Bright Ruin

by Vic James

  And something that could have been pity welled up in Bouda. It had felt extraordinary, down there on the Thames shore, filled with the immensity of both the river and her Skill. To never know that? What kind of a third-rate life would it be? Commoners at least had little idea of what they lacked. But Jenner? Faiers?

  Faiers.

  ‘People have attempted it for thousands of years,’ Bouda told her brother-in-law. ‘And if anyone ever discovered how, they kept it very quiet. But I agree, if anyone in this country can, it will be Arailt Crovan. I’ll do my bit to try and persuade him. And if he succeeds, well, it’d be nice to think there’s one Jardine who keeps their word and pays their debts.’

  ‘I won’t forget it,’ Jenner said. ‘You’ll see.’

  Whittam was sprawled on the sofa when the pair of them reached the Chancellor’s suite at the top of the tower. Bouda blinked away the distasteful memory of the half-naked woman she had once seen lounging in the same spot. Whittam had a whisky glass in his hand – he was rarely seen without one these days – and his face was beginning to look puffy, his skin coarse. It was just as well the public only saw him from a distance, on the balcony of Aston House, or behind the tinted glass of the state cars.

  Crovan was at the vast paned windows, looking across the Westminster complex. Many floors below lay Bouda’s Office of Public Safety, but Crovan, like most visitors to these rooms, had eyes for only one thing. The golden coruscations of the House of Light played over his face, turning the lenses of his glasses into dazzling disks. Bouda ignored Whittam’s slurred greeting, and went to Crovan’s side.

  ‘Impressive, that trick with the dragon,’ Crovan said, lifting his chin in the direction of the crenelated roof of the House. He glanced briefly at Bouda. ‘Yours too, of course. At Gorregan you displayed the sort of elemental manipulation that has a long history in these isles. Of course there are similarities with your ancestor, Harding the Voyager. But to animate those creatures . . .’

  Dragons crouched on each end of the House’s roof. From up here, you could see how big they really were. Almost the size of legendary dragons. Bouda imagined them sailing across the skies of London. That would be an impressive sight. The people would stand open-mouthed in the streets.

  No, the sooner Midsummer was dealt with, the better. Getting Gavar in had been the right thing to do – his information would enable this to be brought to a swift conclusion.

  ‘You’re so right,’ she murmured, looking up at Crovan through her lashes. He was one of the few who had always been immune to her small charms and flirtations. Was he gay? Asexual? She had never heard the slightest breath of intrigue around his personal life. ‘It would be fascinating to discover how she does it, wouldn’t it? Very rewarding research.’

  Crovan snorted. ‘I doubt she’d co-operate with any research, Bouda.’

  ‘Do your prisoners at Eilean Dòchais co-operate, Arailt? And yet you study them nonetheless. Midsummer is a criminal, and I imagine her punishment would be for the Chancellor to decide, just as it was with Meilyr Tresco. Perhaps unlike his, it might be carried out in an environment better suited to . . . thorough evaluation.’

  Crovan turned to her then, and as the light slid from his lenses, she glimpsed his eyes: pale grey and coolly assessing. She stood her ground. Whittam had given this man Meilyr, but Bouda could give him Midsummer.

  And if Jenner wanted to believe she was doing it so Crovan could rip out Midsummer’s Skill, and hand it to Jenner like a coat for him to slip into, then so much the better.

  The door being thrown open behind them made Bouda jump. It was her man-child husband, who had so much promise, yet seemed determined to deliver on absolutely none of it.

  ‘You do realize,’ Gavar said, crossing to the small table where the whisky decanter stood and pouring himself a glass, ‘that I’m supposed to be in revolt from my family. Disgusted by my father’s regime. Not popping round for tea.’

  ‘That doesn’t look like tea,’ remarked Jenner.

  Gavar muttered something coarse, and tossed back the drink.

  ‘The explanation Midsummer gets is that you’re here for a dressing-down over your botched arrest, which enabled a prisoner to escape,’ Whittam said, holding out his glass for Gavar to refill as if he were a butler at Kyneston. ‘So, what news do you have for us?’

