Tarnished City

by Vic James

  The entrance hall was dominated by a diamond-shaped staircase. It bent outward to a mezzanine gallery, then back to a landing directly above, where tall French doors opened onto the balcony. Gavar scooped Libby into his arms and followed his family.

  ‘Our new house,’ he told his daughter, nuzzling her cheek and making her giggle. ‘Draughty old dump.’ The sea-green dress he had picked out for her was adorable, and he’d had Daisy coax her curls into an approximation of neatness with a matching ribbon. Gavar Jardine: infant stylist. He snorted. Maybe he should develop a second career. It looked as though Father’s plans meant he wouldn’t be required for the Chancellorship for several more decades. What was he supposed to do with himself his whole life long?

  Bouda was waiting for him by the French doors, arms folded.

  ‘You’re not bringing her out,’ she said in a low voice, as Gavar boosted Libby up against his shoulder.

  ‘Just stop me.’

  ‘Think about it,’ Bouda persisted. ‘This is about us versus them – showing them that their Equals are their betters. What sort of message will this send?’

  ‘Libby isn’t a message, Bouda. She’s my daughter. And besides, I thought this was about making them love us. Who doesn’t love a little child – except a frigid bitch with a shard of ice where her heart should be?’

  He didn’t stay to hear her retort. Gavar pushed the doors so hard the glass rattled, and strode onto the balcony. Mother and Father were already there, and Gavar went to his place beside them. Silyen was leaning on the balustrade, chin in his hands, studying the crowds below. Jenner was getting into the whole waving thing.

  Libby swiftly got into the waving thing, too. As Gavar kissed her cheek, he felt Bouda step into position on his daughter’s other side. A manicured hand wrapped lightly round Libby’s back, and Bouda turned her perfect face and perfect smile towards their audience. Whatever she was feeling inside – if she felt anything at all – Bouda always knew what face to present in public. The control of the woman was terrifying.

  The cordon had been lifted and, with Security supervision, the people of London were pressing closely around Aston House. As he looked at the sea of faces, Gavar was unpleasantly reminded of the last time he’d stood on a balcony before a massed crowd. It had been in Millmoor late last year, during the riot. A riot fomented, as they’d eventually discovered, by Meilyr Tresco.

  Meilyr was part of the problem that Father was trying to solve.

  Father was part of the problem that Meilyr had been trying to solve.

  Were those really the only two choices?

  He remembered the screaming fat woman, and her friend who’d launched the makeshift spear up at the Overseer. He remembered the hardboiled Security guy ordering open fire. The sight of people falling beneath the bullets, and the sickening realization that they still weren’t going to stop advancing. He remembered his own voice calling ‘No’ and his Skill rolling out across the Millmoor square.

  He’d done the right thing – everyone had said so. He’d not merely prevented bloodshed, he’d also given the commoners a lesson in knowing their place. That was what the slavetown’s Overseer had said. Father, too. Gavar remembered saying something similar to Leah, during their frequent, final arguments – that she should know her place.

  He looked at the daughter Leah had left him. Where was Libby’s place? Up here among the Equals, or down there with the commoners? In this world of only two choices, his little darling belonged nowhere. He stroked her soft, flushed cheek.

  Then thrust her, suddenly, into Bouda’s startled arms as something arced towards them. Gavar lifted his hands and his Skill leapt out of him, just as it had in Millmoor. It caught the object on its upward trajectory, lifted it higher, enveloped it and squeezed.

  The bomb – for that was what it was, Gavar’s brain had finally registered – detonated inside a crackling sphere of his Skill. The sound was muffled but still shocking, and a wave of pressure reverberated through the air. Black smoke churned and billowed, held fast within the confines of his power.

  Screaming started up in the crowd below, but all Gavar could hear was the shrill, terrified wail of his daughter in Bouda’s arms. The bomb had been intended for all of them. It would have caught them unawares, just like the ballroom explosion at Kyneston but far more deadly, their Skillful reflex unable to save them.

  Who had done this? His anger swelled and seemed to detonate just as the bomb had, engulfing him in a red-hot ball of rage. Skill burned in his veins and he screwed up his eyes against the pain of it.

