Tarnished City

by Vic James

  ‘I will communicate it immediately,’ the man said, his thin lips pursed. ‘But it won’t go down well. May I ask if there will be backup? Security detachments?’

  ‘That’s not out of the question. But if we need to intervene, it will mean authority has broken down in Riverhead. Your authority. Do you understand me?’

  If the man called in the guards, his career would be over. That threat was usually enough to make the timid ones get their act together. The incompetent ones, of course, would have more to worry about than losing their job.

  The line fizzed and sputtered as the man was speaking. Bouda looked around in exasperation for the tech guy. Could no one here do their job properly?

  Then a voice crackled through the room. Amazingly, it came from every speaker in the office.

  ‘I’m the one you’re looking for.’

  Bouda stiffened in her seat. It was a woman’s voice. Soft and low. Almost, somehow, familiar. The Geordie accent was like those she remembered from her childhood. Like those of the slaves on her grandfather’s estate. Almost, a tiny bit, like her mother’s, though that had been more refined.

  This must be the woman her people had hunted for all this time. The one who ran the Riverhead railroad.

  The bitch.

  ‘Who are you?’ Bouda asked.

  There was no image to accompany the voice. All she could see onscreen was the Riverhead Overseer, plainly hearing the same as Bouda.

  ‘Who am I?’ The voice paused. ‘You can call me the Angel of the North.’

  Someone screamed as every monitor in the office cracked in an instant with the Skillful lash of Bouda’s fury. She was unrepentant. If she had no Skill, she would have grabbed each screen and smashed it on the floor. How dare this bitch? How dare she?

  The Angel of the North, the giant winged sculpture that watched over Riverhead, had been commissioned by heartbroken Daddy and Grandpa. Named for Bouda’s murdered mother, sweet Angelica Bligh.

  Bouda would have this commoner woman’s head in a bag, just as her kind had done to Ragnarr Vernay.

  ‘Meet me tonight,’ the voice continued. ‘Ten o’clock, in the middle of the Tyne Bridge. Just you and me. Leave your people on the Newcastle side, and I’ll leave mine in Riverhead. No guns. No Security. No surveillance. You have Skill, so you’ve nothing to fear. Let’s see if we can end this. Not just Riverhead. All of it.’

  More crackling, and the line went dead.

  On the video link, Bouda and the Riverhead Overseer stared at each other.

  ‘Tell no one of this,’ she snapped. ‘Continue as discussed with the protocol. We’ll review your progress later.’

  Then she cut the link. Exhaled. Ran a hand along her ponytail to calm herself.

  ‘We take her out,’ said Whittam. ‘Snipers. Easily done.’

  At his side, Kessler nodded.

  They talked casually of killing, these men. But could you really build a better Britain on the bodies of the dead? Was this what Faiers meant, when he said that Whittam would break Britain?

  And what of Faiers’ notion that she should let him?

  Well, one kiss didn’t make her beholden to Faiers any more than marriage made her bend the knee to Gavar Jardine. No one made Bouda’s decisions for her.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘This woman has a whole slavetown behind her. As much as I could rip her apart with my bare hands for the way she’s insulted my mother, killing her there and then would be mistaken. First, her little uprising needs to fail. Then her own people will turn her in.’

  She looked at Whittam, to see how he’d respond to being overruled, but he merely grunted. Faiers nodded.

  Bouda turned on her heel and issued instructions for helicopters to be made ready for the flight north.

  It had been years since she’d last seen the Tyne Bridge at night. She’d forgotten how high it stood above the river. How much you could see of the surrounding city and slavetown.

  Behind her, Newcastle glowed bright and many-coloured. Its party scene was in full swing. Carefree young people, their slavedays still years away, walked along the towpath far below, laughing, talking, and swigging from bottles. On the opposite riverbank, the slavetown burned a febrile sodium-yellow. Its low-rise apartment blocks stood in ranks against the curve of the hill.

  On top of the hill: the silhouette of the Angel of the North.