  ‘Two things. One is a prison breakout at Fullthorpe supermax, to free those taken at Riverhead and other political prisoners: the ones from Millmoor, the Bore, the Hadley parents, et cetera.’

  Jenner flinched at the name. Bouda suspected he’d been relieved when the eldest Hadley girl had escaped the Blood Fair. She had briefly wondered if he’d been responsible for spiriting her out of the square, because she hadn’t seen the girl on the back of any of the bronze lions. But Midsummer must have got to her somehow, given Abigail’s participation in Gavar’s sham rescue. Ah well, Abigail Hadley was one more loose end that would soon be tied up.

  ‘The other thing is a day of protest across London. She’s had that in the works for a while.’

  ‘Protest?’ You could see Whittam’s lip curl. ‘As if anything was ever achieved by banners and placards.’

  ‘How does she propose to get into Fullthorpe?’ Bouda asked. Jon had told her about the planned protest, but the Fullthorpe jailbreak was new information. It must have been a recent decision. ‘It’s our most secure. She’d need an army.’

  ‘No idea,’ said Gavar. ‘Facilitating that fake escape has got me access, but there’s still resistance to my presence and she has a pretty tight inner circle.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Crovan said, leaning forward, interest evident on his face, ‘she intends to use you. It was your Skill that destroyed the Blood Fair platform, you who knocked a whole square of rioters and Security to their knees in Millmoor.’

  Gavar shrugged. ‘Maybe. But like I said, I don’t know. I presume you’ll want me to go along with whatever it is, rather than try and prevent it?’

  ‘Indeed, for appearances. And because we need her to commit an unambiguous, high-profile criminal act. Do you know what she intends to do with those released?’

  ‘They have well-developed smuggling networks for getting people out of Britain. Her allies are from a number of slavetowns and regions, so they could be sending people out in any direction, though my bet would be on Holland, and over the water to the Irish provinces.’

  ‘Interesting.’ Whittam sat back, steepling his fingers over his whisky glass. ‘Well, if further details come to light, be sure to pass them on. In the meantime, this is all useful. When these pitiful disturbances have been taken care of, and we have Midsummer under lock and key, your mother will be delighted to welcome you back to Aston House – to be reunited with your daughter.’

  ‘You bastard,’ said Gavar. He ground his cigarette into the side table, and the varnish gave off an acrid stink. ‘I guess if Midsummer decides she wants your head on a spike, I’d have to go along with that, too. For appearances.’

  With a swirl of black leather coat around the door, he was gone.

  ‘It seems that Midsummer has ambitions,’ Crovan said. ‘However, I see nothing here that requires my immediate participation. I should get back to my castle, which I’ve left in my steward’s hands for several days now. It’s always amusing to see how my guests have passed their time in my absence – they tend to make their own entertainment. But to delay longer might be imprudent.’

  ‘Perhaps you might join me for dinner tonight,’ Bouda said, ‘then make your journey tomorrow, when rested? There’s so much we could discuss.’ She darted a conspiratorial glance at Jenner, who looked like someone had handed him a puppy for Christmas.

  ‘Very well, that sounds agreeable.’ Crovan was smiling thinly. Perhaps he was already imagining Midsummer delivered to him for her Skill to be excised and examined. He rose and bowed courteously before departing.

  Bouda wasn’t relishing the thought of a few hours alone with the man. But she needed to discover how he might
align, in the various possible configurations of a final power struggle. Would he support her? Remain a neutral observer? Or even prove to be another late contender?

  ‘Protests!’ Whittam burst out contemptuously, once the door was closed. ‘Is that the best the whore can do? We need more than that. I can’t flay her in the public square for a bit of fist-waving and window-smashing.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Bouda. ‘She wants to go high and portray us as going low. We’ll never provoke her into plotting something like an assassination attempt—’

  Jenner nodded. ‘But we could insinuate that she was behind her uncle’s slaying, because she knew that if he married Aunt Euterpe, she’d be out of the Zelston line of succession.’

  ‘That might work. What’s more important than beating her – at least at the moment – is dragging her down. She wants the moral high ground and we can’t let her have it. So, we let her win Fullthorpe – but we make sure she’ll lose it, too. Then in London, we bring her down. Here’s what I’m thinking.’

