Gilded Cage

by Vic James

  Lord Jardine turned to Crovan and beckoned him forward. Would the man be going back to Scotland with two prisoners, not one?

  ‘You can’t Condemn Equals,’ yelled the woman at the back, who began stumbling down the stairs towards the front of the chamber.

  ‘Lady Tresco.’ Lord Jardine purred the name, but it was a lion’s purr, full of teeth and blood. ‘How gratifying that you finally appreciate the principle of “one law for us, and one law for them”. But I have no intention of Condemning young Meilyr. Simply correcting him.

  ‘Arailt has been working on such an intervention for some time. Should it prove effective, your son will be able to return to Highwithel this evening having learned the error of his ways. Gavar, ensure Armeria does not interfere.’

  Gavar moved to intercept the woman, barring her way before she reached the bottom of the stairs.

  No one else moved. In the centre of the second row, the blonde leaned forward intently, her perfect face hard as marble.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Jackson, his voice calm.

  ‘Doing?’ Lord Jardine smiled. ‘Well, a dangerous beast has its claws pulled. So what to do with a dangerous Equal, hmm?’

  He nodded at Crovan. The man turned to Jackson, his glasses flashing in the sunlight, and the Doc winced.

  But though the Doc looked away, his grimace remained. Deepened. Twisted into a look of unmistakable pain.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he said again, in a voice clotted with horror. ‘No.’

  He staggered and dropped to one knee. One hand clutched his head. The other clenched into a fist – and the tall, immaculate form of Lord Crovan went up in flames.

  Crovan gasped and slammed a hand down through the air. Jackson sprawled to the floor, felled. Still Crovan burned. Luke could feel the heat from where he stood, though there was no singeing. No smell. The man beat at his arms and legs, and where he touched the flame died. He smoothed his fingers up his face and back through his hair, and the last of the fire was wrung out at the ends like water.

  The Doc dragged himself onto all fours, the effort it cost him clear in his face. He looked up at his opponent and Luke saw tears leaking from the corner of each eye. Tears of pure gold.

  The woman Gavar was restraining began to scream – harrowing, inhuman shrieks. An animal seeing its cub in a trap.

  Jackson lifted one hand from the floor. The gold stuff was dripping from beneath his fingernails now. A thin line of it trickled from his eardrum to his throat. He chopped down. Everyone heard the crack as both of Crovan’s legs broke and the man fell to the floor. Jackson chopped again. Another crack. Crovan screamed and writhed, his arms falling unnaturally by his side.

  Luke gasped, seeing the last of the Doc Jackson he knew disappear in this desperate, unimaginably powerful Heir Meilyr. Fighting for his life. Or something more.

  The Doc crawled over to where Crovan lay and wrapped both hands around his neck. And squeezed.

  An airless keening escaped Crovan’s lips, and for a moment, despite the horror of it all, Luke exulted. The man was getting what he deserved. Payback for Dog. Payback for whatever sick things he did behind the walls of his castle to men and women who’d defied this race of monsters that called themselves ‘Equals’.

  Then he realized it was a hiss of triumph.

  The air around Meilyr burst into a fine golden mist. It sprayed up from his body as if exploding from every pore. He was too dazzling to look at. Luke put a hand to his cheek to wipe it off, whatever it was. He remembered the woman in front of him in the MADhouse square, her skull blasted apart by Grierson’s rifle. The spatter and the gore.

  But his fingers came away clean. The golden substance was light itself, Luke thought. Lighter than air. It rose upward, spreading, thinning. Finally gathering like a bright vapour beneath the gleaming glass of the East Wing’s roof. Then with a blinding flare, it was gone.

  In front of Luke, Crovan was sitting up, flexing his arms, bending his now undamaged legs.

  But Heir Meilyr – Doc Jackson – was huddled in a heap. He was sobbing like his heart had been broken in two. Like his soul itself had shattered.

  Like his Skill had been ripped out and annihilated.

  Epilogue

  Abi

  The car had taken Luke in the middle of the night.

  Abi’s Condemned brother and his jailer, Lord Crovan, had been driven out of Kyneston’s gate straight to a helicopter. By the time his family learned he was gone, Luke was already halfway to Scotland and whatever fate awaited him at Eilean Dòchais.

  Jenner had brought word at breakfast, by which point the Hadleys had been sleepless for nearly twenty-four hours. Dad had crumpled at the news, and Mum had simply laid her head against his shoulder and cried. It was such a perfect nightmare that Abi was almost – almost – grateful for the distraction of what Jenner said next.

  ‘Jackie, Steve, you and Abi will need to pack your bags quickly. You’re being sent to Millmoor this afternoon.’

  ‘Millmoor?’ Dad looked baffled.

  But Mum had caught the word that Jenner hadn’t said.

  ‘Daisy too, you mean.’

