Gilded Cage

by Vic James

  There were bodies strewn everywhere. And the East Wing of Kyneston was entirely gone.

  Abi, and everyone else – hundreds of parliamentarians and slaves – were exposed beneath the night sky. A fine powder was raining down. Abi thought it must be ash and looked for the fire, which was when she saw that the entire side of the stone mansion had been sheared off.

  Rubble and jagged lumps of masonry bigger than a man were scattered about like Libby’s building blocks. There didn’t seem to be enough to add up to half a house, so some of it must have been pulverized. That accounted for both the grit that Abi could taste in her mouth, and the drizzling dust.

  She recoiled when she saw her clipboard a few metres away and, close by it, an arm reaching out from under an immense bronze door, now laid not quite flat on the ground. The hand was lightly dusted with powdered stone. It could almost have been a statue toppled from the roof, were it not for a trickle of bright red blood that ran down the sleeve. The poor marshal. Abi had stood barely a metre from him throughout the evening.

  The rest of her family would be safe, she knew, with a surge of relief so strong it nearly knocked her off her feet. Mum was spending the evening in a makeshift first aid station in the housekeeper’s office. Dad was watching over the generator array set up some distance from the house. Daisy was back at the Row with banished Libby Jardine. Had any of them been here, they might well have been dead.

  Then everyone in the world screamed all at once.

  It was her hearing coming back in a rush. Abi shook her head and winced. The blast must have deafened her eardrums. In her disorientation, she hadn’t even noticed till now.

  The ironwork skeleton of the East Wing was shredded, its massive girders crushed by the despairing surge of Euterpe Parva’s Skill. Metal lay in twisted heaps, jumbled anyhow like bones uncovered by archaeologists in some long-ago murder pit.

  Beneath the ruins, here and there, were bodies – or things that had once been bodies but which were now smears and gobbets. Exposed bones that had snapped like sticks. Limbs lying without context. She saw an unmistakably female hand, curled like a hairless baby animal near the larger huddle of a man’s black serving uniform.

  The Equals were mostly up and walking.

  Abi watched, unwillingly mesmerized, as a girl not much older than herself surveyed her injuries. She was clad in the tatters of a scarlet evening dress and was reaching along her legs as if performing a sit-up. She wouldn’t be touching her toes, though, because half of them weren’t there. One of her feet, still wearing a dainty golden stiletto, lay half a metre from where it should have been, attached only by a few stringy tendons. The girl’s other leg was slashed to the bone, plainly the work of an ornamental iron pinnacle that lay like a bloodied dagger nearby.

  Tear tracks streaking her cheeks, the girl screwed up her face and began to tremble all over. She was Heir Ravenna of Kirton; Abi remembered the marshal’s voice booming, a lifetime ago.

  Like a ball of wool being ravelled up, the stretched tendons tightened. Heir Ravenna trembled as the bone reconnected, and her hands fluttered protectively over the injury. Beneath them, raw flesh was knitting itself together. Finally, Ravenna’s hands dropped to brush over her skin, as if smoothing out a skirt. Abi almost missed what happened to the girl’s left leg. The skin there drew itself together like the gaping back of a too-tight dress pulled closed by a sympathetic pal, who zipped you up while you held your breath.

  Who knew how long it had taken. But as Heir Ravenna’s shoulders slumped, her eyelashes tarred shut by tears and mascara, Abi thought that you’d never know anything had happened to her. She could just have had a few too many drinks and a tumble off her heels.

  Abi shook her head, furious with herself for becoming distracted when every second might count.

  Where was Luke?

  She looked round the ruined ballroom and shivered. It was March, and now that the adrenaline had ebbed from her system the night was damp and chill. Was anyone looking after the injured slaves? Was Mum here?

  Yes – there she was. Jackie Hadley was kneeling beside a crumpled figure, barking instructions at a kitchen-slave carrying a green satchel emblazoned with a white cross. The girl was fumbling inside the bag for something, which she passed across to Mum. It looked like a bandage. Mum obviously had no idea about Luke, or she would have been pulling down the rest of Kyneston looking for him.

