by Simon Morden
‘You mean like you can turn into a dragon and fucking castles grow out of the ground?’
Bell faltered. ‘This place just has different rules, that’s all.’
‘One of which might be, you can’t go back,’ interrupted Dalip. ‘Do you have any evidence at all that anything has ever gone back to London, over and above simply wishing it was true?’
‘No,’ she whispered. ‘No.’
‘Great.’ He turned away, then abruptly towards her again. ‘You were going to have me fight people to the death because you hoped something might just happen that had never happened before. That’s just …’
‘Fucking nuts?’ offered Mary.
‘Pretty much covers it. If you were going to experiment on someone, at the very least you should have started with yourself.’ The wind rattled the balcony doors open, and Dalip went to close them with something more substantial.
‘These maps,’ said Mama. ‘Are they that important?’
Mary nodded. ‘Without them, we don’t have a fucking clue where we are or where to go next. Geomancers like her spend years making them, finding them, hiding them away. Get it right, and you get a massive fuck-off castle like this, people to follow you, and maybe, if you’re the first to work out how everything works, you get to run the show.’
‘Then we should concentrate on getting the maps back,’ said Mama, arms folded.
‘Problem is, Crows is long gone, turned into a sea snake and away.’
‘He can’t carry the maps like that,’ said Bell, shifting awkwardly. ‘He can’t get them wet, and he needs hands to carry them.’
Mary looked at the ceiling. ‘He lied to me. Again.’
‘He does that,’ said Bell.
‘I’m not feeling sorry for you, if that’s what you want. If I was him, I’d have lied to you too.’ She tutted. ‘He’d have to have them stashed somewhere, somewhere close. Not at his castle—’
‘He had a castle?’
‘It was a bit shit, but yes. Full of crows, which is why I thought he was called Crows.’
‘Those weren’t crows,’ said Bell.
‘Then what the fuck were they?’
‘The crows were Crows. You’ve met Daniel and his wolves.’
‘The wolfman?’
‘Him. The wolves were Daniel. Projections from him, controlled by him. He can see through them, like a witch’s familiar. Crows does the same, but through a flock of crows.’
Mary wiped her face with her hands. ‘Oh fucking hell. I thought Crows had vanished, and he was there all the time. He played me. Fuck. He even taught me how to fly.’
‘So where are the maps?’ asked Mama. ‘Does this Crows have them?’
‘He wouldn’t have left the area without them. They were in the castle, so he probably stashed them nearby, where I wouldn’t find them. And if he can only carry them when he’s a man, then … somewhere near the river. We know he swam up it, don’t we, Dalip?’
‘I thought he was going to eat me,’ said Dalip. The increasing wind rattled at the shutters again, threatening to tear them loose. What might have been thunder rumbled distantly.
‘The wolfman was down by the portal,’ said Mary. ‘I thought he was looking for Crows. Or me. But what if he was looking for the maps?’ She thought about it. ‘Where would he go with them? If he wanted to sell them, or just start again? Or maybe the other thing, trade the fact that portals can disappear.’
‘There’s really only one place. The White City. But it’ll take him weeks to get there. There’s still time to find him.’ Bell murmured an offer: ‘I can help you, if you want.’
‘You are not going to turn into a dragon again. No. You with the maps is more dangerous than Crows with the maps, we’ve already found that out for ourselves. If anyone’s going to find him, it’s me.’
‘She can turn into a bird,’ said Dalip. ‘A big one. A hawk.’
The others exchanged more glances, and Mary shrugged, pulling on her wounds.
‘I’ll go in the morning, just before it gets light. Where is this city?’
‘In the far west. If I had my maps …’
‘You’re a regular joker, aren’t you? I’m tired of having to drag everything out of you, one bit at a time. I’m just tired. I feel like I could sleep for a week.’
‘It’s the transformations,’ said Bell. ‘They’re exhausting.’
‘Crows said there’s a chance of getting stuck. Is that right?’
