by Vic James
It would never be resolved. Bouda felt as if every last trace of Skill had been painstakingly scraped out of her, like flesh off the back of an animal hide. The others surely felt the same. It was never coming back.
She understood now why Meilyr Tresco had fought Crovan so desperately. How Jenner Jardine must have felt all those years. His body had been found outside the interrogation room, his neck broken. The only mystery was how he had managed to resist killing himself years before.
Bouda didn’t want to die. But she wondered what she had to live for. She had pursued political power her whole life, until she had finally discovered something even more astonishing – the surging brilliance of her Skill. And no sooner had she found it than she had lost it.
She went to the wall of portraits – that unbroken line of Chancellors. So many Jardines. The occasional Rix, or Esterby, or Occold. She touched the gilded frame around beautiful Aristide Jardine, the Harrower of Princes.
Had he thought that this was all there was? The climb, and the Chancellor’s Chair, and your face on a wall? Slowly and deliberately she pushed a sharp fingernail through one corner of the canvas and watched it tear. That was what political power was. A magnificent facade, stretched thin over nothing at all.
She walked along the line to the very end. Two more would need to be added: Zelston and Whittam.
Perhaps a third. A Last Chancellor, just as there had been a Last King.
At the knock on the door, she turned.
‘Come in,’ she called, though there was no force to her words beyond mere permission. There would be no more conversations behind Skillfully sealed doors.
It was Rebecca Dawson, the Speaker. The pair of them stood awkwardly, facing each other. When Dawson extended her hand, Bouda shook it.
‘The others are on their way,’ Dawson said.
‘My people too.’ She poured the woman a glass of water from the carafe that stood where Whittam’s whisky decanter had once been. ‘Shall we?’
There were eight chairs around the oval dining table in the suite. Bouda considered sitting at one end, with Dawson at the other, but changed her mind and took a seat in the centre. Dawson sat opposite.
‘Your son?’ Bouda asked. She had visited Faiers in hospital, but only briefly, and on both occasions he had been unconscious. Medicated to the eyeballs to deal with the pain. Once, a simple touch from Bouda could have eased that – and even if healing shattered kneecaps wasn’t something she could be confident of performing, she would have had a go. As it was, he’d need weeks in hospital, and months of physiotherapy if he was to walk again. The same few minutes that had stolen Bouda’s Skill had robbed Faiers, too. He’d also lost an ability that had once been as natural as breathing.
Dawson gave her an update.
‘You genuinely care for him?’ the woman said, when she was finished. ‘I always knew he admired you – far too much for me to approve of, but . . .’
Bouda didn’t think she could care about anyone or anything ever again, but she nodded.
‘He believed in me.’
More knocks at the door, and one by one they arrived. Bouda’s team: Daddy, the Elder of the House Hengist Occold, and Lord Esterby.
Not Astrid. Bouda had sent her to Eilean Dòchais to establish if the castle’s wards were still operational (they weren’t), and to impose order before the Condemned realized they could now just walk out of their prison.
Dawson’s team: a woman named Emily, who had been an activist at Exton slavetown, a pleasant-faced man named Bhadveer, from Portisbury – and Armeria Tresco. No surprise there. Bouda and Dawson directed them to sit in alternate seats around the table, so there was no sense of one side facing another.
‘Our Skill has gone,’ Armeria said, in her usual forthright way. ‘What you did to my son, to punish him, has somehow fallen on all of us. And don’t give me that nonsense about it being erratic, or a disturbance. Meilyr said it was like a hole inside him that the wind blew through. That’s how we all feel, yes?’
Bouda nodded. There was no point denying it.
‘We’ll have to be straight about it sooner or later,’ she said. ‘But we need to acknowledge the risks of such an announcement . . .’
‘Risks to you Equals,’ said Emily. ‘Not to the rest of us.’
‘Yes, to the rest of you,’ Bouda said. ‘For centuries, our country’s governance – our whole way of life – has been based on the slavedays. And the foundation of the Slavedays Compact is quite clear: labour given in exchange for Skillful protection. Now there is no Skill, there is no longer any basis for the slavedays.’
