Authors: Simon Morden
He held out his hand for her, and it was like the rest of him: hard, bony, spare. He had no problem hauling her to her feet, though. The top of her head came somewhere below his jutting chin.
‘It is usual, when you save someone from their enemies, to be thanked,’ he said.
‘Are they? My enemies, I mean.’ Mary didn’t know. She’d run anyway. ‘Yeah, okay: thanks,’ she added.
‘My pleasure,’ said the man. ‘And yes. At least, they are my enemies, and we still need to have our wits about us. Stay close.’
It was difficult, as he moved like a stain, visible when slipping from cover to cover, vanishing when stationary. And he moved so quickly, climbing and jumping and crouching, that she, already exhausted, could barely keep up.
When he finally stopped, she slumped to the ground and lay there. The burning in her legs was exquisite, the taste of blood in her throat less so.
‘You have determination,’ he said. She weakly acknowledged the compliment with a raised middle finger.
She became dimly aware of a floor that wasn’t leaves, and walls that weren’t wood. She coughed and choked on what came up, and coughed again, hollow and barking. The sound echoed away.
There was stone under her face, flat, worn and dirty, like a pavement. She got her hands down and raised her head. They were in some sort of building: behind her was a wide arched doorway that led directly into the forest, and the forest seemed to be creeping in through it, along with the moonglow that gave the only illumination. She could hear her own panting, the man’s footsteps in the dark corners of the room, padding about, and above her, the soft mutterings of roosting birds.
He set a bowl in front of her that reflected moonlight off its trembling surface. She unceremoniously plunged her face into the bowl and started sucking. It wasn’t water, but some sort of beer, and she didn’t care. It was as far removed as possible from the cans of cheap lager she’d beg, buy or steal, but she picked up the bowl when she couldn’t empty it any other way. Yeasty froth stuck to her upper lip.
‘Finished dying?’
She coughed one last time. ‘Where am I?’
‘My castle,’ he said.
‘Does that make you a king?’
He laughed. ‘The King of Crows, if anything.’
‘You could do with a new front door.’
‘I will tell my craftsmen to saw the timber first thing in the morning.’
Mary drew herself shakily to her feet, peering around her in the gloom. It was a ruin. If she looked up, she could see the sky through the ragged rafters and birds’ wings. Dark doorways led further in. The man took the bowl from her, and disappeared into one of the rooms beyond.
‘What do I call you?’ she asked. He might have rescued her from one set of dangers, but that didn’t mean he was safe.
‘Your Majesty?’ came his disembodied voice.
‘Fuck off.’
‘Crows, then. Call me Crows. You know about names, do you? What they mean?’
‘I know that the wolfman wouldn’t tell us his. He said others should give us our names.’
Crows returned holding the bowl. He’d pulled his hood back to reveal his face, a fine black face with a long oval head shaved close. ‘So what should your name be? What are you famous for?’
‘I’m …’ and she trailed off. She ended up shrugging. ‘Nothing really.’
‘That is a poor title,’ said Crows. He handed her the bowl, and she drank deeply, almost greedily. ‘What do you call yourself, when the lights go out and all is dark and quiet, in those moments between waking and sleeping when you dream and can still remember?’
‘I can’t tell you.’ She stopped drinking, and looked at him over the rim of the bowl.
‘Cannot or will not?’
‘It sounds stupid.’
‘Others should be the judge of that.’
She muttered it into the bowl, and he cupped his long fingers around his ear.
‘Too soft. Louder, so all the crows can hear.’
‘The Red Queen.’ Her face burned.
‘Oh, oh oh.’ He laughed, and all she could see of him were his fine white teeth. ‘The King of Crows and his Red Queen it shall be. But you’re not a queen yet, are you? What shall we call you in the time before you claim your throne?’
‘Mary,’ said Mary. ‘When do we start?’
When they dragged Dalip’s hood off, he was sitting in a chair, wrists tied awkwardly behind his back by someone who enjoyed their work just a little too much. There was also a rope around his neck, a noose that would tighten when jerked.
