The Ring of Five (15 page)

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Tarnstone and Westwald. Cherbs come across in boats at night to attack," Les said. "The guards in the watchtowers try to keep them out, but they still get through. There are thousands of Cherbs."

Vandra pointed and Danny saw for the first time that there were towers on the other side as well. "Look," she said. As they followed her finger they could see a glint of light from one of the towers.

"Coming off binoculars," Les said. "They spotted us. Better get down. Don't want them recognizing Danny when we get over there."

The shadows were growing and it was almost dark by the time they got back to Wilsons. Their return trip had taken longer than the walk out due to Dixie's insistence on spinning round and round "to really confuse the path." She had succeeded, and the path had ended up crossing itself several times before they could persuade her to stop. They were late getting to Ravensdale. When they entered the abandoned village, rain was pelting down on the narrow main street, and they were soaked by the time they got to the Consiglio dei Dieci. Most of the other cadets had finished dinner, and the only food that appeared was cold stew. They wolfed it down, however, and Danny yawned a yawn that made his jaw crack.

"Sorry," he apologized, "it's been a long day."

Twenty minutes later they were standing on the balcony outside the boys' Roosts.

"Just one thing, before we go," Vandra said. "When

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we were in the anteroom to the library of the third landing, you said I was a physick. How did you know?"

"I ... I saw it on the headstone. Your parents' headstone."

"What headstone?"

"In the graveyard, where all your parents are buried ...," Danny said. They were all staring at him now.

"There is no graveyard, Danny," Les said.

"All our parents were left behind--in the Lower World," Dixie said.

"But I saw it," Danny cried. "There were flowers on the graves and everything!"

"Welcome to the world of spies," Vandra said with a grim little smile. "Somebody desperately wanted you to say yes, so they thought up a way to make you feel our pain. The graveyard was a fake."

Danny stared at them. Of course. Under his jacket he felt the outlines of the knife that had been thrown at him. That was why it had missed. He'd been meant to follow the pretend assassin and find the fake graveyard.

"The whole thing was a setup," Dixie said with a sad little grin. "It was a fake, Jake. Now our boy with the multicolored eyes won't stay with us."

"He has to," Les said, "he said it in front of the shadows. But will he want to now?"

"The reasons I said yes haven't changed," Danny said firmly, although he wasn't sure, "even if I was set up. But there's something I need to know."

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"What?" Les asked.

"If I'm supposed to get into the Ring, then no one is supposed to know that I'm not really the lost member."

"Yeah?"

"But everyone in Wilsons knows me--who's to say that one of them isn't a spy who'll go back and tell ... Longford or somebody that I'm not who I say I am?"

"Do you remember the oath you took in front of the shadows?" Les sounded serious. "The Oath of the Shadows? It binds every cadet. The shadows would have you in a second if you told something like that. Don't worry, mate. Your secret is safe."

The boys said goodnight to the girls and went into the Roosts. The first person they met was Exspectre.

"Must be the first time a Cherb has joined Wilsons," Exspectre said, blinking his big eyes.

"Push off, bush baby," Les said, shoving Exspectre aside. Smyck sat at the far end of the hut, saying nothing but keeping his eyes fixed on Danny. Some of the other boys came up to him and murmured, "Good to have you on board," and, "Congrats." They looked half ashamed as they did it.

"They're afraid of Exspectre and Smyck," Les said. He and Danny sat down by the stove. Danny could feel his eyes start to close.

"What is a physick, anyway?" he asked.

"Like Vandra?" Les said. "She's a healer.... Those teeth--they work, you know."

"What?" Danny said, sitting up in alarm. "She really is a vampire?"

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"No, no," Les said, "she doesn't take blood out of you. A physick puts stuff into you--like medicine. They drink it and use their teeth to bite it into you. They got their own healing stuff too. They got special glands. A physick's a good thing to have around. Only problem is that what's wrong with you sometimes moves to the physick--it's hard on them."

Ten minutes later Danny lay in bed. Outside, rain began to fall, and he pulled the blankets up around him. An image of Vandra's pale face appeared in his head, and he felt a great pity for her. Then suddenly the realization gripped him: he was a spy! For a moment the world was full of danger, and he felt a jolt of fear at the mission he was to be trained for. Then he heard Les's voice.

"Good night, Danny."

"Good night," he whispered back, feeling better. He wasn't on his own, and was safe for now, at least. He closed his eyes and felt sleep steal over him.

In fact, he was safer than he thought. Outside, in the shadows under the wall of Wilsons, stood McGuinness. Rain dripped from the brim of his hat. His eyes were fixed on the wooden building high above his head, on the window beneath which Danny slept. If anyone, or anything, moved in the night, McGuinness would see it.

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INKS

The next morning as they were leaving Ravensdale after breakfast, Blackpitt summoned Danny to Brunholm's office. Les raised an eyebrow.

"None of us ever been to Brunholm's office before. Didn't know he had one."

When they reached the main building, Danny watched his friends walk off toward class, and suddenly felt very alone as the corridor emptied. Above his head a raven stirred in the dark rafters.

"Door to your left," Blackpitt said gleefully, "the one with the skull design."

The door did indeed have skulls etched on it, and it opened onto a long dark staircase. There were stuffed antelope heads on the wall, and Danny felt that their glassy eyes were following him as he mounted the stairs. There

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were no windows, but a cold draft made him shiver. Up and up the staircase went, bending round on itself, until Danny thought he must be right up at roof level. But when the stairs opened onto a landing, he saw through a low barred window that he was only twenty feet above the ground. The twisting and unreliable stairways and corridors of Wilsons were starting to make him feel a little bit unreal, and he felt even more unreal when he stepped into Brunholm's office.

