The Ring of Five (3 page)

23

dark-skinned boy with a thin face. The boy crouched beside him, peering out the window where the attackers had disappeared. His eyes were the same strange blue as those of the dancers in the ballroom. He was about the same age as Danny, but there was one difference. As the boy looked down at him there was a fluttering sound, and in the moonlight, Danny distinctly saw the tips of wings flicker briefly over his shoulders.

"Sorry about that," the boy said, reaching behind him in the darkness, offering a hand to help Danny up. "There was no telling what them Cherbs was up to. Who knows what would have happened if they'd seen you through the window."

"Who are you?" Danny asked.

"Les Knutt, at your service," the boy said, giving a mocking half-bow.

"Danny. Danny Caulfield," Danny said. "What ..." He opened his mouth to ask another question, but realized he didn't know which of the questions crowding his head he wanted to ask. Who were the people in the ballroom? Why did they have wings? Who were the Cherbs? And why was there a low, angry worried hubbub of voices from the ballroom? By the time he closed his mouth again, Les had his eye pressed to the crack in the door.

"Looks like they got somebody," he murmured. Danny looked too. Someone in the hall had lit candles. One of the tall figures was lying motionless on the floor, and others were tending to him. Les kept his eyes to the door and Danny had a chance to study him in the moonlight. The boy was painfully thin, and his ragged clothes

24

seemed to belong to another century. His collar was velvet and there were gold buttons on his jacket. The dirt was ingrained on his small quick hands. Then there were those wings. Almost without thinking, Danny reached out to touch them. The feathers were white, with golden tips that shimmered as they moved. The minute Danny's hand touched them, Les's wings opened wide with a speed that made Danny jump back in alarm.

"Don't touch the wings," Les said, turning to Danny and refolding them.

"S-sorry," Danny stammered.

"That's all right," Les said. "You weren't to know."

"Please," Danny said, "who are you? I mean, all of you? And where am I?"

"Where are you?" Les said, looking baffled. "You're in Wilsons, of course."

"What is Wilsons?"

"You really don't know?" Danny couldn't see the boy's face clearly, but his tone sounded half amused, half pitying.

"Wilsons is ...," Les began. But just then, with a shudder and a whir, feebly at first, then growing in strength, the lights came on again. Les stopped abruptly and stared at Danny. His expression changed from amused to alarmed and hostile.

"What is it?" Danny asked, but Les was backing away from him, the light glinting off the knife that had suddenly appeared in his hand.

"Don't try anything," Les said slowly. "The tip of the knife is dipped. You wouldn't last a minute."

25

"What did I do?" Danny asked, bewildered.

"Your eyes," Les said.

"What about my eyes?" Danny said.

"The hair ... everything ...," Les said, almost to himself. "One of them, right here ..."

"One of who?" Danny cried. "What's going on?"

"You don't fool me, Cherb," Les said, his eyes hard and wary. Danny took a step toward him, but the knife came up, fast as lightning, the tip of it to Danny's throat. The boy's eyes searched Danny's face.

"I never seen one close up before. Your lot killed my mum and dad." Danny could almost feel the point of the knife.

"I don't even know what a Cherb is!"

"One more inch and there you go, all over." The boy's voice was almost a whisper. Danny backed away slowly until his heels touched the wall behind him. He looked into the thin face held close to his. Les was going to strike....

"Knutt, put up the knife!" A figure dressed in black pushed swiftly between them, and the knife was snatched from the boy's grasp.

"But Mr. Brunholm, he's a Cherb!" Les said.

"No he isn't." Danny breathed out. His rescuer was a dark-haired man with a mustache, wearing a long dark cloak.

"His eyes ...," Les said.

"What are you saying?" Danny asked. He didn't like the subject of his eyes being brought up, particularly when it seemed that they had nearly got him killed.

26

"The brown and the blue," Brunholm said musingly, "that belong to the untrue."

