Down Station

by Simon Morden

  Reluctantly, Mama took hold of Dalip’s proffered hand and she jumped over Pigface’s body. The man was no longer moving, breath no longer rasping, fingers no longer twitching.

  ‘Go. The door. Do what Stanislav told you.’ Dalip eased her past him and away.

  Luiza all but threw Elena at him, and leapt the obstruction herself. Dalip muttered his apologies as they squeezed by, but Luiza merely tutted her frustration and shoved Elena hard in the back to speed her up.

  They diverged at the end of the corridor. The women went into the guard room, Dalip into the pit. It was completely dark, something that neither he nor Stanislav had bargained for.

  ‘We need a light,’ the older man growled, and hurried out, coming back with a lantern from the guard room.

  The glow it gave was feeble, and Dalip could barely see the edge of the parapet. Even though he’d jumped up to it several times now, groping around in the dark wasn’t going to make it any easier.

  Stanislav put the lantern on the floor and judged his position. Dalip trotted over to the far wall and braced his back against it.

  ‘Ready?’ he called.

  ‘Yes.’ The shadow was so deep that it was almost impossible to tell. They’d just have to trust that they’d trained enough.

  ‘Okay. Three, two, one.’

  Dalip ran, half-blind, hoping that Stanislav could see him better than he could see Stanislav. He raised his foot and stamped it down at the undifferentiated mass of darkness, and then he was flying. He remembered in time to raise his leg, turn his body, reach out in case he hadn’t risen quite far enough.

  The landing was brutal. He’d overcompensated and so had Stanislav. He slammed, sight unseen, on to the balcony, having cleared the parapet completely, crashing into the throne and shoving it across the floor until it wedged against the wall. Parts of him were tangled with the legs of the chair, and not for the first time, he could taste blood in his mouth.

  He’d also made enough noise to wake the dead. If there was anyone within earshot, they’d be busy raising the alarm and arming themselves. A slave uprising always had to be a possibility for a slaver: even though there were only five of them, and calling it an uprising was nothing more than a bad joke.

  He staggered to his feet, spitting, and leaned back out over the pit.

  ‘The knife. Throw me the knife.’

  The lantern was there, but Stanislav wasn’t. The confusion at the door was Luiza shouting at Elena, trying to get the table through the gap. They tried repeatedly, and only succeeded in blocking it for Mama.

  Dalip spat on the ground again, wiped his mouth, and realised that if anyone came through the door behind him, he’d have to deal with them himself. His only weapon was the throne, too solid to break up, too heavy to wield. He could still drag the chair against the door until they were ready, so he did, and went back to the parapet.

  They’d finally negotiated the doorway and were carrying the table in.

  ‘Here, just here,’ he called. They looked up, changed their path, and placed the table against the wall below him. Mama stacked the chair on top of it, and Luiza climbed up straight away.

  When she stretched up her hand, Dalip could reach down and clasp her wrist.

  ‘Okay?’ he asked, and he could make out her nodding.

  He thought that it’d be a strain, an effort, something he’d struggle with. It turned out that either she was very light, or he was now very strong. When he could, he used both hands, and was even able to ease her over the top, rather than dump her like a sack of rice on the floor.

  ‘Still okay?’

  ‘Yes … yes.’

  ‘Go and stand by that door. Listen out for anyone coming.’ He pointed, and she nodded again, brushing her hair back from her ear in readiness.

  Elena was next, and again, despite all her weight being on one arm, he could lift her and hold her until she was able to swing herself over the edge of the parapet.

  Mama was next. A more substantial challenge, and there was still no Stanislav.

  ‘Mama, get on the table, then on to the chair.’

  She was surprisingly limber despite her rolling curves.

  ‘Oh, that poor man. That shouldn’t have happened,’ she said as she clambered up on to the tabletop.

  ‘Yes, Mama. I know. I … it’s wrong, but what else are we supposed to do? Ask them nicely to let us go?’

