Bright Ruin

by Vic James

  Could there ever have been an England in which Elizabeth was admired as a strong and independent ruler? In which Henry V was the daring hero of Agincourt, and not a cocky dunce? It didn’t seem likely, but then this book had been written in a country that had known three centuries of Equal rule. Who knew how these feckless monarchs had really lived?

  Two hours later, she was through with the book and Midsummer still hadn’t arrived. Abi decided to stay put. Being a rebel leader in a police state wasn’t the sort of job where you could leave the office on time, was it? And an hour after that, Midsummer turned up, striding through the tangle of brick, weeds, frayed wires and broken office furniture.

  ‘Sorry I’m late. It’s been a strange morning. But it’s so good to see you.’ She pulled Abi into a hug, then put her at arm’s length to inspect her. ‘I like the haircut. Joining the sisterhood?’

  Abi laughed. ‘Something like that.’

  ‘What happened in the square? When the lion came back without you, I was frantic. You said someone rescued you? Who?’

  ‘I’ll show you.’

  Abi walked into the darkness of the ruined warehouse, started up the bike engine, and wheeled it to where Midsummer stood. Her reaction wasn’t what Abi expected, her face screwing up with suspicion.

  ‘Gavar Jardine? Are you serious?’

  ‘I know, I know. I almost thought I was hallucinating because of concussion. But he did it on the spur of the moment, just like he stopped the fair. He’s not a good person, Midsummer, but his heart’s in the right place.’

  ‘Well, that just made my complicated morning even messier.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He’s been in touch – Gavar. He did it via Speaker Dawson. Told her that he wanted to meet me. That his father’s mad, he’s had enough of his family’s cruelty, he’s worried about his daughter, and – I’m reading between the lines here, but I don’t think I’m wrong – that he hates his wife.’

  Despite herself, Abi laughed. ‘You’re not wrong.’ She told Midsummer everything that had happened since the Blood Fair, and the Equal listened in silence.

  ‘So, what does he want?’ Abi asked, when she’d finished. ‘Apart from family counselling. Why did he contact the Speaker?’

  ‘He wants to join us, Abi.’ The Equal’s fingers worried at her lip-ring. ‘I honestly don’t think I can trust him, though. Yet he’s so Skilled, and it would be such a PR coup to have the Chancellor’s own son turn on him. I’ve arranged a meeting this evening – though if there’s any sign he’s accompanied, we abort. I’ve let him know we’ll have a gun on him, if he makes any unexpected moves. He’ll meet me and a couple of the others. Jon will keep away – we can’t have his involvement revealed to Gavar.’

  ‘I need to be there,’ said Abi.

  ‘I thought you’d say that. Come on then. Time to show you our new digs.’

  By the time of Gavar’s arrival, Abi had taken in so many faces and names at Midsummer’s new HQ that it’d be a challenge to memorize them all. She would, though. At school, she’d always memorized everyone’s names by the end of the first day of a new term. At the time, she’d imagined it’d be good practice for when she was a doctor, with a ward full of patients. Ah well, transferrable skills.

  Midsummer had taken over an antiquated factory building on the outskirts of London – doubtless one of those built privately last century, before its commoner owners realized they couldn’t compete with Equal industrialists using unpaid labour. In its repurposed rooms were gathered people from around the country, with links to slavetowns from Penzance to Aberdeen.

  Some were barely older than Abi herself – students with multiple mobile phones, sat in the corner with computers. She spotted one group in a circle around Luke’s techie friends from Millmoor – Hilda, Tilda and Asif – and gave the trio a wave. They’d be hoping to rescue their friends Jess and Oz, taken at Riverhead and held at Fullthorpe secure unit – where it seemed likely Abi’s parents also were.

  There were others here whose reasons for fighting were more visible: on their skin, or in their wary eyes. A lean woman from Exton, her face and neck a mass of ropey scar tissue. A burly Scotsman, whose rolled-up tracksuit bottoms revealed a prosthetic lower leg. A sad-eyed man from Portisbury whose wrist bore a series of faded woven bracelets and a tattoo with two dates just twelve years apart. Had he lost a child in a slavetown – one he had taken in young to give a good start in life, just as Mum and Dad had done with Daisy? Abi shivered.

