Mary dipped her hand into her honours and skimmed some off the top. She let them fall back into the pile, one at a time. ‘If that’s the case, why do I have these?’
‘Tradition.’
‘I think you’re lying. I think if I walk out of here and ask around, I can get a better deal.’
‘You want food?’
‘I want food.’
‘Wait here.’ The woman stood up and went to the door.
Mary stayed precisely where she was just long enough for the woman’s footsteps to echo away, then sprung from her seat to explore the room.
It didn’t take her long: what little there was was on view. There was no clutter, no debris, nothing of normal life, just the dust of age. There should have been something, though, in a corner or under a shelf. But the room had been picked clean long before she’d got there. She eyed the ceiling hooks suspiciously and went to the window, to peer out across the courtyard.
Nothing else stirred. She could hear the river’s deep rumble, and that was all. Which was why, when she turned her head and saw another man leaning out of the next room along, doing the same as her, she gave an involuntary squeak.
He stared at her without blinking, his wide, dark-ringed eyes full of desperation and regret.
‘What?’ she said, recovering. ‘Seriously, what? You’re giving me the fear.’
‘You’re not one of them,’ he finally managed.
‘One of them?’
‘A Lord or Lady,’ said the man, scraping his long, thinning hair up over the top of his head.
‘Are you saying I’ve got no manners?’
‘The rulers of the White City, I mean. You must have seen them.’
‘I’ve not met any kings or queens, if that’s what you mean.’
The man leaned forward, gripping the window frame. ‘You should get yourself away,’ he said to Mary. ‘Refuse to give them anything. This place. This whole place. It’s nothing but a trap.’
‘But I’m here for answers!’
‘That’s what they want you to think.’ He was leaning so far out of the window he was almost falling into the courtyard. ‘They put this rumour about that they can answer all your questions, and maybe they can, but what they do is take everything that you know and give you back nowt. A little bit here, a little bit there, but it doesn’t make anything clearer.’ He nervously glanced behind him, then at Mary. ‘We come from all over Down, fight our way here, die on our way here, and for what? I had a friend. A good pal. He… changed. Couldn’t help him. I’m left wondering when it’ll be my turn.’
They stared at each other in silence for a moment.
‘Go,’ he urged. ‘While you still can.’
Then he was jerked away, dragged back in to his room by unseen hands. She spun around and found that she was being watched from the doorway. The woman, now carrying a steaming bowl, narrowed her eyes.
‘What did I tell you?’
Her tone was perilously close to that of a school teacher, but Mary was sufficiently alarmed not to rise to the obvious bait. ‘To wait here. And I did. Who was that? And what did he mean, this place is a trap?’
‘Don’t concern yourself about him. He ran out of honour, and has to leave. That’s all.’ She put the bowl on the table, and shoved it in Mary’s direction. The smell was slight, but it triggered all of Mary’s hunger.
What it was exactly was difficult to identify◦– some sort of stew. But as she was having to focus on not dribbling, she realised she didn’t care. Even with the man’s warning ringing in her ears, she was drawn towards the bowl, and the crudely carved spoon protruding from the brown mess.
A few minutes later, she glanced up. The woman was watching her with amused detachment.
‘What? I’m fucking starving.’
She scraped the edge of the spoon across the grain of the wood and thought about picking it up to lick it clean. She just about stopped herself. She pushed the bowl away, and hoped there’d be an offer of seconds, but there was none forthcoming.
The woman started to circle the table, and Mary kept a wary eye on her, her hand resting on the dagger.
‘Why don’t we start with your name?’
‘Why don’t we start with yours?’
‘You’ve nothing to bargain with, girl.’
‘So what are these for?’ Mary threw a handful of honour on to the table, where they rattled and rolled. ‘I came for answers, not questions.’
‘You’re just another squib. Come back when you know something.’
‘I’m not going anywhere. I’ve done things you wouldn’t even believe, that I couldn’t imagine anyone doing, let alone me. Now I’m finally here, in what’s supposed to be Down’s only city.’ She pushed her seat back and brandished her dagger. ‘I’ve had enough. If you know what the fuck’s going on, you’re going to tell me.’
‘If we gave you the dagger,’ she said, ‘what makes you think it can be used against me?’
‘You bleed the same as me.’
She didn’t confirm or deny that, just continued circling and moving out of Mary’s immediate range. ‘Can you use magic?’ she asked.
Mary wondered what Dalip would say. ‘Why don’t you tell me what magic is and where it comes from, and I’ll tell you if I can use it.’
Another question was poised on the woman’s lips, but she instead sat down opposite Mary. ‘We’ve started off on the wrong foot,’ she said. ‘I know you’ve come here looking for answers. We’re looking for answers too. Think of it as pooling our information. We stay here, and we record what travellers tell us about what’s happening in Down. We try and make sense of this world, so we can help those who come to us.’
‘That man next door: did you help him? Or did you do a number on him, slap him around a bit, work him over for what he knows? Because he didn’t look very helped.’
‘Some people expect us to have all the answers, and are disappointed when we don’t.’ She gave a theatrical shrug. ‘Coming to Down doesn’t appear to require any sort of test of intelligence or wisdom.’
‘Well, you got here,’ said Mary, and saw that she’d momentarily got to the woman. But rather than annoyance, there was blank-faced confusion that flicked on, then off. Something was definitely going on, and she didn’t know what. One last try, then. ‘That bloke: the one I talked to, the one who was telling me to run. I want to see him again.’
‘And what good would that do? He doesn’t have any answers.’
‘Neither do you, it seems. For all this “let’s hold hands and share everything” patter, you’re not giving anything away, are you? He was right. This is… fake.’
‘Sit down, girl.’
‘Fuck you.’
‘You know this isn’t how it’s supposed to work, don’t you? You’re supposed to come here, and tell us your stories of where you came from, and what you’ve seen, and then we send you back out, just as ignorant as when you arrived, to get more information for us. Sometimes you even come back, you’re that pliable. That gullible.’
The door was the other side of the table, and the woman between it and Mary. But there was always the window at her back, and Mary was no stranger to using one as an exit.
‘For those who see through the charade, it’s a little different. We make you tell us. We make you tell us everything.’ The woman reached up and peeled her face away, dragging it off like it was a scab. The skull underneath was moist and running with a pink fluid. She gasped like she was coming up for air as her exposed white bone started to dry.
‘Fuck.’
It wasn’t a skull. It was a mask. White, porcelain, oddly beautiful; anorexic-model beautiful, with immobile features, huge dark eyes, and cheekbones like knife-blades. She pulled her hand down across her forehead, her nose, her chin, and flicked the last of the slime on to the floor. Her pale, matt features were almost, but not quite, human. Then she pulled her hair off her egg-like head and held it nonchalantly in her hand.