Tarnished City

by Vic James

  ‘You know you can’t go through,’ she said.

  ‘Enough of this.’ Crovan’s voice was cold. ‘Sling the body out and be done with it.’

  Luke could barely see the outline of the Last Door through his tears. He and Coira shifted Jackson’s body till his boot heels rested against the lintel. Coira came to kneel next to him, setting both her hands to one of the Doc’s shoulders. Luke followed her example, trying not to look at the ragged bone and pulpy mass above Jackson’s eyebrows where his skull had been.

  On her count of three, they pushed. Jackson’s legs were across.

  Angel had crouched, her face in her hands, unable to watch. Which left Abi to lift the Doc’s feet as Luke gripped his hands. Luke looked at his sister as they lifted the body of his friend. It was impossible that the space between them was death itself.

  Abi was checking him over frantically.

  ‘Are you okay?’ she whispered.

  ‘Yes,’ Luke said. ‘This place is . . . But, yes. Daisy?’

  ‘At Kyneston with Gavar,’ Abi said. She paused. ‘Safe.’ It didn’t sound like she thought so. ‘And Mum and Dad are at Millmoor. They’re fine.’

  There was no way she could know that, Luke thought unhappily.

  ‘Luke – no!’

  A hand grabbed the back of his shirt so suddenly Luke almost dropped Jackson.

  ‘You can’t go through,’ Coira said fiercely. ‘Look.’

  Luke’s hands were close – so close – to the threshold. He trembled.

  ‘It’s true – the doorway actually kills?’ said Abi, shocked, pale beneath her freckles.

  Luke nodded. ‘I’ve seen it. I’ll put down his shoulders and you’ll have to pull the rest of him to your side.’

  ‘I’ll take him,’ Angel said, straightening. And as Luke and Abi laid Jackson down, the blonde Equal pulled him to her and gathered the body gently into her arms. She did it with surprising ease. That would be the Equal’s unnatural strength. Angel could have broken Devin’s neck with a single blow. Grief made his thoughts ugly, and he wished she had.

  ‘We will speak of this to no one.’ Crovan had come to the doorway to address the two outside. ‘Meilyr’s death was unfortunate, but he brought it on himself. You are trespassers here. Furthermore, Miss Hadley is a fugitive while you, Bodina, are believed by everyone to be a spendthrift good-time girl. I presume that no one else is privy to your involvement in Meilyr’s unfortunate politics, and that you would like it to stay that way.

  ‘So you will leave as you came. Invent a story. I’m sure everyone will be saddened but not greatly surprised to hear that Meilyr Tresco took his own life. I don’t think he ever recovered from the loss of his Skill, do you? And of course, no Skill means no self-protective reflex. Meilyr will be the first Equal in history to have committed suicide. What a distinction.’

  ‘How dare you,’ Angel blazed. She stood, cradling the Doc’s body. Luke felt the crackle of static that he now knew presaged Skill. ‘I’ll kill you for what’s happened here.’

  ‘I highly doubt it, Bodina. But do feel free to keep trying.’ Crovan slammed the door in both their faces, too quickly for Luke to take a final look at his sister.

  ‘She will kill you,’ Luke said. ‘And I’ll help her.’

  Crovan assumed an air of long sufferance.

  ‘Clearly the good manners practised in my home haven’t rubbed off on you yet, Hadley. Don’t make promises you can’t keep. Now get cleaned up before dinner. I won’t have you at table looking like that. Devin, come with me.’

  Then Crovan was gone, as if he’d just answered the door to nothing more consequential than a parcel delivery.

  Luke swayed where he stood. His mind churned. Abi. Jackson. Angel.

  When Coira came and wrapped her arms around him, laying her head against his chest, he said nothing. But neither did he push her away. After a few moments, she gave his ribs a squeeze before stepping back.

  ‘You heard what he said. Go get clean. I’ll have this place mopped.’

  The crowd of guests along the staircase had broken up. Devin must have chased them off.

  Devin. As he trudged to his room and there stripped off his gore-grimed clothes, Luke tried to focus. For Devin to kill to defend Crovan, given what his master did to him, was unimaginable.

