Bright Ruin

by Vic James

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I needed that. I used to take pills if my anxiety and panic attacks got really bad, like around exam time. I reckon I’m due an upping of my dose.’

  Dog laughed – and the sound of it made her miss her father even more. Dad had always been her quiet cheerleader, but also the one who pushed her out of her comfort zone. He’d taken the training wheels off her bike, and had let go of her in the swimming pool before she’d felt ready. In both cases, though, Dad had been right and she’d managed just fine.

  She was going to have to go through the rest of her life without him.

  The tears that she’d held back the whole day suddenly came uncontrollably.

  She pulled the car over to the side of the road and killed the engine, then laid her face against the steering wheel and cried and cried.

  Sometime later, she felt a bony hand on her back. Heard a ruined voice rasping.

  ‘Easy now. Good girl. Breathe.’

  Abi breathed. And wiped her face.

  ‘You and your brother,’ Dog growled. ‘Stronger than you think.’

  ‘I could have gone through life quite happily never finding out,’ Abi said, and hiccupped. She wiped her streaming nose. ‘Luke too, I bet.’

  ‘He’s safe. With Silyen now.’

  Abi’s head snapped round so fast it pinched a nerve, pain slicing up the side of her skull to stab the back of her eye.

  ‘Luke is with Silyen? What do you mean – at Far Carr? Why didn’t you say anything?’

  ‘Wasn’t important.’

  Abi could have strangled him. Instead, she asked a million and one questions, which Dog mostly answered with shrugs. But the little she gleaned was that Luke had made a friend at Eilean Dòchais who had helped him escape. (And wasn’t that just her little bro all over?) He had come to London to try and rescue Abi from the Blood Fair, but lost her in the chaos, whereupon Silyen had taken both Luke and Dog to Far Carr and woven them into the estate boundary.

  ‘And he’s safe?’ Abi asked, over and over again. ‘You said he’s safe?’

  ‘I said, he’s with – Silyen Jardine. They seem to be – getting on fine.’

  Dog wheezed a laugh. Who knew why. Presumably because the idea of being safe in the vicinity of a Jardine was risible. And yet . . . that estate wall. Luke was somewhere neither Crovan nor Whittam Jardine would be able to find him, just like Daisy.

  Abi leaned back in her seat, limp with relief and disbelief. She was full of regret that Dog hadn’t told her earlier, so she could have insisted on seeing her brother and hugging Luke till her arms hurt.

  But it would have changed everything.

  She couldn’t have not told Luke about Dad. But going through that again, so soon after telling Mum, would have been unbearable. And how would Luke have reacted? Knowing him, he would have decided to shoot Whittam Jardine himself, which could only have ended in absolute disaster.

  It was better this way.

  She wiped her face. ‘Thank you for not telling me back there,’ she told Dog. ‘That was the right call. Now let’s get on with this.’

  She pulled the car away from the kerb, and drove them deep into the dense, run-down streets of East London.

  Dog craning at the window caught her attention, so she ducked and looked, too.

  A body was hanging from a railway overpass. It was swollen from exposure, the face so tight with black bloat that it was impossible to guess at age, ethnicity or gender. The one thing you could tell was its crime, because a sign pinned to the body bore the words ‘SABOTEUR’. Near its dangling feet, a Security officer patrolled, presumably to deter any attempt to cut it down.

  Abi’s mouth went dry. The words ‘KEEPING BRITAIN SAFE’ had been stencilled along the inside of the underpass. The body spun as a train went overhead.

  Once past the swinging corpse, it was just a few more turns to the railway arches. They encountered no more Security, and Abi let out a sigh of relief. It was a little after three in the morning and the grimy cul-de-sac was deserted. As she had remembered, an auto-parts yard with a roll-down metal shutter was the only business unit that appeared still to be trading.

  Abi led Dog to the unit that looked the best combination of deserted yet habitable, and pushed open the door. There was a scuffling within, and she froze. Rats? But there was no further movement, so she gingerly stepped inside.

  Only to be slammed against a wall as something slashed toward her arm.

