Tarnished City

by Vic James

  ‘Bodina’s here,’ he said to Father. ‘Do excuse me. I must make sure she knows where to go – she won’t have much time to get ready.’

  It was a convenient pretext. Dina Matravers was so beautiful it wasn’t like she’d need much in the way of hair styling and make-up. Except as Gavar made his way through the throng, brushing aside greetings and well-wishes, he realized that no make-up on earth would conceal the transformation grief had worked on Bodina.

  ‘Dina,’ he said, touching her elbow. ‘You made it.’

  She turned from his brother, surprised. Jenner unsubtly tucked the thing in his hand – had it been a letter? – inside his waistcoat, and made his exit.

  Gavar was shocked by the girl’s appearance. She was as lovely as ever. But something had changed in her that had nothing to do with looks. The brightness had gone from her eyes. Even the pug in her arms was subdued.

  Her sorrow touched something in him he’d not known was there.

  ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ he said. ‘So sorry.’

  Was it empathy? Understanding, at least. Poor Gavar Jardine, heir of Kyneston, envied by all but understood by none. Well, now he and Dina had this in common: they had both lost the only person they had ever truly loved. He had shot his beloved, and hers had jumped off a cliff, not even her love enough to keep him in a world without Skill.

  ‘Yes,’ said Dina, looking him in the eye. ‘Yes, I really think you are.’

  Then she laid her face against his chest and sobbed her heart out.

  They drew a few curious stares. Gavar wrapped his arms round her to shield her from prying eyes and shot his most quelling glare at the spectators.

  At last she stilled. He heard a bubbling inhalation of snot as Dina looked up, tears sheening her cheeks.

  ‘Well, that was unexpected. Thank you.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  Pug under one arm, she rummaged awkwardly in her handbag for a tissue.

  ‘I didn’t realize you were friendly with Jenner,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, you know.’ When Dina finished wiping her face it was her familiar self looking back at Gavar. Bright-eyed. Smiling. ‘Mutual acquaintances. I’d better get to my sis. Don’t want to spoil your big day. She’s taken over the Small Solar, right?’

  Gavar nodded, and Dina was off, slipping easily through the press of people, sympathetic murmurs following in her wake.

  Two hours and numerous glasses of champagne later, Gavar Jardine was a married man.

  It took a lot of alcohol to have much effect on an Equal. Gavar knew where that threshold was and had ensured he’d surpassed it by the time he met his blushing bride at the altar. (And the only thing on earth capable of making Bouda Matravers blush, he thought, was a pot of pink pigment, generously applied.)

  Bouda was clad in white, drawing a train of lace and feathers behind her like some albino peacock. With her ice-blonde hair, the effect was striking, and Gavar was drunk enough to think he might be capable of fulfilling his marital duties after all. But as he leaned in for the obligatory kiss, he saw the look in his bride’s eye. The predatory gleam. The hunter’s triumph. Bouda was more hawk than peacock.

  With the exchange of vows came the moment Gavar had been steeling himself for, as their Skill touched and flared. He sensed Bouda at the very core of him, as if she had speared a manicured nail deep into the meat of his heart. Then it was over. He was grateful when she turned her back on him for the mantling.

  Across her shoulders was a blue velvet cape, with the Matravers arms couched in silverwork. The device had been revised by her ancestor Harding the Voyager, and depicted a ship under sail. Iter pervenimus was embroidered beneath it. I voyage to arrive.

  His wife had certainly arrived now, Gavar thought, as he removed the cape and replaced it with one of gold, bearing the Jardine salamander in scarlet. When they turned together for the applause of their Equals, her expression was nothing short of exultant.

  The banquet that followed was every bit as excruciating as Gavar had imagined. The glass vastness of the East Wing reeked of a nauseating blend of flowers and cooked meat. It was filled from end to end with circular tables for their hundreds of guests, with the newly-weds in the centre of an elevated top table. His father sat on his wife’s other side. In lieu of his wife’s mother – killed years ago now in an industrial accident at a BB plant that could have been sabotage – Bodina was seated next to Gavar.

  The girl was almost defiantly chirpy. To anyone who’d not felt the way grief had convulsed her body earlier, she might seem little altered from her normal self. A touch subdued, as was to be expected. But essentially the same, sparkly DiDi Matravers.

