Tarnished City

by Vic James

  Bouda rapped on the door to the suite and felt Skill tingle across her skin like fingertips. The door opened just wide enough for her father-in-law’s head to appear in the gap.

  ‘Bouda,’ he said, raking back that silvering tawny hair and smiling his lion’s smile. ‘Do come in. Imogen was just leaving.’

  The woman on the sofa as Bouda stepped inside did not look like she was just leaving. She wasn’t wearing enough clothes, for a start.

  This wasn’t the first time Bouda had walked in on such a scene. She suspected Whittam did it deliberately. He could easily have fabricated a pretext to keep her waiting outside while the woman dressed. This was Whittam testing her limits, to see if she complained or criticized. Bouda pressed her lips together and said nothing.

  ‘Family business,’ Lord Jardine told the woman, snatching something brightly coloured and flimsy off the floor and tossing it in her direction. She stood, shaking out the blouse and slipping it on.

  ‘Always so busy, Whittam,’ she said, in a little-girl voice. (And how was that supposed to be seductive? Bouda thought, revolted.) ‘Don’t work too hard.’

  ‘Goodbye, Imogen,’ he said, holding the door open. ‘Until next time.’

  The woman paused to blow him a kiss on the threshold before the door was shut firmly in her face. Bouda had placed her. She was the third wife of an elderly Midlands lord – one of the minority who had not backed Lord Jardine’s coup.

  ‘Revenge?’ she said. ‘Or recruitment?’

  Her future father-in-law unstoppered the decanter that stood on a side table.

  ‘Both.’ He poured a generous measure. ‘The best revenge on an enemy is to make him want to be your friend. And the best sight in the world is the expression on his face when you plant a knife in his back anyway.’

  He passed the whisky to Bouda and poured another for himself. They touched glasses and smiled.

  ‘What brought you here, dear daughter? Not long now till I can call you that. My son doesn’t know how lucky he is, winning a prize like you.’

  Whittam reached for Bouda’s jaw and cheek, turning her this way and that like a jeweller looking for a flaw in a diamond. He wouldn’t find one.

  Her father-in-law’s fingers were warm and strong. Bouda wondered where his hands had been, just minutes earlier.

  ‘Of course,’ Lord Whittam continued, ‘Gavar didn’t win you. I did.’

  His fingers squeezed once – Bouda could imagine the red marks they’d leave on her skin – and released.

  ‘I’ve come about the Millmoor boy,’ she said. ‘To ask if Crovan has secured any information of use to our investigations into the slavetowns.’

  Whittam’s mood changed in an instant. He banged down the now-empty glass and went to his desk.

  ‘Nothing substantial,’ he said, sifting the papers and snatching one up. ‘He’s only carried out one interrogation so far because, as I found in the Middle East, the process takes a toll on the subjects. Loss of mental faculties, and so on. I can’t have the prisoner’s mind turned to mush before Crovan has discovered what’s needful.

  ‘So the boy will be examined weekly, which should give us at least a couple of months before he’s a drooling idiot, and Arailt is confident he’ll have answers within that time.’ ‘Perhaps . . .’ Bouda hardly dared say it. Lord Whittam’s moods, like his heir’s, were unpredictable at best. ‘Perhaps it is all as it seems: a boy, radicalized, and sent to kill a Chancellor. No larger conspiracy, no Equal involvement beyond what Meilyr has already confessed.’

  ‘No. The one thing Crovan has found is evidence of Skillful tampering with the boy’s mind. Masking his memories with the Silence, perhaps, or an initial act of compulsion. Maybe both. But it proves that one of our kind was behind this. And when that gun came up, it was pointing at me.’

  Could he be right? Of course, if Whittam was the true target, then the motive could be anything at all. Bouda thought of the woman on the sofa. Any number of cuckolded husbands might want to take a pop at Lord Jardine. Gavar would have been top of her list of suspects, except all the Jardines knew family members could not be harmed by one of their own slaves.

  ‘I had Silyen make an attempt on the boy’s mind, in the hours before the trial. But he found nothing. Perhaps I should have given him longer. But Silyen himself insisted I send the boy to Crovan for further searching, and we all know it isn’t like my youngest son to make a modest assessment of his abilities.’

  More new information. Bouda turned it over, unsure what it meant.

