The White City

by Simon Morden

  ‘We are in Down,’ said Crows. ‘For some, that is lost, and for some, that is found.’

  She searched the horizon for any sight of land, but saw none. It was water as far as she could see. She had never been this alone before in her life: her experience had always been the noise and chaos of a children’s home, when there was always someone around. It was wealth and privilege that bought privacy, locked doors and high walls.

  She started to laugh, and Crows looked at her as if she was deranged, which only made her laugh harder, until she was all but incapable of speech. She was rich, not in any way she could understand, but she was here to stay. Down was everything she’d ever wanted. It wasn’t heaven, it was more like hell, but it made her feel alive.

  ‘It is good to laugh,’ said Crows, still not sure what to make of it, or her. ‘After the … unfortunate incident on the beach, I thought your heart would always be sad.’

  Mary panted for a while, and managed to sit upright again. ‘Oh, you’ll pay for that, one way or another, one day. And just so you know, when that moment comes, you’re on your own.’

  ‘Your friends have to catch me first.’ A wave rose slowly from the deep and rolled towards the stern, at the same time a trough formed ahead of the bow. The boat pitched forward, and the sensation of movement, if not the visible signs of it, began.

  ‘Don’t write them off too fast.’ She rearranged the sewing in her lap. ‘They’re full of surprises.’

  Crows considered it. ‘One old women, one scared girl, and your Dalip Singh, who is brave but naïve and simply too trusting to survive here. You should not pin your hopes on seeing them again.’

  ‘Ever?’

  ‘Down is vast, and ever is a long time. But Bell is not the only geomancer, and hers not the only castle. It would be a kindness if they were taken by someone else; at least, they would not then starve.’

  ‘I’m not saying you’re wrong. Just … you know. Stuff like that has a habit of coming back and biting you on the arse.’ She punctuated her words with stabs of the hole-maker through the sail cloth.

  ‘I will watch my arse carefully.’ Crows folded his hands into his lap. ‘You are right. Miracles do sometimes happen, and so may Dalip Singh.’

  She made more holes, then started to thread them together. She would find a way to open the portals, get her friends home, and … then what? Would the chaos brought about by the geomancers end because she’d finally cracked the problem? Or would she have to fight them all, either one by one or in groups? Because she was up for that. The Red Queen’s army would sweep across Down, opening every last dungeon and freeing every last captive.

  ‘You are smiling,’ said Crows.

  ‘Am I? Just concentrating.’ She needed the maps first, before any of that could happen. How long was this journey supposed to take? Probably not long enough, but if she was walking – or flying – she wouldn’t be able to sew at the same time. Better get on with it. Stop daydreaming and stitch like it was all that mattered in this world.

  Mama could do this sort of shit, she bet. Luiza and Elena too, maybe. Dalip – did Sikh boys get taught needlecraft? She thought probably not. So there was at least something she could do better than him. She pulled and sewed and tightened, frowning at the stiffness of the cloth and the springiness of the thread.

  Yet when she tied a knot in the end of the line, and snipped off the excess with the shears, she was – if not happy – satisfied with the result. The two pieces of sailcloth didn’t part when she pulled at them, and when she let go, they sprang back along the join. There were still things like drawstrings to consider, that would change a wearable cloak into a functional sack. There’d be no point in stealing the maps and then dropping them, one by one, into the ocean as the wind took them.

  She had no idea about patterns or how to cut cloth in order to give it shape. There was no way around that problem: she’d just have to manage with as much guile and tenacity as she could muster. One thing was certain, and that was: she was learning. Her second attempt was far better than her first.

  Crows was watching her closely, his eyes half-closed. She held up her handiwork for his inspection, and he pursed his lips and looked to one side.

  This will be your undoing, she thought. Not magic, not power, not weapons, not cheating or lying, neither great plans nor sudden surprises, but this: your cynicism. I know what that’s like, but I’m better than that now.

  ‘You are smiling again.’

