Tarnished City

by Vic James

  ‘I won’t start with your mind, if you try anything again like you did last night,’ Luke said, attempting to sound as tough as he could while holding a pile of folded shirts and underpants. ‘You and your friends need to stay away from downstairs.’

  ‘Or else?’ Blake lisped.

  Luke didn’t dignify that with a response. Call the encounter a draw – though it didn’t seem that Blake would be getting his goons to beat Luke to a pulp anytime soon. It sounded more like he was relying on Crovan to wreck Luke for him. Which wasn’t reassuring.

  ‘I have a question,’ Luke said loudly, as Devin ushered him into Crovan’s presence a short while later. Devin tutted audibly at his audacity as he withdrew.

  ‘Hmm?’ Crovan was looking out of the window of the high, wide room, his hands clasped behind his back.

  ‘Those below are punished. They’re terrorized, and they live like servants, doing all the work. While those of us above live like house guests at Kyneston – we dress for dinner and drink champagne. But we’re all here because we’ve been Condemned. So why don’t you punish us too?’ Crovan turned. ‘You think I don’t?’

  ‘Not that I’ve noticed.’

  ‘Not that you’ve noticed. Indeed. Which means that either my guests go unpunished – or I mete out their pain privately, away from prying eyes. So, welcome to my private apartments, Luke.’

  Crovan permitted himself a smile. A thin one, as if sketched lightly by a portraitist uncertain whether the expression belonged on that face. His words sent a chill through Luke.

  He looked around, but there was nothing out of the ordinary here. An intricately stuccoed ceiling. An immense leaded window overlooking the loch. Old and expensive-looking furniture. The door Luke had come in, and then another on the far side.

  ‘You know that I believe in a natural order, Luke. Well, I also believe in a natural justice. To my guests, I give back their crime in kind.’

  ‘What does that even mean?’

  ‘Allow me to show you.’

  And before Luke could say that no, he’d do perfectly well without being shown, thank you, Crovan pulled a rope pinned to the wall. Out in the corridor, a bell rang. And moments later, Devin stepped back into the room.

  ‘No,’ Luke said, apprehension rising. ‘No, Devin, you’re not needed.’

  ‘Master?’ Devin looked between them, confused.

  Crovan circled the man. He stopped behind him and put a hand on his shoulder, like a proud headmaster presenting his top pupil.

  ‘Let me tell you Devin’s story. Devin needs to be needed. He was the indispensable assistant to an elderly lord. Catered to the fellow’s every whim: bathed him, dressed him. Was like a son to him. But as this old gentleman approached the end of his life, he had one last, all-consuming wish: to see again his two children, from whom he’d been estranged for many years. So Devin promised to find them.’

  ‘My lord?’ Devin was looking uneasy.

  ‘After a few months of searching, Devin reported that he’d located them. But they were wary, he said. Doubtful of their father’s love. Perhaps if he could prove it to them in some way. A gift, maybe?

  ‘The gift Devin suggested was an expensive one. But no matter. The love of a child is priceless. Over the months that followed, there were more gifts. Letters. Promises of visits. The old lord was anxious, because he knew his health was failing. But he had every confidence in Devin, his surrogate son.’

  Crovan patted Devin’s shoulder. Let his hand rest there. Gripped powerfully with a suddenness that made the man cry out in surprise.

  ‘You’ve made your point,’ Luke said. ‘You can stop now. I can imagine how this ends.’

  ‘It ends like this,’ said Crovan.

  Devin’s scream tore at Luke’s ears.

  He couldn’t see what had happened, at first. But then Devin’s hands came round to clutch the front of his black dinner jacket and the blood became visible, running freely over them.

  Another scream. Against Devin’s white dress shirt, blood welled from a deep wound that had appeared from nowhere in the middle of his chest. The man howled.

  ‘Master,’ he begged. ‘What? Please stop.’

  ‘You see Devin was jealous. And Devin was greedy. He’d not done a thing to locate his lord’s children, and he’d spent all the money. Frittered it away on gambling and cocaine. The occasional rent boy. His master was bound to find out eventually. And when he did, Devin turned on him. Most of us Equals could have withstood such an assault – our Skill would throw off any assailant. But this poor fellow was so old. So ill and weak. It still took Devin twenty-three stabs of the knife to finish him off.’

