by Simon Morden
‘I can’t go along with that.’
‘Then you are one of the weak, and you will always be a slave.’
Dalip stared at the man, who’d he’d spent hours with. He knew Stanislav was hard, driven, and unsympathetic, but as long as he’d worked hard and not spared his effort, his teacher had seemed not just satisfied, but actually pleased. Yes, he’d had moments where he’d disliked the man, but they were fleeting, because he could see the point to his training – staying alive long enough to escape.
It had turned out that Stanislav wasn’t putting on an act, and that he was actually like that.
‘Mary had it all under control, and look, I’m not the only one who thinks you went too far.’
‘Not far enough, I say.’
‘You were trying to rape her in front of everyone! What the hell did you expect us to do? Watch?’
‘That is how humiliation works.’
Now Dalip slipped into despair. ‘Where did you learn this stuff, Stanislav? Normal people don’t think like this. They don’t. They just don’t.’
‘This is war, you stupid boy. This is anarchy. This is all the places you read about in the newspapers and see on the television and are glad that you do not live there. Do you think normal, civilised, nice people live in such places? No, only two sorts of creatures: wolves and sheep. No shepherds. The wolves eat the sheep whenever and wherever they like.’ He snorted. ‘And now the sheep have the chance to kill one of the wolves and still they bleat.’
‘So which are you?’
‘I had to become a wolf because I did not want to be a sheep. You, you were becoming a wolf too, but no. The sheep have dragged you back into their fold.’ Stanislav screwed his face up in disgust. ‘Baaaaa.’
Dalip slid down the door, still barring the man opposite from leaving.
‘Where were you?’
Stanislav equivocated for a moment, pressing at the various lumps on his head.
‘Bosnia.’
Dalip had heard about it, briefly and in passing, but it had started before he was born, and ended when he was still a baby. That some of those responsible had gone on trial later was the only reason he knew there’d even been a war. His parents had been uncomfortable enough about what had gone on that they’d talk over the reporting, exchanging family gossip until the report had finished.
The images, however, remained: mass graves, shattered buildings, haunted people in the backs of cars and trucks piled high with their belongings.
Stanislav had been there. More than been there: had fought there, and it didn’t really matter for who, or why. What was important was that he’d brought that war with him to Down; in the same way, Dalip supposed, that everyone who came to Down brought only what they were with them. Their hopes and dreams, their fears and nightmares, the past they’d lived and the future they were destined to live.
‘You have to leave that behind,’ said Dalip. ‘It’s destroying you, and us.’
‘Do you know what it is like, to be weak?’ asked Stanislav.
‘Not until recently. I only got through that because of you.’
‘Do you want to be that weak ever again?’
‘No, of course not—’
‘Can you not see that if we fail to act now, then we are condemning ourselves to always being that weak?’
After everything that had gone on that night, Dalip was abruptly exhausted. He’d done everything asked of him, and more. His head sagged, and he gathered up his loose hair and dragged it over one shoulder.
‘We cannot do a deal with our former owners,’ said Stanislav. ‘They are not people we can trust. They will seek to own us again, and they must be stopped.’
‘We have stopped them.’
‘For now. When they regroup, they will try again.’
‘Then we’ll fight them again. Stanislav, it doesn’t have to be like this.’
‘Tell them that and see if they agree with you. They did not have to take us as slaves, but they did. They did not have to make you fight in the pit, but they did. They will do it again unless we – you and me – finish it now. There is no one else: even if we walk out of here, they will take others. Do you want that? Do you want to say to yourself, “We let the slavers go”, knowing that you have condemned others to the same state as you were?’
‘I know we have to do something.’
‘You know what you have to do. You know!’
Dalip scrubbed his face with his fingers. ‘We don’t have to do that. We don’t. We just don’t.’
‘You know the right thing to do. You refuse to do it.’ Stanislav pulled himself up by the table-top. ‘I will have to do it myself. To protect the sheep.’
‘You’re staying here. The others don’t trust you for the moment.’ He got to his feet too, and they were both as uncertain of vertical as each other. ‘Give it time, and we’ll work something out.’
He left him there, and closed the door. Stanislav wasn’t a prisoner, and there was nothing but words keeping him in the store room. Dalip hoped all the same that he’d stay there.
Truth be told, the man had a point. They’d been tricked and trapped and enslaved, and they had a moral duty to make sure that it didn’t happen to anyone else. There was no justice in Down, no higher authority to appeal to. It was the strong against the weak, or the strong for the weak: what other way was there?
Dalip climbed up the steps to the top floor. Mama was seeing to the geomancer’s wounds, while Luiza and Elena were carefully checking the contents of each box, each drawer. Mary had moved on to the bed, and lay there against the headboard, still wrapped up in the tapestry.
‘What are they looking for?’ he asked her.
‘Maps,’ she said. ‘She should have lots of maps, but there don’t seem to be many at all.’
‘And why maps?’