That was all there was. Him, in his chair, and on the stone floor in front of him, a single candle. The light barely reached him, let alone the walls. He was inside, he could tell that much, and he’d passed through a corridor and another room to get where he was. Beyond that? He’d been force-marched, blind and bound, for a night and a day, along with the others.
Everything hurt. He was bruised and battered. They’d taken his kirpan, his kara and his kangha. They’d taken his turban and his patka, leaving his hair to tumble, sweaty and knotted, over his shoulders.
They’d all but stripped him of everything that made him who he was and set him apart, and the only thing that stopped him from slumping to the flags were the last vestiges of his pride. Whoever had hold of his hood now was walking away into the darkness, leaving him alone.
He tried to pull his hands apart. The cord used to tie them was stiff and strong, and all his struggling seemed to do was make the bindings dig deeper into his skin and threaten to cut off his circulation.
That he couldn’t see the knots made it impossible to even try and undo them. If he could bring his arms down under his body, and slip his legs through – he’d seen it done once, but the escape artist had limbs seemingly made of rubber.
He forced his shoulders down and tried to straighten his arms, but his wrists had been held parallel and in opposition to each other before they were bound. There was no slack to take up, and he didn’t think he could physically do it, even if he could stand the pain. He stopped and waited for his muscles to uncramp.
He had, as far as he knew, done nothing to deserve this. He had been the one to offer the wolfman hospitality, and he’d been repaid with violence and betrayal. The ember of anger burning inside ignited into righteous fury.
Dalip stood up, deliberately knocking the chair over on to its back.
‘How dare you treat us like this! How dare you! Untie us at once and let us all go.’
His voice rang out, and came back to him distorted and hollow. A big room, then. If he had the patience, he could work out just how big merely by listening to his words return to him.
‘Show yourselves. I know you’re watching. Come out where I can see you, or do you just hide in the shadows? You can’t be scared of me, not like this. Come on!’
He was panting with effort. He knew it was dangerous, trying to goad whoever had taken him into action, but he’d had enough. Dangerous and stupid: there were far worse indignities they could heap on him – rape, torture, slavery, execution – but he wanted to see his captors, look them in the eye and spit in their faces before they did any of that to him.
He circumnavigated the circle of light provided by the candle, stepping around the fallen chair, searching the darkness for a sign that he’d been heard.
The flame flickered with a sudden draught. A distant boom signalled a closing door. Slow, deliberate footsteps, accompanied by a metallic tapping, grew louder. Dalip stopped his pacing and straightened his spine.
The steps sounded outside of his vision. They circled him just as he’d circled the candle.
‘Pick up the chair.’
‘I’d rather stand, thank you.’
‘It’s not a request. It’s an order.’
He considered it. ‘Make me.’
‘How tiresome.’ The voice was male, cultured, urbane, and bored. So very bored.
‘Pick it up yourself. You can untie me at the same time.’ Dalip turned to face the shadow of the man. ‘What did we ever do to you?’
‘I don’t think you appreciate the gravity of your situation, young man.’
‘So why don’t you tell me? Why don’t you come where I can see you?’
‘Knowledge is power, and I’d be a fool to give you anything. Since I’m not a fool, let me tell you the way this works: I ask you questions, and you answer them.’
This wasn’t the geomancer. But the geomancer would be listening.
‘What,’ said Dalip, ‘what if I refuse?’
‘Then you will be beaten, starved, chained, and eventually – after a very long time – you will die. It doesn’t have to be that way. All that is required is your cooperation, and we can avoid that. You do want to avoid that, don’t you?’
‘I’m not keen on pain.’
‘There, that didn’t take long, did it? Sit down, and we can begin.’
He almost did. His foot reached out for the seat, to pivot it upright.
He pulled his leg back. ‘No. Do your worst.’
‘How … disappointing.’
‘You’ve not given me a reason to want to please you.’
