Tarnished City

by Vic James

  ‘I’m sure I remember Meilyr telling us all about your bravery,’ Crovan observed.

  Luke dug his fingers into the gritty beach, fighting down his anger. Crovan was toying with him.

  But he did need to know.

  Hesitant, he dabbled his fingers into the shallows.

  And screamed as what had looked like water turned out to be acid. His whole body convulsed with the shock of it. He could feel his skin melting, his fingerbones corroding and washing away on the sparkling, shining wavelets. He fell backwards onto the beach, sobbing and cradling his ruined hand.

  His eyes squeezed shut with the horror of it. He’d been so stupid. So unbelievably stupid, playing the hero and planning an escape, when he should have simply focused on surviving this place, this man.

  ‘I forgot to mention its name,’ Crovan said, from a world made distant by pain. ‘Loch nan Deur, the Lake of Tears. My family, like the Jardines, guards its privacy.’

  Luke forced open his eyes, and through the blur saw faint amusement on Crovan’s face. Rage welled up inside him and he lunged. All he had to do was knock the man down in the shallows. If necessary, he’d wade in and hold him under, if it was the last thing he did.

  Which was when two things happened. The compulsion exerted by the collar slammed him to the ground.

  And as his arms came up to break his fall, Luke saw that his hand was not, after all, half gone.

  Fingers. Skin. Everything still there. Intact.

  In shock, Luke lay motionless, his cheek pressed against the coarse, gritty sand. His thoughts raced to make sense of everything. The lake wasn’t acid. Those wicked glints of Skill had worked on . . . what? His body, to make him feel pain? Or his brain, to make him think it? It was like the bed of blood he’d hallucinated at Kyneston after hours of Crovan’s interrogation. He could no longer trust the evidence of his own senses.

  Wait, he admonished himself. Wait and learn. No more escapes, no more attacks, until it’s all figured out.

  ‘Watch,’ said Crovan.

  The Equal stepped backwards into the water.

  Luke was prepared not to be impressed. It stood to reason that if it was Crovan’s or his family’s Skill that infused the loch, it wouldn’t hurt him. But what happened next was astonishing enough that Luke was mesmerized.

  Where Crovan moved, the water moved away from him. It flowed with a smooth, almost magnetic repulsion. For a space around the Equal, the loch bed was exposed.

  ‘Come quickly and keep close,’ said Crovan. ‘If you don’t stay on my heels, the water will claim you. I think you have an idea by now of how that would turn out.’

  Luke didn’t need telling twice, he scrambled to his feet and plunged after his new master.

  It was cold within the loch, and as they moved further in, the water grew deeper. Reached head height. Continued to rise. Soon, the claustrophobia was intense. It would have been pitch black, were it not for the gentle glow of Skill all around them. It was like being at the bottom of a well. What did they call those deep pits in dungeons – oubliettes? Forgetting-places.

  His family wouldn’t forget him, Luke knew. At least his parents and Abi would be safe in Millmoor. Mum and Dad had useful professions that the Labour Bureau would recognize, while Abi’s perfect grades had included Chinese, so Millmoor’s Bank of China call centre would snap her up. She’d be bored out of her mind, but she’d be away from the deadly intrigues of the Equals.

  He was worried sick thinking about his little sis at Kyneston, with the Jardine heir her only protection. Hopefully Gavar would grow tired of having Daisy around once Libby was old enough for school. Then she’d be sent to Millmoor to join the others.

  If anything happened to him here, would they even be told?

  Luke only just caught himself in time as Crovan stopped abruptly. Their passage was blocked by a wall of rock, into which was cut a series of glistening steps. They had reached the island.

  As Luke followed Crovan up, careful not to lose his footing, a chill wrapped around him. His fate here was close.

  They broke free of the water’s edge. The castle rose above them, vaster than it had appeared from the shore. The walls were blank and massive, flaring slightly at the base. Not even a mouse would be able to climb them.

  Set into the wall directly ahead, separate but side by side, were two doors. They stood twice Luke’s height, made of weathered wood banded with iron. Two words arched across each, incised deep into the stone and picked out in gold. Neither door had a knocker, a keyhole, or any visible means of opening. Mounted above both was a large stone shield carved with the device of a lightning-struck boat.

