Wormwood Gate (18 page)

‘Don't think I don't recognise this horse,' said the Queen of Crows. ‘You could have enlisted the Count's aid, but you chose to take his horse and leave him to walk the paths back to the Kingdom of Crows. Why?'

‘I prefer to work alone, Your Majesty. You know this.'

‘And that is why I find it hard to trust your loyalty. You prefer to work where you cannot be watched. And so I must come traipsing after you, to watch you myself!'

‘There was no need for that. I work only in your service, Your Majesty. I have been working steadfastly here to fulfill your commands.'

‘But the queens still rule the City, and the treaty still holds. When the Lord of Shadows no longer has free passage through this City, I will count your loyalty as proven. Until then …' The queen glanced at Julie. ‘Watch your step. Both of you.'

With that, the crow on her shoulder took flight, and the Queen of Crows vanished.

The guards by the gates came back to life. ‘How did you get over there?' one of them said. ‘Wait, never mind. Um. HALT! Yes, that's it. Yes, um …'

‘Oh, let me handle this,' said the other one. ‘You're rubbish at it. You, missy! What are you doing? What is your business at the Tower? Give us a good reason why we shouldn't arrest you!'

Julie glanced at Molly Red, whose expression was pretty blank.
No wonder the Queen of Crows doesn't trust her
, she thought.
I don't think I trust her myself
. There were things going on that Molly Red had never mentioned, plans and schemes and plots. The expression ‘wheels within wheels' came to her mind, and for the first time, Julie thought she knew what it meant.

She was right, though
, Julie thought.
I do have an oath to fulfil
.

She spared one last glance for the black-clad body beyond the gates, squeezed her eyes shut for a second, two seconds, three seconds, then opened them again and gave the guards a hard stare.

‘I have a prisoner for the queen,' she said, walking slowly over to where the horse stood. ‘See?' she said, gesturing to Molly Red. ‘The queen asked me to bring her news from Molly Red. I brought her Molly Red herself.'

‘Oooh!' said the first guard. ‘That'll make her happy!'

‘Will you shut your fat trap?' said the second guard. ‘All right,' he said to Julie. ‘Take her up.'

Julie walked around to the horse's other side, wondering for an unsettling moment whether it was strange for the horse-head guards to see an ordinary, non-talking horse. She tugged at Molly Red's ankles, pulling her downwards over the horse's back until she slid down of her own accord, landing smoothly on her feet. ‘Come on,' she said, grabbing her by her bound wrists and dragging her towards the Tower's front door.

The helmeted guards at the door saluted her and opened the door before she reached it. She marched through, Molly Red keeping pace at her side.

She had reached the end of a corridor and turned around three corners before she calmed down a bit and began to wonder exactly how large the Tower was on the inside and whether she ought perhaps to ask for directions. But just as she was about to say something to that effect to Molly Red, she turned a fourth corner and came upon a staircase –
the
staircase; the same staircase the horse-head guard had carried her up when he had brought her to see the queen.

Now that she was there with a prisoner of her own, she could see why the guard had had orders to carry her up. The stairs were so narrow that the two of them couldn't possibly ascend them side-by-side.

She pushed Molly Red forward. ‘Go on,' she said in a clipped voice. ‘You go first, I'll walk behind.'

Molly Red hesitated, turning her head to face Julie. ‘She might come back, you know,' she said quietly.

‘Who? The Queen of Crows? And by the way, were you ever going to tell either of us that that wasn't the queen of the city in the deerhide? Or was that another one of your super special secrets?'

Molly Red shook her head. ‘The Queen of Crows won't return for a long time, if she ever does. No, I meant Aisling.'

For a split second, Julie wanted to punch her. ‘Don't
say
things like that!' she whispered. ‘Don't – you can't say things like that about somebody who's …'

She trailed off. She couldn't say the word.

‘You know that life and death are not the same here as they are in mortal realms,' said Molly Red. ‘That's why we call them mortal realms. There's a power that the Queen of Crows has in the lands where death is final.'

