Bright Ruin

by Vic James

  Luke felt sick. He’d known what sort of people were condemned here. The worst of the worst. He should have learned that lesson with Julian. But this was grotesque: to fake a rape in order to draw Coira out of safety. After which, these creatures would compel her to make their escape.

  When he saw the door slowly open, his veins iced up.

  ‘Stop it,’ said Coira.

  Her voice was as quiet and commanding as ever, and for a moment Luke wondered if her Skill had woken, that she could speak with such assurance. But then as she took in the scene around her, and understood that she had been tricked, fear came into the girl’s eyes.

  He saw Coira’s shoulder turn and her fingers scrabble uselessly for the handle. But the largest of the men, the one who had been hammering the door and leading the charade, leaned against the door. Its lock shut behind her with an audible click.

  ‘Oh no you don’t,’ he said.

  Which was when Luke let loose a bellow of fury and charged.

  12

  Luke

  His momentum, and the surprise, carried Luke through the circle of men to where Coira stood by the door. The onlookers stepped back, startled, then closed in again to watch what would happen next.

  ‘Who’ve we got here?’ the man sneered. He was powerfully built, and Luke recognized him from the confrontation in the kitchen, the night he and Coira had run afoul of three of the castle’s worst. ‘Little I-Didn’t-Do-It assassin boy. Back for another clip round the head with a saucepan? I’ll do it harder this time.’

  ‘Luke, what are you doing here?’ Coira’s eyes inspected him swiftly. ‘Your sister?’

  ‘She escaped the Blood Fair.’

  ‘Why did you come back?’

  ‘For you.’

  ‘Touching,’ the man sneered, jostling Luke intimidatingly. ‘We’re gonna have some fun here first. I’ll let you watch, then maybe you can join in.’

  ‘Give it over,’ Luke said, with a momentary giddy rush of relief as he remembered Coira’s collar protected her from harm. ‘You know you can’t hurt her.’

  ‘Who’s talking about hurting her . . . ?’ The man leered and grabbed his crotch.

  Luke didn’t let him finish. He drove his fist hard into the man’s belly and watched him double over, grunting. It felt like Luke had broken all his fingers, but he swung a second blow up against the man’s chin and watched his head fly back. He’d grown strong in Millmoor and at Kyneston, and hadn’t lost it in the few months he’d spent in this castle – unlike the men around him. Their long incarceration and Crovan’s formal dinners had rendered the prisoners flabby and unfit.

  There were, though, many, many more of them.

  ‘Get back in,’ he urged Coira, as the circle around them tightened – but it was too late. The woman made a grab for Coira’s hair and twisted, making Coira cry out in pain. And as Luke looked over, something heavy and hard smashed into the side of his skull and he reeled back against the door.

  ‘You little . . .’ roared the man Luke had punched, now hefting a chair leg.

  But the rest of what he said was lost in the resonant zing of steel drawn across steel, followed by a ripping sound that was most definitely not curtains. One of the onlookers let out a yell of horror as the man standing next to him crumpled to the ground, scarlet cascading down his front. Dog stood there, blood dripping from the lethal fingers of his metal hand.

  ‘Bad doggy,’ scoffed the ringleader. He tipped back his head and emitted a few derisory barks and howls. ‘I remember you, you mad bastard. Get him, lads.’

  But nobody moved.

  Dog’s blades flashed forward, so close that Luke felt the air passing over them and flinched. The Condemned woman screamed.

  ‘Now – go,’ Dog growled.

  Luke saw that the woman’s hand – still attached to her body – clutched a length of thick dark hair. Coira’s hair. The woman recoiled, dropped the severed tresses, and pushed her way through the pack of onlookers. Her feet thumped the stairs as she ran.

  Freed, Coira pulled back and began wrestling with the handle. But the door opened outward and the press of bodies made it impossible to open. The men were wary of Dog’s blades, but there were nearly twenty of them. Where was Silyen? Why wasn’t he coming to their aid?

  ‘No one else will die,’ Luke said, lifting his hands partly in appeal, partly as a warning. ‘Just leave Coira alone.’

