Tarnished City

by Vic James

  Well.

  Luke wanted to hurry after him, to offer encouraging words. Jules had always been insistent that he was only here because Athalie’s family disapproved of her seeing a commoner, and that they had fabricated charges against him. Perhaps they’d had a change of heart. Or perhaps someone had proved his innocence and Astrid was here to notify Crovan. Maybe Athalie was getting married, and Jules was no longer considered a threat to their family’s well-being, so he could be released.

  But in his heart, Luke knew it would be none of these.

  And that it would be nothing good.

  Would the Jardines have done something similar to Abi, if her relationship with Jenner had continued? He wouldn’t put it past them. Jenner would have fought for her, though. Luke worried often about his big sister’s safety, and where she was now, but in Dina and Jenner, she surely had powerful protectors.

  Daisy was under Gavar Jardine’s wing – he hoped. Luke sometimes forgot that it was Gavar who had sprung him out of Millmoor, at Daisy’s request. It sat oddly with his recollections of the boorish, swaggering heir – other than the moment Luke had paused from his woodcutting to watch the three of them out walking, Gavar holding Libby, and Daisy chattering animatedly at their side.

  Libby’s mother had tried to flee through Kyneston’s gate with her child, but the baby had been unable to open it. And Jenner, too, had needed Silyen to open the gate the night Luke had been dumped outside the estate wall.

  Both had Jardine blood in their veins, yet were incapable of opening the gate.

  What was he not understanding?

  His brain was so clouded. He remembered the clarity he’d experienced outside the castle, yet it was impossible to think clearly in here. Luke retrieved the history book and went to shower and dress for dinner. One more read through wouldn’t hurt.

  He knocked on Julian’s door before going down. Jules opened it, wild-eyed and reeking of booze. Plainly the champagne wasn’t the only alcohol he’d got his hands on. He wasn’t in black tie.

  ‘I’m not going,’ said Julian. ‘She lies. It’ll all be lies. They hate me, and that one’s the worst of all.’

  ‘She might not even be at dinner.’

  ‘Of course she will be, Hadley,’ said a voice behind Luke, and he spun, horrified, to see Crovan standing there. ‘She’s here for you, Julian. You’ll be accompanying Astrid to London tomorrow. So scrub up.’

  Maybe his wild imaginings were correct, Luke thought, astonished. Maybe Athalie had been pining for his friend so badly that the family had relented.

  ‘Interesting news for you, too, Hadley,’ Crovan said, before stalking off.

  ‘I have no idea,’ Luke said to Jules’s questioning look. ‘None at all. Go get ready.’

  Astrid Halfdan was dwarfed by Crovan as the two Equals entered the dining room where the rest of them waited. Her dark hair had a glossy, bird’s-wing sheen. Her lipstick was a classy coral. And something about her was absolutely terrifying.

  ‘Julian,’ she said, breaking off her conversation with Crovan. ‘Such a pleasure to see you here. Arailt assures me you’ve been a model prisoner, responding just as we’d hoped.’

  Luke’s stomach flopped. He knew what that meant – how Crovan tormented his guests with their own crimes. He’d never forget the horrifying demonstration in which Devin was slashed and stabbed by nothing but Skill. Not knowing Julian’s supposed crime, Luke couldn’t guess what Crovan did to him.

  The lord of Eilean Dochais pulled out a chair for Astrid, and she sat. She had been placed directly opposite Julian, who blanched.

  ‘Athalie has been making progress, too,’ she continued. ‘My sister never recovered use of her hands, despite the efforts of some of the most Skilled. There were several unsuccessful rounds of neurosurgery, too. Eventually, amputation was recommended, to at least enable her to regain a semblance of function with prosthetics. She’s got the prettiest little robot fingers you could hope to see. They can manipulate almost anything – as you’ll find out.’

  ‘Julian,’ Crovan said, pausing for the servant to set a plate of pheasant terrine in front of him before leaning across the table. ‘You’ve been chosen for a singular honour. Lord Jardine has revived the venerable tradition of the Blood Fair, to deliver justice to enemies of the state. But you know, people sometimes find it hard to get outraged about political crimes. So he’s asked me to provide a few warm-up acts. The kind of thing that makes people’s blood boil. And Athalie put in a special request for you.’