  ‘Oh, he was a bad man for sure, but kill him?’ She put both hands on the chair back and looked up. ‘Can’t you, I don’t know, keep Stanislav under control?’

  ‘You’re joking, right?’ He lowered his hand over the side. ‘Come on. Whatever happens next, we need to stay together.’

  ‘I don’t think I can climb, Dalip.’

  ‘Let me worry about that.’ He waved his fingers. ‘We have to hurry.’

  She got her knees on to the chair, then one foot, then the other. Slowly, shakily, she stood, her arms out wide trying to hug the wall.

  ‘Reach up. Right up.’

  She was shorter than both Luiza and Elena. They both stretched, and could just about touch.

  ‘Elena, hold my legs. Stop me going over.’

  He leant right out, over the parapet with both hands, and with Elena gripping his knees, he was able to take hold of Mama’s wrists.

  ‘You ready?’

  ‘No,’ she whispered.

  ‘We’re not leaving without you,’ he said. He started to straighten up, taking all her weight through his arms and into his back. Her feet left the chair, knocking it over in the process.

  It clattered to the pit floor, and she looked down at the sudden height. She started to wriggle in his grasp.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ he said.

  ‘It’s too far.’

  He kept on pulling, and she was rising despite herself.

  ‘You want to get back home? You want to get back to your kids and grandkids?’ It hurt, from his elbows, through his shoulders to the small of his back. He was speaking through clenched teeth. ‘This is the only way.’

  Luiza left her post at the door, leant herself over and took a handful of boilersuit at Mama’s side. She pulled as Dalip leant back, and that was enough to drag Mama up as far as the parapet, getting her on the wide stone wall and over the right side.

  They lay together, in a heap.

  ‘You’re strong, Dalip,’ said Mama. ‘You’re a strong man now.’

  ‘Maybe.’ He didn’t feel strong at that moment: he was breathing hard, and everything felt over-stretched. But it seemed Stanislav had been right. He couldn’t have managed to pull any of them up, not even himself, before he came to Down. He heaved himself up and looked over the edge. The pit was empty, save for a table, tipped chair, and weakly burning lantern.

  ‘Where is he?’ asked Luiza, extricating herself from under Mama. ‘What better thing does he have to do than be here?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He stared at the pit door, as if it’d make the man appear. ‘Stanislav? Stanislav!’

  It was more a stage whisper than a shout, and even that seemed too loud.

  ‘What do we do, if he does not come?’

  ‘He’ll come. Go and listen at the door again.’

  He didn’t know what to do. It seemed like an age before Stanislav trotted back into the pit, though it was probably no longer than a minute. He was holding a hessian sack heavy with loot in one hand, and Pigface’s knife in the other.

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’ hissed Dalip.

  ‘Taking care of business. Catch.’ He threw the bag up, and Dalip caught it neatly, setting down beside him. ‘Now the knife.’

  That, he threw slightly to Dalip’s right, so that it landed ringing on the floor. Then he reset the chair on the table, put the lantern next to it and climbed deftly up. He held up the lantern for collection, then both hands
.

  ‘Pull.’

  Dalip didn’t. ‘When you said … You’ve killed him, haven’t you? The other guard.’

  ‘You are so squeamish. Have you never seen Spartacus?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘When the slaves revolt, they kill their overseers. They have to. They are owned. This is the only way. Now pull me up.’

  Dalip looked at Mama, at Elena. He didn’t want to be a slave, and he didn’t want them to be slaves, either. He warred with himself, balking at killing, railing against what he’d already been forced to do. Of course Stanislav was right. He was squeamish. He’d never thought of himself as someone who’d kill even in a just cause. Southall wasn’t like that.

  Clearly, wherever Stanislav had lived had been exactly like that. He was uncomfortably comfortable with violence. And they needed that. They all needed that. Without it, they were as good as back in their cells.