  ‘Perhaps he didn’t want to lose face by failing, so soon after his triumphs in reviving his Aunt Euterpe and rebuilding the East Wing?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  Whittam did not sound convinced. Bouda wasn’t either. But neither did she have another explanation – yet.

  ‘I have not seen Silyen since his adoption,’ Lord Jardine said, refilling his glass. Bouda frowned. It wasn’t even midday. ‘Which is not in itself problematic, although his mother misses him. He has gone to Orpen Mote.’

  ‘Orpen? But that’s a ruin.’

  ‘Not any more. Silyen and his aunt Euterpe are restoring it, apparently. First Kyneston, now Orpen. I thought I was raising a Skillful prodigy. And when he came to Westminster I imagined it might be the beginning of a political career. But it seems my youngest’s true vocation is as a jobbing repairman. What a frustration, the pack of them.’

  Lord Jardine banged down his glass. Refilled it yet again. ‘But not you, eh? My diligent, dutiful daughter.’

  Lord Whittam eyed her. Around his blue-green pupils, the whites of his eyes were pink and bloodshot.

  ‘Tell me, Bouda, what do you think of my children. Are they not all defectives? Gavar a wastrel, Silyen without a shred of responsibility, and Jenner of no use to anyone.’

  It was no more than Bouda thought privately. But she doubted that Lord Jardine would wish to hear her true assessment of his family. Where was this leading? Was her future father-in-law finally about to admit what she had waited all these years to hear – that his son’s wife, and not his son, would make the best head of the family’s next generation?

  ‘It seems unlikely, does it not,’ Whittam continued, gesturing to the portraits that surrounded them, ‘that a family like mine would throw up such specimens. Even Silyen, so powerful, is flawed in so many ways. The boy is ungovernable and unnatural. And yet what a line they come from.’ Lord Whittam took Bouda by the elbow and steered her towards the portrait-lined walls. The first they passed over without comment. Cadmus Parva-Jardine needed no elaboration.

  ‘Ptolemy Jardine,’ Lord Whittam said, pointing to Cadmus’s heir and successor. ‘He entrenched his father and grandfather’s revolution, and ensured that our rule would last forever. His son, Aristide Jardine – Harrower of Princes. He executed not one, but three imposters who claimed to be inheritors of the extinguished throne.’

  Bouda looked at Aristide. His was one of the most handsome faces in an already handsome line. He was almost beautiful. His destruction of the Pretender Princes was similarly flawless.

  Rather than punish those commoners who had backed the first imposter, Aristide had granted a three-day holiday for the working folk of London. The city became one immense fairground. Stalls distributed free pies and beer, sweetmeats and wine. Hawkers gave away ribbons and trinkets; jugglers and fire-breathers performed in the streets, and dogs fought bears in the public byways. At its culmination, drunk on liberty, licence and liquor, the revellers surged into a square where the terrified pretender was tethered naked to a post. The Londoners had torn him apart with their bare hands.

  Seven years and another two pretenders later, when Great Britain had unsurprisingly run out of royal claimants, Aristide instituted the Blood Fair as an annual holiday. The worst offenders against the Equal regime were publicly dispatched during a day of revelry. The grisly tradition had continued until two centuries ago. Bouda had always admired Aristide as the pinnacle of Skillful statecraft.


  They walked past more portraits. More Jardines.

  ‘Jerrold Jardine,’ Whittam said, pausing in front of one showing a smiling young man whose long copper hair was tied back with a knot of sea-green ribbon. ‘Jerrold the Just. Known to you, no doubt, from his friendship with your ancestor Harding Matravers, who first lifted your line from obscurity. A playboy in his youth, Jerrold found greatness in the Chancellorship. There was a time when I imagined Gavar might do likewise. Now I’m not so sure.’

  ‘Why are you telling me all this?’ Bouda asked. She knew these paintings, these faces and histories, as well as those of her own ancestors that hung at Appledurham.

  Then she gasped as her father-in-law’s hand closed tightly around her arm and thrust her back against the canvas. She turned her head away as Lord Whittam put his face close to hers, and found her eyes meeting the knowing, painted gaze of Jerrold.

