The Dark City (10 page)

Bianca brushed herself down as she stood and walked carefully to the edge of the deep ravine, peering down past its sharp crags to the churning white foam in the rushing river far below. ‘I think it's ready,' she said.

‘Yeah, I can see that,' said Marco, peering through his fingers.

Bianca regarded the patch of her bedroom floor where she'd painted the ravine. It was about two metres wide, running almost all the way across the room at the foot of her bed so it looked as if most of the floor had fallen away.

She'd painted a tightrope strung across it. She picked up the broom she'd borrowed from one of the maids and prodded the rope, which wobbled convincingly. Not bad for a morning's work!

‘Let me show you.' Bianca walked around the ravine, grabbed one of Marco's hands and dragged it away from his eyes. With her other hand she dropped the broom into the ravine. It went down into the floor for about half a metre, and then stopped. The rushing waters of the river crashed around it. ‘See? It only
looks
very deep. It's a perspective trick! I promise it's safe.'

‘You can promise all you like  … ' Marco turned his head away, straining not to look at the painted ravine.

‘Look, I said I'd help you – this is the only way I can think of!' Bianca said. ‘At least try it.'

Marco sucked in a deep breath though his teeth and turned to face the vast crevasse in front of him. Sweat beaded on his forehead and his face went pale. Bianca jiggled the broom up and down, to show him again that the painting wasn't deep, then pulled it out and handed it to him. Marco grasped it firmly between his hands, just like one of the long white sticks the troupe sometimes used for balance.

‘All right. I can do this,' he said, and took a step forward, so the toes of his foot touched the rope. His throat tightened as he swallowed hard.

‘Keep talking,' she suggested.

‘I used to be able to do this,' Marco croaked. ‘I've walked on tightropes in shows, and climbed high sets.'

‘Tell me about them!' Bianca edged along the side of the painting as Marco took one hesitant step and then another, wobbling a little and clutching the broom tightly.

‘Well  …  I played a pickpocket who was being chased by the Palace Guard,' Marco said. Bianca nodded encouragingly. It was working! He was out on the rope now. As long as he didn't think about the fire, he would be fine. ‘And another time I climbed up a wooden tower with  …  with the others.' A drop of sweat fell from Marco's nose and his hands shook.

‘What others? Why were you climbing the tower?' Bianca asked.
Come on, you can do it! Just a few more steps!

‘It was  …  there was  …  Olivia was playing the Queen of Arcadia, and we  …  we were  …  we were the Knights of  …  nope. Nope. Nope.' He froze and squeezed his eyes shut. ‘Sorry, I know you worked on it all morning, but  …  I can't.'

‘It's OK, you're doing so well!' Bianca said. ‘You're nearly halfway across, you can make it!'

‘I can't,' Marco said with a shaky exhalation of breath. ‘I can smell smoke. I can't see  … '

His eyes were still firmly closed, but Bianca guessed that pointing that out to him wouldn't be helpful. She sighed and hopped down into the ravine, so Marco's trembling feet were at waist height. She reached up a hand to take his elbow. ‘I'm here. Hold on to me.'

Marco's hands shook as he let go of the broom and groped for her. He missed her outstretched hand and grabbed the top of her head.

‘Ow!' Bianca winced as his fingers gripped tightly on to her hair. ‘It's all right. Just hold on.'

She walked him carefully forward, holding him steady as his shaking toes felt for a grip on the painted rope. Finally he touched solid ground and stumbled forward onto his hands and knees, gasping.

Bianca hopped up to sit on the edge of the painting, her legs dangling into the magical space. The perspective trick made them look like a giant's legs, ending in feet as wide as the whole ravine.

‘Sorry,' she said, as Marco sat back and hurriedly wiped the sweat from his neck with the end of his sleeve. ‘Maybe I should've made it shallower.'

‘I'm not sure this is ever going to work,' Marco said miserably.

‘Maybe if we just give it time. This is only our first try.'

‘Yeah. Maybe.'

They fell silent for a few seconds, then Marco hopped to his feet.