‘Because,’ she said, ‘maps are power and wealth. It’s what geomancers need to … Look, this is fucking complicated and I can barely get my head round it myself, let alone explain it. She should have a fuck-ton of maps somewhere in this tower, and they’re like gold, so I’m guessing that they’re somewhere here, in this room.’
‘Have you asked her where they are?’
‘She’s not exactly in an answering mood: between me and your mate, we’ve terrified her into silence.’ She shifted uncomfortably on the bed, and sat up, revealing her scars as she slid her hands down to her shins.
‘Who, what happened?’ The wounds were new, barely healing, wide and glistening.
‘She did. She happened. A few days ago now. She would have killed me if she could.’
Dalip sat on the edge of the bed, his back to her. He watched while the two Romanian women systematically went through everything, lifting things up, moving them around, checking behind them.
‘What are we going to do with her?’
‘I don’t know. I thought I was coming here to kill her. It turned out I didn’t need to.’
‘I thought we were going to have to kill her too. But I didn’t have the stomach for it. I wanted to see if I could reason with her instead.’ He looked at her over his shoulder, her coiled-spring hair, her skin opened up in broad red trenches. ‘Was that a mistake? Stanislav seems to think so. He says if we leave her alive, then either us or someone else will become her victims. We have to remember what sort of person she is.’
‘She’s no saint. Neither am I. You might be, I guess. What do you think we should do?’ She drew up her legs and hugged her knees.
‘That the only way to stop her may be to kill her. And that I’m not going to be the one to do it.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t know if that makes me a coward or not.’
‘A lot depends on her. If she even looks at me funny, I’ll have her.’ Mary pointed down behind her neck. ‘The last time I turned my back on her, I got these.’
‘I’
m supposed to protect the weak – that’s what the gurus say. I don’t know who the weak are any more.’ Dalip reached into his pocket for Pigface’s knife, and considered his distorted, dim reflection in the blade. ‘This isn’t over yet, is it?’
‘No way. But at least we can do what we came here for – ask some questions of her, and work out if we can go home or not.’
Dalip caught her gaze, and held it. ‘Do you think we can?’
‘I’m told if we do, we’d be the first.’ She blinked her big brown eyes. ‘We might have to stay.’
He didn’t know what he thought about that, and looked away.
27
They couldn’t find any maps, just some half-complete outlines of the coast to the south, with scratches marking a few prominent features. Mary knew that this wasn’t right, that the geomancer had to have maps, because that was the whole point. How could someone hope to divide Down with criss-crossing lines of energy without detailed maps?
The wind had picked up, and the broken doors on to the balcony were beginning to heave and yaw. Dalip went to wedge them shut, while Mary went to sit opposite the geomancer, who looked up through closing eyes at the woman who’d beaten her. Her split lips reopened as she pressed them together.
‘What do we call you?’ asked Mary.
‘Whatever you want.’
‘Pick a name. Yours would be good, but any name will do.’
Mama frowned at Mary and went to wipe away some of the freshly blooming blood with a damp cloth dipped in what might be wine. The geomancer pushed her hand firmly away.
‘I’m not a cripple.’
‘You seemed grateful enough for my help before,’ said Mama. ‘What’s changed?’
‘It’s me,’ said Mary. ‘She can fool you as to what she’s really like. She can’t fool me.’
‘She’s just a—’
‘She tried to kill me, Mama.’ Mary shrugged off the tapestry. ‘She did that. She did everything that’s happened to you and the others. All this is her fault, and she can fucking tell me her fucking name right now, or we’ll go another six rounds.’
The geomancer looked sour. ‘Bell. I’m Bell.’
‘Like the Disney princess?’
‘The thing that rings.’
‘Okay. Bell: where are your maps?’
‘I don’t have any.’
‘That’s just bollocks. I know you have maps. Where are they?’
A flash of defiance burned in Bell’s face. ‘They were stolen.’
‘Convenient. By who?’
The fire flickered, and was extinguished. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It matters to me. We want to know where the fuck we are and what the fuck is going on, and whether we can get the fuck home again. So, you’re going to tell me where your maps are, or I’ll beat it out of you right now.’ Mary balled her fists, and the muscles in her bare arms flexed.
‘A man called Crows stole them when he left me.’ Bell put her hands to her face to cover her shame.
‘Left you? Like he was your boyfriend? Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me.’
‘You know this Crows man?’ Mama looked askance. ‘You get around, girl.’
‘Yes, I know him. He stole my fucking map too.’
‘Mercy! Will someone please, in heaven’s name, explain what is going on?’
‘Right.’ Mary glanced up to see she had an audience. The longer she left it, the more interested they became, and the more embarrassed she turned. ‘No. I’m going to let Bell do it.’ She pushed her with the flat of her foot, and the geomancer tried to slap it away. Too slow.
With the focus of attention off Mary, she moved back and waited with the others.
‘Down,’ said Bell, with a shuddering sigh, ‘Down isn’t just a direction.’
‘It’s a destination,’ said Mary. ‘Get to the good bits.’
