by Vic James
‘No.’ Gavar shook his head, his tone petulant. ‘I’ve already gone through all this with Father.’
She saw him cast a mute look at Lord Whittam, as if appealing for support. None came. None ever did. It was almost pitiable, really.
‘If Gavar hit the fugitive, well, he’s gone. But if it was an accomplice, he must still be in Millmoor. The clinics should be monitored,’ she told her father-in-law. ‘The healthcare staff questioned. And even if the injury wasn’t grievous and the victim is tending to it himself, managers and foremen should be instructed to keep an eye out. Residential-block staff need to watch for blood on sheets or towels.’
‘Good suggestions,’ said Whittam, and Bouda couldn’t help preening under his approval.
Was it too much to hope that he might recognize how better suited for high office she was than his son? Sadly, it probably was. The only thing Whittam Jardine prized above merit was blood. Still, at least Bouda’s own children would one day benefit from his single-minded devotion to his family’s pre-eminence.
‘So the facts are these,’ Whittam said, in the tone he used to conclude official meetings, including those at which the Chancellor was present. ‘The criminal Walcott broke out of the detention centre with the aid of two males, possibly Skilled.’
He inclined his head towards his heir in a condescending fashion. Could he not see, Bouda wondered, the resentment in his son’s eyes? Gavar was like a brutalized dog that knows exactly how long its chain is and waits for the day its master forgets.
‘We believe that either one of the accomplices or the prisoner was then shot and injured. We do not know the current whereabouts of the accomplices. However, the prisoner subsequently left Millmoor in a vehicle driven by an unidentified and unchipped female. Correct?’
‘Whatever are you all talking about?’ came a drowsy voice from the doorway. ‘Do you want some coffee? I’ve had Anna brew me some. My own silly fault for going back to bed halfway through the morning. Paris was so much fun, but I’m absolutely pooped.’
It was Dina, looking rumpled. A cashmere dressing gown hung loose over her shoulders and she cuddled her unconscionable pug, Stinker. Bouda hadn’t even heard her sister open the door, she’d been so focused on the discussion.
Whittam looked murderous. Bouda knew he believed Dina to be a spoiled little girl and a liability. It was unfortunate that she’d wandered into this conversation, of all the things they could have been discussing. Bouda would have to explain, yet again, that DiDi’s idea of challenging the regime was to address slaves by their given names. That, and lavishing Daddy’s hard-earned cash on so-called human rights organizations, which doubtless blew every penny on swanky offices and drinks parties for the international media.
She went over to her sister and put an arm round her to steer her back towards the kitchen.
‘We were just prepping for tomorrow’s debate, darling, but we’re done now. And yes, I’d love some coffee before we make tracks for Grendelsham.’
‘Stinky woke me up,’ Dina said, looking at her sister anxiously. ‘He’s got a funny tummy. I guess I shouldn’t have fed him so many escargots. I don’t think snails agree with him. Or garlic.’
Bouda looked at the dog with alarm. Stinker had earned his name ten times over in his short life. The pug looked back, its boggle eyes swivelling with unmistakable guilt.
‘Why don’t you put him down,’ she suggested. ‘Let him have a little run around the sitting room. I’m sure that’ll help sort him out.’
Scooping the dog from her sister’s arms, Bouda set it on the floor. She gave its belly a sharp nudge with the pointed toe of her shoe, which she hoped Dina didn’t spot. It sent the pug yelping and skittering into the room where the lord and his heir stood.
Then Bouda closed the door.
After coffee and goodbyes came the long drive to south Wales and Grendelsham. Just as the First and Third Debates took place on the great equinoxes of autumn and spring, the Second Debate was held on the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. Bouda always timed her arrival for sunset.
As the car swung round a bend, the sandy expanse of the Gower Peninsula stretched ahead. And there atop the cliffs, bathed in the last fire of the sinking sun, was Grendelsham. It resembled a box of pure, pulsing, rosy light. Skill-built, the mansion was made entirely of glass. Gorgeous and wholly impractical, it was the first and only example of the so-called Third Revolutionary style. Nicknamed the ‘Glasshouse’, it resembled the sort of pretentious art installation that Dina liked to sponsor at the Southbank galleries. But this was a hundred times bigger and more breathtaking.
