When he heard footsteps, he thought it was her. He looked up, and saw that it wasn’t.
Perhaps, if he hadn’t already had his machete in his hand, it would have ended very quickly and very differently.
The sword came down towards his head. He raised his own arm and just about deflected the blow down to his left. His hand went numb with the shock of impact and he knew he wouldn’t be able to block again, so he threw himself at his attacker.
Dalip’s head caught him square in the ribs, lifting him off his feet and spilling him backwards into an unforgiving wall. Dazed, they fell together, and Dalip clamped his good hand around Sebastian’s wrist.
From then on, it was down to two factors: brute strength and who was willing to fight dirtiest. They were evenly matched on the first. Dalip was hopelessly outclassed on the second. He endured the punches, gouges, kicks, and bites, and simply hung on, making sure that whatever happened, Sebastian couldn’t use his sword.
He was aware that maps were getting crushed and muddled as they struggled. If he’d have had the time, he would have suggested they take their disagreement to a different room. But, however worried he was about redoing the work, he was more worried about keeping his guts inside his skin.
He managed to spread his legs wide, brace himself against the floorboards, and tuck his head tight up under Sebastian’s chin. He stretched, forcing the other man’s neck into an unnatural angle, and gradually he felt the attacks lessen and the defensive twisting and prising increase.
Then Sebastian was abruptly limp underneath Dalip. At first, he thought it might be a ruse, some trick to get him to give up the slight advantage he’d gained. Then, that it was something he’d done, but couldn’t figure out what.
‘S’over.’
‘Dawson?’
Dalip shook Sebastian’s pinned hand and rattled the sword free, then levered himself up on his hands and knees. A fat, short dagger, much like Dawson himself, protruded from Sebastian’s right eye.
‘He’s bleeding on the maps,’ was Dalip’s instinctive response. He pushed the nearest pieces of paper away, but there was one under Sebastian’s head. He shoved the body over and freed it, plucking it away with a drop of crimson clinging to one edge.
‘All right?’ asked Dawson, almost conversationally.
Dalip checked himself. He didn’t feel as bad as when he’d gone three rounds with Bell, so he thought he was definitely going to live. Scratched, bruised and sore, yes, but his orange overall had saved him from the worst of the damage.
‘Yes. I’ll◦– I’ll be fine.’
There was another man behind Dawson. Together they lifted Sebastian’s body up, paused as Dalip checked for any scrap of paper that might have got stuck, then carried it away.
He allowed himself a moment’s rest, before gathering together the spilled maps and storing them safely away from the blood. He picked up his machete, and Sebastian’s sabre. His heavier weapon didn’t look to have suffered, but the sword was bent out of true. No wonder his hand still hurt.
Lighter footsteps hurried closer. ‘Are you…?’
He was still holding both swords when he turned towards her. ‘I’m mostly okay. And the maps are, too. A couple of them are a bit foxed, but I don’t think we disturbed any of the ones Simeon laid out.’
‘You killed…’
‘Dawson intervened. I wasn’t losing, but I wasn’t winning either. How did he know to come and rescue me?’
Mary held out her hands and showed him the charcoal. ‘I was getting this. Elena started talking, and she just let it slip, in a room full of people.’
‘Whatever happened, I’m grateful. Grateful I didn’t die, at least.’
‘And you saved the maps.’ She pressed a sooty hand against his breastbone, leaving a dark smudge after the momentary contact. ‘Fuck. That was close.’
‘Just when you think you’ve made progress, something like this knocks you back.’ He threw Sebastian’s sword into a corner. ‘What’s going to happen to her?’
‘Elena? I don’t know. Depends, doesn’t it?’ Mary bent down and straightened some of the maps. ‘If you want, one of us can go and stick her with a shiv.’
‘What? No!’
‘Or we can let Captain Simeon handle it. I mean, that’s what used to happen at the homes I was in.’
‘You let a pirate deal with any fights?’
She shrugged. ‘That would probably have worked out better.’
‘We can’t just leave her to…’ And now it was his turn. Simeon was going to do whatever it was he usually did, and no special pleading on his part was going to change that. Sebastian was dead, Dawson had killed him, and that was that part over. The captain might consider it to be the end of the matter. He might want to◦– banish? maroon?◦– her. He might want to tie her to the mast and give her a lick of the cat-o’-nine-tails. Or something equally piratical. Expediency was going to win out over mercy: keeping the crew working together was going to be the most important consideration, not any pleas for clemency.
‘Can’t leave her to what?’
‘Maybe we have to leave her after all.’
‘She tried to have what’s-his-face kill you and destroy the maps, so that no one would mind when he came for me. That’s seriously fucked up, and I don’t know where she’s going to go after that.’ Mary spread the sailcloth cloak out on the ground, and laid the charcoal on the floor next to it. Her tongue went between her teeth as she concentrated. ‘At least the rest of the crew seem to be on our side.’
Dalip squatted down next to her, still breathing heavily. ‘Can you do this? Can you still do this, after everything that just happened?’
‘Art was about the only thing I was ever better at than the other kids. I graffitied a few walls in my time, and stuff like that. I’m not fucking Leonardo, but I can draw what’s in front of me.’
‘That’s not what I meant,’ he said.
She took a deep breath and picked up the burnt stick. ‘I don’t have a choice. Pull the cloth. Not so tight it wrinkles, but it mustn’t move.’
He shuffled around so he could do that without impeding her movement.
‘This isn’t what I thought I’d be doing this morning,’ he said.
‘Me neither.’ She started the line on her left, slowly, deliberately, moving to her right in one continuous movement. The coast of Down◦– a small part of the vastness of a different world◦– appeared.
Sometimes she would stop and squint at the maps that Simeon had laid out, the end of the charcoal stick hovering over the unfinished line. Sometimes she would tut and scowl at the marks she’d just made. But she never went back. She drew the massive thrust of land projecting southwards, that contained the promontory they had first arrived on, the estuary where they’d first caught fish and encountered Crows and the Wolfman. Then back out into uncharted territory. The deep intrusion of water, that had to be a hundred miles long, twenty wide. And another block of land, its sea-face heading north-north-west, before being broken by another long inlet, and the end of Simeon’s knowledge.
She went back along the line, marking in the portals and the castles. Some were on the coast, like theirs. Many were not and, by making the dots inland, she pushed back the boundary of unknown territory. There didn’t seem to be a pattern to it, at least for now, but Dalip was hopeful. All the other maps would go north of the coastline. Some would be duplicates, some would be impossible to place because they didn’t relate to any other part of the map. Either they had all the information they needed, or not enough. There was still room for educated guesses to fill that gap.