  She leaned in on the sofa, and told father and son precisely half of her plans.

  10

  Abi

  Abi ran a comforting hand down Renie’s back as the girl gazed out of the car window. They’d been on the road for several hours, but had left London before dawn, so the sun wasn’t long risen as they neared the Zelston family seat of Lindum.

  They’d just passed Lincoln – the city to which the original Roman settlement of Lindum had given its name. This was farming country, hard against the perimeter of the Bore. Was Renie thinking of her brother, who had died there in the agricultural slavezone? Of her uncle Wesley’s years of harsh labour?

  Abi was thinking of her mum and dad.

  She let her hand rest on Renie’s back. She never wanted to let the girl out of her sight again, yet here they were, about to take on the supermax facility of Fullthorpe to rescue their loved ones. Abi’s parents, Renie’s friends Oz and Jess, as well as the others taken at Riverhead and rounded up in the Bore.

  Her stomach had been knotted the whole journey just thinking about it. There were so many things that might go wrong between now and the moment Abi could put her arms around her mum and dad again. Every minute of the drive up had been excruciating. Abi’s senses were strung out from straining for the distant whoop of a siren, or the flash of red and blue lights from a pursuit car. And even now it wasn’t over. What if there was a cordon around the estate, or officers at the gate?

  Abi tried to smother her anxiety. If she didn’t, it would swell and swell until there was room for nothing else inside her skull, and she needed her wits now more than ever. Midsummer had promised that once they reached Lindum, Abi would understand how they could get in and out of Fullthorpe to rescue so many. Did the Equal have a private platoon of tanks? Because otherwise Abi didn’t see how they could manage the kind of assault that would be needed. This wasn’t trickery, to smuggle out a prisoner or two, as with Renie’s retrieval or Oz’s rescue from Millmoor. This was releasing dozens of people. What secret concealed there would make that possible?

  Midsummer pulled the beaten-up old car – it was her girlfriend’s – off the road and onto overgrown tractor ruts. As they bumped along the farm track Abi glimpsed far ahead, rising above a double row of cypress trees, two towers of neat Roman brick. The electricity of Skill thrilled across her skin as the car passed through the trees, and she knew that they’d crossed the estate boundary. The excitement was a welcome distraction.

  A sturdy two-door wooden gate was dead ahead.

  ‘Can you give me a hand, Abi?’ asked Midsummer’s girlfriend, Layla, from the passenger seat. ‘I’m usually fine, but right now . . .’

  The woman unclicked her seatbelt and swivelled out, the bump of her pregnancy plainly visible. At the gates, Abi lifted the bar under Layla’s direction, then set her shoulder to the left panel. She gave a grunt of effort – just as the gate swung open of its own accord. Midsummer beeped the car horn jauntily, and they heard Renie’s laughter through the car window.

  ‘She always likes to make her guests work for it first.’ Layla rolled her kohl-lined eyes, though she was smiling. She jerked a brilliantly manicured thumb over her shoulder at the mansion now revealed behind them. ‘This place is something else, isn’t it? Given the state of that ruddy track, we’ll do better walking from here.’

  Every schoolchild saw pictures of it in textbooks, but nothing could have prepared Abi for Lindum. Even by the standards of Equal estates, it was jawdropping, fashioned from the remains of an immense ancient bath house, like that of the Emperor Caracalla in Rome.

  Abi remembered what she’d read of its history. The baths had slipped into slow decay following the empire’s abandonment of Britain. But two hundred years ago, a Zelston ancestor had decided to mark her family’s Roman-era lineage by remodelling the complex into a liveable estate. It turned out that abandonment had been the saving of it. Concealed beneath strata of leaf mulch, bird droppings and blown topsoil were glass mosaics, monumental statuary and bright tiles – all intact.

  Restored, it was spectacular. Abi’s head turned as she took in Lindum in pieces, because the whole was too incredible. They were approaching a pillared courtyard, once the bathers’ exercise yard. Above it rose the famous dome, pierced with an oculus that opened to the sky. Everywhere, the structure glittered: red-and-white tesserae surfaced the courtyard walks, while the dome’s rim was banded with blue and yellow tiles. Sculptures of strange beasts peered from nooks and crannies, or loomed along sight lines in the formal gardens.

