The White City

by Simon Morden

  Simeon beckoned him closer again. ‘What’s his plan?’

  ‘He stole our boat, and our maps, and left us for dead. He didn’t share his plans, I …’ Dalip shook his head. ‘I think he wants to sell them, or use them to buy influence, or something. I don’t know how it works.’

  ‘And what was your plan, Singh?’

  ‘We were going to put the maps together. They were all fragments: mostly of one portal and one castle. But there were, I don’t know, hints, that we could join them up and finally reveal the shape of where the portals are across Down. Even then, we don’t know how to open any of them and make them go in reverse. It was a hope, that somehow the answers would fall out of a completed map. That was it. That was what we were going to do.’ He shrugged. ‘Out loud, like that: it sounds pathetic. You get caught up in the madness of it. No wonder the geomancers are all so …’

  ‘Unhinged?’ offered Simeon, and Dalip nodded.

  ‘It’s cost us too much already. We need to give it up.’

  ‘But part of you wishes that this dastard Crows pays through the nose for his murder and rapine?’

  Clenching his fists, Dalip said: ‘I’d kill him if I could.’

  ‘Oh, there’s quite a queue ahead of you.’ Simeon fiddled with the brim of his hat before setting it back on his head. ‘So he’s heading for the White City – yes, he knows where it is, have no fear on that score – and with a king’s ransom of maps? Well, now. That is interesting.’

  ‘He can turn into a giant sea snake. He’d sink the Fool and kill everyone on board if he thought you were going to try to take the maps. I’m not asking that of you: in fact, I’m begging you to forget the whole idea and I’m regretting I ever mentioned it.’

  ‘He can do that now, can he? A bit different from when we were lowly mates together, back in the day. He had no ambitions then, save survival – same as the rest of us poor dogs.’ The captain put his foot up on the side and stared out to the north-west. ‘Have no fear, Singh, old chap. It’s perfectly right and proper that you’ve told me all this. Lots to think about.’

  ‘I’ll go and do something useful,’ said Dalip.

  ‘Yes, it’s good to keep busy.’ Simeon seemed overly distracted by something in the far blue distance. ‘The Devil makes work, eh?’

  Dalip wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but he took it as a dismissal. Many of the sleeping crew were now stirring, but even so the deck seemed too large, and too empty. There weren’t enough of them to make it look full. It could easily have held twice their number.

  And yet, if everything he knew about Down was true, these few were the only truly free people. Everyone else, all the refugees from disasters and dilemmas, were either held in thrall by the geomancers, living secretly and desperately, or dead.

  It was pitiful. Down was a way out, a fresh start, and it had been corrupted by the very people it had saved. Rather than living lives of duty and honour, enough had chosen the way of selfishness, greed and violence to poison the land for all. The sea only remained pure because it had no portals.

  If that was the way it had to be, then he would accept it. The maps were lost, Grace was lost, Stanislav dead, Luiza dead, Mary gone. He’d accepted life as a pit fighter. Why not a sailor? He was young and strong and, apparently, brave. Neither was he afraid of hard work.

  Two men were starting to unfurl the gathered sail. Dalip took a position behind them and gathered a length of the loose rope in his hands. His fingers, already calloused, gripped the damp fibres, and waited for instruction.

  13

  Crows controlled the boat’s speed and course, and guarded the trick of creating a standing wave closely. Mary had seen him do it often enough to think she could probably crack it on her own without accidentally summoning some nameless creature from the deep, given some practice, but he never left her alone for long or ranged far enough for her to do so in secret. She had her sewing to keep her occupied during his fishing trips, and she was learning patience. She was certainly learning how to ignore the hollow feeling in her stomach and the increasing thirst that was drying her throat to a croak.

  ‘How much further?’

