by Vic James
He had time to shower at the cottage – he felt soiled in every way by the conversation at the kennels. Then Luke presented himself at the servants’ entrance of Kyneston to begin his evening shift.
He badly wanted to be left alone to sort through whatever had just happened. Maybe they’d give him a tray full of ready-poured glasses, so he could stand in a corner like a human drinks trolley.
It wasn’t quite that simple, but it was close – he was handed a silver tray with four bottles of champagne.
‘We have the French: Clos du Mesnil, twelve-year vintage,’ the wine butler explained, peering at Luke to make sure he was absorbing the information and could relay it. ‘And English, from the Sussex chalk downs on the estate of Ide. They’re relatives of the Jardines.’
Luke eyed the cold-beaded bottle with loathing. Had the heir enjoyed swigging some before he assaulted Dog’s poor wife?
He nearly came a cropper at the outset. He emerged via a concealed service corridor and was following his ears to the din of the East Wing when he nearly tripped over a dog pattering down the hallway at speed.
It was a small, ludicrous beast with a squashed face. As Luke’s feet collided with it, the creature yipped in outrage and unleashed a stomach-churning fart. Gagging, Luke hurried towards the immense bronze doors set into the glass wall ahead.
On the other side of the door was a familiar figure: Abi, in a plain navy dress. She was holding a clipboard and standing next to Jenner Jardine, both of them beside a bloke only a few years older than Luke. He was done up in the full penguin outfit of tux and tails. He wasn’t prepossessing, with a dodgy haircut and cheeks full of pimples. If Luke was the grandest aristo in the land, he wouldn’t put someone like that on the door, to be the first face your guests saw.
A few moments later, though, he realized the guy hadn’t been chosen for his face. Just a few steps behind Luke came a middle-aged Equal in black tie, escorting a much younger girl wearing a scarlet gown gaping wide across the breastbone. Even Luke’s seventeen-year-old brain thought the effect was somewhat desperate.
Jenner Jardine leaned over and whispered something in Abi’s ear. Abi consulted the clipboard then held it in front of Pimples, pointing with her pen. In an unexpectedly sonorous voice, he announced the new arrivals.
‘Lord Tremanton and Heir Ravenna of Kirton.’
A few guests looked up, but the entrance of lord and heir went largely unremarked. The girl’s head swivelled this way and that, searching the room, before her father gave her arm a discreet but not especially gentle tug. He led her down the few steps into the vast chamber.
The East Wing resembled an immense aviary, raucous with the squawk of conversation and the coo of a jazz singer at a microphone in one corner. It was filled from wall to wall with a multicoloured flock of Equals in their finery. Black-clad slaves darted unobtrusively here and there, like some dull, inferior species released among them by mistake.
You’d never know, thought Luke, gazing around, that there’d been some kind of coup that morning. That the Chancellor had been ousted by the host of tonight’s party, Lord Jardine. Was this the Equals’ idea of a revolution? They’d find it no party when the people rose up.
As glasses were thrust in his face for refilling, Luke’s thoughts took him to Millmoor. During the long, dull days with Albert he’d planned every detail of how he might return. How he’d hitchhike, striking away east up the country. Then he’d travel across to Sheffield, up to Leeds and over the top of the Peak District.
His microchip would presumably alert Security when he re-entered Millmoor’s perimeter. He hoped Leeds might hold the answer. In the rougher bits of the city he’d be able to find someone who’d escaped from its notoriously lawless slavetown, Hillbeck. They’d know what to do about the implant; could maybe get it out without the sort of butchery Renie had inflicted on herself.
‘You’re miles away, my lad,’ said a voice, not unkindly.
Luke snapped back in an instant. He couldn’t afford to be pulled up on anything now. Just get through this evening. Then get the decision made.
‘I’m so sorry, sir,’ he told the man who’d spoken to him, a dapper old dude with swept-back silver hair who smelled faintly of expensive tobacco. ‘Which can I get you, English or French?’
The Equal didn’t bother inspecting the bottles, gesturing towards the French champagne.
‘Interesting accent you have there,’ he said. ‘You’re not from round here. Somewhere up north?’
