Tarnished City

by Vic James

  Luke’s brain raced for an explanation.

  ‘Perhaps he was cruel to her and she left him, but had to leave you behind. Or she was unfaithful, or he thought she was, and they separated and Crovan took it out on you? Who knows. We’ll find out, I promise. But first, please, I have to get out of here. My sister dies tomorrow if I don’t. You have to call the boat over so we can get away. I know you can do it.’

  ‘If I have Skill, then why have I never felt it? You’d think I’d know.’

  This knocked the breath from Luke like a punch. Maybe Coira was like Jenner after all. Maybe she had no Skill, and that was why Crovan had separated from her mother, and why Coira lived collared with the servants. Maybe she’d lived upstairs until her father had finally given up hope that her Skill would appear. Then, disgusted, he had sent her below.

  But there was still the fact of the door.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said desperately. ‘I’ve no idea. But I know that what happened at the door before was real. And Crovan knew it too, I could tell. Please.’

  ‘We have to try,’ she agreed. “I’ve gathered some things for you, money from Devin’s cash box and some normal clothes. Get changed, then we can go.’

  She led him to the pantry, where he found his old trousers laid out alongside a shirt and a chunky, high-necked jumper that would conceal his collar. A fisherman’s satchel contained a roll of bank notes, food and water. Then they crept through the deserted entrance hall.

  Luke and Coira stood in front of the Last Door side by side. He reached for her hand and squeezed it.

  ‘I should probably say something,’ she said. ‘He did, just now, when showing Heir Astrid out – “after you”, he said. That’s permission to leave.’

  She pulled open the door, and Luke saw two things: one was the rain-washed morning of Loch nan Deur, clouds dulling the glinting water.

  But laid over it, Luke saw a different, twilit land, where a breeze ruffled copper grass. As Luke looked up, the silhouette of a great owl passed across the silver disk of the moon. And by its pale light, he saw something he’d not noticed before – on a mountainside, the gleam of a golden tower.

  Luke’s heart felt like it might burst. In that tower was the king. He knew it.

  ‘Go on,’ Coira urged him.

  Luke shook his head to clear it. His sister needed him. He couldn’t afford to step through that door to anywhere but the shore of Crovan’s island.

  He blinked furiously, as if that shining land was a mote he could dislodge from his eye. When he focused again, all he could see was the the rocky shore of Eilean Dochais, beneath a light Highland drizzle that dimpled the loch.

  Coira would think he was hesitating because he was afraid.

  He stepped through and felt the rain soft against his cheek.

  He turned to Coira, behind him, to check.

  ‘You’re still here,’ she said, with one of her rare smiles.

  ‘Yes.’

  She meant that he was still alive. But Luke tried to hide the strange disappointment he felt at being here, and not there, in the king’s twilit realm.

  No. He was where he needed to be. Where Abi needed him to be.

  ‘Your turn – if you’re sure you want to do this.’

  He watched her pale, determined face, and realized the depth of her courage. He knew they were right, that she was this castle’s heir and that the door was hers to bind or loose.

  But if they were wrong. If they were wrong . . .

  Coira stepped through and he seized her and swung her around joyfully.

  ‘You did it! Oh, you did it.’

  And with an extravagant flourish he went down on one knee and kissed her hand, and didn’t even care that he went bright red as he did so.

  ‘Heir Coira.’

  ‘We’re not there yet,’ she said, pulling her fingers gently from his grasp. She was frowning. ‘This is where my Skill wakes up and summons the boat, right? Because I’m still waiting for that to happen.’

  Luke stood up immediately. He had assumed . . .

  He had assumed . . .

  ‘You’re not feeling anything?’

  ‘No. And I haven’t for my whole life. Why would that change now?’ Her hands went to the band at her throat. ‘Maybe it’s this? He controls people with these collars, so perhaps mine controls Skill too? Or maybe I just don’t have any.’