Bouda couldn’t take her eyes off it. You never knew what colour the Glasshouse would be: blue as the sky on a summer’s day; a buttery yellow in mellow sunshine; frosty lilac at dawn. And the colour was still shifting now, as the sun downed. The rosy pink deepened, darkened, became a hot fleshy red – turned, unmistakably, the colour of blood.
Bouda shrank back in her seat, suddenly unnerved. With a stab at a button she wound up the tinted car window. She’d been reminded of the photograph of the Millmoor Administration building daubed with a massive scarlet ‘Y’, ‘E’ and ‘S’. The paint had been sprayed on in great slashes, as if carving the word into skin. Then there were the confiscated leaflets. ‘WE BLEED beneath their WHIP,’ one had read. Crude propagandist trash, Bouda had thought. As if anyone used whips these days.
She was glad that it was finally dark by the time the car pulled up at the house, and under the black sky Grendelsham shone brightly from within. Bouda wove through the thronging Equals, dispensing and receiving greetings and kisses as she went to find her allotted room. Grendelsham’s bedrooms and bathrooms were also glass-walled (although, thankfully, curtained). The Second Debate was notorious for the indiscretions and intrigue it provoked. Bouda reminded herself to secure her door that night, in case Gavar Jardine was inspired by the house’s reputation.
She summoned a slave to help her into a dress that was slashed to the small of her back. It was so narrow that Bouda had no idea how to put it on – couture brought from Paris by DiDi that she hadn’t had the heart to refuse. She needn’t have worried. It fell from her shoulders to the floor in a glittering spill of silver, an effect so pleasing that Bouda didn’t even chastise the slave who piped up unbidden to voice her admiration.
She enjoyed the turn of heads as she went back to the reception downstairs and plunged into the press of dinner jackets and evening gowns. Her father and Rix were enjoying snifters on an uncomfortable-looking chrome-and-leather sofa. Daddy was already several sheets to the wind, while her godfather cackled over her account of the latest events in Millmoor.
‘A runaway slave, eh?’ Rix said, fragrant smoke from his cigar pluming down his nostrils. ‘Can’t we set the dogs on his trail? Hypatia’s one, maybe.’
Bouda pulled a face. Hypatia’s hound would have to be securely kennelled during the Third Debate and her own nuptials – or even better, not be at Kyneston at all. Crovan had done his work well and the thing was an eyesore. DiDi would be bound to make a fuss.
She sat between the two men at dinner, then afterwards detached herself unobtrusively and began to work the room. Her favourite part of the evening.
Word of the Millmoor debacle had spread and her Equals were keen to know more. She was coy – it would all be in a little speech she had to give tomorrow, as Secretary of the Justice Council. But here and there she dropped a detail, a small seed to be watered by gossip and speculation. Along with the information went a touch of regret, of exasperation – of doubt, even. What had the Chancellor been thinking, with his irresponsible Proposal, one so open to misinterpretation? And she heard the murmurs of agreement before she moved on.
What fruit might those small seeds eventually bear?
As it grew late the press of people began to thin. However, the volume of noise hadn’t decreased proportionately, as those guests remaining were now rather drunk. Stonier ground for her little seeds. Tim
e to turn in and read through her speech one final time. Perhaps a breath of fresh air first, to clear her head.
Weaving between laughing, flirting groups of Equals and the occasional Observer of Parliament, she noted any who stood particularly close together. This hour of night might not be ideal for sharing information, but knowledge could still be usefully gathered. Bouda was making for Grendelsham’s massive bronze-edged door. She was close enough to see the moon-slicked beach when she was yanked backwards so hard it pulled the breath from her throat.
She spun, furious, ready to lay into Gavar, having seen the red hair as she turned – and found herself face to face with her future father-in-law. His grip squeezed her arm to the bone as he hauled her close. Unbalanced on high heels, Bouda stumbled and fell against his chest, and his other arm went round her. The cut-glass tumbler in his hand dug into the exposed small of her back.
