Tarnished City

by Vic James

  Abi remembered the Millmoor brute who had come to take Luke away: his bull neck and bristling hair. In the worktown he had beaten Luke so hard his ribs broke, Renie had told her. Jon said he worked for Bouda Matravers now. Abi hadn’t forgotten either his face or his name. It had been written on a strip across his chest: Kessler.

  Was that what happened when the powerless were given power?

  But no. Kessler aside, she wasn’t going to start blaming commoners who turned on their own kind. It was the Equals that were responsible. In the twenty-first century, they perpetuated a system created centuries earlier – when a man might think a decade’s service to his lord a fair exchange for food and a roof over his head. The slavedays should have been swept away long ago.

  So how to make people understand that it didn’t have to be this way? How to show them that it was possible to stand up to the Equals? Millmoor’s uprising had been a start. So had the burning of the Bore. Dina’s planned shutdown of Riverhead was taking shape. The North was aflame with anger.

  But London was different. The scruffiness of East London notwithstanding, this city was rich. Money the Equal families made from their factories in the slavetowns poured into this place. Tourists from around the world came to gawp at London’s history and culture, and buy its slave-made luxury goods. Abi had seen them in their thousands on the day she’d gone to the Queen’s Chapel.

  This city maintained the facade that Britain was a civilized modern nation, when really it was barely one step up from feudalism.

  ‘We need to talk about what else we’re doing,’ she said. ‘Yes, we have to rescue those who were captured. That’s what you’re all here for. But the Bore burned in the first place as a protest. A message to our masters that conditions are atrocious and unjust.

  ‘We have to keep sending that message. My brother was Condemned. Meilyr Tresco was punished in the worst way imaginable. Dina Matravers and the Club members took a terrible risk to get out of Millmoor. And for what? Millmoor is practically back to business as usual; the Bore soon will be too. Whatever fire you started in the fields up there, we’ve got to keep it burning.’

  They had all been talking among themselves before she spoke up, but the room fell gradually quiet.

  ‘Go on,’ Wes prompted. ‘I don’t think there’s anyone here who disagrees with you.’

  He looked around the room at his fellow fugitives from the Bore. They all shook their heads.

  Abi drew a breath. There was no going back now. Would they understand where she wanted to lead them?

  ‘There’s no free internet and social media in this country. So there’s no easy way to reach lots of people – except through something so big it can’t be dismissed or ignored. And you can’t ignore what happens in London. The bomb and the business with Heir Ragnarr’s head proved that.’ ‘Makes me think of what you said earlier.’ Renie looked up from where she perched on the sofa arm next to her uncle. Her jaw was remorselessly working some gum. ‘About keeping the fires burning.’

  Abi should have known she’d get it straight away. Renie Delaney had a talent for trouble.

  ‘What’re you saying, child?’ Wesley elbowed his niece as squirmed away. ‘You gittin’ ideas from those old nursery rhymes?’

  And he began to sing softly, ‘London’s burning, London’s burning. Fetch the engine, fetch the engine. Fire, fire! Fire, fire!’

  Renie’s wriggling ceased. She was transfixed by her uncle’s voice.

  ‘Used to sing you that when you was little,’ he told her. ‘My baby sister’s baby girl. You were cute as a button in your frilly pink cot. Your da would lullaby you, too, with soppy old Irish ballads. But he didn’t have no beautiful voice like mine.’ He threw his head back and laughed.

  Watching Renie’s pinched face soften, Abi felt a surge of outrage. This hardbitten kid had been sent to somewhere far worse than an orphanage, after her whole family was rounded up when she was only eight years old. She had brothers, parents and a family that loved her, but they’d been split up. The same slavedays system had stolen away Abi’s own siblings, and packed off her mum and dad to Millmoor.

  No. It was time to stop talking about the ‘slavedays system’ as if it were an abstract thing. Time to stop thinking of it as some historical hangover – a bad idea dreamed up centuries ago, that Britain was regrettably still stuck with.

  It was a group of people, right now, making a choice every single day, to let all this continue.

  The Equals had done this. As directly as if Bouda Matravers had pushed Renie’s brother into the slurry tank, or Thalia Jardine had personally chauffeured Luke up to Crovan’s castle.