  She held out her hands, as if willing them to flare with power, like something from a movie. But they remained empty. Just her own chapped-raw palms and slender fingers, red-knuckled from all the scrubbing in the kitchens.

  Luke’s throat constricted, as if the collar there was tightening. What was the problem?

  ‘I’m sorry, Luke.’ Coira looked up, and for the first time on that strong, sensible face he saw something like hopelessness. ‘There’s just nothing there. I’m so sorry.’

  Her eyes shone, and as he watched, a single tear welled up and spilled over, running shining down her cheek. She reached up to wipe it away.

  And as she did, the fire came back into her eyes. She took his hand, and pulled.

  ‘We forgot,’ she said. ‘There’s another way.’

  26

  Luke

  She did it like she did everything: boldly. As she went down the steps to the glittering dark water, it was Luke’s turn to panic. Her reasoning was that the loch, like the door, would respond to her simply as a Crovan, rather than needing any Skillful command. But he knew the agonizing price she’d pay if it didn’t.

  So when the water parted beneath her foot, as she left the final step above the water margin, he sagged with relief.

  ‘Wait, I need to stay close.’

  He kept one hand on her back as they entered the water and crossed the loch. The chasm of water was chilling, the trickling walls on either side blocking the sunlight. But Luke’s hand was warm where it rested on Coira’s shoulder and his heart sang with expectation.

  ‘I hope nothing stops us reaching the shore,’ Coira said as the loch bed began to slope upwards again. ‘The boat wouldn’t land with Rhys still on board, remember.’

  But plainly the Crovan land and the Crovan loch would not deny their heir, because first Coira and Luke’s heads emerged above the waterline, then their shoulders, until finally it was at their ankles and they stepped free of the dark water onto the gleaming gravel.

  ‘Phew.’ Coira pushed back her hair. ‘I’m glad that’s over. Though I’ve got the walk back to look forward to.’

  ‘What? Why would you ever go back? We’re free now. You never have to see this place again.’

  ‘It’s not that simple, Luke.’

  The look in her grey eyes didn’t bode well.

  ‘Think about it. I’ve never left this castle. It’s my whole world. I’ve never seen a train, or a . . . shop. Never even been in a village, much less a city, much less London. And I don’t have any Skill to help you save your sister. I’m not the person you need with you for this. I’d get run over or something before we even reached Edinburgh.

  ‘And there are the others. There are people here who need to escape. I have to get them out. And there’s my . . . father, and my mother. I need answers, Luke. Who am I? I need to know.’

  Luke couldn’t believe it. ‘If he’s kept your parentage hidden for seventeen years, why do you think he’d tell you now? And he’ll punish you for helping me and the others to escape. He’ll make you forget that you ever knew a thing about yourself. You’ll be back to being a Condemned servant girl, when really you’re this castle’s heir.’

  ‘Well, it’s good that you’ll be out and free with that knowledge in your head then, isn’t it? You’ll be okay, Luke. You have more allies than you know. I’ve seen how Silyen Jardine looks at you. You’re important to him, though I’ve no idea why.

  ‘You are going to rescue your sister, and you are not going to forget about me. And when things are calmer, if I still haven’t found you, then you must come back for me. But I can’t go with yo
u now.’

  Unexpectedly, quickly – too quickly for Luke to follow – she broke away and darted back into the loch and he’d lost her. He called her name, yelled it with everything in his lungs, but he could see the turbulence in the water as she went deeper, walking away from him.

  He couldn’t believe it. Had he done something wrong? Said something wrong?

  But no, there was no time for that. He had to reach London – and Abi. The supply boat crossed from the opposite side of the loch, and it was serviced by a delivery truck that came down a track to the shore. At the other end of that track would be a shop, a village, and a bigger road.

  The wheel-rutted-track was where he started. His shoulders were hunched with every step he took, as if anticipating – what? A yelled alert to his escape? A bullet from Devin’s rifle? The village proved even worse. Luke held his breath as he passed through. Paranoid, he imagined every house here having a sheet pinned up with photos of all the Condemned, in case any of them escaped. But of course, none ever did.

