There would be a bloodbath, though, and the survivors would hunt her down to her dying day. Worse still, Dalip would be in the middle of it all, and if he survived, he’d turn against her. That… would be difficult. She wanted a friend. She wanted him as a friend.
She had the power to decide, one way or the other. She gritted her teeth and turned back around.
‘What the fuck is wrong with you people? Seriously, just talk to each other. We might even learn something useful. You in the robe? What makes the maps so important?’
The figure slowly reached up and curled a hand around the cutlass blade. Their grip was such that the sword sank into the narrow bridge of flesh between fingers and thumb, and pink liquid started to run towards the hilt. The captain tried to resist, but the point inexorably moved away from the figure’s exposed throat.
With one last little shove, the captain staggered back, red-faced, and was caught by Dalip before he pitched over the edge of the ravine.
‘The maps represent our work. Sooner or later, we knew they would all come to us. We had expected them one by one, or a few at a time. Not, as has apparently happened, all at once.’
‘So… what? The geomancers are working for you?’
‘As a tree works for a gardener. The tree neither knows nor cares about the fate of its fruit, whether it is eaten by birds, falls to the ground to rot, or is harvested by the owner. So are those you call geomancers to us. They bear the fruit. We harvest it.’ The robed figure turned to address her directly. ‘That is our harvest. It belongs to us.’
‘But,’ she said, ‘you know what bastards they all are.’
‘We planted the seeds in the minds of the first geomancers: do this and you will control Down, we said. They went forth and the seed grew until it became a tree, a tree that would multiply and cover the face of Down. Now, the harvest is gathered in. You hold it in your hand.’
She felt sick. She swallowed against the bile rising in her throat.
‘So what do you want them for?’
‘You would not understand.’
‘Are you calling me stupid?’
The figure’s impassive white mask tilted with its head. ‘Let me rephrase. You may have some degree of agency, but you are not in full command of the facts. This leads you to behave in a sub-optimal way.’
‘You’re still calling me stupid, right?’
‘If you understood, you would hand the maps to me without hesitation. You would know you had no alternative.’
There was now a little semicircular space around the figure. The pirates had backed off slightly, wary of this strange creature which ignored gaping wounds in its hand and was far stronger than any normal man. Dalip stepped into that gap and walked slowly around it.
‘Why don’t you make us understand, then? Go on. They say out there, that if we get enough maps together, we can control the portals, and maybe go back home. Is that right?’
‘The truth is beyond your comprehension. Any of you. I cannot explain it simply enough, and your minds are too weak to grasp the complexity of the answer.’
‘Try. Or is your own understanding flawed? Do you really know what’s going on, or has Down changed the rules for you?’
‘You ignorant savage. You dare argue with me?’
‘You’re the reason Down’s been corrupted. You created the geomancers. You’re the reason I had to fight for my life in a pit. So yes, I dare. I dare a whole lot more than just argue. Your influence◦– your contamination◦– over Down has to end.’ He raised his machete, ready to strike.
‘Dalip, don’t. Don’t take it on. Swords won’t hurt it.’
‘Is that so?’ He carried on circling the figure, and the figure kept turning to face him.
‘They gave me this dagger to make me feel safer. Work it out.’
The white mask fixed Mary with its impenetrable stare.
‘Enough. Give me the maps and you may go.’
With a tremendous and sudden charge, Dalip rammed the figure from behind. It almost wasn’t enough, and it was almost too much. It spent what seemed like an age tipped over too far for recovery and yet still not falling. Dalip was dragged back at the last moment by the captain or he would have preceded the fluttering robes into the white-flecked river below.
Mary watched it fall, all the way down, until it splashed down and the water covered it. She thought it would emerge a moment later, spluttering and coughing, but that time stretched and eventually snapped. It wasn’t going to resurface.
‘Fuck, Dalip. What have you done?’
The servants of the White City took a belated step forward, and the pirates formed a line to face them. Neither side was certain of what to do next.
‘They’ll never tell us what we need to know now.’
‘They never were. Because if we knew, we’d stop them.’
She was running out of steam. ‘Stop them from doing what?’
‘I don’t know! But given the way they’re going about it, I don’t think I’m going to like the result, and neither are you. We simply don’t count in whatever it is that they have planned. We’re never going to make them care◦– you heard it◦– so we have to work this out by ourselves, for ourselves. This is where it happens, though,’ said Dalip. ‘Nowhere else. This is where it gets done.’
Mary looked at where she was, balanced on a pillar of rock high above a fast-flowing river, both hands full.
Simeon peered down into the river, where there was still no sign of the robed figure. ‘I may have been hasty, good lady. You have my word, as a captain, that if you were to return to us, the maps will remain your property, to do with as you see fit. All I ask in return is no more lies. It seems they are altogether more dangerous and more deadly here than in the rest of Down.’
‘Okay,’ she said, and nodded. ‘You are a pirate captain, though, right?’
‘As I informed young Singh here, we’re the good kind of pirates. My word is my bond. Besides,’ he added, ‘I think you’ll find throwing your lot in with us is slightly more appealing, now we know they’re not human. Remain where you are, while we chase them off the streets again. We’ll consider our options after that. Singh? See that no one gets past you.’
He retrieved his hat, set it on his head, and moved through the pirates until he was at the front. He kept walking, and they followed with a shout. The crew met the servants with the ringing of metal and the cracking of skulls. And still the Lords of the White City declined to act, even as they saw their men get cut down, one by one, by the far more accomplished pirates.
‘Dalip? Dalip, what are they? You know, don’t you?’
He was watching the second rout of the White City that day, but he dragged his attention back to Mary.
‘I think◦– and it’s only a guess, but I’m reasonably sure◦– that they’re from the future.’
‘Our future?’
‘A long time in our future. They look at us and they see savages.’ He snorted.
‘You killed one of them.’
‘I don’t think they die that easily.’ He shook his head. ‘Not savages. I don’t know: bees. We do all the work, we live and we scavenge and we die, then they take all the honey.’
She sighed, and let her arms fall by her side. ‘That… didn’t go as I expected.’
‘I think we just have to get used to the surprises.’
22
Did he regret it? Had he given in to anger, and hate? Or had he been trying to dispense some small measure of justice in a world caught up in an age of darkness? Did his motives even matter, when the end result was one less monster?
Any doubt he’d had that the robed figure wasn’t human had been dispelled the instant he’d charged it. He’d hit it with everything he had, and it had been like striking a brick wall. If it hadn’t been so close to the edge, it would never have fallen. He alone wasn’t surprised that it hadn’t come up again. It might have had the form of a man, but what lay beneath the cloth and skin was far removed from flesh and blood.