Map of Plagues

Chapter 1

1

Morning sun lanced through the windows of the flat above the old map shop, lighting on the walnut wood bookshelves laden with notebooks and leather-bound journals. The cry of seagulls wafted in as they hung on the breeze above the Georgian streets of Bath, tasting the ocean on the air as it blew inland from the Bristol Channel.

Sienna Farren sat cross-legged on a cushion by the bookshelves, a tendril of titian hair escaping from her blue striped headscarf as she pulled down another of her grandfather's journals. The cover was grey leather, faded in parts, marked by the sun of another time. It looked like elephant skin, but as she ran her fingers over the whorls and lines, she sensed a different vibration. It was from a creature of the Borderlands, lost to Earthside but hunted over there, brought back in death.

The journals captured fleeting moments from the years that Michael Farren had spent as a Mapwalker on missions off the edge of the map. That world was lost in time, but the moments he had spent watching were captured here on the page, passed from his memory to hers across the generations. Sienna had not really known her grandfather in the years before he was murdered, sacrificing himself to save the city of Bath from Borderland invasion. She had inherited his map shop as well as his lifelong mission and in many ways, she was still trying to come to terms with the new direction of her life. These journals were an insight into the mind of a man she wished she had known better in life, but perhaps could still help her even in death.

She flicked through the pages of the journal, past line drawings in thick black ink, some highlighted with color. A bright kingfisher sketched on the edge of a sparkling stream with feathers of burnt orange and turquoise, his spiked beak slightly open. A mountain range with numbered passes, a thin line to show the path of the Mapwalker team. Red-hot lava spilling over the top of a volcanic cone, trailing a path of destruction toward a village that lay beneath.

The face of a young Nubian woman gazed out from another page, loving lines and delicate shading betraying a deeper connection. Sienna wondered who the woman was, and how long ago her grandfather had loved her.

She read on past pages of temples and buildings and ruins, some overrun with vines, others as pristine as if they had been built yesterday. He had noted the sounds and smells of the jungle next to the sketches, the call of monkeys, the fecund aroma of tropical flowers. The scent of berries rose from the page, the purple ink made from the juice of some unusual Borderland fruit that Sienna didn’t recognize.

The journals were numbered with tiny Roman numerals etched into the spine. They were ordered on the shelves, but number twenty-four was missing. Her grandfather’s compass was still missing too, stolen by a Shadow Cartographer just round the corner from the map shop where she now sat. Sienna wondered where the notebook was now.

She understood that the sketchbooks weren't absolute truth, they were her grandfather’s perception of a moment of time. But who's to say where art, truth and history intersected? The notes he made and the drawings he sketched told his version of the tale, even if the annals of the Mapwalkers told something different. None of those who traveled there could take pictures. The boundaries of the Borderlands turned all technology to dead metal. When the borders were formed in the days of stronger blood magic, only the old ways remained off the edge of the map. So Michael had used pen and ink, paint when he could. Charcoal, ash, dust.

Blood.

Sienna pulled up her shirt sleeve to reveal her healing scars, tattooed ley lines of The Circus and the Royal Crescent. Her grandfather’s skin had the same lines, his own blood map providing protection for the city of Bath and the portal that they guarded here. Now it was Sienna's turn to be the guardian of the gate. But she wanted more than that. She wanted to be fighting the Shadow Cartographers, trying to build a future for the Borderlanders.

Alongside Finn.

She flicked through more of the pages, pulling down the journals faster now. Her grandfather had traveled all over the Borderlands. He must have visited the trader town on the edge of the Uncharted, he must have known a way to get back there. Sienna thought of Finn’s face as he stepped back through the gate as the border closed around him. It had only been a month ago, but it felt like forever. He had said his mother came from the slave markets there and after the battle with his warlord father, it made sense that he would flee to the edge of Borderlander civilization, where there were plenty of places to hide.

But it was hard to find and she couldn’t just walk back there through a map of her own creation. She had no context, no anchor, and as with all locations in the Borderlands, its position changed as new places were pushed off the edge of Earthside. As the landscape of the Borderlands shifted, it pushed the trader town even further into the Uncharted. Few dared stay too long, as time moved differently out there.

Sienna wondered if Finn thought of her. She saw his face every night when she closed her eyes, and she longed to go to him.

But there was also a darker thread to her desire.

When she had cut into her skin and used her blood to create a powerful map, she had let the shadow inside. Now it beat within her, drawing her back to the dark magic of the Borderlands, pulsing deep within her heart.

She had to go back there, but she didn't want to go alone. There was one person who understood this craving, one person she could trust. Sienna picked up her phone and texted Mila.

The low thrum of the engine beat time as the canal boat moved slowly through the water under the shade of overhanging trees. As her phone buzzed, Mila Wendell kept one hand on the tiller while she read the text from Sienna.

When are you back?

A bark of excitement made Mila look up as Zippy, her golden cocker spaniel, greeted the local ducks as they turned toward the aqueduct at Dundas, just a few miles out from Bath. Sunlight dappled the water with shades of green and the smell of elderflower rose from the hedgerows as they passed.