  Stinker the pug had acquired a white bow tie, and Dina was holding it up to pose for photographs. Gavar recalled the memorable occasion the dog had somehow got shut in with him and Father in the Matravers’ Mayfair drawing room, and devoutly hoped that Dina was watching what it was eating.

  Her bridesmaid’s speech was something of a surprise.

  ‘We’re here to celebrate love,’ Dina began, rising to her feet in shoes so high-heeled the mere act of standing defied physics.

  Before he could stop himself, Gavar rolled his eyes. The weddings guests, now equally intoxicated, laughed good-naturedly. They’d all enjoyed seeing Gavar the playboy finally being made an honest man.

  ‘Love comes in many forms,’ Dina continued, after the laughter had died down. ‘That between partners, between siblings, between parents and children. All these are expected. Chosen. Sanctioned.’

  A few people stirred at that. ‘Sanctioned’ wasn’t the sort of word you’d expect to hear from DiDi.

  ‘As you’ll all know, earlier this week I lost the man I love, Meilyr Tresco. I’ll never be sitting at a table like this with him beside me, as my sister and Gavar are here.’

  More restlessness from the guests. It was in extremely poor taste to be talking about Meilyr’s suicide on such an occasion. On Gavar’s other side, his bride’s body stiffened as Bouda sat upright and turned to watch her sister.

  ‘Meilyr held views that weren’t widely appreciated. Certainly not with my sister’s new family. But all he really believed in was love.

  ‘Not just love for those we know and have chosen, but for those we’ve never met and haven’t chosen. The unSkilled. Commoners.

  ‘As we sit in this beautiful place, enjoying the privileges of our position, we shouldn’t forget to have love in our hearts also for the less fortunate. In fact, we forget at our peril our shared humanity.

  ‘My sister and her husband embark upon a great enterprise. The creation of a new family. The next generation of this dynasty that first brought our kind to power. But that’s not the only task ahead of them.

  ‘They’ve been asked to purge the slavetowns. The goal is to keep the common people in line. To uphold our way of life. The belief is that this will require force. Repression. But to you, Bouda, and to you, Gavar, I say one thing: this, also, can be done with love.’

  Bodina Matravers lifted her glass in salute towards bride and groom, then tipped her head back and drank. On the table in front of her, Stinker cavorted.

  The wedding reception sat in excruciating silence.

  It was broken by a loud and heavy handclap. Joined reluctantly by a few more. Then a smattering more besides.

  Bodina Matravers sat down. Gavar became aware of his wife’s hand curled around his wrist. Her manicured nails dug into the thin skin where the veins ran near the surface.

  ‘Stop that,’ she commanded.

  Gavar looked down.

  The noisiest applause had been his.

  He’d never grasped why it took months of planning for a single day’s event. But as one petal-and-confetti strewn stunt after another unfolded, Gavar began to comprehend.

  To cover the awkwardness of Dina’s speech, Mother had cued up the string quartet early, and over coffee and petits fours something like a normal mood had resumed. Next, he and Bouda toured the reception, stoppin
g at every table to exchange platitudes and receive congratulations.

  ‘Nice of your brother and aunt to make the effort,’ said Bouda, as they neared the most obscurely positioned tables and saw the two empty seats that had been allocated to Silyen and Aunty Terpy.

  ‘Best wedding gift they could give us,’ Gavar murmured. ‘Or would you have preferred a finale like the one they laid on the last time we should have been getting married?’

  Bouda pressed her lips together and said nothing.

  Everywhere they went, photographs were taken. Outside on the parterre, Gavar stood to one side as the photographer fussed to ensure she captured the moment when Bouda’s bouquet went airborne above a pack of giggling women. He saw Dina also off to one side, watching.

  He had no idea where the speech she’d delivered earlier had come from. He would almost suspect Meilyr of having written it. Except Meilyr was dead.

  A sudden, intense sadness gripped him. Life wasn’t meant to be like this, for any of them.

  Maybe that was why he went to the kitchens to fetch Libby. There was one thing in his life that was perfect and that he wasn’t ashamed of, and when he was lord of Kyneston no one would shut her away, so why shouldn’t they see her now?

