Bright Ruin

by Vic James

  ‘But when I was at Orpen a few months ago, there in the real world, in Kent, helping her rebuild the ruins . . .’ The Equal paused, momentarily stricken. ‘The wall wasn’t there. It had no real-world counterpart.’

  ‘It was only in her mind,’ Luke breathed. ‘And you first saw it years ago, before you ever met me. So this isn’t just about us, or because of things that have happened recently.’

  ‘I’d lay money on the fact that we’re not the only ones with this wall running through them. I’m trying to remember if anyone else . . .’

  Luke wondered into how many minds the Equal had trespassed. It wasn’t a comforting thought.

  And then just like Dad doing the final tuning on a car engine, to send it sputtering into life, a connection sparked in Luke’s brain. What all this was, and what it could mean.

  ‘Maybe everyone has it. The Silence is how you make people forget things – it only doesn’t get used on Equals because of some weird etiquette, right? And your family Quiets tell us that forgetting can be made to pass down, to last for years. So maybe if this is the work of the king, and he’s that powerful, he’s come up with some combination of the two – and the thing we’ve forgotten is him.’

  Silyen stared at him and Luke thought he might laugh till he bust a rib, because he had actually come up with an idea about Skill that Silyen Jardine hadn’t thought of. The Equal shoved his hair off his face. His speech and his breathing had sped up.

  ‘Right. And because he did it so long ago, the act has slowly been breaking down. You can see it right there in the wall, which is pretty much coming apart.’

  They both looked across Silyen’s beach to where the wall, stripped bare of flowers, seaweed and sand, looked like the bleached remains of a long-lost Atlantis. The cracks and gaps in it were plain to see.

  ‘Yes!’ Luke crowed. They were on a roll with this. ‘Which is why he’s remembered from time to time. Because the forgetting is disintegrating, every now and then a memory slips through. Someone writes a poem about him, or carves an image, or paints a picture . . . What? Why are you shaking your head?’

  Silyen couldn’t be having second thoughts. This was all making sense – inasmuch as anything Skillful ever would.

  ‘I get how it might work, that it might decay, et cetera. But, Luke, nothing could be done on that scale. Silences are laid individually. Yes, family Quiets are inherited, but even those start with a small group of people, the original family members. You couldn’t do it to an entire country. Even assuming that the population of Britain back then was much smaller, you’d still be talking more than a million people. Dammit.’

  Silyen squatted on his haunches, chewing his fingernails. The wind stirred that messy hair.

  They’d been close to something, Luke thought. So close.

  But they weren’t there yet. And in the meantime, having given Silyen what he wanted – the chance to step back into Luke’s mind – it was time for the Equal to keep his side of the bargain.

  ‘Would this be the moment to remind you that I want to check on my friend at Eilean Dòchais? I mean, who knows, it might even help us with this, because that’s where we were when we first saw him, and . . .’

  Luke stopped, his mouth going dry. Silyen arched an eyebrow.

  ‘And?’

  It came back to Luke with the intensity of a hallucination. After just a few days away, his time at the castle already resembled a feverish nightmare.

  He remembered standing by the Last Door only half conscious, his mind cut loose by Crovan’s interrogations. He’d been clutching the doorframe – and the deadly door was open. Coira had found him there, staring out, babbling about the king and his stag.

  He was insisting that he’d find them there, on the other side of the door.

  Coira had snapped her fingers next to his ear. Had looked like she wanted to slap him. Had grabbed his shirt and pulled him back from danger.

  And then, at the end of her patience, she had told him Be my guest if he still wanted to risk his life by chancing the Door. And Luke had stepped through the Last Door onto Crovan’s rocky island – and lived.

  The first thing that had gone through Luke’s mind was astonishment at still being alive. The second thing was what that meant about Coira’s parentage – that she was a Crovan. Only family could give a person permission to step through the castle’s Last Door.

  But this third thing, he had only remembered now: his conviction that the king was out there, just through the door.

  Had he been? And if so . . . why?

  As the salt-sweet breeze of Sil’s improbable mindscape blew around them, Luke pulled Silyen to his feet.