  The track away from the village soon became a tarmac road – practically a highway in this part of Scotland. At a T-junction, a sign pointed in one direction to the Isle of Skye bridge, so he turned the other way and stuck his thumb out. He struck lucky when two blokes on their way to a stag weekend in Inverness gave him a ride. They’d already opened the beer so the conversation required from him was minimal, which avoided any super-awkward ‘What are you doing up here?’ questions.

  A couple of hours later they dropped him at the railway station, pressed a can of beer on him ‘for the journey’, then pulled away tooting their horn. Luke bolted into the departure hall. Coira had given him enough money for the ticket, but the timetable had no good news. Inverness was the other end of the country to London and it would take nearly nine hours to get there, with a change at Edinburgh. The next train left just before 1 p.m.

  They were the longest nine hours of Luke’s life – worse even than the day he’d spent shut in Kyneston’s cellars after his trial. He’d used the time at Inverness station to buy a baseball cap to hide under, and a visitor guidebook to London. He’d only been in the city twice, once on a school trip and once as a family treat when Mum received a promotion. His memories were of the tourist spots, individual places with no idea how they connected.

  He remembered Astrid mentioning the Blood Fair’s location – in Gorregan Square, where the roads from Aston House and the House of Light met. He traced the map with his fingers, trying to commit the streets to memory. But beyond mastering some basic orientation, Luke had so little information that formulating a plan was beyond him. He’d received the impression that the prisoners were held at the parliamentary complex at Westminster. Breaking them out of there would be a non-starter.

  Gorregan Square was the best bet. If the Blood Fair relied on ordinary people being frenzied enough to murder defenceless prisoners, the mood would be close to anarchy. Who knew at what moment it might all spin out of control and give Luke an opening. That thought wasn’t much, but it was something.

  Once they were past Durham, he pulled the cap down and hunched in his seat. He’d lost sleep due to the nightmares about Abi, and knew he’d likely be awake much of the night. The train conductor nudged him once, to check his ticket again. Then when he next woke, it was dark and he was in London.

  Security stood on the other side of the ticket barriers, rifles tucked into their elbows. Were they waiting for him? But no, he saw them stopping people as they left the platform. It looked like a spot check of some kind.

  ‘Curfew for all under-eighteens,’ he heard one say. ‘Twenty-four hours, until six o’clock tomorrow night. Please get your children indoors directly.’

  Luke hoped his stubble was bristling, and thanked his time in the Machine Park for a chest that was broader than most boys’ his age, as he squared back his shoulders and walked confidently past. A band was playing in the plaza outside the station, and punters were crowding around a temporary bar lit up with neon. Women in short dresses walked around handing out drinks from trays. On the stage behind the band, a digital clock counted down from its current position of just over thirteen hours.

  It was the number of hours until the executions began, Luke realized. The number of hours his sister had left to live.

  Choked, he pushed past a girl who held out a drink to him, not stopping to apologize when he knocked it flying. He needed to get to Gorregan Square right now.

  Traffic was flowing as normal, but signs warned of closures from midnight. Many streets were already dark and deserted, but here and there – in Russell Square and Covent Garden – were more bands, more bars. In the darkness, on park benches, squatting on the steps of churches and among the shadows of Covent Garden’s grand arcade, he saw people passing around bottles, cigarettes, joints, and more.

  ‘You want something?’ a shaven-headed guy said, shaking a little ziplock bag full of what Luke was very sure weren’t headache pills. ‘Special rates tonight.’

  Luke shook his head and picked up his pace.

  You could hear Gorregan half a mile away. His progress slowed as the streets became busier; he wasn’t the only one heading to the square. It sounded like the biggest party London had ever seen was underway. Soon, the air itself was reverberating to the thud of bass from massive speakers.

  As he approached the National Gallery, he could hardly believe what he was seeing. It looked as though the whole population of London was there, crammed into the square and spilling down the radiating roads.