  But Devin didn’t know what Crovan did to him, of course. Their master made him forget each time. He’d left Luke with that memory, though. As he stood under the shower, Luke recalled the entire encounter, including Crovan’s last words: ‘For you, I have special instructions.’

  If C rovan could take Devin’s memory of the awful assault he had perpetrated on him, then what had he torn from Luke?

  And would he steal the memory of what had just happened?

  Luke leapt out from beneath the steaming spray. The water swirling down the drain had been pinked with Jackson’s blood, but now ran clean. He towelled himself dry and dressed quickly. Checked his watch. Still twenty minutes until dinnertime. Everything that had just unfolded had taken barely quarter of an hour.

  He hurried down to the library, retrieved the battered heraldry book that he had concealed, and ran with it back to his room. He didn’t have long enough to record everything that had just happened, but scribbled down the most important things.

  Jackson and Angel came to rescue me. Abi with them. (How?) J said Lord ‘Rix’(?) made me kill Zelston. Devin shot the Doc – defending Crovan. Coira & I put Doc through Last Door. Crovan told A+A to say it was suicide.

  He thought a moment, then tore out a page.

  WRITE IN THIS EVERY DAY, he wrote in block capitals. THIS IS ALL REAL. TRUST WHAT’S IN HERE, NOT WHAT YOU REMEMBER.

  He folded the sheet in half, and tucked it over the top of the cover so it would be the first thing he saw. Then he slid the book under his pillow, where he couldn’t miss it.

  He ran down the stairs to dinner. Devin was waiting, fob watch in hand. He frowned as Luke approached.

  ‘Cutting it fine, Hadley.’

  The man tutted. Luke stared at him. Barely half an hour earlier he had blown out the brains of the man Luke had most in the world, and now he was reproving his timekeeping as if nothing had happened.

  As if he couldn’t remember something had happened. Crovan had got to him already.

  Luke thought of the book now safe beneath his pillow, and shivered.

  13

  Gavar

  Families, Gavar thought with some exasperation, were more trouble than they were worth. If his wife-to-be’s sister’s ex had to jump off the cliffs of Highwithel, he could at least have waited till after the wedding.

  As it was, no one had heard from or seen Dina since the news of Meilyr Tresco’s death had broken a few days earlier. Bouda was half hysterical that her sister was going to skip the wedding altogether, while Father was grouchy that people might attempt to pin the death on him. Meilyr had been popular, despite his wacky politics, and the note from Armeria Tresco – she had sent a copy to each member of the Justice Council – was explicit that her son had been suffering a deep depression since the loss of his Skill.

  Mother, of course, was carrying on as if nothing had happened.

  ‘You look lovely,’ she said, pinning the pink rose buttonhole to Gavar’s lapel. ‘My handsome boy, my first born, all grown up and getting married.’

  While he was indisputably handsome, Gavar highly doubted he looked lovely. He probably resembled a man going to his own execution – which in a way, he was.

  The wedding of the century was finally happening, and half of Equal society was there to celebrate it. The other half was either too arriviste (Mother’s exclusion criterion) or of the wrong political persuasion (Father’s criterion) to be invited.

  Mother kissed him on each cheek, dry little kisses that entailed contact between the minimum number of skin cells to constitute an actual expression of affection. Then she gathered her skirts and hurried from the room intent on some further nuptial errand. Checking pl
ace cards, perhaps. Or that the correctly shaped wine glasses were matched to each vintage served at the reception.

  Kyneston had filled up again: guests, cars, slaves. There’d been a time when Gavar had relished these occasions. He’d strut around at the Debate Ball every year as if he already owned the place. Kyneston’s Heir and, through his teenage years, the Chancellor’s eldest son, his portrait destined one day to join that of his father on the walls at Westminster.

  Here he was, the Chancellor’s son once again. But these days, Gavar could take it or leave it. Even the fringe benefits were no longer as appealing as they had been. A high point had been his nineteenth year, when his conquests had gone into double figures over the course of the Third Debate weekend. Dozens of well-bred women who had tried and failed to get their hooks into him would be sitting there witnessing his union with Bouda.