  ‘They couldn’t ignore London burning,’ Abi said.

  She felt her words electrify the room. These men had burned the fields they were enslaved in. Would they dare to burn the capital city?

  Because she would, Abi realized.

  When they’d gathered shell-shocked and despairing at Highwithel, in the aftermath of Meilyr’s death, Abi hadn’t been ready to join Dina Matravers’ political crusade.

  But she’d changed. Ragnarr’s head and Whittam Jardine’s bomb, Faiers and Midsummer, Wesley and the Bore had all seen to that.

  ‘No, they couldn’t ignore London burning,’ agreed Wesley.

  ‘They won’t ignore it,’ said Renie, as she flashed Abi a grin. ‘When we do it.’

  ‘Is this the point I should excuse myself?’ said Jon Faiers. ‘Only I do now work with Heir Bouda.’

  He always called her that, Abi noticed, with annoyance. Deferential habits died hard. There was a practical reason, too, she supposed. It wouldn’t do for him to omit the honorific when at Westminster, in the corridors of the House of Light.

  ‘You think she suspects anything?’ Wes asked urgently.

  ‘I think I’d have a hot date with Astrid Halfdan in her soundproof basement room if she did,’ replied Jon. ‘But still, I wonder if it’s worth the risk – to all of you, I mean.’ ‘They can’t find things out that easily, surely,’ Abi said. ‘It’s not like watching a movie of everything that’s ever happened to you, is it? I mean, look at when they were examining my brother, trying to discover what had happened at the Debate Ball. Obviously he’d been Silenced, but they didn’t see further back – they never saw Bodina’s involvement in Millmoor, did they? Even now, no one knows about Dina, apart from Crovan. And he has his own reasons for not telling.’

  ‘I wonder how much longer it will stay like that,’ said a new voice from the doorway. A new voice, but a familiar one.

  The woman liked these kind of entrances, Abi decided, smiling despite herself as Midsummer Zelston came into the room. Renie launched herself at the Equal, and as they hugged Midsummer waved over the girl’s head to Wesley and the other men of the Bore.

  ‘Dina’s plans are coming together,’ the Equal announced. ‘Any day now Riverhead’s going to grind to a halt. The whole place.’

  ‘All of it?’

  Jon sounded impressed. Abi was, too.

  Riverhead was the most northerly English slavetown and it specialized in shipbuilding. Vessels were welded together in the shipyards of Riverhead then floated down the Tyne. These ranged from workaday ferries, to the gleaming cruise ships in which Confederate Americans visited their country’s territories in the Caribbean (which the Union States forbade their own citizens from visiting). The idea that it might simply stop was almost unthinkable.

  ‘From what I overheard back there just now,’ Midsummer said, jerking her head to indicate the hallway, ‘it sounded like you have some plans of your own. Incendiary plans. So what’s the idea? Because we know Jardine’s got this Blood Fair lined up for the first of May, just over a week’s time. So we’ve got until then to rescue our lads in custody. And I reckon a shutdown in Riverhead, trouble here in London, and a breakout of prisoners will set off unrest in the Bore all over again. It could be just what we need to tip things over.’

  ‘All this "Blood Fair” business,’ one of the men said,
speaking up. ‘What is it exactly? I mean, the name ain’t exactly promising, but what do they do? It’s execution, right? Jardine’s bringing back the death penalty. Like hanging?’

  ‘There’s not much blood at a hanging,’ said Jon Faiers grimly.

  ‘It’s state-sponsored torture in the name of public entertainment, is what it is,’ said Midsummer, a ferocious, disgusted look on her face. ‘The sort of thing that’s been outlawed by international statute across half the globe.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ the man said. ‘But what do they actually do?’

  Faiers heaved a sigh, as if reluctant to talk about it. Abi soon realized why.

  ‘There’s a painting by Hogarth,’ he said. ‘It’s been in the parliamentary vaults for decades, but at Jardine’s suggestion Heir Bouda has put it up on the wall of what she’s now calling the Office of Public Safety. It depicts the Southwark Blood Fair of 1732. Midsummer, maybe your phone can show us?’

