“Would you die with me?” Annette yelled back. “Are you that fucking worthy?”

“No.”

Annette yelled again. Stephanie couldn’t hear her, the air had gone. Choma, Tinkerbell, come and get us. Quickly please.

Annette was clawing at her throat, gulping wildly as her skin turned dark red. Her desperate motions pushed her away from the ground. Stephanie kicked off after her and grabbed a thrashing ankle. Together they tumbled away from the top of the mound. The universal white light had turned the mud fields a glaring silver; crinkled cliff tops ignited into magnesium splendour. Ketton island melted away into the glaring void.

Stephanie and Annette soared ever onwards, drowning in light.

“Are they really worth it?” someone asked.

“Are we?”

Cold aquamarine light clamped around them.

Luca didn’t have to guide the horse; it simply followed the route he’d taken so many times before, plodding along without hesitation. A great circle round the middle of Cricklade estate: through the upper ford in Wryde stream, around the east side of Berrybut spinney, over Withcote ridge, taking the narrow humpback bridge below Saxby farm, the fire track through Coston wood. It gave him a good overview of his land’s progress. On the surface it was as good as any previous year; the crops were later by a few weeks, but there was no harm in that. Everyone had pulled together and made up for the lost weeks following the possession.

As they bloody well ought to, by damn. I sweated blood getting Cricklade back on its feet.

And now there was enough food for everybody, the coming harvest would enable them to see the winter months out without undue hardship. Stoke County had emerged from the transition exceptionally well. There certainly wouldn’t be any more marauders, not since the battle of Colsterworth station. Good news, considering the reports and rumours trickling out of Boston these days. The island’s capital hadn’t been so fast to embrace the old ways. Food there was becoming scarce; the farms immediately round the outskirts it were being abandoned as citizens roamed across the countryside in search of supplies.

The idiots weren’t capitalising on their existing industrial infrastructure by producing goods to trade with the farming communities for food. There was so much the city could provide, basic stuff like cloth and tools. That needed to happen again, and soon. But the indications he’d got from Lionel and the other traders weren’t good. Some factories were up and running, but there was no real social order in the city.

It’s actually worse than when the Democratic Land Union was out on the streets, agitating for their claptrap reforms.

Luca shook his head irritably. There were a lot of his thoughts roaming free these days. Some of them obvious, the ones he relied on to keep Cricklade going; others were more subtle, the comparisons, the regrets, odd mannerisms creeping back, so comfortable he could never drive them out again. Worst was that eternal junkie ache to see Louise and Genevieve again, just to know they were all right.

Are you such a monster, an anti-human, you would deny a father that? A single glimpse of my beloved girls.

Luca put his head back and yelled: “You never loved them!” The piebald horse came to a startled halt as his voice carried across the verdant land. Anger was his last refuge of self, the one defence which Grant could never penetrate. “You treated them like cattle. They weren’t even people to you, they were commodities, part of your medieval family empire, assets ready to marry off in exchange for money and power. You bastard. You don’t deserve them.” He shivered, crumpling down into the saddle. “Then why do I care?” he heard himself ask. “My children are the most important part of me; they carry on everything I am. And you tried to rape them. A pair of little children. Love? Do you think you know anything about it? A degenerate parasite like you.”

“Leave me alone,” Luca screamed out.

Shouldn’t it be me asking you that?

Luca gritted his teeth, thinking about the gas Spanton used, the way Dexter had tried to make them worship the Light Bringer. Building up a fortress of anger, so his thoughts could be his again.

He tugged on the reins, wheeling the horse round so he faced Cricklade. There was little practical point to this inspection tour. He knew the condition the estate was in.

Materially they were fine. Mentally . . . the veil of contentment furled around Norfolk was souring. He recognized the particular strain of forlorn resentment accumulating over the mind’s horizon. Cricklade had known it first. All across Norfolk, people were discovering what lay beneath their external perfection. The slow-maturing plague of vanity had begun to reap its victims. Hope was withering from their lives. This winter would be more than the physical cold.

Luca crossed the boundary of giant cedars and urged the horse up over the greensward towards the manor house. Just seeing its timeless grey stone façade, inset with white-painted windows, brought a peaceful reassurance to his aching thoughts. Its history belonged to him, and so assured his future.

The girls will carry on here, will keep our home and family alive.

He bowed his head, embittered by his deteriorating will. Anger was hard to maintain over hours, let alone days. Weary, weepy dismay was no defence, and those emotions were his constant companion these days.

There was the usual scattering of activity around the manor. A circular brush ejecting a puff of soot as it rose out from the central chimney stack. Stable boys leading the horses down to graze in the east meadow. Women hanging sheets out to dry on the clothes lines. Ned Coldham—Luca couldn’t remember the name of the handyman’s possessor—painting the windows on the west wing, making sure the wood was protected from the coming frosts. The sound of sawing drifting out through the chapel’s empty windows. Two men (claiming to be monks, though neither Luca nor Grant had ever heard of their order) were slowly repairing the damage Dexter had wrought inside.

There were more people bustling about in the walled kitchen garden at the side of the manor. Cook had brought a team of her kitchen helpers out to cut the shoots of asparagus ready for freezing. It was the fifth batch they’d collected from the geneered plant this year.

Johan was sitting beside the stone arched gateway, a blanket over his knees as he soaked up the warmth of the omnidirectional sunlight. Véronique was on a chair beside him, with baby Jeanette sleeping in a cradle, a parasol protecting her from the light.

Luca dismounted and went over to see his erstwhile deputy. “How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Not so bad, thank you, sir.” Johan smiled weakly, and nodded.

“You look a lot better.” He was putting on weight again, though the loose skin around his face remained pallid.

“Soon as they gets the glass finished, I’m going to start getting some seeds set,” Johan said. “I always like a bit o’ fresh lettuce and cucumber in me sarnies during the winter. Wouldn’t mind trying to grow some avocado as well, though it’ll be next year before they fruit.”

“Jolly good, man. And how’s this little one, then?” Luca peered into the crib. He’d forgotten just how small newborn babies were.

“She’s a dream,” Véronique sighed happily. “I wish she’d sleep like this at night. Every two hours she wants feeding. You can set your clock by her. It’s really tiring.”

“Sweet little mite,” Johan said. “Reckon she’s gonna be a proper looker when she grows up.”

Véronique beamed with easy pride.

“I’m sure she will,” Luca said. It pained him to see the way the old man was looking at the baby; there was too much desperation there. Butterworth wanted confirmation that life carried on as normal here in this realm. It was an attitude that was growing among a lot of Cricklade’s residents, he’d noticed lately. The kids they were looking after had been receiving more sympathetic attention. His own resolve to stay at the estate and ignore the urge to find the girls was becoming harder to maintain. It was a weakness he could date back to the day Johan had collapsed, and then accelerating after the battle of Colsterworth station. Every step he took on the sandy gravel path around the manor seemed to press blister-sized lumps deep into the flesh of his soles, reminding him of how precarious his life had become.