  ‘There’s more I need to tell you,’ he said. ‘And we really need to get to Eilean Dòchais.’

  9

  Bouda

  ‘Who thought that putting your husband into Midsummer’s circle was a good idea?’ Jon Faiers demanded before the office door had barely closed behind him. ‘Because as far as I can see, his contribution so far has been failing to capture one prisoner and releasing another. Not to mention seriously limiting my usefulness. While he’s close to Midsummer, she’ll keep me away because she won’t want to, as she thinks, betray me as her spy in your office.’

  Jon’s eyes flashed with anger, but Bouda let neither their fury nor their gorgeous baby-blueness distract her.

  ‘Sit down,’ she said, motioning to the armchair on the other side of her desk. ‘I said, sit down. I know what this is: it’s jealousy. And it’s pointless. Gavar has explained that the staged escape was necessary to win Midsummer’s trust. I wasn’t happy, but it makes sense. We give up one prisoner, to get Gavar into a position that enables us to sweep up them all.

  ‘As for how his work affects your position, don’t be ridiculous. You couldn’t plausibly spend much time with these ragbag rebels anyway. Midsummer’s no fool. She’d realize you were absent from this office to a degree I’d never tolerate, and quickly come to the conclusion that I did tolerate it, and that you were a traitor. More importantly, you and Gavar have different roles. His job is to bring us information from their camp, and yours is to plant misinformation into their camp. You’ll have your part to play in our endgame.’

  Jon didn’t seem mollified.

  ‘And you think Gavar will be able to keep up the pretence?’ he protested. ‘He’s hardly a master of subtlety. You’re talking about someone who shot his mistress because he wasn’t articulate enough to persuade her not to leave him. He’s dumb and dangerous.’

  Bouda leapt to her feet, incensed.

  ‘How dare you speak of my husband like that. He’s the Chancellor’s heir. Show some respect.’

  ‘Your husband he may be, but has he laid a hand on you since your wedding? At least when he was sober he was able to tell the difference between you and one of his commoner pick-ups. Ah!’

  There was a crack like a handclap, and Faiers staggered back, palm pressed to his face. Blood trickled from between his fingers. What on earth had just happened?

  Slowly, Jon lifted his hand away and Bouda saw it – a shard of glass embedded in his cheek, beneath the eye. Then she noticed that the front of his shirt was soaked through, and that the waterstain was pinked in places. More blood.

  The remains of the water glass that had stood on her desk until a moment ago lay scattered across the floor. A surge of Skillful anger had shattered the glass.

  No. Bouda flexed her fingers and knew what she’d done. She had exploded the water.

  She hadn’t intended to hurt Faiers, and yet her Skill’s reaction had been honest. Why did these men feel entitled to perpetually question her judgement? Even this man, whose mind and body were so attractive, even though his Skillessness should have repulsed her.

  Well, maybe this would be a lesson for him. Argument was one thing – she valued his counsel and opinions. But defiance and disrespect were not to be tolerated.

  ‘Let me see,’ she said, pushing his hands away as she examined the damage. A f
ew shards hadn’t penetrated through his suit jacket, but there was a nasty needle of glass jabbed close to his collarbone. Bouda tweezered it out with her lacquered nails and heard Faiers gasp.

  She needed to see the wound, so tugged off his tie and unbuttoned the neck of his shirt. Which was when she noticed that his breath was coming even faster and his heartbeat was hammering. He tipped his head forward, so his mouth rested against her forehead.

  ‘You,’ he breathed, as she touched her fingers to the puncture and felt the skin beneath them heat up. His exhale was long and sensuous, and one hand came up to the back of her neck. He was finding this arousing.

  Bouda was, too.

  She lifted her mouth close to his.

  ‘Say that you’re sorry,’ she said. ‘For disobeying me.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Heir Bouda.’

  As their lips met, hot and hungry, Bouda thought it wasn’t absurd that she felt like this about a commoner. It was almost perfect. This was how things should be, between the Equals and the commoners. The people might be defiant, but were easily reminded of their place – and would love and admire their masters all the more for it.

