Tarnished City

by Vic James

  The statue was of King James I, father of the Last King. He had gifted the original Aston House to one of his numerous favourites. If you didn’t already know his identity, though, you’d have a hard time guessing, because the statue’s face had long ago been chiselled off.

  ‘He was that ugly, eh?’ Renie asked, hands on her narrow hips.

  ‘He was no looker,’ Abi agreed. ‘But that’s not why they gave him a facelift. Most of the royal statues were destroyed, but this one was left up as a reminder of the degeneracy of the monarchs. James actually wrote a book saying kings ruled by divine right – authorized by God. You can imagine what the Equals thought of that. But we’d better be quick.’

  Abi shrugged off the backpack she carried and pulled out its contents, one wrapped around the other. The lighter one she passed to Renie, who had already vaulted onto the plinth and was preparing to shimmy up the king’s stockinged legs.

  Abi unfolded the sheet. Okay, so the slogan was in Latin, but everyone knew its meaning. Sic semper tyrannis – Thus always to tyrants. She fastened it securely to the railings. Above her, Renie was tying a knot tight around the curls of the king’s stone wig.

  The rumble and crunch of an explosion made them both look up. Less than half a mile away, the Queen’s Chapel had just been reduced to rubble. A plume of powdery grey smoke rose into the air, its visibility reminding Abi that dawn was fast approaching. As they watched, the column of cloud was replaced by a gout of flame – the chapel’s annihilation would soon be complete.

  ‘Hurry,’ said Abi. ‘There’ll be Security all over the place.’

  ‘There you go.’ Renie straightened the mask. Over the ruined visage of King James I now lay a ruddy-cheeked plaster-of-Paris mask of Chancellor Whittam Jardine. It was disturbingly lifelike, crafted by one of the men from the Bore who’d once had a talent for art.

  ‘Much more handsome. How about a kiss from a filthy mongrel brat, eh?’ Renie planted a smacker on the mask’s cheek and cackled scornfully. Then from her vantage point, the kid twisted to look over her shoulder.

  Right at Aston House.

  She peered down at Abi.

  ‘All this is just practice for the main event, right? Them.’

  Abi gazed at the blank facade of Aston House – this building that Jardine had reclaimed solely as a rebuke to the common folk. The windows at the north end shone with reflected flame from the burning ruins of the chapel. Behind one of them, perhaps, Daisy was sleeping.

  Jenner, too.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, not meeting Renie’s eye. ‘Them.’

  23

  Bouda

  ‘The resemblance is uncanny,’ said Faiers, setting a spread of photographs and a takeaway coffee on Heir Bouda’s desk.

  Bouda sifted through the pictures. Onto the faceless statue had been tied a wretchedly convincing mask of Whittam. The characteristics were exaggerated – his skin wasn’t that pink, nor his hair so orange; his eyes not quite so piggy – but it was instantly recognizable.

  The image had gone round the world by the time Security had discovered the statue. The first person to see it had been an American jogger, pounding the parks in the early hours. He’d posted it to social media, where it had been spotted by an enterprising freelance photographer – another meddling foreign national – who had gone and shot proper images. Of the banner, for example.

  Sic semper tyrannis.

  The protesters had also made a mess of Mountford Street, and levelled the Queen’s Chapel. Graffiti sprayed onto the wall opposite the ruined building read: UN-FREE = UN-FAIR. A protest against the upcoming Blood Fair, then – which linked it to the disturbances in the Bore. Quite a web to disentangle.

  ‘Two things,’ she told Faiers, who had woken her with a call at 5 a.m. to break the news. ‘How do we control this narrative, and how do we find out who’s responsible? Your mother keeps asking for access to the Twelve Bore prisoners. Is she part of this?’

  ‘The first point,’ the commoner said, producing the two newspapers he held tucked under his arm, ‘is already under control. I took the liberty of offering exclusives to two sympathetic editors – pictures and quotes in return for the right sort of headlines.’