She smelled the whisky he’d been drinking. His face was so close that when he spoke it was as if he breathed the words right into her, like a god animating a manikin of clay.
‘You are a spectacle, in this dress.’
For emphasis, Whittam dragged the glass the length of her naked spine. He stopped at Bouda’s neck and brushed his thumb against her throat. She tipped her head back to avoid the touch, but it only left her feeling more exposed. There was a surging in her ears that could have been her pumping blood, or the sea beyond. But they were surrounded by people. She couldn’t make a scene.
‘It is not appropriate’ – his breath tickled her collarbone, the thumb dug in a little harder – ‘for a member of my family.’
The slippery silver dress was treacherously insubstantial. She felt every shift of his body against hers.
When a wave of cold swept over her she wondered if she had fainted, or if Whittam had committed the ultimate outrage of working Skill upon her to stop her struggles. But she opened her eyes – when had she closed them? – and saw that the great glass door had swung open. A dark shape stood there, a shadow pricked by a tiny hot point of light. A cigarette, she realized, as the smoke drifted towards her. Whittam’s hands fell away and Bouda took a small step back.
‘Is everything okay in here?’
A man’s voice. Polite. Unfamiliar.
‘I was merely having a word with my daughter,’ Whittam said easily, raising his glass to take another swig of whisky. Some of it had spilled down Bouda’s back, and she felt it drying there, sticky.
‘Of course, Lord Jardine. I do hope I’m not interrupting. I simply saw Miss Matravers stumble and wondered if she might benefit from a breath of air. Though when I say “breath of air”’ – the speaker paused thoughtfully – ‘of course I mean “howling clifftop gale”. The effect is quite bracing. Miss Matravers?’
The stranger pushed the door fully open, standing in the entryway as if to invite her outside, and so placing himself between Bouda and her father-in-law.
Wind gusted through and heads began to turn, voices calling irritably for the door to be shut. So she did the simplest thing and lifted the hem of her dress and stepped over the threshold. Behind her, she was aware of Whittam turning away, mingling back amongst their peers.
What had just happened?
Her rescuer – not that he was that, she was perfectly capable of looking after herself – let the door swing shut. They weren’t quite standing in a gale, but the wind was strong and Bouda narrowed her eyes against it. It was freezing cold, and while that was no discomfort for Equals, Bouda wasn’t sure if her unexpected companion was one of her own kind, or a commoner. She hadn’t recognized him in the doorway.
As her vision adjusted to the darkness, she studied him. Definitely not an Equal. But not an OP either.
Then it came to her. She pursed her lips. How ignominious.
‘You’re Jon Faiers,’ she said. ‘Speaker Dawson’s son.’
‘I won’t hold your family connections against you’ – his cigarette waved carelessly in the direction Whittam Jardine had disappeared – ‘if you don’t hold mine against me. Anyway, I’ve been waiting here for ages.’
‘Waiting?’
She was so taken aback by his impertinence she could barely get out that one word.
‘You come outside before turning in at every Second Debate, no matter what the weather. You like this place, don’t you?’
He gestured at the glowing expanse of the house and as he turned towards the light she saw his face, his cropped brown hair. His eyes were blue. She’d seen Grendelsham bathed in that very same blue, one cloudless day in summer, years ago.
‘I don’t blame you,’ Faiers continued, oblivious to her scrutiny. ‘It’s incredible. Beautiful. Our best civil engineers couldn’t build such a thing even today, and your kind did it with Skill, centuries ago.’
Was he trying to be ingratiating? Yet there was an odd sincerity to his tone.
Still, what was that to her?
‘You’re correct, Mr Faiers. But I really don’t think this is the time and place for a discussion of architectural merit.’
‘Oh.’ Faiers turned back, his face sliding into shadow. His cigarette flared with a final deep inhalation, then he dropped it and ground it out beneath his heel. ‘I wasn’t discussing architectural merit.’
He paused, and appeared to be contemplating the view. The moon was high and full, and its radiance flared silver off the churning sea. Was this his cue to make some clumsy gallantry about her dress?