"So what if they're different colors?" Danny said. "If it's any of your business, it was an operation that went wrong when I was small. They messed up the iris."

"Yes, yes, of course," Brunholm said, almost chuckling. Suddenly he grasped Danny's chin. "But look, Knutt. The dark hair and the way it sweeps round at the cheekbones, the pointed ears, the eyebrows, the fine bone structure at the chin."

"A Cherb, like I said," Les insisted. Danny glared at him. Although being called a Cherb probably beat being called Danny the Pixie.

"I told you. I was born this way," Danny said. "I'm not a Cherb, whatever that is."

"No, of course you're not," Brunholm said smoothly. "An accident of birth is all."

"If you're sure," Les said grudgingly.

"Yes, I am sure," Brunholm said, "and by the way, the carrying of a knife dipped in venom is expressly against the Tenth Regulation, not to mention extremely dangerous."

"You going to report me?" Les asked. "I can't take any Tenth Regulation offense. They'll throw me out."

"He was using the knife to protect me from the ... the Cherbs," Danny blurted out. Les looked at him gratefully.

Brunholm looked at them in amusement.

"How very naive and touching. I won't report you," Brunholm said to Les, "but from now on, you are mine, boy."

27

Les shrugged. Danny thought that it was one thing claiming rights over Les, but enforcing them might be difficult.

"This has been a productive night," Brunholm said happily.

"Excuse me," Danny said, between gritted teeth, "when you two have finished ..."

"Yes?" Brunholm said.

"Would somebody explain to me where I am?"

"Wilsons," Les said. "I told you."

"But what is Wilsons?" Danny felt his voice rising.

"An academy of the devious arts," Brunholm said.

"Devious arts ... what are devious arts?" Danny said despairingly.

Brunholm bent down to Danny's face. His eyes brimmed with both amusement and malice.

"Spying, my dear young man," he said. "Wilsons is an academy of spying."

28

MASTER DEVOY

A school for spying? Danny looked from Les to Brunholm, bewildered.

"Not just
a
school for spying. Wilsons is
the
school for spying," Brunholm said, clapping Danny on the back. "Only the elite, the handpicked few, end up at Wilsons. Knutt here, for instance, is one of the great natural thieves. It's a pity you couldn't meet a few of the others tonight."

"You can," Les said quickly. "We was doing Stealth and Shadows revision tonight. We only just finished. They're all getting something to eat. I was just on my way down to Ravensdale--"

"And thought you might do a bit of quick thieving on the way, no doubt, from those feeble old creatures in the ballroom," Brunholm interrupted. Les looked wounded.

29

"Now," Brunholm said. "Let's go and meet some of your new friends and classmates."

"Classmates ...?" Danny was bewildered. "I don't ... I mean, I won't ..."

"Come on," Les said kindly. "We all felt that way at the start." Les started after Brunholm, who had strode off down the corridor. Not knowing what else to do, Danny followed.

Les and Brunholm walked quickly, and it was all Danny could do to keep up with them. Every time he reached a corner, it seemed that they were just dis appearing around the next one, or they were concealed by cunningly placed urns and plants. Eventually Les realized what was going on and dropped back.

"It's just Wilsons," he said; "the place is just like that. You'll get used to it."

"I don't want to get used to it," Danny said. "I'm getting out of here in the morning. I'm supposed to be at Heston Oaks."

"I wish you luck, mate," Les said, "but I bet you don't even know where you are." Danny opened his mouth to speak, and closed it again. Les was right. He didn't have a clue where they were. He didn't even know what time it was. There didn't seem to be any clocks at Wilsons.

They rounded a final corner and were faced with a huge pair of dusty purple velvet curtains.

"Ravensdale," Les said. "I'm starving." And he plunged through the curtains. Danny followed him.