After the battle with the Borderlanders, Mila had fled the city, needing time to let her body return to its Earthside physicality. She could travel in the ripples between waves, spin liquid into weapons, turn her body to water. It was freedom, but every time the Mapwalkers used their magic, a sliver of shadow weaved its way inside — and Mila knew that she had used too much of it in those last days.

And yet every day for the last month, she had fought the desire to go back to the Borderlands alone. She held Zippy close in the night, weeping into his fur as she resisted the pull to darkness. It was an addiction that only grew worse with time. Their mentor, Bridget, had warned of this and it was why Mapwalkers must always travel in teams into the Borderlands. If they had too much shadow, they could no longer cross over for fear of losing themselves. Too many of their kind had been lost over the years, too many had shifted into Shadow Cartography.

Like Xander had done on the last mission.

Once the golden child of Mapwalker lineage, his skill as an Illustrator had marked him out for greatness, but he had betrayed them all for a chance to use his magic every day. To stop resisting the dark.

Mila understood why he had made that choice, but she hoped that she could resist it long enough to help Sienna find Finn and maybe, just maybe, there was a chance for peace between Earthside and the Borderlands.

Zippy ran up and down the roof of the canal boat, happiness on his doggy face. He knew the smells of this place, and they both had friends here, friends who would look after the little spaniel when she had to travel alone. It was time to moor up again, to settle for a time in a place she had come to call home.

Mila texted back. Soon.

In the stone corridors beneath Bath Abbey, the whoosh of fire echoed before ending in a metallic slam. The sounds repeated again and again, faster now, until suddenly it stopped. Peregrine Mercator leaned over, hands on his knees, panting with effort, his t-shirt damp with sweat in the over-heated room.

As his breath slowed, Perry stood again and pulled the human-shaped target back toward him across the wide expanse of the practice room. It was made of thick metal, but its heart had burned clean through with his repeated attack. Perry nodded, pleased at his improved precision. He was not the same man who had faced his father a month ago. He was stronger now, his muscles more defined, his magic under control.

He sent the target back once again, opened his palms and conjured the fire once more. While the other Mapwalkers had to be careful of using their magic on Earthside, he was a Halbrasse, a half-breed, able to move between the realms, born with shadow already in his veins, choosing to stay and fight for the world he had grown up in. This was his home and when they came for it again, he would be ready.

He slammed flame into the head of the metal target once more, seeing his father’s face melt away with every blow.

Outside the door of the training room, John Farren sighed as he watched Perry’s anger explode. He leaned heavily on his cane, the barely healed scars on his back preventing him from standing upright, part of his mind still chained in the bloody dungeon of the Borderlands. He understood the depth of the young man’s pain, and he saw a reckoning ahead with the man who had wounded them both so deeply. Sir Douglas Mercator, Perry’s father — and the Shadow Cartographer who had tried to make a blood map from John’s own skin.

An alarm sounded suddenly, a deep note of warning.

John turned from the window and limped away down the corridor. In years past, the sound had been unusual but these days, it seemed the borders were tested several times a day, the Borderlanders pushing against the limits of their world, finding ways back into Earthside. For generations, the magic of the border had been taken for granted, but now it seemed, it was beginning to crumble. It was only a matter of time before they faced a proper invasion and this world would have to face a truth hidden for too long.

He reached the War Room. Bridget Ronan stood before a computer screen showing a map of the south of England, a red light pulsing above the City of London. A deep frown creased her beautiful face, and as she leaned to look more closely, her multi-colored patchwork dress swirled around her legs. As it shifted, John remembered one night when they had danced together under the full moon on a ruined terrace above a forgotten river deep within the Borderlands. The scent of spring blossom hung in the balmy air and the sound of the water splashing below drowned their cries of pleasure as they lost themselves in one another. That night they had left their responsibilities behind, a stolen moment off the edge of the map. But they had returned to real life soon after, the memories fading as he returned to his Earthside family, and she took on a different role in the Ministry. It had been their last mission together.

Bridget looked up, her expression softening as she saw him standing there. Perhaps the memories hadn’t faded after all. Perhaps there was still a chance for them. But with the amount of shadow now within him, John knew he could never go into the Borderlands again. He was stuck on Earthside, as Bridget was too, both of them tainted by the magic they had used on the other side of the map.

Bridget turned back to the screen and zoomed in on the map to show a plague pit behind the City of London.

“A small group of Ferals breached one of the secondary gates under the Thames. It seems they only had one goal.” She pulled up pictures of a tomb surrounded by security tape, then a sarcophagus, an empty box upon the remains of a knight. Above it, the painting of a demon devouring plague victims as the dead piled up in mounds around it. She clicked through to security footage of a man in a plague doctor’s mask.

Bridget frowned, biting her lip in concern. “I think they found the first piece.”

John reached for her hand. “It’s not over, then?”

Bridget shook her head. “It’s only just beginning.”