Tarnished City

by Vic James

  But Abi barely had a chance to see her assailant before the woman was yanked backwards, and in her place, looming over Abi, was a taller, broader figure, the late afternoon sun glinting bronze in his hair.

  ‘Abi? Tell me you’re okay.’

  Jenner crouched down, turning his back on the drop, the raging sea, and pulled Abi against him. One hand smoothed back her hair from her face, checking for injury.

  ‘I’m not letting you out of my sight,’ he said. ‘And I won’t get angry like this morning ever again, I promise. I’m so sorry – will you forgive me?’

  His brown eyes looked anxiously into hers. His kiss begged her forgiveness – and she gave it.

  When Jenner half lifted her back onto her feet, Abi saw the other pair standing there: Meilyr Tresco and a flushed and trembling Bodina Matravers. What had just happened?

  Then she understood, and her heart broke for Highwithel’s heir all over again.

  ‘That was her,’ she said to Meilyr, ‘not you. For a moment I thought your Skill . . . I’m so sorry.’

  Meilyr was sombre.

  ‘I reckon all four of us here have things to be sorry about,’ he said. ‘And me most of all. Dina came looking for me, and Jenner was with her, trying to find you. They didn’t catch us at our finest moment.’

  Abi shook her head.

  ‘But they did. We worked out what happened the night Zelston died. Which means that Luke is innocent. Now we just need to prove it, and then they’ll have to let him go.’ ‘Abigail Hadley,’ said Meilyr Tresco, ‘we shall and they will. And it begins now. Dina just told me that my mother and I have been summoned to Westminster – Lord Jardine has called his first parliament. We’ll be gone in a few hours. Everyone I need to speak to will be there.’

  ‘And if they won’t listen,’ Abi said, ‘we’ll figure out how to get into Crovan’s castle ourselves.’

  5

  Gavar

  Gavar had lost count of how many drinks he’d had in the parliamentary Members’ Bar that night. He tossed the last of the Jura down his throat and signalled to the barman for more.

  ‘Make it two,’ said a voice beside him.

  Had Gavar been less fuddled, the smell of the cigar smoke would have told him who stood there. As it was, he had to turn before he recognized the voice as belonging to Rix. The rest of the place had emptied out. Just how late was it?

  ‘Mind if I join you?’ said Rix, eyeing the empty glasses lined up on the counter. ‘I’m steeling my nerves for tomorrow’s big event.’

  Gavar wasn’t aware of any upcoming event. And Rix could have danced naked on a table for all Gavar cared. He grunted assent.

  ‘Just give us the bottle,’ Rix instructed the barman. ‘Then close up for the night. Everyone else overdid it on Lord Whittam’s hospitality at Kyneston.’

  ‘I don’t want to hear that name,’ Gavar slurred. ‘No.’

  His father. Always his father. The man was running the country again. And what was the first thing he planned to do? To humiliate his eldest son, of course. To take the only good thing in Gavar’s life – his daughter – and proclaim to the nation that she was worthless. A baseborn nothing.

  Rix indicated two high-backed armchairs by the fire. Gavar shrugged, but followed. Rix now had the bottle of malt, after all.

  ‘Is this about the mooted Bill of Succession?’ Rix asked, refilling Gavar’s glass and pouring one for himself.

  What did the man think? That Gavar drank like this every night for absolutely no reason?

  Oh, wait.

  ‘Your father won’t rule Britain forever, you know. This is an interim administration. And the bill may not even pass.’

  ‘It’ll pass. I know what I’ve heard round the dinner table at Kyneston. Half of parliament has been moaning in private for years, wanting to go back to how things used to be. He’s just giving them permission to say those things in public again. Denying baseborns the family name. Requiring them to do days. They’ll be tying baseborn babies in sacks and throwing them in rivers next.’

  Gavar leaned back in his chair, winded by his own vehemence. Rix was eyeing him thoughtfully. Gavar was about to tell him where to get off when the man spoke.

  ‘I had a child, too. Like yours. A boy. And for years, I never even knew – thanks to your father.’

  Gavar blinked, and pulled himself upright.

