Wormwood Gate (17 page)

‘Yeah, yeah, great and terrible vengeance, whatever,' Aisling muttered. ‘Come on. Kick her again, Julie. You can probably see the Tower better than me from where you're sitting.'

‘Good point.' Julie kicked the horse into a walk again, shifting in her seat as it started to move, the extra passenger making the saddle feel cramped and uncomfortable.

‘Listen,' Julie said as a thought occurred to her, ‘you shouldn't come with us. You were supposed to stay in prison as a – as a hostage, to make sure I'd behave. ‘It wouldn't look good if you came along with me as if you'd been released.'

‘Huh,' said Aisling, ‘Now that you mention it, it's funny that nobody found me. There were patrols around, but none of them seemed to be looking for me, specifically.'

‘I was protecting you,' said Molly Red's voice, sounding a little strained by her odd position. ‘Not on purpose, mind you. You've heard that I can't be found unless I want to be? That extends to my companions.'

Julie twisted a little to look at her, then gave up when she found that, no matter what she did, she couldn't see the expression on Molly Red's face without slipping dangerously low to the left. She satisfied herself with asking, ‘Then who counts as a companion? Does your woman in the deerhide count, even though she's off to the side?'

‘Yes,' said Molly Red. ‘She is travelling with me, even if at a distance. That's why the queen's seagulls haven't tried to peck her to ribbons already, though –' She cut herself off abruptly, and suddenly laughed. ‘She wasn't happy to hear that.'

‘I bet she wasn't,' said Julie, picturing the look on the queen's face when she realised she had to depend on Molly Red for protection. ‘So … what do you think she'd be like, as a queen? Do you think she'd be a good ruler?'

‘The important thing is getting rid of the one the City has now.' Molly Red's voice dropped low. ‘That one there doesn't have to come next. Be better if she didn't, for more reasons than one.'

They were close to the Tower of Light now, and Julie could see a wide tree-lined avenue peppered with statues that led to the gated compound containing the Tower itself. Between getting there by being carried by seagulls and getting away by running like the clappers with both eyes out for guards, she hadn't yet had a chance to really look at the Tower, much less the approach to it, and the experience of seeing it now was a little dizzying, like the moment when an optical illusion would switch from one image to the other and back again, or like the times when she had seen a girl from a higher year in school and immediately known whose sister she was.

If they had been in the real Dublin there would have been a bridge over the river; there would have been people on the bridge selling T-shirts and cheap jewellery, and buses trundling past, and a smell of fermenting barley wafting down from St James's Gate. As it was, there was no river (but it had been there earlier – where had it gone?), no bridge, no jewellery stall, no scent of beer or horse dung or urine or car fumes; the buildings more than twenty feet away were misty and indistinct, and even the ground below her looked a little uncertain of itself, as if it might forget how to be ground if it were distracted.

And the avenue wasn't O'Connell Street; didn't even look like O'Connell Street, not really. There was a giant pillar with a statue on it just before the gates to the compound, for one thing, and no McDonald's or Burger King or Foot Locker or bank machines. The GPO was still there, a little scorched-looking, and the O'Connell Monument still dominated the southern end of the avenue and still had bullet-holes in random places, which raised a question Julie couldn't begin to answer: had the Easter Rising happened in the City of the Three Castles, just as it had happened in Dublin? Or had the effects of the Rising seeped through, somehow, leaving scorchmarks and bullet-holes in the City without the battles that caused them ever happening there?

But the resemblance ended there. Past the tall stone pillar was a stone wall interrupted by a high wrought-iron gate, and past the wall was a round tower the width of a house, made of a gleaming silvery metal and reaching high into the sky. Julie craned her neck to see the top; she could just about make out the cage containing the Queen-that-was, hanging below what looked like the current queen's chamber, complete with floor-to-ceiling windows.

It occurred to Julie that, high as the Tower was, and big as the windows were, the queen could probably see the entire City from there. No doubt she seldom left it.

‘We should split up now, I guess,' said Aisling as they passed the O'Connell Monument. ‘I can just hang around under one of those trees or something while you do the needful. Um, actually –' She reached into her pocket and produced something that looked like a Swiss Army knife, only its cover was metallic rather than red. ‘This is my multitool,' she said, handing it to Julie, who had to fumble awkwardly to get it into her bag without letting go of the reins. ‘It's got two knife blades, and a saw, and pliers and scissors and screwdrivers and – well, anyway. It's a handy thing to have.'

And it's already proven its worth as a murder weapon
, Julie thought, but that was too dark a joke to make out loud.

‘Thanks,' she said. She wanted to say more, but her throat had closed over. She could only hold Aisling's gaze as Aisling nodded gravely, said ‘Good luck,' and turned to go.