  What on earth had happened here? The last thing Abi remembered was Euterpe Parva screaming. Had Luke done something worse even than shooting Zelston? So much destruction had to have been the work of a bomb.

  A crescendo of hysterical sobbing arose from somewhere to Abi’s right. It was a sound that no one could hear and ignore. She hurried across, stepping carefully over shatterfalls of broken glass.

  But someone was already there. Incredibly, it was an Equal, a beautiful young woman in a sequinned dress. She looked vaguely familiar. Had Abi seen her picture in a magazine? The Equal’s hand was pressed to the forehead of a slave who lay pinioned across the chest by a heavy iron strut.

  ‘I can’t feel my legs,’ the man was whimpering. ‘I’m so cold. Please, I’ve got four kids.’

  ‘Best leave out the grisly details in your next letter to them,’ the girl said in a husky voice, giving him a reassuring smile. ‘Let’s get this off you, shall we?’

  The fallen girder was as long as she was and must have been many times heavier. But the girl set her free hand to one end of the length of metal and, exertion plain on her pretty face, lifted it off him. When it was raised to arm’s length she flexed her elbow and shoved, sending it clattering harmlessly away.

  ‘Still . . . can’t . . .’ the man gasped.

  The Equal shushed him gently and moved both hands to his chest, where wetness had spread across his black uniform shirt. She laid her fingers weightlessly upon him.

  ‘I know a doctor,’ she told the man, her smile softening. ‘He’s better at this than me. I’m afraid he’s busy looking for a friend of ours, but I promise I’m not too terrible. Be brave.’

  The Equal girl was so gorgeous Abi wouldn’t be surprised if the man thought he’d died and gone to heaven already. He was gazing trustingly into her angelic face while she worked her Skill. Abi’s first aid plainly wasn’t needed here.

  Only one person needed her right now. Where was Luke?

  She searched the devastated scene once again for any clue.

  Felt her breath stop in her throat as she saw the last person she would have imagined.

  Dog, silhouetted against the brightness, walked to and fro across the sheared-off side of the mansion. He wore filthy overalls and a small pack on his back, and was plainly searching for something.

  He owed her a favour. And he had more reason than most to hate the Jardines. Perhaps he could help her find Luke. She started to pick her way towards him, lifting the hem of her dress over rubble and ruin.

  The shattered house was a disturbing spectacle. With one wall gone, Kyneston’s interior was entirely exposed, like a doll’s house. Equals and slaves were visible, moving around within. If any hand was moving them, Abi didn’t like to think what sort of game it was playing.

  ‘I think I prefer it like this,’ said a voice right behind her. ‘It’s much easier to see what people are up to, wouldn’t you agree?’

  Abi spun, knowing who it was by the shudder that ran through her, even before she saw him.

  Silyen Jardine.

  ‘Dog needs a hand,’ he said, looking over to where Dog had stopped to remove the knapsack. ‘He’s about to run up against the same problem your brother did.’

  ‘What?’ Abi’s voice was sharp, but she didn’t care. What did Silyen Jardine know about what had happened to Luke?

  But the boy was already off, his long legs striding easily over the debris beneath his feet. At one point he stepped right over a whimpering slave, bleeding into the dirt. Abi murmured an inaudible ‘sorry’ and did the same, trying to keep up.

 
Silyen and the hound were already speaking by the time she reached them.

  ‘You know the binding won’t let you,’ Silyen was saying.

  Dog stared at him. The planes of his face were etched unnaturally sharp beneath the roughly scissored hair that furred his face. His eyes burned. His leash was wrapped tight around one hand, the length of it dangling loose.

  Abi glanced past the pair of them and into the ripped-apart house. In the wall-less Great Solar in a high-backed armchair, her face streaked with soot and her eyes closed to the chaos outside, sat Lady Hypatia Vernay.

  ‘You laid it,’ growled Dog. ‘You can lift it.’

  ‘Of course I can.’ Silyen Jardine smiled. ‘But she is family. Why would I?’

  Dog’s eyes narrowed. Perhaps he was remembering his canine self and considering sinking his teeth into the Young Master. But with visible effort, he controlled himself.