  At her cry, Dog sprang snarling through the doorway. Whoever had assaulted her was now attacked in turn, and screamed. Abi’s heart raced.

  ‘Stop! Please!’ came a cry from the dim recess of the cavernous space.

  It was a child’s voice.

  The person Dog now had in his grasp called out something in a language Abi didn’t understand. And though the voice was male, it had that wobble Luke’s had when his voice was breaking between child and adult.

  They’d been attacked by children?

  A light sputtered into existence – a small battery-powered lamp. Its pool of weak light revealed a pair of unkempt children, one maybe eight, the other younger, and held in Dog’s grasp was a struggling boy of perhaps twelve.

  ‘I speak best,’ said the middle one, in heavily accented English. ‘Please don’t hurt us.’

  They looked to be from the Mesopotamian region? It was hard to tell. A few blankets on the filthy concrete floor showed where they had been sleeping, empty sandwich cartons scattered around.

  ‘We won’t hurt you,’ Abi said, motioning at Dog to release the boy. He did so, though not before shaking the kid’s wrist until a penknife fell to the floor.

  ‘Are you Security?’ asked the child. Its small sibling began to cry.

  Dog was still wearing the uniform.

  ‘No. Who are you? Why are you here?’

  In halting, but clear English, the child poured out a story that Abi had already half guessed. The family had fled conflict in their homeland, and been smuggled to Britain. They’d been here for six months. Their parents were both teachers, but had worked as a labourer and a cleaner to pay the rent on the single room they all occupied. Then a week ago, Security’s immigration team had come knocking.

  ‘She said we were thieves,’ the child said. ‘Because we use schools, have jobs, walk in the street, but do not do slavedays. My parents cried. They said: “We will do days, we just want that our children are safe.” But they were taken. We were told to stay, a child dee-poor, dee . . .’

  ‘Deportation,’ Abi supplied. Her eyes were watering with the dust in this place.

  ‘Child deportation officer would come in the afternoon. But we ran. We hide here.’

  The smallest one snivelled against its sibling’s side. Their brother looked on, fingers clenching, having lost his only means of defending the remainder of his family.

  ‘Keeping Britain Safe,’ Dog rasped. ‘I fought in their country, against – their persecutor. Now we need to keep this country – safe from them?’ He spat on the floor.

  But Abi knew many would approve of such expulsions. This narrative fitted into the bigger lie Whittam Jardine was telling the British people. If folk felt poor, it was because of these sponging refugees, not the greed of the Equals. In the same way, those who protested against the slavedays were being cast as the lawbreakers, when it was the days themselves that were unjust.

  Whittam was terrorizing the people of Britain under the guise of being their protector. The man was a monster. And a genius.

  She and Dog would be the end of him.

  Abi drew Dog back outside, away from the children.

  ‘This can’t go on. Something needs to happen – and soon. I need to get back to Lindum and find out what Midsummer’s plans are. When we do this, it has to be in a way that doesn’t implicate her, but I’m betting on the fact that what she’s planning will draw him out. He won’t be able to resist grandstanding: addresses to the public, some kind of counter-demonstration, flags, that sort of thing.’


  ‘I’ll watch Aston House,’ Dog said. ‘And Westminster. People on the offensive – often forget the defence. If there are weak spots – I’ll find them.’

  ‘Good. But remember, we have to see if this can end peacefully first.’

  Abi could tell from the look in Dog’s eye that he didn’t believe it could.

  And neither did she.

  21

  Bouda

  ‘It starts the night after tomorrow,’ Jon said.

  ‘So soon?’ Bouda couldn’t hide her scepticism.

  ‘They’re drawing on networks that have been in place for years, remember. There are people here from Exton, Portisbury, Auld Reekie, you name it. All my mother’s shadier contacts, too. They want to keep up momentum after Full-thorpe. There are three stages planned. First, targeting property – there’ll be takeovers of empty mansions. They’re going to call those “house parties” and invite people to turn up. It’s a way of getting people turned out, ready for the march the next day.