‘You mean she doesn't have power
here
? Because I kind of got the impression she did, what with the freezing and the illusions and … stuff.'

‘Oh, she has power, of a kind. But why do you think she needed to use an illusion at all? She can't walk openly through another ruler's territory because in their own lands they have the advantage. She has the advantage in her own kingdom and in the Land of the Dead – the land on the banks of the River – but in the realms of the Fae and the Realms Between, she is no more powerful than I.'

‘But –' Julie frowned. Part of her wanted Molly Red to explain, preferably with a diagram and maybe a map, but there was only one thing that really mattered to her right that moment. ‘So – Aisling is … is she back in mortal lands?' She said Aisling was in her domain. Does that mean – is she back in mortal lands?'

Molly Red shook her head. ‘Most likely she's at the banks of the River.'

‘What river? The Liffey?'

‘You know the way people here have names that tell you who they are, or make-names that tell you who they want you to think they are? The River doesn't have a name at all. It's just the River. It's older than names, and the magic of names doesn't touch it.'

‘So … Aisling is … this river, it – it's like the Styx? The river that leads to the land of the dead?'

Molly Red shrugged. ‘Sort of. I've crossed it eight times and never known where it would lead if I let myself float downstream. Not sure anyone knows, even the Queen of Crows herself. But I'd bet seven of my nine forms that Aisling's at the River's bank right now, and knowing her, she's probably giving the Ferryman a run for his money.'

Julie stared at Molly Red's face.
It is a skill of yours to lie
, the Queen of Crows had said, and yet Julie didn't think Molly Red was lying now. ‘So she might come back,' she said, trying to ignore the leaping of her heart. ‘She might not be … gone … for good?'

‘I know better than most that there are ways around the River. Ways to cross it without paying the Ferryman's fee. She's a clever girl, your friend. She can puzzle her way across it, or under it, or past it, and find her way back here or back to your own city.'

Julie stood still, staring at the walls and thinking. It was still a ‘maybe', an ‘if', a possibility rather than a fact.
I'll act as if she's … gone
, she thought, wincing away from the word even in her own head.
Because it would be … if I thought … if I hoped, and then
…

Tears sprang to her eyes and she took a deep, slow breath to push them back down.
I could at least have told her
, she thought, furious at herself.
I knew we were heading into danger and I never even –

She grabbed Molly Red's arm and turned her around to face the staircase. ‘Go on,' she said. ‘Go up.'

*

Aisling woke up to the sound of water lapping against stone. The ground beneath her was cold and hard, and her head hurt. She groped on either side to make sure it was safe and carefully pulled herself upright without opening her eyes.

Paracetamol
, she thought. She always had paracetamol in case of an emergency.

She felt through her pockets one by one, thinking as she did so that she really should get some sort of bag, like a doctor's bag, maybe, with labelled compartments, because all of her stuff was getting squashed and dusty, and it was impossible to find what she needed when she needed it. Her fingers finally closed on a small, slightly flattened rectangular box, and she pulled it out and opened it, only to find that what came out when she shook it was not a blister pack of pills but a pungent-smelling cigarette.

She opened her eyes.
That's not right
, she thought.
I gave the cloves to Molly Red, and she never gave them back
.

Her headache was fading anyway, so she abandoned the search for painkillers and examined the cigarette packet. It was the same packet she'd given to Molly Red: same brand, same packaging – even (she tipped out the cigarettes and counted them) the same number of cigarettes.

But she burned some of them down
, she thought.
I don't know how many exactly, but at least two
.

She put the cigarettes back in the box and looked around. The light was dim and diffuse, as if it came from everywhere and nowhere in particular; she was in a place she didn't recognise, on the bank of a river that had once been deep and wide, to judge from the highwater marks on the opposite bank, but had now shrunk down to a tiny stream, no more than twenty feet across.

There was a ferry perched incongruously in the water, taking up so much of it that Aisling could have jumped from the far end of the ferry to the other bank. On the ferry stood a hooded and cloaked old man with a punting-pole and a sour expression. He was staring at Aisling in a distrustful way. Aisling decided straight away that she didn't like him, and she would put off talking to him as long as she could manage.

