by Vic James
‘Because it makes us easier to round up and arrest in Parliament Square? You must think I’m stupid.’
‘No. Because it seems to me that the current leadership – which is to say, the emergency leadership of Whittam Jardine – may be failing in several respects regarding the welfare of this country. Speaking as a committed parliamentarian, I would have no objection to hearing valid criticisms of that leadership voiced.’
Midsummer went quiet. Bouda knew she’d be processing that. Good.
Then she heard the woman’s throaty laugh.
‘You’re good, Bouda. Or bad. Or whatever. For the record, I regard you as part of that leadership, and I’m not making deals of any kind with you.’
‘I’m not proposing any deals. All I’m saying is that should, at some point, the people of London—’
‘Britain.’
Bouda could almost hear Midsummer smile. She smiled too. ‘. . . the people of Britain spontaneously decide to voice their dissatisfaction with the current leadership, then I would require our Security forces to be respectful of their right to free and open protest.’
That laugh again.
‘I’d volunteer to dog-sit your sister’s flatulent pooch in a broom cupboard before I trusted you, Bouda. But this has been an interesting conversation. Thank you for calling.’
The line went dead. Bouda let it whirr in her ear a moment before ending her call. She replaced the handset and contemplated it.
Tomorrow was going to be interesting.
She received a text from Jon at lunchtime the next day. All it contained was a time and a list of place names.
All of them were locations on the list of possible arson targets that she and Jon had drawn up.
Well, Midsummer might have ‘citizen journalists’ – kids with cameras – but Bouda had the professional media at her disposal. She put in a call to a correspondent whose reporting she’d always found irreproachable, and suggested that he and his crew be at the parliament gates at eight o’clock that evening.
The word came through from Security a few minutes after eight, at which time Bouda and Astrid were already in her ministerial car, parked in front of the Westminster complex alongside the crew’s satellite truck.
Even burning, the first target looked beautiful. It was one of London’s most iconic department stores, its pillared facade dominating the main shopping street. The store was Equal-owned and, like the luxury shops on Mountford Street, sourced much of its stock from slave labour, where there was no constraint on how many hours might be spent crafting a single, exquisite item. The fire service was on the scene, their hoses playing across the building. Astrid ran to instruct them to redirect their attention to the corporate headquarters behind the store. Preserving the company’s office space was the priority, they were told.
Which left the facade clear for Bouda. Flame was licking through the windows. Over the main entrance was a vast art deco frontage, a delicate lattice of glass. The TV crew got in position just in time to see it blow.
Perfect.
Bouda filtered her Skillful awareness down through the tarmac into the subsoil of the city. She felt for the city’s wet arteries – those buried and forgotten tributaries of the Thames. There were two close by: the Tyburn and the Westbourne.
And she called them.
Her heart was racing, her Skill was thrumming, and this was it, now. These next twenty-four hours were all or nothing. Bouda wouldn’t sleep again until Britain was transformed.
The result was even more spectacular than she’d hoped. She could feel the two sunken rivers strain upwards, and was almost thrown off her feet as they erupted at the surface. They geysered high into the air, and Bouda heard the TV crew’s astonishment.
‘Are you getting this?’ the producer asked the cameraman, who made a scathing response.
Then she had no more attention for them, because she was directing the jets across the store’s elegant exterior, where the flames were fiercest. She didn’t need to gesture to do this. She knew by now that the water simply bent to her will. But for the sake of the cameras she played it up – crisp, precise movements, like a musical conductor.
This wasn’t just about what she could do. It was about what she was seen to be able to do.
Jon had first hit on the idea – something that would fit in with Midsummer’s rebellious plans, while actually showcasing Bouda’s Skill. And his instincts had been spot on. He’d even suggested the red suit she was wearing. ‘To make you more visible. Pale clothes will get filthy; in dark colours you won’t stand out. It has to be red.’