  He flattened the papers across the desk. A red-topped tabloid bore a photograph of the blaze on Mountford Street with the headline ‘Flaming morons’. ‘Yobs torch luxury street’, read the subhead, and the article decried the impact on London’s tourist industry. ‘Vandals’ was the header of the second paper, in which a picture of the Queen’s Chapel looking elegant by candlelight was juxtaposed with the heap of smoking rubble it now was. A strapline along the bottom – accompanied by an inset of Thalia and Jenner looking weepily dignified at Euterpe’s memorial – demanded ‘Have they no respect?’

  Of the masked statue, thankfully, there was no sign.

  ‘We can’t steer the international media, of course,’ Faiers continued. ‘Our best tactic there is simply to downplay it. A period of uncertainty, the sort of minor unrest that occurs anywhere after a transition of power. We can turn that around to talk about Chancellor Jardine’s vision of strong leadership, rejecting Zelston’s technocratic approach, et cetera.’

  Bouda stared at Faiers with surprise. He seemed almost too good to be true, this new adviser of hers.

  Was he too good to be true?

  ‘What?’ he said, with a note of alarm. ‘Did I say something wrong?’

  ‘You understand how this works,’ she said. ‘So few do. But why are you here in my office, Jon Faiers? I asked about your mother just now. She’s the Speaker of the Commons. Was the Speaker. And your father – as we know from that sensational little scene in my office – was an Equal who abandoned you both. Shouldn’t you be out there participating in these sorts of protests, rather than in here helping me deal with them? Can I trust you?’

  Anger flashed in those eyes that were the blue of cloudless skies over Grendelsham. How clear they were, and how unlike Gavar’s bleary, bloodshot gaze.

  ‘My mother is a hypocrite,’ Faiers said. ‘She prates about commoner rights, yet raised her child in a slavetown to avoid inconveniencing the Equal man she was infatuated with. My father, too. He imagined that doling out money to human rights organizations and fomenting unrest among the common folk would atone for what he did.’

  ‘So your motives are personal?’

  ‘You know what my motives are. I told you on the clifftop at Grendelsham, before the Second Debate.’

  A slight smile touched his lips, and the events of that night came back to Bouda vividly. Whittam’s vulgar groping; Faiers intervening and escorting her outside. The way the cigarette smoke had plumed from his mouth as he spoke, telling her that he’d noticed her out on the cliffs before every Second Debate.

  ‘I believe there is a natural order,’ Faiers continued. ‘And that the common people not only cannot fight against it – they should not. But I also believe this country can be better governed. The slavedays do not make the best use of people’s abilities. And weak Chancellors have apologized abroad for the way we conduct ourselves, while failing to make any changes at home. Our international prestige wanes. Your Skill is disregarded, by you and by us. Most ordinary people have no idea of what you are capable. And you are capable of so much.’

  Bouda saw Gavar leap from the balcony and run superhumanly fast after a man whose actions no normal person could ever have discerned. She thought of Silyen Jardine at the heart of a vortex of glass, as shattered Kyneston reformed around him. She remembered what she had felt in the Bore – the dizzying moment her Skill had passed into the water, and she knew it was at her command.

  Faiers was right. If her own experience was anything to go by, few Equals used – or were even aware of – all that their Skill could do. But why did he care?

  ‘What do you want, Jon Faiers?’

  He rested both hands on the desk and bent down till his face was level with hers. And she could almost taste his words as he spoke them, just as she had br
eathed in his cigarette smoke on the clifftop that night.

  ‘The same as you, Heir Bouda: to be greater than we are.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Britain. Me. You. You want to be the first female Chancellor. Your ambition shines from you. There can’t be one of your Equals that does not know it. Yet you trot at Jardine’s side like a show pony, in the hope that one day he will take off the reins and let you run. He never will. You must know what he thinks of women. You are a diligent ally, an attractive vote-winner – a brood mare for his son. At least, I presume, for his son.’

  Bouda leapt up, humiliated and incensed. How much had those pretty-boy eyes seen? She’d had the right word for Faiers the very first time they’d spoken: insolent. Criminally so.

  Her Skill prickled in her fingertips. He wanted to know what Skill could do? Well, Bouda would gladly show him.

  ‘Chancellor Jardine is doing exactly what you say is required,’ she told him, her chin high. ‘Reasserting Equal rule and strengthening the nation.’