  ‘The mother?’ he asked. ‘She was—’

  ‘A commoner, yes. This was more than a quarter of a century ago. I’d gone back to Oxford to give a talk, and afterwards at High Table she was seated next to me, this beautiful creature. Turned out she was brilliant as well – doing research comparing the legislative structures of countries ruled by our kind, with those governed by the unSkilled. We had a lively dinner discussion, and neither of us wanted the evening to end. So it didn’t. It went on for months – the happiest of my life.’

  ‘Then she got pregnant but never told you?’

  ‘She got pregnant and did tell me. And I told my father. Announced that I wanted to marry her, and that the succession of Far Carr could skip me and go to my cousin instead.’

  Gavar had never had that conversation with his father. He’d never had the courage. And if he was honest with himself, though he had loved Leah, he wouldn’t have renounced Kyneston for her willingly. He had believed he could have both, and Bouda would just have to suck it up. Once, many a cottage on a great estate had housed a common-born family.

  What if he’d had to choose, though?

  A pointless thought. He drained his glass and poured another before speaking.

  ‘Your father didn’t take it well,’ Gavar said.

  It wasn’t a question. The previous Lord Rix had been a noted statesman, rumoured to be the power behind the Chair of not one, but two Chancellors. He was also famously choleric; a man more admired than liked.

  ‘He did not. We fought; he threatened to disinherit me. But that would have been freedom for me – of sorts. So I imagined I had the upper hand. Then she disappeared.’

  ‘Disappeared?’

  ‘She began her days. She wrote to me saying that she had chosen not to be an obstacle between me and my inheritance. I only found out later that it was all arranged by your father – and my father rewarded him handsomely for it, with a seat on the Justice Council.

  ‘Whittam was cunning even then, you see. He sent someone to her with a large sum of money, pretending that I had sent him to pay her off and provide for an abortion. She refused, of course. So then came an appeal to her decency: that she begin her days, to save me from scandal. A place at Arden was promised – the model slavetown near Stratford-upon-Avon, the one that tourists see.

  ‘But that was a lie, too. She was sent to Portisbury, Bristol’s shadow. An awful place then, as now. It was a miracle she didn’t lose the baby. But he was born there. Raised there. And though she never spoke ill of me to him, he grew up believing that I had cast his mother off and wanted him terminated.’

  The tale was so horrible that Gavar had forgotten to take even a sip of his whisky. He gulped it down now. Then his own story rose up and overwhelmed him.

  ‘Leah ran away,’ he heard himself say. ‘I adored her, but we argued all the time. I wanted my father to recognize Libby, our daughter. She said a quiet life was safer for both of them. She was so strong, but she was afraid of my father. I think she was afraid of me, too, at the end, and that’s why she ran, to escape both of us.’

  Gavar hung his head. He’d never spoken of the shame he felt to anyone. He wasn’t sure why he was telling Rix now, except that the guy had always been easy to talk to, and Gavar had been pierced by his admission about his lost child.

  ‘And you killed her,’ said Rix. ‘Didn’t you?’

  ‘I . . . I . . .’ Gavar hunched in his chair. I didn’t mean to, would sound ridiculous. I hardly knew I did it, would be even more absurd.

  Yes, when he’d learned that night that Leah had gone, he had raged. But he had leapt on his motorbike and gi
ven chase in order to keep her, not kill her.

  It had happened at the gate. The blazing sight of it had set off something in Gavar’s brain. After that, he’d hardly known what he was doing – until the moment he had stood over Leah, gun in hand, and heard their daughter howling.

  No. He couldn’t talk about this. And he certainly wasn’t going to spit out a confession that could be used against him. His anger flared again. At Rix, for asking all these questions. At his brothers, for being there when it happened and not stopping him. At his father, for his contempt for the little girl who was Gavar’s whole world. But mostly – always – at himself.

  ‘I’m done for tonight.’ He banged down his glass and rose unsteadily to his feet. ‘I’ve had enough of your questions.’

  ‘Wait.’ Rix caught his arm as he pushed past the man’s chair. ‘You don’t have to live in your father’s shadow, Gavar. Doing your father’s bidding. That man has destroyed your happiness, and mine, and now he wants to destroy your child’s. He’ll destroy our country, too.’

