I was so preoccupied with Lucella that I didn’t notice until too late that Calhoun Ashford was coming down the stairs. As I saw his white hair I stopped, but it was too late; he’d already seen me. His eyes passed over me—

  —and moved on. Calhoun reached the bottom of the stairs and strode away in the direction of his sister, brushing past me as though I wasn’t there.

  I stared after him for a second, until the raised voices behind me reminded me that Lucella was still coming after me. I climbed the stairs that Calhoun had descended and walked swiftly along the gallery. People were turning to watch the commotion below, but I averted my eyes and nobody stopped me as I walked past them and through the door at the end.

  The hallway beyond was decorated with paintings and wall hangings and felt quiet after the noise of the party. My feet creaked on the floorboards as I walked down the hall, counting the doors. When I reached the third on the left, I stopped and knocked.

  A deep voice called out from within. “Come!”

  I opened the door.

  * * *

  —

  The study within felt small compared to the room I’d come from, though it was still much bigger than my bedroom. Bookshelves ran from floor to ceiling; the solitary patch of open wall was taken up by a huge map of the United Kingdom with spots marked out by pinned notes and glass beads. Two windows at the back were covered by drawn curtains. The room was dominated by a wooden desk the size of a dining table, covered in books and papers, with one chair behind it and one in front.

  Sitting behind the desk was a man. He looked old—maybe midsixties—but his back was ruler straight and his movements measured and steady. He had receding hair and a neatly trimmed beard and was writing with a fountain pen. The scratch of the nib on paper was the only sound in the room.

  I looked at the man curiously. Seconds dragged by. “Are you Charles Ashford?” I asked when he didn’t speak.

  The man kept writing.

  “Um,” I said. “Have I got the right room . . . ?”

  “Sit,” the man said without raising his eyes. He had an upper-class accent and spoke with a ring of command.

  I hesitated, then walked forward and sat.

  The man wrote for another thirty seconds while I watched. Then he set down his pen, stamped the paper with something that left a red imprint, and slipped the document into a leather folder. Only then did he look up at me with a pair of piercing blue eyes. “Well,” Charles Ashford told me. “It seems the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

  I frowned. “Sorry?”

  “Do you know why you’re here?”

  “My name’s—”

  “I know who you are, boy.”

  I paused.

  “When you walked through that drawing room, you passed representatives of four major drucraft corporations and seven different Houses,” Charles said. “I have meetings with them scheduled all the way through to midnight. However, right now, none of those meetings are taking place. Do you know why?”

  I shook my head.

  “Because I have to deal with you instead,” Charles told me. “To clean up this mess that you, Lucella, and Tobias have collectively created.”

  “I didn’t create anything,” I said, nettled.

  Charles raised his eyebrows. “And yet here you are.”

  I frowned.

  Charles regarded me for a few moments, then nodded to himself. “What did Tobias tell you to say?”

  “Lucella came to my house last night with—”

  Charles cut me off with an irritated motion. “I didn’t ask you what happened. I asked you what Tobias told you to say.”

  “The truth.”

  Charles snorted. “You’re a fool if you think Tobias cares about that.”

  I was starting to get a bit pissed off about how Charles was acting as though the whole thing was my fault. I wanted to snap at him that Lucella had been the one to attack me . . . except I already knew what he’d say. And yet here you are. I was the one coming to him, not the other way around.

  Well, if I wasn’t going to get sympathy, maybe I could at least get some answers. “Tobias said that the reason Lucella came after me is because I’m a candidate to become the next head of House Ashford,” I told Charles. “Am I?”

  Charles looked back at me without expression. “What do you think?”

  I thought about what I’d seen since stepping into this mansion. The wealth, the status, the conversation with Johanna. I looked across the desk at Charles. Would someone like him want to hand all that over to someone like me?

  “No,” I told Charles. I knew it was true as soon as I’d said it.

  “Of course not,” Charles told me. “You fail just about every possible criterion, especially the ones concerning education and social standing. I’m surprised you even made it into this room.”

  It was what I’d been expecting, but the way Charles said it still rubbed me the wrong way. “Okay, fine, since you brought it up,” I said. “Before she tried to kidnap me, Lucella told me that there are schools that teach drucraft. Is that true?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is there any way I could go to one?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because drucraft schools charge somewhere in the region of forty thousand pounds per year.”

  I stared.

  “I assume that’s a little outside of your price range,” Charles said.

  Looking at Charles’s expression, I had a sudden flash of intuition. He doesn’t like me. This wasn’t about Lucella or his meetings. Charles had disliked me before I’d even knocked on his door. But why?

  “Schools are free,” I told Charles, trying to hide what I was thinking.

  “Schools run by the British government are free,” Charles told me. “Do you know why? No? Well, I presume you attended a state primary and secondary school. What were you taught there?”

  “Maths, English—”

  “Not the subjects. How were you taught to behave? What were the rules you were trained to follow?”