  Bouda pulled back to inspect Jon’s wound. It was a nasty slice, and she flinched to see how close it had come to his eye. Just as well that she used only fine Prussian glassware. She saw a slender shard still embedded deep in his cheek. Her nails plucked it out, and it left a welling red seam some two inches long.

  She licked her finger and wiped away the blood, watching the cut close up in its wake. Healing was no talent of hers, but every Equal child knew how to fix cuts and grazes so they didn’t scar.

  When she took her hand off Jon’s face, though, there was still a faint red line marking his cheekbone – and always would be. It would be good for him to remember both who had injured him, and who had healed him.

  The country would do the same, once Bouda was through with it.

  ‘Jon,’ she told him, stroking the mark she had left, ‘let me explain why it’s irrelevant whether or not Gavar “keeps up the pretence”. I suggested to my father-in-law that Gavar go to Midsummer. If he succeeds in sustaining his deception, then we have her trapped and can end this cancer of commoner revolt. If he fails, then he’s finally out of his father’s good graces. Either way, one of my rivals falls.’

  Which would leave only one more person to deal with.

  There was a reason Bouda had suggested to Whittam that he be the one to task Gavar with infiltrating Midsummer’s camp. A reason why Bouda ensured that Lady Thalia be the one to secure Gavar’s child, and why Bouda herself had sat there cringing submissively as Whittam stroked her like a pet and made vile insinuations about the Kyneston succession.

  Midsummer, Gavar . . . and Whittam. If the trio could somehow be made to take out each other, Bouda would be the last one standing.

  Faiers was watching her, as if hypnotized. She remembered the evening they had first met, at Grendelsham. How smoothly he had intervened when Whittam was groping her. His frank declaration on the clifftop. For all his faults – not least this possessiveness that ran through men like blood – he wanted the same things as her and would take risks to achieve them.

  And to have a commoner at her side when the dust settled would be a valuable thing. He could never be more than a lover – to have an unSkilled child would be unthinkable. But he could be a partner in power.

  ‘Come down to the river with me,’ she said, refastening his shirt and ignoring his pout. ‘We need to talk where we won’t be interrupted, and there’s something I want to try.’

  As they descended the final stairs to the rivergate exit, Bouda remembered the CCTV of Abigail Hadley and the feral child from the Blood Fair, drawing back the bolt and running for freedom. Gavar’s ‘capture’ of Abigail had been a well-choreographed piece of fakery – one designed to deceive both the Westminster guards and, more importantly, Midsummer’s supporters. Bouda had watched it several times. The CCTV coverage was incomplete, but she saw the small giveaways: the moment Gavar twisted the girl’s neck to show her the door leading to the exit corridor; whatever it was he said to the guard in Astrid’s detention rooms, to get the imbecile to wait at the top of the stairs, back turned.

  No, Gavar might be many things – crass, brutish, and oblivious – but he wasn’t stupid.

  Then she and Faiers were out of that same door and on to the parliamentary terrace, and Bouda’s head swam with the zing of ozone from the river. She was giddy with the sense of her own power, tingling through her.

  Faiers steadied her elbow.

  ‘You were magnificent that morning,’ he murmured. ‘The creature you conjured out of the river to throttle Midsummer’s dragon. I’ve never seen anything so incredible.’

  ‘You’ll see something much better, if I have anything to do with it. And I’ll need your help.’

  And she told him what she was thinking.

  That was the thing about winning a game. It wasn’t enough to have your own strategies and tactics; you had to learn everyone else’s, too.

  And then there was Silyen Jardine. Bouda wasn’t sure that he was even playing a game – it certainly wasn’t the same one as the rest of them. But he was too powerful to ignore. She had watched him rise. First, his impressive feats at Kyneston, then his irregular inheritance of Far Carr. And finally, by sheer accident (surely sheer accident, because the person responsible for it was Bouda herself, when she arrested Rix), his elevation to be its lord. No one had seen him since before the Blood Fair. The day of the Fair, he had inexplicably freed every slave on his estate.

