Tarnished City

by Vic James

  ‘I won’t recover. Look at me.’

  Meilyr Tresco’s voice was calm and clear. At the far end of the table, his youngest sister stifled a sob.

  Highwithel’s heir rested his cane against the arm of his seat and hauled himself upright. He reached out, his arms trembling with the effort, and his fingers twitched, palsied. Abi saw a vein throb at the side of his throat. How on earth had he made it down those steps last night? Why had he done that just to greet her? Abi’s only claim on this man was that she was Luke’s sister.

  Maybe that was all the claim she needed. She looked at Meilyr. The others in the Club were plainly devoted to him. Abi had come here half convinced that she would be confronting a man who had exploited her brother’s devotion and turned him into a walking weapon. She no longer believed that was true.

  But if Meilyr hadn’t done that, then who?

  ‘Don’t push yourself,’ Dina told him. ‘Last night was too much. You should be in bed.’

  The heir gave a tight, mirthless laugh.

  ‘I’ve been in bed half the day ever since I came here. Isn’t that right, Mother?’

  He looked down to the far end of the table to where his mother sat. Lady Armeria Tresco appeared to have aged a decade from when Abi had last seen her, at the Debate Ball. She nodded.

  ‘You just need to rest,’ insisted Dina.

  ‘No, I don’t. No amount of rest will fix my Skill. There’s nothing left to fix.’

  ‘Skill can’t be destroyed. It’s not possible.’

  There was a panicky edge to Dina’s voice now. Somewhere beneath the table her little dog, sensing her distress, started a thin, unhappy whine.

  Meilyr reached out and took her hand, and Abi saw the shine of tears in Dina’s eyes.

  ‘Dina, it’s not coming back.’

  The Equal shook her head. She turned her hand in Meilyr’s grasp and her fingers tightened on his. He jerked back, but she held on, a frown creasing her forehead. Was she working Skill on him?

  The members of the Club were watching them. Jessica pressed a hand to her mouth. Beside Abi, even Renie had stopped squirming.

  ‘Please don’t,’ Meilyr said. ‘DiDi, stop it.’

  He snatched his hands back, wincing at the abrupt movement, and lowered himself carefully into his chair.

  ‘Where does it go?’ Dina pleaded. ‘It’s like I’m pouring it away into nothingness.’

  ‘That’s because there is nothing, not any more. It’s like there’s a hole inside me, and the wind will just blow through it forever.’

  As Meilyr wiped sweat from his brow, Abi saw the tears overflow from Bodina’s eyes and spill down the Equal’s cheeks. And at last she understood.

  The Equal girl’s refusal to go after Luke this instant was partly because she believed Meilyr would recover, and she wanted him at her side for the rescue. And doubtless partly because she was terrified of confronting the person who’d done this to the man she loved. But mostly, Abi sensed, what had happened to Meilyr was so monumental, so devastating, that no one else’s pain made an impression on Bodina Matravers right now. And despite what that meant for Luke, Abi couldn’t find it within herself to hate the Equal for that.

  A hush fell over the room – until Jenner broke it.

  ‘Life goes on without Skill,’ he said. Beneath the table, his warm fingers gripped Abi’s knee reassuringly. ‘I’d say I’m proof of that, and so are all your Millmoor friends here.’

  ‘Meilyr’s not like you,’ said Dina fiercely. ‘He’s going to get better. You’ve never had Skill. You were born without it.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s true.’

  At the far end of the table, Lady Armeria Tresco rose from her place. Abi had heard her discussed disparagingly by Lord Jardine and Bouda Matravers at Kyneston. She was estranged from her husband, a minor noble who had taken her family’s name on marriage – but who had not, in her judgement, lived up to it. But with her chin held high and intelligence in her keen blue eyes, she looked a woman you didn’t underestimate.

  ‘I remember one time at Kyneston, when you were small, Jenner. You know how Meilyr and your brother Gavar would sometimes play together, being the same age. This was just a few weeks before Silyen was born, and your mother was exhausted, so we were sitting in the sunshine talking and keeping half an eye on the three of you. Then a wail goes up from my boy.’

  Lady Armeria stopped by her son and lowered a hand to the back of his chair.