  He hoisted his daughter onto his shoulders and bore her outside like a battle standard. Beneath the golden marquee, as twilight drew in, the Equals of Great Britain were dancing. On the lawns, children of sufficiently exalted lineage to have been invited were running and laughing, playing tag or croquet, or wrestling on the grass.

  Heads began to turn as Gavar set his daughter down in the middle of them.

  Libby toddled into the croquet, squatting to try and pick up a ball that was too large and too heavy for her tiny hands. A smiling boy bent down and offered it to her.

  There was a commotion in the marquee. A woman pushed her way out and grasped the boy by the hand, hauling him up.

  ‘Bedtime, Aubrey. Now.’

  Libby wailed as her companion was dragged away, protesting.

  For a brief moment, Gavar was tempted to go after the woman, to grab her by the hair and force her to her knees for an apology. He could feel his Skill smouldering and clenched his fists. He turned to the onlookers, daring another parent to walk past him to remove their child.

  Then his wife was there in his face.

  ‘Are you trying to shame me? First my sister, now you. Am I not allowed one day? Take her back to the kitchen.’

  ‘No,’ said Gavar. ‘Why should I? She is mine, and Kyneston will be mine, and by the vows we took today you are now also mine and will obey me.’

  ‘And you still obey the law of this land. And that will soon clear up any confusion about half-breeds like that child and where they truly belong.’

  There was a roaring in Gavar’s ears. He shook his head to clear it. It didn’t diminish.

  ‘Don’t try that one. The Bill of Succession is just an empty threat of Father’s, to keep me in line.’

  ‘On the contrary.’ Bouda’s smile was so cold you could almost see her lips icing over. ‘Your father and I have just completed the draft. It tidies up any ambiguity about the status of mixed offspring. They’re to be removed from parental custody and sent to the UMUS homes in the slavetowns. We can’t have anyone thinking they’re something special, when actually they’re an abomination that shouldn’t exist.’

  Gavar’s anger detonated. For a moment, his vision flared so red he was unable to see. The roaring grew louder. His face scorched.

  His vision cleared.

  The cloth-of-gold marquee had gone up like a fireball.

  14

  Abi

  ‘Gavar sent the marquee up in flames,’ Dina said. ‘Pandemonium everywhere. So I doubt my poor sister had the wedding night she wanted.’

  The Club members were huddled around the vast hearth in Highwithel’s hall. Although it was now late May, the fire was crackling. They all needed its cheeriness – for comfort, more than warmth.

  ‘And it’s got me thinking,’ Dina said. ‘We need to change. Isolated protests won’t achieve a thing. The people now in charge of the country – including my sister – won’t listen. And as we saw in Millmoor, forceful action inside the slavetowns is easily contained and quashed.’

  Abi saw Renie nod her head and hug her knees a little tighter to her chest. She’d seen things no child should ever witness, Abi was sure of it.

  ‘What are you saying, Bodina?’ Hilda asked, when the Equal girl didn’t elaborate.

  ‘Well, she’s not saying banners and marching in the , is she?’ said Jessica tartly. The woman looked at Dina. The toll of what had happened in the past week was evident in both their faces, sleeplessness and grief etching lines and smudging shadows. ‘You’re talking terrorism.’

  Dina hesitated, and for a moment Abi thought she was going to pull back from a word like that. But she didn’t.

  ‘If you want to use that word, yes, I am.’

  Abi sat back in her seat, her thoughts turbulent. Alongside Jess, Oz let out a sound neither of agreement nor dissent – more a sigh than anything. Were they ready for this, any of them? Was Dina in any fit state to be making decisions of this scale?

  ‘Is that what you want?’ Abi asked Lady Armeria, who was sat with them. ‘Is that what you want your son’s legacy to be?’

  ‘Meilyr always favoured peaceful protest,’ the Equal said, looking between Abi and Dina. ‘However, my son is now dead.’

  They had followed Crovan’s directive on representing Meilyr’s death to the outside world as suicide. If the true story of events at Eilean Dochais came out, the depth of Dina’s sympathies would be revealed, and her chance of ever gleaning anything useful from her sister would be lost. But they had told Meilyr’s mother the truth.