The heat from the flames was ferocious, but nothing that Bouda’s superior Equal physiology couldn’t cope with. Again, the cameras wouldn’t miss that she stood closer to the flames than anyone else – another subtle signal of both her bravery and her superiority.
The arson strikes were expected through the night. Jon’s text had told her the second target, but the location was an anonymous set of offices in an unphotogenic section of Vauxhall – something that wouldn’t look good on camera. And as in their conversation earlier, Bouda didn’t want Midsummer knowing exactly how much detail she had. If the woman sensed that Bouda was going to steal the thunder for each act of arson, she might call off the attacks. And Bouda didn’t want that happening before target number three.
The third target was one side of Canary Wharf’s main plaza, behind which loomed the gleaming corporate skyscrapers of international banks and investment firms. It was the HQ of an Equal-owned commodity trading firm, whose origins lay in partnerships opened up by the voyages of Bouda’s ancestor, Harding. That was a nice detail for the reporter to pick up – a reminder that Bouda wasn’t just an Equal, but from a family that had helped build Britain’s economy. She hoped he also remembered what she’d said about using her maiden name of ‘Matravers’, instead of the double-barrelled version she’d adopted since marrying Gavar.
Once word came from the fire service – Bouda didn’t want to arrive too early, to give the blaze time to catch hold – their car sped through the streets flanked by motorbike outriders. The TV crew’s outside-broadcast truck raced after them, capturing every moment. As they drove, Bouda drafted a short statement to deliver on arrival, condemning the arson attacks. Overhead, the whirr of helicopter blades told her that an airborne filming crew was also tracking them. Perfect.
Canary Wharf at night was a diamond grid against the sky. Each lit window in its towering office blocks was a pixel in a billboard thirty storeys high that advertised London’s prosperity to the world. The blaze had already taken hold, though, and even though only one building was on fire, the mirrored glass on several of the office blocks gave the impression of a vast, raging inferno.
Both the skyscraper lights and the flames reflected off the black water that surrounded the central plaza on all sides. To the west was the Thames, Blackwall Basin was to the east, while north and south of the plaza were the former docks, now yacht-filled marinas. When Jon had suggested a Canary Wharf target, Bouda had initially dismissed it. Too challenging. Too much. But then she’d come and walked around here, and realized it could be her finest moment. The water in the docks and basin was shallow and would be much easier to manipulate than the open channel of the river.
‘And we’re hearing about homes – mansions, I should say – across central and West London being occupied by groups of protesters,’ said the reporter, once Bouda had delivered her statement against the blazing backdrop. ‘Can we expect tough action on those, too?’
‘I’m monitoring the situation,’ said Bouda. ‘Property ownership is the well-deserved reward of hard work, and its destruction will not be tolerated. But let me say this: I will never authorize the use of undue force against those peacefully protesting. The events of this evening are a message from the people of Britain – one that I, Bouda Matravers, will be listening to carefully. Now, please excuse me.’
‘A busy night for Bouda Matravers-Ja . . .’ she heard the reporter tell
ing the camera as she jogged towards the burning building. ‘Miss Matravers heads the Office of Public Safety, and as you can see, she’s taking that responsibility very personally indeed this evening. I’m seeing feats of Skill here with my own eyes like I never imagined. And just look at this . . .’
Bouda stood in the centre of the plaza and turned slowly on the spot, arms outstretched. Skill vibrated through every cell of her and the sensation was ecstatic. The river, her power, and the fifty per cent of her body that was composed of water felt one indistinguishable whole.
The water spiralled up from all four sides of the plaza, rising like an inverted tornado above the long, low blocks of offices. Bouda, her entourage and the film crew stood beneath its dripping, foaming pinnacle.
As she held her breath a moment, the Skill quivering through her, Bouda gave devout thanks to Midsummer Zelston and her ragtag revolutionaries. They couldn’t have provided her with a better opportunity for her to show what she was capable of. Then she inverted the point of the churning cone of water, and with a balletic dip of her knees and a powerful downwards swing of both arms, pulled it down to douse the fire in one surging instant.
