Bright Ruin

by Vic James

  Except when she’d explained the concept to Dog, he’d bared his teeth and laughed. ‘Then second – if you have to – ignore the first rule.’

  The female officer was on her radio, which crackled.

  ‘Go to the Great Quad, staircase four,’ she said. ‘A staffer will take you to Chief Kessler.’

  ‘But we’re here for Lady Thalia,’ said Abi. ‘Surely she’s in the Chancellor’s suite in the tower?’

  ‘Couldn’t say,’ said the woman. ‘But Kessler needs to see you first. My colleague will walk you over.’

  Kessler.

  Abi exchanged a quick glance with Dog, hoping to convey her alarm at hearing the name. The four of them followed the officer across the front precinct of parliament towards the great quad. Another woman, dressed in office clothes, waited on the steps to one of the staircase doors.

  Abi knew where this was. The wing of Bouda’s Office of Public Safety. It was where Renie had been held, when she and Gavar had broken the kid out.

  They must have Gavar down in Astrid Halfdan’s suite.

  Her heart rate surged and raced. The one good thing was that she knew the layout of what lay ahead. But that was outnumbered by a legion of bad things. The space was confined, with nowhere to hide. Controlled by doors to which she did not, this time, have a fob. And if it contained Gavar, there was a good chance it also contained Bouda, or Astrid, or possibly Crovan.

  Or even all three.

  The officer turned back and the woman took them in. They passed Bouda’s headquarters on the right. ‘That’s where Daddy’s wife works,’ Daisy whispered to Libby.

  With her fob, the woman buzzed them through a door at the end. Abi recognized the sparse waiting room with its moulded metal furniture.

  ‘The next door has restricted access. Heir Bouda’s head of personal security, Chief Kessler, will be with you shortly to take the child through. He can see that you’re here.’

  She pointed out two CCTV cameras in opposite corners of the ceiling, then left. The door clicked and beeped shut behind her.

  ‘Why don’t you read to Libby while we wait?’ Abi told Daisy. As the pair settled themselves onto chairs, she and Dog looked around them.

  ‘Not good,’ she said softly. ‘Beyond that door are the cells and Astrid Halfdan’s suite. She’s Bouda’s in-house torturer.’

  ‘This Kessler – Bouda’s head of security – he’ll have – all the keys we need. And he’s a bastard – the kid said.’

  ‘Yes, but—’ Abi said.

  But then the far door beeped open and Dog was already upon him.

  His momentum took the two men back through the door, and Abi grabbed Libby’s backpack and ran to wedge it open before it shut. In the dim corridor she heard a wheeze and gurgle.

  Dog wouldn’t be fooling anyone any more that he was a normal Security officer, because his face was drenched in gore. In one hand he held a knife – he must have had that stashed somewhere. The other hand clamped shut the mouth and nostrils on a broad, meaty face that Abi had last seen puce with fury as Kessler clawed at Renie around a door. The wheezing sound was air passing through his opened trachea, but it wouldn’t save him, because his lungs were drowning in his own blood.

  It was horrifying. Every bit as unbearable as seeing Meilyr Tresco die. Except it was Abi’s decisions that had led to this death.

  Please let it be the last one.

  Abi kept Libby and Daisy behind her, shielded from the awful sight, until Kessler’s final, sodden breaths had subsided. What should she do with the two girls? Nothing good could be happening to Gavar and his mother if they were being held in here.

  Somewhere on Kessler’s person would be the fob to open the outer door they’d just come through. Should she tell Daisy to take Libby and flee back to Aston House? But that would alert Security to the fact that their mission had gone rogue. More officers would come and investigate. And the girls might not even make it out. Perhaps they’d be kept at the gate until the officers received further instructions – and who knew what those might be. Could Abi find a place for them to hide in this wing of the quad? Maybe a store cupboard. She’d tell Libby they were playing hide and seek, and lock them safely in.

  And yet . . . Abi touched the gun at her hip. Looked at Dog, now stripping Kessler’s body of anything useful – a key chain with a fob, a taser.

  ‘You two stay here and keep quiet,’ she told Daisy, then went to Dog’s side.