  ‘And that’s exactly why no one should be making any decisions right now,’ Abi protested. ‘We’re in shock, especially you, Bodina. You won’t honour Meilyr’s death by going against what he stood for.’

  ‘How dare you.’ Bodina leapt from her seat. In the hearth the flames soared, and kindling popped like a gun going off. Abi winced to hear it. ‘You never even knew him. Your brother is the reason Meilyr is dead.’

  ‘You and Meilyr are the reason Luke is in that monstrous place at all.’

  ‘Actually,’ said a new voice behind them, ‘Whittam Jardine and the centuries of Equal privilege he stands for are the reason for all of it. But yeah, don’t mind me, carry on fighting.’

  The newcomer came closer. Abi stared in astonishment. She recognized this woman from the television coverage of Zelston’s state funeral. She was athletically built, her hair half shaved. Piercings through ear, nose and brow gleamed against her dark skin.

  The late Chancellor’s niece. Heir Midsummer Zelston. ‘You look terrible,’ she said to Dina. ‘But I guess you’ve got a reason. Come here.’

  Midsummer opened her arms, and Dina went over and collapsed into them. Midsummer enfolded her, and held Dina as she cried and cried. Abi felt her anger leaching away as she watched. It was a miracle any of them were functioning, given the recent succession of events: the ballroom explosion, Luke’s trial and Meilyr’s punishment, and then the disaster at Eilean Dochais. Abi knew the indicators of post-traumatic stress disorder. She could identify most of them in herself, and felt sure it would be the same for the others.

  ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t see you earlier,’ Midsummer said, stroking Dina’s blonde hair as she quieted. ‘Funnily enough, me and my girl weren’t on the guest list for your sister’s wedding. But I got your message, and here I am. So what can I do, besides being a human-size handkerchief for you to wipe your snotty, pretty little nose on?’

  Even Dina sputtered at that. Wiping her nose with the back of her hand instead, she took her friend by the elbow and turned her towards the circle of expectant faces around the hearth.

  ‘Everyone, this is Heir Midsummer Zelston, a friend of mine and Meilyr’s. I’ve asked her to join us because she’s been part o
f this in her own way, up in Lincolnshire.’

  Lincolnshire. Abi knew that the Zelston seat was Lindum – one of Britain’s more extraordinary great houses. It was a sprawling oddity, built around various Roman remains. The vaulting red-brick structure that formed Lindum’s hall had been an immense bathhouse, and mosaics still covered its floor.

  The Zelstons traced descent from a consul posted to Britain by Rome’s African emperor, Septimius. The lineage gave them the oldest pedigree of any family in Britain, though Abi had more than once heard Lord Whittam pouring scorn on it. His objections evidently stemmed from personal animosity to Zelston. And also blatant racial prejudice – given a vile comment Abi once heard him utter about the Chancellor’s doomed love affair with Euterpe Parva.

  Dina had almost finished naming each of the Club members for Midsummer, and as her turn approached, Abi froze. There was only one connection she and Midsummer had in common: her brother had killed the Equal’s uncle.

  ‘And this is Abigail Hadley,’ Dina said. ‘The sister of Luke Hadley. The Millmoor boy.’

  Should Abi apologize? Would that appear to concede Luke’s guilt? But to ignore it would be worse, surely?

  Unexpectedly, Midsummer laughed, a frank, throaty sound.

  ‘You’re tying yourself in knots there, Abigail. There’s no need. I know what your brother was Condemned for. I know the price Meilyr paid for insisting that he didn’t do it. And I know that Meilyr had a theory that my uncle wasn’t even the target in the first place. What a mess, eh?’

  Abi could have fallen over with relief.

  ‘I don’t believe my brother was in any way responsible,’ she said. ‘But I know I need to prove that. I want to prove it to everyone, but to you especially. I’m sorry for your loss.’ Midsummer’s gaze was disconcertingly direct. Abi sorted through what she knew about this woman, not much older than herself. You never saw Midsummer Zelston in the magazines that papped Dina and her sister. She was a graduate student, Abi thought – and not at one of the Oxford or Cambridge colleges attended by almost all Equals. In Brighton, wasn’t it? And she had a commoner girlfriend.