  ‘When you ask me for – a life in exchange. I’ll do it. I’ll owe you.’

  Silyen paused, seeming to consider the offer. He could probably kill someone with Skill alone, Abi thought, remembering the dead deer and withered cherry tree in the autumn woods all those months ago. But then the boy nodded. In the same instant Dog winced. It was as if a bond tying his hands had been cut; a lock inside his brain picked.

  Abi wasn’t sure what had just happened, but it looked a lot like permission given.

  ‘That’ll be three things you owe me,’ the Young Master told the man. ‘An escape, a life, and a name.’

  ‘A name?’

  ‘Don’t you want to know your name?’

  ‘Not mine.’ A terrible longing filled Dog’s eyes. ‘My wife’s.’

  Silyen Jardine smiled. He leaned forward, placed his mouth close to Dog’s ear, and whispered. Then pulled back.

  ‘So I’ll see you later, as we arranged. I’ll be a bit busy until then.’

  Dog stood staring intently at Silyen with something that wasn’t devotion, but wasn’t hatred either. It was gratitude, she decided – and this meant Silyen Jardine now had a larger claim on Dog’s assistance than she ever would. So much for that plan.

  Dog wiped his nose and face on the arm of the overalls. He took the other end of the leash in his free hand, and wrapped it around his palm. Then he snapped both ends, testing his grip.

  Without another word he turned his back on them and walked towards the house. Abi didn’t want to see what came next.

  ‘Busy night for all of us,’ said Silyen brightly. ‘I’ll get to your brother later. But I’ve something to do here first. I think you’ll enjoy it, Abigail.’

  ‘My brother?’

  ‘May be useful to me,’ Silyen said, waving a hand airily. ‘I sensed his potential that first night at the gate. But I’d better get going. I think my audience has recovered enough to pay attention.’

  And the Equal was off again, walking easily through the chaos and confusion of the ballroom to its very centre – to where Abi had last seen her brother, blood-drenched and shaking.

  Had Luke known what he was doing? Had he done it willingly?

  She didn’t want to consider the idea, but if Abi was honest with herself, it was possible. Who knew what had happened to her little brother in Millmoor during the months they were all apart. The slavetown had been in a state of turmoil. She knew that much from Jenner’s cryptic comments, and from snatches of conversation between Lord Jardine and Heir Gavar that she’d heard as she passed unnoticed from room to room.

  Had someone there preyed on Luke’s vulnerabilities? Twisted his mind and used him?

  If that was how it had happened, Abi would find them out.

  Would make them sorry.

  The sound that interrupted her was as shining and beautiful as her thoughts were dark and discordant. A surging, chiming rush, as from thousands of bells struck all at once. Abi’s eardrums tingled.

  Then the effect was spoiled by a woman’s terrified cry. People were pointing upward, so Abi looked. This night had already birthed more horrors than her brain could process. What was one more?

  The black sky was studded with stars of glass. They hung overhead, unimaginably sharp and deadly. From jagged blades – some still edged with blood – to tiny shards and sparkling dust. Abi had read that once, thousands of years ago, people believed the heavens to be a crystalline sphere surrounding the Earth. The night sky above Kyneston now was what that might look like smashed into millions of tiny pieces, the moment before they all fell.

  But they didn’t fall. Instead, the galaxy of glass rotated slowly. More chimes shivered in the cold air as shards struck each other, but not a sliver broke off. Then the glittering mass curved down to the ground, encircling them all.

  Abi looked at Silyen. He stood in the centre of the space, arms upraised and face rapturous, like some musical prodigy conducting an orchestra only he could see.

  Every piece of metal, from vast girders to lace-like ornamental tracework, rose slowly into the air. Those slaves who had been trapped beneath them and still lived groaned and sobbed. Abi flinched as a side strut lifted past her, hovered at head height, and continued its ascent.

  In mid-air the pieces of metal melded as smoothly as Heir Ravenna’s body knitting itself together. The ironwork locked like an immense skeleton, all backbone and draping wings: a roof ridge, columns and beams, rivets. The suspended glass shards contracted inwards, moulding to the frame.