  She took the taser and keys from him, and watched as he helped himself to another gun and snapped off Kessler’s radio transmitter. Together they rolled the body over, to conceal the worst of Dog’s butchery and the dead man’s staring eyes.

  Abi returned to where Daisy and Libby waited, and picked up Libby’s backpack, letting the door close softly behind them. Leaving it propped open would alert anyone on the outside.

  She’d keep the girls with them a little longer, until they knew how things lay on the other side of that door. If Gavar and his mother were simply captives in a cell, they might yet be able to pull this off.

  ‘Don’t look,’ she warned her sister. Then she scooped up Libby, and pressed the little girl’s head to her chest as she stepped over Kessler’s body.

  The corridor was short, and ended in another door. This one wasn’t locked, but was heavy and soundproofed. She and Dog looked at each other.

  ‘Stairs down, and then the cells and the interrogation room,’ she told him, and he nodded.

  Abi remembered the horror of that white-tiled room, so like a hospital, but devoted to pain, not healing. She swallowed down her nausea.

  ‘Wait here,’ she told her sister, then readied and lifted the taser.

  She pushed the door open, and Dog went ahead of her down the stairs. The door of Astrid’s torture chamber was ajar. The cell doors were all closed. Abi crept around them, and saw in one the unconscious form of Lady Thalia. No Gavar. Which meant there was only one place he would be.

  The pair of them flattened themselves against the wall by the partially open door.

  ‘I would like you to try,’ Bouda was saying. ‘I’m aware that it’s not been successfully attempted, but wouldn’t it be good to know it can be done?’

  ‘It would be dangerous,’ replied a voice. Scottish. Crovan. ‘Besides, his brother has already tried.’

  ‘To transfuse dregs of his own Skill.’ And Abi knew that voice. Jenner. Still seeking the reward for which he had betrayed her. From the corner of her eye, she saw Dog finger his gun. ‘This wouldn’t be the same. Here, you would be removing it from Gavar – we know you can do this – and placing it entirely into me.’

  ‘Foolish boy,’ Crovan sneered. ‘Do you imagine Skill is like water and can be poured from vessel to vessel? In any event, you are a broken vessel. What Silyen has told me makes that perfectly clear.’

  Abi shifted to try and see further into the room.

  And saw Gavar, restrained in a chair. He was injured, though not grievously – a split lip, bruising and cuts to his bared chest – but he was limp and unaware. You might almost think him dead, were it not for the shallow rise and fall of his diaphragm. By his side stood a watchful Astrid Halfdan, a hypodermic in her hand.

  ‘I have another suggestion, Arailt,’ Bouda said. ‘How about we make a trial of this procedure using someone unSkilled?’

  ‘A commoner?’ Abi could hear Crovan’s lip curl.

  ‘Not exactly. My friend Mr Faiers here is the base-born son of the late Lord Rix. He is the same age and sex as Gavar. Why not attempt it?’

  Abi froze.

  Jon.

  Jon at Bouda’s side – and being offered Gavar’s Skill? So he had fooled them all along. That was how Bouda had known about the locations of the arson attacks. She must have planned in advance those spectacular demonstrations that had stunned the whole of Britain and were surely already making her a global celebrity. How much had he known and passed along?

  Another betrayal. And was this one, like Jenner’s, done for t
he sake of Skill? It certainly sounded like it.

  Abi trembled with fury. This awful ability the Equals had. It twisted both those who possessed it and those who did not.

  But Jenner was shouting, and Bouda replied scornfully, and when Jenner walked out of the interrogation room and saw Abi, his eyes went wide –

  – and Dog’s arm was around his neck, twisting, and Abi heard the crunch as it broke.

  Dog eased Jenner’s lifeless body to the floor and laid it in the shadow along the wall.

  That swiftly, it was over.

  There would be no last words between them. No recriminations for this boy who had betrayed both Abigail and his own better nature. No chance to offer a final forgiveness that Abi hadn’t known, till this instant in which it became impossible, that she wished to give.

  Spasms shook her body, and she fought to steady herself. This was no time for shock or grief. They needed a plan and they needed one now. Dog couldn’t just lurk outside the door and murder them one by one as they came out.

  Or could he?