At her side, she heard Daddy exhale.
‘Words I never imagined hearing from you,’ said Armeria.
‘Simple fact,’ Bouda said. ‘While our class possessed Skill, we were superior, and the slavedays was a rational and effective expression of that superiority. We still are superior, of course, but not in the same way or to the same degree, and so the nation needs to be reordered to reflect that.’
‘Still not admitting that you were wrong? That the slavedays are cruel and inhumane?’
Such useless words. What was right or wrong? Only thinking made it so.
‘If my sister was still alive, Armeria, she’d be sitting here saying the same as you. Your son, too. That was what they believed. I believe differently: my assessments are based on logic, not sentiment. Speaker Dawson’s son, Mr Faiers, works for me. And for some time we have been discussing ways in which the system might be improved. Now I see that those improvements need to go further. That wholesale reform is needed.’
‘Reform?’ Bhadveer sat forward. ‘When something is as broken as the government of your people, it cannot be reformed. It can only be scrapped and re-made.’
‘Let me be clear,’ Bouda said, pressing her fingertips against the polished wood of the tabletop. ‘This is a remaking. I am proposing democracy: direct elections. I am proposing the abolition of the slavedays. But transition is needed, if we are to keep our country strong and maintain our place in the world. Some changes can begin right away. We will act upon slavetown conditions immediately, for example.’
‘How kind,’ said Emily, unappeased. ‘Vague promises of elections, improvements. We could put your entire class on trial for crimes against humanity – do you realize that? Many countries in the international community would support such a move.’
‘And many would not,’ snapped Esterby. ‘Japan and our Confederate cousins, for a start.’
‘You think they’ll care about you now?’ scoffed Bhadveer. ‘You are their worst nightmare. A country where – pouf! – Skill just disappeared in an instant.’
‘Enough.’ It was Dawson. ‘Miss Matravers is correct. She’s made us a big offer here. The two things we want most: abolition and the vote. The rest will take time, if the country is not to collapse into anarchy and economic ruin.’
‘Time for them to find a cure for this loss of Skill,’ said Emily.
Armeria Tresco reached over and laid a hand on the woman’s arm.
‘I saw it with my son,’ she said softly. ‘There is no cure.’
‘Let’s hear what you’re proposing, Bouda.’
Dawson sat back in her seat, and Bouda saw in her qualities that she recognized in herself: a love of country, a fierce defence of her own class – and a yearning for power that circumstances had long denied her.
Perhaps she and this woman could talk.
Perhaps things need not change so very much.
Bouda pulled her folder towards her and opened it.
‘This is my proposal,’ she said.
It was late afternoon by the time Bouda made her way to the small, subterranean chamber where Whittam’s body was being kept after his lying-in-state. Equal bodies now decayed as fast as normal ones, so he had been removed here, to what had been a former cold-store for the parliamentary complex, before electricity.
The corpse was being prepared for dispatch to Kyneston. The funeral was tomorrow. Bu
t Bouda wouldn’t be going.
She circled the body where it lay, all those old feelings swirling through her: admiration, resentment, fear, and a longing not for who he was, but for what he represented.
‘It’s just as well you never lived to see it,’ she told him. ‘It would have finished you off. Gavar took you just a few hours early, nothing more.’
A wig had been placed over Whittam’s blasted scalp. The handkerchief that had covered it had been cleaned, and was tucked into his top breast pocket. Bouda tugged it out and crumpled it in her fist, suddenly overcome with emotions to which she couldn’t put a name. Tears were hot on her face.
‘I’m the Last Chancellor,’ she said. ‘They’re giving me five years, and I’ll work alongside an elected cabinet to transition the country. My picture will hang next to yours on that wall. A woman among you all, at last.
‘After that, everything changes. There’ll be a Prime Minister, or a President, or something. It might even be one of us. Who knows. Old habits die hard, and while they’ll take Daddy’s factories, I won’t let them take our estates. We’ll still be the elite, we’ll just have to adapt. You always said a confident politician never compromises. Well, I guess that’s one more thing you were wrong about.’