  Devin screeched. Another wound sheared along his collarbone, gushing crimson.

  ‘Now he imagines that he is my most trusted servant. My right-hand man. He opens doors for me, pulls out my seat when I sit for supper and when I rise. Every time I do this he cannot believe it.’

  Crovan lifted Devin’s chin and made the whimpering, sobbing man look him in the eye.

  ‘I only keep you near me to make this so much sweeter. And then . . .’

  Crovan turned to Luke with the air of a conjurer presenting his final, most spectacular trick.

  ‘All gone.’

  Devin groaned and collapsed to the floor. He wobbled, unsteady, on his knees. Hands fluttered to touch himself all over.

  The lord of Eilean Dochais knelt down beside his servant, all solicitude.

  ‘How are you, Devin? Have a seat. You broke a glass and managed to cut yourself quite badly – just look at the mess you’re in. But I’ve fixed you now.’

  Shaking, Devin allowed himself to be helped to an armchair. He looked down at his bloodstained shirt, face pale with shock. He stammered out copious thanks to Crovan, and his hand trembled as he drank down a shot of whisky the Equal passed to him.

  Luke was pretty sure he was trembling himself. He’d not seen anything more horrifying in his entire life.

  ‘You do that – to all of us?’

  Was this to be his fate? A brutal cycle of infliction and forgetting. Luke remembered the mess that had been Zelston, spattered across the ballroom floor. The tide of blood. Horrifying – but quick.

  For Luke, Crovan would wound, but not kill.

  It would not be quick.

  ‘Well, in your case,’ Crovan said, his eyes unreadable as ever behind his gleaming spectacles, ‘I will be making an exception. You see, for you, I have special instructions.’

  9

  Bouda

  At this rate, the only opportunity Bouda would have to speak to Gavar about the slavetown purge would be on their honeymoon. Perhaps she could make creative use of some silk scarves, then when he wasn’t in a position to escape, get out her ministerial dispatch box and take him the paperwork.

  For now, she was well served in her advisers. One was Bouda’s own appointment: the former Millmoor Overseer. She had been the first to suggest using special measures on the prisoner Walcott and hadn’t shrunk from giving the order to fire during the slavetown’s riot. The other was the Security man Kessler, whose recruitment had been Gavar’s sole contribution to the task his father had given them.

  She’d initially thought Kessler a mindless brute. But quickly discovered he was that most useful of creatures: a mindful brute. He’d asked if he needed to relinquish his baton and stun gun now that he was no longer serving Security. Bouda had told him that on the contrary, his new position might merit an expansion of his arsenal.

  Kessler had grinned at that. He might be Gavar’s recruit, but Bouda had a feeling that he’d scented where true authority lay.

  ‘I was aware of this underground railroad between Millmoor and Riverhead,’ the Overseer was saying, her finger drawing a line between the two slavetowns on the wall-mounted map of Great Britain. ‘It smuggles technology and information and facilitates the illicit movement of people. But it was never clear from which of the two places it was being masterminded.

  ‘After the re
velation about the Tresco heir’s activities in Millmoor, it was tempting to lay this at his door too. But I now have reason to believe that the railroad operates from Riverhead. And here’s a surprise – the ringleader may be a woman.’

  Bouda wasn’t surprised. She knew all too well how easily women were overlooked and assumed to be of less consequence. Yet women were capable of feats of Skill as powerful as any man. Anyone who doubted that – and there were many, still – need only look at what Euterpe Parva had done at the Debate Ball.

  So why not a woman leading the sedition in Riverhead? Bouda could almost picture her: older, with authority. Lean and hardbitten by life, but charismatic. Able to stir up the law-abiding slaves with rabble-rousing talk. Revelling in her secret network. Imagining she was playing the Equals at their own game.

  Not for much longer.

  There was a rap on the door behind them. Her secretary put his head round it and had barely got out the word ‘Speaker’ before the door banged open. Speaker Dawson, the woman who led the commoner Observers of Parliament, barged past him into Bouda’s office.

