What was he thinking, drawing that on his drinks cabinet? Did the Guardians see it? What does it mean? First the mention of acoup d’état, then Mama telling me to flee London, and now this. I lean back against the desk and close my eyes.
It means they’re guilty.
If that’s true, then whatever the Guardians found in that secret cupboard might prove it. And if the government sees it, or it’s used in court …
My parents and Uncle Thomas will be sentenced to death.
And what about Marquis? A small moan escapes my lips. How could our parents do this to us? How could they have done everything they told us not to?Never remove yourpass, never socialise below your class, never break the rules. The thought of my demotion terrifies Dad enough for him to lick a birch rod across my arm … so why has he done something that guarantees that Ursa and I will find ourselves in a halfway house before his body turns cold?
The clock on the wall says ten o’clock. Tomorrow morning, Prime Minister Wyvernmire will arrive at her office in Westminster and examine whatever evidence her Guardians have found.
I jump at the loud squawk that comes from the corner of the room. Dad’s dracovol – a tiny subspecies of dragon perched inside a hanging cage – is staring at me. He hasn’t been out since yesterday, when Mama sent him to deliver a letter. I pick up the cage, set it on the windowsill and open the door. The dracovol flies off into the night. I pull the window closed and stare at the empty cage.
I need to get rid of the evidence against my parents, but there’s no chance I’ll get past the security at Westminster. So, unless the box of incriminating papers decides to spontaneously combust during the night, there’s no way out of this.
A light flashes on in my brain.
It’s a ridiculous idea, probably the worst I’ve ever had. But what’s the alternative? If I don’t do something, then my sister will end up in a halfway house, my career will be over before it’s begun and my family …
My family will be dead.
*
Ten minutes later, I carry a sleeping Ursa out of the house.Mina yowls mournfully from inside my sister’s schoolbag, which is packed with a change of clothes and a favourite teddy. The night air is cold and the street eerily silent. In the sky high above the streetlamps, I see the distant shape of a soaring dragon. I’m lucky that Marylebone is only a short walk away and that I won’t have to sneak across any Third Class quarters to get there. A poster stares out at me from a tram stop, the image of a respectable family smiling obliviously while a gun-clad rebel with a dragon’s tail snatches their child from behind. The young protestors Marquis and I saw must have been victims of radicalisation, but my parents can think for themselves. So how did it come to this?
Sophie’s parents live in a modest red-brick house with an apple tree growing outside. The curtains are tightly closed and shadows loom across the lawn. I walk up the stone pathway, my arms aching from the weight of my sister. I rap the brass knocker and wait.
Silence.
I glance nervously over my shoulder. Then a light comes on in the hallway. Abel opens the front door. Sophie’s father is grey-haired, his face creased with age, or sleep, or perhaps the trauma of losing his only daughter.
‘Vivien?’ he whispers into the dark. ‘Is that you?’
‘Yes,’ I squeak. ‘Abel, I’m in trouble.’
Abel opens the door wider, beckoning me inside, but I shake my head.
‘No time,’ I say, hearing the tremor in my voice. ‘My parents have been arrested. They’re being accused of civil disobedience or something, but I have an idea thatmight save them. Will you take Ursa?’
Sophie’s father blinks.
‘Abel?’
His wife appears in the doorway, wrapped in a flannel dressing gown.
‘Vivien?’
‘I need you to take Ursa,’ I say, a sob rising in my throat. ‘I need you to look after her until I get back, which will probably be tomorrow, but if it’s not I need you to keep her safe and I need to know she’ll be okay, because otherwise I might—’
My voice cracks. Horror creeps into Alice’s face as she looks from me to her husband.
‘Vivien,’ Abel says slowly, ‘if your parents have been arrested, there’s nothing you can do—’
‘I can’t do nothing,’ I reply loudly, and Ursa startles. I lower my voice. ‘My family will die.’
‘Not if they’re innocent.’
‘Sophiewas innocent,’ Alice says fiercely. ‘And God knows where she is now.’