  ‘Who are you, girl?’ called an older man who wore a servant’s tunic. The look in his eye was desperate and Luke wondered what he’d done that Coira hadn’t selected him for freedom. ‘How can you get in there, to his private rooms? You was downstairs with us, in the kitchens. And now you can get people out of this place? We only want you to take us, too.’

  All eyes turned to Coira. Luke’s heart was in his mouth wondering what she’d say, what pretext she’d come up with.

  ‘I’m his daughter,’ Coira said. ‘Now let me and my friends pass.’

  And the men’s hostility turned to something that Luke sensed was fear. As they shuffled imperceptibly away, there was finally enough space for Coira to wrench open the door.

  ‘Bravo,’ said a voice from behind them all, as Silyen stepped out of the shadows. ‘I was wondering how you’d manage that.’

  ‘And who the fuck are you?’ said the ringleader, gobbing bloodily onto the carpet.

  ‘Family friend,’ said Silyen. ‘Just stopping by. If you could bring me some coffee, I’d appreciate it. Thirsty journey.’

  Silyen knew how to turn his creepy superwattage up for an audience, because you could actually see Skill fizzing and spitting from him as he walked through the pack of desperate prisoners. When he reached the door, he put his arms around Luke’s and Coira’s shoulders.

  ‘Great work,’ he murmured, as he steered the pair of them through into Crovan’s apartments. ‘Nicely done. Just one thing.’

  ‘What’s that?’ said Luke, suddenly apprehensive.

  ‘Never make promises of good behaviour on others’ behalf.’

  The door smacked shut behind the three of them. Through the thick panelled wood, the sing of metal on metal was plainly audible. Luke heard Dog’s rasping laugh.

  Then the screaming began.

  Luke could feel Coira, on Silyen’s other side, twist in his hold. But the Equal’s grip was unyielding.

  ‘Forget them,’ Silyen told her. ‘You had your chance and you made your choices. They’re the ones you chose not to save.’

  Coira struggled against him.

  ‘That didn’t mean abandoning them to be murdered.’

  ‘Killed fast or killed slow.’ Silyen shrugged. ‘Amounts to the same thing. You know what Crovan does to them. At least Dog’s no sadist.’

  ‘When Crovan gets back, when I’ve had a chance to speak to him, I’ll persuade him to do it differently. Those people can’t be let out, but they could be kept here without such cruelty.’

  ‘Not as long as Arailt Crovan keeps them,’ said Silyen.

  The screaming outside had stopped. Presumably most of their would-be assailants had fled after seeing that Dog meant business. Luke didn’t want Dog anywhere near him – or Coira. But it would be better for him to stay with them, rather than roam the castle picking off its inmates one by one.

  ‘It’s over,’ he told Coira.

  Her nod told him she’d thought the same, and she shook Silyen off and went to the door. A further two corpses were visible on the carpet outside – one of them the ringleader. Dog was almost at the landing but he turned at Coira’s whistle, short and sharp, like you’d use with a real dog. Shivers ran down Luke’s spine at the thought of the pair of them here, for the years of Dog’s incarceration, when Coira would have been just a child. What history did they share?

  ‘Let’s get you cleaned up,’ Coira said, ushering Dog inside the apartment and closing the door. As he stood on the doormat, she inspected him and sighed. ‘It’s good to see you.’

  Unbelievably, she went up on tiptoe and
– very briefly – put her arms around his neck and squeezed.

  Coira led Dog to Crovan’s bathroom then went to locate some clothes. Silyen appeared untroubled by any notions of privacy. He strolled through the rooms running his hands over everything, picking things up before carelessly putting them down again.

  ‘So much history,’ the Equal said, breathless.

  ‘This isn’t a trip to the museum, Silyen. Your mother said Crovan is coming back today. He could arrive at any time. We have to be quick.’

  ‘No, we don’t. We may not get another chance like this. You’ve got what you came for – that girl. Now I want what I came for – to know why our king walked into your mind here, and why you saw him at the doorway downstairs.’