  Some spectres would mercifully be absent from the feast. Crovan had sent a polite note of regret – he didn’t do social events. Which worked for Father, who was doing some adroit back-pedalling. Yes, he had sanctioned Meilyr’s punishment, ran Lord Whittam’s line. But Crovan had carried it out. The creepy Scottish lord, never top of anyone’s guest list, was for the time being firmly persona non grata. And Father, like the cunning old fox he was, had managed to distance himself – but not so much that people would forget he was allied to a man with the terrible power to strip Skill.

  It was all frankly depressing. Gavar pulled out a packet of Sobranies and lit up. Bouda didn’t approve of his occasional ciggie habit. Hopefully she’d smell the smoke on him when she joined him at the altar.

  Would Dina show up? She was supposed to be her sister’s bridesmaid, but Gavar hadn’t spotted her yet and there were now just a couple of hours until the ceremony. Gavar hadn’t been permitted to see Bouda all morning – which was fine by him – and he could only imagine she was having paroxysms at the thought that her sister might miss her big day. She’d been noticeably less distressed at the death of the man her sister had loved.

  As for Gavar’s siblings, well, Jenner was predictably doing his bit: issuing directions to everyone from caterers to florists. He’d even given the wedding photographer a tour of the grounds, to pick out the most scenic spots in which the happy couple could pose. (Bouda had specified that Kyneston was to be visible in the background of all the formal portraits.) Jenner was trying to be helpful, but plainly didn’t realize that all the menial activity only made him seem more like the commoner he practically was.

  Silyen’s name had a question mark next to it on Bouda’s reply sheet. Mother had received a short note last week, penned in Sil’s borderline illegible hand, stating that he was with Aunt Euterpe at Orpen.

  And Aunty Terpy herself? Who knew whether the Woman in Black would show?

  ‘I know she’s your aunt,’ Bouda had said, frowning down at her seating plan, ‘but she’s a bit of a conversation killer, isn’t she, and I can’t think who I’d put next to her.’

  Gavar gazed out the window of his childhood bedroom, across the wide vista of Kyneston’s front lawns. It was now dominated by a gargantuan open-sided marquee made from cloth of gold. At each end of the parterre were linen-draped tables, ready to serve up the finest that Kyneston’s wine cellars had to offer. Someone had even festooned the statues with swags of gold silk and chaplets of roses.

  Sometimes Gavar wondered if his future wife was not a cold marble statue herself, somehow animated by Skill.

  She and Father got along well enough, though. Bouda was an eager acolyte, ready to force through any of Father’s legislation with the backing of her cronies. More than once Gavar had run into her on the staircase leading to the Chancellor’s Tower suite in New Westminster. She was probably measuring up the place for curtains and picking out a colour scheme for when she took office herself.

  Her appetite for power was unassuageable. When not plotting with Father, she was shut in what she’d laughably termed the War Room – the hub of the so-called slavetown purge with which they’d been tasked.

  Gavar had precisely zero interest in purging slavetowns. His two trips to Millmoor had been quite sufficient. Millmoor was a ghastly place – needlessly so. Of course slavery wouldn’t be much fun. But why make it quite so degrading? Surely the way to pacify the occupants of these hellholes was simply to make the places that bit more liveable. Then there’d be less dissatisfaction. Then there’d be fewer riots and unrest.

  There you go: Gavar Jardine’s prescription for peace in Britain.

  Except it’d never happen. People like Father and Bouda, and many more besides, regarded the slavetowns as almost punitive. Punishing people for what? The crime of being born unSkilled? UnEqual?

  ‘Daddy!’

  Gavar hastily stubbed his cigarette out on the windowsill and flicked it towards the terrace beyond, before turning to scoop up his daughter.

  Libby was toddling confidently now. And at some speed.

  ‘Dada!’ she squealed, as he lifted her high into the air. ‘Kiss! Tickle!’

  He gladly obliged, only a fraction later remembering to check that the door was closed so his daughter’s happy shrieks couldn’t be heard in the corridor. He needn’t have worried. Daisy had it shut tight and stood there like a diminutive sentry.

  ‘There’s no way Libby wasn’t seeing her daddy on his wedding day,’ the girl said doughtily.