  But for all the anger and tragedy in these people’s pasts, the factory space hummed with a sense of purpose, and Abi felt good being part of it. No matter how determined you were, no matter how resourceful you tried to be, you’d never achieve as much alone as when part of something bigger. Was this what Luke had discovered in Millmoor?

  Could Abi fill the hole left inside her by Jenner’s betrayal with the fellowship of these people?

  ‘It’s time,’ Midsummer said, when afternoon had turned to evening. ‘We’re meeting Gavar a long way from here. I’m not having this place put at risk.’

  At her side was a woman Abi had seen on and off throughout the afternoon, petite and curved in every place, from her wide hips to her smiling mouth, and what looked like the middle stages of pregnancy. She wasn’t smiling now, though, and she held tight to Midsummer’s arm.

  ‘If you think it’s a risk,’ the woman said, her Brummie accent making her sound even more urgent, ‘then why’re you going at all?’

  ‘Layla, darling, it’s Gavar bloody Jardine.’ Midsummer wound her fingers in the woman’s glossy hair. ‘He could be what swings this thing our way. We’ve secured the place and we’ll be checking out every vehicle and person that comes close.’

  She bent down and kissed her girlfriend, and Abi’s heart clenched. Not even Equals were indestructible and Layla would have an anxious few hours ahead.

  Renie’s Uncle Wesley handed Midsummer a closed-circuit radio.

  ‘My boys have been scoping the place out,’ he said. ‘No sign of anything fishy.’

  ‘Thanks, Wes.’

  ‘You should join us,’ Abi said to him. ‘I mean, Midsummer, it’s your call. But Gavar stopped the Blood Fair because he saw Renie. Wesley being there, like me, would show that you’re putting some faith in his good intentions.’

  Midsummer thought about it for a few moments, then nodded. She was decisive. She was good at this.

  They travelled by car across London, west to east. Though it was just after six in the evening, their route kept them far from the city centre, and the roads and pavements were half empty. Wesley spoke from time to time via the radio. The driver turned down a gravel track, then pulled over.

  ‘Right.’ Midsummer inhaled deeply. ‘Here we go.’

  While the Equal was plainly tense, Abi felt a strange sense of calm. She’d been impressed by Midsummer’s level of organization and support, and she believed that Gavar could be won for the cause. The burly heir had spirited Luke out of Millmoor simply because Daisy asked, and had sped Abi away from Gorregan without anyone asking at all. If these two Equals could just manage to trust one another, who knew what might become possible?

  The air was brackish in her nostrils, and wind blew round Abi’s newly bared ears as she surveyed their surroundings. You’d hardly know you were in London. They’d driven to the edge of Walthamstow Marshes, and blue-black water pooled in reservoirs all around. It was a clever choice. The space was wide open, and only narrow raised paths divided one lake from the next. They were meeting Gavar where three lakes adjoined, and when a man nodded to Wesley as the trio stepped onto a path, Abi realized that there were two more lookouts stationed at the entrance to the other paths.

  Further out, where the raised banks converged, someone was waiting. He stood brooding in a black leather overcoat that hung from his wide shoulders down to the tops of his biker boots.

  ‘This is Wesley,’ Midsummer said, presenting him to Gavar. ‘He would have died at the Bl
ood Fair, if you hadn’t intervened. More importantly, his niece, Renie, would also have died. She’s the girl you interrupted it for.’

  ‘I owe you one,’ Wesley said, extending a hand to Gavar who simply stared, before Wes shrugged and withdrew it again. ‘You stood up to your family for that. It was a brave thing to do.’

  Gavar made a dismissive sound, then transferred his gaze to Abi.

  ‘You’ve come to return my motorbike, I presume.’

  ‘I appreciated the loan.’

  The heir scowled. ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Did you find my note?’

  ‘Yes, and I told your sister what you asked me to.’

  ‘Thank you. But that’s not the bit I was referring to. What I said at the end – about you and your family, that bit. I meant it.’

