be the first: this is the greatest treasure on Down, and must be treated as such. All men will desire it. All men will kill to possess it.’
‘I’d figured that out.’
‘Very perspicacious of you.’
‘There is a way around it, though.’
‘Oh?’
‘We make copies of it. As many as possible. Give them to whoever wants one.’
Simeon was momentarily taken aback. ‘Audacious.’
‘We promised Crows he could have all the maps as soon as we’d copied them.’ She held up her hand. ‘I know, I know. But he was horrified by the idea of even one copy. So fuck him. Let’s make lots.’
‘Your plan has merit, though it’s not without its own dangers. I’ll ponder the matter for a while. However, we must return to the present. For as surely as we have bottled up the Lords of the White City in their palaces, so are we also confined, and this valley is as much a gaol for the gaolers as it is for the g
aoled.’ He took off his hat and ran his hand through his thinning hair. ‘I can no more order a half-dozen men to their deaths than I can a single one. I understand you had sight of this weapon?’
‘If you’re asking about how many bullets it has or its range or anything like that, I don’t know – children’s homes were rough, but not that rough. But just going on what it looked like, it was a rifle a soldier would take to war, maybe fifty, a hundred years ago.’
‘Or two hundred years hence. You understand my reluctance to confront the threat head-on. The defile is narrow, and as easily defended as Leonides’ Thermopylae. Alas, it now only takes one Spartan with a futuristic powder gun where previously it would have taken three hundred with pikes. Can this map solve any of our current travails, or offer us guidance as to our next move?’
Mary looked down at the map. How could it possibly help? ‘I don’t know. I just don’t. Don’t make any of your decisions in the hope that something will come up. It might, but …’
‘No, that’s wise counsel. We have what we came for. Scouts have been sent to the valley head, and up the steps to the plateau: the moment we have a way back to the ship, we leave.’ He laid his hat back on, and rubbed the side of his nose. ‘You have that long until we depart, and I’m afraid I must insist on the maps accompanying us, even if you choose to stay here.’
She was in no position to argue.
‘It’s both my duty and my honour to protect the lives that serve under me. Be forewarned that those who Down has touched with the gift of magic cannot sign on as crew. We have no truck with that, being too deeply scarred by our early encounters with geomancers. Otherwise, I wish you well and, after today, hope we hail each other as fellows, not foes. I must be about my business.’
He bowed again, lower and deeper, and left her staring blindly across the courtyard at the wall opposite.
Shortly, or in a few hours, however long it took the scouts to return, she was going to lose the maps for ever. And Dalip. And Mama. She’d already lost Elena to exile, Luiza to the Wolfman, Stanislav to the storm, Grace to … whatever had taken her. Of course, Dalip and Mama could choose to stay with her, rather than Simeon, but she couldn’t even contemplate them having to make that decision, let alone its outcome.