  At any rate, one of the others might come out any second to chase after Jenner. They couldn’t risk being caught here like this. Abi laid a finger to her lips and motioned towards the stairs. Dog moved up them soundlessly. Abi didn’t disguise the tread of her feet, opened the soundproofed door, and once Dog was through, slammed it shut behind her. Hopefully they would think that was Jenner, making his exit, so no one would investigate when he didn’t return.

  Daisy and Libby looked up. Abi had no idea what she could say to them. She leaned against the wall, her chest heaving, trying to get her thoughts under control.

  Crovan. Bouda. Jon. Astrid Halfdan. And Gavar their prisoner and unconscious.

  Tasers didn’t work on Equals. Dog would be able to shoot one of them, but it would have to be fatal, as he’d only get one shot, and then the others would be alerted. Their protective reflexes would go up, and they’d be on him in a trice.

  Wouldn’t the best thing be simply to gather up Libby and Daisy and quietly creep away before they were all discovered and a terrible situation became a tragic one?

  She and Dog looked at each other. He would kill and kill and kill, she knew. But there was surely enough of the soldier in him to resist the needless throwing away of life. Wasn’t the harder, better thing to do to leave a man behind for the sake of the rest?

  And maybe they would merely take Gavar’s Skill and let him go – the same punishment given to Meilyr Tresco. It would be shattering, but Meilyr had survived and found purpose in life. Gavar had his little daughter – and she was also Skilless. He’d come through it.

  But in her heart of hearts, Abi didn’t think Gavar was getting out of that room. He was only alive at this moment so that Crovan could harvest his Skill.

  Abi silently offered him an apology. She had tried. The best thing she could do for him now was keep his daughter safe.

  She motioned for Daisy and Libby to get to their feet.

  Which was when she heard a hiss and crackle from the far end of the passageway. The bolts popped back, and the door opened.

  28

  Luke

  The body was Kessler. That brutal bull neck had been slashed so ferociously you could see right into his gaping windpipe.

  Whoever had done for him knew what they were about. They’d also stripped him of weapons – apart from a baton, which he presumably still carried for old times’ sake. No matter how grand you got, the fancy might take you now and then for a bit of old-fashioned rib-breaking.

  Luke could make use of it. Silyen might be the most Skilled for centuries, blah blah, but not even he could stop a bullet he couldn’t see coming. Someone still needed to watch his back, particularly if there was a killer this effective on the loose.

  He was tugging the baton from Kessler’s belt when Silyen’s boot gave an urgent tap-tap-tap against his ribs. Looking up, Luke saw movement at the far end of the corridor. It was too dim to make out who was there, or how many they were – it was definitely two people, maybe more.

  He stood up slowly, shielding the Equal.

  ‘Can you see?’ he whispered.

  ‘I think . . .’ said Silyen. ‘You won’t believe it.’ And was that honestly a curl of amusement in his voice?

  The Equal spun a ball of golden Skill-light in his fingers and released it down the passageway. Luke froze in horror as he heard a small child’s laughter, and saw a tiny figure toddle down the corridor towards it.

  ‘My brother does it to amuse her,’ said Silyen into his ear. ‘Excuse me while Uncle Silly goes and says hello. And before you freak out, the door down there is soundproofed, and not even two-year-olds scream as loudly as torture victims, so I’d say we’re okay.’

  Luke barely paused to push shut the door they’d come through, because he’d realized that if Libby Jardine was here, then . . .

  But where he’d hoped he might find one sister, he found two. Unbelievably, along with Daisy, was Abigail. Luke felt as though his heart would burst. He picked up his little sis and crushed her against Abi as all three of them were reunited for the first time since the fatal Kyneston ball. He decided to test his strength and leaned back to lift Abi off her feet, too. Daisy was having silent hysterics. Luke could feel her little body huffing against his.

  Then he heard a noise from Abi, and put her down. She was crying – very, very quietly.

  ‘Your brother,’ she said to Silyen. ‘He just . . . came at us. I’m so sorry. Both your brothers.’

  ‘What?’

  Silyen looked up, shock so plain on his face that Luke wondered how he had ever thought this boy didn’t have feelings.