  No matter what the others thought, then. He reached down and Stanislav clamped both his hands on Dalip’s wrist. He pulled him up, more difficult than Elena, easier than Mama. Once he could reach the parapet himself, Stanislav could haul himself over.

  While he did that, Dalip collected the knife, and hung on to it. The bag contained Pigface’s club, and smaller knives from the kitchen, which he distributed. They were all armed now. Just how dangerous they collectively were was doubtful, despite the two corpses they were leaving behind.

  ‘Any sounds?’ Dalip asked Luiza.

  ‘No, nothing.’

  ‘Then we have to go. Find the bridge to the geomancer’s tower. Cross it without being seen. Then we find her, and—’

  ‘Take her hostage. Knock her out, tie her up. We need her to get past the dragon.’ Stanislav heaved the throne out of the way and raised Pigface’s – his, now – club. ‘If she tries to use magic on us, we might have to kill her anyway. Any one of us who has the chance.’

  He lifted the latch on the door, and to forestall any further qualms or questions, swung it wide. ‘Bring the lantern, Mama. Hold it high.’

  They were in uncharted territory now, outside what any of them had seen. The light showed mainly shadows, and the glimpse of stonework, a wall, stairs up – and another door. It rattled on its own, making them jump and step back, but it was just the mountain wind, whipping cold around the ill-fitting frame.

  ‘This must be outside, yes?’ Luiza felt the door for the latch, found an iron ring, and twisted it. The door resisted opening, then eased ajar. More of the cold air swirled in.

  Stanislav crouched and peered through. ‘No moonlight. We need the lantern, but we must keep it low so that it is not seen. Remember, we must be quick and certain. If someone sees us, they have to be silenced before they can raise the alarm. Afterwards is too late. Once we have crossed the bridge, we search every room in the tower for her. And we take no prisoners but her.’

  ‘What about her steward?’ asked Dalip.

  ‘What about him? He is part of this, so you know what to do.’ He took charge of the door from Luiza. ‘I will go first, Dalip will go last. Watch for the dragon.’

  Stanislav heaved the door wide and took a moment to check the bridge and the sky above it.

  The bridge itself was clear – it ran straight and flat across from the pit to the geomancer’s tower, where there was another door. The waist-high parapet either side was going to give them some cover, but the tower loomed tall, and there were narrow windows that overlooked the bridge: anyone so much as glancing down would see them.

  The top of the tower, with its conical slate roof, was almost invisible against the sky. There could have been a dragon wound around it, and none of them would have been any the wiser. The side of the tower to the right flickered with firelight, so they’d have to keep down, but Dalip wasn’t so worried about that as he was by the prospect of that far door being barred shut from the inside. If he was in charge, leaving doors to the slave quarters open seemed not just averagely stupid, but lethally so. It was the whole reason why they’d been going to strike just after one of the fights.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘we don’t even know if we can get into the tower. Why don’t I go across first and check?’

  It made sense, and Stanislav could tell by the shifting body-language that the others weren’t now going to cross until they knew the way was clear.

  ‘Mama, give him the lantern so he can signal. Go, then, and quickly.’

  Dalip found himself at the front, the wind dragging at the candle flame inside the lantern. He squeezed the knife handle and took one last look. That he couldn’t see a dragon was no promise that there wasn’t one. The lights at the windows in the door stayed constant, and there was no better time – or at least, it would get worse the longer he left it – to run.

  He held the lantern low, so that it almost scraped along the walkway, and crouched down. It wasn’t far. He covered the distance quickly and quietly, and nestled the lantern in the corner of the door recess.

  He listened and, on hearing nothing, reached up and turned the iron ring. The latch lifted on the other side of the door, he could hear that, but when he pushed, the door moved only a fraction before pressing against something immovable.

  Dalip’s stomach tightened even further. He tried again, to make absolutely certain, but he’d been right the first time. The door was barred or bolted, and they weren’t going to be able to shift it.

  He took a step back and looked up. There was a window slit right over the door, the same height again above it. He might, if he could get up there, squeeze through it, then open the door from the inside.