  It could be a way of forcing her off the boat and away from the maps. He could simply circle the same patch of empty ocean until she was compelled to take to the air to search for water and food. Could she find him after that? She didn’t know how far away the nearest land was – or rather she did, and it was infested with plague. She’d have to find somewhere on the mainland, or another island in the bay which had fresh water, and then hunt for something raw and bloody and substantial.

  ‘A way,’ he said.

  Fine. That was how he was going to play it. He underestimated her resolve to stick to him like glue.

  ‘Then next time, bring me some fucking fish, okay?’

  ‘A simple enough request, but we have no fire to cook them. I do not think—’

  ‘Look, what’s that stuff the Japanese eat? It’s fish, right? And it’s not cooked. So it’s either that, or land the fucking boat somewhere.’

  He spread his hands wide, fanning his fingers. She’d come to realise that the gesture meant he was giving in. ‘Perhaps by the end of the day.’

  ‘Or earlier? Can you manage that?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Good.’ She’d called his bluff. If he thought that she’d suffer in silence, or plead with him, then he was wrong. She bent over her work again, and pretended not to notice that the sun slid over the stern of the boat and over to her left. He’d changed course. He knew where they were going.

  Facing away from the bow meant all she saw when she glanced up was Crows and, behind him, the horizon. When she next happened to glance over her shoulder, and all she saw was cliffs, she couldn’t help but stand and back away.

  The rock was hard and grey and jointed. Heavy, worn blocks littered the wave-swept shelf that had formed at its base. She looked up and up, and the cliff did nothing but loom back at her. The swell rose up to the shelf, spilled white foam across it, then sucked down by her height and more. It looked lethal.

  ‘Is this it?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ he said. The bow eased around and aimed for the next headland. ‘But it is not far now.’

  She should have heard the booming of the waves against the shore – it was all she could hear now – and it both angered and worried her that she’d let herself get so distracted. If she was going to beat Crows, she needed to be sharper than that.

  The bow crested the promontory, and she had her first sight of the bay beyond. It was deep, and the cliffs high like battlements. A cobble beach ran for part of its length, and on it lay the bones of boats like rotting whales, their timbers gone and only the ribs remaining. Hollow, gaunt and bleached by the salt sea.

  And there were so many, of every size, from child-like rowing boats, fit only for a trip around a duck pond, to broken-back ocean-going ships, whose curved timbers reached up like praying arms to the sky.

  ‘Everyone comes to the White City,’ said Crows. ‘Sooner or later.’

  All of those boats, sailed or rowed into the bay, abandoned and left to be dismembered by time and tide. It was … real? The White City was actually real?

  The boat slowed, began to bob with the waves, then started to drift towards the sheer cliff.

  ‘Crows? Not so close.’

  He tutted, and kicked the ship’s mast and tackle aside to reveal broad-bladed paddles. He passed one to her, and took the other himself. He took a position on the rear left, and indicated she needed to hang over the front right.

  Her strokes were fast and ineffective to start with, and the rock shelf was just off the side, near enough that she could almost use the paddle to push against it.

  ‘From here, we must do this for ourselves. Long, slow and steady,’ Crows directed. He leaned over and in, and the bow inched over
. She reached down and tried it. Her arms pulled and her muscles burned.

  The boat seemed to hang in space, not moving away, held by some invisible force. She pulled again and, gradually, they broke free.

  It was cold, and still, and it grew colder and more still the deeper into the bay they drove. The sound of the moving water echoed off the rock and made her want to whisper. There were ghosts here, and she didn’t want to disturb them.

  ‘How long has this been going on?’

  ‘For as long as there has been time here.’ Crows pointed towards an almost-empty spot between wrecks. ‘From the founding of Down to its end, this bay, this beach: this is the way to the White City.’

  She looked down through the reflecting surface of the water to the sea bed. It was littered with the disarticulated remains of many more vessels, planks and masks and keels, encrusted with weed and shells.

  ‘Stroke hard,’ said Crows. They were heading straight for the gap on the beach, and he clearly intended to strand the boat as far up as possible.