  Correction: who had led the OPs, before Lord Jardine had suspended them. Four hundred years of history, established by Cadmus Parva-Jardine himself, swept away in a single emergency decree.

  A second figure slipped in after Dawson. The Speaker’s son, Jon Faiers.

  Bouda still remembered the audacious way he had spoken to her after the Second Debate, that windswept night on the cliffs at Grendelsham. How he’d professed to admire the Equals and their rule. Bouda had at first thought it a simple – and grossly inappropriate – come-on. Had she not been shaken by her encounter with Lord Jardine, she would have dismissed him instantly.

  She should dismiss him now. If his mother had no right to be in here, he had even less.

  Faiers caught her looking. Bouda frowned and turned her attention to his mother.

  ‘. . . been nearly two weeks,’ Dawson was saying. ‘Lord Jardine was explicit. “Until cleared of disloyalty,” he said. Well, we are ready and waiting to be examined – and cleared. There’s no disloyalty among the OPs.’

  ‘We’ll be the judges of that,’ Bouda said. ‘And if what you say is true, then there’s hardly any urgency to investigate, is there? As you can see, we have before us a more immediate task. Rooting out those whose disloyalty is blatant. Twenty slavetowns. Twenty investigations.’

  ‘We could assist with that,’ Dawson said. ‘Your enquiries will progress more easily with our co-operation.’

  ‘Are you suggesting that we need your help?’ Bouda asked, narrowing her eyes. ‘That sounds as though you are questioning our competence. Which sounds an awful lot like disloyalty.’

  At Bouda’s side, the Overseer scoffed. Dawson screwed up her face as she tried to think of a response that wouldn’t dig her deeper.

  ‘Leave us, Speaker Dawson,’ Bouda said, exasperated by the woman’s presence. ‘Or should that simply be “Dawson”, as you have forfeited your right to speak for anyone at all. Don’t bother us again unless you have something concrete to offer. Names. Information. And given your current status as a person under suspicion, it’s best you don’t come yourself. Send someone else. Him, maybe.’

  Bouda indicated Faiers then immediately turned back to the map. She’d intended it to be a gesture of dismissal, but had felt herself flush as the words left her mouth. What had possessed her to say such a thing?

  Behind her, she heard a low ‘Goodbye, Heir Bouda’ that could only have come from the commoner. His mother was out of the door with no words at all.

  Bouda set her shoulders back. The woman was an irritation and her son was an irrelevance. That was all there was to it.

  She sleeked her ponytail around her neck and studied the map.

  ‘There are two other sources besides the line my team is pursuing,’ the Overseer continued, as if the interruption had never happened. ‘The Highwithel heir must have known this woman. And there’s the boy that killed the Chancellor. The one in Lord Crovan’s custody. Given that the railroad ran between Riverhead and Millmoor, he may have met her.’

  The Highwithel heir.

  Meilyr had been at the opening of parliament. His attendance had shocked Bouda to the core. The effrontery of it, of course. But also the look of the man. With his gaunt face and walking cane, Meilyr was a shadow of the carefree boy who just a couple of years ago had been a welcome visitor at the Matravers estate.

  The change in Meilyr had begun when his mother had brought him on to the Justice Council. The Trescos were commoner sympathizers from time immemorial, of course. But as the council debated labour and living conditions, and tackled unrest, Meilyr’s criticisms had become sharper, his arguments more strident.

  Then he had disappeared.

  Should Bouda have guessed that he had somehow become mixed up with commoners? Could she have done more to protect her little sister from the inevitable heartbreak?

  And what of Meilyr’s absurd attempt to speak up for the boy who had shot Zelston? He had as good as claimed responsibility for the act himself. What had been done to him was horrifying – Bouda remembered the golden mist, and Meilyr’s anguished howl – but his own actions had made it necessary.

  Well, Crovan’s interrogations of the commoner boy might confirm if Meilyr had indeed been involved – not just in the Millmoor debacle, but in Zelston’s death too. They could also clarify Whittam’s belief that he had been the intended target.