  When he opened them again, everything was different. Slower. Magnified. The sounds that reached his ears were distorted. The only vibrant point in this stretched-out world was Gavar himself.

  His heart was beating frenziedly. Staring down at the crowd, the sensory overload stabbed his skull. He could see lines at the corners of the eyes of a woman stood hundreds of metres away, powdered make-up clogging the creases. Could see that the hairs in the beard of the man who stood next to her were dark at the root, but orange-tipped.

  He hadn’t seen the direction the bomb came from. How far could a man throw? He identified the potential origin radius. Let his awareness expand out from it, like a bomb itself.

  There.

  The man was running now, but there was nothing suspicious about that. Everywhere people were running, and yelling, and calling, the sounds reverberating hollowly in Gavar’s new hearing.

  This man was different. Gavar saw the sweat on his forehead. Watched as a single bead welled up from a single pore and broke, slicking down his temple. He wore light cotton gloves. On one of them were snagged a few green microfibre strands. The green rucksack they were from had been discarded under a tree a few hundred metres away.

  Gavar vaulted the balustrade and dropped from the balcony – an easy fall for an Equal. As his feet hit the ground, Gavar took off after his quarry. The chaos of the crowd didn’t touch him. It was as easy as dodging through a gallery of statues.

  In the centre of Green Park, in no time at all, Gavar caught up.

  He rugby-tackled his target – those years on the Oxford second team hadn’t gone to waste – and felt the man’s legs break as Gavar’s shoulder crunched into him at astonishing speed. The bones shattered in four – six – nine places as he wrapped his arms around both knees. Once the man was down, Gavar punched him once, as gently as he could, because a man with his skull staved in would tell no tales. He heard the brain strike the inside of the man’s skull, then ricochet – the coup and countercoup – and twist in its casing.

  Then Gavar passed out.

  He woke into a drab world. He wondered if he had torn something in his optic nerve, or somehow developed cataracts while he slept. The voices that swirled around him, on the contrary, were too fast, too high and twittering.

  He wiped both hands down his face and groaned. He was in a bed, propped up on a stack of pillows.

  ‘Libby,’ he said, remembering the blast. The shimmering shell of his Skill containing the explosion before it could hurt his child – and everyone else.

  ‘Absolutely fine and waiting for her daddy to wake up from his nap,’ said a firm, small voice. ‘She couldn’t believe Daddy ran so fast, so of course he had to have a lie-down.’

  Gavar focused. Daisy. The commoner kid was standing in the corner of the room. She gave him a massive smile, as if someone had handed her the best present ever.

  That would be himself, in one piece, Gavar realized with astonishment.

  ‘Darling,’ his mother said, from right next to him. ‘You were so brave. The television won’t stop replaying it. You’re London’s hero.’

  ‘And your Skill,’ said another voice. ‘I never knew you could do that.’

  Gavar blinked with surprise. Bouda. The ice queen sat there beside his bed, pale and perfect, and Gavar saw something in her eyes he’d never seen there before – admiration.

  ‘Neither did I,’ he told his wife. ‘I guess I’d never nee
ded to, before.’

  Already it was fading, his memory of that too-vivid world in which he had seen every vein on every leaf and heard the wind ruffling the down of ducklings on the lake. Had he really sensed those things? It must have been adrenaline.

  But it wasn’t, of course. It was Skill. Somehow he had surged far beyond the limits of what his body could ordinarily achieve. It had been spontaneous, involuntary.

  Could he do it again? Deliberately?

  Bouda was talking. He strained to pay attention.

  ‘The man you captured. I had him taken to Westminster straight away for Astrid Halfdan to question. She didn’t need long. He was paid by someone acting on behalf of the Twelve Bore – that’s what they’re calling them, the twelve men I arrested in Lincolnshire a few days ago.

  ‘I think it must have been them behind your Cousin Ragnarr, too. The timing makes sense: Ragnarr as a kind of curtain-raiser, then this. A literal decapitation, followed by a symbolic one. You did very well to catch him, Gavar.’

  And astonishingly, Bouda leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. Not only that, she whispered in his ear.

