Саймон Морден - Down Station

She said it with grudging admiration, but hadn’t counted on Dalip not taking it as a compliment. Luiza just about stopped him from dragging the geomancer up by the hair and throwing her through the closed balcony doors.

‘It wouldn’t have worked if I’d told you why you were being trained to fight,’ said Bell. ‘It wasn’t about you being scared. It was about those other plebs being scared of you.’

Luiza pushed Dalip away and stood in front of him. Dalip’s chest heaved, and he seemed to only control himself with the utmost effort. ‘It didn’t work at all.’

‘You can’t blame me for trying,’ Bell offered.

Luiza’s hand pressed hard against Dalip’s sternum.

‘I do blame you for trying.’

‘To be honest,’ said Mary, ‘it sounds like a really shitty thing to do, over and above all the other shitty things you did. And though Crows might be shady as fuck, at least he never tried to kill me, or any of my mates. He saved me from the wolfman. He taught me how to use magic. Why don’t I guess why he left you?’

Bell stayed defiantly silent.

‘If I said he left you because he thought your idea was fucking nuts, would I be wrong?’

‘Yes. You don’t understand anything.’

‘So make me understand.’

The two women stared at each other. Mary was acutely aware of the cold wind rattling through the tower, brushing against her wounds in a way that didn’t happen when she was a bird, but also that Bell was sitting opposite her in a fine white dress turned to scarlet rags. The gravity of the damage they’d done to each other should have been worthy of comment, but neither of them were ever going to be called to account for that.

‘Crows was my lover,’ said Bell. ‘We planned everything together.’

‘Hang on,’ said Mary. ‘Where’s Grace?’

‘She’s not here.’ Mama shrugged. ‘She’s not here and we don’t know what that means.’

‘Okay. We’ll have to look for her after this. Go on, Bell: you were making plans.’

‘We knew there was a portal around here, but didn’t know where. We found this crossing point using…’ Her voice trailed off as she contemplated her collection of broken brass instruments. ‘A device. We searched◦– him by water, me by air.’

The others frowned at this.

Mary sniffed. ‘Remember the huge sea snake we saw after we got to the shore? That was Crows. He knew at that point that the portal was probably somewhere on the island. When he couldn’t find it, he got me to tell him exactly where. They’re not supposed to disappear.’

Bell suddenly showed more than passing interest. ‘The portal vanished?’

‘There’s nothing but rock there now. It’s gone, and Crows didn’t know what that meant. Do you?’

Bell shook her head. ‘Portals are attached to London. They don’t go anywhere. They’re fixed points.’

‘What if,’ said Dalip. ‘What if London ceased to exist?’

That caused disquiet, but he persisted.

‘I don’t mean to… I’ve got as much to lose as everyone. But that fire wasn’t normal. We ran and ran, and it wasn’t enough. Even a plane crash wouldn’t have been that bad. And if◦– I don’t know◦– a nuclear bomb, maybe, with a firestorm afterwards. Would that be enough to break the connection?’

‘When are you from?’ asked Bell.

They were all too surprised at the question to answer, except Mary.

‘Twenty twelve. You?’

‘Nineteen sixty-eight.’ Bell looked at them again, each one, checking for differences between them and her. ‘How did it go, those forty years?’

‘Good for some. Not so good for others,’ said Mary. ‘This is well off the point, though. Crows said that whoever controls the portals, controls Down.’

‘And London,’ said Dalip. ‘They’d control London too.’

‘That. But no one’s ever managed to open a door going the other way, right?’

‘No. But there has to be a way to do it.’

‘Why?’ asked Mary. ‘Why does there? Why can’t this just be it?’

‘Because it doesn’t make sense otherwise. If things can pass from London to here, then it stands to reason they can pass back.’

‘You mean like you can turn into a dragon and fucking castles grow out of the ground?’

Bell faltered. ‘This place just has different rules, that’s all.’

‘One of which might be, you can’t go back,’ interrupted Dalip. ‘Do you have any evidence at all that anything has ever gone back to London, over and above simply wishing it was true?’

‘No,’ she whispered. ‘No.’

‘Great.’ He turned away, then abruptly towards her again. ‘You were going to have me fight people to the death because you hoped something might just happen that had never happened before. That’s just…’

‘Fucking nuts?’ offered Mary.

‘Pretty much covers it. If you were going to experiment on someone, at the very least you should have started with yourself.’ The wind rattled the balcony doors open, and Dalip went to close them with something more substantial.

‘These maps,’ said Mama. ‘Are they that important?’

Mary nodded. ‘Without them, we don’t have a fucking clue where we are or where to go next. Geomancers like her spend years making them, finding them, hiding them away. Get it right, and you get a massive fuck-off castle like this, people to follow you, and maybe, if you’re the first to work out how everything works, you get to run the show.’

‘Then we should concentrate on getting the maps back,’ said Mama, arms folded.

‘Problem is, Crows is long gone, turned into a sea snake and away.’

‘He can’t carry the maps like that,’ said Bell, shifting awkwardly. ‘He can’t get them wet, and he needs hands to carry them.’

Mary looked at the ceiling. ‘He lied to me. Again.’

‘He does that,’ said Bell.

‘I’m not feeling sorry for you, if that’s what you want. If I was him, I’d have lied to you too.’ She tutted. ‘He’d have to have them stashed somewhere, somewhere close. Not at his castle—’

‘He had a castle?’

‘It was a bit shit, but yes. Full of crows, which is why I thought he was called Crows.’

‘Those weren’t crows,’ said Bell.

‘Then what the fuck were they?’

‘The crows were Crows. You’ve met Daniel and his wolves.’

‘The wolfman?’

‘Him. The wolves were Daniel. Projections from him, controlled by him. He can see through them, like a witch’s familiar. Crows does the same, but through a flock of crows.’

Mary wiped her face with her hands. ‘Oh fucking hell. I thought Crows had vanished, and he was there all the time. He played me. Fuck. He even taught me how to fly.’

‘So where are the maps?’ asked Mama. ‘Does this Crows have them?’

‘He wouldn’t have left the area without them. They were in the castle, so he probably stashed them nearby, where I wouldn’t find them. And if he can only carry them when he’s a man, then… somewhere near the river. We know he swam up it, don’t we, Dalip?’

‘I thought he was going to eat me,’ said Dalip. The increasing wind rattled at the shutters again, threatening to tear them loose. What might have been thunder rumbled distantly.

‘The wolfman was down by the portal,’ said Mary. ‘I thought he was looking for Crows. Or me. But what if he was looking for the maps?’ She thought about it. ‘Where would he go with them? If he wanted to sell them, or just start again? Or maybe the other thing, trade the fact that portals can disappear.’

‘There’s really only one place. The White City. But it’ll take him weeks to get there. There’s still time to find him.’ Bell murmured an offer: ‘I can help you, if you want.’