  ‘The Crovan arms and my ancestral motto,’ said Luke’s new master, indicating the words. ‘Omnes vulnerant; ultima necat. All hours wound; the last one kills.’

  ‘Cheerful,’ said Luke with a bravado he did not feel. ‘Very welcoming.’

  ‘Each door opens only one way,’ Crovan continued. ‘This opens from the outside, the other from the inside.’

  At the Equal’s touch, the left-hand door swung inward. Someone stood just over the threshold – a finely dressed man who looked to be in his late twenties. Was he Crovan’s son and heir? But no, the Equal sat alone in parliament.

  ‘Master,’ said the waiting figure, a strained edge to his voice. ‘Thank goodness you’re back. You’ve been gone so long.’

  As the man wrung his hands anxiously, Luke glimpsed, beneath the silk scarf knotted at his open collar, a golden band like his own. The man noticed Luke standing there, and his fawning expression hardened.

  ‘You’re not alone, Master?’

  ‘Evidently not,’ said Crovan tersely. Then he turned to Luke and continued: ‘This is the Door of Hours. You Condemned don’t do days, you do hours. There are so many more of them.’

  Crovan stepped over the threshold. Luke watched him, reluctant to follow. What awaited within these walls?

  ‘The other door,’ he said, stalling for time. ‘Does that one have a name, too?’

  ‘That is the Last Door.’

  The speaker was a girl. She wove her way between the other two and came forward. Skinny and pale, she was no older than Luke himself. She wore a plain black dress, and her golden collar was bright against her thin neck. Her voice was clear, as were her cool grey eyes.

  ‘Remember the motto: ultima necat. The last one kills. You don’t want to walk through that door – not until the day you want it so much that nothing will stop you.’

  Luke stared at her.

  ‘It kills you? How?’

  He conjured up images, none of them good. A guillotine, dropping from above. A poisoned door handle. Perhaps concealed blades that shot out from the walls and skewered you as you stepped over the threshold.

  ‘The “how” is immaterial,’ Crovan said. ‘It takes your life, as all things that kill do. Luke, enter. Coira, this is Luke Hadley. Show him to a room and see that he is presentable, then bring him to breakfast.’

  The irresistible compulsion of the band drew Luke over the threshold. And as he felt his body comply with the will of his new master, Luke knew for certain that this was how it had happened – the murder of Zelston. Someone had used Skill to make his body do their bidding and kill the Chancellor. Then he had been made to forget his own part in it.

  But who? Crovan himself? Lord Jardine? The Equal he had known as Doc Jackson?

  Perhaps even Silyen Jardine?

  The door slammed shut behind him. He glanced back, only to see something even more startling – the door was gone.

  ‘You look like someone tried to kill you,’ said the girl. Coira. She was studying his appearance sceptically. ‘Or that you killed someone. Given that you’re here, I’m guessing it’s the latter.’

  The blood that covered his shirt had long since dried and stiffened, and was slowly turning brown. He’d not been permitted to clean up before his trial – his appearance proclaimed his guilt without Lord Jardine having to say a word. He was also streak
ed with feculent muck from the Kyneston cellar.

  ‘Luke has been Condemned for slaying Winterbourne Zelston,’ Crovan clarified.

  ‘The Chancellor?’ said the man with the cravat.

  ‘Yes, Devin.’ Crovan spoke as if to a slow-witted child. ‘Chancellor Zelston is dead. Britain is now once again governed by Whittam Jardine, as interim Chancellor in an emergency administration. My hunch is that the emergency will prove sufficiently dire to require him to stay on in that capacity for some time, if not indefinitely. Come, I’ll tell you all the details.’

  And Crovan led away the man – Devin – leaving Luke and the girl standing by themselves.

  ‘I didn’t do it,’ Luke said immediately.

  He had no idea who this girl was, or whether he’d ever see her again after this morning, if Crovan’s next plans for him involved a cell or a kennel. But for just this brief moment he wanted someone to believe him. He’d not expected to find anyone of his own age here, let alone a girl.

  But Crovan’s words had turned her mood.