  ‘Gavar had taken something of his, a toy or a book, and had torn it or broken it. He was such a little brute. So Meilyr was going puce and demanding justice, as we Trescos do.’ She smiled fondly, and the tips of her fingers brushed her son’s cheek. ‘Then you leaned across, Jenner. You couldn’t have been older than four. You picked this thing up and gave it back to Meilyr, and you said – I remember this clearly – "Better now.”’

  ‘And it was fixed?’ Abi blurted, gripped by the story.

  ‘It was fixed. I distinctly remember congratulating Thalia that she had a good-hearted boy who would grow up to use his Skill well.’

  Everyone was quiet. Jenner had removed his hand from Abi’s knee and was sitting very still. Abi chewed her thumbnail to stop herself saying anything more. She remembered Jenner telling her, that time in Kyneston’s library, that Lady Thalia had tales of his infant Skill. He had dismissed them as a mother’s wishful thinking. Surely he couldn’t ignore this?

  But his response wasn’t what Abi was expecting.

  ‘So what happened?’ said Jenner calmly, lacing his hands together on the table. ‘Did Crovan make a social call shortly after and rip out my Skill while no one was looking? I don’t think so. Mother has stories like that too. The time the gardener brought her a bunch of rosebuds cut from the garden, and I made them all bloom. But of course rosebuds open when brought into a warm house. And that toy was never broken. It would simply have been children squabbling.’

  ‘How can you say that?’ Abi said. ‘Why would she make it up? Or your mother? Don’t you want to have been born with Skill?’

  His vehemence was so sudden, so startling, that Abi never saw it coming.

  ‘Want to?’

  Jenner’s hands slammed against the table as he shoved the bench back so hard the others wobbled. Beneath the freckles, his skin had gone the mottled pink Abi was used to seeing on his father and older brother. Never on Jenner, though.

  He stormed away across the hall, this boy she thought she loved, then spun back to face them all accusingly.

  ‘You don’t get it, do you? Just like she doesn’t get it.’

  He pointed at Bodina. His voice was louder now. More like shouting. More like Gavar.

  ‘It’s gone. It went before I even knew what it was. And Meilyr’s right, it isn’t ever coming back. All I’m left with is a gaping hole where it used to be, and all I can do is pretend it never existed. Because if I have any hope, that means I’m looking into that hole, and the last thing its emptiness will swallow – is me.’

  The only sound was the muffled sobbing of Dina Matravers. She’d picked up her dog and buried her face in its fur while her shoulders shook.

  Abi was trembling, but not with fear. She could never be afraid of Jenner, even in the grip of this terrible passion. Because she recognized it for what it was. A self-loathing buried so deep she had never suspected its existence.

  She thought of the first day she’d met him, at Kyneston’s gates. The easy, practised way he had alluded to, and dismissed, his lack of Skill. She remembered the library, where he had shown her the little portrait of Sosigenes Parva, the Skilless child erased from his family line. The bitterness in his voice as he’d pointed out the empty cage, the dead flower, the noteless music – everything that symbolized how his world looked, to those with Skill.

  Now she knew the awful truth. The empty cage, the dead flower, the noteless music. That was how Jenner’s world looked to Jenner himself.

  ‘But you have filled that hole.’

 
It was Meilyr Tresco, taking a few painful steps across to where Jenner stood.

  ‘You have filled it with kindness, and with integrity. Kyneston’s slaves are well treated, under your supervision. You manage the Jardine land to benefit its tenants and workers, more than for your family’s enrichment. You will be an example to me. Your family is the most powerful in the land, yet you are the best of them.’

  Jenner looked at Meilyr, his chest rising and falling as he drew in breath that seemed to pain him.

  ‘I could have been the best of them,’ Jenner said, wiping a hand across his face. ‘And even now there are nights when I lie awake thinking that I would gladly be the worst – cruel like my father, callous like Silyen, reckless like Gavar, all rolled into one – if only I could have Skill.’

  You don’t mean that, Abi wanted to say.

  But of course he meant it. It would have been more surprising if he didn’t. His whole life had been lived in a society that told him he was worthless. Abi sprang to her feet.