  The hull scraped, and she caught hold of the side, bent her legs and braced. The whole boat roared and rattled. Then it tipped, spilling her against the side, and her thread and needles on top of her. The box of maps slid slowly against the same side, and she put out a hand to steady it, making certain that it wasn’t going to pitch over and out into the surf.

  Crows walked over it, over her, and jumped the short distance to the cobbles. He straightened himself up and placed his hands in the hollow of his back, staring at the back wall of the bay.

  Mary looked up from amongst the debris and followed the direction of his gaze. There was a notch at the base of the cliff, little more than a dark smudge. She stared harder, and finally saw it. Obscured by the shadow was the start of a staircase, barely more than steps crudely cut into the rock.

  ‘Up there?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Fucking hell. They don’t make it easy, do they?’

  ‘No. Not easy at all.’

  She gathered up her strewn sewing, and everything else she thought she might need from the forward locker. She hid the compass in the folds of a spare square of canvas, and piled it all next to her. Righting the map box, she unclasped it.

  Crows watched her as she carefully placed the cloth and tools on top of the maps, and just as carefully closed the lid again.

  ‘Why are we adding to our load?’ he asked.

  ‘Because I want to.’

  ‘You may change your mind.’ He stepped closer and reached into the boat for the nearest of the rope handles.

  She pushed the box up and along the top rail, so that Crows could drag it out above the surf line. She jumped over the side after him, and clattered wearily up the beach. Her dress was the only splash of colour in the graveyard of ships.

  Looking back at their boat, she asked: ‘What’s going to happen to it now?’

  ‘It falls apart. It has outlived its purpose. Houses without people, castles without kings, boats without crew. They all decay.’

  Mary picked up the other handle, and made they their awkward way to the base of the cliff.

  ‘But these haven’t rotted, have they? They’re not being sucked back into the ground, they’re being broken up. What is it that’s different here?’

  ‘There is no magic.’

  ‘Down’s blind spot.’ She remembered what Dalip had said, though it felt like years ago. ‘But I thought that was just something Dalip made up.’

  ‘Yes. Dalip Singh, for all his protestations, understands Down better than most. So, from now on, we cannot rely on our other abilities: just on our wits and our luck.’ He pursed his lips. ‘We do not travel to the White City because it is safe. We travel because it is necessary. I thought you understood that.’

  They were at the bottom of the steps, and Mary was able to comprehend their full terror in one sweeping look. They were carved, one tread at a time, into a fold in the cliff face. The narrow crevasse was angled only slightly away from the vertical, and in places seemed to be little more than a ladder with nowhere to cling.

  ‘You have got to be fucking kidding me.’ The height didn’t scare her, rather it was the utter ridiculousness of it. ‘Someone made that?’

  ‘Most likely many someones.’

  ‘I can’t climb that.’

  ‘We have to. Together. You cannot fly to the top – and I cannot support the weight of the box on my own. Not all the way up.’

  ‘Is this it? Can’t we sail around the coast until we find an easier way? Because this is fucking nuts.’

  She couldn’t see the top, even though she knew it was there.

  ‘If we want to get to the White City from here, we must use this stairway.’

  She was dizzy, and on the verge of agreeing with him, when she realised she wasn’t in any fit state to do what he wanted.

  ‘No,’ she said. She turned her back on him and sat down on the cobbles. She could hear his weight shift on the stones behind her as he considered his options. Perhaps he really couldn’t climb with the box. Perhaps it was a trap – another one – for her. It was probably both. ‘I didn’t come all this way to be shafted by you now.’

  ‘I understand,’ he said. He wasn’t going to let it stop him, of course. He was Crows, and it was his nature.

  She could sulk all day if she had to, and the silence thickened about them.

  ‘How are we to do this, then?’ he finally asked.

  ‘Find me something to eat and something to drink, and then, if I feel strong enough, I’ll help you.’