  The river flowed beneath, black and wide, rippling with light. And above was the high, criss-crossed iron parabola of the bridge’s span. It was one of the few truly impressive structures in Britain built by slaves, not Skill. Bouda was certain the woman she was here to meet had chosen this spot on purpose.

  She checked her watch. Five minutes to go. She nodded at her people – Faiers, the Overseer and Kessler all stood behind her. She had nothing to fear. Any move against her would be answered by annihilation of the slavetown rebels. She didn’t think they’d be foolish enough to take that risk.

  As she walked towards the centre of the bridge, she saw a figure detach itself from the far side and do the same. Female, tall and slim, wearing a black hat to render her silhouette anonymous.

  The lights on the bridge had been doused, but Equal eyes were sharp. When Bouda saw who it was coming towards her, she stopped in her tracks, horror struck.

  Her sister.

  How had they taken Bodina? Was she some kind of hostage? Why had she not simply broken free with her Skill?

  Perhaps – Bouda shuddered at the thought – they had somehow brainwashed her into supporting their cause. Taken advantage of her vulnerability since Meilyr’s death, and sent her to intercede for them.

  Bouda didn’t think it was possible to hate the rebel leader, this “Angel”, more than she already did. A Blood Fair would be no more than the woman deserved.

  She sped up. She wanted to hurry to her sister, take her in her arms and tell her that it didn’t matter why she was here, nobody would be cross with her. Bouda blamed herself. She’d known her sister would be hurting after Meilyr’s death. She should have watched out for her, made more time for her. But there had been one thing after another to manage: the wedding, the slavetown purge, the Twelve Bore, and now Riverhead.

  She would never again let it all come before family and her darling sister.

  They were nearly level. Dina had stopped. Bouda halted too, about five metres away.

  ‘What are you doing here, DiDi?’ she asked. ‘Did they make you? How did you get mixed up in this?’

  ‘We’ve tried so many times to tell you,’ Dina said, ‘but no one’s been listening. Not when Meilyr spoke out – and paid for it with his Skill. Not at your wedding, when I said in front of everyone that it didn’t have to be this way. That it could be done with love and not with cruelty.’

  Bouda trembled.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she said. ‘These people are defying us, undermining us. Destabilizing the whole country.’

  ‘Oh, Bouda. They simply want justice.’

  ‘Justice? They’re terrorists. Who filled your head with this rubbish? The Riverhead woman – this Angel of the North?’

  ‘Do you really not understand?’

  There was something like pity in her sister’s face, and Bouda realized she did understand. She simply didn’t want to believe it.

  When Bodina spoke next, her voice was strangely altered. It had a strong Geordie accent. Like the slaves of their childhood. Like their mother.

  ‘I’m the Angel of the North.’

  Bouda stared at her. The words were meaningless.

  ‘You can change things,’ Dina said urgently. ‘You’re more important to Jardine than you know. His majority relies on your supporters’ backing. You are the pretty face of his regime’s ugliness. If you go back to him and say “enough”, he will have to listen.’

  ‘Stop it, darling,’ Bouda said.

  She longed to reach out to her sister, to fold her in her arms and rock her like she did when they were children and DiDi suffered nightmares. Like she had aft
er their mother’s funeral, when Bodina cried herself to sleep every night for months. Nothing would calm her except Bouda climbing into bed alongside her and holding her little sister until she quieted.

  ‘It’s not too late. No one knows you’re mixed up in this. Come back with me now. I can say you were a hostage. You call yourself their leader, but without you this protest will fail, so there’ll be no need for reprisals. No one will be hurt, no one need die.’

  ‘Listen to yourself,’ Dina said, the shine of tears in her eyes but her voice unwavering. ‘People are hurt every day. People die every single day, thanks to what our regime does. Well, not in my name. Not any longer. When news of what’s happening here goes out across the world, it won’t be the voice of the Angel of the North they hear. It’ll be me, Dina Matravers, Equal, sister-in-law of the First Family. I love you so much, Bouda, but I can’t be quiet any more.’ When Bodina dropped to the ground, it took a second for the sound of the bullet that killed her to reach Bouda’s ears.