But before Aisling was more than a few steps away, all three of them heard a sound that Julie, at least, had not heard since arriving in the City, so that it took longer than it should have done for her to realise what it was. By the time she knew it was a car approaching from around some corner or other, the horse had already grown alarmed and started to whinny and shake its bridle, and Aisling had whirled back around with a startled look on her face.

Julie yanked the reins – a little more forcefully than she had intended – and looked in the direction of the sound as the horse clattered to a halt. Sure enough, a car roared towards them from the direction of … not O'Connell Bridge, but where O'Connell Bridge would be if the Tower really stood on O'Connell Street. It was a taxi with its light switched off. It careered wildly across and down the road as if its driver was drunk and screeched to a halt halfway between the O'Connell Monument and the huge stone pillar –
Oh
, Julie thought, irrelevantly,
it's Nelson's Pillar; it didn't get blown up here –
and its driver stumbled out, muttering curses, and staggered and weaved towards the horse.

‘Ah!' he said, and now that he was out of the car, Julie could see that it was Jo Maxi.

‘What do you want?' she called out, trying to sound fearless and undaunted. There was a bit of a wobble in her voice that she hoped only she could hear.

‘What do I want?' Jo Maxi shouted, waving his arms wildly. ‘I want me fares back. I want to tear down the glass cages! I want to drown out the new chimes! I want things back the way they were, when this was my city as much as anyone else's!' He laughed a bitter, hopeless little laugh. ‘But since I can't have that, I want to cut off the head of Molly Red and sell it to the Queen of Crows.'

Julie felt a cold fist forming in her stomach and very carefully and slowly took a deep breath, and then another.

‘Let's talk about this, shall we?' she said, watching and listening to herself from a distant place inside her head where she wasn't terrified. ‘Let's not do anything rash.'

9

Taking her cue from Julie, Aisling started walking slowly towards Jo Maxi, holding her hands out wide in a non-threatening posture. He didn't look like he was carrying a weapon, but she didn't want to risk provoking him if he had one concealed under his jacket.

‘Why do you think selling Molly Red's head will make things better?' Julie was saying, so calm and collected that Aisling wondered whether she had an autopilot that kicked in when things got scary. She had been calm when the seagulls had grabbed them and carried them away too, so calm and sure of herself that she'd been able to talk Aisling out of a panic attack.
Do you know?
Aisling thought.
Do you have any idea how brave you are?

She felt a little ashamed of herself for being so easily scared, and then she felt even worse for thinking more about her own feelings than what was happening to the City, and she focused her gaze on Jo Maxi and watched and listened for an opening.

‘It won't make things better,' he was saying in a hopeless sort of way, his gaze fixed on the ground and his face looking tired and droopy and sad. ‘Nothing will. The City that I knew is dead. Dead and gone, and a new one springing up in its place. And that one's dying too. Dying before it was even properly born.'

‘I'm trying to make things right,' said Julie. ‘Please, let me get past you. I have something important to do, and I need to get to the Tower to do it.'

At that, Jo Maxi sprang to life as if he were Frankenstein's monster struck by lightning. ‘The Tower?' He spat on the ground. ‘The feckin' Tower? What makes you think I'll let anyone go to the Tower if I can stop them?'

‘I'm trying to help!' said Julie, and there was a note of fear as well as frustration in her voice. ‘I'm not a friend of the queen's. I'm with Molly Red.'

Jo Maxi's face distorted with rage. Aisling winced. That was the wrong thing to say. ‘Molly feckin' Red! Sure, what did she ever bring us but lies and broken promises! Broken promises, can you believe that? And lies! Lies, she brought to the Realms Between, to the City, which was always a place where no lies could be told!'

He reached into his jacket and took out a wrench and a saw, brandishing them like twin weapons. Aisling stopped her slow movement towards him and lowered her hands a little. She looked at Molly Red, who lay across the horse's back, immobile, like a crash test dummy.
If she has any awesome destructive powers
, she thought,
now would be a good time to reveal them
. Molly Red's face was hard to read upside down, so Aisling couldn't be sure of her expression; what she could see was stern and stoical and not encouraging.

‘Whatever issues you have with Molly Red,' said Julie, ‘she's opposing the queen, and that makes her someone on the same side as me. For now, at least. The queen is sucking the life out of the City, and the only way to stop it is to bring her down.'

‘Do you think the City can be saved? Is that it?' Jo Maxi threw back his head and laughed. There was a ragged edge to the laughter, as if he was a hair's breadth away from crying. ‘What do yous know about that? Talk to the Ferryman and he'll tell you: everything dies. Everything! Even cities die, and this City's been dead for days. And it won't come back. The only hope for those of us left – few as we are – is to find a place somewhere else. And I mean to find Molly Red for the Queen of Crows and hand her over for a passport!'