  Crovan leaned back in his seat. Both he and his guest watched Julian.

  Everyone watched Julian.

  Luke felt sick. He didn’t know what a Blood Fair was, but with a name like that it was a sure bet it didn’t involve carousels and candyfloss. And while he still wasn’t sure what Julian was accused of, Luke didn’t need more details on anything that required amputating a girl’s hands.

  ‘I didn’t do a thing to Athalie,’ Julian said, his face gone very pale. ‘Except love her.’

  ‘So you’ve always claimed,’ Astrid Halfdan replied. ‘You loved her so much that you drugged her with veterinary-grade anaesthesia to inhibit her Skill’s protective reflex – a dosage you administered every four hours during the nineteen days you held her captive. You chained her so tightly, in that basement, that the nerve damage to her wrists was irreparable, even by us.

  ‘You loved my little sister so much that during those nineteen days you violated her repeatedly, in every way imaginable, and recorded yourself doing so. The videos show that every time you judged her insufficiently appreciative, you blocked off her airways until she passed out, then carried right on.

  ‘Thanks to our Skill, Athalie’s body has recovered from the less grievous injuries you inflicted: the twelve broken bones, the spinal fracture where you stamped on her, and the internal lacerations. But not her dear little hands. And maybe never, despite her amazing strength and spirit, her mind. If there’s one night a week she sleeps through, we count ourselves lucky.’

  Luke pushed his chair backwards and scrambled to his feet, anything to get away from this person he’d called his friend.

  And weirdly, it was to him that Julian turned his resentful gaze.

  ‘You suddenly believe them too, do you? I told you how things were with me and Athalie. Punting. Parties. It was beautiful – and they ruined everything.’

  ‘Your friend is a fantasist,’ Crovan said. ‘An obsessive, psychopathic fantasist. I did try to tell you when you first arrived, Hadley: this is human nature. Your precious moral superiority is pure delusion.’

  Luke cringed against the wall.

  ‘Just in case an abductor-rapist isn’t enough to get the good people of London worked up to a murderous frenzy, I thought a child molester would do nicely, too. Blake, you’ll also be accompanying us.’ Crovan picked up his knife and fork. ‘Do try the mustard, Astrid. I have it prepared at one of my family’s properties in Dijon.’

  For a few moments, the only sound in the room was the clink of Arailt Crovan and Astrid Halfdan’s silver cutlery against the china plates as they ate.

  ‘What is this?’ Blake said icily, from where he sat on Julian’s other side.

  ‘The Blood Fair?’ Crovan wiped his moustache with a spotless napkin. ‘A primitive but wholly entertaining spectacle of retributive justice. The people get to vent their disgust at criminal behaviour in what you could call a hands-on fashion.’

  ‘Not just hands,’ Astrid added. ‘Anything goes, really, as long as it’s not fatal. Obviously cumulatively, it’ll be fatal, but the idea is for it to take a while.’

  Luke looked at Blake and Julian, and saw his own empty seat beside them. Three of them, all in a row.

  Crovan had promised ‘interesting news’ for him, too. He leaned against the wall, his legs gone boneless with fear.

  ‘Me too?’ he forced out through a throat that had closed to try and keep the words in.

  ‘You?’ Crovan looked up, candlelight glittering
in the lenses of his glasses. Luke was glad of the creepy reflection – glad he didn’t have to see Coira’s eyes looking out at him from the face of this maniac. ‘You stay right here. Silyen and I aren’t done with you yet. No, it’s your sister Abigail who gets top billing at the Blood Fair.’

  ‘No!’ The word exploded out of Luke. Horror. Astonishment. Denial. It was all of these and more.

  ‘It seems you set quite the revolutionary example. She stirred up trouble in Riverhead and got Dina Matravers killed. Calls herself the Angel of the North – a poetic touch. Once the mob’s through with Julian and Blake, I’m sure they’ll be ready for Jardine’s piece de resistance of a fallen angel.’

  It took a moment to sort that out. Dina, dead. Abi supposedly stirring up Riverhead and calling herself the Angel of the North. And Jardine going to punish her for it?

  ‘You know that’s just not true.’ Luke was shouting now. ‘Dina is the Angel, not my sister. You must have seen that in my memories.’

