“They used Skill?”
“That’s what I said.”
Her future husband crossed his arms, his face reddening at her skepticism.
Bouda sighed. Was this how married life would be? Gavar getting truculent at the slightest provocation: “Was it the marmalade you wanted, darling?” Glower. “That’s what I said.” “Is your great-aunt coming for tea today, my love?” Scowl. “That’s what I said.”
She’d find out soon enough. Tomorrow was the Second Debate, at Grendelsham. They would be married at Kyneston after the Third. Three more months.
How would it have been if fate had delivered her one of the other Jardine sons: Jenner or Silyen? Jenner would have been out of the question, she supposed. If he’d been the eldest, Whittam would have disinherited him. And Silyen? Well…maybe there were worse things than Gavar’s short temper.
And perhaps the strategies she learned for dealing with him would come in useful when they had babies.
“But I understand from your father”—she looked over at Whittam to enlist his support, and he gave a confirmatory nod—“that the escape can be explained entirely by Millmoor’s own lax security protocols.”
She counted off their failings on her fingers, wincing at the garish turquoise polish on each nail. Dina had returned from Paris in the small hours, spilling noisily through the door with bags of designer nonsense and exorbitantly priced cosmetics. She had insisted on giving her sister a manicure after breakfast, even though there were slaves for that sort of thing—“Because politicians can be pretty, too!” There was another fortunate accident of birth, Bouda supposed. Just imagine if DiDi had been the Matravers heir.
“The perpetrators wore valid identity bands. And because they posed as Administration Security, the fact that they were unknown to the prison guards didn’t raise suspicion.” She folded down two fingers, counting. “Your father has just received confirmation that they compromised the CCTV cameras, too. They were also monitoring Security’s communications channels, which is how they knew you were coming.
“And above all, they held their nerve. If Walcott’s escape weren’t so exasperating, I’d applaud their brazenness. Walking out with the prisoner, while telling the imbeciles on duty that you were the breakout team.” She folded down the last finger. “All in all, more than enough reasons to explain how they extracted the prisoner from under the noses of such incompetents.”
Gavar held his ground, looming over her where she sat on the sofa. She wasn’t intimidated. They were in the snug sitting room of Daddy’s little Mayfair bolt-hole. Everything here was as cozily over-upholstered as Daddy himself, and Bouda felt secure. This was home territory.
“It was more than that,” Gavar insisted. “I daresay slavetown Security aren’t recruited for their intelligence, but for those guards to have fallen for such a simple trick? And me? I walked straight past them. Didn’t spare them a glance.”
And that, thought Bouda, was the simplest thing of all in this whole farcical business. Gavar Jardine misses a breakout taking place right under his nose. And to cover his own idiocy, he starts seeing Skill at work. In a slavetown, no less. Bouda had seen how agitated Gavar was at the thought of using special measures on the prisoner. He’d probably been drinking nonstop from the moment his car left London. Everyone knew about the decanters that nestled in the Jardine Bentley’s backseat.
“It’s an interesting hypothesis,” said Lord Whittam, who’d been leaning against the mantelpiece, observing the exchange. “But not a necessary one. The stolen vehicle was found abandoned just inside the Peak District, half submerged in a quarry. It’s being recovered now, though it doesn’t seem likely we’ll get much from it. That isn’t the sort of stratagem a Skilled person would resort to.”
“Do we know who was driving the vehicle?” she asked Whittam. “The fugitive himself, or an accomplice?”
“Security ran a perimeter chip-check about five minutes after the breakout was discovered. That showed that all microchipped individuals not inside the boundary were absent with authorization, except for the prisoner Walcott. The vehicle passed through several internal checkpoints. The guards at each report that the ID was in order and the driver was a Caucasian female, though their descriptions of her are unhelpfully vague.”
“Female and unchipped?” said Bouda. “His wife, is she on the outside? Free?”
“Dead,” said Whittam impassively. “Breast cancer three years ago. Seems to have been what prompted Walcott to start his days.”
“I’m telling you”—Gavar was clenching his fists—“it was Skill.”
Bouda felt certain that the only Skill that had been used in Millmoor last night was Gavar’s own. Infuriated at being trapped inside the detention center by a guard who thought Gavar himself was Walcott’s rescuer, he had simply blasted his way out. The max wing of the prison had been reduced to rubble and several individuals inside were seriously injured. It was all rather excessive—albeit a well-timed reminder to Millmoor’s seditionists of the power they sought to defy.
He had then pursued someone through the streets with his beloved revolver, apparently in the belief it was either Walcott or his fleeing accomplice. Gavar Jardine, the action hero. She smiled to herself. He was such a little boy.
But she didn’t want Gavar throwing all his toys out of the pram at this early stage. She’d be spending the next two days with the Jardine father and son, after all. Maybe it was time to use a softer tone.
“What happened to the person you shot at? Whatever tipped you off, Skill, intuition, or a sharp pair of ears”—she sent Gavar her most mollifying smile, though he seemed sadly immune—“your instincts about the rescue attempt were correct.”
“I didn’t shoot at him,” said Gavar. “I hit him. I heard him yell out.”
Gavar was touchy about his marksmanship. Had been ever since word had got out about the hunting accident—the one that killed the slavegirl mother of his child. Bouda hadn’t found it in her heart to be sorry about that particular incident.
“But you never found a body, or any blood indicating a wounding, where you believed your target was?”
“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 preeminence.
“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 center with the aid of two males, possibly Skilled.”
He inclined his head toward 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 cocktail parties for the international media.
She went over to her sister and put an arm round her to steer her back toward 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 goggle eyes swiveling 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.”
Bouda scooped the dog from her sister’s arms and 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 color 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 color was still shifting now, as the sun downed. The rosy pink deepened, darkened, became a hot fleshy red—turned, unmistakably, the color of blood.
Bouda shrank back in her seat, suddenly unnerved. With a stab at a button, she raised 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 kenneled 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 afterward detached herself unobtrusively and began to work the room. Her favorite 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. Time 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 backward 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 toward 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 among 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 toward 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 labor, 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’s 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.