Gilded Cage (Dark Gifts #1)(56)

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 amongst 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 towards 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 labour; 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’ 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.





14



Luke



The Millmoor Games and Social Club was preparing to throw the biggest New Year’s party the slavetown had ever seen.

It’d be a riot.

Christmas had been less unbearable than Luke had feared. Even slaves were given the day off, and Ryan had been his guide to their dorm block’s meagre festivities: a lie-in, a lunch of roast chicken and soggy green veg, then a screening of the Chancellor’s Christmas message in the main rec room. This was followed by movies and television specials. As the day wore on, bottles of illicit hooch were produced and passed round. Luke joined in a good-natured and occasionally life-endangering street football match against the neighbouring block.

There were no gifts, of course. Not even a card from his family at Kyneston, because though the three months of no contact were finally up, Millmoor had been under communications lockdown since the ‘YES’ graffiti stunt. But getting Oz to freedom was the only Christmas present Luke had needed.