  He never received a reply, because Julian seized the moment to lunge across the table at Crovan with a steak knife. It was madness with a second Equal in the room. It was madness anyway, because of the collars. Which was when Luke wondered if Julian didn’t want – or didn’t expect – to kill Crovan. He wanted Crovan to kill him, to spare him what was coming next.

  Jules would be disappointed. He barely made it halfway across the table before Crovan’s Skill, or the collar’s restraining power, flipped him onto his back and slammed him against the mahogany. Astrid leaned forward with her own knife and stabbed it hard through Julian’s palm, transfixing him.

  She surveyed the effect, before taking the knife from the diner to her left and slamming that through the other hand. Julian howled.

  ‘Get used to it,’ Astrid said, before resuming her seat.

  Dinner passed in a haze. Luke didn’t dare try and meet Coira’s gaze as she directed the servants in with the next courses. Julian wept and writhed, a grotesque centrepiece. Blake cut his food into minuscule pieces and ate them, one by one, like a condemned man eking out his last meal. Which was exactly what he was.

  Dinner concluded, Crovan summoned Blake to his side, and the pair of them left with Astrid. The others filed out in silence, unable to look at Julian, who was plainly fastened to the table by more than just two lengths of sharpened silver.

  Luke lingered a moment. The easy thing would be simply to walk out like all the rest. But Julian had been a friend to him in here; Luke had chosen not to see the darkness inside his heart.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘What you did to that girl sounds horrific, but . . .’

  He couldn’t finish the sentence. Was he going to say that he didn’t think Julian deserved what lay in store for him? Because he wasn’t sure that was true.

  He shook his head. Maybe Julian did deserve such a fate, but no society could do it and still call itself civilized. And Luke refused to subscribe to Crovan’s nihilistic view of humanity. Julian’s evil wasn’t a judgement on the entire commoner class, and answering atrocity with atrocity could never be justified.

  Julian’s throat was working, as if he was trying not to cry. Then Luke began to panic that maybe he was choking.

  Then he wondered if the kindest thing was to let him – until Julian released a gob of spit straight into his face. Luke recoiled, wiping his eyes, as Julian began to thrash his head and shout and swear.

  It was all too much. Julian. Abi. Surely his sister couldn’t be destined for the same fate? Luke shook his head, feeling desperate.

  ‘Easy, easy.’ A hand was on his shoulder and Coira was there, turning him to her and folding her arms around him. ‘It’s not all lost. Not yet. You heard – Crovan won’t be here tomorrow. He’s going with her.’ She looked over at Julian. ‘We can’t talk here.’

  Luke lifted his face from her shoulder and followed her gaze. Julian had fallen silent again, his head thudding back onto the table.

  ‘Perhaps I could – a pillow or . . .’

  Coira shook Luke gently by the shoulders, then not so gently took his face between her hands and made him look at her.

  ‘You’ve got to pick your battles, Luke. He’s not your battle. If Crovan and Heir Astrid find him dead in the morning, they might decide to take someone else – like the Angel of the North’s brother. You can’t risk it. Sleep. Tomorrow the castle is ours.’

  Coira leaned in as if she might kiss him, but she simply pressed their foreheads together before spinning away into the kitchen. Luke didn’t know if he was disappointed or relieved. He couldn’t cope with anything more tonight. His legs barely worked to trudge up the stairs to his room, where he fell face down onto the bed.

  In the middle of the night Luke came to, gasping. Dark images churned through his mind, all of them of his sister. Abi, suffering.

  He saw Astrid Halfdan pin her to a table with knives through her hands. He saw Julian, leering, as he stamped down hard on her midriff. He saw a collar flare golden at her throat and the lord of Eilean Dochais bend to clip a leash to it and tug her onto all fours. His sister was whimpering as she crawled on bleeding hands. She had Dog’s broken-backed gait because Julian had shattered her spine. Crovan paraded her through the streets of London and the people jeered and applauded.

  Luke ran to the sink and was violently sick. It was all he could manage not to punch the enamel, furious and powerless. He glanced at the clock on the wall. Three in the morning. It was Thursday now. The Blood Fair would take place on Friday – called as a public holiday. Unless he could stop it, Abi’s fate would be everything his nightmares had shown him, and worse.