Aisling glanced at Molly Red again.
Why isn't she saying anything?
she thought.
Why isn't she doing anything? Come to that, how was he able to find us?

She looked from Molly Red to Jo Maxi and back again, and as Jo Maxi gestured shakily with the wrench and the saw and muttered to himself, wobbling on his feet, a startling thought struck her:
He can't see her. He doesn't know she's there!

Carefully, with as little sudden movement as possible, she started walking backwards and to the left, and shifting her eyes and her head so that she could scan the sides of the street for the queen. When Julie looked in her direction, she seemed to notice what Aisling was doing and gave her a questioning look, but Aisling could only shake her head slowly and keep looking.

Molly Red can't hide us because we're standing right in front of him. But she can keep protecting the queen, as long as he doesn't see her. Does the queen know that?

‘I'm still not sure why you want to sell Molly Red's head,' said Julie, ‘or why you're standing in front of me like I can help you get it.'

‘You said yourself you were with her, on her side!' Jo Maxi shouted. There was a sharp cry, and Aisling looked up to see seagulls whirring overhead. Her pulse started racing and she had to close her eyes for a second.
They can't see us. Are we protected? Are they too far away? Maybe they don't have good enough eyesight. Hawks have good eyes, but what about seagulls? I wish I knew
.

Jo Maxi took a staggering step towards Julie, and another, and another. ‘It can't be stopped, d'you hear? The City can't be saved.' The seagulls swooped lower and began to fly over his head, in a circle wide enough to include the horse and its riders. The horse snorted and shook its bridle, and Julie, startled, dropped the reins. When she picked them up again, Aisling could see she wasn't holding them right.

There was a flash of white off to the left, behind a pillar. Aisling let her eyes dart over in that direction to confirm that it was the queen's dress she'd seen, then looked back. Her heart started to throb painfully.

‘I don't know why you're even talking to this guy,' she said loudly. ‘If I were you, I'd just ride past him through the gates of the Tower.'

Another flash of white in her peripheral vision. Jo Maxi was looking straight at Aisling now, and she didn't dare look directly at the queen to see if she'd got the hint. ‘What can you do, anyway?' she said to him. ‘We don't know where Molly Red is. Go and look somewhere else.'

‘Why do you want to give her head to the Queen of Crows?' Julie said more quietly.

Jo Maxi stopped walking and stood still, not even swaying. He still looked a little drunk, but not any more as if he couldn't control his body, only maudlin and emotionally volatile. Aisling started shuffling sideways in Julie's direction. He would be more dangerous like this.

‘Because I have no place in the Kingdom of Crows,' he said. ‘Unless I can give the queen something she can't get any other way. Do her a boon that nobody else can do for her. Then she'll give me a place, and when the City gets swallied up by the Kingdom, I won't get swallied up with it.'

‘But why would she want Molly Red?'

‘Not Molly Red. Molly Red's head, to put on a spike outside her palace, where she keeps the heads of traitors.'

He started to advance towards Julie, his eyes fixed upon her. Aisling took the opportunity to stare openly in the direction of where she'd last seen the queen. Sure enough, when she scanned up the left side of the street, she saw a white-clad figure creeping towards the gates of the Tower, dashing between trees and statues, trying to spend as little time as possible away from cover.

Aisling reached Julie and the horse before Jo Maxi did and tugged at Julie's hand, correcting her grip on the reins.

‘When I say “go”,' Aisling whispered, ‘kick her and kick her again. Get her through the gates.'

Julie frowned. ‘But the gates are –'

‘I'll kill her with this,' said Jo Maxi, brandishing the wrench, ‘and then I'll cut off her head with this,' waving the saw, ‘and the Queen of Crows'll let me in then. Oh yes. Maybe give me Molly Red's old job too. But first you have to tell me where she is, and don't you dare tell me you don't know!'

The seagulls started to cry. Aisling looked up at them, then forward, past Jo Maxi and towards the Tower. The gates were open.

This is it
, she thought.
My turn to be brave
.

She walked forward three steps, enough to put her more than an arm's length from Jo Maxi – far enough away that he couldn't hit her with a wild swing of his wrench or saw, but close enough that she could jump him at a moment's notice. ‘I don't think the Queen of the City would be too pleased if she found out about you,' she said loudly.

‘I don't give a gnat's fart for the Queen of the City,' said Jo Maxi, and he spat at Aisling's feet, missing her boots by a bare inch. ‘She's as much doomed as the rest of us, eejit that she is.'

