‘But you worked with Crows, yes?’
‘No. I pretended to work with Crows.’
‘You wanted the maps for yourself. You tried to run off with them when we got here. You cannot be trusted in anything.’ Elena pushed Sebastian forward, towards Mary, presumably assuming that he’d go for her. Dalip could tell he was beginning to see that the situation previously presented to him as clear-cut was anything but.
‘Mary was only doing what she thought was right. The maps don’t belong to us,’ said Dalip. ‘Or rather, they belong to everyone: it doesn’t really matter who owns them. What matters is what we do with them. Crows is working for the White City, whatever that means. He was going to give them, or sell them, to the Lords and Ladies in return for who knows what. We do know that once they had them, that’d be the last we ever saw of them. We have Mary to thank for saving them from Crows. Not so we can sell them ourselves, but so we can use them.’
‘If I may,’ said Simeon. He ambled lazily across in front of them, and then back again. ‘It is abundantly clear that Mary would make an admirable pirate lady. She is a liar and a thief, and probably not averse to a bit of the claret, but also she’s brave to boot, and loyal to her crew. Her quick-thinking salvaged a tragic situation and wrested control from our enemy. She is to be commended.’
He leaned his sword over his shoulder and dared anyone to gainsay him.
Elena stepped back, her lips thin and her face white. Then she turned and walked away. Sebastian swiped at the ground with his blade and made to follow her.
‘Sebastian,’ said Simeon. ‘Sometimes dipping your wick makes a man lose his head. If you get my meaning.’
Sebastian worked his jaw, said nothing, and trotted to catch up with Elena. Simeon turned to Mary.
‘Don’t find yourself alone with either of them. I have a premonition of woe regarding that pair.’
‘I didn’t go with Crows because I… Oh, what’s the point?’
‘The maps were the point. I would have done the same: I have, however, learnt through long and bitter experience that the dead stay dead, and that a man can only mourn so many times before he becomes inured. Singh, I charge you with the most solemn duty of keeping Mary alive.’ He pushed his hat up. ‘Can you manage that?’
‘Aye aye, Captain.’
‘We’ll make a sailor of you yet.’
One of the crew emerged from the building, giving the all-clear, and Simeon ushered Mary and Dalip inside. They followed the corridor to the courtyard.
‘What do you need?’ Simeon asked them.
‘Somewhere big enough to lay out all the maps, arrange them, and make sense of it all. It’ll need light, but no draughts.’ Dalip looked around at the square, trying to judge the sizes of the rooms that might lie behind them.
‘Take whatever room you want. I’ll post a guard and lookouts. Then we can start kicking down doors and hauling these dastards out, one by one.’ He reached into his jacket and pulled out the plastic egg, handing it to Dalip. ‘You might need this.’
When he’d gone, Mary leaned in. ‘What is it?’
‘Something I took from the Wolfman, along with his boots.’ He gave it to her, and she turned it over in her hand. ‘It’s a light. A little portable light.’
‘How does it work?’
‘I have no idea. I think it’s from the future too.’ He took it back and popped it into a pocket. ‘Let’s have a look around and pick somewhere.’
‘We’ll need Mama if we’re going to piece all these bits together.’ She glanced down the long corridor to the outside. ‘I know Elena’s pissed about Luiza dying, but how can she think I had anything to do with it?’
‘Because if something terrible happens, you find someone to blame.’
‘Blame the Wolfman. Blame Crows. Don’t blame me.’
Dalip shrugged. ‘You flew away. You didn’t come back. That looks a lot like guilt.’
She was quiet for a while, and Dalip studied the square of sky.
‘What did you think?’
‘I thought you were dead. That you and Crows had fought over the maps and you’d lost. Otherwise, you would’ve come back.’
He remembered what it had been like, sitting there, staring out to sea. It was only a few days ago, and he’d wondered if he’d ever get used to the hollow feeling inside. It turned out that he wouldn’t. And then on seeing her again◦– her stabbing him was forgotten◦– there was no sudden filling up again: simply confusion. How could she be alive when he’d so entirely believed her dead?
‘This isn’t making a start, is it?’ he said. ‘Let’s find some stairs.’
He was pointed to a rough wooden ladder that led up into a series of bare, dusty rooms that didn’t look like they’d been used for years. Their footprints, especially those from Mary’s bare feet, left a clear trail when they ventured beyond the search party’s tracks.
The windows were narrow, mere slits that hardly let in any light, and more like those in medieval castles than anything else. Dalip put his eye to one, and saw a section of the road and a couple of buildings. Nothing moved outside.
‘This is as good a place as any. We can even block up the windows with bits of cloth if we have to.’
‘It’s a bit, welclass="underline" dark.’ She stalked around the corner room. The doorways◦– no doors◦– were adjacent to each other against the innermost wall.
‘Why don’t we see if this works?’ He put the egg in the middle of the floor, which was apparently on a slope, because the egg rolled over and he had to stop it. He frowned, then asked: ‘Give me the compass a minute.’
He wrestled it from its tin and placed it on the boards, waiting for the glass face to stop swinging before he set the egg carefully down on its dimpled end, and it settled.
‘So we just wait for it to realise it needs to work?’
‘Pretty much. It hasn’t got an on switch. It’s got no switches at all.’ He stepped back and examined the room. Yes: it would be big enough, and being on the first floor, away from any of the four ladders, meant there’d be no through traffic. They could even insist on it and have guards warning people away. Or they could have a little viewing gallery so that anyone who wanted to could see their progress. That would be far better. If they had no secrets, there’d be no conspiracy theories brewing downstairs.
Their original plan had been to copy the maps on to a single sheet of paper or parchment, which they were going to buy, or somehow trade for, at the White City. That didn’t look like it was going to happen now. It wasn’t that sort of city, and he hadn’t seen a single scrap of paper. It was, however, still a good plan.
Mary had finally put the maps down, and was looking through the windows one by one.
‘Where did the boat end up?’ he asked.
‘This creepy bay, really tall cliffs, and a ladder cut out of the rock. It was insane. And the beach was covered with old, rotting boats, just sitting there, falling apart.’
‘The Bay of Bones,’ he said. ‘We didn’t land there. There’s a much easier way here, starting further along the coast.’ He almost told her about the other White City, the one buried under the forest. Something stopped him. ‘We could use the sail. To draw on. We can spread it out over the floor and once we’ve positioned a part of the map, we can draw it on the sail underneath. That would work.’
‘I pushed the boat back out into the sea, to try and make Crows think I’d legged it. I suppose someone could go and check, see if it’s still bobbing around in the bay. But in the morning: it’s a bit of a walk and you don’t want to be doing that climb up or down at night.’
‘Probably right. No point in taking stupid risks, is there?’