Gilded Cage (Dark Gifts #1)(61)

So he went to bed.

Sleep didn’t come easily. He was shaken awake just after 7 a.m. by one of his roommates who worked in the chicken sheds and caught a bus to work round the same time Luke did.

‘You’ll be late, sonny.’

‘Not well,’ Luke mumbled into his pillow. ‘Not going.’

‘Your funeral.’

The man moved away and Luke pulled the blanket back up and tried to doze off again. Incredibly, he managed it.

He shot awake for the second time some while later – a check of his watch told him it was 9 a.m. – thanks to a horrific blaring of feedback from the public announcement system. The PA was installed in each building and at intervals along every street. As Luke rubbed his eyes, the speaker in his dorm room made a loud farting noise then crackled into speech.

Luke recognized the voice. Had anyone warned Jessica?

‘Hello there, people of Millmoor,’ boomed Oz. ‘This is Oswald Walcott and Radio Free For All wishing you all a very good morning. It’s going to be an amazing day. Let’s start with a special request for a friend of mine.’

There was a moment’s pause as if Oz was figuring out the controls, then the air filled with the unmistakable first chords of the paopaotang bubblegum synth.

Luke buried his face in his pillow and groaned as the familiar backing beat started up.

The music filled the room and spilled out into the corridor, where it hit a backwash of vocal cuteness issuing from other speakers throughout the dorm block. It even echoed in the streets in demented syncopation.

‘It’s “Happy Panda”!’ Oz’s deep voice announced triumphantly. ‘People, let’s get this party started!’





15



Abi



The evening in the Great Solar had begun, as many evenings at Kyneston did, with Gavar Jardine hurling a whisky glass into the fireplace. Perhaps it would end with him exploding one of the glass-fronted bookcases, or a piece of his mother’s prized porcelain – neither was a rare occurrence.

This evening Abi had not only seen Gavar smash the glass, she had been standing next to the fireplace when he did it. Jenner half rose from his chair and snapped at his brother to take better care, but Gavar only laughed contemptuously. Sitting opposite, alone on the two-seater sofa, Bouda Matravers pinched her lips together like someone watching a toddler throwing a tantrum in a supermarket.

Current probability of wedded bliss for this pair, Abi thought: about zero.

Wedding planner had been added to Abi’s job description a few hours earlier. She and Jenner were to pin down Gavar and Bouda for more specifics, given that the ceremony was now just two months away. Bouda had stalked in to the Solar after supper and sat down, smoothing her skirt, then checked her diamond-studded watch and told Jenner he had her attention until nine o’clock. Gavar had slouched in soon after.

Abi was fascinated to be in such proximity to the Matravers heir. She’d seen pictures of Bouda before, of course, in magazines. She’d even quite admired her. The young parliamentarian was always poised and polished, a cool intelligence evident in her pale blue eyes. She was a woman unapologetically making her way in a man’s world. (Abi was quicker to flip through pictures of her sweet-faced sister, who was invariably papped falling out of nightclubs accessorized with a tiny dog and a gargantuan handbag.)

Bouda Matravers in person was another matter altogether. The intelligence was there, sure enough. But it wasn’t cool, it was ice-cold – the kind of cold that could burn. Not that she’d notice you were there in the first place. Bouda was one of those Equals for whom commoners were simply irrelevant. Invisible. Abi wondered, briefly, what it would take to get her attention. A jab in the leg with a sharp pencil, perhaps. She had no intention of trying.

‘Ignore him,’ Bouda told Jenner, pointedly not looking at Gavar, who had stopped pacing and was now staring morosely into the fire. ‘Justice Council voted this afternoon to send him back to Millmoor tonight. Unfinished business from his last failed trip there. So he’s sulking and half-cut on booze already, in case you hadn’t noticed.’

Abi fumbled with her pencil, catching it clumsily before it dropped to the floor.

Millmoor? Why Millmoor?

Positioned to one side of Jenner’s armchair, she couldn’t catch his eye. But he knew how worried she was about Luke, especially because the communications lockdown meant they’d still had no news of her brother since the day he’d been taken from them. So she could have hugged Jenner when he asked, mildly, what was going on in the slavetown.

‘Nothing, is what,’ said Gavar, rummaging through the drum-shaped drinks chest. ‘Rumours. A prisoner escaped just before Christmas and now there’s been some new intel, so Father and Bouda have got it in their heads that something’s going to kick off tomorrow. Zelston was too gutless to authorize the use of lethal force himself, so yours truly is being sent up there to’ – and here Gavar turned, a rectangular green bottle gripped too tightly in one hand, and mimicked the resonant tones of the Chancellor – ‘make the decision on the ground.’

He unstoppered the spirit and drank straight from the bottle, gulping it down.

‘Lethal force?’ Jenner’s tone was sharp, but it didn’t come close to capturing Abi’s fear.

Please let Luke be safe. Please.