Bright Ruin

by Vic James

  That door. He could mean only one. Rhona had spoken of it with pride – and not a little fear. The fatal portal. The mormaer’s vow and the hostage’s security. The Last Door.

  Rædwald knew where it led. Only to death. He had been there himself, though rarely and always reluctantly. Each time he had felt the place clawing at him, as if he was something that had slipped from its grasp which it wanted back.

  ‘If that’s where she’s gone, then there’ll be no returning.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ said Luke. ‘She went through the wrong way.’

  The boy described their escape from the castle. How Lord Crovan – Rhona’s brother – had discovered their departure and seized Coira when she was neither through, nor back. How the girl had gone through all the same . . . to somewhere else entirely.

  Somewhere else.

  Rædwald tossed his last pine cone on the fire. It was guttering to embers and ashes, and flakes of brightness spiralled upwards and died in their ascent.

  ‘Could you find her?’ said Luke, leaning forward. ‘Wherever she’s gone? I couldn’t see it, but there was . . . a colour, I can’t describe it, and a sound I can’t explain either. And it was warm, but sort of softly so.’

  ‘Do you understand how many worlds there are, boy?’ he asked. ‘As many as this.’

  He gestured to the eddying sparks of Skill, as numerous as constellations, and he saw the light dim in Luke’s eyes. Silyen laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder, and Luke slumped against him.

  So his daughter had a friend who cared about her. Rædwald was glad.

  ‘To search through them all would take lifetimes,’ he told them. ‘But then, lifetimes are exactly what I have.’

  He rose, and his stag huffed up to stand beside him. A piercing whistle summoned the eagle to his shoulder. He studied the boys with eyes that had once swum in blood, but now were the pure gold of Skill-light.

  ‘Thank you for what you’ve shared. I won’t abandon her a second time. If my girl is out there, I’ll walk the worlds until I find her.’

  He knew where he’d begin. Rædwald reached into the air and pulled open a door. The world that lay beyond it was entirely dark, but welcoming. Nameless fragrances drifted through. In its unseeable depths, a voice spoke a greeting in a tongue that he alone understood.

  ‘Wait!’

  Silyen had scrambled to his feet, boot heels slipping on the stones.

  ‘You said that you come back to repair your enchantment, so the boundary is whole again. That means everyone forgets. Will we? I don’t want to forget this.’

  ‘I don’t want to forget who Coira really is,’ Luke added, at Silyen’s side. ‘I thought that Crovan was her father – a monster. But she’s your daughter, and that’s incredible. Someone here should know that.’

  Could it be managed? These boys, two bricks pulled from the wall to let the light in?

  He thought it could. He reached out and touched a hand to Silyen’s forehead, and the boy flinched and gasped. Rædwald smiled – it would be the boy’s first encounter with a power greater than his own.

  When he touched Luke’s brow, the boy dropped to one knee. Clearly the habits of majesty died hard.

  ‘Very well. Remember me. And perhaps one day we’ll meet again, here or there.’

  Rædwald patted his stag’s powerful flank to send it through the door before him. He loosed the eagle into the alien sky.

  Silyen watched, golden-eyed and silent, and Luke remained kneeling as Rædwald lifted a hand before following his creatures through.

  20

  Abi

  Dog looked at the weapon, as if memory was stirring, then reached through the gate with a hand that knew exactly what it was doing.

  ‘Point-four-oh calibre,’ he said to himself as he banged the magazine into the handgrip. ‘Nearly full. Who have you got – this for?’

  ‘Whittam Jardine.’

  Abi’s chest tightened. She’d known that naming the deed to Midsummer would meet the response it had. But suggesting it to Dog? That was as good as making it real. Like putting the gun to Whittam’s head and pulling the trigger.

  Was that really what she wanted?

  No. Of course it wasn’t what she wanted. But it was what had to be done. She’d seen how the Jardine family worked, and how Lord Whittam crouched at the centre of it. That night at Aston House when she had gone to Jenner for help, her heart had stopped – actually stopped, who cared if that was a medical impossibility? – when she realized the boy she adored had betrayed her to his father.