‘Near Manchester, sir. There you go, sir.’ He refilled the proffered glass.
‘There’s no need for all the “sir”s, my boy. I’m Lord Rix. And you’re the Millmoor lad – Luke, isn’t it?’
Luke didn’t like the idea of any of them knowing his name, or asking about Millmoor. Time to sidestep this nosy old cove and move on.
‘We have a mutual acquaintance,’ Rix continued as Luke lifted the tray higher, ready to make his exit. ‘A certain doctor.’
Luke stopped in an instant, and stared at the man.
This distinguished old parliamentarian was Jackson’s contact.
Not Gavar Jardine. Thank goodness he hadn’t said anything to the heir – or anything incriminating, at any rate. This was the man who saw the shadows in the House of Light. Who’d told the Doc about the Proposal.
Luke’s heart soared. He hadn’t been forgotten. Nor would he have to make the trek back to Millmoor, all unknowing of the reception he’d get when he arrived there. This was what he’d been waiting for.
‘You’ve got a message for me?’ he said, barely breathing. ‘Something for me to do? I’m ready.’
Rix sipped his champagne, the epitome of patrician amusement.
‘Is that so?’ he said, lowering his glass. ‘Well, I’m delighted to hear it.’
Then the Equal’s attention was caught by something over by the entrance and Luke reflexively followed his gaze.
And nearly dropped the tray.
His whole body trembled. It was like someone had kicked him in the back of both knees, hard, and it took everything he had not to collapse to the ground right there.
Her white-blonde hair was pinned up, strands falling on either side of her face, just as they’d escaped from under her beanie hat. She’d swapped her black fatigues for a sequinned gown that glittered in the light from the chandeliers. She didn’t need sequins to dazzle, though.
And he stood at her side, impeccable in black tie. He’d had a haircut since Luke had last seen him, but the neat beard was the same as ever.
Jackson and Angel.
Luke was wrong. They hadn’t left it all to their contact. They’d come for him, too.
Had tricked their way here, into the very centre of everything they were fighting against.
They stood side by side at the top of the stairs. Luke watched, his heart throwing itself against his ribs like a wild thing maddened in a cage.
Please let them not be found out.
Please.
Abi held out the clipboard to Pimples. Pointed. Again with that showreel voice.
‘Heir Meilyr of Highwithel, and Miss Bodina Matravers.’
And Angel and Jackson descended the steps and were swallowed up in the throng. The chatter in the room grew louder around them as they were greeted, enfolded, absorbed.
What did it mean? What disguise could be that successful? Luke’s pulse thrummed at what was surely twice the normal human rate. He could feel it staccato in his fingertips against the smooth underside of the tray.
‘You hadn’t guessed?’
The old aristo hadn’t moved away. He was studying Luke curiously.
‘Well, well,’ Lord Rix said. ‘Now you see that some of us also fight. Also wish to end this abomination of slavery – by any means necessary.’
Realization hit Luke like a bottle to the back of the head.
Angel was an Equal.
Jackson was an Equal.
The evidence was right there in front of him, where it h
ad been all along.
The Doc’s hands on him that first day, Skillfully healing what Luke had known were appalling injuries from Kessler, using the useless cream as a cover. Reviving Oz in the cell not with an adrenaline shot, but Skill. No heads turning as they walked Oz through a prison full of Security. Guards swallowing flimsy suggestions and fake instructions. The gunshot and Jackson’s agonized cry, with no sign of any wound a few days later.
The tingle of Angel’s touch on his face. Her escape with Oz through checkpoint after checkpoint.
‘How do you think we got round the Quiet?’ Rix asked, watching Luke as everything swung into place, the facts heavy and irresistible. ‘Meilyr was in Millmoor the day of the Proposal, when Zelston laid the Quiet on us. But because parliamentarians were able to talk to other parliamentarians about it, I could tell him. And once that knowledge was with someone not bound by the Quiet, there was no limit to where we could spread it.’
The shock of the truth made Luke want to double over and retch. To heave up everything he’d ever felt for the pair of them – the respect, the admiration, the longing, the belonging – and purge it out in a great stinking puddle at his feet till he was empty.