  Immense statues stood at three of the square’s four corners. At the fourth was an empty plinth, intended to hold the statue of a king, but abandoned and symbolically left empty after the Equal Revolution. It afforded Luke an excellent vantage point over the seething mass below.

  Unignorable, in the centre of the square, was the scaffold. It encircled the base of Nelson’s Column, built on the backs of the four monumental bronze lions that guarded the admiral’s monument. Another low platform surrounded it. That would be so the crowd could reach the victims, Luke realized with a shudder.

  On the scaffolding, set at intervals and close to its edge, were thick metal posts. As Luke pushed closer, he saw that long chains hung down from each post: two from the top, ending in small cuffs, and one from the centre, terminating in a secondary loop of metal. Again, the chains were long enough that the person attached to them could be reached easily.

  Crash barriers edged the platform. People were already camped down there, Luke saw with disgust. Who were they? Who could be so sick in the head that they’d want to be first in line to inflict pain on someone they’d never met, whose crime hadn’t affected them in the slightest?

  The numbers were against Abi and the rest. London had a population of more than six million. It stood to reason that among so many, there would be a few – and it would only need to be a few – twisted enough to grab this opportunity.

  How could he stop this? Join the fray around Abi, with bolt cutters to sever her chains? But he wouldn’t know which post would be hers. And Security would just haul her off again – and probably pull him up there, too, for good measure.

  Some sort of diversion, then. Maybe he could steal some tear gas canisters from Security, let them off just as the first victims – that would be Blake and Jules – were being led out. Or maybe a bomb alert, to evacuate the area before the spectacle even started? It was such a long shot, but he had to try something. No one had searched his bag as he came into the square. Anyone here could be carrying anything.

  He did a lap of the square, checking for opportunities. As he walked, he turned over idea after idea, but came up with nothing better. On his third circuit, he saw a Security officer enjoying his beat near one of the pop-up bars. A flirtatious bar girl was plying the man with drinks. The situation had potential, and Luke settled in to watch.

  He waited as the officer became progressively more intoxicated, then he allowed the crowd to jostle him in close. Grateful for all he’d l
earned from Renie during the Club’s ‘games’, Luke managed to snag one of the tear gas cylinders from the man’s utility belt. He made a note to try for his stun gun later, if the guy was out completely cold, but when he circled around again, the officer was gone.

  He’d need a phone to make a bomb-threat call. That bit was simple. The square was full of people either drunk or high or both. His momentary qualm about lifting a woman’s handbag was quickly squashed. Anyone whose idea of fun included drunk-dancing the night before people were publicly tortured to death deserved the inconvenience of losing their bag. The woman’s phone was a standard touch-key model, so unlike the smartphones used by the Equals, there’d be no worry about unlocking it. He dialled a number at random to check, and heard the dial tone. No problems there.

  Then it was time to hunker down and wait.

  27

  Luke

  As dawn rose, Gorregan’s bronze lions and marble statues gazed imperturbably across a party that was showing no signs of stopping. A reek of sweat and vomit hung over the imposing square. Given the state of most people here, half of them would happily stab a penknife in a prisoner’s leg if their mates told them it’d be a laugh.

  But no. Luke wouldn’t believe that. Not until the evidence of his own eyes convinced him. That was Crovan’s view of human nature. Never Luke’s.

  With the fair scheduled to begin at ten that morning, he resolved to make the call at half eight – enough time for an evacuation, but not long enough for them to discover that there was no bomb and restart the whole thing. Worming his way through the thick of the crowd, he skulked round the back of St Martin in the Fields. He rehearsed his words, then, with sweaty fingers, dialled the emergency services.

  ‘Okay, thank you for your call,’ said the male voice at the other end when he’d delivered his piece. It sounded almost bored.

  ‘You don’t understand. I said, I have a bomb, and I will detonate it if the Blood Fair goes ahead.’