Tarnished City

by Vic James

  So what had happened here tonight?

  He calmed, and looked up at Coira, and saw the same question in her eyes. Was this to do with the door, or with him?

  ‘You should go to the boat dock,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow’s a delivery day. You can wait. Hide. From what you’ve told me of your Millmoor adventures, you’ll have no problem concealing yourself on board.’

  ‘I thought you said someone already tried that, and the boat stopped moving – couldn’t make it to the shore?’ ‘That’s true. But no one’s ever walked through the Last Door and lived before. So there’s something different about you, or about your collar. It must be worth a try.’

  ‘It is.’ Luke hesitated. ‘But what about you?’

  They looked at each other. Him outside in darkness; her inside, dimly lit by the light from the entryway’s wall sconces.

  ‘I’m not leaving you behind,’ he said with finality. ‘That’s not what we did in the Club. It’s not what I do.’

  Should he urge her to walk through the Last Door and join him? Could they take that risk? What if she was right, and this really was due to something special about him.

  He thought back to his time in the golden land, his meeting with the king. Those two churning, fiery lights. His thoughts had been too confused, the whole time he’d been in the castle, to fully remember or analyze what he’d seen. But out here his mind was as clear as the night sky. Memories joined up like stars mapped into constellations, and told a story.

  Those fiery forms had been the two Equals. The one lashing savagely against the high wall: that had been Crovan, trying to break down the Silence laid on Luke. The other, the bright one: that must have been Silyen. Connected to him by a fine, golden thread.

  What did it mean? Luke felt around his midriff, as if he’d find the end of the thread still anchored there, to tug on. There was nothing, of course. But as his hands touched the spot, he remembered.

  Silyen at the gate, when Luke had first arrived at Kyneston in the van from Millmoor. That sensation of being disassembled, like one of Dad’s engines. The feeling he’d had of a part being removed – or added.

  Silyen at the gate a second time, when Luke became Crovan’s property. The boy’s glowing eyes as he broke Luke’s binding to Kyneston. His whispered question: You feel it? The skin-crawling sensation that the broken estate bond was nothing compared to the bond that still connected him to the Young Master.

  Was that it? Was Silyen protecting him – even watching over him, somehow? Yet Silyen had sat there as Crovan tore into Luke’s brain. He had let him be Condemned, when he claimed to know who had used him to kill Zelston. That was hardly the behaviour of a protector.

  ‘I think it’s to do with Silyen,’ he said eventually. ‘But I’ve no idea what, or why. Don’t come through. I don’t want you to risk it.’

  ‘You need to get away,’ said Coira. ‘The boat dock is easy to find – it’s on the other side of the island. The boat is kept on the far shore of the loch; when they sail over, they unlock the outer door and unload. We’re not allowed to open the inner door and take everything in until the boat has gone again. They take the castle waste, everything we can’t burn, which is how we smuggled Rhys out last year.

  ‘Like I told you, the boat stopped before it got all the way over. After they circled the loch endlessly trying to reach the shore, Rhys gave himself up. They brought him back and Crovan punished him, but he’s still in one piece. For you, I think it’s a risk worth taking. Maybe whatever Silyen did to you that means you can walk out of the Last Door also means the boat won’t be held back.’

  ‘But I’d be leaving you.’ Luke hovered on the threshold. His fingers went to the collar at his throat, so tight and smooth it was almost like his own flesh. What he wouldn’t give to be free of it. ‘And the others. Some of them desperately need to get away as well: Rhys, Julian, the woman that brute goes after. Even Lavinia. What she did was criminal, but she doesn’t deserve to be left here, terrorized by Blake.’ Which was when Luke saw Crovan stride up behind Coira and grab her hair.

  ‘What is this?’ the lord of Eilean Dochais barked. He looked out of the door and saw Luke. ‘Hadley. How?’ ‘Luke,’ Coira called. ‘Go! Get away!’

  But where could he go? How could he get away? The boat was still on the other side of the loch, and he had no way of getting to it across the waters of Loch nan Deur.

  ‘What have you done?’ Crovan demanded, and when Coira didn’t reply he backhanded her, and she reeled with the force of his blow.

