Silyen looked at the man in front of him. Zelston’s dark face was shiny with sweat, his immaculate white silk cravat askew. It was remarkable how much emotion the Chancellor was displaying. Was that a politician’s habit, all for show? Or were some people really subject to such constant storms of feeling? Gavar was, Silyen supposed. It must be exhausting.
He gestured to the overturned chair by the bedside and it flipped back onto four legs. Gratifyingly, Zelston took the cue and sat down. The Chancellor bowed his head and ran his fingers along his knotted braids. His posture suggested prayer. Though praying for what, or to whom, Silyen couldn’t imagine.
‘Here’s a question for you, Chancellor: what is Skill?’
He knew that Zelston had been a lawyer. This was before his elder sister’s early death elevated him from spare to heir, at which point an unsuspected political ambition revealed itself. Lawyers liked questions – and even more, they liked supplying smart answers.
Zelston looked up warily from between his fingers and obliged. He used the taxonomy devised by scholars centuries ago.
‘It’s an ability, origin unknown, manifesting in a very small fraction of the population and passed down through our bloodlines. Some talents are universal, such as restoration – that is, healing. Others, such as alteration, persuasion, perception and infliction, manifest in differing degrees from person to person.’
‘Magic, you could say?’ Silyen offered.
He watched the Chancellor wince. It was an unfashionable word, but Silyen thought it a good one. How dry and ill-defined those traditional categories were. Skill was not a parcelling-up of small talents. It was a radiance that lit the veins of every Equal.
But he needed to speak to the Chancellor in a language the man understood: that of politics.
‘Perhaps you could say that Skill is what separates us’ – he pointed to himself and Zelston – ‘from them.’ He indicated the window, beyond which two garden slaves were grumbling about apple weevils. ‘But tell me this: when was the last time you used your Skill, beyond healing a paper cut when opening a letter, or exercising a little persuasion in political matters? When did you last use your Skill to actually do anything?’
‘We have slaves to do things,’ Zelston said dismissively. ‘The whole purpose of the slavedays is to free us to govern. And you want to dismantle this system?’
‘But many countries are governed by commoners: France, where the people rose up against the Skilled aristocracy and slaughtered them in the streets of Paris. Or China, where our kind retired to mountain monasteries long ago. Or the Union States of America, which deems us enemy aliens and bars us from their ‘Land of the Free’, though their cousins in the Confederate States live as we do. Government is not what defines us, Chancellor. Nor is power. Nor wealth. Skill is what defines us. The slavedays have made us forget that.’
Zelston stared at him, then rubbed his eyes. He showed all the signs of a man about to give in. Despite his fine words about the country’s peace, he was going to toss it all away for a chance to regain the lost love of his youth. It was almost admirable, if one were inclined to admire such things. Silyen was not.
‘And you think this Proposal will somehow remind us?’
‘I think it will help,’ Silyen said.
Which was true, as far as it went.
Zelston let his hooded gaze drop to Aunt Euterpe’s face, then reached out and stroked her hair.
‘Very well. I will lay this Proposal before parliament. We will debate it at Esterby Castle, and then at Grendelsham. And when the Third Debate comes to Kyneston in the spring, you will keep your side of the bargain. Euterpe will be restored to me before I call the vote. Which will go against you. Now get out of my sight.’
Silyen dropped a shallow bow and couldn’t resist a taunting knock of boot heels as he came to attention. He turned before he left the room:
‘Oh, milord Chancellor? You couldn’t have laid a finger on me just now, if I had not permitted it.’
He shut the door behind him.
Silyen went into the adjacent music room. Only the piano would suffice right now – would be big enough and loud enough to drown out just a little of the endless roar of his Skill inside him.
He folded back the instrument lid. As he poised his fingers over the keyboard he heard, in the next room, Chancellor Winterbourne Zelston begin to cry.
3
Abi
They had sat numbly in the car, speaking only to rage, sob, or – in Abi’s case – to offer plan after plan of how she was going to get Luke’s assignment to Millmoor overturned. Dad was quiet, and Mum made the driver pull over while she checked him for concussion. Her reassuring verdict calmed Daisy down, and allowed Abi to focus on her brother. For the remainder of the journey, Luke was the sole thought in her head.
Until they reached the wall.
‘That’s Kyneston on the left now,’ said the Labour Allocation Bureau woman at the wheel. She had been silent the entire journey, after making it plain that it was above her pay grade to comment on the morning’s disaster.