‘Things will go badly for you. You should reconsider.’
‘Badly? They’re not exactly terrific at the moment.’ Dalip watched the candle flicker again. Someone else had entered the room. So let them work for it, since they were going to thrash him and he was completely defenceless.
He spun around and kicked the candle away, out of its molten wax socket and into the dark. The flame stretched, tore, and was extinguished. He could just about remember where the chair was. He took a shuffling step towards it, and another. Something hard tapped his shin, and he crouched down, turning the chair legs so he could pick it up one-handed by its back.
He listened very carefully. Now he’d stopped moving, there was no sound. The darkness was total. Or was it? Every time he’d looked at the candle, he’d ruined his night sight. With that distraction gone, he could make out – dimly, but there all the same – an inconstant rectangle of light. The door.
The light occulted, right to left. Someone had walked in front of him.
He hefted the chair as he stood, and it scraped on the floor. He stepped right, and the air rushed past him. Now he could hear and smell his attacker. He swung around, let go of the chair, and as it connected with the hidden figure, there was an audible grunt of pain.
The chair clattered away, and he made for the door, not directly, but off to one side. His broken, melted boots crunched on the gritty floor, and running with both hands tied behind him made him step more heavily.
He felt, rather than saw, the wall ahead, the deadness of sound and the absence of space. He slowed, turned, bounced off it with his shoulder, and squatted down again.
‘Enough,’ said a woman’s voice, high and imperious.
But it wasn’t enough. The door was at the end of a short tunnel, and he rolled around the corner and headed, crab-like, for it.
Something heavy and fast-moving tapped his skull and he went down. His ankles were lifted and pulled, and he was dragged back into the centre of the room. A light came on, high above him, up on the wall. Then another. And another. All around him, the flames seem to leap from candle to candle until he was surrounded by a soft orange glow.
Someone took Dalip’s shoulder and turned him on his back, none too gently, either. A man, heavy-set and smelling of piss, stood close by his feet, while another, a thin man with a thin, silver-topped cane was by his head.
The room was shaped like a drum, a perfect cylinder, except that high up were rings of open balconies, each ring illuminated by the candles. A gloved hand draped over the lowest balcony’s rail.
‘Enough,’ she repeated.
Dalip was hauled to his feet and dropped on the chair. He squinted, one-eyed, up at the balcony, at the woman in the white and gold dress. She inspected him down the length of her nose.
‘You’re quite brave,’ she said.
‘And you’re not,’ he managed before the silver-tipped cane swung at his head again, a sharp tap to the back of his skull that left him with a bitten tongue and blood in his mouth. He spat on the floor and glared at the wielder. ‘Why are you doing this to us?’
‘You’re going to be useful to me.’
‘You could have asked us first. We could have, I don’t know, come to some sort of deal that didn’t involve having the crap kicked out of me.’
The man with the cane drew his arm back again, but the woman raised her hand. ‘I said, enough.’ She rested an elbow on the parapet and leaned forward. Her blonde hair was caught in a
net that twinkled with jewels. ‘You don’t know what it is that I want yet.’
‘Information. Knowledge, your man said. We want that too. For God’s sake, we don’t even know where we are, or why.’
‘Is that so?’ She cocked her head. ‘Are you sure you don’t have anything to tell me?’
‘What do you mean? None of us have any idea of what this place is or how we got here.’ He tried to get up, and was forced back down by the hand on his shoulder.
‘Two of you have disappeared since you came through the portal.’ She sat back. ‘And no one escapes my very talented wolves. I’ll have the truth from you, one way or another.’
Dalip tried to stand again, was forced down again. ‘You’ve already got the truth. Torturing me won’t change that.’
‘Experience tells me otherwise. Take him away and make him uncomfortable, then bring in the next one. Perhaps they’ll see more sense.’
The guard took a handful of Dalip’s hair and pulled him up and swung around, launching him in the direction of the door. Without being able to use his hands, he landed heavily on his side, and once again, his head hit something hard.