‘Heir Bouda?’
She turned. It was a minor functionary in the Office of Ceremony, the third son of an obscure lord. She imagined he spent most of the time polishing the trumpets that heralded the Chancellor’s approach. They would sound one final time, for her installation.
‘What should we do with this?’ The man tipped up a section of wooden board from where it had been leaning against the wall. ‘It’s the only bit that survived the destruction of the House. We laid Chancellor Jardine out on it, but should we send it to Kyneston?’
As he angled the wood, Bouda saw what it was. The carved back of the Chancellor’s Chair. The old throne of kings and queens. It had outlasted the monarchy, and now it had outlasted the Equals.
Her fingers traced the carvings upon it. Age had rendered them dark and smooth, and the wood was freshly pockmarked, where flying masonry and debris had struck the chair as the House fell. But she could make out fanciful images. A dragon. A crowned man. A winged woman holding a sword. A sun surrounded by stars. Wavy lines that could have been water, or could have been something else entirely. Nonsensical pictures from a more primitive time.
Was that how history would remember the rule of the Equals?
‘It’s of no use,’ she said. ‘Burn it.’
Epilogue
Abi
Abi held Daisy’s hand, and Daisy held Libby’s as they watched the three bodies carried out of the great house, each draped in scarlet-and-gold cloth. On Libby’s other side was Gavar, his mother on his arm. A black net veil was pulled down over her face, this woman who had lost her sister Euterpe, and now her husband and two sons.
As they stood on the high curve of the hill, Gavar bent low to answer his daughter’s curious chatter.
Abi had never imagined she’d be back at Kyneston. She’d worried about coming at first – fearful it would drag up bad memories and trigger an anxiety attack. But she was glad Daisy and Griff had persuaded her. The old woman had stayed at home. She didn’t want to see young men she’d known as babies put into the ground, she’d said. And besides, someone needed to keep watch over Luke. Although unharmed, Abi’s brother hadn’t regained consciousness since Dog had carried him out of Astrid’s basement, and he now lay sleeping in a room at Griff’s cottage.
Abi breathed in the warm June air. It was good to be out of the house, and she drank in the sight of open parkland, the lake sparkling in the sunshine, and the loud cooing of wood pigeons from the trees. The water was the only thing about Kyneston that glittered now. The coruscations of Skill were gone from the house’s great glass wings. Its boundary wall possessed merely the warm, dull patina of aged brick. The gate was now just a perpetually visible arch of intricate ironwork.
Skill had died in Britain when the House of Light fell.
That had been a week ago. Midsummer Zelston hadn’t lived to know it, but the change she had fought for was coming.
It had to.
The Equals still weren’t admitting it – though reports promised a ‘joint statement’ from Bouda and Speaker Dawson on Monday – but the disappearance of Skill was unignorable. One of the first clues had been when a helicopter of holidaymakers bound for the Scillies had seen an entire island shimmer into existence beneath them, topped with an extravagantly spired and turreted castle. Their blurrily snapped pictures of Highwithel had gone worldwide.
Abi liked to imagine Renie on the castle’s law ledge, flipping the bird at the tourists as they flew by. She and the Club had taken refuge there with the Trescos. Layla and the men of the Bore had gone to Lindum.
No one knew where Dog was.
Abi had seen the moment it all changed. She had led Daisy and Libby out of the main gates of parliament without challenge from the Security officers, and they were almost across Parliament Square when it happened: a soundless, near-blinding explosion of light.
They’d turned back to look, Abi shielding Libby’s eyes. In place of the pulsing golden cloud above the House of Light swirled an incandescent vortex. Then in an instant, soundlessly, the light funnelled down into the ground and disappeared.
Not knowing what it had meant, still desperately anxious about the safety of Luke, Gavar, Dog – and, yes, Silyen – Abi had hastily scooped up Libby. She’d urged Daisy to follow, and run to Aston House. She’d headed for one of the back gates but had noticed, as they passed, that the flames and fiery salamanders that had adorned the front gate had been extinguished.