  ‘I tell you because there is taint in this line,’ Whittam rasped. The alcohol fumes on his breath tingled across Bouda’s skin. ‘Taint that must have come from my wife’s family. My wife is only weakly Skilled. And you know her sister’s degeneracy. Euterpe’s desire to crossbreed her ancient line by marriage to Zelston, her inability to control her emotions, and the violence of her Skill that almost destroyed Kyneston itself.’

  What Euterpe Parva had done the night Chancellor Zelston was killed was something Bouda would never forget. It was grief made into pure power.

  In the moment before the ballroom exploded, Bouda had felt as though everything inside her was being crushed down impossibly small. And the terrifying thing wasn’t that unimaginable pressure; it was the apprehension of what might come next, when that force released its grip. Bouda had felt for a moment as though she might fly apart into a million tiny pieces. And then Kyneston’s East Wing had shattered instead.

  ‘Taint from my wife’s line is in my sons,’ Whittam continued, his other hand coming up to take Bouda’s chin and force her face back towards him. ‘In Gavar, your affianced husband.’

  His words froze Bouda where she stood. She was not married yet. Not mistress of Kyneston. Not yet the mother of heirs. All could still be lost – and with it, Bouda’s hopes of the Chancellor’s Chair.

  ‘What are you saying?’ she asked, hoping it didn’t sound like a plea. ‘Do you no longer wish Gavar to marry me? My line may not be exalted, but it is strong. We are wealthier even than you. I am Skillful; my children will be both beautiful and clever. If what you believe about your line, in this generation, is true, who better than someone like me to breed out that taint?’

  ‘Oh, I’m not talking about you breeding it out,’ said Whittam. He stepped closer, and she felt him against the length of her body. The hand that had been around her arm let go, and began to move lower.

  ‘Gavar is my image,’ said the lord of Kyneston, his mouth against Bouda’s ear. Was it only the alcohol on his breath that made his words sting and scorch? ‘No one will ever know. Let’s make sure that taint is never bred into you.’

  His mouth attacked hers. His knee pushed forward between her legs.

  Bouda felt her Skill coil inside her – the protective reflex held on a trigger, her body uncertain whether or not this assault was a threat.

  Was it?

  She didn’t want Lord Jardine. But then she didn’t want his son, either. She wanted the Chancellorship.

  Whatever it took.

  Like bringing a savage animal to heel, Bouda quelled her body’s Skillful instincts. She let her arms fall to her side. She parted her lips beneath her father-in-law’s hungry mouth.

  All around them, the painted likenesses of dozens of Jardines watched. Proud. Intelligent. Powerful.

  Hers would join them, Bouda thought, as she tipped her head back.

  Even this was worth it.

  10

  Abi

  Meilyr had come back from Westminster without a pardon for Luke, and though Abi had told herself not to get her hopes up, it was hard to contain her dismay.

  He had confronted Rix, who had denied any involvement. And he had spoken to Silyen Jardine.

  ‘Silyen more or less confirmed that Rix worked Skill upon Luke,’ Meilyr said, holding himself carefully in one of the library armchairs as Abi and the Club members huddled around to listen.

  ‘More or less?’ Renie scoffed. ‘What good is that?’

  ‘He has to tell someone,’ Abi insisted. ‘The Equals need to know who’s responsible – and his father wouldn’t be happy to learn that Silyen was withholding something like that.’

  ‘You lived alongside him,’ said Meilyr wearily. ‘Do you think Silyen Jardine has ever been made to do anything in his life? And he’d probably withhold information purposely to make his father unhappy. He sparked all this, you know. He did a deal with Zelston to raise the abolition Proposal, in exchange for waking Euterpe Parva.’

  Abi sat back, astonished.

  Silyen? He would have been . . . well, maybe not the last – his father and Bouda Matravers took that title – but one of the last people she could imagine advocating abolition. Everything about him reeked of belief in his kind’s superiority.

  But that was a mystery for another day.

  ‘Well,’ she said, forcing down her disappointment that there hadn’t been an easier way to do this, one that was reasonable and fair. But if there was one thing she’d learned, it was that the Equals didn’t do fair. ‘It’s just as well we’ve been busy with an alternative while you’ve been away. I’m not saying we give up on Rix. You’ve said he won’t confess willingly, so we should consider pressure, or passing on an anonymous tip-off. But here’s what the rest of us have been doing while you’ve been in London.’