  ‘That’s what they all say,’ she said. ‘I hope for your sake that whatever you did to him was quick. Follow me.’

  You’re not here to make friends, Luke reminded himself, as Coira walked off. You’re here to survive – and escape. You’re here to find out anything you can about the Equals, so you can use it against them.

  But maybe there would be allies here. The Condemned were those handed the very worst punishment by the Equals. Those not wrongly convicted, would have already committed some atrocity to land them in this place. They had reason to hate the aristocracy, and experience of acting on that hatred.

  Luke remembered his Millmoor friends with a pang: nervy Asif and the cheerful, improbable tech wizards that were Hilda and Tilda. Violence had never been part of their plan. But perhaps fighting the Equals justified using every means available. Luke would keep an open mind about his fellow prisoners at Eilean Dochais – assuming he wasn’t being led to solitary confinement.

  Where he was being led, he noted with some astonishment, was through rooms as luxurious as any at Kyneston – albeit festooned with tartan and armour, and ornamented with the occasional taxidermied animal head.

  As he followed Coira through thickly carpeted corridors, he kept waiting for the moment their path would turn downward to dungeons below, or would pass through a locked iron door to a corridor of cells. But no. The walls were hung with sepia portrait photographs and garish oil paintings, many depicting Eilean Dochais itself, often amid scenes of battle. In one, the castle’s silhouette was lit up by vivid swirls of what could be either the northern lights, or scintillations of Skill.

  There were even weapons hung on the walls – bayonets and pikes, crossed swords and axes – though Luke doubted he could simply creep down one night and grab one, hack open the door and flee.

  ‘Let’s try this room,’ said Coira, stopping outside a door. ‘Blake is alongside, which is why nobody wants it, but it’s got a lovely view.’

  She turned the handle and led Luke into what looked like a posh country hotel room. A large double bed was positioned facing a window that looked out across the loch. There was an over-stuffed armchair (more tartan) and a heavy, carved wardrobe. The air was slightly musty, but Coira unlatched the windowpane and a trickle of fresh air seeped in.

  ‘It won’t open any wider,’ the girl said, fastening the latch. ‘So don’t go getting any ideas. I’ll fetch you something to wear – you look about Julian’s size. Bathroom’s through there. I’ll be waiting outside in ten minutes to take you down.’

  Then she was gone before Luke could say anything.

  This was all some elaborate joke. It had to be. Maybe you were given a few days of this, to make it ten times more painful when you were finally dragged to the dungeon in chains.

  But right now, Luke didn’t care. He threw off his filthy clothes and went into the bathroom. He could have stood under the shower for ages, letting it scald away everything his body had endured in the last forty-eight hours, but he remembered Coira’s ten-minute warning and leapt out the second he was clean.

  He laughed in disbelief at the clothes she had laid on the bed: a three-piece suit made of fine but slightly hairy fabric (was it tweed?), a crisp white shirt, and a tie. He had no idea what to do with the tie.

  There was a knock on the door and Coira’s head poked round. Her eyebrows went up at the sight of the limp tie-ends loose in his hands.

  ‘Let me,’ she said, knotting them briskly. ‘Come on, you mustn’t be late for breakfast.’

  Then she was off again, and Luke was hurrying after in trousers that were an inch too short and boots that were a size too small, but at least weren’t spattered with the mortal remains of Chancellor Zelston.

  He should talk to her, this girl. Was she one of the Condemned, like himself? Or simply a house-slave, like those at Kyneston? It was impossible to tell from her dress, which was more formal than anything Luke had ever seen a girl wear, but also plain and well-worn.

  ‘How long have you been here?’ he asked, as he followed her through a gothicky-looking door inset with panes of coloured glass. ‘Are you just doing your days, or, or . . .’

  He trailed off as she turned on her heel. She looked furious. Luke could have put his head in his hands. Talking to girls was difficult enough under any circumstances, but surely he deserved to catch a break.

  ‘We’re all killers – or worse. Some of them will try and tell you otherwise, or claim they acted for a great passion or a grand ideal, but we all have blood on our hands.’ Luke didn’t know what to say. Even on his past form, this was going disastrously.

  ‘Ask, if you like,’ she goaded him. ‘I can see you want to.’

