It was Rix. Gavar had never heard anyone sound less interested in the answer to a question they’d asked. Anything to alleviate the boredom, he supposed.
‘We have one in custody,’ reported the Millmoor Overseer, slipping a photograph out of a fold of brown manila and sliding it to the centre of the table. ‘He was at the scene of a sabotage of the East Sector Labour Allocation Bureau. It’s believed a presently unidentified female was conducting the intrusion. However, when she was surprised by a Security patrol he made a show of force that enabled her to escape. He was subsequently subdued and apprehended.’
Couldn’t this peon speak plain English? The man had fought the guards to buy the woman time to get away. Under other circumstances it might have been an honourable thing to do.
Gavar glanced at the photograph. It showed a muscular black man, one of his eyes swollen shut. His skin was too dark to make out any injuries, but his T-shirt was heavily bloodstained. He looked about the same age as Zelston, though this man’s skull was shaved and he had none of the dandified Chancellor’s fine clothes and fancy ornaments.
The accident of birth, thought Gavar, recalling another of his father’s favourite phrases. The accident of birth had given this criminal slave and the most powerful man in the land the same skin on the outside, but very different abilities within. And from that difference, their fates had diverged.
Libby had Gavar’s own skin on the outside. His hair. His eyes.
He remembered the boat drifting across the lake towards them that day. Could she really have the same abilities within?
‘You said “Security patrol”?’
Bouda’s officious voice broke into Gavar’s thoughts. He just knew the sound of it was going to grate on him for the rest of his natural life.
The Overseer nodded, her face guarded. Bouda had clearly spotted something the woman had hoped would go unremarked.
‘I presume you mean a routine patrol?’ the blonde girl said. ‘In other words, after several weeks of multiple incidents, including the defacement of your own headquarters, you have managed to catch one perpetrator – by accident?’
The commoner’s expression turned from guarded to dismayed. Gavar almost laughed.
‘You do understand’ – Father sat forward in his chair, the thickly stuffed red leather seat creaking faintly – ‘that the authority of the Overseer’s Office in Millmoor is not your own. It is our authority. That of your Equals and the government of this country. And therefore these attacks, which you have failed to prevent, are attacks directly upon us.’
Gavar had to hand it to his father: the man knew how to make an impression. The room suddenly felt several degrees colder. He wouldn’t have been surprised to see the condensation turning to ice on the inside of the windows.
‘Naturally,’ Whittam went on, ‘the continuance of these outrages cannot be tolerated. Now that you have one of the perpetrators in your custody, I trust that you have taken every step to discover his associates?’
‘Well . . .’
Even Gavar could have told the woman that wasn’t the correct answer.
Whittam leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers and staring over the top of them. It was a posture that, on one humiliating occasion in his childhood, had caused Gavar to wet himself. He’d never forgotten the look in Father’s eyes as the hot liquid trickled miserably down his leg. It hadn’t been anger, merely contempt.
Contempt for a child. No one would ever look at Libby like that. Gavar would kill them first.
Not being a five-year-old boy, the dumpy woman didn’t piss her pants, but she did go pale. Then she lifted her chin ever so slightly and met Father’s gaze. Maybe she had some backbone after all. The slavetowns were hellholes, from what Gavar had heard. You probably had to be tough to rise to the top of one.
‘With every respect, my lord, that is precisely why I am here. The perpetrator has been questioned thoroughly, using all means at our disposal, but has so far failed to give satisfactory answers. I’ve come here today to seek the council’s approval and assistance to implement special measures within our secure facility.’
There was a noise from Gavar’s left that could have been Lytchett snuffling in his sleep or a snort of derision from Rix. What were ‘special measures’? Gavar had no idea. But he remembered Father’s injunction: ‘Never show ignorance.’ He wasn’t about to show himself up by asking. Next to Zelston, Bouda was nodding sagely. It was likely she knew, but then she could have been bluffing. You could never tell with the bitch-queen.
‘Special measures are not to be used lightly,’ came a crisp voice from opposite Zelston.