  ‘Just, you know. Finding something I’m not bad at, after years of thinking I’m shit at everything.’

  ‘Your stitching is workmanlike,’ he said.

  ‘What’s wrong with stitching like a workman?’

  He fanned his fingers wide. ‘I could show you how to do better,’ he said. ‘Sailors have always had to mend their own clothes, even after the age of sail.’

  This was better than her plan. Crows would show her how to stitch the bag she’d use to steal the maps.

  ‘You’re on. Can you do that at the same time as you move the boat?’

  Whether he said yes or no, she had her answer ready.

  ‘It would be,’ he considered, ‘difficult.’

  ‘We’re in no hurry, right?’ Mary gathered up her practice pieces, the thread, the needles and the wickedly sharp spike. ‘And I need something to do while you steer.’

  She waddled towards the stern and dumped herself on the other side of the rudder.

  ‘Now?’ He seemed disconcerted by her eagerness to learn.

  ‘Now,’ she said firmly.

  She’d backed him into a corner, and he had no graceful way out. He shrugged. ‘It is a strange request, but, very well.’

  He took the first of her attempts, snipped through the securing knot, and unthreaded in an instant what had taken so long to create. He selected a needle from the assortment, then arranged the work over his knees.

  ‘Like this,’ he said.

  12

  Once Dalip, Elena, and Mama had been manhandled aboard, the anchor was dragged up from the sea bed and the sail lowered.

  Quickly, quietly, the ship headed out to sea, and the dark line of the shore slipped away.

  The crew – difficult to count in the dark – numbered some two dozen. They seemed to know their duties, because they neither blundered nor swore at each other as they pulled on lines and lowered big boxes through hatches in the main deck.

  Simeon warned them to keep out of the way, but nothing else. A few words with the steersman at the rudder, and he was off through the crew towards the prow, checking everything as he went.

  The three of them huddled together, nervous. But, after a while, the activity slowed: some of the crew were assigned to take the watch, while the rest either broke into small groups to rest and talk, or individually to curl up on the broad deck and sleep.

  Dalip listened to the creaks of the ropes and the soft flutter of loose canvas, and settled back against the bulwarks.

  ‘Who are these people?’ Mama hissed. ‘And where are we going?’

  ‘We’re going wherever they’re going. That’s okay, isn’t it? For a while, at least?’

  Mama harrumphed, and put a thick arm around Elena, who sat between them, shivering. ‘It may be the best offer we have, but I don’t have to like it. If these men are pirates—’

  ‘They just call themselves that—’

  ‘And if I called myself a crack-head baby-killer, what’d that make you think about me, even if I wasn’t one?’

  She had a point, even if Dalip wasn’t quite willing to concede it. ‘We’ve sunk so low that an offer from a bunch of pirates is the best offer we have. We may end up chained to the galleys and rowing ourselves to death, or made to walk the plank, or whatever, but no one here seems to be a slave, and there aren’t many places to hide them either.’

  ‘Trusting folk hasn’t
exactly worked for us so far. They come to us with open hands and the minute we let our guard down, they close them into fists to beat us with.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve run out of ideas. And the time to argue was before we got into the boat.’

  Mama would have usually folded her arms at that point, but one was still holding Elena tight. ‘You never used to sass me.’

  ‘This is the best I could do.’ He looked up at the moon, now almost overhead, the mast drawing a line between sea and sky. ‘We just have to hope that it’s enough.’

  ‘The boat is okay,’ whispered Elena, so quietly that Dalip had to lean in to hear. ‘It cannot be as bad as the beach.’

  Perhaps it could. They might be about to find out. Simeon was now making his way back to the stern, his three-cornered hat marking him out from the others.

  He pulled up one of the chests that was still on deck and sat astride it, his knees almost touching the boards.