  ‘Jenner’s dead,’ Abi said. ‘He was with them. They’ve got Gavar shackled down there, under some kind of sedation. Bouda told Crovan to take Gavar’s Skill, and Jenner asked for it, but Bouda wanted it for someone else instead. The Speaker’s son, Jon Faiers. So Jenner stormed out – and surprised us, and . . .’

  Abi lost it, and Luke held her as tight as he could while she shook.

  ‘It was quick,’ rasped a voice. ‘Reflex.’

  The only person not currently being reunited with family stepped away from the door where he was leaning. Dog. So Luke had been correct – Dog and Abi had somehow teamed up. Well, that would be a story for another day.

  ‘But you know,’ the man continued, ‘I might have done it anyway.’

  ‘You animal,’ said Silyen coldly. ‘The only one of us that can’t fight back.’

  ‘None of us can fight back – against any of you. And if I’m an animal – your family made me one.’

  There would never be a good time for a conversation like this, but right now definitely wasn’t it.

  ‘You say Gavar is in danger,’ Luke said. ‘And we’ve got these two to think about.’

  He put his hand on his little sister’s head. Her hair was soft and tangled as ever, and his need to protect her and Gavar Jardine’s kid was overwhelming. To hear that Dog had killed Jenner was unreal and would presumably hit him later. Abi must be in bits – or would be soon. She needed to be out of here, too.

  ‘Tell us quickly what we’re facing down there, Abi. And then you need to get this pair away from here.’

  So she did. And it was bad. Crovan, Bouda, Astrid-bloody-Halfdan, who he’d seen pin a man to a table with her dinner knife. Plus some commoner called Jon Faiers, about whom Abi was particularly bitter. And Gavar Jardine, restrained with Astrid standing guard. She’d surely kill him if they gave her a moment’s opportunity. Luke’s brain raced, trying to find a way through it.

  Dog would be able to get in a shot and take one of them down. Probably Astrid, from what Abi had said about the layout of the room. The protective reflexes of the other two would kick in, making normal weapons or attack useless, so it’d be Silyen against the pair of them: the cruellest and the most ruthless Equals in Great Britain. And there’d be nothing Luke could do to help him other than make sure the Faiers bloke wasn’t a problem.
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  But Silyen had been doing some thinking of his own.

  ‘Luke needs a weapon. Give him your knife,’ he told Dog, jerking a thumb at Luke. ‘The one you used on that chap back there. It’s obviously nice and sharp.’

  So at least Sil didn’t think he’d be useless.

  ‘Didn’t you wipe it?’ the Equal said, as Dog produced the sticky blade from down the side of his boot. ‘Nasty. Hanky, please, Libby.’

  Little Libby beamed as she pulled a crumpled white square from her cardigan sleeve and handed it over. Silyen cleaned the blade fastidiously, then passed it to Luke, handle first. The blade was short and thick, yet plainly razor sharp on both sides. It didn’t have a proper handle, but notches at intervals down the haft, where it had been sewn into a leather glove. One of the knives from Black Billy’s deadly gauntlet.

  ‘Keep it to hand. You’ll know when to use it. Now, how about something in exchange?’

  Luke narrowed his eyes. You never just agreed to Silyen’s bargains.

  ‘A kiss for the hero who’s going to save everyone,’ the Equal said.

  And Luke was halfway through laughing at him when Silyen’s hand went round the back of his skull and Luke found that he was kissing him instead. It was . . . startling. It was absolutely mortifying.

  It was quite possibly the best thing ever.

  He felt dizzy, and reached out to steady himself, one hand on Silyen’s shoulder, the other on the Equal’s hip, pulling him closer. Something coiled and fizzed inside his chest that had nothing to do with Skill. He heard himself groan and felt Silyen smile against his mouth.

  Luke was having none of it. The boy should be busy kissing, not smirking. He angled forward hungrily, and heard a squeak that could have been either one of his sisters. Luke felt himself flush bright red, but couldn’t care less.

  Silyen’s hand was at his neck, gripping possessively. Through his giddiness, Luke realized that the boy was pressing his thumb insistently in one spot, just below and behind his ear. Luke’s pulse was hammering, and its beat was almost painful beneath Silyen’s fingers.

  Then Silyen whispered something. Just a few words. That wicked tongue gave a parting lick around the curl of his ear, and the Equal leaned back. Luke stood there, dazed and reeling.