  ‘That’s because we’ve got it wrong,’ she cried. ‘No world should prize the merely Skillful over the truly good.’

  ‘It shouldn’t,’ said Jenner. ‘But it does. Do you think you can change it, Abi? Do you, Meilyr? Or how about you, Dina? Because good luck with that.’

  He fixed Abi with a last, terrible look, then strode out of the hall. Abi sat shell-shocked as the great doors of sea-wracked wood slammed behind him.

  At a light touch on her shoulder, she turned.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Meilyr quietly. ‘For allowing Jenner to feel that we all think being Skilless is a fate worse than death. He has lived with that every day of his life. I’ll apologize to him.’

  Abi watched the Highwithel heir for a moment.

  ‘This world, that prizes the Skillful over the good,’ she said, ‘do you really think it can be changed? Does my brother think that, too? Will you tell me what happened to him?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Meilyr Tresco. His eyes were very clear, and something about the way he spoke made Abi shiver. ‘Come to me this afternoon and I will.’

  As Meilyr led his mother and Dina from the hall, the Club members turned to Abi with a tumult of support. They wanted Luke back too, they assured her. Dina would come to her senses soon. Even if she didn’t, the rest of them would do it without her.

  Nobody said a word about Jenner’s exit.

  ‘We shut down Millmoor without Dina,’ Renie said fiercely, and Abi could have hugged her.

  But it would be madness to risk a rescue without at least one Skilled Equal. Dina Matravers had to come round. Because there was no one else.

  Was there?

  Abi needed space to think, so she went where she always thought best: a library. Highwithel’s was magnificent. She curled up in a corner chair, hidden from view, with an age-spotted historical tome on the great estates that contained a chapter on Eilean Dochais. From the old engraved plate illustrations, it looked every bit as beautiful as Highwithel.

  There were two island estates in the whole of Britain, and she and Luke were at them. Abi wasn’t superstitious, but it felt almost like a sign. They were on parallel journeys. Like her, Luke would have crossed water to a Skill-bound castle he could not easily leave. What had he found there? What was happening to her little brother in that awful place?

  Those accusatory, insistent voices started up again, so when Meilyr’s sister arrived to show Abi to the garden, the interruption was a relief.

  The castle garden was a walled oasis of lush flowers and fruit trees, occupying one of Highwithel’s highest courtyards. It was walled on three sides and open to the sea on the fourth, but rather than the gale Abi anticipated with such exposure, barely a breath of wind stirred the surrounding greenery.

  She went to examine the view, only for her legs to stop co-operating when she realized that what she had taken for a terrace was actually a platform, jutting out way too far and stomach-turningly high over nothing but the heaving sea below.

  ‘You can’t fall.’

  Which was just as well, because the unexpected sound of Meilyr’s voice made Abi start. She turned and saw him sat in a low canvas deckchair.

  ‘It’s called the “law ledge” and it’s warded by Skill. My ancestors used to throw wrongdoers off there. Smugglers, slavers, crooked revenue men, pirates, the lot. You could say we Trescos have always had a robust approach to justice.’

  His words were light, but his expression grave. Abi noticed the deep lines at the corner of his eyes. Once, this man had smiled often. But not any more.

  ‘So you’re willing to use any means necessary to dispose of the unjust? Like making a commoner boy kill a man whose politics you don’t agree with?’

  The heir’s face clouded, and he forced himself to stand. Abi wished he wouldn’t. The sight of him struggling made her heart well up with pity, and she needed to be tough.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, that’s not my way. But, Abigail, I’m pretty sure I know what happened to your brother.’

  Abi’s legs went limp beneath her, as if Heir Meilyr had pushed her to the brink of the ledge and forced her to look down.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘There is a man, an Equal: Lord Rix. He shares my belief, and Dina’s, that the slavedays are unjust. But he also nurses a deep hatred of Whittam Jardine. It goes back to their youth. Rix loved a commoner woman, but Whittam – to curry favour with Rix’s father, an influential man – arranged for her to be packed off to a slavetown.