  ‘Jardine will break Britain, and you know it.’

  Her hand came up to slap him, but Faiers caught her wrist and held it. And damn him, she was stronger than any commoner man if she wished. She had only to let her power flow.

  ‘Treason,’ she hissed.

  She glanced around the room, checking for any hitherto unseen witnesses hidden in corners, but of course there were none. Her eyes returned to Faiers, and didn’t look away until he released her.

  ‘So you want me to stop him?’ she said, as his hand fell away. His fingers had left red marks on her wrist.

  ‘On the contrary. Let him do it. And then when this country is broken, you put it back together again, claim the Chancellorship, and remake things as they ought to be.’ That was all Bouda had ever wanted.

  Which was the only possible explanation for what she did next – which was to reach for Faiers and kiss him.

  He pressed her back against the desk, his mouth hungry, his hands possessive. The intensity of him stole her breath. She had submitted to the pawings of Lord Jardine, and the overtures of her man-child husband. And yet here was a commoner – worse, a baseborn – who not only dared to lay a hand on her, but who was waking sensations she had never known. She scratched her nails into the short hair at the back of his neck and heard him groan.

  He pulled back and tipped up her chin. ‘Rule sternly, but gloriously,’ he said, and leaned in for another kiss. ‘Make Britain a country to be admired and feared around the world. And let me be at your side, your trusted adviser for the people. I believe in you, Bouda.’

  This was madness. Madness itself. And yet she found she couldn’t – didn’t want to – stop, and stretched up to recapture his mouth.

  It was only when she heard the outer door to her suite of offices open that she pushed him away. He cast his eyes to the floor as he straightened his clothes and wiped his mouth.

  ‘Back to your desk,’ he whispered. So she went, picking up the now-cold coffee and pressing the plastic lid to her lips.

  ‘Bouda?’

  Astrid Halfdan. Trid knocked and opened the door without waiting to be called in – testament to the years of friendship they’d enjoyed at university. But those days were gone. What had happened to her friend’s little sister three years ago, Bouda thought, had changed Astrid almost as much as it had Athalie herself. Now, understandably, there appeared to be no bounds to the woman’s deep hatred for commoners. The Blood Fair was supposed to be a spectacle of public violence, but if the people of London were slow to get started, Astrid would happily show them how it was done.

  ‘I see you’ve heard,’ said Astrid, nodding at the newspapers on the desk.

  ‘Heard and acted,’ said Bouda. ‘Mr Faiers was quick to respond. Thank you, Faiers, you may leave us.’

  She half longed for a burning glance as he went, but Faiers was no fool. He closed the door with a deferential ‘Heir Bouda’, and she was glad of it.

  ‘Can I help you with anything, Trid?’ she asked. ‘It’s just that it’s going to be a busy day . . .’

  She indicated the papers and photographs, but what she really needed was time and space to process what had just happened with Faiers. It was absurd, unseemly, to sully oneself with the touch of a baseborn – her own godfather’s bastard child. And it was the last thing she needed with everything else going on.

  And yet his dream was also hers. And he believed in her. Darling Daddy had never really understood her ambition, while DiDi simply wasn’t interested in politics. Bouda’s parliamentary groupies admired her mostly for her looks, she knew. And everything Faiers had said about Whittam? If she was honest with herself, it was all true.

  ‘Sorry,’ she told Astrid, rubbing her face. ‘Hardly any sleep and a lot to wake up to.’

  Astrid’s dark eyes – her mother came from a Japanese noble family, and had met Trid’s father when he’d studied in Kyoto – passed no judgement.

  ‘I thought you’d want to hear this as soon as possible. I was with Suspect Nine last night, and something interesting came out: Midsummer Zelston.’

  ‘Midsummer? How do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, she’s in the thick of it with the Twelve Bore. Up to her neck. Practically co-ordinating them.’

  Another traitor.

  Bouda sat back, disgusted. First, Meilyr Tresco. Then the revelation that her own godfather, Rix, had been a commoner sympathizer – and Speaker Dawson’s lover (and don’t think about Faiers). Now this. Midsummer Zelston involved with the Twelve Bore.

