The E-Rank Husband

Chapter Three: The Proxy

In Highmoor, a rich man never went to prison. He bought someone to go for him.

Wyatt stood in the doorway of the flat and read the contract twice, because the first time the words wouldn't stay still. Under the rank law, any A-rank convicted of a crime could buy an E-rank to serve his sentence. The law was old, it was perfectly legal, and nobody in the upper city had ever seen a reason to change it.

The convicted party was Peregrine Varley. Last month he had driven drunk along the river road and killed a cyclist, a man whose name the papers printed once and then forgot. Peregrine's card was still suspended, but his father's wasn't, and the contract carried Hallam Varley's seal at the bottom.

The proxy was Elsie Lowry, sixteen years old.

Her papers had been sold that morning by Wyatt's landlord. In the Lowside, landlords held their tenants' rank papers as security against the rent, and the law let them sell those papers to anyone who asked. The Varleys had asked. The price was written beside the seal, and Wyatt knew the number well because he paid it every quarter. Three months' rent. That was what his sister was worth to House Varley.

Sentencing at noon, Rank Court, Courtroom Four. Eight years.

The clock above Elsie's bed said twenty past eleven. He ran.

The Rank Court stood at the top of the hill where the upper city began, all white stone and bronze doors. The guard saw the E on Wyatt's card and waved him toward the back benches, where the Lowside sat when it came to watch its own being sentenced. He pushed into Courtroom Four just as the clerk called the hearing to order.

The gallery was full. The front rows belonged to the upper city, and in the middle of them, stretched out with one arm along the back of the bench, sat Peregrine. Beside him sat a lean, silver-haired man in a dark grey suit, perfectly still, watching the dock the way a buyer watches an auction. Hallam Varley, head of the House, the man who had stood in the Council chamber before dawn and demanded that Zero be unmasked.

Peregrine turned at the sound of the door. When he saw who it was, he laughed out loud, loud enough that the clerk looked up and the friends in the row behind him started laughing too.

"Look," Peregrine said. "The pet came to watch."

Wyatt didn't look at him. He was looking at the dock.

Elsie stood inside it in a grey prison smock two sizes too big, her hair scraped back, her hands gripping the rail. Yesterday she'd been doing chemistry homework at the table in the flat. Now she was searching the gallery with wide, wet eyes, and when she found him her chin wobbled and she pressed her lips together until they went white. She was trying not to cry in front of them, and somehow that was worse than if she had.

Wyatt sat down on the back bench and took the old phone out of his pocket.

He knew exactly what this would cost. Last night, Zero had spoken for the servant. If it spoke today for the servant's sister, in front of Hallam Varley, the Varleys wouldn't need to hunt for Zero anymore. They would only need to look at him. Winifred had spent years making sure nobody could ever draw that line, and he was about to draw it himself in front of a full courtroom. Then he looked at Elsie again, and the decision was already made.

The number saved under a single zero reached one person in the city, Odessa Rhodes, who had run Zero's sealed desk at the Rank Office for twenty years. Every order that left her desk went out in a black envelope, and no court in Highmoor could refuse one. Wyatt typed the order, checked every word and pressed send.

At the front of the room, Judge Okonjo was reading the charges in a dry, tired voice. Causing death while intoxicated. One count. Proxy accepted under the rank law. The prosecutor stood and said something about the court's time. Hallam Varley crossed one leg over the other. Elsie had started to shake.

"The proxy will face the bench," the judge said.

Ten minutes after Wyatt pressed send, the side door opened and a court officer crossed the floor with a black envelope in his hand. The whispering in the gallery died. He laid it in front of Judge Okonjo and stepped back as if it might burn him.

The judge broke the seal and read it, then read it again. She set it down very carefully and took off her glasses.

"By order of Rank Zero," she said, "the proxy contract for Elsie Lowry is void. The proxy is released." She lifted her eyes to the front row of the gallery. "Peregrine Varley, come down to the dock. You will answer for the death of that cyclist yourself."

For a moment nobody moved. Then Peregrine laughed again, but it came out thin and wrong, and when two officers came through the gallery gate he looked at his father as if Hallam might simply send them away. Hallam didn't say a word. The officers walked Peregrine down the steps and snapped the cuffs on his wrists in the same courtroom where he had come to watch a sixteen-year-old take his punishment.

The gallery that had laughed with him went silent. Nobody filmed. Nobody even shifted on the benches.

The bailiff opened the dock, and Elsie came out of it at a run, smock flapping, and hit Wyatt so hard he rocked back against the bench. He wrapped both arms around her and held on. She was crying properly now, into his shoulder, and he kept one hand on the back of her head until her breathing slowed.

"I thought you weren't coming," she whispered.

"I'm always coming."

They walked out together into the noon light. Halfway down the courthouse steps a shadow fell across them, and Wyatt looked up to find Hallam Varley beside him. Up close, his eyes were pale and patient, and they never left Wyatt's face.

"Zero hasn't spoken in twenty years," Hallam said. "Now it has spoken twice in two days, both times for you." He let the words settle. "Either Zero has taken an interest in you, servant, or you've taken an interest in Zero."