  Bouda had no idea what Silyen was up to. But she’d learned one thing from him. Skill was so much more than any of them had appreciated. All her life, Bouda had used her Skill in petty ways. Now, in this turmoil, it was finding outlets she’d never imagined. She was finally understanding that, like a muscle, her connection with her Skill strengthened and developed with use. As an Equal, it was thrilling to feel the potential tingling in her veins. As a politician, it was an unrivalled opportunity to inspire both obedience and admiration.

  And wonder. Surely better than either fear or love, because it contained both.

  ‘Keep an eye on me,’ Bouda instructed Faiers, as she stood on the gritty river shore where the Thames alternately challenged and retreated from the terrace wall. She needed to know how far she could go. How far before the river escaped her control. How far before she was lost.

  She sent her Skillful awareness coiling out into the water like a sinuous, infiltrating weed. When she’d first felt this, drawing water from the Bore’s canals onto its burning fields, she’d been afraid of the way the water tugged at her, as if her very self might be one more piece of flotsam to be washed away.

  But not here. Not now. She sent her Skill deep into the Thames.

  This was London’s lifeblood. From the time of the Romans, the river had quenched the thirst of this settlement, carried away its filth, borne the trading vessels that helped it grow and, just occasionally, poisoned it.

  But there was far more than simply this central channel. London’s lost rivers flowed far beneath the stone and tarmac. They crisscrossed below the city, an alternate, subterranean map. Their interlocking branches and tributaries were a net of water, spread out under the capital. If you could draw it tight enough, you would capture the whole city.

  Bouda was uncertain if she was breathing any more – or if she was, whether it was air or water. She could still feel Jon’s hand on her elbow, and yet it was as though she was at a distance, looking at him holding someone else. She was immersed in Skill. Was this what it had been like for Silyen Jardine all these years? No wonder he had been strange and separate and self-absorbed.

  She flowed through the river – and the river flowed through her.

  In Gorregan, she had pulled the water up through the fountain. Had drawn it spouting into the sky to extinguish the flaming platform, and create a barrier for Midsummer’s wretched metal lions. Now, she wanted to push
the water upwards. Through the soil, through the cracked mains pipes and the straightjacketing tarmac. Through every crevice and chink it could find. And though she couldn’t see it, Bouda could feel it, as she made the streets of London ooze and run. Far from where she stood, puddles welled in Oxford Street and storm drains slopped over along the Mall.

  It was there. She could reach it. Her plan could work.

  ‘Bouda?’

  That wasn’t Faiers.

  ‘Bouda?’

  ‘She was feeling a little tired – we’ve been working through the night on new security measures – and came out for some air. Can I help, Jenner?’

  Bouda reeled herself back into her body, and wanted to cry with the smallness of it. She shook herself. Blinked.

  ‘Jenner. What can I do for you?’

  ‘Father wishes to see us. Crovan’s with him, and Gavar will be coming soon with news.’

  Very well. While Bouda planned her next move, the other players had been busy with theirs. Time to find out what they were.

  ‘You’re dismissed, Faiers. Thank you.’

  And without a backwards glance at Jon, Bouda walked with Jenner to the Chancellor’s suite in New Westminster Tower.

  Her brother-in-law at least waited until they were out of earshot before he began wheedling and beseeching. How had she not noticed before that beneath that blandly pleasant exterior, Jenner was just as hungry as the rest of the Jardine men? But not for power – or rather, only for that power the rest of them took for granted: Skill.

  ‘Crovan wants to go back to Scotland, but we have to keep him here in London. Father promised me that he’d research Skill restoration, or transferral. I need you to help me make sure he stays.’

  ‘And how do you propose I do that? More to the point, why would I? Just a few days ago, your father was using the prospect of you, with Skill, to threaten my husband with disinheritance. As long as you’re Skilless, that’s an empty threat.’

  ‘Bouda.’ Jenner took her elbow and pulled her to one side in the corridor beside a long tapestry. She shook him off. Men didn’t touch each other when trying to make a point, so why touch her? ‘I’m no threat to Gavar, or to you. There’s only one thing I want – that I’ve ever wanted, although I’ve tried to pretend to myself otherwise. Whoever gives me that, I’ll be in their debt forever.’