She looked equivocal. ‘It’s been known.’
Mary wondered what it would be like, to forget everything, to give it all up and live each day, free of consequence from yesterday and free of thought of tomorrow, her whole world just flight and wind and feathers. That wouldn’t be too bad, would it? Except she had responsibilities now, to protect this ragged band of survivors. Her crew: her gang, in other words.
Not that she’d done a good job so far, but she was going to change that, and their fortunes.
‘Okay. In the morning, I’ll go out and look for Crows. In fact, what I’ll do is look for crows. If I find some, he might be nearby. What we need to do is make sure that dragon-lady here doesn’t try anything before then. Any suggestions?’
No one, apparently, wanted to kill her. At least, they weren’t saying it out loud.
‘Tie her up and lock her in a room?’ said Luiza. ‘A small room so if she changes, she hurts herself and not us.’
‘Is she that dangerous,’ asked Mama, ‘that we have to tie her up?’
‘I don’t want her coming for me in the night,’ said Mary. ‘And it’s going to be me, isn’t it? I’m the threat to her, no matter how brave Dalip is or how mad Stanislav is.’
‘We should watch her,’ said Dalip. ‘Take turns. But that means one of us is alone with her. Two of us?’
‘I’ve never done anything like this before.’
‘Stanislav will have,’ said Elena.
‘We’re not going to ask him for advice,’ said Dalip. ‘Why don’t I check the rooms and see if there’s anything without a window? Or ask someone who knows, which’ll probably be quicker.’
He wasn’t gone for long, when he came running back.
‘Stanislav’s gone.’ He paused. ‘He’s also killed the steward.’ He paused again. ‘It’s … not good.’
Mary caught his meaning better than the others. She looked at Bell’s reaction. She’d just lost her … what? Servant? Slave? Friend? Lover? And there was nothing except barely contained glee that their plans were going awry.
She knew people like that, back in London. They were the ones to avoid, the strange, dangerous ones who ended up getting locked away for the rest of their lives.
‘Then we’d better go and find him.’
28
The steward was over by the door to the bridge. And under the table. And halfway up the wall where something, some part of him, had been thrown with great force and stuck.
‘It looks like a fucking abattoir,’ said Mary, and retreated quickly, intercepting Luiza with a muttered, ‘You don’t want to go in there.’
Dalip had been to an abattoir, where they killed animals to eat according to Sikh rules. Quick, clean, one cut. The room – the killing floor, because that’s what it was called – had been almost spotless. The store room was far from that.
He stepped across the threshold and looked around. Stanislav could now be anywhere, either in the castle or even outside it. But he could still be here, hiding behind the barrels and the shelves, and he needed to check. The far door was still barred, but he peered into the shadows made barely lighter by the meagre lantern.
The steward had been decapitated, his head torn off with a force that was beyond human capacity. Hopefully, he’d been dead before that, because the thing that was glued to the wall was the sticky remains of his burst heart.
Dalip walked the room as if he was in a dream, the knife not even in his hand. What could he possibly do in the face of such primal forces except succumb? But Stanislav wasn’t there, and he stepped outside and back on to the staircase to report.
‘If he didn’t come up, he had to go down.’ He tugged at the hair on his chin. ‘We need to stay together. I think … I think he’s having some kind of psychotic episode. He was in a war where he came from, and he’s pretty much reliving it now. The very worst parts of it.’
‘Was that the guy’s head?’
Dalip nodded. ‘I don’t think Stanislav used anything but his hands to do that.’
Mary grimaced. ‘Seriously, he should be easy to find. He’ll be covered in blood, everything. Just, where the fuck are his footprints? Hand-prints? I’ve seen places where some kid got stabbed, and it’s everywhere: floors, walls, ceiling, and there’s always footprints and smears and marks on the walls where you brush against them. I mean, just look.’
Dalip did. His bare feet were leaving almost perfect dark impressions on the stonework, like a child’s printing set.
