None of the three they were watching noticed. They were already surrounded by so much devastation. But Euterpe and Silyen saw what the trio did not.
They saw the wind whip through the still air, sending a plume of ash gusting upwards like a filthy geyser. Debris spiralled in the eddy and a charred and blackened tree, gutted by fire, toppled to the ground.
Another bird fell heavily: a mallard, flying from the lake. The sky above the ruins of Orpen darkened, and a tangle of cloud was spun by an unseen hand into a skein of storm. Rain lashed down. More small feathered shapes plummeted to the ground.
Euterpe heard Silyen inhale sharply.
‘You,’ he said. He sounded almost excited. ‘Your Skill. Incredible.’
Euterpe didn’t feel excited. She felt sick at heart. Her Skill terrified and disgusted her.
‘Look!’ the pair of them heard Thalia say, as she directed Winterbourne’s gaze away from the girl in his arms. The two stared towards the water meadow on the far side of the river, the one that fed the moat.
The river had created a natural firebreak and the fields there had remained fresh and flower-filled, even as the house burned. But now the grass was bending, waving, as if under an approaching wind – and where it bent, it died.
‘It’s her!’ Thalia cried, raising her voice to be heard above the drumming rain. ‘It’s not something she can control; it just happens. I’ve seen it once or twice before, when she’s been really upset. But I’ve never seen anything like this. We have to stop her.’
Puck gave a shrill howl and huddled closer to the stricken girl’s skirts. Then the breath went out of him and his legs folded. He curled up against his mistress in death, as he had in life.
From her vantage point in the garden with Silyen, Euterpe let out a choked sob. Tears coursed hotly down her cheeks.
‘Stop her!’ Thalia yelled at Winterbourne, looking half deranged herself now. Her hair was plastered across her face by the raging storm. Overhead, sheet lightning lit up the blackened sky. ‘I can’t. I’m not powerful enough. But you can.’
Euterpe watched her lover bend over her crumpled other self. The girl was shaking violently with the uncontrolled Skill that coursed through her, venting itself in havoc and destruction. But even so Winterbourne gathered her up and held her to him, tight against his chest. He placed a soft kiss upon her forehead.
The words he spoke were too quiet to be heard by the watchers in the garden. But Euterpe knew them.
Remembered them.
‘Hush,’ he told her, his voice charged with Skill. ‘I love you. Be still.’
The girl in his arms went limp. With shocking suddenness, the storm ceased. Thalia rubbed both hands over her face and pushed back her hair. She looked in disbelief at the devastation around her, and at the clear blue sky above.
In the sun-drenched garden, Euterpe’s memory cracked open. A hideous understanding crawled out.
She felt Silyen’s hands upon her shoulders. The young man – her sister’s child – turned her towards him, and she looked up into his face.
‘So now you know,’ he said. ‘And soon, it’ll be time to leave this garden. They’re both waiting for you. They’ve waited for years.’
11
Gavar
Millmoor slavetown might be going up in flames, but Gavar Jardine failed to see why that was his problem. Particularly not at eight in the morning.
How could a few incidents and arrests up north necessitate an emergency convening of the Justice Council? What was important enough to drag Gavar away from Kyneston and his daughter in the days before Christmas? It was bad enough that soon there’d be the long trip to the Second Debate at Grendelsham, without this summons to London, too.
Through the leaded windows of the overheated council chamber, Gavar saw that it was snowing. He wondered if the slavegirl Daisy would be playing outside in the Kyneston grounds with Libby. Perhaps making a snowman. They’d better both be warmly dressed.
‘Pay attention.’
His father’s whisper in his ear was like a gust of cold blown in from beyond, and it was all Gavar could do not to hunch his shoulders or turn up his collar. He shivered, and tried to focus on the speaker at the far end of the table. It would be easier if the woman’s voice were not so monotonous, her face not so unimprovably plain.
‘. . . seditious literature,’ she was saying, ‘distributed across the city, including dormitories, workplaces, even sanitary facilities. That’s toilets,’ she clarified.
Gavar snorted. Did the commoners think Equals never needed to use ‘sanitary facilities’? Though it was true that some he’d met regarded his kind as hardly human. Gavar had done nothing to disabuse them of this belief. Ignorance bred fear, as Father was fond of saying, and fear bred obedience.