  Instinct took over, and Luke rushed to her – only to slam against an open doorway that was somehow as closed to him as if the door was shut. He could see them, he could hear them, he simply couldn’t cross over to them.

  Crovan spared him a glance.

  ‘Fool. It only goes one way.’

  Only goes one way. Crovan had told him that when he first arrived here. Both doors did. You went in the Door of Hours, and out of the Last Door. What else? What else had Crovan said? Something important.

  Coira stood there, panting, glaring at their master. Her pale grey eyes flashed contempt. Crovan stared owlishly back, his eyes naked without his glasses. He had obviously risen from his bed to come and confront them, because he wore a belted dressing gown thrown over his trousers. His immaculate hair stuck up in places.

  Luke was just about to hurry back through the Door of Hours to put himself between them, because the expression on Crovan’s face boded nothing good, when he saw it.

  He thought at first that he was mistaken. Or imagining it. But looking at the pair of them facing each other, he wondered only that he’d never seen it before.

  It was the eyes, he realized. He had never seen Crovan’s eyes unshielded by his creepy glasses.

  They were the same cool grey as Coira’s.

  You wouldn’t make the connection without a prior clue. Their hair colour was different; her face more angular. But with the knowledge he now had, Luke could see resemblances between Coira and this man – who must surely be her father.

  Luke almost blurted out his discovery, to throw it in Crovan’s face, this secret the man had concealed so that not even his own child knew it. But then his thoughts were racing ahead. Out here, in the crisp air, his brain felt preternaturally acute.

  He remembered Jackson standing in this entryway, saying how the Crovans had been hostage-keepers, how someone who entered could only leave with the say-so of the lord or heir.

  Coira’s angry words to him, just minutes ago: Be my guest. Go on.

  She was a Crovan. And she had given him permission to leave.

  Who had Coira’s mother been? Some commoner slave? One of the Condemned? Luke couldn’t imagine any good scenario. Perhaps rape had been part of it. Perhaps murder.

  But one thing was clear – if Crovan knew that he knew, Luke would never be let near the door again. He’d be locked up, and perhaps Coira would be, too. Whereas if he could just keep this knowledge from Crovan, they’d be able to try again another night, together. As a child of the castle, Coira must be able to leave by the same door she allowed others to pass through. Perhaps the boat might respond to her, too.

  They wouldn’t have time to co-ordinate it for tomorrow. But in a week, they could be on the boat, across the loch – and, just maybe, away to freedom. Coira could give them all permission to leave, all the Condemned. As the supply boat approached the castle, they could make a break through the door and be waiting for it, ready to overpower the crew and turn the vessel straight back round again.

  ‘Hadley,’ Crovan said, narrowing his eyes at Luke. ‘Astonishingly, activity seems to be occurring in that brain of yours.’

  ‘I’ve worked it out,’ Luke announced. ‘I’ve worked out how it happened, because I’m not supposed to be able to get out of this door, am I? I should be a very dead doornail right now. Well, you didn’t think that someone would help me do it, did you?’

  ‘And who would that be?’

  ‘Silyen Jardine,
of course. He’s interested in what happens to me, I can tell. I had this sense, when he was here, that he wanted to help me. And I was right. He does. She tried to stop me, but I knew it would be fine. And it was.’ ‘Is this correct?’

  Crovan turned to Coira, who scowled up at him.

  ‘Of course I tried to stop him. It kills people; I know that, he knows that. But he wouldn’t listen.’

  ‘So you told him to go ahead and do it anyway?’

  Luke had to prevent his fist clenching in triumph. Crovan was working through the same scenario. His theory had to be correct.

  Coira nodded, sullenly.

  ‘Such a good friend you are,’ Crovan sneered. ‘Well, yes, it seems that Silyen’s meddling may have produced a surprise for all of us. But it won’t be anything I can’t take care of. Now come back inside, Hadley. There’s nothing for you out there beyond a nice breath of fresh air – presuming that Bodina Matravers hasn’t come back for you in my boat. But I didn’t get the impression she’ll be doing that, did you? No one will be coming for you, Luke.’