  She should have seen it a mile off, were it not still astonishing to her that an Equal could betray their own kind in this way. Midsummer was dating a commoner woman. Maybe that was it. People did strange things when their heads were turned. (And definitely don’t think about Faiers.)

  Was Midsummer still at Lindum, or here in London? Was she perhaps involved with those responsible for last night’s stunts? If they had an Equal abettor or protector, it would explain their daring.

  ‘We need to track her down,’ Bouda said. ‘Let’s do it the soft way first, and find out who last saw her. I’ll also have the data guys try and get a fix on her phone.’

  And with that, Bouda’s day began in earnest. Astrid disappeared down to her silent basement, while one of the Overseer’s minions took Bouda through to their small broadcast studio. Today, she had to get through the interviews Faiers had scheduled with foreign media. The Chinese one went smoothly – Bouda spoke the language fluently, having joined Daddy on many business trips from childhood. But her Japanese was rusty and she spent a fretful fifteen minutes trying to remember the specific verb forms used only by the Skilled.

  When she stepped out of the studio, it was to find her office even more frenzied than usual. The Overseer pounced.

  ‘Heir Bouda,’ she said. ‘We have a developing situation.’

  The tech team was erecting a giant screen in front of the Hogarth painting. Nearby, a huge monitor displayed a map not of London, or even the Bore, as Bouda might have expected. Instead, Riverhead slavetown and the city of Newcastle were on display.

  Whittam was standing in front of it, frowning. To one side waited Kessler and Faiers.

  ‘Riverhead? Take us through it,’ Bouda barked.

  ‘At 6.15 a.m.,’ the Overseer droned in her monotonous voice, ‘a call was placed by a manager at the parts supply warehouse. Shifts there start at six, in advance of the yard-day beginning at seven. But no one had turned up. A check found that the buses that would have transported the workers hadn’t left the depot. In fact, the whole vehicle depot is deserted.’

  Bouda nodded. The dry docks were spread along the banks of the Tyne, so workers were bussed out to them from the slavetown hub. The transport depot would be an obvious strategic target. Shut it down, and you’d cause a lot of disruption with only a little effort. So this didn’t have to be a large-scale protest.

  But the rest of the Overseer’s narrative put paid to that hope. Over the next two ho
urs, no one in Riverhead had turned up. To anything. Not to the slavetown’s own infrastructure services: sanitation, waste and maintenance. Nor to the shops or the canteens.

  Riverhead served a huge area: Newcastle, Sunderland and North Tyneside. More than a hundred thousand people did their days there at any one time. There was no way the slavetown’s Security could force that many people out of their beds and dorms, and onto buses to go to work.

  This would have to be dealt with by penalties, then.

  After conferring briefly with Whittam, she got her tecchies to patch her through to Riverhead’s Overseer. While they tested the link, Bouda pondered unhappily that it should be Riverhead, of all places, that was causing such trouble.

  Her mother, Angelica, had been the only daughter of an eccentric Tyneside lord. As young girls, Bouda and DiDi had loved shopping in Newcastle, hats pulled down over their distinctive white-blonde hair so they could roam anonymously. Their maternal grandfather, Lord Bligh, possessed a sprawling coastal estate north of the city, and had a weakness for building lighthouses.

  Bouda rarely saw him now, though Dina still visited him regularly. Everything had changed after their mother died, killed in an act of sabotage when visiting the Portisbury BB plant with Daddy. Bouda had been thirteen. Bodina only eleven.

  That had been the moment Bouda had realized that she and her kind weren’t universally loved, as she had imagined up till then. No, they were feared and – by some – even hated. That day’s awful insight had never left her.

  Riverhead would need stern handling.

  The slavetown’s Overseer came fuzzily into view on the video link. He was a thin, anxious-looking man, but as the picture sharpened she saw that his eyes were flinty. The reassurances he offered that the ringleaders would be found were convincing too. He was taking tough measures, he promised.

  A shame it was too late for that.

  ‘For each missed shift, another year on their days,’ she said. ‘Do you understand? The usual penalty is a month. But for this flagrant mass disobedience, we must acknowledge that the stakes are higher – and so must they.’