  As at the fateful Third Debate, Father had ordered that Libby be neither seen nor heard during the festivities. Gavar had put up a fight, only for Bouda to grow strident and Mother to insist that he ‘heed his bride’s feelings’. It was news to Gavar that Bouda had any feelings, besides ambition and a patronizing affection for her father and sister, but cornered and outnumbered, he had backed down.

  ‘Pretty,’ Libby said, fumbling the flower from his buttonhole.

  ‘Just like you,’ said Gavar, kissing his daughter’s nose. ‘Daddy’s beautiful, clever little girl.’

  Libby smiled at him, and though her colouring – the copper curls, the blue-green eyes – was all Gavar, details were emerging in her small features that reminded him painfully of Leah.

  He put down his daughter, suddenly afraid he might well up, and turned back to the window to compose himself. Guests were arriving for an aperitif before the ceremony. Gavar spotted his soon-to-be father-in-law, Lord Lytchett Matravers, readily locatable by the distinctive flow pattern of people squeezing around his gargantuan bulk. By his side was Bouda’s godfather, Rix.

  He remembered that conversation with Rix in the Members’ bar at Westminster, the night before the man’s shocking adoption of Silyen. How Rix had confessed that he, too, had a baseborn child – a boy he had not seen, or even known about for years. That son would be about Gavar’s age. How did he feel about his father now?

  Gavar looked down at his daughter. The very idea of being without her made his Skill tingle at his fingertips. Father had made no further mention of the proposed Bill of Succession that would degrade baseborn children. Gavar wondered if he was keeping it in reserve, a threat to hold over him, to ensure Gavar’s compliance.

  Well, Gavar had done everything expected of him, hadn’t he? Including agreeing to walk down the aisle with that harpy Bouda.

  Had Leah still been alive, would he be getting married today?

  In all probability, yes. He was Kyneston’s heir and duty came first, always. That had been instilled in him from when he was the age his daughter was now. Presumably even earlier. Father had presented his newborn heir with a stuffed toy salamander as big as the child himself. It had lain in Gavar’s cot. He remembered its blank, black eyes.

  This was where it led. A loveless marriage. And in time – if he could bring himself to do what was required – another heir.

  He lifted his eyes from Libby, who was absorbed in the flower, to Daisy, to find the girl watching him.

  ‘She’d understand,’ Daisy said. ‘Leah, I mean. I’m sorry, I don’t know if that’s who you were thinking of, but you seemed sad, a
nd — ’

  ‘Thank you.’ Gavar choked the words out, cutting her off. ‘And for bringing Libby. I think the two of you had better go now.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Daisy took Libby’s hand and led the little girl to the door. She went without protest. It was curious, Gavar thought, how the commoner girl – whose appointment as Libby’s childminder had been intended as a discrete but deliberate slight to his child – had been the best thing to happen to his daughter in her short life.

  ‘Say goodbye to Daddy,’ Daisy instructed her small charge. Libby flapped her hand and lisped the words. ‘Don’t worry about us. I’ve got a place in the corner of the kitchens all sorted and Libby will be getting as big a piece of Daddy’s cake as she can manage.’

  ‘Cake,’ Libby agreed, tugging Daisy out of the door, drawn by the magnetism that sugary foods exert on small children.

  ‘I’ll press the flower, too,’ Daisy added, as she disappeared, ‘so she’ll have it when she’s older and will know that she was here, even though the photographs won’t show it.’

  Then they were gone. The only two people in the world who had the power to make Gavar feel at ease with himself: his bastard and a commoner kid who was still a child herself.

  Being heir of Kyneston really wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

  Father caught up with him as Gavar plunged into the throng on the terrace. He was in an uncharacteristically good mood – which was to say, sozzled already.

  ‘Your big day, son. The day you become a man.’

  Personally, Gavar would have set that day some ten years earlier, when on his fifteenth birthday he had convinced a particularly attractive parlourmaid that Heir Gavar deserved one extra-special present.

  ‘Tonight, you show that wife of yours what us Jardines are made of, you hear me? Remember: family honour in all things.’

  Faintly disgusted, Gavar turned his face away – seeing, as he did, something unexpected. Dina Matravers, talking to Jenner. As he watched, the blonde girl held something out to him. Jenner’s face lit up. Strange.