  Crovan curled his fingers almost disdainfully, and Luke felt a warmth in the collar around his neck. He’d been to celebrate prematurely, he realized. The man could still do anything he wanted to him. And while he had misdirected Crovan for now, he still had no reliable way off this island.

  Luke’s heart raced as he realized the Equal might take any memory of this night from him before he’d even had a chance to tell Coira. And there was no use shouting it out to her here and now – Crovan would simply take the knowledge from her, too.

  ‘You don’t need to make me,’ he said. ‘I’m coming.’

  He moved towards the Door of Hours. As soon as he was out of their sight line he crouched and hunted around on the ground. It took a moment to find a shard sharp enough for his purposes. He dug it into the flesh of his palm and bit his tongue as he carved as deep as he could bear. There was no time for more than the two cuts, and he winced as he dragged the sharp stone tip through his skin.

  ‘Hadley?’

  Crovan’s voice was imperious.

  ‘The door handle,’ Luke shot back, quickly licking his palm clean of blood. ‘Can’t see . . . ah, I remember, there isn’t one.’

  He pushed on the Door of Hours and it swung inward. Crovan stood there, smiling beneath his thin moustache.

  ‘Welcome back,’ he said.

  Luke stepped inside and a sensation like drunkenness came over him, clouding his brain. The castle’s insidious influence.

  Not entirely, though. He felt slow. Groggy. But the contours of what he’d learned were still there. Crovan. Coira. He looked between the two of them, trying to fix it in his mind. He flexed his left hand, and the pain in his palm reassured him that he had marked himself with the truth.

  ‘Well, I’d better take care of what Silyen did to let you out of the door,’ Crovan said, advancing. ‘I can’t have you slipping out again.’

  Which didn’t make sense. Silyen had done nothing about the door. Crovan knew that.

  But he thought that was what Luke believed.

  Then the first strike hit him and Luke’s body became a lightning rod for pain. He howled as it sent him to the ground.

  It was fake, he realized. Not the pain, but its purpose. Crovan would make him suffer, so Luke would believe he was burning away some gift from Silyen Jardine that had helped him open the door. But it was all a sham.

  Luke was chilled by his own insight. He was thinking like them now. Would it help? Dare he dream that he could outsmart them? He’d have to hope so, because he couldn’t out-anything-else them, that was for sure.

  The second jolt of pain was so excruciating his brain nearly shorted. He jackknifed involuntarily onto his side, then rolled to lie face down so he felt less vulnerable.

  Luke rested his forehead against the flagstones of the entryway, trying to control his breathing and his runaway heart. He let his eyes drift out of focus as he took in the meandering fissures of the slate. Jackson had lain more or less here, his skull blown away, his blood and brains leaking out.

  There aren’t any winners in our game, he remembered the Doc saying, a lifetime ago, as they’d talked in the Millmoor back office. Not till it all ends.

  Please let it end soon. Please.

  Tears ran down Luke’s face: for Jackson and for Angel. For Coira, whose father was a man who had held her captive her entire life, but who didn’t know it yet. For his sisters and parents, wherever they were (and please let that be somewhere safe).

  For himself.

  The third strike made him scream, and a shameful hot wetness bloomed beneath him. Not even Kessler and his tasers had managed that.

  ‘That should do it,’ said Crovan gloatingly, coming to stand over him.

  The tassel of Crovan’s dressing gown cord brushed against Luke’s face, and to his sensitized nerves, it burned. Luke wished he’d kept the sharp stone so he could have jammed it into the man’s ankle, maybe found a juicy vein that would drain him out like a pulled bath plug, faster than his Equal body could repair itself.

  ‘Whatever Silyen did to you, it won’t work again. So stay away from that door, Hadley. Death is a high price to pay for a breath of fresh air.’

  The Equal crouched down and grabbed Luke’s collar, hauling his head up. His other hand he splayed barely an inch from Luke’s face, those fingers poised to plunge into eye sockets or pinch shut mouth and nostrils. He turned his head this way and that, assessing, like a hawk inspecting some furry scrap between its claws.

  ‘I’ll leave you with the memory of this evening so you can learn your lesson. As your canine friend used to complain: I let you keep the bad ones.’