  It seemed their only option, and they were running out of time. Sooner or later, someone was going to check where Pigface and the other guard had got to. Then there’d be no hope of escape, and certainly no going back to captivity.

  He left the lantern where it was, and raced back to the others.

  23

  She could see everything. Every last leaf, rock, blade of grass. Every fold of the ground, every lake, the course of the rivers and the line of the ridges. Everything, like it was the map she’d painstakingly drawn and then had stolen from her.

  The crows had kept up with her as they’d taught her how to flap and turn and glide and land – how difficult that had been, when she would fill her vast wings with air and snap them almost in front of her to try and brake herself. She ended up pinwheeling into the ground, and then going backwards, and then almost hovering in flight as she tentatively dabbed at the ground with her coal-black talons, unwilling to commit.

  As she circled higher and higher, she left the smaller birds behind, and as she spiralled upwards, Down became a sheet of beaten copper, lit by the dying sun. She watched the shadows lengthen, deep pools of darkness stretch out and cover the land like ink, then the last threads of light hung on the western horizon while the forests and mountains settled into slumbering dusk.

  And she could still see, her preternatural vision catching movement far below: animals emerging from cover, the wind-waves on the crowns of the trees, the rising spire of smoke from a fire.

  Her fire. She remembered. She’d set it, and lit it, and now there was a thin column of sooty smoke marking its place. She wheeled away. She didn’t want boiled grain any more, if she ever wanted it in the first place. Meat. Raw meat, running with blood, hot and vital. Only that would satisfy her. But she was huge. The crows she had flown with were like flies to her. She could crush them by the handful and still not be satisfied, and they were her crows, not to be slashed out of the air and broken on the ground.

  She needed bigger prey.

  She turned and spread her feathers wide, gliding like she had been born a bird, and started searching in the growing gloom for something to catch and kill.

  Even though she spotted, and swooped low over, cattle the size of cars, they didn’t excite her or give her the same th
rill that the discarded thought of catching crows had given her. Not some beast tied to the ground for her. Her quarry should be airborne, like her, so that she could dive on it from above, wings swept back and feet clenched like fists to break its wing and send it tumbling to the ground.

  Where was she going to find such creatures, something worthy of the effort? She could almost taste them, the breast feathers torn out with her hooked beak, the puckered flesh beneath, the first burst of flavour.

  She turned east to look across the hill country, and north towards the high plateau, south over the ocean and east to view the islands set in the darkling sea, but there was nothing. The sky was void and empty, and it would be hours before the moon rose. She turned for home, to the tiny red glow of the fire on the pavement in front of the castle.

  She landed in a flurry of feathers, as disappointed as an unfired gun. Folding her wings, she strutted forward to inspect the remains of the cooking pot that was now a foul-smelling cinder on top of a whited-ash heap.

  Her head turned sideways to look at it, her talons gripping the cracks in the pavement, and she was distracted by a flash of colour off to one side. She couldn’t walk – the motion was unnatural – so she hopped over, and found a circular pool. She pecked at the thing floating in the rippling water, a shed orange skin with a rent and stained back, and dragged it out to get a better look at it.

  She knew it should mean something more to her than it did, because it was her skin, the one she’d worn before she’d spread her wings, and what? Jumped from the top of the tower, that tower above her, its edges ragged and unfinished, full of roosting crows.

  There’d been a man, too, with skin as black as a crow’s coat. He’d helped her, or had pretended to do so, and then he’d stolen from her that which he considered most precious.

  The door. The fire. The stepping into the surging sea. The cold saltwater washing around hot burns.

  Mary. Her name was Mary.

  This was Down’s doing, then. The wish first, followed by the act. That was the art of magic, and the danger of it too, because it could so easily destroy her: the transformation of her from human to avian almost had her lost in the now of flight, of hunting, of seeking. That was what Crows had warned her of, too much, too soon.