They weren’t brave. They were Skilled. Rich young Equals who’d had fun playing at being revolutionaries, knowing they were never really in any danger – unlike Luke and the rest of the club. Unlike poor Oz, beaten to a pulp. Unlike the man and woman shot dead in the MADhouse square, and whoever else had been hurt that day before Gavar Jardine twirled the pain dial up to eleven.
Luke felt the old guy put a hand on his shoulder, and twisted his whole body to shake it off. The bottles on the tray rattled.
‘They share your cause,’ the Equal said.
Was Rix some kind of idiot? Was he as deluded as Lord and Lady Liar, aka Jackson and Angel?
‘How can any of you share our cause when you’re the enemy?’ he said, hearing the edge in his own voice and hating it. ‘You had your chance in the vote yesterday and you blew it. This isn’t your fight; it’s ours.’
Luke could feel scalding tears spill from his eyes and course down his cheeks. Had no idea whether they were shed in fury or grief.
‘Is that so?’ said Rix, looking at him. The kindliness in his voice had entirely drained away. ‘Well, seeing as it’s your fight, I’m sure you won’t mind doing one last thing before we say goodbye. Once we found out where your family was, I knew this would be the perfect opportunity. And when that cretin Gavar Jardine actually brought you here, it’s like it was meant to be.’
He opened the breast of his dinner jacket and from a holster beneath his arm hooked out a handgun. A pistol.
‘You’ll be a hero, Luke.’
Rix reversed the gun so he held it by the barrel, offering the grip. With his other hand, he pointed away through the crowd.
Unmistakable, in the centre of the room, stood Lord Whittam Jardine.
‘No,’ said Luke. Then again, in case the guy hadn’t got the message: ‘No way, are you crazy?’
‘That monster has been plotting his return to power for a long time,’ said the Equal. ‘I know what he intends to do now that he has it. The slavedays are nothing compared to what he’ll bring. Where’s the courage you had in Millmoor? I thought you’d signed up for the long game, Luke.’
‘I quit,’ Luke spat. ‘I’m not playing your game.’
‘I’m sorry to hear it.’ Lord Rix grimaced slightly, as if he’d just been told that his favourite restaurant didn’t have an available table, or that the rain wouldn’t stop in time for his round of golf. ‘Meilyr didn’t approve of my plan either, though I’m sure I could have persuaded my goddaughter Dina, in time. But we’re all out of time. And the game is more important than any individual player. So here we go, Luke.’
The sensation was extraordinary. Awful. Like being six years old and held in a neck lock by a boy much bigger and stronger, twisted this way and that.
Powerless to prevent it, Luke saw his left hand reach out and take the pistol then disappear under the tray, concealing the firearm.
His skin prickled all over with horror. This couldn’t be happening. He began to walk forward – or rather, something was walking him forward.
Lord Rix’s Skill.
‘Your sacrifice won’t be in vain, Luke,’ the old Equal said, behind him now, as Luke pressed deeper into the crowd.
Panic was swelling in his throat. Luke prayed for it to choke him. To make him pass out.
Equals murmured disapprovingly as he pushed through them. One or two ordered him to stop so they could get a refill. But Luke kept moving, watching it all helplessly from behind his own eyes.
There was Lord Jardine, his cruel, craggy face unyielding as he listened to someone Luke couldn’t quite see. Then the whole group came into view. Lady Thalia stood beside her husband, her sister Euterpe on her other side. The fourth figure was the Chancellor – or ex-Chancellor. And Winterbourne Zelston’s impassioned speech was having no effect whatsoever on Lord Jardine.
Quite an audience for an assassination.
Equals had protective reflexes. Could heal. This would be an all-or-nothing shot. Could Luke close his eyes until it was over?
He didn’t have a chance even to do that. It happened so fast it took him as much by surprise as the foursome around him.
His arm tossed the tray away, champagne spraying, bottles falling. His left hand whipped up, the pistol steady and level.
Then it was as if something was ripping him apart from the inside out, as if he was a walking human bomb. Its epicentre was where he’d felt Silyen Jardine’s Skill at the gate.
He remembered Silyen’s words, in the kennels: ‘You’re bound to the estate. None of you can hurt us.’