Water sluiced across the plaza, carrying burning debris with it. The office was gutted (if the fire hadn’t been allowed to take hold, the pictures would have looked pathetic), but with one drenching, the blaze was now entirely extinguished.
‘That would have looked even more amazing from the air,’ Astrid said, hurrying to her side once the cameras had moved off Bouda to pan up Canary Wharf’s glass towers, saved by her actions. ‘How are you? Is it exhausting?’
It wasn’t. Bouda had never felt more alive. This was what she was born for – to work Skill, and be a strong leader for her people.
They caught up on reports of further explosions – another two, bringing the total to five. According to Jon’s text, only two targets remained.
One would be the historic buildings in the heart of Mayfair that housed the neighbouring embassies of Japan and the Confederate States of America, Britain’s partners in the Skilled Bloc of Three. The other was the London headquarters of BB Enterprises – the Matravers business empire that Daddy had named for his two girls, Bouda and Bodina. It was the biggest private employer of slave labour in Britain, and Daddy kicked back generous payments to parliament each year for the use-rights of their labour.
As Bouda had anticipated, these final attacks broke simultaneously. These were the two most high-profile targets, and the saboteurs would want to ensure that London’s firefighters were fully engaged elsewhere before they took them out.
‘We have reports of fire at the headquarters of your family’s business, Heir Bouda,’ one of the TV crews said, pushing a microphone into her face. ‘I imagine you’ll be heading straight there.’
‘The goal of these devastating attacks is quite clear,’ said Bouda. ‘To damage British-owned businesses, and jeopardize the livelihoods of tens of thousands of ordinary men and women. Now, I’m very confident that BB has every firefighting procedure in place. My concern is for Britain’s crucial economic and diplomatic relationships with our great allies, Japan and the Confederate States. I’ll be putting national interest above my own family interests tonight – as anyone would.’
‘Smooth,’ Astrid murmured, as their car sped across London.
The embassies would be her pièce de résistance. The nearest water source was the Serpentine lake in Hyde Park. Like the Gorregan fountain, it was fed by a deep borehole.
Well, Serpentine by name, serpentine by nature. The entire lake lifted from its bed as a vast, coiling wyvern, like that which had done battle with Midsummer’s animated dragon. Unlike her first creation, raised from the Thames, this serpent had to move without contact with its now-drained source. It was phenomenally unstable as it flew across Hyde Park, its every molecule held together by nothing but Bouda’s Skill and her will. Sweat was running down her face and spine, and her hands shook.
But it was a short flight and a glorious ending.
The wyvern set a collision course for the embassy buildings, annihilating itself against the pillared porticoes and elegant frontages, and extinguishing the flames in an instant. Astrid had instructed Security to allow onlookers to remain at a safe distance, rather than evacuating the whole square. And as the fires died in a gout of smoke of which a real dragon would have been proud, noisy cheering and applause went up from those gathered to spectate.
Bouda didn’t turn to acknowledge them – that would have been unseemly grandstanding. But the cameras missed nothing. And inside, she was exultant.
Dawn was breaking.
Round one to Bouda Matravers.
22
Abi
Whoever coined the phrase ‘on the run’ was right.
Abi felt like she’d barely paused for breath since the day she ran from Kyneston, after Luke’s trial. But one way or another, this was where the running stopped.
This gamble was too big. If they won, everything changed. If they lost, they lost it all: the country, their freedom, possibly even their lives. Crovan would destroy Midsummer’s Skill, just as he had Jackson’s. And then there’d be another Blood Fair, at which no lions would come roaring to the rescue.
After leaving Dog lying low in Dalston, she’d returned to Lindum. On the drive back, she’d wondered if they would let her in. After all, she’d vocally supported Gavar, who turned out to have betrayed them, and had just disappeared herself without warning. Perhaps Midsummer would suspect her, too.
She had an explanation ready, though, when she pulled the car up to Lindum’s front gates and waited for the Equal to come out.