They never burned again.
From where she stood now, on Kyneston’s hill, Abi could make out the marble salamander curled on top of the Jardine family mausoleum, granite flames licking about it. Beneath, along the lintel of the Roman-style structure, was the Parva motto: Uro, non luceo. ‘I burn, not shine.’ The front of the mausoleum was a pillared portico, and the Jardine motto was carved within, above the heavy bronze door: Sapere aude. ‘Dare to know.’
But what was there to know after you’d been carried inside, Abi thought? There was nothing to learn in there. Death held no last, great secret.
The three biers were closer now, the bearers trudging slowly towards them. Gavar led his mother away from the group of mourners, up to the mausoleum gates.
Abi watched the small procession. The first body was a man she had been prepared to kill, if she had to. She had realized something important in that moment: that sometimes the best thing isn’t always the good thing. In the end, Gavar’s bullet had felled his father. But Abi had given Dog the order, and felt as changed by that as if she had shot Whittam Jardine herself.
She wasn’t sorry.
About the second body, she was more sorry than she could ever say.
What she’d felt for Jenner hadn’t been love – she knew that now. But it had been something that had felt bewilderingly, beautifully, deceptively like it. And though it had ended in horror and betrayal, she had learned something from Jenner, too. That loving someone didn’t mean you could save them. And that you didn’t save yourself simply by the act of loving.
It was a cruel irony that he had not lived to see a world in which he would, finally, have been the equal of his now-Skilless peers. Abi made no attempt to stop the tears that welled in her eyes as his body passed. Their sting was somehow cleansing. Abi forgave him, and forgave herself.
The third body, she almost didn’t believe. But she’d seen Silyen’s pale, cold face when the three Jardines had been laid out in Kyneston’s great hall for mourners to pay their respects.
No one knew exactly what had happened in that basement room of Astrid’s. In the chaotic hour that followed that explosion of light, Security had ventured into the interrogation suite – and found a scene of carnage. None of those who survived had spoken of what happened. Maybe Luke would tell her, one day
.
Much though she longed for her brother to wake up, Abi dreaded what she would have to tell him. He still didn’t know about Dad. Abi had asked for her father’s body to be cremated, and when Luke woke up and Mum was back from over the water, they’d all go and scatter his ashes somewhere special.
And depending on what had happened in the basement, it was possible he didn’t know about Silyen’s death either. Their moment in the corridor had taken her completely by surprise – though now she’d thought about it, there had been clues. Like the time she’d spotted Silyen watching a shirtless Luke chop down trees in these very woods.
Luke’s enthusiastic response had been rather more startling. But then Abi and her brother had been apart for most of the past year, and they’d each changed in ways both obvious and invisible.
Not Daisy, though. Abi squeezed her little sister’s hand. Stoical, steadfast Daisy. She’d seen the good in Gavar long before the rest of them, and had stuck loyally to him and his little daughter.
It remained to be seen whether anyone else would see the good in Gavar. The bad was rather more conspicuous. And of course, he had confessed before thousands – not to mention the assembled news cameras – that he had killed his father.
And yet the country’s mood had shifted, just as Midsummer had dreamed it would. Already, that father was no longer seen as a great statesman to be wept over, but as a tyrant. His death might not go unpunished, but would definitely go unmourned. Gavar’s words were played over and over by the media: ‘I don’t want Britain to be a country where one child’s opportunities are greater than another, simply because of their birth. I take no pride in being the son of a man who thought that’s how it should be.’ Pundits freely debated whether he would end up in prison or running the country. Both were equally possible.
Here he was now, unlocking the door of the family mausoleum as the biers of his father and brothers drew near. A sweet, tarry odour wafted out – the phenols of late-stage decay, before the last flesh had rotted off the bones. That would be the remains of Euterpe Parva. Abi thought of Jenner lying in there in the darkness, his freckled face hollowing out, skin shrinking tight to bone, then falling away, and found herself sobbing again for a world that hadn’t been kind enough to any of them.