  The East Wing raised itself over them like a great metal monster with a flayed and shining hide, Equals and slaves alike swallowed in its belly.

  The whole structure flared like magnesium, too bright to bear. And when Abi had blinked away the shapes seared into her retinas, she saw that the vast ballroom stood intact once more. It was as if the evening’s disaster had never happened.

  Silyen hadn’t finished just yet. Lumps of masonry were flying back up towards the shattered stone mansion, dropping into place like some giant’s version of a stacking brick game. Kyneston’s sheared-off wall rose layer by layer, the people inside gradually disappearing from view as if the Young Master was walling up his family alive.

  ‘Abigail!’

  Arms seized her roughly from behind and spun her round. It was Jenner, his face so begrimed his freckles could barely be seen.

  ‘Thank goodness you’re all right.’ His hands cupped her face carefully as if she, too, was made of glass and had only just been glued back together.

  Then he kissed her.

  And for a moment she was soaring with the stars in the crystalline sphere, dizzyingly high and perfect.

  She forgot her brother. Forgot Silyen. Forgot Dog making a garrotte of his leash. Forgot the marshal’s broken body, and Chancellor Zelston in a pool of gore. Nothing existed apart from the urgency of that mouth against hers.

  Then she was pushing Jenner away. Because although this was what she wanted – more than anything – it was too late. It was all too late. Luke was a murderer. Lord Jardine was in power. Euterpe Parva had torn open the sky. And Silyen Jardine was rebuilding Kyneston with nothing but Skill.

  ‘It’s the Great Demonstration,’ she said, filled with awful understanding. She pushed at Jenner even as he tried to enfold her more tightly.

  ‘What?’

  Jenner was uncomprehending. His blackened palm caressed her neck and made her shiver, and she ducked away from his hand. Couldn’t he see it?

  ‘The Great Demonstration. When Cadmus built the House of Light using nothing but Skill.’

  ‘He’s just repairing the damage.’

  ‘Repairing? This isn’t one of your mother’s ornaments, Jenner. This is Kyneston. Look.’

  She pointed to the glass walls that soared above them, restored and flawless, exactly as they had been.

  But they weren’t exactly the same, were they? Because what she had at first mistaken for smoke, and then thought was simply shadow, was neither.

  It was dim, radiant forms moving to and fro beyond the glass. Just as they did at the House of Light.

/>   Fear filled Abi’s heart. The lesson of the Great Demonstration was one that every child in Britain learned. It was the greatest statement there had ever been of the irresistibility of Skill. More powerful even than the killing of the Last King.

  Cadmus’s work that day had ended one world and forged another that was wholly different, in which those without Skill were made slaves. It had ushered in Equal rule.

  ‘What is your brother trying to prove?’ she murmured.

  ‘And what about yours?’ Jenner said, gently taking Abi by the shoulders and turning her to face him. ‘Father has him in custody. He shot Zelston, Abigail. And father has got it into his head that the bullet was meant for him.’

  ‘For your father? But how could Luke have missed. They were standing right next to each other.’

  ‘The binding, Abi. What Silyen does to you all at the gate. None of our slaves can hurt us. If Luke had gone for my father, he would have been compelled to deflect. And as mother and Aunt Euterpe are family too . . .’ Jenner shrugged, at a loss to find any way of softening the blow. ‘Zelston was the only one left.’

  Abi shook her head. Could that be true?

  Did it even matter? Luke had killed Zelston, whoever his true target had been.

  No, only one thing mattered now. Luke was still here at Kyneston. Still rescuable.

  But how?

  22

  Luke

  Luke wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting. A cell? Dog’s pen, perhaps.

  But not this. Not a huge, sumptuous bed with a crimson silk coverlet pulled up to his chin. Someone had tucked him in like he was a little kid.

  He closed his eyes with relief. So they’d realized he hadn’t done it.

  Because he didn’t do it, he was certain. Although Lord Jardine and the other man – had it been Crovan? – seemed convinced that he had.