  ‘Get off me.’ Gavar shook off Rix’s hand. He could hear his voice rising. ‘I’ve nothing to say to you.’

  And thank goodness he knew the route from the bar as well as any corridor at Kyneston, because his eyes were blurred with tears as he stumbled from the room.

  He woke in the morning refreshed in body, if not in spirit, and cursed his efficient Equal metabolism. But when the pantry slave delivered his breakfast, he left the Bloody Mary he’d ordered untouched upon the tray. He wanted to be alert today, for the beginning of parliament and Father’s new regime.

  He took his place in the House of Light at the last possible moment. Leah had filled his thoughts all night, and he had no desire to speak with Bouda. Especially that a new date had been fixed for their wedding. Nor did he wish to see if Meilyr Tresco had dragged himself back from Highwithel – or what state he was in if he had.

  Barely a moment later, the trumpets sounded. Father might be only an interim Chancellor, but he was denying himself none of the trappings of office.

  The session was beginning with that most ancient of ceremonies, the Investiture. The acclamation of debutant peers and heirs usually took place at the first session of each parliamentary year, in May. Father had brought it forward, cloaking his coup in the velvet and ermine of tradition.

  Gavar averted his gaze as the first pair was announced: his eager night-time pupil, Heir Ravenna, and her father Lord Tremanton. They knelt to receive their ermine at Father’s hands, before proceeding to their obscure estate seat.

  The second pair, though, drew his unwilling attention – and that of everyone else in the House. A repulsive snort from directly behind told him that Bouda must have prodded her humongous father awake.

  ‘Of Lindum, in Lincolnshire,’ quavered Hengist, the ancient Elder of the House. ‘The Lady Zelston and Heir Midsummer.’

  The late Chancellor’s younger sister had outlived her entire family. She’d been a schoolgirl when her eldest brother and parents were killed instantly, when the light plane her father was piloting had crashed. And her middle brother, of course, was only a week dead – gunned down by the commoner boy that Gavar himself had fetched out of Millmoor.

  There were those, Gavar knew, who might dream of a cataclysm overtaking their family, erasing the line of succession that stretched before them. But Lady Flora Zelston’s black skin was dull with grief, and her haggard face showed that she was not one of them.

  And then there was Heir Midsummer.

  Lady Flora’s eldest child was a postgraduate at university – in Brighton, rather than Oxford or Cambridge, which surely explained her ridiculous half-shaved hairstyle and the bar piercing her ear. Her chin was high and her expression defiant as she stared around the chamber. She did not look like the heir of a doomed line. She looked like trouble.

  Neither she nor her mother had been present at the hasty trial of the Millmoor boy, now Condemned to Crovan’s custody. What had they been told? Did they believe the official version of events: that he was some sort of lone-wolf terrorist, radicalized in the rioting slavetown and brought to Kyneston by unhappy chance?

  As Midsummer and her mother knelt before the Chancellor’s Chair, the girl turned to stare over her shoulder directly at Gavar. Her dark eyes burned with unmistakable hatred. Did she imagine that she knelt here between a father and a son who had connived at murder for the sake of power?

  Gavar stared back, feeling an angry flush creep up his neck. Let her think what she would. The Zelstons were not among the great families. Her uncle had risen to the Chancellorship through his smarmy ways, and without him, they would return to being provincial nobodies.

  Gratifyingly, Midsummer looked away first, having to bow her head to murmur the formula of fealty. He saw her shoulders shift uneasily as Father draped the ermine mantle around them.

  Two more installations followed, and Gavar’s thoughts had wandered, when the final pair of names pronounced by old Hengist jerked him upright.

  Surely he’d misheard?

  But if he had, then the four hundred Equals seated around him were mistaken, too. The surging noise in the chamber threatened to lift the vaulted roof right off. Striving against the din, Hengist repeated himself.

  But words were superfluous as the great doors swung open and Gavar saw him standing there. He’d acquired a new jacket for the occasion, but his hair was uncombed as ever. From where Gavar sat, the customary mischief and malice shone in those familiar black eyes.

  Father half rose from the Chancellor’s Chair in disbelief as Hengist announced them a third time,

  ‘Lord Rix of Far Carr, and Heir Presumptive Silyen.’ Heir presumptive. As Silyen was not a blood relation of Rix, an act of Skill would be required to confer inheritance.

