‘How? How can you…?’
‘Bitter experience. We’re not superheroes. We can’t do it all. This,’ she said, pointing at the floor, ‘this we can do. So let’s get on with it.’
He nodded in acquiescence, and went to find a box to stand on.
25
She stopped when she became too tired to keep her eyes open. He, driven by a force greater than exhaustion, wanted to carry on and she hadn’t the energy to stop him.
At some point, Simeon poked his head around the door frame to see how they were getting on, and at another, Dawson appeared with two bowls of boiled vegetables and little puffy grains.
She’d asked: ‘What are the green bits?’
Dawson had replied: ‘Seaweed, I suppose.’
She’d eaten it all, every last scrap, and despite the urgings of her stomach, made sure that Dalip ate his too. It had tasted slightly salty, and of very little else. It could have been utterly bland, and she’d have still wolfed it down.
And when she slept, she slept hard and deep, exhausted both physically and mentally. She’d turned her back on the bright light now fixed in the middle of the room, and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, Dalip was slumped on the floor. Still kneeling, but with his forehead resting on the boards, his hands invisible in his lap.
She was about to wake him, because sleeping like that? He was going to be so stiff, she’d need an actual iron to straighten him out again. Then she noticed the position of the maps around him, and she pulled back.
To his right, there was a small stack of paper and parchment, some dozen fragments he either couldn’t place or hadn’t quite got around to. The rest of the maps were placed in a way that suggested order, not chaos.
She stepped between them, her bare feet falling softly, taking it all in. The scale◦– it was the scale that had defeated her, how one map of the same physical length could represent a journey of ten miles or a hundred. Dalip had broken that code. This line here was a part of that line there. He’d marked them all on the cloth, too: not the features on the map, but rather sketched outlines of the coverage of the map. Little rectangular boxes, with tiny numbers, were scattered over the sailcloth like ghosts.
The charcoal was half gone already, and the fragment increasingly difficult to hold. She gripped it as tightly as she dared between her finger and thumb, and started to transfer what was on the maps into their marked areas.
What had been obscure before started to become clear. Rivers now flowed from the distant mountains to the sea, jagged through the highlands and sinuous on the plains. Broad lakes nestled in the lows, and everywhere there was a portal, she drew a little doorframe, two uprights and a crosspiece. Villages became pointy-roofed houses, and castles, tall stone towers like chess pieces.
Down took shape, was given form, and became whole. Some of the detail she omitted, because it wouldn’t show on the map. If she couldn’t imagine seeing it, flying over the land and looking down, it didn’t go on.
As she worked next to the sleeping Dalip, making lines and symbols on the cloth, she realised that she was fulfilling her destiny. She was a Beast. A geomancer. She was revealing the position of the portals across the face of Down. Her breathing became ragged. The portals were joined to other portals by lines of power◦– no more than three, Crows had said. Or had it been Bell? Villages lay along the lines, castles where they crossed.
She could draw those lines. She could actually draw them. She could fill in the areas of the map for which they had no information. Geography didn’t matter. What was important was the lines, and that she could predict hidden portals, unknown castle-seeds, and boat-birthing points.
She was, momentarily, the most powerful person on Down. She could roll up the map, leave the building on some excuse, and run. Once out of range of the White City, she could fly anywhere, raise a fortress, gather an army and go forth to conquer. The Red Queen needed soldiers, and she’d recruit them from the slave quarters of every geomancer she overthrew.
It wouldn’t even mean stealing anything. All she’d be taking was a copy, just like they said they would when they were bargaining with Crows in the forest. The originals would stay right there, with Dalip.
If she stayed, then she couldn’t keep the map. Simeon’s pirates were stronger than she was. They could do whatever they wanted with it.
‘My lady?’
She gasped and turned around. Simeon stood in the doorway, and she couldn’t help but blush. A wave of guilty heat washed over her and left her nervous and blinking. If he could read her mind, she’d be in real trouble.
‘Captain.’
‘Did I startle you?’
‘I… yes. And he’s asleep, so keep it down.’
‘Then we will repair to an adjacent room.’ His gaze rested on the sailcloth. ‘Bring that with you.’
‘It’s not finished,’ she said, starting to blush all over again. ‘And I don’t want to smudge it. Everything’s going to rub off if we fuck around with it.’
‘Then carry it carefully,’ he said.
She put down the charcoal and picked up her former cloak along one edge, bringing it with her. Simeon stepped through to the next room, and she joined him. He opened the shuttered windows overlooking the courtyard, and weak light filtered in. It had become morning, and she hadn’t noticed.
‘Show me,’ he said.
She laid the cloth down carefully, straightening the edges and tugging out the wrinkles. No one but her had seen it, and she felt she was betraying a confidence by not sharing it with Dalip first.
Simeon’s face set in a mask of concentration. He said nothing for a long while, only shifting his stance slightly as he examined different portions of the map. He made little motions with the tip of his finger, as if he were tracing his own imaginary lines over the top of what Mary had drawn.
Eventually, he stepped back and walked the length of the dusty room and back.
‘Is this what you make of it?’ he asked.
‘It’s the best we can do, given what we’ve got. What d’you think? Is it, I don’t know, right?’
‘The coastline is what I know best. That, I think, we can agree is done with some fair degree of accuracy. There are some islands offshore we can append, though I don’t know what the import of them will be.’
‘One of them has a portal. And the plague. There are skulls along the beach as a warning.’
‘I know it. Here-ish.’ He pointed to a blank portion of cloth. ‘A portal, you say?’
‘Opens up in the middle of the Black Death. Almost everyone who comes through is dying. They burn the bodies so that they don’t infect the rest of Down.’
‘Never had the nerve to go ashore, and calculated there were fairer, altogether less doom-laden isles to visit.’ He made a little bow. ‘Yet you did. I take it you have no symptoms?’
‘Where I come from, we know what caused the plague◦– fleas. I didn’t get close to anyone. I flew in, and out.’
‘I had heard rumours about your abilities. You’re a Beast?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can you also do other magics?’
‘Yes.’
‘You should realise that you would normally be our enemy.’
‘I know. Geomancers don’t have a great rep, what with all the kidnapping, slaving and killing. But I figured a geomancer doesn’t have to do any of that. It’s tempting. Fuck knows that’s true. To have all that power to make people do what you want. Especially for someone like me who never had shit. There’s nothing I should want more.’
‘And yet?’
‘That’s not going to change anything, is it? It’s not sticking it to the Man if I become part of that gang. So let’s find out what happens when we smash the system. It might turn out to be more broken than before, but it can hardly be worse, can it?’