He was reeling and half-blind, and that was before they put his hood back on. The world went dark and stuffy again. He was pulled and pushed, dragged and thrown. He tripped and fell, was kicked into walls and doors, and finally pitched head-first again to the ground.
He lay there, waiting to be coerced into moving again, but there was nothing. A door banged shut behind him. A bolt worked into place. Footsteps faded.
The only way to get the hood off was to drag his face along the floor, twisting his head left and right to work it free. Eventually he reached a point where he could shake it loose and cast it aside.
He was in a tiny room, barely longer than he was tall. A slit of a window – more like a crack in the stonework – let in light and air, but not much of either. The floor was bare, and his hands were still tied.
And he had no idea how he’d ended up there. What had the woman – the geomancer? – meant when she’d intimated that he might be lying? That he knew where he was? That was preposterous. The geomancer must be wrong, or mad, or both.
He’d done nothing wrong. He’d never done anything wrong. From earliest memory to the moment the supervisor had called Stanislav’s name, and the two of them had appraised each other on the station platform: he’d always behaved, always acted honourably, always told the truth, always been kind. He’d been told that if he did those things, then he’d never know shame, that he’d never be the one in his father’s study or the headmaster’s office or the police interview room, staring at the door and thinking of what best to say to get out of trouble.
And now, he was a prisoner, in a prison cell, held captive by someone who wanted him to confess to who knew what? And there could be no appeal to a higher authority, because there was none. No black-suited solicitor would sweep in, demand his release with threats and promises, and drive him back to his parents.
It was up to him.
And he had nothing to bring to a situation like this. Nothing he’d ever done had prepared him remotely for action. All his learning, all his good manners, all his religious devotion: could it really have left him so grossly unprepared?
Yes. No. Perhaps.
He could shout and scream and kick at the door until his toes broke. Or he could work out why he was there, what the geomancer thought he knew, and how to escape. No doubt that kicking the door and making himself hoarse would feel better, but enough bits of him were broken already.
There was the door, there was his foot. He took a deep breath.
What he really wanted was his hands free. The walls were old and the stone coated with powdery grit. There were no protrusions or sharp edges to grind the bindings against, but there was the recess made by the door frame. In lieu of anything better to do, he pressed his back against the angle and started rubbing his wrists against the stone work.
It was long, boring, and repetitive. Like simultaneous equations, but with added muscle ache. He had to stop every once in a while, just to rest and let his arms hang in a more natural position. But when he’d rested, he went right back to it.
There were noises from outside, so far, twice. He heard Stanislav’s resonant voice echo down the walls, then fade away into the distance. He was questioning the guard, but getting no answers. Sometime later, a woman’s sobbing came and went. He couldn’t tell who it was from the sound, and the door had no grating. The shadows under the door flickered as they passed, then it was quiet again.
He kept on rubbing. He couldn’t see if it was doing any good, neither could he feel any extra give. Eventually, if he kept it up long enough, one of the cords around his wrists would wear thin, and then he could break it. Once broken, he should be able to work out the loose end and the whole knot should unravel.
This, he knew. He’d learnt this: a little bit of his schooling was useful after all. This was how materials behaved.
His legs started to cramp with the tiny up-down movements he was making. As he stretched his calves, his shoulders flexed, and something snapped.
A third person was led past. Voluble, outraged Romanian infiltrated his cell, and like before, faded away. It ended with a sharp bang – a door being closed, but nearby. If he pressed his ear against the wood, he could still hear the complaints.
He wriggled his wrists, easing them apart, slowly unravelling the cords, pulling and relaxing, twisting and turning. Then his hands were free.
They hurt, not just from their prolonged captivity, but from shielding himself from the kicking he’d received. He had a lump on the back of one hand that hurt exquisitely when he pressed it with his thumb, and now that normal circulation had been restored, it started to throb with every beat of his heart.
All his fingers seemed to work, however. That was something. He squeezed his wrists and felt the deeply indented grooves in his skin made by his bindings.