‘Down is a world separate to where we came from, but connected to it in lots of different places and times. These places we call portals, and they’re doors where people can enter Down, but not, apparently, leave. Someone, a long time ago, discovered that if you draw a line between two portals, there’s nearly always another portal on that line. You can get villages on those lines, too. Where those lines cross, you get castles. That’s why maps are important. And Crows stole mine.’
‘She’s missing some stuff out,’ said Mary, ‘but that’s pretty much what I got from Crows.’
‘So what did I miss out?’ asked Bell. She pushed her hair back from her face, to better show off her black eyes, torn skin, and dew-drop of blood clinging to the end of her nose.
‘That the villages and the castles grow, depending on how many people live there.’ Mary watched the others’ consternation rise. ‘Those houses we found in the forest? They grew there, and were just sinking back into the ground. The same with castles. She needs people to live here in order to keep the walls and the towers intact.’
‘Is that why she took us?’ Elena was as bemused as she was angry. ‘Is that all?’
‘No, that can’t be all,’ said Dalip. ‘Why did you make me fight in the pit?’
‘Fight? Pit?’ asked Mary.
‘Like a, a gladiator. She wanted me to be afraid. Isn’t that right?’
Bell shifted awkwardly, painfully. ‘I … I was carrying out an experiment. When we came to Down, we were all running from something, someone. I thought that by making someone scared enough, I could open a portal back to London. Didn’t work though, did it? You were too bloody honourable.’
She said it with grudging admiration, but hadn’t counted on Dalip not taking it as a compliment. Luiza just about stopped him from dragging the geomancer up by the hair and throwing her through the closed balcony doors.
‘It wouldn’t have worked if I’d told you why you were being trained to fight,’ said Bell. ‘It wasn’t about you being scared. It was about those other plebs being scared of you.’
Luiza pushed Dalip away and stood in front of him. Dalip’s chest heaved, and he seemed to only control himself with the utmost effort. ‘It didn’t work at all.’
‘You can’t blame me for trying,’ Bell offered.
Luiza’s hand pressed hard against Dalip’s sternum.
‘I do blame you for trying.’
‘To be honest,’ said Mary, ‘it sounds like a really shitty thing to do, over and above all the other shitty things you did. And though Crows might be shady as fuck, at least he never tried to kill me, or any of my mates. He saved me from the wolfman. He taught me how to use magic. Why don’t I guess why he left you?’
Bell stayed defiantly silent.
‘If I said he left you because he thought your idea was fucking nuts, would I be wrong?’
‘Yes. You don’t understand anything.’
‘So make me understand.’
The two women stared at each other. Mary was acutely aware of the cold wind rattling through the tower, brushing against her wounds in a way that didn’t happen when she was a bird, but also that Bell was sitting opposite her in a fine white dress turned to scarlet rags. The gravity of the damage they’d done to each other should have been worthy of comment, but neither of them were ever going to be called to account for that.
‘Crows was my lover,’ said Bell. ‘We planned everything together.’
‘Hang on,’ said Mary. ‘Where’s Grace?’
‘She’s not here.’ Mama shrugged. ‘She’s not here and we don’t know what that means.’
‘Okay. We’ll have to look for her after this. Go on, Bell: you were making plans.’
‘We knew there was a portal around here, but didn’t know where. We found this crossing point using …’ Her voice trailed off as she contemplated her collection of broken brass instruments. ‘A device. We searched – him by water, me by air.’
The others fr
owned at this.
Mary sniffed. ‘Remember the huge sea snake we saw after we got to the shore? That was Crows. He knew at that point that the portal was probably somewhere on the island. When he couldn’t find it, he got me to tell him exactly where. They’re not supposed to disappear.’
Bell suddenly showed more than passing interest. ‘The portal vanished?’
‘There’s nothing but rock there now. It’s gone, and Crows didn’t know what that meant. Do you?’
Bell shook her head. ‘Portals are attached to London. They don’t go anywhere. They’re fixed points.’
‘What if,’ said Dalip. ‘What if London ceased to exist?’
That caused disquiet, but he persisted.
‘I don’t mean to … I’ve got as much to lose as everyone. But that fire wasn’t normal. We ran and ran, and it wasn’t enough. Even a plane crash wouldn’t have been that bad. And if – I don’t know – a nuclear bomb, maybe, with a firestorm afterwards. Would that be enough to break the connection?’
‘When are you from?’ asked Bell.
They were all too surprised at the question to answer, except Mary.
‘Twenty twelve. You?’
‘Nineteen sixty-eight.’ Bell looked at them again, each one, checking for differences between them and her. ‘How did it go, those forty years?’
‘Good for some. Not so good for others,’ said Mary. ‘This is well off the point, though. Crows said that whoever controls the portals, controls Down.’
‘And London,’ said Dalip. ‘They’d control London too.’
‘That. But no one’s ever managed to open a door going the other way, right?’
‘No. But there has to be a way to do it.’
‘Why?’ asked Mary. ‘Why does there? Why can’t this just be it?’
‘Because it doesn’t make sense otherwise. If things can pass from London to here, then it stands to reason they can pass back.’