There was a firm hand grasping her elbow. Jenner. Then an arm around her shoulder. Her father. The hand let go.
‘Skill can affect people sometimes,’ Jenner said. ‘If you’ve never been exposed to it, you need to acclimatize. It’s strongest with Silyen around, but you might feel it again when my father and older brother return from London. Let’s get you all to your cottage. I’ve put you over in the Row; you’ll like it.’
Jenner led the way. He didn’t get back on his horse, but walked alongside them. Dad hefted his and Abi’s bags onto his shoulders, while Mum swung hers and Daisy’s, one in each hand. Daisy scampered back and forth, admiring the horse and peppering Jenner with questions about it. Abi walked by herself, off to one side, trying to make sense of everything that was roiling through her.
‘Oh!’ Daisy’s exclamation was so loud that the small group stopped, alarmed. ‘Look,’ she said, pointing back the way they had come. ‘It’s gone. Is it invisible?’
Where the shining gate had been was a single, unbroken expanse of wall. The Hadleys stared.
‘You were right with “gone”,’ Jenner said, coaxing his horse to a stop. ‘The gate only exists when one of my family calls it into being, and it can be summoned anywhere along the wall. That’s why there’s no driveway and no roads inside the estate. It’s also why my father keeps busting the suspension on the classic cars he loves so much, and why Sil and I prefer to get around on horseback. Gavar takes his motorbike. It can only be opened by Skill, though. That’s why just now . . .’
He trailed off.
‘Why are you telling us?’ said Abi. ‘Isn’t that sort of stuff, I don’t know, a state secret or something?’
Jenner fiddled with his horse’s bridle, pausing before replying.
‘Kyneston isn’t always an easy place to be. Sometimes people think about trying to leave.’ He turned to Abi. ‘My brother told me that before we arrived, when you were still on the other side, you did a bit of exploring. No, don’t worry’ – for panic had wrapped its fingers tightly round Abi’s throat and squeezed – ‘you didn’t do anything wrong. But just . . . try not to be too interested in things. It’s easier that way.’
He sounded subdued, and Abi suspected he wasn’t talking generally, but recalling something specific and distressing. Was it ridiculous of her to want to comfort him?
It was ridiculous.
‘Try not to be too interested?’ she said, a touch sharply. ‘Isn’t your family motto “Sapere aude”, “Dare to know”?’
‘Trust me,’ Jenner said, those brown eyes on hers. ‘There are some things it’s better not to know.’
He turned away, and they all walked on in silence. It was around a quarter of an hour later – Abi could see from Daisy’s face that she was about to do the ‘Are we there yet?’ thing – when the ground sloped upwards to a small rise. And as they crested the top, what she saw stole her breath.
Kyneston.
She’d seen pictures of it, of course: in books, on the TV and online. Seat of the Founding Family. Once the home of Cadmus Parva-Jardine, Cadmus the Pure-in-Heart, peacemaker and chief architect of the Slavedays Compact.
The pre-Revolutionary part of Kyneston was built of pale, honeyed stone. Three storeys high with soaring windows, it was topped with a small dome and edged with a parapet crowded with statuary.
But the rest of it shone almost too brightly to bear. From the main body of the house, two great glass wings stretched out, each as wide again as the original frontage. These had been Skill-forged by Cadmus, just as he had raised the House of Light, seat of the Equals’ parliament. In the low afternoon sunshine, the two wings were like greenhouses filled with exotic blooms of fire and light. Abi first shaded her eyes then had to look away entirely.
‘It’s beautiful,’ said Daisy. ‘And very shiny. Do you live there?’
‘Yes,’ said Jenner Jardine. ‘It is, and I do.’
He was smiling, genuinely pleased at Daisy’s pleasure. He loves this place, Abi realized. Although if what he had said about the gate and his lack of Skill was true, he was as much a prisoner here as they were.
‘Look,’ said the young Equal, directing Daisy’s gaze to a petite female figure appearing from behind a topiary hedge. ‘There’s my mother, Lady Thalia. She and I look after the house and grounds. She does everything Skillful, and I take care of the rest.’
‘And who’s that?’ asked Daisy, as a second person appeared.
Then she gasped, a hurt, shocked little sound that made Abi fleetingly wonder if Jenner had pinched her.
Abi glanced at where Daisy was looking, at the second figure now emerging from the hedge-line. It was another woman, her hair a steely coif, her shoulders mantled in what looked like dozens of fox furs. A leash was wrapped around one gloved hand.
And at the end of that leash, crouched on all fours and naked, was a man.
4
Luke