  Gavar shifted his gaze to Midsummer. ‘Congratulations. You seem to have found the only two enrolled members of the Gavar Jardine Fan Club.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure my little sister is one too,’ Abi said. ‘Founding member, in fact.’

  Gavar snorted at that.

  ‘All right,’ said Midsummer. ‘Time to get real. Come with me.’

  6

  Abi

  Gavar sat in a chair in the middle of the dripping, strip-lit concrete space – the boiler room of a disused pumping station, back from when the reservoirs had been London’s emergency water supply. If he was intimidated to find himself ringed by half a dozen people, he didn’t show it.

  Abi suspected he wasn’t intimidated in the slightest. Gavar had little reason to fear anyone.

  Anyone except, perhaps, his father.

  ‘You expect us to believe you?’ said Bhadveer, the guy with the bracelets, his tone that of a teacher hearing another the-dog-ate-my-homework excuse. ‘Well, maybe we do. Maybe you yourself believe it right now: that you hate your father, and think his and your wife’s policies are cruel and misguided. But you are a hothead. Impulsive. You may be with us today, then regret this conversation tomorrow, and then the day after that, be our enemy again.’

  He turned away to Midsummer. ‘I’m sorry, Midsummer. I do believe he’s genuine, but I don’t believe he’s reliable. The risk’s too great.’

  ‘Genuine?’ It was the Scottish bloke with one leg. ‘You’re off your head. His daddy’s our entire fackin’ problem. His wifey’s near as bad. I don’t believe a word of it. This whole thing stinks.’ He spat angrily onto the floor at Gavar’s feet and the heir reacted at last, his face flushing with that Jardine rage. But he remained in his seat.

  ‘Isn’t the point,’ asked the woman from Exton, Emily, ‘that this is the people asserting themselves against our masters? I know you’re our leader, Midsummer, but you’re practically one of us. You’ve lived among commoners for years, you love one of us, you’ve faced prejudice because of that love, and for the colour of your skin. Your and Layla’s child will be common-born. But if Gavar joins us, doesn’t this just become a power struggle between Equals?’

  Abi winced. That was exactly how she’d felt, during the past months, watching Meilyr Tresco and Dina Matravers lay their doomed plans at Highwithel. This battle belonged to the common folk of Britain. There was a reason you talked about winning freedom, not accepting freedom, or being given it by the very people who’d chained you.

  But Gorregan had changed her. The white-hot terror of the execution scaffold and the realization that she was about to die had burned away some of her scruples about how you won.

  ‘It’s still a victory, if you use your enemy’s weapon against him,’ Abi told them. ‘Anything that helps us win, we need. Gavar could be the game changer.’

  Several people started talking at once at that: disagreeing, offering opinions. Then one voice cut through them all and the room fell quiet.

  ‘He can go get my Renie,’ said Wesley. ‘To prove it. She’s being held in those cells beneath parliament, where they kept us before the Blood Fair.’

  ‘In Astrid Halfdan’s suite?’ Gavar said, appalled. ‘I knew she’d been retaken, but – there?’

  How could anyone fail to see that his horror was genuine?

  ‘Why do you think I lifted the dragon off the roof of the House of Light?’ asked Midsummer. ‘Or didn’t they tell you about that, either?’

  ‘Threats,’ said Gavar. ‘The way Bouda described it, she said you were threatening the House. Menacing it with your Skill.’

  ‘A rescue,’ said Midsummer grimly. ‘One that failed. That’s a good idea, Wes, and goodness knows I want that kid back, but it’d blow Gavar’s cover pretty quickly if he just walks in there and walks out with her.’

  ‘He can take me,’ Abi heard herself say. ‘We can make it seem like an arrest – then an escape.’

  She looked at the floor to steady herself before continuing, willing herself to believe that this wasn’t the worst idea she’d ever had.

  ‘His family thinks I’m on the run,’ she said, ‘and that I’ll try and contact my little sister, who works for him. So, it’s only what they’ll be expecting if he says he caught me trying to sneak in to see her. I’m guessing not even Astrid runs a twenty-four-hour operation down in that basement, so if he took me in late tonight there’d be fewer guards. He could take me down to the cells, go to put me in the same one as Renie, then we could . . .’