  ‘Rix has been an ally to me and Dina. He works in his own way, on the parliamentary Justice Council, to protect commoner interests. Sometimes he tips us off about arrests, miscarriages of justice. He hides under a veil of contempt for the common folk. He tried to get Gavar Jardine’s mission to Millmoor voted down as beneath an Equal’s dignity, when in reality he was trying to protect Oz and everything we were working towards.’

  Lord Rix. Abi turned the name over in her mind, trying to fit it to a face from the formal announcements at Kyneston’s ball. Then an earlier memory swam up. A tall, thin man smoking a fragrant cigar. Stopping her in the corridor during the debate preparations.

  ‘When we discovered that Luke had family at Kyneston,’ Meilyr continued, ‘Rix suggested we get him transferred so that he could assassinate Lord Whittam. The act would take out Jardine, and make Luke an icon for the unrest we hoped to spark in Millmoor and across the country. But I refused point blank. I wanted Luke to be reunited with you all at Kyneston. Not used like that. Never to pay that price.’

  Horror twisted Abi’s guts, because she had just remembered the conversation she’d had with Rix that day. He had enquired about her brother, the famous Millmoor escapee. He’d asked her to point him out.

  And Abi had told him: a blond boy with an axe, working in the estate grounds.

  Something roiled in her stomach. Guilt. Anger.

  ‘So you think Rix tried to compel Luke to kill Lord Jardine. But something went wrong and the Chancellor was shot instead?’

  ‘Yes. I don’t know what. The gun must have misfired, or someone moved just as he pulled the trigger.’

  And the missing piece in Meilyr’s account clicked into place in Abi’s brain.

  ‘There’s a slave binding at Kyneston. Silyen Jardine lays it on us all at the gate. Jenner told us about it – it means we can’t hurt any of the family. There were four of them together that night: Lord Whittam, Lady Thalia, Euterpe Parva, and the Chancellor. Zelston was the only one who wasn’t family, unprotected by the binding. Even if Rix intended for my brother to shoot Jardine, the only person Luke would have been able to harm was the Chancellor.’

  That was how it had happened. It had to be. It was almost a relief to know. Abi looked at Meilyr Tresco. Surely her own face mirrored the awful, guilty understanding that dawned in his.

  But Meilyr Tresco’s guilt was a useless thing.

  He had known that Lord Rix wanted to use Luke for murder. He should have reported Rix when the man first menti
oned his plan. He should have found and warned Luke the minute he arrived at Kyneston to attend the debate. He should have turned Rix in at Luke’s farce of a trial, never mind that he hadn’t known about the binding, which made it all fit together.

  One missed opportunity after another. What use was his regret now? None at all.

  The anger that had been bubbling away inside Abi erupted.

  ‘You let this happen,’ she heard herself shout, as she grabbed Meilyr’s shoulders and shook him. ‘You practically made it happen.’

  Then something slammed into her and lifted her off her feet. Abi gasped as she was tossed through the air, just as she had once seen Bouda Matravers thrown by Gavar’s Skill. She went down hard against the stone ledge, banging every bone and joint as she hit.

  Shame and fury consumed her. It wasn’t only Meilyr. Even if Rix was ultimately responsible, and Meilyr culpable, Abi had also let Luke down. They were both to blame for the nightmare that had engulfed her little brother.

  And Meilyr was in chronic pain, yet still she had seized and shaken him.

  Abi rolled onto her front to hide her face, hating herself.

  But Meilyr had struck back. He had thrown her through the air. His Skill was returning. Abi sat up, breathing hard. Could this ugly fight have brought about something so wonderful?

  Like a giant’s hand, another surge of Skill shoved her to the brink of the ledge.

  She screamed, but came to a halt just in time. Her head and shoulders were jutting out over the edge of the platform. Whatever Skillful wards Meilyr claimed made this place safe, they weren’t there now. Abi stared numbly down. It was hundreds of feet to where the sea bit and slavered at the rocks below.

  Was this how it would end, with Luke unrescued, her parents unknowing, and her sister alone? With Jenner still wrathful and disappointed with her?

  ‘How dare you? You know the state he’s in.’

  The voice was female and enraged. A hand pulled Abi’s shoulder round and another slapped her so hard that dark spots wheeled before her eyes.