  I thought for a second. I was coming to dislike Charles almost as much as he seemed to dislike me, but I had to admit, he was good at making you think. “I suppose . . . do as you’re told. Show up on time, do the work, don’t cause trouble.”

  “And why do you suppose you were taught those things?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted.

  “Over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this country moved from an agricultural economy based upon farming, to an industrial economy based upon factories,” Charles told me. “Factory workers must possess very specific skills. They must be educated to a basic minimum standard of literacy and numeracy, and they must be reliable, nondisruptive, and good at following instructions. Most importantly, they must do exactly what they are told, when they are told to do it. Industrialising countries lacked such workers, therefore institutions were set up to produce them. Replaceable parts for a machine.”

  I looked at Charles.

  “Of course, you’re too old to be going to school,” Charles said. “So I imagine Lucella would have talked about universities instead. Where did she mention? Canterbury?”

  “Yes,” I said. I was getting a bad feeling about this.

  “Canterbury University is the premier drucraft university in Western Europe,” Charles said. “Oxford, Cambridge, and Imperial all have departments for drucraft theory, but not for practical courses. The students who go to Canterbury are the future ruling class of the United Kingdom. Children of Greater and Lesser Houses, corporate and political heirs. Canterbury is also very specifically not subject to the fee cap for domestic students, which means that its fees are set by market forces.” Charles looked at me with raised eyebrows. “How much do you think it costs to study at a place like that?”

  I was silent. I could see where this was going.

  “Go on, guess.”

  “More than I can afford,” I said flatly.

  “Educational institutions exist to serve the needs of those who operate and fund them,” Charles said. “In the case of this country’s elite universities, the way they serve those needs is by functioning as a finishing school for the ruling class. A lower-tier university might see some profit in taking on a student such as you. A drucraft university would not.”

  The last traces of the hope that Lucella had planted last night flickered and died. I suppose, deep down, I’d always known it was a mirage. Some people get golden tickets and some don’t. People like me are the kind that don’t.

  “What about my mother?” I asked Charles.

  “What about her?”

  “She works for you, doesn’t she?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is she here?”

  “No.”

  “Then where—”

  “In Leipzig.” Charles glanced at his watch. “Assuming her flight was on schedule, she should have arrived about half an hour ago. She’ll be spending the night before moving on tomorrow afternoon.”

  I stared at Charles.

  “As you said, your mother works for House Ashford,” Charles said. “As a result, she has an extremely busy schedule that leaves no time for distractions.”

  “What distractions?”

  “Distractions,” Charles said, “such as a boy who, apparently, does not know how to take a hint. Your mother has been free to contact you for a very long time. She has chosen not to. I suggest you respect that decision.”

  The words hit me like a slap to the face. The thoughts went out of my head, and all I could do was stare at Charles, who looked back at me with level eyes. I felt a pain flare up, like an old wound.

  “Now,” Charles said when I didn’t speak. “There is the matter of Lucella’s actions. My niece, much as I may regret it, is nevertheless a member of House Ashford, and until and unless she gives me reason to disown her entirely, I bear partial responsibility for her actions. What is your salary?”

  “What?”

  “How much do you earn in a year?”

  “I get paid week to week.”

  “Then multiply your average weekly salary by the number of weeks in a year. I assume you’re capable of multiplication.”

  I really didn’t like this guy. “Twenty thousand, eight hundred and sixty-five pounds.”

  “Which, after tax, should come to a little under eighteen thousand,” Charles said. He opened a desk drawer, took out a chequebook, picked up his pen, and began to write. “In the unlikely event that you are financially prudent and do not spend the entirety of your spare income on drink, drugs, and flashy clothes, as most people your age do, you might save twenty percent of that.” The pen finished scratching; Charles tore off the cheque and held it out. “This is a cheque for how much you could expect to earn and retain in a year. I offer it to you in recompense for my niece’s actions, with the understanding that the matter will be closed.”

  I stared at the cheque. It was an instruction to pay Stephen Oakwood the sum of three thousand, six hundred pounds. “Or I could just go to the police,” I told him.

  “You are free to do so,” Charles said. “In which case, you would eventually end up in a court of law. With the quality of lawyers that you could hire versus the kind that my niece could hire.”

  I looked at the cheque, then back at Charles. “What’s stopping me from taking this, then going to the police?”

  Cold blue eyes looked into mine. “I would not recommend it.”

  I didn’t move for ten seconds. Then I took the cheque and put it into my pocket.

  Charles placed the cap back onto his pen and set it down. “Good.”

  The tone in Charles’s voice sent a flash of resentment through me. It was the dismissiveness, as if everything was settled. “So now what?” I asked him.

  “Now you can go,” Charles told me.

  “Can you . . .” I hesitated. “Can you give my mother a message?”