  The Equal pulled out her device – a Union American smartphone. All the Equals used them, but no one else in Britain was permitted them, even though the handsets were made here. Midsummer found an image via the unrestricted internet that only Equals could access, and passed her phone around. The looks of horror and revulsion on the faces of the men as they glanced at it set Abi’s gut churning with apprehension. How bad could it be? She’d wanted to be a doctor; she wasn’t squeamish about injury. And yet a doctor’s first vow was to do no harm, and the thought of deliberate infliction of harm always sickened her.

  When she saw the phone, she realized it was even worse than she’d imagined.

  At first glance, the painting was merely a riot of innocent-seeming detail. A woman, whose yellow dress had the sort of neckline Gavar Jardine would appreciate, beat an enormous drum. A beggar’s cat walked upright, a hat on its head. Flags and tavern signs flapped and swung, while an acrobat gyrated on a rope. Drunks quarrelled in the street, swords drawn.

  It was so giddily distracting that it took Abi a moment to work out what was happening on an elevated platform in the centre of the canvas. And then she wondered how she could possibly have missed it.

  One naked unfortunate was being swung over the edge by his ankles. The crowd below, holding aloft knives, were sawing at whatever bit of him they could reach. Another stripped figure, trussed to one of the balcony struts, was punctured by all manner of homely implements. These varied from a fish hook, to a toasting fork, to what appeared to be a cook’s ladle jammed straight into one oozing eye socket. A child not much bigger than Libby Jardine was determinedly driving a large splinter of wood into the victim’s shin.

  Abi felt her gorge rise, and looked away. She hastily handed the phone back to Midsummer.

  ‘Is he mad? That’s not a show of strength – it’s inhuman. It’ll turn everyone against them.’

  ‘You might be surprised,’ Faiers said. ‘Don’t romanticize the common people, Abigail. There was no state executioner at the Blood Fairs. The prisoners were simply tied up and the public given free licence. Chancellor Jardine describes the Blood Fairs as celebrations of “people’s justice”.’

  ‘British people would never do that,’ said Wesley, one hand now protectively on Renie’s shoulder.

  ‘People anywhere will do it, given enough reason,’ said Faiers.

  ‘Hardly enough reason with these lads,’ one of the Bore escapees protested. ‘Burning fields and blowing up machinery sheds.’

  ‘They’ll be given a reason,’ Abi said. ‘Your friends will become enemies of the state – a threat to everyone.’

  ‘I’m sure the mood will be helped along, too,’ said Midsummer. ‘I’ve seen at uni how drink and drugs can make normal people act like animals. I know girls who’ve had horrendous things done to them at parties. All you need is one messed-up person to start it off, then that gives everyone else permission. People forget themselves.’

  The room fell quiet. It was such a bleak vision. Did everyone have a monster inside them, just waiting to be unleashed? Look at Dog, and the horror he’d become.

  No, Abi wouldn’t believe it.

  Which was when she realized that the Blood Fairs weren’t about converting everyone into bloodthirsty killers. Only a few would join in – the ones who, as Midsummer had said, were screwed up already. Its power over the rest would be as a threat. A grisly fate that awaited those who stepped out of line.

  How to defeat that?

  ‘Whatever they can do, we can do, too,’ Abi said. ‘If the Equals think they can make everyone afraid, using the spectacle of the Blood Fair – well, we can make everyone brave using the spectacle of defiance.

  ‘Let’s fight their history with our history. When the kings fell, statues were smashed, portraits destroyed, royal buildings defaced and burned. Symbolic targets. We should do the same. No casualties; maximum visibility.

  ‘Jardine’s taken over Aston House because he thinks it represents commoner failure that only Equals can fix. Let’s tell our side of the story. Let’s go for the Queen’s Chapel, where they staged the Blood Fair show trials. The Mayfair stores where they flog things made in slavetowns to the world’s rich tourists. Those mansions along Aston Garden, where all the countries too ashamed to have an open diplomatic relationship with us cozy up discretely to their Equal neighbours. We can set this city on fire, and I don’t just mean with matches.’