  ‘Your Skill. Something happened to me, too. In the Bore.’

  She pulled back, squeezing his wrist in a way that was not exactly affectionate, but constituted more voluntary physical contact than she had shown at any point since their wedding.

  ‘Get some sleep,’ Mother murmured, petting his hand. ‘My brave boy.’

  Gavar’s eyes were closing already.

  When he woke for a second time, the light was almost gone. He shook his head to clear it – he felt back to normal again – and only then noticed that there was another visitor at his bedside.

  Silyen was folded up in the armchair, hugging his knees to his chest and watching his brother over the top of them. The pose made him seem even younger than his eighteen years. It was hard to believe that only that morning Gavar had sat in the House of Light watching as Sil was installed as lord of Far Carr.

  His little brother was as dishevelled as usual. There were even twigs in his hair, as if he had reached Aston House not by motorcade, but by crawling through a hedge.

  Gavar peered closer. No, it wasn’t simply a messy tangle, was it? The twigs had been woven together into a circlet. It almost, Gavar thought, resembled a crown.

  He felt a sudden urge to slap some sense into his little brother, because this was lunacy. Crowns were forbidden, obscurely shameful icons. Emblematic of a time when commoners, not Equals, had ruled. During Aristide Jardine’s Harrowing of the Princes, the blood-drunk people of London had rampaged through their city smashing the heads off statues of bygone monarchs. Royal portraits had been slashed, and even the signs of pubs unlucky enough to be named The Crown, The King’s Head or The Queen’s Arms had been pulled down and burned in the street.

  But as he leaned forward to snatch the idiotic twig-crown, Sil’s eyes flicked up to stare right into his, and it was all Gavar could do not to cry out.

  In Silyen’s dark, dark eyes, so like Mother’s, the pupils burned like a hot drop of gold.

  Then he blinked, and the gold dimmed to black.

  ‘You were incredible earlier,’ Sil said. ‘I was so proud of you. How did it feel? Amazing – am I right?’

  Gavar stared at him. There was no denying it.

  ‘You’re right.’

  ‘I knew it. It’s how we are, how we truly are. This is only the beginning. You’ll see.’

  Silyen smiled up into Gavar’s face. His expression was radiant.

  Despite the blankets that still covered him, Gavar’s skin prickled cold at the sight.

  21

  Luke

  ‘Luke?’

  That was his name, wasn’t it? Or it had been. He wasn’t sure. He swayed unsteadily and gripped the edge of the door for support. The sun fell on his face but the breeze was cool.

  ‘Luke!’

  A hand seized his and tried to tug him away from the open doorway. He took a reluctant, stumbling step back.

  ‘Let go of me.’

  He shook himself free from her grasp. Her. The name swam up in his memory. Coira. The girl from the kitchen.

  ‘What are you doing? This is the third night I’ve found you down here with the Last Door open.’

  Her hands came up to his face and turned it from side to side, like he was a dropped pot being checked over for damage. Then she snapped her fingers right by his ear and Luke startled. It sounded like a gun going off.

  A gun. He remembered Jackson here, in this place. And Angel, too. And Abi. The girls had been outside, though. But Jackson had been in here. Then the gun had gone off, and Luke and Coira had put him through the door.

  This door. He turned back to it. But Coira grabbed his hand again and pulled him round to face her.

  ‘What’s out there that’s so fascinating? It’s just the loch, in the middle of the night. Hardly even any stars, it’s so cloudy.’

  What was she talking about? Couldn’t she see what Luke saw? A golden world. Fields of rippling grass. A forest. Mountains.

  And somewhere – he had been straining for a glimpse of them – an eagle. A stag. And a king.

  Luke swayed on his feet. He looked back over his shoulder. The sun was just lifting above the tufted treetops. As a breeze stirred, the leaves flashed and glittered like a dragon’s heap of gold.

  ‘He’s there,’ Luke said. ‘I know he is.’

  ‘Who’s where?’ Coira said angrily. ‘Luke, snap out of this. You’ve not been right since Silyen Jardine came. What did he and Crovan do to you? I heard you scream, just after I took the coffee pot away, and I went straight back, but Devin wouldn’t let me in, even when I kicked him.’