  It rang out with a crack like that of a heart breaking.

  24

  Abi

  There had been silence when the news about Dina reached them at midnight. Then tears and shouting. Now, in the mid-afternoon, there was silence again. Renie was asleep on the sofa, and Abi laid a blanket over her. The kid had cried herself to exhaustion. Abi remembered how she’d been in the helicopter as they’d flown back from Eilean Dochais after Meilyr’s death: silent and stoical. Holding it all together. Just like Bodina herself, who had piloted the helicopter that flew the three of them out of there.

  Renie had channelled that loss into a sense of purpose with the Bore, and the joy of discovering her uncle Wes. But now the tide had turned yet again, and deferred grief had come rushing back with a force as irresistible as the sea. Meilyr, Dina, and her brother Mickey. Her losses had finally crashed over Renie.

  Abi was squashed at the end of the sofa, one hand absently stroking the girl’s back, the other curled around a mug of tea. She was very still.

  Her mind, though, was racing.

  The television rolling news channel was playing. Abi had muted it, but the running captions told the story.

  ‘HOSTAGE TRAGEDY’ was one that flashed up again and again.

  According to the looping news, a cell of known political terrorists had attempted a takeover of Riverhead slavetown. They had used a troubled Equal girl, Bodina Matravers, as a hostage. She was known to be emotionally vulnerable following her fiance’s suicide. He had been involved in commoner unrest, in Millmoor last year – and had been censured by parliament.

  The possibility was left open that Bodina might have been with them willingly – due to her impaired judgement, of course. This segment was illustrated by all those paparazzi photographs that Abi had once flicked through: Dina holding a tiny dog up to the camera; Dina with a cocktail in hand, laughing. In each shot she looked extremely thin and even younger than her age. If you’d never met her, it was easy to imagine the sort of girl this was: fragile, sweet and gullible. Easily led.

  Abi’s heart ached. Yes, she and Bodina had had their differences. She would never forget the terror of the girl’s Skill shoving her to the edge of Highwithel’s law ledge. But Dina had been brilliant and brave. She had played her role of fun-loving party girl too well, and now that was how the world would remember her. What an insult. Abi closed her eyes against the stream of inane news images and pictured Bodina as she had been at Highwithel, standing on the jetty with Meilyr, Skill-light in hand.

  Now both of them were gone.

  The rolling bulletin continued its analysis. Dina had been targeted by the terrorists because her sister, Heir Bouda Matravers-Jardine, headed the Office of Public Safety. The Riverhead rebel leader, a woman calling herself the Angel of the North, had contacted the office. She’d challenged the Equal to meet her on the Tyne Bridge. Heir Bouda, unintimidated, had gone north immediately. The archive footage showed Bouda at the recent investiture, dignified in her heir’s mantle, as beautiful as her sister but in every other respect her opposite.

  Naturally, Security had provided an escort, including snipers. And it was one of those men who – not realizing the identity of the woman who had come forward from the rebel-held slavetown – had fired. He’d been alarmed by an apparent altercation between the two and had intended a disabling injury, rather than a kill. But it was pitch dark – an expert weighed in here on how night vision was notoriously challenging – and the bridge’s girders obstructed sight lines.

  Bodina Matravers had died instantly.

  Security detachments had immediately been ordered across the bridge. Helicopters lifted up and over the city, their powerful spotlights lancing down. Armoured jeeps rolled in. For the umpteenth time Abi watched the images play out.

  Those who stood at the end of the bridge were picked up first. Behind them, Riverhead’s great gates had slammed shut. Unlike isolated slavetowns such as Millmoor, there was no exclusion zone around Riverhead. Only a high concrete wall with heavy-duty barriers inset at intervals.

  Barriers that were never built to withstand explosives. Controlled detonations destroyed a few, the bars crumpling and concertinaing, and ground Security rushed in with choppers spotlighting their path. The way the pictures had been edited, including helmet-cam footage, made it look exciting – even immersive. It reminded Abi of a couple of Luke’s console games of which Mum had particularly disapproved.

