From the high curve of the hill, Luke could see the whole of Kyneston spread beneath him.

A ring of illuminated windows encircled the cupola, crowning the house with light. On either side, the great glass wings stretched away. The western one was unlit and almost invisible in the twilight. The east was a blaze of candles and chandeliers, its iron frame caging a galaxy.

Should he stay here?

Should he hold fast to those few words of Jackson’s, and trust that the club wanted him at Kyneston for a reason?

Or did the Doc, Renie, and the rest consider him lost to the cause? Because the only way he could prove them wrong would be by breaking his parents’ hearts and ripping his family apart a second time—by escaping to Millmoor.

Luke Hadley. The only person in history to try and get back into a slavetown.

It felt like time was slipping away for his decision. The Proposal Ball began in less than an hour. Tomorrow was the wedding. The window of bustle and traffic in which a boy might slip away unnoticed would close soon after.

But he could make plans anyway. And whatever Luke chose, there was Dog to think about. He and Abi had argued over the man’s plight. She was fair, but firm. She wouldn’t be party to any escape plans until they knew what crime the man had committed.

Luke was confident he could get Dog out on his own if he had to—he’d managed rather more in Millmoor, after all. But he and his sister were in this together now. He didn’t want to do it without her. And besides, she was right. They needed to know.

Dog was curled on his side in the pen. The stench was even worse than usual. There was no lavatory pail. Not even a litter tray. The man was expected to use a thin pile of straw in the corner, which didn’t look as though it had been changed for days. Luke’s gorge rose, but he crouched as close to the bars as he could bear.

“The guests have all arrived. I saw your jailer,” he said, watching Dog’s reaction. “Crovan.”

“My—creator,” Dog said, making that noise that sounded like the world’s worst cough, but was actually laughter. He seemed to save it for the least amusing things imaginable.

“What did you do to get sent to him? Why were you Condemned? Please, I need to know.”

The laughter stopped. Dog contorted himself into a bow-backed squat, the attitude of a beaten creature. He scrubbed the back of his hand over his forehead, as if trying and failing to erase the memories it contained.

“They killed—my wife.”

Luke had been expecting something like that. But nothing prepared him for the pain on Dog’s ravaged features. The man screwed up his face, willing the words to come more than two or three at a time.

“We wanted—a family. So we chose—an estate. At first, we were happy—so happy. She became pregnant. That’s when…” The man’s fists clenched.

“That’s when—it changed. It happened. She got—confused. I saw the bruises. Thought pregnancy was—making her clumsy. It wasn’t. He was—raping her. Silencing her—with Skill. Hurting her—in every way.”

Dog’s rasping voice dragged over Luke’s skin like the unwanted touch of fingers.

“Who was he?” Luke demanded.

“He was my great-aunt Hypatia’s grandson, the heir of Ide,” a voice said from the doorway. “Her favorite.”

Luke’s entire body went cold. Terror tingled in his fingertips like frostbite. He’d been so intent on Dog’s narration he hadn’t heard anyone approach.

Silyen Jardine walked over to the pen, then flapped out the tails of his riding jacket and sat down on the concrete floor. Luke scrambled backward. The Equal didn’t seem to notice—or didn’t care, if he did.

“Do carry on,” he said. “I’m sure Luke’s desperate to know what happens next.”

“Next,” Dog said, “my wife—hanged herself.” He fixed Luke with eyes that were bright with tears and shone with madness. “She was tiny but—heavy with—the baby. Nearly due. I found her. Neck snapped. Both dead. The next bit—was easy. I was a soldier—before. Before I was—a dog. I killed—him first. Then—his wife. Then—his children.”

The bottom dropped out of Luke’s stomach. Had he heard that last bit right? Please let him not have heard it right.

“Children?” he whispered to the man in the pen.

“Three of them,” said Silyen Jardine. “All under ten. And it gets worse, because we’re not talking a nice soft pillow over their faces.

“You’ve heard of Black Billy’s Revolt, haven’t you, Luke? The blacksmith who defied his masters? They made him forge the instruments of his own torture and killed him with them. Well, that all happened long ago at Ide, but my dear relatives there always kept those tools. A little memento. Let’s say our resourceful canine friend found a new use for them. Isn’t that so?”

Dog looked at Silyen for a long time.

“Yes,” he rasped. “Worked well. Wish I—still had them.”

Luke thought he was going to vomit.

This world was sicker and more rotten than he’d imagined. Who could have thought he’d be nostalgic for the days when Kessler was beating him black and blue on the storeroom floor? There was nothing like a bit of honest thuggery.

“Anyway,” the Equal said, “don’t let me interrupt. I doubt you were discussing a joint wedding gift for my brother and his bride. Escape plans, maybe?”

“No,” said Luke. “I was just bringing him medicine.”

“Because the Dog,” Silyen continued, bizarrely conversational, “and you, Luke—and all our slaves—are bound to this estate. None of you can hurt us, or leave us. Not without my permission. In a nice bit of irony, Father had me devise the binding soon after the events at Ide, to ensure nothing like it could happen here.”

“I’m not helping him escape,” Luke said. He felt somehow, furiously, that Dog had made a fool of him. “He’s a child-killer. I thought he was a victim, but I was wrong.”

“That’s rather narrow-minded of you, Luke.” Silyen Jardine got to his feet, brushing down his jeans. “Aren’t you all victims? But have it your way.”

The Equal looked at Dog. “Luckily, some of us keep our promises. I’ll wake the gate at 3 A.M., like I said. Wait for me in Kyngrove Hanger, the high beech wood.”

Silyen Jardine reached down to the padlock that secured the cage and plucked it off. No key. No fuss. The Equal opened his fingers and a dozen broken bits that were once a padlock tinkled as they hit the floor. He nodded at Dog, then walked out of the kennel.

Luke nearly keeled over with relief that the nightmarish conversation was finished. He leaned against the adjacent pen, keeping a wary eye open.

“Silyen Jardine promised to help you escape? Why? You can’t seriously believe him. It’s a trap. It must be.”

Dog shrugged. “Possibly. But what trap—could get me anywhere—worse than this? As for—why. Perhaps to spite—his great-aunt. Perhaps—for trouble. Perhaps just—because he can.”

“I’m so sorry for what happened to your wife,” Luke said awkwardly. He stood. Dog made no move to quit the cage, which was a small mercy. “But that doesn’t excuse what you did. I really did want to help you, before I knew. Anyway, it’s not like you need me now. Good luck getting out.”

He hoped his voice didn’t betray exactly how unlikely he thought that was. Dog stared.

“You have to—hate them,” the man grated out. “To beat them.”

“I don’t hate them enough to kill children,” Luke said, with no hesitation.

“Then you don’t hate them—enough.”

Luke didn’t have an answer for that. To the accompaniment of Dog’s hoarse laughter, he ducked through the doorway and didn’t look back.

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 toward 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 swiveled 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 multicolored 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 reentered 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 toward 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 ‘sirs,’ 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-blond 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 sequined 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 center 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 had 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 center 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 favorite 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 were ripping him apart from the inside out, as if he were a walking human bomb. Its epicenter 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’ defenses 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 anymore. Flesh and bits that you never imagined might actually be inside a person were scattered around. The colors 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 viselike 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.