  The Equal pushed open the door to a small sitting room. Books lined the far wall, and a cushion and blanket on the sofa showed that this was where Coira had been sleeping. But Silyen’s eye was caught by the tapestries that covered the room’s two long sides.

  ‘Look at those. I’m pretty sure that’s where the inspiration for the prisoners’ collars came from. Do you remember me asking Crovan about “Gruach’s necklace”? My ancestor Cadmus speculated on the story in his journals. It’s what first got me interested in Skillful bindings.’

  The tapestries must have been hundreds of years old, but the colours were still bright, doubtless preserved by Skill. One showed a handsome young couple in a boat. The girl had red hair to her waist, and beside her sat a bearded young man. Above them, a storm raged and lightning forked. The tapestry opposite showed the same girl standing on the shore, with Eilean Dòchais looming behind. At her side was not the young man, but an old woman with a braid of white hair. Around the girl’s neck was a necklace of twisted gold – a toque, stitched in thick gilt thread to look almost real.

  ‘The legend of Fair Elspet and Bold Alane,’ said Silyen. ‘Rather romantic, if you can imagine applying such a word to a Crovan.’ He raised an eyebrow at Luke, who cringed.

  ‘Elspet was the granddaughter of the mormaer Crovan who built this castle. He believed Scotland needed no high lord, and turned hostage keeper to end the Earl’s War, after his son died fighting. But his adored granddaughter Elspet fell in love with the son of the man who killed her father – a young noble named Alane.

  ‘Knowing the mormaer would never agree to their marriage, they murdered him in this castle one night, then fled across the lake. But Elspet’s great-aunt Gruach discovered their crime, and from the battlements she called down lightning and struck their boat.’

  ‘The coat of arms,’ Coira said, behind them, making Luke jump. ‘The lightning-struck boat is the Crovan emblem. I never knew the story.’

  Luke suppressed a ripple of jealousy, that Silyen could give Coira this gift of knowledge of her family lore.

  What would her Equal status mean? She’d talked of staying here to speak with Crovan, but after what had just happened, surely she’d now leave with them. Perhaps at Far Carr Silyen could work with her to unlock her Skill.

  And after that . . . ? There was a seat in the House of Light that belonged to Coira: the heir’s chair of Eilean Dòchais. Could she still claim it, even if her father never acknowledged her? Would Equal society embrace her? Luke’s imagination conjured Coira, in a pale silk gown, waltzing across a ballroom in the arms of a dashing young heir. It wasn’t a comforting image.

  ‘And the necklace?’ Coira asked, touching the golden band around her own neck. ‘The other half of the story?’

  ‘Ahh.’ Silyen smiled. ‘Not a happy ending. When the boat sank, Alane drowned. And once her great-aunt Gruach got to her, Elspet wished she had, too. Hers were the first tears to fall into Loch nan Deur – the Lake of Tears. The pain the water causes is said to be her grief and anguish – though presumably it’s just a prosaic old enchantment to protect the island. And to prevent Elspet fleeing a second time, Gruach wrought a necklace that bound her to the castle.’

  ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘I tend to lose interest in legends once the Skillful bits are over. But I’ve not read that Elspet’s necklace came off, or that she ever left the island again.’

  ‘I can leave the island,’ said Coira. ‘Or I can get to the far shore, at least. That’s where I took Luke, and then the others. I never tried going along the track to the village, but I made it across the loch.’

  Silyen flapped his hand impatiently. ‘You’re not wearing the actual necklace, are you? You’re simply subject to a Skillful binding that takes the form of a golden collar, presumably in homage to this charming bit of family history. In your case, if you are who events seem to suggest you are – Crovan’s daughter – I’m guessing it constrains your Skill. That wouldn’t affect your power over the castle itself, though, or the loch and the Last Door, which respond to the family blood. May I take a look at it? Luke has been badgering me to see if I can take it off.’

  ‘I’d wondered why you came,’ Coira said, turning to Luke. ‘I can’t imagine anyone ever wanting to see this place again.’

  ‘I wanted to see you again,’ Luke said – and please, no, let him not be blushing as the pair of them stared at him.

  ‘Touching,’ Silyen said drily, after a pause that was precisely long enough to be awkward.