  How fragile she’d felt, as Lord Whittam gripped her face with thick fingers and pondered her usefulness for the Blood Fair. When he had circled her, weaving plausible lies that she and Luke had been part of a network of rebels scheming violence from the start. The same lies that he had spun around Dad, concealing the kind, straightforward man that he was in a sticky tangle of falsehood.

  Whittam Jardine had to die, because otherwise how could Abi ever clear Dad’s name?

  And Dog had to do it, so that Midsummer’s name wouldn’t be dragged into it.

  ‘Thought you were the – good girl,’ Dog said, not letting go of the weapon. ‘And your brother – the hothead.’

  ‘He . . .’

  Abi couldn’t say it. The words swelled like a sponge in her throat, and even air could barely get through.

  She had to say it. She had to name the crime for which this man would die.

  Abi swallowed, and forced the words out. She told Dog about the raid on Fullthorpe, and its aftermath. How they’d thought their plan had worked. And how the Jardines had twisted it to their own ends, after all.

  ‘They shot them, then staged it like the prisoners were the violent ones. My dad, and three others.’

  Dog looked at her, and Abi braced herself for the inevitable ‘sorry for your loss’, but none came. Instead he nodded.

  Then whisked the gun around so fast Abi didn’t even have time to scream, ran his thumb over some catch, and fired up into the trees. A moment later, something small plummeted to the ground. It was amazing Dog had even seen the creature, let alone hit it.

  ‘Whittam’s on my list,’ he said, lips pulling back from bloodstained teeth. ‘I’ll do it. I prefer to be hands-on – with a blade. But this way – has advantages.’

  ‘Silyen doesn’t need you here? He hasn’t bound you to this place, the way we both were at Kyneston? I remember he broke your binding the night the ballroom exploded, and mine was removed when my parents and I left the estate for Millmoor . . .’

  Dog shrugged. ‘I’m a free man.’

  Abi stood there, on the other side of that low gate. Could it really be this easy?

  ‘And you can just walk away?’

  ‘That’s what he said. I can’t let you in. But I can – go.’

  ‘Well, let’s go now then. Is there anything you need from the manor house? I have money.’

  The man waved the glove of knives dismissively.

  ‘This is all – I need. If I went back, it’d get – complicated.’

  Dog set his hand to the latch, and it lifted easily on what was barely more than a simple farm gate. Judging from the car park and this casual entryway, and given that the concealment of the estate was Silyen’s work, slaves would have come and gone freely when Far Carr belonged to Lord Rix. The man had lived his principles.

  Abi shivered. The irony hadn’t struck her before now. Rix had used Luke to try and kill Whittam Jardine. It was his actions that had sent everything spiralling into disaster for her family.

  Yet here she was, finishing the job for him.

  ‘I’ve got a car,’ she told Dog, as he swung the gate shut.

  And as he dropped the latch, it disappeared: the gate and then the wall, blurring away into nonexistence before her eyes. It was the creepiest thing Abi had ever seen.

  Well, Silyen Jardine and whoever else was loopy enough to be in there with him could enjoy their privacy. The lord of Far Carr had a gift for
meddling, but from here on, everything needed to unfold as straightforwardly as possible. The further away Silyen was, from what was about to go down in London, the better.

  She planned to head for Dalston, where, several blocks away from the old safe house, she’d noticed a row of railway arches housing businesses that were barely getting by. Abi was sure at least a few were abandoned and boarded up. Dog could hole up there for a few days, scoping out opportunities, while Abi rejoined Midsummer and Renie and the rest.

  Then when she knew what was proposed for the protests, she and Dog could lay their own plans.

  It turned out the direct route from the gate to the car took less than ten minutes. Abi didn’t know whether to be impressed or freaked out by the scope of Silyen Jardine’s brain-bending Skill, and settled for both.

  ‘I’ll drive,’ she told Dog. ‘Get in.’

  ‘Nice not to be – in the back,’ Dog said, and cackled as he pulled on his seatbelt.