They searched the stairs, inspected the stonework, went down to the kitchen at the bottom of the tower, where their barricade was still mostly intact.
‘He can’t have come this way,’ said Dalip, rattling a big chair hard enough to make the table resting on it fall to one side. Once it had all finished moving, he added: ‘See?’
‘You climbed in the window,’ said Luiza. ‘He must have climbed out.’
‘I don’t know if he could. He doesn’t seem the climbing sort.’
‘He doesn’t seem the kind of bloke who’d rip someone’s head off, either,’ said Mary. ‘But here we are.’
Dalip leaned back against the wall. Stanislav had saved his life, more than once. And now this. He’d been brought up to be loyal, and deferential to his elders. This … this was difficult for him.
‘Luiza. The two women we found in the room above. Where did they go?’
She blinked. ‘They came upstairs with us.’
‘But they’re not there now.’
‘No.’ She tutted. ‘I suppose we must look for them too.’
‘This is getting stupid, right?’ Mary stared into the darkness up the stairs, and Dalip couldn’t help but see how her scars shifted.
‘We should go back to the top floor,’ said Luiza, ‘and wait until morning. We cannot see what we are doing.’
‘At this rate, there may be no one left by morning.’ Dalip pulled out the knife. ‘We brought him here. We have to deal with this. One way or another.’
‘Well, he’s your mate,’ said Mary.
‘In which case, I might get a chance where no one else will. I’m not saying we have to do anything, you know, permanent, but who else is going to stop him? There’s no one but us.’
‘Every room, then. Every door. If he’s not in the tower, then that’s something.’
When they got back to the store room, Dalip made to go in again. Mary was about to stop him, and tell him they’d already looked there. Then she caught his expression and said nothing.
He opened the door, pushing it with his foot. It was exactly as he’d left it, except that the bars that should have been sealing the way to the bridge were lying on the floor, and the door chattering and rattling in the rising wind. The draught stole around his ankles on its way through the tower.
Luiza, in charge of the lantern, held it high over Dalip’s head. ‘He was in there all the time,’ she said.
Dalip moved back on to the stairs and pulled the door firmly closed behind him.
‘Mary, when you turn into a bird, how do you do it?’
‘How? I just … I don’t know. I just can. I want to be it, and there I am. Some big-arse bird.’
‘And the first time, what happened?’
‘I grew wings. Bell’s dragon cut me open, and when I got the boilersuit off, I had wings. I really don’t know how this works.’ She stopped, and asked: ‘Why?’
‘So you can turn into a hawk, she can turn into a dragon, this man Crows turns into a sea serpent. I think Stanislav can turn into something, too. Something not good. Very strong.’ He struggled with the whole idea, even though he himself may have been changed, and was in the process of changing. ‘Do you get a choice?’
‘Of what you change into?’ Mary shrugged. ‘Maybe, but I think you just become whatever it is that suits you best. Have you got any idea of what he’s going to be?’
He knew. ‘It’s a wolf. He’s going to be a wolf.’
‘There is a thing, where you get stuck as an animal, and you forget what you were. Is that what’s happened to him?’
‘No,’ said Dalip. He thought about the conversation he’d had, about wolves and sheep. ‘I think he’s got stuck halfway. A wolfman, who’s actually part-wolf, part-man.’
‘A werewolf. Fucking hell. How the fuck do we deal with that?’
‘Silver,’ said Luiza. ‘We need silver.’
Dalip’s mouth had gone dry. ‘We don’t have any silver, whether or not we can make weapons out of it, and anyway, if he’s just like Mary or Bell, they don’t need anything special to hurt them. But I should be able to talk him down. He’ll listen to me.’
‘You’re kidding yourself, right? Dalip, he’s gone crazy. This isn’t like telling a mate not to do something stupid. He’s gone way beyond that.’
‘She is right, Dalip. He is a danger to everyone.’ Luiza poked him in the chest. ‘Especially you.’
‘Why me?’
‘Because you will not treat him with care. You will remember him as he was, not as he is. In that moment, he will kill you.’