  ‘It’s all shipshape and Bristol fashion. Tomorrow, we’ll show you the ropes – because there’s one thing this tub doesn’t go short of, it’s rope – and you’ll see how it all works. Rules are very simple here on the good Ship of Fools: captain’s law. If you disagree with that, now or at any point, you get put ashore at the next available opportunity.’ He drummed the top of the chest with the flats of his hands. ‘But we’re all survivors here. There are no passengers on board, but there are no slavemasters either. Muck in, and you’ll do perfectly well.’

  Mama disengaged herself from Elena and moved forward. ‘They’re good words, Mr Simeon, fine words even, but we haven’t seen much kindness from strangers hereabouts. What makes you so different?’

  ‘All we want to do is live free. We don’t want magic, we don’t want castles, we don’t want to own anyone or anything, save the skins we stand up in. We’ve escaped the madness of the land to cope with the more straightforward vagaries of a life on the ocean. We’ll protect that way of life if we have to, damn the geomancers to Hell and back, but for the greater part, they leave us alone so long as we have nothing they want.’

  ‘And us? What if they want us?’ Dalip spoke into the silence.

  ‘Hasn’t happened yet, old man. To them, we’re all pretty much interchangeable as planks or bricks, and there are lower-hanging fruit than taking on a band of bloodthirsty pirates.’ Simeon slapped his knee, as if to prove his piratical credentials. ‘We’re also sailing away billyo from our last port of call. It’s what we do: in fast, out quicker. Throw the pursuers off the scent and show them a clean pair of briny heels. Whatever happened back there, you’re safe now.’

  He changed, just like that, from pantomime caricature to someone possibly worthy of trust.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Elena.

  ‘You are very welcome, madam. It’s not often we get to save damsels in distress. Women, well: Eve’s race is somewhat under-represented here.’ He raised himself up on to the gently swaying deck and doffed his tricorn hat. ‘Dawson will bring you your mess shortly. With that, goodnight. May we all live till morning.’

  Mama waited until Simeon had stepped away before she reached over and tapped Dalip’s knee. ‘And just how is this supposed to get us home?’

  The boat wasn’t so long that a raised voice wouldn’t be missed at the other end. ‘Mama, keep it down.’

  ‘I am not spending the rest of my days on this glorified rowing boat.’

  ‘Where would you like to spend them?’

  ‘Home. In London.’

  He’d found them, after a day of chaos and grief and against all expectations, a place of respite: somewhere they might just be able to make sense of everything, at their own pace, in the company of people who weren’t trying to either kill them or worse.

  ‘I don’t know what you want from me. We lost the chance to go home when Crows took the maps and Mary didn’t come back. Something might come up that changes everything. Maybe we find Mary again, I don’t know. For now, there’s nothing I can do except learn how to steer a ship, raise the sails and row.’

  ‘So we’re not going to look for Crows?’

  ‘This is not a taxi,’ he growled. ‘It isn’t going where we want it to go, and it’s not ours to command.’

  Elena put one hand on Mama’s shoulder, and one on Dalip’s – which made him shiver. But rather than a light touch, she clawed her fingers and dug her nails in until neither could ignore her.

  ‘We played at being geomancers. That is why we are here, and why Luiza is lost to us. If we want to keep playing, we will all die. Either we have to become like Crows, like Bell, like Mary and all the other monsters, and do it for real, or we stop playing, stop pretending that we are like them, and try to live our lives as we wish.’

  The mention of Mary in the same breath as Crows and Bell surprised Dalip, but the pressure on his shoulder relaxed slightly, and he decided now wasn’t the right time. Eventually, he nodded. ‘She’s right. I’m not ruthless enough,’ he said, ‘and neither are you, Mama.’

  ‘I just want to go home,’ she murmured. ‘If only there was a way …’

  ‘It’s what we all want.’ Dawson appeared out the shadows. ‘But it ain’t happening.’

  He set three bowls on the sea-chest that Simeon had used for a seat. Each was full of a variety of things that none of them could make out yet, so they didn’t know whether to be pleased or disappointed. He slipped a waterskin off his shoulder and handed it to Dalip, who only worked out what it was by its weight. Then he left them without another word.