  Apart from the carrion stink, he proved to be an excellent travelling companion. On the outskirts of a riverside town, they pulled into a twenty-four-hour supermarket so Abi could buy a few basics for them both – sandwiches and water, toothbrushes, clean underwear and T-shirts, and a couple of cheap mobile phones. Wet wipes to get the blood off Dog. She came out to find that Dog had tugged the licence plates off another vehicle in the car park and fitted them to Layla’s car. He tossed their plates in the boot.

  He also had the radio working in time for the midnight news bulletin. Abi’s hands shook on the wheel, as she heard Jenner’s voice pledging a full enquiry into the ‘unlawful’ events at Fullthorpe secure unit. She wanted desperately to switch it off before anyone mentioned Dad’s name. She thought she might throw up if there were any more lies about his violence, and how Security guards had supposedly risked their lives to end his.

  Instead, Abi turned up the volume. Like her fear, her courage was a wild animal. She could feed it with fury or starve it with grief.

  Right now, she needed it fed.

  Dad’s name wasn’t the only horror the bulletin contained. It named four prison officers and Security staff also killed during the breakout.

  ‘Impossible,’ she said, fingers clammy on the radio dial. ‘None of us were armed. Well, apart from a giant with two huge hammers. But Midsummer was controlling him.’

  ‘The death toll may rise further,’ the reporter’s voice crackled out from the dash. ‘And the public is asked to refrain from speculation while a full investigation is ongoing. However, should this prove to be the work of the same cells that have acted with such callous disregard for life in Millmoor, Riverhead and the Bore, Chancellor Jardine has vowed that they will be pursued with full force, in order to keep Britain safe.’

  ‘Maybe deaths from friendly fire,’ Dog shrugged. ‘When they were – firing at you. It happens. Or false flag.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘False flag. You do something bad. Then blame it on – your enemies.’

  Was that even possible? To ramp up outrage over the Fullthorpe breakout, could Whittam Jardine’s regime not only have murdered Dad, Oz and those others, but also have stage-managed deaths among its own officers? Who could do that and ever sleep again?

  Listening to the radio bulletin had been the right choice. Abi had once swotted up on the ethics problems you had to study at med school – seemingly daft questions, like whether you’d push one person onto a railway track to block a runaway train that would otherwise crash and kill five passengers. If you just considered the numbers, it should be an easy choice. But somehow, the fact that you had to push the unfortunate made almost everyone hesitate – Abi included.

  Not any more. If the person you were pushing was Whittam Jardine, Abi would shove him with every ounce of strength she had.

  As they drove through the sodium-lit night, Abi sketched for Dog the barest outline of Midsummer’s plan. This included the day of protest and the possible addition of large-scale arson, just to show that the Equals could be hit where it hurt – their assets and centres of privilege. She sensed he wasn’t especially interested. Perhaps because his motives were purely personal, or maybe because no killing was involved.

  ‘This list of yours,’ she asked, although she didn’t really want to know. ‘Who else is on it?’

  ‘All of them.’

  Dog patted the bulging front pocket of his overalls, where he’d stashed his monstrous glove. But his reply disturbed her. Could he really mean Lady Thalia, who might be cold and indifferent, but was nothing like her husband? Or Gavar and Jenner? Even Silyen, although Dog had been living under his roof and had managed not to kill him just yet.

  ‘All the Jardines?’

  ‘All the Equals.’

  Abi’s skin crawled as she shifted lanes to take the route into London’s heart. Her ally’s moral compass was as busted as that of her enemies. Well, you could still do a good job with bad tools.

  It was nearing two in the morning, and traffic was sparse when a Security officer waved them down just outside Romford. Should she speed away? But the officer’s patrol car was parked by the side of the road, so it would only invite a chase. She pulled over and wound down the window.

  ‘I need to see your licence, please, miss.’ The Security officer was a young man, and though his Essex accent was cheeky, his expression was serious. ‘The Chancellor’s raised the alert level across the capital and we’re doing spot checks. No cause for worry.’