  ‘I still pinch myself whenever I’m here,’ murmured Layla. ‘Luckily her mum, Lady Flora, is a sweetheart, otherwise it’d all be a bit much. Needless to say, I had no idea Midsummer was an Equal when she pulled me in a dark nightclub four years ago. Ugh, she’s killing the suspension on that.’

  The car was making jerky progress along the track. Abi focused on the ghastly scraping of the exhaust box against the ground, as distraction from a pang of jealousy that this commoner girl had found an Equal who thought she was worth loving back.

  ‘It’s good to have you with us, Abi.’ Layla patted her arm in a maternal fashion. ‘You and Renie both. I still can’t quite believe it’s come to this – and so soon. Midsummer’s been working quietly for years. She was just the obscure child of a third-born Equal, and didn’t want anything to do with their screwed-up, back-stabby world. She loved her uncle, and hoped he was going to make change happen in his own way. But he was forever being blocked, and when things weren’t moving fast enough, the other two – Meilyr and Dina – wanted to put on more pressure.’

  Layla paused, her hands dropping to the round of her stomach. She was maybe six or more months along, Abi estimated.

  ‘We decided to start a family, with the help of a friend of ours, and amazingly it all went right first time. But it feels like everything’s been going wrong ever since. Her uncle was shot. Jardine’s back in power and worse than ever. And suddenly Midsummer is an heir and leading a resistance. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared for her, Abi. Scared for all of us.’

  Perhaps it was hearing Layla name her fear that brought it welling back up in Abi. Clawing its way up her throat so her breath came hard, and flooding her stomach with bile. She’d read that people who’d cheated the odds – walked away from a car crash or defied a bleak medical diagnosis – often underwent a change in attitude. They became more carefree, more able to live in the moment. Well, Abi was still waiting for that to happen. It felt like the moment she lived in most often was the one in which she stood on the platform at the Blood Fair, awaiting the knives.

  ‘I sometimes feel like I’m second-guessing everything,’ Abi confided. ‘And that whatever I choose, it will be the wrong decision.’

  Layla nodded. ‘Like Gavar Jardine. I thought Midsummer should have sent him packing. I still do, most of the time. But then I think: what if he’s the one that’ll make the difference? His Skill is so powerful. His name is so p
owerful. What if it’s not her that changes it all, but him?’

  Abi was nodding in agreement when the car door banged and she nearly jumped out of her skin. Get a grip, she told herself. What use would she be to her parents’ rescue if she startled at every sound?

  ‘Welcome to Chez Zelston,’ said Midsummer, snagging Layla round the waist for a quick kiss before dropping the car keys back in her hand and whispering, ‘Sorry, babes, I bust the exhaust box.’

  ‘Woah.’ Renie spun on her heel to take it all in. ‘What is this place?’

  ‘It’s home sweet home. I came here when I was ten, after spending my childhood in Abyssinia, where my father’s from. When my parents split up, Mum brought me to Britain and my two little brothers stayed with him. That was really tough for both of us, as you can imagine, so she moved in with her brother. Uncle Winter had never got married, still pining after Euterpe Parva, so he became a father figure for me. There’s not a day I don’t miss him, especially here.’

  ‘That’s the abbreviated family history,’ said Layla, leaning into her partner’s side. ‘But yeah, if you’ve wondered why my girl thinks a bit differently from all these stuck-up, inbred British Equals . . .’

  Midsummer laughed – that frank, throaty sound Abi had liked since she’d first heard it.

  ‘Here’s the funny thing. My father let me go because when I was little, I was regarded as a bit of a dud. I never showed any particularly interesting Skill and he practically disowned me. It’s how I ended up with my mum’s surname rather than his. But the minute I got here: bam! It all started happening.’

  ‘What started—’

  Midsummer pursed her lips and an earsplitting whistle interrupted Renie’s question. The Equal held up her wrist like a falconer.