  ‘Then second, while Security’s distracted with all that small-scale disruption, I’ve got her sold on the large-scale targets we discussed. There’ll be major arson strikes through the night. Then when London wakes in chaos, to pictures of Equal buildings burning, there’ll be a massive march through the city that will end up in Parliament Square. It’ll finish with a rally.’

  Bouda pressed her lips together. Thank goodness Midsummer had taken the bait on the arson, because otherwise it would be a tame sort of protest. Nothing at all that would justify reprisals. And nothing that would give Bouda the opportunity to show the people of London what she had to offer.

  ‘That’s a pretty innocuous finale,’ she said. ‘A rally? Let me guess: speeches and a megaphone. She seriously thinks she’ll change things like that?’

  ‘That’s the point.’ The line crackled and Bouda could hear the distant hooting of an owl, and wondered where Jon was. No doubt somewhere in Lindum’s grounds, while inside, behind those dirty old brick walls, Midsummer and her band of traitors were scheming. ‘If Security or the military start shooting on the crowd, then you’ve instantly lost moral credibility on the claim to be “Keeping Britain safe”. They figure you’re a hostage of your own slogans.’

  Bouda drummed her fingers on the bedside table. They sported a bright turquoise manicure. Gavar’s inexplicable and uncouth visit had left her thinking about DiDi, and on a whim she’d dug out the little bottle of polish her sister had once done her nails with. On that morning, Bouda had thought her sister was just back from a shopping trip to Paris. In reality, Dina had been breaking a prisoner out of Millmoor – Oswald Walcott. He had foolishly come back to Britain later, so was picked to die at Fullthorpe. You didn’t thumb your nose at authority without consequences.

  Her darling sister had worked against everything Bouda believed in. She had collaborated with Midsummer and others who wished to destroy the Equal way of life and overturn their country’s history.

  Bouda had utterly mistaken the person closest to her. What else might she be getting wrong?

  ‘Bouda? Are you still there?’

  ‘Sorry, Jon, I was thinking. It’s late. Update me tomorrow when timings and locations become clearer.’

  She cut off the call.

  It was time for sleep, but sleep eluded her. She drew the coverlet off her bed and curled up with it in her armchair instead. And in the shadows of her unlit room, one by one, she seemed to see them: Mama, killed in Portisbury slavetown by a commoner’s act of sabotage, when Bouda and DiDi were girls. Bodina, whose final words were that everything her sister believed in was wrong. Daddy, who showed his love by just giving her whatever she desired. Gavar, her longed-for and hated husband, turning away with pity in his eyes. Whittam, who used her as an ally and coveted her as an ornament. Jon, who desired and respected her Skill and her body.

  Who was she, without this Skill and the skin she stood up in? She was nobody’s sister now. Felt like nobody’s wife. Might soon be nobody’s daughter.

  But she wasn’t nobody.

  She shouldn’t get so caught up in Midsummer’s plans that she forgot the other person she needed to take care of: Whittam.

  Because there were two ways to rise – you could climb, or your enemies could fall.

  Manage both, and you’d rise so high no one could touch you.

  She threw the coverlet aside, pulled on some warm clothes and padded through the corridors. Security at the front door touched their helmets in salute as she exited.

  The fountains caught her eye first. Even though it was a mild night, they had somehow frozen. Bouda touched one, and it melted back to bubbling liquid. Then the second and third. When the fourth was flowing freely once more, she sent them jetting high into the sky, even though there was no one there to see them except her and the sentries. She laughed as the water rained down, wetting her face and hair.

  Poor Midsummer, plotting to overthrow Whittam through the so-called power of the people. Did she not realize that the people had no power, and never would have, in a world in which Skill existed?

  Bouda inhaled, and the night air held the river’s briny tang. She let her Skillful awareness reach towards the Thames. The tide was turning, and she could feel the great river flex like an animal shifting in its sleep as she petted it.

  Her sense of mastery felt greater than before. Was the mere exercise of her Skill increasing its strength?