  Maulers – the lowly slave units – distinguished themselves, one commentator said. Abi knew why that had been mentioned: this was ‘good’ slaves against ‘bad’. Everything about this story was designed to put the viewer firmly on one side – and it wasn’t the side of the protesters. ‘INSURGENCY QUELLED’, the scrolling caption flashed over scenes of arrest. Men and women were herded at gunpoint into the streets, hands above their heads in a seeming admission of guilt.

  Then the caption cycled through to the last one, and Abi upped the volume slightly for what came next. She’d already heard it countless times, but she needed to hear it again. Needed to keep stoking her anger, so it burned hotter than her despair or her fear. Under her palm she felt Renie shift in her sleep, like a rabbit in its burrow when a fox walks past.

  Whittam Jardine’s face filled the screen. He was delivering his statement from the riverside terrace at Westminster. The House of Light glowed behind him.

  ‘We condemn, in the strongest possible terms, the senseless actions of the past twenty-four hours. The welfare of every soul in Riverhead has been jeopardized by the behaviour of a small and vicious group of troublemakers. They are now in our custody and will receive the full weight of the law. I pledge to the people of Britain, here and now, that I will not permit the peace of our nation to be disturbed. The right of every man and woman to work out their days without intimidation or alarm will be protected.

  ‘Finally, I would like to pay tribute to my colleague and daughter-in-law, Heir Bouda, on the appalling loss of her beautiful sister. Bodina Matravers was a complicated young woman, but much loved by those who knew her, and my family feels her absence deeply. Those to blame for her death will be brought to justice.’

  ‘CHANCELLOR VOWS PEACE AND PROTECTION’ cycled the caption.

  Nauseated, Abi stabbed the remote and switched the television off.

  Whittam could play the media like Silyen could play the violin – with a mastery that was itself a kind of Skill.

  Riverhead had failed and fallen. Abi had dared imagine that the Equals’ version of history could be fought with the truth, but how could you do that when they were making it up as they went along, and shouting it over and over and over through the media? They had everything at their disposal: power, money, connections. They hardly even needed Skill.

  The speed and scale of the action against Riverhead exceeded anything they had anticipated. Dina had believed that her involvement would buy negotiating time, and that if Riverhead held out for one day, it could hold out for two, and then three, until the co
untry had seen that it could be done. That Equals could be defied.

  The lesson taught by Riverhead had turned out to be very different.

  And there was something else Abi didn’t want to think about. She had believed, ever since those early discussions in Highwithel, that any uprising for the people had to come from the people. It had felt wrong that commoners should need Equals – Meilyr, Dina, and Midsummer – to be their champions.

  Except now two of those champions were gone, and Abi saw clearly how hard it would be without them. How difficult to rescue the Twelve Bore, and the new prisoners from Riverhead.

  Let alone win freedom for the country.

  Who should she turn to, now? Should she go join the men from the Bore, over in Dalston? That was where Wesley had gone, though he’d refused to leave Renie’s side until the girl had finally fallen asleep. Midsummer would surely be there, too.

  Should she call Jon Faiers? He would be busy in Bouda’s office, and given the circumstances, any contact might place him at terrible risk. If his sympathies were discovered at this stage, it would be disastrous for him.

  Or should she call someone else?

  Abi hadn’t contacted Jenner since coming to London. She’d not wanted to put him in an impossible position with his family, or with Dina. Abi hadn’t forgotten Dina’s attempt at Highwithel to get Jenner to submit to the Quiet about what he had seen and heard. And then there was the fact that he was now an heir and would one day be a lord.

  Her head and her heart warred constantly about Jenner, and it was easiest when she tried to push thoughts of him away altogether. But who else did she have to turn to? And who else knew her like he did? Not Wesley, or Faiers, or Midsummer, that was certain.

  Easing herself from the sofa so as not to disturb Renie, she padded upstairs to the little back office for her phone. She was on her hands and knees groping under the camp bed when the front door was kicked in.