‘I needed to be alone,’ she told Midsummer. ‘I went back to Manchester, to look at our old house. I wanted to think about my dad, about how we were before all this happened. And I couldn’t face having to say goodbye to my mum. Has she gone – you’ve got her away to Ulaidh?’
And when Midsummer said ‘yes’, Abi genuinely broke down in the noisiest, snottiest, most helpless crying jag imaginable, and the Equal had yanked open the gate and pulled her into a hug.
There hadn’t been any questions about her absence after that.
Lindum had been frenzied. Jon was there, and Abi was glad to see him.
‘I hear your info is being put to good use,’ she said.
‘I hope so. Major targets with minimum risk to life. We’ll deliver tip-offs to any night watchmen or cleaning staff so they can get out, and then . . . burn, baby, burn. It’ll send the message loud and clear that the Equals can be hit.’ He flashed that disarming smile, then turned more serious. ‘I think Midsummer has something else up her sleeve, though. Some surprise planned. You’ve no idea what that is?’
It was news to Abi. And given that Midsummer was now so busy that she seemed almost to have used her Skill to clone herself, there wouldn’t be any opportunity to ask. Besides, after the whole Gavar thing, Abi wouldn’t blame her if she kept back parts of her plan from absolutely everyone except those they concerned.
She wondered what it was, though.
And she was still wondering now, even as everything was unfolding around her in the heart of London. Midsummer had delegated responsibility across three teams: Mac from Auld Reekie had joined with Emily from Exton to mastermind the riotous house parties. Speaker Dawson was using her networks to bus in protesters from around the country for the march, with Jon at her side co-ordinating the logistics. And Renie’s uncle Wes was working with unflappable Bhadveer from Portisbury on the arson strikes. Portisbury’s factories specialized in chemical engineering, and several men of the Bore, responsible for the original arson across the slavezone, had chosen to stay and help after their release from Fullthorpe. This team of guys knew what it was doing.
Layla had been clear from the start that she wasn’t leaving her girlfriend’s side. She was running the base they’d temporarily taken over – an office building that had been mothballed pending redevelopment, where everything from the phon
es to the loos were still working.
The whole place smelled of industrial cleaning products that tickled Abi’s nose and throat. She couldn’t sneeze, though, because Renie’s head was in her lap and the girl was dozing. The pair of them had been out on one of the arson hits. They’d acted as lookouts for a team of the same guys from the Bore who’d levelled the Queen’s Chapel.
Abi had heard about Bouda Matravers’ response to the fires. They’d gathered round the office’s TV screens to watch the rolling news reports, Layla rubbing her bump and mouthing swear words of which no mother would approve whenever Bouda delivered some trite condemnation of what was going down in the city. But they all stood openmouthed when she’d flown the water dragon smack into the burning embassy. Jon had stepped away from the telephones to watch, and Abi had heard his awed intake of breath. Had he known what his erstwhile boss was capable of?
Midsummer just stood there grimly, watching. And Abi remembered what she’d heard about Renie’s capture at the House of Light. How Midsummer had raised a dragon from its roof to buy Renie time to escape, or pluck the girl to safety – and how it had almost succeded, until Bouda conjured a creature from the Thames to do battle with it.
There was a rumour going round that the Equal had actually telephoned Midsummer to taunt her. Who knew if it was true. But it was clear that Bouda Matravers was good at more than just feats of Skill. Abi felt a flicker of apprehension. If her plan to take out Whittam Jardine succeeded, would Bouda merely be waiting in the wings to continue his brutal policies?
But the people were rising. Across the city, the parties were drawing more and more Londoners onto the streets. Updates were coming in – someone was tallying the numbers on a massive whiteboard – of coachloads of people arriving in the capital. And many more were disembarking from trains. Even though social media was regulated and closely monitored, two hashtags were trending: #unEqual and #takeback. Hilda had been on standby to knock out any attempts to block them, but it looked like nobody in Bouda’s Office of Public Safety was particularly concerned about hashtags.