‘Now it's my turn.'

Bianca looked up from kicking her heels against the strangely woody-feeling sides of the rocky-looking cliffs. ‘Your turn? To do what?'

‘To help you!' Marco gave her a broad grin and went over to the bag he'd brought with him. ‘I've been looking at the map di Lombardi left you, and I've got a theory. Take this,' he added, holding out a second piece of rolled-up parchment.

Bianca climbed out of the painting and took it from him. She unrolled it. ‘A map of La Luminosa,' she said.

‘We should go into the studio,' Marco said. ‘We need a flat surface, and you made a big hole in this one!' He chuckled as he nodded towards the painting on the floor, but his eyes were still worried.

‘Course,' said Bianca, and carried the map of La Luminosa into the studio. Rolling it out on the worktop, she pinned down the curling edges with clean water jars and palette knives.

‘OK, so this is La Luminosa. And this is the map di Lombardi painted.' He unrolled the canvas and Bianca helped him pin it onto an easel so they could look at both at the same time. The painted map was on about the same scale, but when she saw it next to the map of La Luminosa, Bianca realised it didn't look much like a map of a city at all. The blue-black lines zigzagged back and forth and criss-crossed the canvas. They formed the vague outline of a city much like La Luminosa, but the streets seemed like they'd been laid out by a frothing madman.

‘That's  …  odd,' Bianca frowned at Marco. ‘That doesn't look like any city map I've ever seen before.'

‘Right?' said Marco. ‘When you were in Oscurita – I know you were asleep, but did you notice the streets criss-crossing like this?'

‘No, it felt pretty normal.'

Marco stood back and pulled Bianca with him, so she could see both maps laid out in front of her. ‘I think it might not be a map of Oscurita after all. See that cluster of lines around where the palace is in La Luminosa?'

Bianca nodded. The detail was incredible, streets narrowing to a single painted line. But
were
they streets? She followed the line on the painted map and the printed one. If you imagined them one on top of the other, it almost looked like the lines were describing a crazy winding path leading around the corridors of the Palace of La Luminosa, visiting different rooms in a seemingly random order before running out into the city again  … 

‘Can you see it?' Marco asked. He was practically hopping from foot to foot with glee.

Bianca gasped. ‘It's the secret passages!' She leaned in closer, trying to remember the order of the doors. She found Filpepi's studio on the La Luminosa map. Sure enough, a line ran through it on the other map – in fact, there were two! She knew that next to the door into Filpepi's office there was a door to a passage that led to a small chapel, and sure enough the line shot out across La Luminosa and stopped at the nunnery of San Ferdinand.

‘This is great!' Bianca clasped her hands in excitement. ‘Let's go exploring!'

An hour later, Bianca and Marco sat with their backs propped against the cool paint-spattered walls of the secret passages, exhilarated. The map had worked! They'd been able to find their way from the Rose Gallery painting to the Museum of Art where they'd looked out through the arches in the background of di Lombardi's masterpiece,
The Throne Eternal
. Then they'd simply gone through the next door and been transported across the city to the Via del Orologica in time to see the daily procession of the clockwork monks from their monastery to the Chapel of Chimes.

‘This is amazing!' Bianca said, unrolling the map and searching for a location for them to visit next.

‘I'll never be late for dinner again,' Marco laughed.

‘Where shall we go now?'

Marco leaned forward, examining the spidery trail of lines across the map. ‘I fancy having a poke around in one of these grand houses.'

Bianca followed Marco's finger, until something caught her eye on the edge of the map, making her heart pound. ‘Wait  … ' she whispered. There was a line that seemed to extend south of the city, past the docks and the mouths of the canals, right into the sea. ‘What do you think this means?'

‘Maybe it's a painting that was shipwrecked and now it's at the bottom of the sea!' Marco said ghoulishly. ‘Maybe we'll be able to look out through a window and see the skeletons of the sailors!'

Bianca was shaking her head in disbelief, barely taking in Marco's words. ‘Maybe  …  maybe it means the painting leads to another
place
entirely,' Bianca said quietly.