  They were all staring at her: Renie and her uncle, Midsummer and Jon, the men of the Bore. Abi saw determination in their eyes.

  ‘Don’t know about you all,’ Renie said, with an emphatic snap of her gum. ‘But I reckon matches are a great place to start.’

  And it turned out Renie was good with them. And with bricks. And with finding her way into and out of buildings, dodging CCTV, and hearing Security coming a full ten seconds before they turned the corner.

  ‘Just as well I got some talents,’ the kid said, as the two of them headed up Mountford Street. You could almost forget it was four in the morning, the light from the gilded, crystal-paned storefronts was so bright. ‘Jackson tried to get me to write a banner once, but even he couldn’t read it, and him being a doctor, that’s saying something.’

  She lapsed into silence. They were both thinking the same thing, Abi knew. Jackson hadn’t been a real doctor at all.

  ‘Yer brother dangled me off a roof one time, on just a bit of rope.’

  ‘You know, that’s really not much better as a conversation starter.’

  Renie snorted. Both their voices were muffled by cotton scarves that covered most of their faces. ‘I remember Jess sayin’, when we was in Scotland, that you’re more like Luke than you know. I don’t think you believed it then. Do you see it now? You’ve changed, Abi.’

  ‘It all changed when I ran from that car driving us to Millmoor,’ Abi said. ‘It’s taken me till now to realize. I thought I’d be able to prove Luke’s innocence, so they’d understand why I ran and everything would be all right. I was so naive. All I did was put myself in a place from which there’s no going back.’

  ‘Gives you a kind of freedom, though, don’t it? When you’ve nothing to lose.’

  It did. Abi felt for the spray can in her pocket. Tonight would be another line crossed. No, not just crossed. She was taking a run-up and would do a flying leap over it.

  A leap into the unknown. Her heart was pumping. ‘There are the others,’ said Renie, nodding to where two more dark-clad figures, their faces similarly covered, appeared at the far end of the street. The girl looked at her watch, a plasticky BB thing from Millmoor. She might have just been checking when her bus was due, Abi thought. Her cool was astounding.

  ‘Three – two – one – and, party time.’

  Renie took off at a sprint. Speed would be of the essence here. These high-end stores would all have alarm systems linked directly to private security firms. They’d allowed themselves ninety seconds.

  Abi ran for her target, one of the street’s few modern stores. This was a boutique of couture supposedly desig
ned by the wife of one of Lord Jardine’s chums, where dresses sold for more than the average annual salary. That was pathetic enough, but the garments were hand-stitched in Exton, the Devon slavetown that was a favourite for the sorts of luxury brands showcased on this street.

  The proprietress of this particular label believed the small hands and sharp eyes of Exton’s children were best for the fine detailing prized by her international clients.

  The expanse of window displaying her wares was perfect for their message. Abi tried to ignore the sounds of smashing glass and the smell of kerosene from all around her, as the other three did their work with bricks and petrol bombs. Her hand moved swiftly.

  CHILD SLAVERY = SO LAST SEASON As the hiss of spray paint died, Abi became aware that there was no more tinkling glass or thudding brick, only the crackle and roar of flame. She turned, but Renie was already at her shoulder.

  ‘Pretty handwriting,’ she said approvingly. ‘The Doc woulda picked you every week. Let’s go.’

  They fled down the street, shopfront goods now luridly illuminated by awnings of flame.

  The streets of Mayfair were a warren, but Renie’s larcenous talents included an enviable sense of direction, and all Abi had to do was sprint in her wake. The two men from the Bore had split off southeast, towards the Queen’s Chapel. Even though she’d suggested it as a target, Abi couldn’t bring herself to be part of its destruction. It was a magnificent building that had survived centuries, but now its final moments were at hand. They would be the perfect distraction for the second task she had assigned herself and Renie.

  Here was Hyde Park Corner. Only at this hour of night was it clear of the traffic that clogged it constantly. Then down along the edge of St James’s Park towards Aston House. Where the former carriage lane met the great circular driveway of the First Family’s new residence, an imposing statue loomed in the darkness. It was entirely unlit, though its position made it prominent in the daylight.