  Jenner looked up at the ceiling, as if the words he needed might be written along the wooden beams. They weren’t, of course.

  ‘Daisy stays here. At Kyneston.’

  Abi’s head snapped up. She hadn’t seen that one coming.

  Mum roared furiously and launched herself at Jenner, battering him with her fists. Abi didn’t move to help him, nor did Dad try to pull Mum away. Jenner ducked and dodged the worst of her blows, then caught both her hands in his, waiting until she’d fought herself to a standstill.

  ‘You’re taking my children,’ Mum sobbed, wiping her snotty nose on her dressing gown sleeve. ‘You’re not human. You’re monsters.’

  ‘It’s not permitted,’ Abi said to Jenner, more to have the matter over and done with, than in any expectation of a comforting reply. ‘The law says that children under the age of eighteen can only do days with their parents. Although I remember your mother forgetting that in Luke’s case, too.’

  ‘Abi, my father is the law. He can say whatever he likes. Gavar asked, and Father agreed. Daisy will move into one of the rooms in the servants’ wing, and Libby will have a nursery next door.’

  Daisy sat mute and motionless at the table. She twisted round to look through the kitchen door, to where Libby was bashing plastic bricks on a rug in the living room. Her expression was unreadable. She loved the little girl dearly, Abi knew. But Daisy was still a child herself, not yet eleven.

  Would Gavar become a substitute family for her – a strange combination of older sibling and parent? After the wedding, how would Bouda Matravers take to her husband’s unorthodox household?

  Daisy said nothing.

  ‘We need regular contact,’ Abi rapped out. ‘Letters weekly. Telephone conversations whenever possible. None of this three-month waiting period; it has to happen immediately. You can ensure that.’

  Jenner looked chastened. ‘I will.’

  ‘And I need to come up to the house now. There are things of mine in the office.’

  ‘Of course. I was going to suggest that.’

  ‘Mum, Dad, get the bags packed. I’ll be as quick as I can. I don’t want to miss a moment with you, little sis.’

  Abi and Jenner were away from the Row, but not yet over the rise to Kyneston, when Jenner kissed her. For a brief, traitorous moment Abi let herself melt into him. Wondered, madly, what would happen if she begged him to beg his father to allow her to stay.

  ‘I did ask for you already, you know,’ he said, somehow intuiting her thoughts. He cupped her face and looked down at her with those warm brown eyes. They were filled with the same regret he’d had when he’d warned her not to be curious, on that very first day. ‘I didn’t want you to think that if Gavar could get permission for Daisy, that I hadn’t tried.’

  ‘I believe you,’ she said, and stretched on tiptoe to kiss him again. She wo
uldn’t make him say it. Wouldn’t spell out what they both knew – the fact of Jenner’s powerlessness. Gavar was the heir. His alliance with Lord Jardine was an uneasy, volatile one, but father and son needed each other. No one needed Jenner.

  Not even me, Abi told herself fiercely. She wondered how many times she’d have to say it before she believed it. And how many more times after that before it became the truth.

  The things she was after were in several spots around the office, not just her own desk. So she encouraged Jenner to look through the workbooks and databases she’d set up, to make sure he understood them. While he was occupied, she moved around opening drawers, unlocking cabinets, occasionally announcing what was where, for Jenner’s benefit.

  She asked him not to walk her back to the cottage, and they said their goodbyes there in the Family Office. Jenner wound his fingers in her long hair as if he never wanted to untangle them again, and she pressed her face to his chest and breathed him in.

  ‘I want this,’ she announced, tugging at his scarf when they separated. He knotted it round her neck, kissed her cheek, and watched her go.

  The Hadleys’ final hours together were subdued. They didn’t discuss Luke. His absence was too awful to speak of just yet. Mum and Dad held Daisy desperately, trying to remember every inch of her. By the time they saw her again, their baby would be a grown woman of twenty.

  ‘It’s not uncommon for kids Daisy’s age to be away from their parents,’ Abi tried to console their dad. ‘It’ll be like she’s at the world’s most exclusive boarding school.’

  ‘Only with no one checking my homework,’ Daisy chipped in. ‘And I’m the one doing the teaching.’

  Dad laughed, then halfway through the laughter turned into excruciating weeping. For the millionth time Abi cursed herself for talking them into applying to Kyneston. If it weren’t for her, they would all have been in Millmoor: underfed, poorly housed, bored out of their minds – and together.

  Jenner came back just after lunch and led the four of them to the wall, where the Young Master was waiting on his black horse. The gate shimmered into existence. Abi hated that its appearance was every bit as miraculous as it had been the first time. There was a car visible on the other side, another silver-grey Labour Allocation Bureau vehicle.