  A chill went down Bouda’s spine. She remembered when she’d first encountered a notion like that. It was a year ago, in the House of Light, when Whittam had told her of Silyen’s scheming for an abolition proposal. The only explanation they’d come up with to explain the boy’s motives was that, as a devotee of Skill, he wanted the Equals to use their neglected powers.

  Well, he’d got his wish.

  He might be only eighteen, but her precocious brother-in-law knew more about Skill than anyone alive, Bouda was certain. Had he anticipated events building to a confrontation like this? Engineered it, even? Because that proposal had sparked the Millmoor riot, which had snowballed into the Bore burning, and then Riverhead – and everything since. Where was Silyen, anyway? And what was he up to?

  He’d never appeared interested in politics. And yet he’d levered himself neatly into the House of Light. If the rest of them were discovering that the more you exercised your Skill, the more you wanted to, might Silyen find that the more political power he had, the more he wanted?

  Bouda curled her fingers. Everywhere you looked were people with their own slippery agendas. Why did this have to be so hard? There was no question of this country not being ruled by the Skilled. Anyone with an iota of common sense could see there was no alternative.

  Yes, the slavedays and the country’s economic footing required adjustment, to ensure that people’s qualifications and experience were being put to best use. That, coupled with improvements in living conditions in the towns, should satisfy the vast majority.

  That was what was needed. Not Midsummer’s abolition. Not Whittam Jardine’s tyranny.

  And if she could just hold her nerve through these next forty-eight hours, Britain’s future would rest in Bouda’s hands.

  Working through these problems had helped settle her thoughts, and when she returned to her apartments, Bouda slept.

  The next day, she was at her desk first thing. The office felt strangely empty without Jon, but soon warmed up with a hum of activity. Across the country Bouda’s monitoring stations were reporting gatherings and departures – coachloads of people slipping out of the great cities of Britain and heading to the capital. Tomorrow night, these people would kick off the ‘house parties’ across Mayfair, Chelsea and Kensington. The day after, they – and everyone they’d drawn onto the streets with their fun – would march.

  It was a tough call, deciding when and how to intervene. If Security’s response betrayed too much foreknowledge, it could alert Midsummer that her plans had been compromised beyond the little that Gavar had gleaned.
But for Security not to react at all would be even more suspicious. Bouda didn’t want Midsummer sensing that she was being led into a trap, and spooking. This showdown needed to happen.

  She picked up the phone and called Speaker Dawson. She knew from Jon that his mother still used the number listed in the parliamentary directory. When the woman answered, Bouda demanded to speak to Midsummer.

  The muffled and confused exchange down the phone was almost entertaining. Bouda could just picture the panic among the plotters. But Midsummer’s voice was strong and confident when she came on the line.

  ‘Bouda. I take it you’re not ringing for a chat. What can I do for you?’

  ‘I appreciate you’re busy, so I’ll keep it short. I hear you have some fun planned for us, and the traffic and people movement data I’m seeing suggests it might be happening soon.’

  ‘Your husband reported back like a good boy, did he? I wish I could say I’m surprised. Are you calling to tell me how you’ll put a ring of steel around London? The people won’t be denied, Bouda.’

  ‘I’m sure they won’t, Midsummer. But they might have a difficult time making their voice heard if I shut down London’s main thoroughfares. Block off any place that might be used for gatherings.’

  ‘You can’t close down everywhere. We’ll find a way.’

  ‘What if –’ Bouda jumped in quickly, because it sounded as though Midsummer might be about to hang up. ‘What if I didn’t? What if I gave you and your rabble a free pass to the very heart of London? Gorregan Square, maybe. Or even Parliament.’

  ‘We don’t need your permission, Bouda. We’ll be marching peacefully. I’ve invited members of the international press. Global observers. Citizen journalists. The minute one of your goons lifts a baton against us, it’ll go around the world. You’ll be even more of a pariah regime than you already are.’

  ‘Midsummer, I know you took an advanced degree in Thinking the Worst of People, but you may have misheard me. I said I would let you through. You can come down the Mall. Do your thing in front of the House of Light itself, if you want.’