Reaching the seat where her father sprawled, fingers locked across his claret velvet waistcoat, Bouda bent and kissed his cheek, prodding him lightly in the stomach. Lord Lytchett tossed back his mane of ivory hair and hauled himself upright to make room for his darling girl. She slipped easily through the narrow space and into the heir’s chair on his left.
As Bouda sat, smoothing her dress, a thunderous sound echoed through the high chamber. It was the ceremonial mace, striking the outside of the thick oak doors. The doors opened only for those qualified by blood and Skill: lords, ladies and their heirs. Not even Silyen, for all his supposed gifts, would be able just to walk in here. But Cadmus had created a provision – one long overdue for reform, Bouda thought – for a dozen commoners to witness parliamentary proceedings.
‘Who seeks admittance?’ quavered ancient Hengist Occold, the Elder of the House, in a voice that didn’t seem loud enough to be heard on the other side.
‘The Commons of Great Britain most humbly seek admittance among its Equals,’ came the formal response, in a clear female voice.
The old man’s hands worked in the air with surprising deftness, and the doors swung inward to admit a group of people.
Outwardly, there was nothing to distinguish the twelve well-dressed newcomers from those who filled the chamber. But these were merely the OPs, the Observers of Parliament. Voteless. UnSkilled. Commoners. Not, Bouda thought, that you’d know it from the way that bitch Dawson, their Speaker, was decked out in the height of Shanghai fashion.
Rebecca Dawson, a dark-haired woman in her fifties, led her group to their allotted place: the back bench along the west side of the chamber. It was opposite the tiers of estate seats and behind the Chancellor’s Chair. She held herself perfectly upright, despite wearing towering Brazilian heels. The Speaker and Bodina could probably spend hours talking about shoes, Bouda thought. Shoes and abolition. Both equally pointless topics.
As the OPs settled themselves the air thrummed again, to trumpets heralding the Chancellor’s approach. The sound thrilled Bouda as much now as it had the very first time she’d heard it. The current, unworthy incumbent of that great office swept into the chamber, and with a final gesture from the Elder of the House, the doors closed.
Bathed in coruscating light that streamed through the south end window from the shimmering world beyond, the black-and-white figure of Winterbourne Zelston ascended the steps to the chair. He unclasped his heavy ermine and velvet robe and swept it into the waiting hands of the Child of the House, the youngest heir present.
The Chancellor sat. Parliament was in session.
Before the Proposal came the regular business. Usually, Bouda took a keen interest in the routine affairs of state, but today she was distracted by thoughts of the coming announcement.
Down on the chamber floor Dawson was up on her hind legs, yapping away. She was objecting to a perfectly logical scheme to assist the long-term unemployed by returning them to slavery for twelve months’ respite. So Bouda tuned her out and gave the matter further thought. Could Silyen really do as he had promised, and revive Euterpe Parva? Could Zelston still love the woman so much that he would risk his position with such an insane Proposal?
And this was hardest of all to understand: why, given that the Proposal would surely fail, would Silyen ask for it?
She turned over what she knew of the boy, and to her surprise found that it wasn’t much. Silyen was rarely present at Kyneston’s social events – the garden parties, the hunts, or Lady Thalia’s interminable chamber opera evenings. He would occasionally turn up for family dinners, eating sparingly and offering sly, barbed remarks. These were usually at the expense of his eldest brother, and Bouda had to repress her urge to laugh. The family all maintained that Silyen was powerfully Skillful, but Bouda had never seen any direct evidence.
Although there had been moments. Feelings. She’d never been able to put her finger on one, but sometimes at Kyneston she’d experienced small sensations of wrongness. Conversations that she couldn’t clearly remember. Objects that didn’t feel entirely right in her hand. Even the taste of the air felt off sometimes, static and heavy.
She usually put it down to Gavar’s generosity with the contents of his father’s wine cellar. She’d even wondered if it was due to the charge crackling through Kyneston’s vast Skill-forged wings.
But she couldn’t be sure.
When the recess bell sounded, Daddy levered himself up to head for the Members’ Parlour and its cake trolley. His disappearance gave Bouda the opportunity to have a long-overdue conversation. She looked for her quarry. Sure enough, Lady Armeria Tresco was there, in the furthest row of seats. Alone.
The Tresco seat in the chamber matched the location of their estate of Highwithel: peripheral. Had Highwithel’s heir not broken her sister’s heart, Bouda might one day have found herself a frequent visitor. She was glad this was no longer likely. The Tresco estate was an island at the heart of an archipelago: the Scillies. They were the southernmost point of the British Isles, off the tip of Cornwall. Beyond Land’s End.