  ‘I don’t have a licence,’ Abi said, sounding as contrite as she could. ‘I’m really sorry. I mean, I’ve got a provisional one, but not on me. My test is next week, so I just begged Dad to take me out for a quick practice.’

  How had that word come out of her mouth so easily? Abi could have wept.

  Frowning, the officer ducked down to peer at Dog.

  ‘Funny time for a driving lesson, sir. Your daughter should be getting her sleep.’

  ‘Sorry, officer,’ rasped Dog, rubbing a hand wearily across his face. ‘I’m a shift worker. Only chance I get. Anyway – she’s a night owl.’

  The Security guy’s face softened at Dog’s profession of paternal duty.

  ‘You should be displaying learner plates, sir. I’m afraid I may need to take a few details.’

  ‘It’s my fault,’ Dog rasped. ‘So tired I forgot ’em. Don’t want my girl – getting penalties – before she’s got a licence. They’re in the boot.’

  Filled with trepidation, Abi watched Dog get out of the car and wave for the officer to follow him. Please let Dog not lose it. He’d probably think nothing of making her drive through the capital with a dead body stuffed in the back.

  But he simply lifted out one of the discarded number plates and whacked the officer round the head. Then he carried the unconscious man behind his patrol car, and laid him out of sight from the road. When he returned, it was with another gun, two extra magazine cartridges, and a triumphant expression.

  ‘Wait,’ Abi said. ‘We can do even better.’ And, blushing all over – trying hard to imagine he was just a patient – she went and stripped the officer down to his underwear.

  ‘It should fit you,’ she said, dumping the uniform in Dog’s lap. ‘And now we’ve got to do something about the fact that when he comes round, he’ll have everyone on the lookout for a kinky father-daughter duo in a beat-up blue Ranger.’

  An idea came to her and she pulled off the road half a mile further on. She urged Dog to change into the uniform in the front seat while she cruised looking for the right sort of place.

  The right sort of place revealed itself as a run-down pub with half blacked-out windows, a crooked sign proclaiming it to be ‘Open all nite’, and three cars parked outside. They sized up the best vehicle, and Officer Dog went in to summon its owner on a plausible pretext. Once the man had shuffled outside – from the state of him, he shouldn’t be anywhere near a steering wheel for at least forty-eight hours anyway – Dog performed a simple choke that sent him down into unconsciousness.
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  Dog took the wheel of the new car and followed Abi as she ditched the old one several streets away, lost in an endless row of residential parking. Leaving it at the pub would have established an easy connection between their old car and previous crime, and this new vehicle. Then Abi took the wheel again and they were off into central London.

  ‘You’ve taken to – a life of crime.’

  ‘Just as well,’ she said ruefully, ‘because I’m not going to have a whole load of career options once this is over.’

  The closer they came to the centre of the city, the more armed Security officers were visible on the streets, even at this early hour. That was definitely a new development. It didn’t bode well for Midsummer’s plan to get huge numbers of people assembled peacefully. Because of course, if the Jardines had known in advance about Fullthorpe – and that had to have been Gavar, however much Abi wanted to believe otherwise – then they probably knew about the planned protests, too.

  Here in East London was where the common folk lived. Abi wondered if there were as many Security patrols over in posh West London, or the public spaces of the centre, around Westminster, Aston House and, of course, Gorregan Square.

  Just thinking about the square made Abi shake, and her palms grew slippery on the steering wheel. She could have been over the water in Dubhlinn with Daisy. What was she doing here?

  How could she contribute anything when she was this afraid? And she should stop thinking like this, but she couldn’t. The gun she’d given Dog would surely be damaged from where she’d mishandled it. It would misfire and shoot someone innocent, probably a child, and they would find her and take her away to Astrid Halfdan and then there would just be pain and more pain until . . .

  A hand wrapped round her wrist on the wheel and she yelped. The nails weren’t clawlike any more, but they applied pressure.

  ‘It keeps you alive,’ Dog said brusquely. ‘You can always tell the ones – that don’t feel fear. Coz they’re the ones – that don’t come back. But you can’t let it – master you neither.’

  Abi focused. Blinked. The hand on her wrist was an anchoring pressure.