‘Yeah, maybe we'll end up on the Crowfoot Islands! I say we definitely look there next.'

‘No, Marco. Don't you see?' Bianca raised her startled face and stared at him, a grin forming on her face.
I think that door opens into somewhere further away than the Crowfoot Islands. Much further.

Marco raised a questioning eyebrow but stayed silent as Bianca's quivering finger traced the disappearing line backwards all over the city and past about twenty different paintings, until they came to a door they knew.

‘I want to go there.' Bianca couldn't keep her voice from quavering with excitement. ‘It looks like the best way is to go out through the painting in the Piazza del Oro, cross the canal in the real world and get back in through the mural at the back of the library. Then we just follow the doors to the end.'

Her heart lodged itself in her throat as she quickly rolled up the map and hurried off through the passageways towards the disappearing point shown on the map. Marco followed after her as Bianca glanced through paintings, checking no one was there, before hurtling out the other side. They took a left down a corridor, and were met by a soft bluish glow emanating from the adjacent passageway up ahead. She checked the map to make sure she was where she wanted to be and felt her racing blood pounding in her ears. Round that corner they would be able to see the mysterious doorway.

Bianca counted the steps before she reached the bend, forcing herself to be calm. It was just as likely that the door would lead them to some other country, or the bottom of the sea. She tried to remind herself just how exciting that would be, so she wouldn't be disappointed.

They turned the corner and there, at the end of the corridor, was a black door edged with bright, bright blue.

The door to Oscurita.

‘That's the door from my dream!' Bianca clutched the medallion where it lay against her chest. ‘We've found Oscurita!'

Marco's mouth dropped wide open, speechless for a moment.

‘Now I can explore Oscurita whenever I want,' Bianca said. ‘I can find my mother, and warn her about the Baron.'

‘Let's go!' Marco stepped towards the door. Bianca hurried forward, and then paused.

‘Wait  … '

Marco turned back. ‘What?'

Bianca reached into her dress and pulled out the gleaming medallion.

‘I don't think I should bring this with me,' she said. ‘It's obviously important, and di Lombardi's message did show me bringing it to Oscurita when I was older. What if the Baron and Filpepi take it from me? It's much safer here, for now. I'll run back and hide it in my room.'

‘Well, hurry up!' Marco complained, sitting down beside the black door and fishing an apple out of his bag. ‘I want to see this amazing city.'

Bianca ran back to the palace, hopping out through one painting and in through another, and finally coming back out into the Duke's old sitting room through the mural with the two big cats. She hurried to her bedroom and put the medallion in the pocket of her old painting apron, then wrapped the apron up into a tight ball and put it at the back of the bottom drawer of her dresser.

It ought to be safe there
, she thought. As she turned to go, her eye caught the little silver bracelet and she picked it up.
This, I will take with me.
She wasn't sure who it belonged to, after all – she should at least try to return it.

The big cats seemed to turn their emerald and amber eyes on her as she hurried back down the path in the dust – although she knew they were on a normal
animare
cycle and wouldn't take any notice of what she did. She paused to let the tiger cross in front of her and then hopped into the painting and ran her fingers through the lion's mane before letting herself in through the old door.

Marco was standing on one leg and juggling with two apples and an orange when she got back to the black door.

‘Getting some practice?' she asked.

‘Don't want to get rusty,' said Marco. ‘Even if I'm not performing much any more,' he added sadly. ‘Come on!'

He stood aside to let Bianca slip the paintbrush key into the lock. Bianca held her breath. So much could still go wrong – it could be locked, or not really lead to Oscurita after all  … 

The door swung easily open and revealed the abandoned courtyard. A cool breeze touched her face, scented with night jasmine. She'd never
smelled
the city in her dreams, or not that she'd remembered. She took a deep breath and stood back to let Marco look. The darkness almost seemed to spill out into the secret passage.

Marco blinked. ‘I can't see anything!'

‘It's a courtyard,' said Bianca, pointing. ‘Look, there's a flowerbed, and that's an arch. You can see some of the street on the other side.'