  Dalip sighed. ‘Mama, I wish I was better at this. I’ll talk to Simeon in the morning, but I can’t insist that the entire crew risks their necks to follow or fight with Crows. Whatever happens isn’t up to me.’

  He doled out the bowls, which contained dried fruits, nuts, and some kind of hard cracker that had to be gnawed on to soften. But it was food, and not unsatisfying, and they hadn’t had to scavenge for it themselves. Working the waterskin required a certain amount of practice, but after dumping a good cupful straight into his face, Dalip managed to drink from it, and passed it round.

  By the time they were done everyone, except the sailors needed to keep the ship on an even keel, was asleep. It was the small hours of the morning: the moon was racing ahead of them to the west, already touching the horizon and revealing a far distant and unknown landscape of ragged mountains that would have otherwise been invisible.

  There were no stars to steer by, yet the helmsman seemed to be happy with full sail and a lookout. They had to know where they were: every sea had its hidden reefs and shoals, and every voyage held the risk of shipwreck. Either there was a secret, or he was missing something obvious. The land was in darkness – no lighthouses, no lanterns to mark even where it was. Perhaps it was simply familiarity from plying the same coast for years. Still, to navigate like that was a prodigious feat.

  And with such thoughts playing in his head, Dalip fell asleep exactly where he lay.

  His dreams were strange and he remembered nothing except this: that he was lost and alone and scared, and a great wooden ship swooped down out of the sky to rescue him. Everything else evaporated in the morning light, and he found he was wedged up against the bulwark of a Viking longboat, authentic in every detail, right down to the unfurled striped sail.

  Puffy white clouds floated high above him, and the sun was coming up behind him, turning the sea a violent orange. The ropes strained and creaked, and the waves broke rhythmically against the steep sides.

  Not a dream, then. But what kind of rescue?

  He levered himself up and picked his way through the still crew to the prow.

  ‘When do you sleep?’

  Simeon didn’t take his eye from the telescope, nor did he unwrap his arm from the dragon-headed prow.

  ‘When I must. A captain is always on duty: his the command, his the responsibility.’ He scanned
the horizon and, finally satisfied, looked back at Dalip. ‘The safety of my ship and my crew are paramount.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—’

  Simeon used his lopsided smile. ‘No offence meant and none taken. We are but minnows in the stream, and none will pay us more interest than the pike or the kingfisher. So, Singh: what say you? Will you join us, or is the pirate’s life not for you?’

  ‘Before I answer, I need to tell you something.’

  ‘Oh, oh?’ Simeon swung around and contracted the telescope against his thigh. ‘A confession? You are secretly a prince of the Punjab, the girl a countess, and the lady is the Queen of Sheba?’

  ‘It’s not like that.’ Dalip hesitated, before adding: ‘It’s about how we got here, and how you found us.’

  ‘A story,’ said Simeon. ‘Will it be an honest one, or packed with fictions?’

  ‘I’ll make it as accurate as I can.’

  ‘Good. Your captain deserves honesty.’

  ‘We had a box,’ said Dalip. ‘A sea-chest like yours. Full of maps. Possibly all the maps. It’s impossible to tell, because we only had them for a short while, and we were only able to go through a few of them, before …’

  ‘Let me guess: before you lost them again.’

  ‘Elena’s cousin was killed. And, possibly, Mary. At least, she didn’t come back.’

  Simeon tipped his hat into his hand and tucked it under his arm. He dragged his fingers through his greasy hair. ‘And who is this fell adversary of yours, that betrayed you and murdered your friends?’

  ‘He goes by the name of Crows.’

  Simeon said nothing, but his eyelid twitched.

  Dalip bowed his head, but he shouldn’t have been surprised. Even here, Crows was known and hated. ‘I’m sorry for wasting your time, Captain. I’ll go and find someone to teach me their job.’ He started to retreat, but there were words thrown at his back.

  ‘D’you know where Crows is now?’

  ‘He’s out here somewhere, heading for the White City. If it exists. If he knows how to find it.’