  “I could, but I won’t,” Charles said. “You are, at present, a political inconvenience, for reasons you have neither the education nor the experience to understand, and which I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain. Extending your contact with my family would complicate matters needlessly. This may change in the future, but until it does, you will not return to this house without explicit invitation. Is that clear?”

  “Yes,” I said. I’d had enough of this guy. “Very clear.” I got to my feet.

  Charles picked up his pen and took out a new sheet of paper. “I expect you’ll find my grandson loitering out in the hall,” he told me without looking up. He’d already turned his attention to the document he was reading. “Tell him he’s got fifteen minutes to find Lucella and bring her here. And let him know that once I’m done with her, he’s next.”

  I walked out.

  * * *

  —

  The first-floor corridor in the Ashford mansion was empty and quiet. As I stood listening, though, I could just make out the sound of a familiar voice from down the hall. Tobias.

  I paused, deciding what to do. I didn’t especially want to talk to Tobias, and I wasn’t feeling very inclined to run Charles’s errands for him. On the other hand, I wasn’t actually sure that I could find my way out of this place on my own without running into Lucella or something worse.

  With a grimace, I started down the corridor. Tobias’s voice was coming from a room towards the end with a half-open door. As I drew closer, though, I heard another voice answering him. It didn’t sound like a casual conversation.

  I hesitated for a moment. Then I crept forward, my feet making little sound on the carpet, and listened.

  “. . . see what the problem is,” Tobias was saying.

  “If you want to keep pretending to be some kind of master manipulator,” a man said in a measured voice, “you’re going to have to become much better at covering your tracks.” His accent was a little like Johanna’s, each word clear and precise.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You walked into Charles’s study to demand an audience,” the man said. “Did you really think he wasn’t going to investigate? If he doesn’t already know about your involvement, he will soon.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Tobias argued. “Lucella used our armsmen last night—she can’t cover that up. And Calhoun’ll say he doesn’t know anything, but everyone knows he and Lucella . . .”

  “You stupid little boy,” the man said dispassionately. “Calhoun is being groomed to be the next head of House, and he’s excelled at every assignment he’s been given. That is what matters, not a few rumours. As for Lucella, she may be a black sheep, but as long as she doesn’t do anything to seriously damage House Ashford, the most she’ll get is a slap on the wrist. The same is not true for you. The only protection you have is your status as Charles’s grandson, and your . . . shortcomings . . . place limits upon that.”

  “My ‘shortcomings,’ ” Tobias said bitterly. “And whose fault are they?”

  “You need to be patient. Do as I taught you. Watch, and wait.”

  “Wait for how long? Once Calhoun gets engaged to the Meusel girl, it’ll be too late.”

  “Engagements can be broken.”

  Tobias was silent for a second. “Who are Lucella’s friends?”

  The man’s voice sharpened. “Do not ask that question.”

  “It was three years ago, right?” Tobias asked. “That was when everyone started treating her differently. I’m just saying, whoever these people are, if they could do all that for her, then—”

  “Enough!”

  Tobias fell silent.

  “You do not understand what you are talking about.” The man’s voice was harsh. “If you have any ambitions to rise in this family, you will stay far, far away from Lucella and her ‘friends.’ And you will most especially not mention it to Charles. Understood?”

  “. . . Yes.”

  “Go.”

  Footsteps sounded from the room.

  I moved fast, ducking down a side passage and hiding behind a cabinet. I heard Tobias’s footsteps move out into the corridor, pause, start again, pause again. I waited thirty seconds, then stepped out.

  Tobias turned to face me. “What are you doing there?” he asked sharply.

  “Looking for a way out,” I told him. “What are you doing there?”

  Tobias gave me a narrow look. I glanced casually around. There was no sign of the man Tobias had been talking to.

  “Oh,” I added, as if I’d just remembered. “Charles wants you to fetch Lucella.”

  I saw Tobias perk up slightly. He looked at me as if waiting for more, but I didn’t speak. The two of us stood in the corridor, watching one another, the sounds of the party echoing in the distance.

  “So something I’ve been wondering,” I said. “How did Lucella get my address?”

  “How should I know?”

  “She said someone gave it to her.”

  “Maybe it was Calhoun.”

  “That’s funny,” I said. “Because I passed right by Calhoun as he was coming down those stairs, and he didn’t recognise me. Looked right at me too.”

  Tobias shrugged.

  “So he cares enough to send Lucella to get rid of me,” I said, “but not enough to find out what I look like?”

  “I’m kind of busy,” Tobias told me. “You want to get out of here, head that way down the main staircase.”

  I looked at Tobias. Tobias didn’t meet my eyes.

  “You were the one who told Lucella about me,” I said. “That was why you were so quick to show up this morning.”

  Tobias looked away. “You got some way of proving that?” he said to the wall.

  I kept staring at Tobias. “Fine,” I said at last when it was clear he wasn’t going to say anything else. “Oh, by the way? Charles told me that once he’s done with Lucella, you’re next.”