  ‘An escape plan?’

  Something kindled in Meilyr Tresco’s tired eyes, and next to Abi, Renie bounced in her seat to see it. Abi nodded.

  ‘Bodina did the field work, with Oz, Jess and Renie. Asif, Hilda and Tilda and I did the desk research.’

  Which played to everyone’s strengths, but had also saved Abi from working with the woman who had nearly shoved her off a cliff. Jenner had refused, at first, to depart Highwithel and leave the two of them together. But she had made him go back to Kyneston, at least for a little while, so as not to arouse suspicion. She also wanted him to keep an eye on Daisy while Gavar was in London. It had broken her heart to make him swear not to tell Daisy that he knew of her big sister’s whereabouts.

  Bodina pulled out a phone, laid it on the library table, then dialled a pay-as-you-go number. When it crackled into life, she hit the speakerphone, and the voice was unmistakable despite patchy reception.

  ‘Bit gusty,’ bellowed Oz, once a coded greeting had been exchanged. Dina asked whether he was in a suitable place to talk. ‘You bet,’ came the answer, warped by wind shear. ‘I’m looking at it right now. It’s one beautiful place. Tall and dark, in this loch that kinda glitters.’

  There was some indistinct muttering, then Oz boomed out again. ‘Jess says to tell you it matches those photos you sent, Tilda. The satellite ones. Every detail’s the same. He hasn’t had a nice new bridge put in, sadly. But there’s a boat tied up on the far shore, and something like a gate or little dock on the island itself. We’ve not seen anyone use it, though. We’ve not seen anyone outside at all – on the island, or those jutty bits at the top of the castle.’ Another muffled exchange; Oz’s laughter. ‘The battlements.’

  When the call wrapped up, Abi and Dina unfolded their plan to Meilyr, with Renie chiming in excitably, too.

  ‘So Abi’s told you what we’ve discovered about the castle,’ said Dina, when Abi had finished explaining what she’d found in Highwithel’s library. During her sleepless nights, she’d kept the terrors at bay by trawling antiquarian history books for information about the castle layout. ‘But Crovan is the key. He’s the only one at that place with Skill, and we know he has no scruples about using it.’

  ‘So we’ve gotta get Crovan out of there,’ Renie breathed, leaning towards Meilyr. �
��And you’ll never guess who came up with how. Asif.’

  They all turned to where Asif sat, sunk deep into a chair with his knees drawn up. He cringed and waved his hands.

  ‘Don’t all go looking at me. Poorly socialized introvert over here. And it’s a pretty simple plan.’

  ‘Those are the best,’ said Meilyr, smiling.

  It was good. Abi knew. She’d gone over it again and again herself.

  ‘My sister is secretary of the Justice Council,’ Dina said. ‘So it makes sense that she would notify its members if they had an emergency meeting, yes? Tell me if I’m wrong.’ ‘You’re not wrong.’

  As Meilyr listened, he reached out for Dina’s hand, and Abi saw some of the tight unhappiness that had gripped the Equal girl for the past days ease a little. She admired them, this pair, even if she found Dina hard to like. They didn’t have to be doing this – any of it. They had put aside their privilege to combat the abuses perpetrated by their kind. And yet, something inside Abi insisted. How did that sentence end? And yet they have less to lose? That wasn’t right, because Meilyr had already suffered a loss no commoner could ever understand.

  And yet it isn’t their fight? Maybe that was it.

  No matter. They were all in this together now – and Abi needed them, both of them, if they were to rescue Luke.

  ‘I’ll send him a memo from my sister requiring his presence; I know her handwriting. And I’ll telephone, too. It’s easy to make my voice sound the same. Then while Crovan is travelling to London – we can’t wait till he gets there, because that’s when he’ll discover there is no meeting – I’ll go to the castle,’ Dina was saying. ‘I’ll pose as Bouda. Say that the prisoner Hadley is needed for examination by the full council. That’s plausible, because his people will know Crovan has gone to London for a Justice Council session.’

  ‘We know the boat’s there, to get us over to the castle,’ Renie chimed in. ‘And Tilda’s photos show a helicopter pad – the one Crovan uses. ’Cause we’re posing as legit, we can just fly in and out with the Highwithel ’copter. And that’s it.’