The E-Rank Husband

The Whitcombes' son-in-law was E-rank, the lowest rank in Highmoor.

He was also the one who handed out the ranks.

Nobody at Verity Whitcombe's birthday party knew the second part. They all knew the first, and they knew it the way they knew which fork to use. In Highmoor every citizen carried a rank card from A to E, and that card decided which school would teach you, which hospital would treat you and which streets you could walk without being stopped. Seven great Houses ran the city from the top of that ladder. Wyatt Lowry had come in from the very bottom, an E-rank servant married into House Whitcombe because its matriarch, Winifred Whitcombe, had arranged it, and nobody had dared to say no to her. They had found other ways to say it since. They called him the pet.

He was standing where the family liked him best, at the far edge of the terrace near the kitchen door, when Peregrine Varley cornered his wife.

Verity had her back against the stone balustrade with the city lights behind her. Peregrine had one hand on the rail beside her hip, and he was smiling. The heir of House Varley always smiled when he wanted something, and his family was so much richer than the Whitcombes that he usually got it.

"You're wasted on a servant," he was saying. "Everyone here knows it. You know it too."

"Move your hand, Peregrine."

"Or what? You'll whistle for your pet?"

Wyatt crossed the terrace without hurrying and stepped between them, close enough that Peregrine had to take his hand off the rail or put it on Wyatt's chest.

"My wife asked you to move," Wyatt said.

The terrace went quiet the way rich people went quiet, which meant everyone kept talking but nobody listened to anything else. Peregrine laughed, then lifted the lanyard from around a passing waiter's neck. It held a grey plastic tag with a large white E printed on the front. He looped it over Wyatt's head and straightened it on his chest like a man adjusting a dog's collar.

"There," Peregrine said. "Now you look like what you are. Go and serve my guests their drinks, waiter. Start with mine."

Verity pushed past Wyatt's shoulder. "Take that off him. He's my husband, not your waiter."

"Verity." Her father's voice cut across the terrace. Humphrey Whitcombe came through the crowd with his face already red. He looked straight at Wyatt, and then he slapped him hard across the face.

The sound carried, and somewhere behind them somebody laughed.

"You'll do as Mr. Varley says," Humphrey said quietly. "This family needs House Varley, and I won't have a servant embarrass us in front of them. Do you understand me?"

Wyatt's cheek burned. He looked past Humphrey at Verity, who had gone white, and he understood perfectly. If he refused, the slap would be the least of it. Humphrey would wait until the guests had gone home and take it out on Verity, the way he always did when Wyatt gave him a reason.

"I understand," Wyatt said.

He took a tray from the bar and carried drinks from guest to guest with the E-rank tag swinging against his shirt, keeping his eyes low while people raised their phones. By the time he reached Peregrine, there were forty of them recording, small bright screens all over the terrace pointed at the Whitcombes' E-rank pet.

Peregrine took a glass, looked at it, and tipped it slowly over Wyatt's head.

Red wine ran into his eyes and down his collar, soaking the lanyard and dripping from his chin onto the tray. The terrace erupted. Someone shouted "Good boy!" and the laughter rolled on, and through it Wyatt could hear Verity saying his name in a voice that was trying very hard not to break.

"Clean yourself up," Peregrine said. "You're dripping on the floor."

Wyatt set the tray down and walked away. He went through the kitchen, past the staring cooks, and out into the kitchen garden, where the party faded to a murmur. Then he took an old phone from his inside pocket, a scratched black handset that hadn't been sold in Highmoor for a decade, and switched it on. There was one number saved in it, listed under no name, only a single zero.

He typed one line, read it twice and pressed send.

Twenty minutes later, Peregrine decided the party was beneath him. He made a show of leaving, kissing Verity's hand at the front steps while her father beamed, and half the guests followed him onto the drive with their phones still raised. They wanted to film the heir of House Varley driving off after putting a servant in his place.

The valet scanned Peregrine's card and frowned. He scanned it again, then stepped back from his podium as if it had bitten him.

"Sir," he said. "I can't release your vehicle."

"Don't be ridiculous." Peregrine snatched the card back and turned it over. Across his A-rank card, where his name should have been, plain black letters read: SUSPENDED BY ORDER OF RANK ZERO.

Nobody spoke. The phones that had been filming a joke all night were now filming something else entirely.

Everyone in Highmoor had heard of Rank Zero. It was the hidden seat above all Seven Houses, a veto that could raise or strip any rank in the city with a single sealed order, and nobody had seen it used in twenty years. Now it had spoken, less than half an hour after the richest heir in Highmoor poured wine over a servant.

Humphrey's mouth opened and closed. Peregrine's face had lost all its color. Nobody looked at Wyatt, who had come quietly around the side of the house with his hair still wet.

Then something heavy crashed to the floor upstairs, in the east wing where Winifred had gone to rest before the cake.

Wyatt was moving before anyone else understood. He took the back stairs two at a time and reached her room first. She was half out of bed with one hand clawing at the sheets, the lamp smashed on the rug, her lips a terrible bluish grey. A china teacup sat on the bedside table beside her reading glasses, still faintly steaming.

He caught her before she fell. Her fingers closed around his wrist with a strength that shocked him.

"Someone in this house knows what I gave you," she whispered, and then her eyes closed.

The room filled with people. Humphrey, Verity, cousins, staff, and finally Dr. Ashe, the family physician, who checked her pulse and pupils with quick, practiced hands before sitting back.

"It's a stroke," he said. "A bad one. We need to move her now."

Wyatt looked at the bedside table. The reading glasses were still beside the broken lamp. The teacup he had seen a minute ago was gone.

He stood very still while the family wept and argued around him. For five years he had carried the highest rank in Highmoor in silence, because the

woman on that bed had asked him to.

Now someone had poisoned her for it.