‘He’s not going to kill me,’ said Dalip, and realised he was lying to himself. Loyalty again; misplaced loyalty. ‘Okay. Maybe he’ll try. We – I – have to find him first. Go back upstairs. I’ll do—’
He was at a loss. What was he supposed to do? Warn the remaining guards for certain. Track Stanislav down and confront him in whatever form he’d taken, and stop him from killing his way through the castle’s inhabitants. He’d have to keep him at bay while he talked to him. He could do that. Stanislav had, ironically, taught him well. And if that didn’t work, if it came down to a fight: he’d been taught how to do that, too.
‘I can help,’ said Mary. ‘I’ll be able to spot him, if he’s outside, and if you’re right about him being a wolf, I can just fly out of reach. Luiza, go and tell the others what we’re doing. Don’t leave the room until one of us tells you it’s safe.’
‘What if he comes for us?’
‘You throw everything you have at him. Including Bell if you have to.’ Mary moved uncomfortably, her wounds raw.
Luiza left them the lantern and scurried up the last few turns of the stairs, leaving Dalip and Mary not staring at each other.
‘Do you,’ he said, ‘want me to find you a pair of trousers, or something?’
‘Because running around in my pants makes me feel like a fucking superhero, right?’ She blew out a breath, long and heartfelt. ‘If you’re hiding a pair of jeans somewhere, then yes. Otherwise, we’re just wasting time.’
Under normal circumstances, he’d have found it distracting. He was used to women covering up. These weren’t normal circumstances, and she wasn’t a Sikh. ‘I can cope if you can.’
‘This is fucking stupid, you know that? We’re just kids, and we’re hunting an actual werewolf.’
‘It would be even more stupid if you couldn’t turn into a giant bird of prey.’
‘That’s actually a good point. We can do this, can’t we?’
Dalip pulled a face. ‘No one else is up for it, so I’m game if you are.’
‘You really are a posh kid.’ But she smiled as she said it.
‘Doesn’t mean I’m bad or wrong.’
‘You’re
all right really. What first?’
‘Let’s find the guards. They don’t deserve this.’
They dismantled the rest of the barricade and checked the whole of the downstairs area. There were more store rooms off the main kitchen, and each one involved a sweaty-palmed grip of the latch and a flinging wide of the door, expecting to be attacked in a flurry of fur and teeth, and gratefully disappointed when it didn’t happen.
‘Outside, then,’ said Dalip. The doorway, with its broken door on the floor was full of wind and noise. ‘This castle was grown? Seriously?’
‘It’s weird, but it’s true.’
‘I should be getting used to that, but I don’t think I ever will.’ He stuck his head out and remembered to look up and behind him at the wall. The sky, black already, was low and heavy and churning with cloud. The invisible moon was no help, and the unattended fire in the courtyard burned low and fitful.
‘You go first,’ said Mary. ‘You’ve got the knife.’
He looked at it, its broad blade and short length. ‘Something longer would be so much better. My grandfather had a sword, a proper sword: he even used it during the war.’
‘He’s not here though, is he? You are, and that’s what we’ve got.’
When they both stepped outside, they were surprised at the violence of the weather. The gusty wind took hold of them and shook them hard. To the south, behind the bulk of the mountain, lightning flickered.
‘It’s only a storm, not like before,’ said Mary. She clutched at Dalip’s arm. ‘Fuck me, it’s cold.’
‘I did say.’
The grass was sharp and brittle under their feet as they trotted across to the guard house. Lights glimmered from the window slits, and more ominously, from the open door.
Dalip slowed, and he pulled Mary back.
‘We don’t want to fight them. But they won’t be happy. We’ve turned everything upside down for them.’
‘Fuck them.’
‘We still need to be careful.’
Dalip crossed the remaining distance, past the fire, to the steps up. The door was sideways in the doorway, deep scratches running against the grain of the wood. He leant it against the wall, and beckoned Mary in.