Crows turned slowly, baking first his front, then his back. ‘Down is big. Very big. The portals are spread wide across the land. And the people are few. You can, if you want, find places where no one else has ever been, and just live there, perfectly alone, and not see another soul until one morning, you are too old to get up. For most people, well … there are the castles. There is one place, far away, which you would call a town. I saw it once, many years ago.’ He held his arms out, let them drop back down. ‘Do you see? You are used to London, yes? Millions of people. Here in Down, people are rare. Few come through the portals, and of those some die of injuries they gained while on the other side. Once here, they are vulnerable. Many become victims. Some get new injuries, and they die, or they get sick because they are unused to finding their own food. Some get into fights.’

‘You mean like the others who came through with me?’

‘They have been taken, but she is unlikely to kill them. They will have to answer her questions, and they’ll work for her in whatever role she sees fit.’

‘What? As slaves?’

‘Yes. They may become accustomed to their slavery, and become trusted. But they are still slaves, even though they wear no chains.’

‘Can we do anything about that?’ asked Mary.

‘She is a geomancer. Her power increases, while mine?’ Crows snorted. He lifted his hands to embrace his tumbledown battlements and open-air halls. ‘I have an army of birds and nothing more.’

‘There must be something we can do.’

‘Why must there be anything? Why can it not be hopeless and useless and all the other lesses? There is no law, that those that think of themselves as good must triumph over those they believe are evil: sometimes the best we can hope for is to get out of the way. We have the whole of Down to explore, so why fight over this little piece?’

She didn’t know why, but then a thought entered her head and lodged there.

‘You fought, didn’t you?’

‘Ah. And I barely escaped with my life.’

‘So why are you still here, Crows?’ She stared into the far distance, beyond the broad, dark lake that started where the lines of hills stopped, to where she thought she could make out the coast. ‘Why not take your own advice and find somewhere else?’

Crows looked sour for a moment, his lips pursed as if he was sucking on a vinegary chip. ‘Something keeps me here. I do not know what.’

She did. ‘You don’t like losing, Crows. No one likes losing. What happened?’