Mary grabbed her bag of honours, and was up and over the windowsill before anyone could stop her. Now, if only she could remember the way out.
No, she was good at this: she knew which door to run for, how to barge through it without stopping, how to scan the corridor ahead for obstacles and threats. She was already at the outer door by the time the first figure blocked out the light at the other end.
‘There’s no need for this,’ called the woman. ‘You won’t get away.’
‘The fuck I won’t,’ said Mary to herself. Her heart was banging its way out of her chest, just like the old days when she was dodging the foot traffic on Oxford Street, uniforms a distant second. It took her a moment to wrestle with the unfamiliar door mechanism, and she was outside, looking around and panting.
Except she still wasn’t alone.
Coming down the dirt road was a loose knot of people. Two wore long, floor-length electric-blue robes, with white masks peering out from under their hoods. Two were just men, grey and dirty-looking. And one was Crows.
It was the colour that startled her most. Where did they get the material from? She’d seen nothing like it so far in all of Down: they were like parakeets in the park, in amongst the browns and greys and blacks of the other birds. The fact that Crows was with them dragged her mind back to the moment.
He looked no different from when she’d last seen him, climbing up the cliff. The same serious smile, the same self-deprecating manner.
‘What have you done?’ she snapped at him. ‘You didn’t tell them, did you? Say you didn’t tell them.’
There was movement behind her, and she swung around, backing into the road, standing between the two groups. The woman stepped out just beyond the threshold, and two more men were behind her. At least, she assumed it was the woman from the clothing. The white mask she showed was identical to those the two in blue wore.
Mary was confused. And scared. And angry.
Crows edged forward, not wishing to leave his… friends? Allies? Shit. This was why he’d wanted to bring the maps to the White City.
‘They are not yours, Mary. It is time to give them up.’
‘They’re not here, and I’ll never tell you where they are.’
‘They know they’re in the valley, Mary. They know. The ferryman is one of them, and he saw you with a sack of what could only be the maps.’
‘What do you get, Crows? What do you get in return?’
‘Down.’ He looked almost embarrassed as he said it. ‘I get Down. These good people: they will rule here. And I will rule the rest.’
‘Is that what they told you? You think that’s what they’ll do?’
‘Once the maps are assembled, and the shape of Down finally revealed, yes. They are not that interested in us. They care nothing for us. Once I have served their purposes, then I will claim my reward.’
‘You want the maps, Crows?’ She levelled her dagger over the distance between them, pointed directly at his heart. ‘Why don’t you come and take them?’
‘That is not how we do things, Mary. Come. Be reasonable.’
‘Reasonable? Reasonable? You killed Luiza. I’ll give you fucking reasonable.’ She lunged at him, and he retreated rapidly.
‘Daniel has paid for his sins.’ Crows held his hands up. ‘I work only for the greater good.’
‘No.’ She whirled around to address the woman. ‘If you don’t stop him, then whatever game you have here is finished. He’ll screw you over just like he screwed me.’
The woman inclined her head. The blue-robed figures did likewise. As if they were listening to another voice. They were deciding her fate, and she couldn’t even hear what was being said.
They were, however, busy for the moment.
She glanced to one side: the river, and its precarious stepping stones. Up the valley side and away. She guessed that if she ran, empty-handed, they’d not follow her. On the other side, the road led back towards her locked shelter, and the maps. If she was quick◦– quicker than the Lords and Ladies and their servants◦– she could grab them. Then she just had to get past the ferryman and back out into the land of magic.
And he had a rifle.
No one was ever going to accuse her of making things easy for herself.
20
As they moved inland, the trees grew sparse and stunted: less a majestic cathedral and more an abandoned waste ground. The river cut more deeply, embedding itself between high-sided banks, until it flowed fast and deep.
The land seemed to funnel itself towards a point in the distance, where slabs of rock reared up out of the valley floor and the river emerged from the high plateau above through a slit. They’d been walking towards it all morning, and they were close now.
Then, rather than the constant slow rise, there was a dip, just before the river-cut. At the bottom of that bowl of land, there were two jetties facing each other across a point where the water was briefly wide and slack. On the far side, Dalip could see a little square raft of split logs tethered to the pier, and beyond that a tiny shack with the thinnest of banners of blue smoke waving above it.
They were getting somewhere. Simeon did indeed know the way.
The river between the piers wasn’t so deep as to prove a particular problem, and the raft looked more of a courtesy than a necessity. At the end of their jetty was a bell on a post. Their captain had already decided that a dozen trips by raft to ferry his raiding party across would go against the spirit of their endeavours. He motioned for them to stay quiet, and enter the river in groups of five.
Because he was the captain, he was in the first group; and because Dalip was worried about Mary, he was too.
The water was cold and heavy. He could touch the bottom almost all the way across, his feet churning up the soft silt, the colour of the water downstream becoming milky. They emerged again just below the other jetty, using its uprights to assist their climb up the bank.
They crouched in the scrub, waiting for the others to cross. Simeon shook the water from his arbalest, and wound the string back using the cranks. The metal arms creaked slightly as they bowed, and the trigger mechanism clicked as it engaged.
Slowly and steadily, the other groups pulled themselves up and took up positions hidden behind bushes or clumps of wiry grass.
The inhabitant of the hut showed no sign of having spotted his unannounced visitors, and it became clear that Simeon wouldn’t make their presence known if he could avoid it. He crept forward to have clear sight◦– and clear aim◦– of the closed door, and indicated that each group should go on towards the sharp river-made scar in the wall of rock ahead.
None of them used the track which ran by the side of the shack, instead creeping through the undergrowth. If anyone had looked they would have been seen, especially Dalip in his orange overalls. They were, however, quiet. No one heard them, and the sounds of their passing were easily camouflaged by the low rumble of the river and the bright hiss of the wind in the leaves.
Simeon was the last to leave, his cocked arbalest ready to shoot as he skirted the structure. No one came out to investigate. They passed undiscovered.
The next obstacle was the narrow path that ran by the river as it pierced the rock wall. The straight-sided slice taken out of the plateau echoed with the sound of white water below, and the wind whipped through, blustering and making it feel far more dangerous than it really was: the path was flat and dry, and the long, snaking line of pirates only had to concentrate on where they were putting their feet to come out the other side.