  The gate swung open. Four of them walked up to it, but only three walked through. Daisy stood and waved, Libby Jardine cradled to her chest in a harness. Then, just like that, the gate was gone and so was she. Kyneston’s wall stretched away, an unbroken and unbreachable barrier, furred with moss and glowing faintly with Skill-light.

  ‘You’ve not got much,’ said the driver, as Abi tossed her half-empty duffel into the boot on top of Mum and Dad’s bags.

  ‘I know how the slavetowns work,’ said Abi. ‘My brother was at Millmoor. They don’t let you take much in.’

  She slid into the back seat of the car, Mum beside her, Dad up front. The driver tried to make small talk for the first few minutes, then gave up on them all. Abi watched the roads as the car turned. They’d be cutting west across to Bristol, then north up the M5 all the way to Manchester – and Millmoor.

  She shoved her hands into her coat pockets, willing down the queasiness in her stomach.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she blurted, a short while after. ‘I don’t travel well. I think I’m going to be sick.’

  ‘What?’ the driver looked over his shoulder and scowled.

  ‘Those trees over there. Please.’ Abi put a hand up to her mouth to cover a hiccup. ‘Can you pull over?’

  She didn’t dare do more than squeeze Mum’s fingers as she got out, leaving the door open.

  She moved a short way into the trees, turning her back on the car and doubling over. Her retching sounds would be plainly audible. She coughed, and moved a little deeper into the woods.

  Then once she was out of sight, she took off at a sprint.

  The map in her pocket batted against her leg as she ran. The map she’d taken from the Family Office, and studied as she walked back to the cottage by herself. She knew exactly where she was. Just a short way from here was a small A-road that led west, down to Exeter. Someone would stop quickly for a teenage girl on her own.

  From there she’d get a train to Penzance, the last city in the south-western tip of England. All the money she could possibly need was zipped into her coat. She’d emptied the office petty cash box, and needless to say the Jardines’ idea of a float was more than most people earned in a month.

  She could buy a change of clothing, or hair dye. It’d be wise to change her appearance, as alerts about her fugitive status would go out soon. On her side was the fact that they’d have no idea where she was headed. They’d probably guess Manchester. Or maybe even Scotland.

  From Penzance she could get a ferry. Or a helicopter. Or talk or bribe her way onto a fishing boat or yacht.

  She could be in the Scillies by the day’s end. Nestled at the heart of the archipelago was an island estate. An estate that belonged to the only people who might help rescue her brother: Lady Armeria Tresco and her now Skilless son and heir, Meilyr.

  Abi ran on. She intended to be at Highwithel by nightfall.

  Acknowledgements

  My agent: Robert Kirby, for believing in me and making it happen. My international agents: Ginger Clark and Jane Willis, for making it happen all over the world. My editors: Bella Pagan and Tricia Narwani, for making it the very best it can be. My international editors: Eva Grynszpan, Marie-Ann Geissler, and many others, for loving this very British book. My Pan Mac and Del Rey teams: Lauren, Phoebe, Kate, Jo, Emily, David M, Keith, Thomas, Quinne, David S, Julie and colleagues, for being an absolute professional pleasure. My #TeamUA: Kate, Kat and Yasmin, for having everything covered.

  My family: Mum, Jonathan and Dad, for filling my childhood with books and for always letting me read. My old friends: Hils, Giles, Tanya, John and far too many to mention, for always believing that one day you’d hold my book in your hands. My new friends: Debbie, Taran, Tim and Nick, for inspiring me and cheering me all the way. My telly people: Mike, Jacques, Fiona and Jay, for enabling my great escape. My first responders: Gav who featured me, Amy who pulled me from the slushpile, and Winchester Library who gave me a writing prize at age eight. Early belief is everything.

  My Wattpadres: for being there from the beginning. My Homies: for buying me drinks along the way. My Goldies: for believing that creative and intellectual endeavour belong together. My Swankies: for not letting me do this alone.

  GILDED CAGE

  Vic James is a current affairs TV director who loves stories in all their forms. Her programmes for BBC1 have covered the 2016 US presidential election and Britain’s EU referendum. She has also twice judged the Guardian’s Not the Booker Prize. Gilded Cage is her first novel, and an early draft won a major online award from Wattpad for most talked-about Fantasy. She has lived in Rome, Tokyo, and now London.

  You can follow Vic on Twitter: @DrVictoriaJames

  www.vicjames.co.uk

  By Vic James

  The Dark Gifts Trilogy

  Gilded Cage

  Tarnished City

  Bright Ruin

  First published 2017 by Pan Books

  This electronic edition published 2017 by Pan Books

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan

  20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR

  Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.com

  ISBN 978-1-5098-2146-4

  Copyright © Vic James Ltd 2017

  Cover Images © Shutterstock

  Design by Joanna Thomson, Pan Macmillan Art Department

  The right of Vic James to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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