Luke’s finger was already squeezing the trigger, even as his arm jerked away from Lord Jardine as if something had pushed it . . .
. . . and the pistol discharged a burst of fire into the face and chest of Chancellor Zelston.
Pandemonium erupted and the air crackled with Skill as the Equals’ defences flared up.
From somewhere far away, Luke thought he heard a man’s voice call his name. Hoarse, horrified. Was it Jackson?
He stared at the mess on the ground in front of him. It wasn’t really recognizable as a man any more. Flesh and bits that you never imagined might actually be inside a person were scattered around. The colours were unexpectedly bright. The gun slipped from his hand and fell heavily to the floor.
He could move his own body again, Luke realized. The vice-like grip of Rix’s Skill was gone.
He wished it wasn’t. He had no idea what to do.
‘Luke!’
Jackson pushed through to the edge of the space that had cleared around the scene. His face was white and he looked stricken, like a paramedic rushing to the scene of a car crash to discover that the victim is his own child.
Winterbourne Zelston was beyond any help the Doc could give now.
Luke, too.
The scream started out quiet, almost inaudible. Keening. A bat squeak.
The woman sank to the ground beside the remains of the Chancellor. She was already spattered with gore, and her pale skirts floated on the widening pool of his blood. A crimson tideline crept up her dress.
She bent over the body. Embraced it. Kissed it.
Grotesquely tried to gather it up to cradle in her lap, but it was too far gone and the shattered chest cavity only yawned wider open as she pawed at it. She was red from head to toe now, wearing Chancellor Zelston’s blood like a second skin, drying on top of her own.
She tipped her head back to howl, and the whites of her eyes were shockingly vivid in her red-painted face.
Euterpe Parva, who’d slept for twenty-five years, Luke thought numbly. Who’d woken only yesterday.
Who’d been loved by this man, and had loved him.
Her howl grew louder, became a scream. No longer a sound, but a sensation. Not pain, but pressure, building from the inside out.
To his left, Jackson had fallen to his knees. To his right, Lord Jardine was doubled over and bellowing. Everywhere, Equals were hunched and trembling.
Luke collapsed to the ground. Crouched next to him, he saw Lord Rix. The man’s face was a mask of fury.
‘Stupid boy – what have you done?’
The Equal reached out, pincered his fingers. Luke’s brain became pure pain, as if those fingers had crushed his skull as easily as Silyen Jardine had shattered the padlock.
Stunned and weeping, half blind with agony, Luke rolled onto his back. Above him, Euterpe Parva raised a scarlet hand, fingers clawed.
The air around her seemed to twist and shudder.
And Luke felt the blood trickle hot from his ears and his nose as Kyneston’s East Wing exploded in a supernova of glass and light.
21
Abi
Her mouth was filled with dirt and dust. It was like being buried alive. Abi blinked, and that hurt too, grit scraping across her eyeballs until tears welled up to rinse it away. Even breathing hurt. Her nostrils, her mouth and her lungs felt as though they’d been scratched inside with a thousand tiny needles.
Could she move? Yes.
What had happened?
The world had exploded.
Luke had shot the Chancellor.
Memory flooded back, carrying a flotsam of horror. Abi groaned and closed her eyes, letting her head fall against the ground.
She hadn’t seen the moment he did it. They’d heard the gunshot, and Jenner had gone to see what was happening.
It was only when Euterpe Parva began to scream and people started falling that Abi had seen Luke. Her brother was standing bloodstained and bewildered above a gory mess that had plainly once been Chancellor Zelston. In his hand was a gun.
The detonation of the entire East Wing had seemed like a small thing after that.
Abi coughed and sat up. Where was her brother? She had to find him.
She scrambled unsteadily to her feet and looked around. What she saw was so awful that for a few moments, it displaced even Luke.
The news showed you wars in far-away places: the border between Mexico and the Confederate States, or those islands in the West Pacific that were bombarded alternately by Japanese Skill and Russian nukes. The triumphs of the Skillful regimes over their unSkilled opponents were shown in unflinching detail. But watching carnage onscreen was no preparation for finding yourself in the middle of it.