  Had she no defenders down there in London? Did Daisy know about any of this? Luke desperately hoped his little sis was blissfully ignorant. And yet, might Daisy be able to beg Gavar to rescue Abi, as she had persuaded him to rescue Luke? It didn’t seem likely that the heir would thwart his father’s plans so publicly. There was Jenner Jardine, but he was Skilless and unable even to open his own estate gate. How could he snatch a girl from the middle of a public killing ground?

  Skilless, and unable to open the Kyneston gate.

  Like Gavar’s baseborn daughter, Libby: also unable to open the Kyneston gate, and also Skilless.

  And yet the Last Door had obeyed Coira.

  Did that – could that – mean what he thought?

  Luke was no expert in Equal genealogy, but he was pretty sure baseborn children weren’t considered Equals. That was what the long-running drama of Libby Jardine was all about: Gavar wanting his daughter recognized, and his parents refusing.

  Yet blood alone wasn’t enough for a Skillful boundary to obey you – as shown by Jenner Jardine. You needed Skill as well.

  Luke reached for the book he’d been reading earlier. Yes. There it was, set out plainly. Only the lord or heir could grant safe passage through the door. For the door to obey her, Coira had to be the castle’s heir – and to be heir, she had to be Equal-born.

  And if she was Equal-born, she would have Skill.

  It hardly seemed possible.

  If she had Skill, she could summon the boat. They could sail over the loch, make their way to the town that supplied the castle. Find the nearest railway station. Get to London. Coira’s Skill might even help rescue Abi.

  The despair he’d felt, as he’d fallen on his bed the previous night, was replaced by a sudden, surging hope.

  He lay down, unable to go back to sleep, drifting fitfully in and out of consciousness until dawn knocked at his window. He dressed mechanically, every minute or so reminding himself of his deduction, as if to embed it too deep for forgetting. He found a pencil and scribbled it down, too, in the history book, because who knew what might happen between now and the time Crovan left.

  As he came down for breakfast, a ghastly sight awaited. Julian and Blake were standing in the hallway unmoving; their eyes were open but seemingly unseeing, plainly bound by Skill.

  The breakfast table was deathly silent, except for Crovan a
nd Astrid Halfdan’s inconsequential talk. The guests all listened, wretchedly, as he urged her to try the salmon, caught in a stream on the Crovan estate and smoked to a recipe unchanged since the days of the mormaer. She told him about the preparations for the fair and the great platform being erected in Gorregan Square. It would be sited right at the heart of things, at the axis of Aston House and the Mall, and the House of Light and Whitehall.

  After breakfast, the whole household gathered in the hallway to watch the two Equals and their prisoners depart. Luke kept his head down, saying nothing, trying not to draw attention to himself.

  Except his silence itself drew attention.

  ‘You’ve been quiet, Hadley,’ Crovan said, and Luke’s veins iced up.

  ‘I was trying to work out how to hide in your suitcase so I can go and rescue my sister,’ he said, as insolently as he could.

  Crovan barked with amusement. ‘No suitcase needed. I keep a townhouse in Belgravia. No, the best thing you can do for your sister, Hadley, is wish her a quick death. Maybe a heart attack as the first blade goes in. Devin, I’ll be back in two days. Astrid my dear, after you. Julian, Blake, follow us.’

  He held the Last Door open for Astrid Halfdan, all courtesy. Blake and Julian stepped robotically after her, their movements no longer theirs to command. Then the lord of Eilean Dochais was gone. As one, the guests swarmed up to the library and watched out of the window as the boat sailed into view, crossed the loch, and the helicopter lifted off.

  There wasn’t a minute to waste. Luke hurtled down the stairs and pelted towards the kitchen – only to run into Coira coming out.

  ‘Steady,’ she said, holding him at arm’s length. ‘Everything becomes that bit more difficult if you’ve got a broken leg.’

  ‘Please,’ he said, leading her into one of the small side rooms and closing the door. ‘You have to listen. I can’t quite believe it, but it has to be true.’

  He unfolded his deduction. And to his astonishment, her first question wasn’t about her Skill.

  ‘So where’s my mother?’ she said sceptically. ‘If she was an Equal, she wouldn’t be someone Crovan could just dispose of. And then why have I led a life like this, collared like a servant?’