Is that enough?
Aisling thought. She glanced upwards. It was hard to tell, but she thought perhaps the seagulls' circling had slowed a little, as if they were preparing to swoop.

‘Anyway,' she said, just as loudly as before, ‘I don't know why you think I can help you. I'm not travelling with Molly Red.'

She repeated the last sentence in her mind a few times, just in case saying it wasn't enough.
I'm not travelling with Molly Red. I'm not travelling with Molly Red. I'm not travelling with Molly Red
.

There was a single loud cry, and then a chorus of shrieks, just as there had been when she and Julie had been on the roof.

Jo Maxi looked up, puzzled, his hands dropping to his sides, and Aisling lunged forward and tackled him to the ground. ‘GO!' she yelled. ‘Go, now!'

Through the shrieks and the sudden circle of beating wings around the two of them, she couldn't be sure of what she was seeing and hearing, but she thought she saw the horse springing into a trot, and then a canter, and she was almost sure she heard Julie's voice saying something, though she had no idea what it could be.

The seagulls whirled around them a few times. Then the pecking started. Aisling had thought her coat might protect her, and it did, a bit; but the seagulls got wise to this more quickly than she would have credited, and they pecked at her head and her neck and her legs, the only parts of her that weren't protected. It hurt, like being stabbed with a hundred tiny blunt knives, and Aisling thought perhaps she could give in, surrender, tell them they could take her in, slam her back in the cells, she didn't care, she'd confess to whatever they wanted her to confess to if they would only
stop the infernal pecking
; but no matter how still she lay, they wouldn't stop, and when she risked lifting her head a little, she saw that Jo Maxi was flailing uselessly at the gulls with his wrench and his saw.

‘Stop that!' she shouted. ‘You're making it worse!'

Jo Maxi snarled and shook his wrench at her. ‘You arselicker! I'll show you worse!' He swung the wrench in her direction, and she ducked, but not quickly enough.

I rather think I brought that on myself
, Aisling thought dazedly, and then there was nothing but darkness.

*

Julie yanked on the reins, and the horse reared.

‘Whoa, there!' she cried, which was something she'd seen riders do in films.

It worked; the horse settled down, and when she pulled more gently on the left rein the horse turned in a semi-circle to face back towards the gates, which were now closed, a pair of horse-head guards stationed on either side.

Through the bars of the gates, she could see the flock of seagulls taking off into the sky and a prone figure on the ground – only one, and it was wearing a long black coat.

What happened to Jo Maxi?
she thought, her heart pounding. She let go of the reins and slid off the horse's back, landing awkwardly on her left foot and hobbling as fast as she could towards the gates. ‘Let me out!' she said to the guards, who said nothing and did not stir, as motionless as statues. Aisling's body was lying still.

With a cry, Julie launched herself at the gates, grabbing onto the bars and pulling herself up as high as she could. She didn't get very far before the metal bars suddenly turned ice-cold under her fingers and she had to jump down. A heavy hand came down on her shoulder and a voice she had never heard before said, ‘No running. You are in my power now, and she is in my domain..'

A cold dread gripped Julie. She gritted her teeth and turned around.

The hand belonged to a tall black-haired woman with skin as pale as chalk, dressed in a gown of black feathers, with a crow perched on her right shoulder. Julie had never seen her before, but there could be no doubt about who she was.

‘Now,' said the Queen of Crows, her hand gripping Julie's shoulder momentarily so that Julie felt the prick of talons, ‘to the Tower. You have an oath to fulfil.'

The Queen removed her hand and turned around, and as she turned Julie thought she heard the rustling of dead leaves or grains of sand.

A kind of mist enveloped the Queen of Crows as she walked, weaving into the image of the woman in white with a deerhide round her shoulders and then quickly dissipating. Julie thought back over the things she and Aisling had asked the woman in the deerhide and the replies she had given, and realised that she had never said in so many words that she was the Queen-that-was; Julie had made an assumption, and the Queen of Crows had not corrected her.
I cannot tell a lie
, she had said, and that was most likely true.

‘Can I leave you to take care of this?' the Queen of Crows said to Molly Red, who was still lying athwart the horse's back.

‘Of course, Your Majesty,' said Molly Red.

‘There's no “of course” about it,' said the Queen of Crows. ‘That man with the weapon was right to say you brought lies and broken promises to this city. It is a skill of yours to lie or to twist the truth.'

‘I thought you valued that skill, Your Majesty,' said Molly Red. ‘I have put it to use in your service many times before.'

‘And against me too?'

‘Never!'

‘Tell me, does he know something I do not, that crazed man? He said you were a traitor. A traitor to
me
.'

‘Because I came to work for the queens of this city. He didn't know I came here on
your
orders.'