She got to her feet, stuffing the cigarettes into her pocket, and walked up the slope that led away from the River. The landscape was mostly pretty blank, with a soft greenness underfoot that wasn't grass or moss but something vegetable that felt like carpet to her feet and like reeds to her fingers. A little way on, the slope eased away and then got steeper, turning into a proper hill. In the side of the hill was a doorway with a stone lintel and threshold. Aisling peered in the doorway and saw a stone-lined corridor that looked human-made, not like a natural cavern, though the light petered away after about ten feet, and there was no way to be sure whether there was a natural cavern deeper in.

She hadn't brought her pencil torch with her, and Julie still had her phone, which made the prospect of an impromptu spelunking session very unattractive. She turned her back on the doorway and surveyed what she could see from its threshold: the land sloping down towards the River, the riverbed that was mostly dry, the ferry and the man standing on it. The opposite bank was wrapped in mist, and so was the top of the hill and whatever lay farther up or down the River.

Aisling steeled herself and walked down towards the ferry.

‘From everything I've heard, I imagine you're the Ferryman,' she said when she reached it. The man nodded wordlessly, his expression still sour and distrustful. ‘Well, maybe you can explain a few things. Where are we?'

‘This is the River,' said the Ferryman with a voice like the pages of an old book rustling and crackling as they were turned by an ungentle hand.

‘I can
see
that,' said Aisling. ‘Obviously it's a river. Sorry,
the
River. I mean, this is a mostly featureless landscape surrounded by fog, and I'm guessing that if I walk into the mist, I'll either bonk into an invisible wall or come out again at a slightly different point along the River, right?'

‘No one who has walked into the mist has ever returned,' said the Ferryman.

‘Oh,' said Aisling. ‘Well,' she said, rallying, ‘anyway, you're – is your name Charon?'

‘I have been called Charon.'

‘But it's not your name. Of course not. That would be too simple. You're the Ferryman, you've got the ferry, you bring people across the River that divides life from death –'

The weight of what she was saying caught up with her, and she had to pause and take a breath.
I died
, she thought.
I died, but here I am. Huh
. ‘S-so anyway – I lost my thread. Give me a second. Yes, you – you decide, don't you? What form the creatures take when they cross over? That's what Molly Red said.'

The Ferryman nodded.

‘And, uh, does that – does that apply to everyone who dies in the City?'

The Ferryman nodded again.

Tears prickled at the corners of Aisling's eyes. She bit her lip and sucked in her cheeks and clenched her teeth to keep them from flowing over. ‘Including me?'

The Ferryman nodded. Aisling let out a gusty breath. She wasn't dead! Not really and truly rung-down-the-curtain-and-joined-the-Choir-Invisible dead. There was a chance. There would be more life for her.

There
could
be more life for her.

She didn't want to ask, but she'd been raised by lawyers, and she knew all too well what happened to people who signed contracts without reading the fine print.

She bit her lip and met the Ferryman's eyes. It gave her an unpleasant itching sensation in her mind that she did her best to ignore.

‘What's the catch?' she said.

The Ferryman shrugged. ‘No catch.'

‘Oh, come on. Immortality for anyone who dies in the City, even if they're not from there? That's way too good a deal. And my mum always says that if something looks too good to be true, it probably is. What's the catch, Ferryman? How does it work, and what does it cost?'

The Ferryman sighed, a sound like wind rushing through a pile of dry leaves. ‘The price of the crossing is two coins.'

‘Any two coins?'

The Ferryman nodded.

‘And what happens then?'

‘I cannot tell you that.'

‘“Cannot tell me” as in you swore a binding oath that you wouldn't, or “cannot tell me” as in you'd rather not?'

‘I cannot tell you.'

Aisling scowled. ‘You are positively the least forthcoming person I have met in the past forty-eight hours,' she said, ‘and that's saying something. OK. You can't tell me what happens after you take me across the River, correct?'