  Crovan pulled back, letting Luke drop to the floor.

  ‘Get him cleaned up,’ the Equal told Coira, as he stepped disdainfully over Luke’s slumped form. ‘Then get to bed. I’ll have no more of these night-time disturbances. The next time he tries to leave, he dies – and I know you wouldn’t want that. Caring for someone doesn’t mean you can save them, girl. It just means it hurts more when they don’t save themselves.’

  With a billow of his dressing gown, the lord of Eilean Dochais was gone.

  Luke lay there, boneless and spent. He didn’t protest as Coira rolled him over gently and helped him sit up, even though it revealed his soaked trousers. He hung his head, mortified at the reek of urine.

  But also exultant. He had deceived Crovan, and he still had the terrible knowledge safe in his head. It was knowledge that they could do something with, together, though he wasn’t sure what.

  Coira had turned his hand over and was inspecting his palm.

  ‘Your nails must have done this,’ she said wonderingly, her fingertips lightly tracing the bloody crescents there. ‘You clenched your fists so hard you cut yourself.’

  Luke looked down at what he had gouged: C C

  Coira Crovan.

  He closed his palm around her fingers, held them there a moment. He could feel her pulse beat softly against his wounds.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘There’s something I need to tell you.’

  22

  Abi

  ‘Jardine’s good,’ said Jon Faiers, looking around the room of the Dalston safe house where they were all gathered. ‘The Aston House bomb that’s been pinned on Twelve Bore sympathizers – that is, us. It was his idea.’

  ‘Why would you put your family at risk like that?’ asked Renie’s uncle Wesley.

  ‘There never was any risk,’ Abi said, immediately grasping what Jon was saying. ‘He knew it was coming and would have destroyed it. It’s just that Gavar reacted first, right?’

  ‘But why make yourself look unpopular?’ Renie piped up, from where she was curled on the arm of the sofa at her uncle’s side.

  ‘They made themselves look strong,’ Abi said, unwillingly awestruck by Jardine’s cunning. ‘Seriously. Gavar caught a bomb mid-air, blew it up harmlessly, then jumped off a balcony and sprinted superhumanly fast into a crow
d of thousands and took down the person who did it. Even I impressed, and I know he’s actually an alcoholic, misogynistic jerk. How on earth did you find that out, Jon?’

  Faiers grimaced.

  ‘Heir Bouda’s interrogation team is headed by a terrifying woman named Astrid Halfdan. Seems that the first person they picked up – the one Gavar caught – told her he’d been paid to do it by a man who identified himself as a Twelve Bore sympathizer. Which seems an unnecessary detail to mention. They pulled that man in, too, at which point Jardine turns up in the office and shuts down the inquiry by revealing it was all his handiwork. No one was ever meant to catch the first guy and investigate.

  ‘Heir Bouda wasn’t pleased. They had a row about it, in fact. Seems he’d told the family in advance that there would be a “demonstration of Skill”, but she and Gavar had presumed that meant the stunt with the gate.’

  Wes puffed his cheeks and exhaled – an expression of disbelief that Abi had learned to recognize over the past two days. She had come to like this guy and his comrades. Tough, matter-of-fact men who had seen one too many unnecessary accidents and avoidable fatalities. Men who had learned the hard way how little care the Equals had for their slaves.

  The stories they’d shared with Abi had appalled her. It was strange, now she thought about it, how reticent those who had completed their slavedays were to speak of the experience.

  Was that because those years were too depressing, or even too traumatic, to recall? Was it out of a desire to shield those who had yet to do their days from the knowledge of how bad it was? Or simply because that decade of your life was inevitable, and so not worth complaining about? ‘Mustn’t grumble,’ Nan would say, whenever something rubbish happened, like a week of rain on her one annual holiday. Had she thought the same about her slavedays?

  Was that what kept everyone quiet?

  Or was it fear?

  Fear of the Equals and their mysterious Skill. Fear of their enforcers, Security. In the everyday world, Security were just regular police, keeping the peace. But in the worktowns, she’d heard from Renie and others, they acted as though they were the lords and masters. And perhaps fear of them persisted long after your days were done, meaning no one dared complain too loudly.