The bike surged into view and slashed to a halt, gouging grass into mud. The heir kicked his bike to a stand and hurried over.
‘You’re a long way from the house,’ he said to Daisy sternly. Abi might as well not have been there.
Gavar wore the fierce expression that made house-slaves wet themselves in terror, but her little sister simply grinned.
‘We’re wrapped up warm and have everything we need,’ she told him, undoing the clasps on the harness and handing Libby to her father. Gavar doted on the baby for a few moments, rubbing her nose against his and making her laugh. Then he looked at Daisy and his expression was almost gentle.
‘I missed her while I was away,’ he said. ‘But I knew she’d be safe with you. Let’s go sit by the lake and you can tell me what you’ve been up to.’
He tucked Libby against his chest and laid a hand on Daisy’s shoulder, steering her towards a bench by the water’s edge.
‘You,’ he said, over his shoulder, not bothering to look. ‘Get the bike to the garage.’
Abi scowled as he walked off, secure in the knowledge that whatever else Skill did, it didn’t give you eyes in the back of your head.
The bike was a nightmare, an incomprehensible lump of metal reeking of petrol and hot leather. She didn’t have a clue how to get it moving. Luke would have known.
‘Brilliant idea!’ she heard Daisy sigh, with dreamy approval.
Abi turned to see what Gavar the Marvellous was doing now. On the lake a long, shallow keelboat was gliding across the water. On the far shore, the doors of the boathouse where it was usually kept stood open. The oars were shipped, lying inside along the length of the hull. There was no one in the boat and no visible means of propulsion. It was heading straight to where Daisy, Gavar and the baby were sat, as if drawn on a string like a toy.
Held upright by her father, Libby kneaded her small feet into his thigh and smacked her hands together.
The boat made a faint plashing noise as it moved smoothly forward. Disturbed, a moorhen gargled and scudded away. Everything else was quiet and still. So Abi heard Heir Gavar’s next words very distinctly.
‘I’m not doing anything.’
Abi stiffened, one hand clenched uselessly around the bike’s handlebars. She scanned the wood’s edge for any sign of Silyen. She couldn’t see anything, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t there, plotting mischief. There were only rooks, circling.
The prow thudded softly into the bank, right in front of the bench. There was a faint clatter of wood as the oars rolled with the impact. Then the boat swung until the whole length of it rested alongside the bank.
It was possible – just – that the boat might have slipped its mooring in the boathouse and drifted across the lake. But this movement was unnatural. Deliberate.
Abi heard Gavar’s next words, full of wonder and pride – and just a touch of disbelief.
‘It’s not me, Daisy. It’s her.’
Squirming in her father’s grasp, Libby Jardine giggled.
8
Luke
From his perch high up on the roof parapet, Luke could see right across Millmoor. No one would be charging tourists ten quid to admire the view any time soon.
What stood out wasn’t the shape or size of the slavetown, but its colour – or rather, the lack of it. Everything had a drab, drained look, especially now as dusk mildewed the sky. Partly that was because it was all built of concrete and metal. Partly it was because any sunshine simply zapped the air pollution into perma-smog. But mostly, he’d come to realize, it was inside your head.
Frankly it wasn’t the setting he would have picked for his seventeenth birthday. Nor were this evening’s activities what he would have planned for his big day either.
But as he sat there, waiting for Renie and trying to ignore the fear and excitement knotting his gut, Luke thought there was nothing he’d rather be doing than playing Doc Jackson’s game. With every day that passed, he saw more clearly the injustice of the slavedays and the resilience of those enduring them.
‘Always look at the people, not at the mass,’ Jackson had told him. ‘A face, not the crowd. Look at the world, not at the ground. Every little detail you see is a victory.’
So as he kicked his heels on the rooftop, Luke tried doing just that. He looked out over the low-rise office buildings that surrounded him, towards the residential high-rises beyond. He picked out a pot plant silhouetted on a windowsill; a towel in bright football team colours hanging over a door. In the yellow light of a dormitory stairwell, a couple were snogging up against the wall. He let his eyes move swiftly on. A girl sat by a window, reading. That made him think of his sisters – she looked about Daisy’s age, and Abi was rarely without a book in her hand.