  Fine. She could have it her way.

  ‘All right: who did you kill?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Coira lifted her chin defiantly. ‘He’s taken that from me. He’s taken it from some of the others, too, although most get to remember. But I was young when I did it, because I can’t remember ever being any place other than this. So it must have been another child. An Equal one. Happy now?’

  She met his eye challengingly. Luke couldn’t bear to hold her gaze.

  The pity of her situation overwhelmed him. And his heart fluttered as he realized how easily Coira’s story could become Daisy’s. Two children. An accident. It could only have been an accident. Yet for Coira to have been sent here – collared from childhood. It was inhumane.

  But they weren’t human, were they, the Equals?

  ‘Here we go,’ Coira announced, opening yet another door before Luke had a chance to compose himself. For a split second he was back in Millmoor, with Renie ushering him in front of the Club for the first time, all of them sitting around that knackered office table.

  Then the spectacle of the room he’d just entered registered in his brain.

  It was nothing he could ever have imagined.

  4

  Abi

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Abi, feeling not sorry at all. ‘Would you say that again? Because I thought I heard you say that rescuing my brother wasn’t a priority right now.’

  Highwithel’s occupants were gathered in its great hall: Abi and Jenner, Meilyr and Dina, Renie and the Club, Lady Tresco and her two daughters. Everyone sat on benches along an imposing table made of sea-polished driftwood. All except Heir Meilyr, who had placed himself at the top. A small, malodorous dog was wandering around their feet, huffing loudly. Abi stared at its mistress, the woman who had just spoken – Bodina Matravers.

  The hall windows were stained glass, depicting historical maritime scenes. The light streaming through them imparted a chilly blue lustre to the Equal’s white-blonde hair. Did Bodina resemble her sister, icy Heir Bouda, more than Abi had realized?

  ‘Luke isn’t our immediate priority, no,’ said Dina. ‘We must get the measure of Whittam Jardine’s new regime. Which means, Jenner, that now you know Abigail is safe, you need to leave. You’ll have to accept t
he Quiet about what you’ve seen and heard here. We can’t risk you giving away anything, even accidentally.’

  ‘No.’

  The word was barely out of Abi’s mouth before Jenner said equally vehemently, ‘I’m not leaving.’

  The others all looked at them. Abi focused on the Club members – she had barely mastered their names. The sisters: Hilda and Tilda. The pair she’d thought were Renie’s parents, but weren’t: Jessica and Oz. The young guy who jiggled all the time and struggled with eye contact: Asif. And Renie. Beside her, the kid was bristling.

  ‘The first thing you did was come for us,’ Renie told Bodina. ‘Because you thought this Crovan guy would search Luke’s memories and see us all. You didn’t hesitate. You came. We’ve gotta do the same for Luke.’

  ‘Luke rescued me as much as you did, Doc,’ said Oz, appealing to Meilyr. ‘Went right into that prison in a fake uniform. And unlike you, he didn’t secretly have Skill to save his neck if anything went wrong.’

  ‘The situation with Luke is entirely different,’ snapped Bodina. ‘This isn’t walking past half-witted guards. Arailt Crovan is one of the most powerfully Skilled individuals in Britain. Probably the most powerful, given that no one alive has ever damaged a person’s Skill the way Crovan did Meilyr’s.’

  Abi’s fury warred with her incomprehension. The Dina Matravers she had seen in the aftermath of the Kyneston explosion had been compassionate and powerful, not hesitating to heal a slave. She had rescued the Club members immediately, once they were put at risk by Luke’s interrogation. Why was she not going after Luke now? It made no sense.

  ‘I’m not Skillful enough to take on Crovan by myself,’ the Equal continued. ‘Meilyr can’t help me yet – and obviously Jenner can’t help at all. Plus, it’s not just Crovan we’d have to worry about. That castle of his, Eilean Dochais, is full of ancient and exceptionally nasty power. All sorts of legends surround it. Until Meilyr is recovered, there is no way we can risk a rescue for Luke.’

  Abi was ready to snap, and she felt Jenner angrily push back the bench, ready to rise and remonstrate with Bodina. But someone else spoke before either of them.