  What was Rix thinking? Gavar remembered his greeting from the previous night – Just steeling my nerves for tomorrow. No wonder.

  As the pair walked forward to stand before the Chancellor’s Chair, the uproar died away.

  ‘Explain yourself,’ said Father.

  ‘The precedent is well established,’ Rix replied. ‘Your own ancestor Cadmus was adopted from the Parva line to become the Jardine heir.’

  ‘Cadmus was first-degree blood kin, as all adoptions in living memory have been. But Silyen is no kin of yours.’ ‘Indeed. This is an adoption of merit.’

  ‘Merit?’

  Silyen, who had kept poker-faced up till now, permitted himself the hint of a smirk. Gavar wanted to smack it off his smug, sharp face.

  ‘Surely, Lord Chancellor, your youngest son’s recent feats demonstrate exceptional merit? The revival of Euterpe Parva, and the no less astonishing restoration of Kyneston.’

  ‘Why adopt an heir?’ Father asked. ‘You can easily marry. Pass your estate into the keeping of those of your blood.’

  ‘A fusty old bachelor like me?’ Rix gestured to his immaculate self and drew laughter from a few parliamentarians. ‘I think not.’

  Behind him, Gavar heard the heel of one of Bouda’s stilettos grind against the wooden floor. Rix was godfather to both Bouda and Bodina. Perhaps she had imagined that Far Carr would pass to them one day.

  ‘I need only to ensure that my estate has a deserving inheritant,’ Rix continued. ‘Now that your son is past his eighteenth birthday, I can think of no finer candidate.’

  Far Carr was a dreary place: a hundred mostly empty square kilometres of Suffolk – forest, reed beds, and a scrabbly stretch of coast. Far Hall was a tumbledown medieval pile from the time of the kings. Silyen would be welcome to it – if he could get it, because now Father had turned his attention to him.

  ‘Is being a member of the Founding Family not enough, that you push yourself like a cuckoo into another’s nest?’ Silyen glanced up at the golden shadows that flickered ceaselessly across the glass walls of the House of Light, then back down to their father.

  ‘My lord, you know better than anyone that it’s knowledge I crave, not status. How astonishi
ng it will be for me to sit in this hallowed House. How could I refuse Lord Rix’s generous offer?’

  His expression was rapt, almost childlike, and for the briefest of moments Gavar was thrown back to a time when Silyen was a tangle-headed toddler stumbling around the garden, his Skill wreaking innocent havoc. As the eldest, Gavar had kept a watchful eye.

  But these days there was nothing innocent about his little brother’s talent for mayhem. Silyen had instigated Zelston’s abolition Proposal. And look how that turned out: overwhelming defeat, Zelston dead, and Father back in the Chancellor’s Chair.

  Gavar froze where he sat.

  If Father had anyone to thank for his recapture of the Chair, it was Silyen.

  That had to be a coincidence.

  Surely.

  Of course it was. Father had been as surprised as Gavar when Silyen told them all those months ago how he’d manoeuvred Zelston into issuing the Proposal. Father was just as surprised now, by Sil’s appearance as the heir presumptive of Far Carr.

  Wasn’t he?

  Gavar narrowed his eyes. What if the scene now unfolding was merely the latest in an elaborate piece of playacting? Could Silyen and Father have been conspiring all this time to return Lord Jardine to power? Which would make this latest development Silyen’s reward.

  Or was there even more to it than that? Was this Lord Jardine manoeuvring his brilliant youngest son into parliament? Positioning him for future preferment – even, perhaps, succession to the Chair?

  So Gavar wasn’t surprised when Father soon announced himself satisfied. The adoption would proceed.

  As Father took up an officiant’s position between Sil and Rix, Gavar snorted. Bouda had made him attend several wedding rehearsals, which was what this ceremony resembled. Until Silyen pulled out a knife.

  Sil ran a finger along the edge of the blade. It gleamed gold beneath his touch and looked sharp enough to kill.

  Gavar watched his little brother hold out his right hand, palm splayed. Placing the point of the knife at the tip of his thumb, Silyen jabbed it deep into the soft fingerpad.