  Luke waited for Coira to say something like ‘I missed you too’, but of course she didn’t. She blinked.

  ‘Did you never notice?’ Silyen asked. ‘All those years alongside him. Knowing you were treated differently from the rest. The resemblance that Luke saw – did you really never see it? Did nobody else see it, before now?’

  Coira looked pained.

  ‘In my imaginings, I’ve been everybody’s daughter: from your father’s, sent here to avoid disgrace to the family name, to the cruellest prisoner’s. And yes, Crovan’s. But I never thought seriously about him, because who would treat their daughter like this? And he always told me I was guilty of a crime, just like everyone else. The worst crime, he said.

  ‘Yes, we look a little alike, but I’ve found bits of myself in all sorts of people before: eye colour, body shape, hands, noses, you name it. When you want to see a resemblance that badly, you can find one anywhere. I’ve had these questions my whole life. And now I want answers – it’s what I stayed here for.’

  ‘Well, I could take a quick look and see if there are any answers in there?’ Silyen tapped the side of his skull.

  ‘Surely Far Carr would be a better place to . . .’ Luke started, turning to Silyen, but he had already taken Coira’s hand and was leading her to the sofa.

  What was Sil playing at? He knew that Crovan was heading back, and he had told Luke he was here to investigate any trace of the Wonder King, not to concern himself with Coira. This was no time for Silyen to get distracted.

  But the Equal was already murmuring instructions as Coira closed her eyes. Silyen took one of her hands in his, and pressed the fingertips of the other to her forehead. Luke recognized it as what the Equal had done to him, but seen from this perspective, it looked weirdly intimate. Something that even Luke’s inarticulate boy-brain could recognize as jealousy prickled through him.

  Well, he wasn’t here to be the third wheel on the world’s most introverted first date. He’d have a dig around. If he could turn up something like the painting at Far Carr, anything that hinted of the Wonder King, then perhaps Silyen would agree to getting the hell out of here sooner rather than later.

  What he saw behind the first door he tried, he wished immediately to un-see. It was the bathroom, and contained a pile of blood-drenched clothes, the glove of knives, meticulously cleaned and drying on a towel, and Dog, neck deep in suds in Crovan’s bathtub. Hastily Luke closed the door again and crept along the corridor.

  Here was the largest room, where Crovan and Silyen had forced their way into Luke’s mind on that excruciating afternoon. Silyen was now doing the same to Coira next door – though if he used violence, Luke would make him regret it. He went to the window to check that their helicopter
was still there, on the moors beyond the loch. It was. Sil had done something to the chopper before they left, presumably to stop the nervous pilot flying away without them.

  On the desk were stacks of papers and a leather-bound notebook that, judging from the year stamped in gilt on the corner, was a diary. Luke’s mind boggled at the notion that Crovan had a schedule of social engagements, and he flipped it open. Except he should have learned the lesson Abi taught him long ago, when she’d torn him off a strip about not peeking at her journal, because the diary was an itemization of horror. Crovan had recorded, in tiny handwriting so neat it looked typed, exactly what he had done that day to whichever ‘guest’ had been summoned to his rooms.

  Luke’s gorge rose as he read a couple of pages, and he slammed the book shut. Coira had this man’s blood in her veins. At school, in biology class, they’d once had the nature versus nurture debate: how much of who you were was set by your genes, inherited from your parents, and how much was because of how you were raised? Half of Coira’s genes had come from Arailt Crovan, and she’d been raised in a castle prison. How had she turned out so decent and so brave?

  Sickened, he looked around. Was this search pointless without Silyen? Would Luke even recognize what he should be looking for? The door on the far wall was ajar – practically an invitation to pry. Luke went over and pushed it a little wider.

  Crovan’s bedroom.

  Given the luxury of the rest of the castle’s furnishings, the austerity of this room was a surprise. The walls were whitewashed and bare of pictures, the floor merely stripped boards covered by a faded and homely rug. The bed was made with military fastidiousness, a single navy-blue blanket folded under it on all sides. A bedside table held a small brass nightlight and three books. A plain window looked out to the loch.