At first he thought the gloomy room was full of people, and that wary-looking boys gazed at him from every corner. Then he realized that all the available space in the room was covered with mirrors--plain bathroom mirrors, mirrors with gilt frames, distorting mirrors like the ones you saw in a fairground, shaving mirrors, vanity mirrors--and from all these mirrors a thousand Danny Caulfields looked back at him.

"I like to come here to be reminded what the world of spying is all about."

Danny spun around to see where Brunholm's silky voice was coming from. The small man's face was reflected back at him from many directions, so that it was impossible to tell which was the real one.

"In our world, Danny, do not believe that anyone is telling the truth. You must suspect everything you hear, question it, wonder what advantage or disadvantage might be gained by a lie."

"But the world isn't really like that," Danny said. "There are things like friendship ... family ..."

"Friendship? Family?" There was a sneer in

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Brunholm's voice. "Have your friends never betrayed you? Has your family never let you down?"

Danny hesitated. It had been one of his friends in school--Mark Dealey--who had started the Danny the Pixie nickname, had whispered it behind his back. And then his mother and father ... why did they never have time for him?

"You see?" Brunholm said triumphantly. "It is true. The only person you can trust is yourself, and sometimes ..." Brunholm must have moved, for his face loomed large and sinister from a distorting mirror in the ceiling. "... you cannot even do that."

Danny took a step backward, but Brunholm's eyes fixed on him.

"When you are out there in the field, all on your own, distrusted, hunted, perhaps, then you start to mistrust yourself. Were you wrong about this or that person? Perhaps they could be trusted after all. You seek their confidence, tell them the truth, and then"--Brunholm clapped his hands together with a noise like a pistol shot--"you are caught! The person you have put your trust in is an agent for the other side."

Brunholm's face appeared in another mirror. This time the distortion in the glass made him appear like an older relative, sympathetic and concerned.

"You are missing your family now, your home, your school friends, perhaps? And they miss you. It is a lonely life, being a spy, lonely and hard." And indeed Danny did feel a wave of homesickness wash over him.

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"Your instruction starts now," Brunholm said. "We have to build quickly toward this mission, but afterward ... afterward we will be able to work on the greatest art of all."

"What's that?" Danny asked.

"Betrayal," Brunholm whispered, from yet another mirror, his face now a picture of treachery. "The art of betrayal."

"But if you betray everybody you know," Danny said, "then you can't trust anybody."

"Precisely," Brunholm rubbed his hand together in delight, "the ideal condition for a spy. You are dismissed boy."

After lunch Danny went to Inks and Ciphers with the rest of his class.

"Inks is okay," Les said. "The teacher's a bit mental. Bartley kind of thinks in code sometimes, which is a bit tricky. They say that during the war he was spying in the Lower World. There was no way to get an important message out, so they shaved his head and tattooed the message on his skull, then let the hair grow back. He got across to Wilsons and Devoy himself shaved the hair back off to get the message. So they say, anyway."

"The hair grew back again," Vandra said, "but if the light is right you can see the blue ink on his head."

Bartley was a tall man with a long white face and thick black-framed glasses. His shock of wiry black hair stuck

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straight up. Danny found himself peering at the man's head, trying to see the secret message tattooed on his scalp.

"Good afternoon," Bartley said. "The shepherd has deserted his flock, and the wolf has lain down with the lamb." He beamed at the baffled cadets.

"Today," he went on, "we will be doing some basic inks, or as the seagull said to the fishing boat, let us both cast our nets and to the victor the spoils."

"What is he talking about?" Danny whispered to Les.

"Who knows?"

It went on in the same vein with Bartley talking about invisible inks. Danny had to admit some of it was interesting, when you left out the strange bits. There were inks that were invisible until they were warmed up. There were inks that you could only see under special lights. Then Bartley produced a jar of luminescent blue that shone like a thousand sapphires. He dipped a fountain pen into it and wrote on a sheet of paper. The ink glowed blue, then gradually disappeared. The cadets tried everything they knew to bring the writing back, but failed. In the end Bartley announced triumphantly that it only responded to a particular word.

"Prudence!" he cried, and the writing appeared and blazed like blue flame. He showed them other inks, all with unique qualities and all responding to different things. One particularly sludgy green-brown ink would only reappear after a live frog had been rubbed over the paper.

"No time for ciphers today," Bartley said, his eyes

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huge behind the bottletop glasses. "The wind blows through the wheat field and the robin flees her nest! Next week we start to learn how to make these inks, and of course we shall begin our ciphers course."

After Inks Danny let the others walk on ahead. A thought had been growing in his head. The truth had been right in front of him, if only he had thought to look for it! When the others were almost out of sight, he doubled back.

It was very still in the Gallery of Whispers. The smooth stone dome curved high above his head and was lost in the gloom. Every sound Danny made was unnaturally loud. When he swallowed, it sounded like a gunshot. What was it Les had said about unauthorized entry? A Ninth Regulation offense. He had no idea what the punishment for that would be, but he knew it would be serious. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered except that he find out the truth about himself. He moved forward, his footsteps ringing out as though an army was marching in the echoing room.

There was a raven etched into the stone in the middle of the floor. Danny stopped there. It had to be the place. He looked up. He felt an air of expectancy in the gallery, as though his question had been long awaited. Danny peered up into the dome.

"Who am I?" he asked, his voice quavering. For a moment there was no response; then a whispering sound began. His question seemed to be repeated and then