  A high-pitched shriek came from out over the woods. Luke saw a spinning ball of wings: two hawks fighting, their talons locked together. The sun was high and the golden light was mesmerizing. If he stepped just a little closer, it would warm him.

  ‘Luke, for pity’s sake.’ Coira grabbed the back of his shirt and pulled him away. ‘We can’t do this every night. I’ll get a letter to Silyen Jardine somehow. Hide it in the supply boat. Whatever he did to you, he can come back and undo it.’

  ‘I said, leave me alone.’ Luke shook her off again, more brusquely than before.

  Coira glared at him. Why was she so angry about this?

  ‘Fine. It’s not like I can stake out the entrance hall every night waiting for you. This is the Last Door. You know what it does. I was the one who told you, the day you arrived. You’ve even seen it at work. It kills, Luke.’

  Coira’s angular, pale face was flushed. She grabbed the door and swung it wider in invitation.

  ‘But be my guest. Go on.’

  She had quite the temper. Luke found her fierceness captivating.

  But not as captivating as what lay through the door. His gaze slid from her face to the landscape beyond, and she realized he was going to do it just a moment too late to stop him.

  ‘No,’ she gasped, reaching out even as he pushed past her over the threshold.

  Everything went dark, and the fuzziness in Luke’s brain lifted for what must be a final, fractional clarity before he died. What had he been thinking? He knew that the Last Door killed. He’d seen it happen. What did he imagine was through here? There was no golden landscape. No forest. No eagle or stag. Only chilling cold and utter darkness. Was he dead already, and this sensation of a body some last trick of departing consciousness?

  He looked at Coira, standing in the doorway, distraught. He should be crumpled on the threshold by now, just as he’d seen happen to the woman who’d confessed to sabotage. They said that your life flashed before your eyes as you died. Abi had once told him that was all nonsense, from a scientific point of view, but here he was, still thinking. Not yet a lifeless huddle. Was this all taking place in one drawn-out millisecond?

  ‘Luke?’

  It was Coira speaking, wonderingly. And could people talk to you in your near death experience – or
actual death experience, or whatever this was?

  ‘Luke, say something. Are you okay?’

  He stared at her as she scrubbed at her face with the back of her hand. Was she crying? She couldn’t take her eyes off him. He didn’t want to take his eyes off her, but he darted a look back over his shoulder.

  And saw not the golden woodland he had seen when he stood inside the castle, but instead, Loch nan Deur at night. Beyond it, the heather heathland sloped up to the helicopter pad. The water glinted darkly. When he lifted his face he saw that the darkness he had mistaken for death wasn’t dark at all. It was the night sky, full of cloud. A sliver of moon jutted over the battlements.

  ‘I’m here. I mean, I’m outside the castle. And it’s nighttime.’

  ‘And you’re alive!’

  She actually started to laugh, a disbelieving, giddy laugh. It was infectious. Luke laid a hand on the wall and sagged against it. He wasn’t in that golden world. Neither was he dead. He was standing outside Eilean Dochais and it was dark and cold because it was the middle of the night. And he had just walked through the Last Door, which supposedly killed people, and yet he was very much un-killed. Luke was bent over, laughing hysterically.

  He laughed until it hurt, with sheer relief.

  He flopped to the ground, and although the cold of the rock seeped through his trousers, it was blissful to be out in the fresh air. He hadn’t gone beyond the castle walls since he’d arrived, over a month ago. The others had been cooped up much longer – years, some of them.

  Coira had been in there for all that she could remember of her life.

  ‘Aren’t you going to come out?’ he asked her.

  ‘Can I? Should I?’

  ‘I just did.’

  ‘But maybe there’s something special about you.’

  He grinned. ‘I really don’t think so.’

  ‘Well, Crovan and Silyen Jardine might beg to differ.’ ‘So is it a lie, that this door kills?’

  But he knew it couldn’t be that. He had seen the woman step through it and drop dead right on the threshold. Jules had told him that others of the Condemned had done the same – and Coira must have seen them, too. On the day he arrived, even Crovan had confirmed it. It takes your life, as all things that kill do, he had told Luke.