  And now there was a further question for Crovan to probe: whether the Condemned boy knew the identity of this Riverhead leader. Bouda dictated a memo to Eilean Dochais to that effect, then dismissed her aides. She needed a few minutes to herself to think.

  DiDi had gone with Meilyr and his mother, when they fled from Kyneston back to Highwithel. Bouda hadn’t heard from or seen her sister since.

  Perhaps DiDi was angry with her for being so closely allied to Whittam Jardine, who had authorized Meilyr’s terrible punishment.

  Bouda pushed down the hurt she felt at that idea. DiDi would see, eventually. Everyone would.

  Whittam wanted only to make their country strong again. To maintain Britain’s influence in a world whose axis of power was balanced precariously between the Skilled and unSkilled nations. Between the Skilless Triad of France, Russia and the Union States, and the Skilled Three of Japan, Britain and the Confederacy.

  Bouda thought it absurd that there was even a semblance of balance. In any conflict, the unSkilled nations would surely be unable to resist the Skilled, despite their powerful military forces. But international disputes these days were settled in the boardroom, not on the battlefield. And there, the unskilled Triad constantly sought to undermine Skilled power. They invoked so-called ‘human rights’ – such as moaning about the slavedays – in an attempt to constrain the way the Three could use Skill in governance and the economy.

  The Triad wouldn’t get the upper hand. Not when the allegiance of China was unknown. That vast country still boasted Skill, but its practitioners had withdrawn from everyday life, living monastically on the high Himalayan plateau. In day-to-day affairs, China conducted itself as if Skilless. And so both blocs sought to bind the powerful nation to a closer alliance.

  In these uncertain times, Britain needed Lord Jardine, and should be thankful to have him.

  She would update Whittam on her progress, she decided, setting off to pay her soon-to-be father-in-law a visit. They needed to discuss some other irritants, as well, such as whether Zelston’s seat on the Justice Council would pass to Lady Flora and Heir Midsummer. Bouda sincerely hoped not. Midsummer was unbearable: as zealous as the Trescos, and crassly entangled with a commoner woman to boot. Her mother had been the third in line. Neither of them had been meant to get anywhere near the House of Light. As was obvious by how grossly unsuited they were.

  Bouda’s route took her through tapestry-hung corridors to an immense winding staircase. Lord Jardine had taken over the Chancellor’s suite at the top of New Westmins
ter Tower. Its principal chamber was oak-panelled on three sides; the other side was entirely glass with views over the House of Light.

  During Zelston’s incumbency, Bouda had visited it only for the annual Chancellor’s drinks party. In between working the room with small talk, she had studied the portraits that lined the walls: the likeness of every man (they were all men) who had ever held that great office of state, from Cadmus onward.

  Every fourth portrait, or thereabouts, was of a Jardine. Bouda knew all the names, and the family stories and scandals that explained a gap. And now that Whittam was Chancellor once more, the suite was again a locus of Jardine power. The rooms were practically an annexe of Kyneston. You felt as if you might open one more door and find Lady Thalia sewing in the Great Solar, or Silyen up to no good in the library.

  Except these days, you might find Silyen right here in Westminster, Bouda mused, as she stepped into the brass cage lift to the top of the tower, Skill-crafted to admit only Equals.

  She still couldn’t understand why her godfather Lord Rix had installed Silyen as his heir.

  She would have quizzed Rixy about it, but that would be in poor taste, given the gossip circulating about her and Dina’s expectations of Far Carr. DiDi wasn’t the sort of stuff an heir was made of, but Bouda had expected to inherit and eventually pass the estate to one of her children. The eldest would have Kyneston, the second would take Appledurham, and a third child at Far Carr would have created a dynasty to last generations.

  Added to the loss of Far Carr was the sheer exasperation of having Silyen in parliament. Bouda liked to deal with known quantities. For years now she had observed people’s alliances and weaknesses, desires and vulnerabilities, filing them away in her head for the day they would become useful. The day she took aim at the Chancellorship.

  She didn’t have a clue what was going on in Silyen’s head.

  And neither did his father, she thought, as the lift chimed for its destination. It was a novel and unwelcome experience for both of them.