  ‘But there is nothing here, Mary.’

  ‘You should have thought of that before bringing me to the one place on Down where I could find myself a thousand feet up without wings. Or is that what you wanted? Rather than having to push me off the cliff yourself, you get to watch me fall off it instead? Well, fuck you.’

  She reached down for a fragment of bleached wood and held it up in front of her. She snapped her fingers at it, and nothing happened. She tried again, because just once was never going to be enough. The wood was dry and brittle, and should have caught alight easily, but it wasn’t happening.

  ‘What we want is at the top,’ he said.

  ‘Then go and get it for me. I’ll wait here and look after the box.’

  ‘This is not unfolding how I imagined it would.’

  ‘What? You with the maps at the top of the cliff, and me at the bottom, broken as these boats?’ She threw the wood away and hugged her knees. ‘I’m not stupid, Crows.’

  ‘I had better begin, then.’

  ‘Yes. You’ll be back sooner that way.’

  She listened carefully. He didn’t move for a while, and it was just the sound of his breathing. Then the cobbles creaked and clacked as he went to the bottom of the first step. The slight grunts he made as he climbed faded, and after a while, she looked surreptitiously over her shoulder.

  Crows was perhaps a quarter of the way up. It looked for all the world like he was just hanging in the air, the steps indistinguishable from the rock face they were carved from.

  He took another step, and rose a little further. He seemed to have no interest in looking down: as a child of high-rise blocks of flats, vertigo wasn’t a problem Mary suffered from. Coming down again was going to be hard on Crows if he did.

  She moved the short distance to the map box, and sat down next to it, waited another moment or two, then nonchalantly undid the clasps. Her sewing was nestled in the top, and she retrieved all the pieces and laid them out on her lap.

  Did she have time for this? Possibly. Was this the plan? No. Was this the only chance she was going to get? Yes, yes it was. Even though she couldn’t turn into a falcon and fly away with the maps, she could still bag them up and climb the cliff herself. While Crows was doing whatever he thought necessary to persuade her up, she’d b
e already halfway to the White City.

  As for which direction to head – it was a city. How hard could it be to find? And once there, she could lose herself in its streets and he’d never find her.

  All she had to do was sew up the two halves of the cloak, deliberately left unfinished, and with a few deft tugs, the seams would tighten and become a functional, if not pretty, kit bag. The holes were already punched, and she was sure she could whip through this in a few minutes.

  She checked on Crows’ progress. A third of the way up. She could do this, if she concentrated.

  She kept making mistakes, and having to go back on herself. She blinked and scrubbed at her face, and the thread she was using swam in and out of focus.

  She deliberately poked herself in the leg with the hole-maker, hoping that the pain would sharpen her senses, and it did, for a little while. Her sweaty, trembling hands couldn’t grip the needle properly, and she almost fainted – or fell asleep: she couldn’t tell which.

  Crows was almost invisible, his black cloak merging with the shadows. Magic or no, he was still very difficult to spot.

  She kept on, and when she was finally finished, she put it all aside and staggered down to the sea.

  The cold was biting, sharp like teeth on her arms as she plunged them in. She knew what she was going to do next would hurt, and she was right. Her head and neck submerged, and the effect was like a slap. She was awake, and gasping, almost howling her breaths. She still had to climb.

  People had been subjected to worse than being a bit hungry, a bit thirsty. There was a refugee kid in the same hostel as her, who’d walked across half a continent with his clothes hanging off him. If he could do that, she could do this.

  She looked up, and couldn’t see Crows.

  She picked her way to the open box, and the maps stirring in the soft breeze. She looked at them, and having dried her hands on the back of her dress, she pressed down on them, compressing their volume and making it much more likely that she could carry them all off.

  She laid out her sail-canvas cloak on the ground, and started shortening the seams, pulling the thick thread a little at a time along its outer length, gradually bunching the cloth up until she had a deep pocket.