If Danny had been expecting anything, it would have been a dining hall like the one at school, with tables in

30

orderly rows, and a serving hatch at the top. But Ravensdale was nothing like that. As he opened the curtain he stepped into what looked like a dark street in a small town. The street was crooked and badly lit, and tendrils of fog obscured blank walls and locked doorways. Shadows flitted across the cobbled passageway in front of him, shadows cast by flickering lamps high above his head. And above the lamps were gnarled and dead tree limbs, with untidy nests of sticks scattered through the boughs. Along the top branches, almost out of sight, he thought he could see the shapes of ravens. There was a single caw, which sounded like a signal of some kind. Other ravens appeared from nowhere and perched on the bottom branches, their heads turned toward Danny. Les and Brunholm were nowhere to be seen.

He turned back toward the curtains, feeling for them with his hand, but his fingers met only rough stone. He took a deep breath and began to walk slowly along the street. There were no windows at street level, only narrow slits high above his head. He could see nothing but darkness above the lamps. Alleyways led off to either side, but they were bathed in darkness and Danny had no desire to venture down them.

After a minute he came to a small crossroads. Each building around the crossroads had a doorway, and each door had a tarnished brass nameplate on it. The one that Danny stood beside read THE KAMIRILLA. The one opposite read THE JEDBURGHS. There was a small stone plinth in front of him with a wooden beam going straight up from it. Danny looked up. He felt a chill go through

31

him. At the top of the beam was a gibbet, and from the gibbet swung a hangman's noose.

Then two things happened. A door with a plate that read CONSIGLIO DEI DIECI opened, and light flooded into the square. Les walked out, sharing a joke with someone behind him.

"There you are," he said to Danny. "I thought you were behind me." He dragged Danny back through the door and slammed it behind them.

Danny found himself in a snug little room arranged around a battered wooden table. The table was covered with dirty plates that suggested that chicken and roast potatoes and gravy had recently been served. There were bench seats with high leather backs on three sides, and on these sat an assortment of boys and girls about the same age as Danny. A fire burned in a hearth set into a whitewashed wall.

It was obvious that Les had been talking about him. The others were all looking at him with open curiosity.

"Looks pretty like a Cherb to me," a tall thin-faced boy in a beret and brown trench coat said dubiously.

"Leave him alone," said a small girl with big hazel eyes and two prominent incisors, which gave her a faintly vampirish look.

"Yeah, Lord Snooty," another girl piped up. "Give him a break. Can you remember your first night here?"

Les had pushed Danny down into the seat beside the door. The closest boy to him was dark-haired, with heavy eyebrows and red-rimmed eyes. He was wringing his strong-looking hands, and muttering to himself.

"Cherbs ... damn them ... wring every one of their

32

filthy necks ... blood and terror ..." He turned to look at Danny. His eyes narrowed. He peered hard at Danny's face as if he was trying to remember something. He's going to think I'm a Cherb, Danny thought nervously. But before the boy realized what he was looking at, a girl was suddenly in the empty space between them. Danny looked at her, astonished. He had no idea how she had come to be there. She had curly brown hair and freckles, and a vague manner, as if she wasn't really sure how she had got there either.

"Oh. Hi," she said. "I'm Dixie Cole. I ... er ... I ... oh yes ... thought it would be a good idea if I got between you and Toxique.... He's okay, really ... comes from a family of assassins, and they want him to learn.... Not really up to the job if you ask me...."

"This is Danny, the new boy," Les said with a grin. "Dixie's a good friend of mine. Danny just dug me out of a spot of bother with Brunholm. Cherbs attacked the Messengers' dance...."

Before Les could say any more, the lights went down. High on one wall an old-fashioned black-and-white television set flickered to life. Danny saw Brunholm sitting behind a newsreader's desk. NEWS AS TRUE AS THE DAY IS LONG, a sign on the wall behind him read.

"It's a short day, then," someone murmured, in what sounded to Danny like an old joke.

"Attention," Brunholm said, facing the camera with what he probably imagined to be a sincere expression. "A few notices." He cleared his throat and read swiftly from a piece of paper in front of him.