‘Many of my kind – my mother, for example – think only about what you Equals take from us. Our labour; our liberty; a decade of our lives. But there are a few among us who are aware of what you give: stability, prosperity. A magnificence that other countries envy. A reminder that there is more in the world than what can be seen.’
Some kind of Skill-obsessive, then? Bouda knew such people existed, commoners fixated on Skill and what it could do. Occasionally a particularly insane one attempted to ritually murder an Equal to steal their Skill – an impossibility, of course. If they weren’t killed by their intended victim, they were Condemned. Then they could spend the rest of their natural lives enjoying personal demonstrations of exactly what Skill could do, at the hands of Lord Crovan.
Faiers didn’t look like a madman, but you could never tell.
‘You must be getting chilly out here,’ she said shortly. ‘So if you’ve a point to make . . .’
She’d hoped to sound repressive, but Faiers simply smiled.
‘I’ve heard about Millmoor,’ he said. ‘And I think soon you’ll be hearing about other places, too. Riverhead, or Auld Reekie. Then maybe the one after that won’t even be a slavetown, just somewhere normal.
‘And on that day – if not before – you might remember that there are a few of us commoners who also like this world just the way it is. Who benefit from that and who don’t wish to see things change.’
Faiers’ glance flicked over Grendelsham’s lighted interior, as if seeking out a flash of red hair among the few remaining guests. His lip curled.
‘Your allies aren’t always who you think they are, Miss Matravers. And neither are your enemies.’
Then the Speaker’s son dropped a deep bow, and turned and walked away into the gusty night.
14
Luke
The Millmoor Games and Social Club was preparing to throw the biggest New Year’s party the slavetown had ever seen.
It’d be a riot.
Christmas had been less unbearable than Luke had feared. Even slaves were given the day off, and Ryan had been his guide to their dorm block’s meagre festivities: a lie-in, a lunch of roast chicken and soggy green veg, then a screening of the Chancellor’s Christmas message in the main rec room. This was followed by movies and television specials. As the day wore on, bottles of illicit hooch were produced and passed round. Luke joined in a good-natured and occasionally life-endangering street football match against the neighbouring block.
There were no gifts, of course. Not even a card from his family at Kyn
eston, because though the three months of no contact were finally up, Millmoor had been under communications lockdown since the ‘YES’ graffiti stunt. But getting Oz to freedom was the only Christmas present Luke had needed.
The following week had brought another belated gift: the sight of Jackson, unharmed.
‘We thought you were hit,’ said Jessica. ‘We heard someone yell out and assumed it was you, seeing as you weren’t the one with the gun.’
Jackson looked apologetic.
‘I was trying to draw him away from you. I’m sorry if you were worried.’
‘And that explosion,’ said Luke. ‘All those flames. What was that?’
‘That was Skill, Luke. And just a small demonstration of what the Equals can do.’
‘Well, what they can’t do is keep two eyes open,’ scoffed Renie. ‘That big ginge walked right past you in the slammer.’
‘He wasn’t expecting to see us and Oz heading out,’ said Jackson. ‘So he didn’t. That’s how people work, Equals included. They see what they want to see. I assure you Gavar Jardine is not to be taken lightly. None of them are.’
‘That’s “Jardine” as in the people my family is slaving for, right?’ said Luke. ‘He’s one of them. My sister made us learn all the names.’
‘He is. And the plan is still to get you to their estate to rejoin your family as soon as possible. You shouldn’t be here on your own, Luke.’
But Luke wasn’t on his own, was he? He had the club.
He had friends. And a purpose.
But he also had family. Sisters.
Supposing Daisy and Abi had to see Gavar Jardine every day? If the guy could blow up a prison with just the force of his mind – his Skill – who knew what he might do to a slave who displeased him.
No, Luke’s place was with his family. But it was strange how the all-consuming need to join them had become less urgent as time went by.
‘How about it, Luke?’ Jackson’s voice pulled him back to the present. ‘Shall we plan a very special New Year’s party for the Overseer and her pals?’