He held out his hand and reached out over the chasm towards Mary. She sheathed her dagger, and jumped deftly from pillar to pillar, catching his fingers over the final gap and landing safely on the bank.
‘What now?’ she asked.
He looked around. The fight had moved on, up the road, where the tail end of the servants, those who were bravest and had fought longest, were finally scattering, running from locked door to locked door and finding no safety. They’d been abandoned by their masters and mistresses, and the pirates were in no mood for clemency. There were bodies lying on the hard-packed dirt, and between the plants in the fields. The bloodstains looked like evening shadows in the noonday light.
‘We do what we came here to do. Try to put all the maps together.’ Dalip wanted to get away from the scene of carnage, and eyed up the pale walls of the structure closest to the river. ‘What’s in this building here?’
‘It’s◦– it’s the only place apart from the stone hut thing I’ve been in. It’s a big house, square, open yard in the middle of it.’
‘Anyone live there?’
‘I don’t know if anybody lives anywhere, as such. It was where I was told to go, and someone gave me the third degree in there. I thought she was like us, right up until she peeled her face off halfway through our chat and thought I’d be cool with it. It’s not a mansion, just a lot of empty rooms.’
‘I could really do with knowing where Crows has gone. I don’t trust him when I can’t see him.’ Dalip steered Mary towards the building, and stood outside, staring up at the narrow windows. He wouldn’t be able to get through them, but if there was a courtyard he could climb over the roof and drop down inside. The stones in the wall were tightly packed, but there were gaps between them.
On the off chance, and just so he could say he’d tried, he nudged the door with his foot. It moved a fraction. He pushed it harder, and it swung inwards, banging against the jamb. Inside it was gloomy and bare, a corridor with rough limed walls, and doors all the way down.
‘Why don’t we wait for backup,’ he said. ‘There’s no point in getting ambushed.’
She seemed to accept that and sat with her back to the wall. The big canvas bag she carried went seamlessly on to her lap.
‘The maps are in there, aren’t they?’
‘One lie at a time is enough for me.’ She opened the top of the bag and hauled out a brass tin. ‘This came with the boat. Our boat. What should have been our boat.’
He took it from her and turned it over, before propping his machete up and easing the lid off. It looked like a compass, but with only one direction◦– west◦– marked on it. The disc swung aimlessly about, then slowly settled down. He checked the position of the sun, which was past midday and behind one cliff, but illuminating the upper scree slopes and the wall of rock on the other. That was west, and that was where the W pointed.
‘It didn’t work when I used it,’ she said.
‘Seems to be working now.’ He bent down to show her.
‘When I say “didn’t work” I mean the direction was wrong, but it led me here anyway.’
‘That’s definitely west, over there.’ He walked a little way away, sighted down the cardinal, then walked back and did it again. He frowned. ‘Simeon would hang me from the yardarm if anything happened to you, or the maps.’
‘Do you want me to come with you?’
‘If that’s okay.’
Dalip slid his machete through the hole in his waistband, and carried the compass over the field boundary. The needle swung about, and pointed in a subtly different direction than before. He watched it carefully as he walked, aware of Mary stalking behind him, trying to see what he was seeing.
He wasn’t mistaken. The disc was gradually turning, tracking not some distant pole, but something very close by. When he judged that the W was no longer pointing west, but mostly north, he stopped and sighted along it again.
‘That dome: what is that?’
‘I know it hasn’t got a door.’ She looked at her feet. ‘I tried to hide from you in there.’
‘That’s okay.’
‘It was stupid.’
‘It’s fine.’ He squinted at the brass tin, but there was no writing on it. The only clue was the single letter on the compass card. ‘You found this on the boat?’
‘It was in a locker. There was sailcloth and needles and thread, enough to repair stuff if it went wrong. Down’s generous like that. You could have sailed it just great.’
‘W is for White City, not west. That building is where this compass points: no matter where you are on Down, you can always find your way here. It’s like a homing beacon.’
‘No shit. How does it do that without magic?’
‘Because,’ he started, but he didn’t know how to finish. How could a boat that had grown out of a sand dune hold a compass that still worked as surely as a satnav inside a magicless area? ‘I don’t know. Maybe there’s something really magnetic in there.’
Even as he said it, he didn’t believe it. If it was that magnetic, every piece of iron for a mile around would be stuck to the building. There was something else at work. Something he thought he ought to be able to explain, but couldn’t.
‘Whatever is in there, it’s so important to Down you need to be able to find it half a world away. So at some point, we need to get in there and find out what it is.’ He put the lid back on the device, and handed it to Mary. ‘It’s yours. You should keep it. I… Bell’s machines: did Down make those too?’
‘That’s what I’m thinking. Which is seriously fucking mad.’
The horn was sounding again and the pirates were assembling at the junction. They came down the road to find Dalip and Mary by the open front door.
‘That’s most of their human lackeys seen to, by God. But whatever those things are, they won’t face us like men. The dastards used their slaves as shields, to get back inside their bunkers without engaging with good, honest steel. Door to door it’ll have to be.’ Simeon spat on the ground and looked up at the building. ‘So what’s this place?’
‘It’s big enough for our needs, and a decent enough barracks for those not on duty.’
‘Right,’ said Simeon. ‘Search the place, room by room. Break things if you have to. Look for trapdoors, secret passages. Let’s have no surprises.’
Two dozen pirates piled through the doorway, and their voices could be heard, shouting as they banged about, checking every last space.
Elena didn’t join them, and she had Sebastian behind her. Dalip saw, and stepped between them and Mary. He held Sebastian’s gaze for longer than was normally necessary and inclined his head slightly.
‘This isn’t your fight,’ he said.
‘Are you sure?’
Here they were, squaring up to each other like fighting cocks. Considering everything else that had gone on, the situation was verging on the ridiculous, if only they hadn’t both been armed.
‘Mary had nothing to do with Luiza’s death,’ said Dalip, loudly enough so that everyone present could hear.
Then Mary pushed past him. ‘You can’t believe I did. Elena?’
‘You went with Crows,’ she said.
‘I stole the maps back.’ She shook the bag of them at her. ‘Look. Here they are.’
‘You have no honour,’ said Elena.
‘I have plenty of honour.’ Mary threw a cloth bag down at her feet. Worn metal coins spilled out across the dirt.
‘What, what are these?’
‘My honour. They give them to you, and a weapon, at the ferry. It’s all a con, though. Like one of those fairs where all the stalls are fixed, but you never realise until all your money’s gone.’