  Abi’s voice trailed off as she saw her plan fall apart. How could she and Renie believably appear to overpower Gavar Jardine?

  ‘You’d trust him enough to let him do that?’ asked the Exton woman incredulously.

  Wesley had also seen the obstacle in the plan. ‘He could take me too,’ said Wesley. ‘Say he’d caught both of us, then when he unlocks Renie’s cell for you, I could hit him or something. Apologies,’ he said, turning to Gavar.

  ‘That wouldn’t be necessary,’ said the heir, sitting forward on the edge of the chair and rocking it onto two legs. His expression was grim. ‘There’s another thing Astrid has that would do the job.’

  Gavar sketched out the route from the cells to freedom, explaining where each door led to, and that his parliamentary pass should open them.

  ‘But you’d need to use a taser on any Security we meet,’ he told Abi. ‘Would you be up to that?’

  The guards would be commoners. Just normal people, doing their jobs. Do no harm, do no harm, do no harm . . . The doctor’s vow beat in Abi’s brain. But I’m not a doctor, she told herself firmly. I’m an outlaw, because they made me one.

  ‘I’m prepared to use a taser,’ she said. ‘Tell me about the other thing.’

  Gavar did. He told them how it could be managed. Abi made some counter-suggestions. And at the end, Midsummer nodded.

  ‘If you’re still willing, Abi, let’s do it. Gavar, you say you want a better world for your daughter – I want the same for my kid. So I’m taking a chance on you, for the sake of both our children. Get Renie and Abi back to us safely, and that’ll make you one of us.’

  A look of understanding passed between the two Equals, then Midsummer turned to bark instructions down the radio to have a boat ready on the Thames for later that evening.

  Abi’s eyes met Gavar’s. She thought she saw her own uncertainty reflected there. It was oddly reassuring – the impulsive heir considering his actions, for once. But Abi couldn’t quite swallow down the bitter memory of the last time she had trusted a Jardine boy.

  She wished she could see Jenner. Talk to him. Rage and shout at his betrayal, and demand to know whether Skill was so much more precious to him than she was. But she couldn’t. And deep down, she didn’t really want to. The answers would be nothing she wanted to hear.

  Instead, when it was time to go, she walked with Gavar to his motorbike. It was a final opportunity to get the measure of him, and to stifle the choking fear that she was making another, terrible mistake.

  ‘We’re sure this will work?’ she asked for the millionth time. ‘Silyen lifted the slave binding on me and my parents when we left Kyneston, so there’s nothing to prevent me ac
ting against you, but surely your Equal reflexes will interfere?’

  ‘You can suppress the reflex,’ Gavar said. ‘It’s something you learn at school – imagine trying to play rugby otherwise. It’s a matter of pride to be the first to manage it. I was only third in my year, so when I got home that holiday Father made me demonstrate, then beat me with a belt buckle. At least the bruises disappear fast, too.’

  ‘Won’t they be able to tell from the CCTV that you’ve let your defences down? That you’re allowing me to do it?’

  But Gavar seemed unconcerned. ‘I can’t imagine anyone will notice,’ he said. ‘The reflex only works against an attack we see coming, so just be sure to get me from behind.’

  They’d reached the bike on which he’d come to the rendezvous spot. It was a massive Union American-imported Harley-Davidson.

  ‘My second-best bike,’ he said, swinging his leg over. ‘We’ll have to get you out in one piece, won’t we, because otherwise I’ll never get back my favourite Norton Triumph. I’ll see you later, Abi Hadley.’

  He nodded at her, and roared away.

  Two hours later, as sweat rolled down her forehead, Abi fought against choking panic. It was only an instinctive reaction to the obstruction of her airways, she told herself. Gavar had stuffed a handkerchief in her mouth – one of those Jardine salamander-print ones, which was hilariously symbolic, except she really wasn’t seeing the joke right now – and was dragging her by the scruff of her neck. She could feel how he’d tried to bunch up the back of the borrowed jacket she wore, so it wouldn’t constrict her throat, but it was still terrifying. Her feet stumbled and scrabbled as she tried to keep upright.