The Secret Prince (20 page)

“Because she can’t!”

“I bet no one would mind. And she’s bloody good with a sword.”

“With a
foil
,” Henry returned. “She’d get in more trouble than the rest of us if she joined, and really, who would throw punches or swing a sabre at Headmaster Winter’s sixteen-year-old daughter?”

“So you told her no.”

“Of course I told her no. And then she told me that we were all going to die in a war,” Henry said sourly.

Adam winced. “I think I liked it better when she climbed through our window with cake wanting to play cards,” he reflected.

“I did too, but Rohan seems to think we’re getting too old for that sort of thing.”

“What does age matter?” Adam retorted. “Boys of thirteen used to be drafted to fight, if you haven’t forgotten.”

Henry went pale. “What did you say?”

“Nothing,” Adam muttered.

“No. You said that boys of thirteen used to be drafted to fight,” Henry said, his voice rising excitedly.

“Well,
you
said it after the Inter-School Tournament.” Adam shrugged. “Something about no one having changed the conscription laws. Although they’ll probably want to fight anyway. I mean, just think of Ollie.”

Henry cringed at the memory of the scrawny serving boy mopping the corridor with one hand pressed against his cracked ribs.

“I
am
,” Henry said. “Don’t you see? That law can be changed. It has nothing to do with combat training or the Nordlands. It’s simply an outdated piece of legislature, left over from the days when boys in the slums were lucky to see eighteen.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not exactly easy to change a law, mate,” Adam reminded him.

“Conrad’s father is the Lord Minister of Ways and Means,” Henry pressed. “If Conrad could make him listen—just think of the good it would do!”

Henry’s mind raced with the implications of what it would mean to change the conscription laws—everyone’s little brothers safe at home and away from whatever was
coming. No knights knocking on doors and taking away schoolboys who still played marbles, handing them swords and telling them to kill grown men.

“Conrad’s father barely speaks with him. He’s too important or busy or something,” Adam said, and then he saw the look on Henry’s face. “It’s worth a try, though.”

Henry gave Adam a grateful smile. “It would be so nice,” Henry said tiredly, “to see some good news in the papers. To have a cause to celebrate even the smallest thing.”

Until that moment Henry hadn’t considered what it meant to be a Knightley student. He’d thought only of war and fighting, not of command. But they
would
be commanding common boys, the same way that police knights directed the common policemen. In a war they’d be ordering squadrons of little Ollies to march bravely to their deaths.

The weight of the last few weeks pressed down on him, and he was suddenly exhausted. Henry shielded his eyes with his forearm, lying there on top of his covers, thinking of conscription laws and boys like Alex from the bakery who hero-worshipped Knightley students, and of Frankie wielding a broadsword as though she thought that if she asked nicely, she too could play.

15

H
enry dreaded the next meeting of the battle society.
All through drills he barely listened to Conrad’s orders and nearly marched straight into James’s back. During Protocol, he used the wrong form of address to a hypothetical foreign diplomat. And he only just caught a glaring translation error in languages as he was about to turn in the assignment.

Henry’s mind was in a lot of places, but mostly he was distracted by worries. What if Frankie showed up at the meeting? What if his idea of changing the conscription laws was met with stony silence? But he kept these fears to himself, and they worried away at him, snatching his attention from whatever task was at hand.

He supposed he could have spoken with Conrad privately, but everyone had seemed so elated to be rid of exams, and he hadn’t wanted to mar their celebrations. So he had sat and fretted quietly and studied in vain and tried not to think about how, on top of it all, he was also avoiding Professor Stratford.

It seemed the battle society meeting had scarcely begun when Henry glanced at his pocket watch to find that curfew had come and gone and midnight was fast approaching. The boys began to gather their things, and Henry briefly debated not mentioning it, but as Valmont gathered his satchel, Henry finally gathered his courage.

“Er, sorry,” he said.

A few boys glanced over.

“Sorry,” Henry said again, this time louder. “I was just wondering whether any of you lot have given much thought to the conscription laws?”

“Ancient history,” Peter called, cracking his knuckles in a way that made Edmund shudder.

“Actually, mate, they’re not,” Adam corrected.

Now everyone was staring curiously at Henry. “It occurred to me,” Henry continued, “that if—er, when—we go to war with the Nordlands, everyone over the age of thirteen will be required to fight.”

“Thirteen?” Geoffrey scoffed. “I have a brother who’s twelve. He comes up to my waist.”

“Here’s the other thing,” Henry pressed. “Laws can be changed. I can think of a few students who wouldn’t be here if change were impossible, myself included. So there’s no reason why the conscription laws can’t be abolished. I just know that year sevens shouldn’t be made to kill grown men, especially without training.”

“So why do we have these laws in the first place?” Luther asked.

“They’ve been around for hundreds of years,” Derrick said, shaking his head. “Boys used to be apprenticed off at eleven or twelve to ancient knights. They already had combat training by thirteen, and were entering tournaments to fight one another for fun.”

“Glad I wasn’t alive back then,” Rohan muttered.

Henry snorted. Secretly he agreed. Because from what he’d learned translating
Pugnare
and paging through the other books he’d found in the forgotten classroom, ancient knights had fared far worse than their modern counterparts.

“I only brought it up,” Henry continued, “because I thought it was important. We should be able to discuss
things here. After all, battles aren’t won by skill but by strategy.”

“My strategy is to
be
skilled,” Jasper called jokingly, making a neat pass with a broadsword.

“This isn’t a joke,” Derrick said to Jasper. “Henry’s right about that law needing to change. I have a younger brother as well. I don’t want any of you lot handing him a crossbow in the near future—or any Partisan students aiming one in his direction.”

“It’s a dashed good idea,” Conrad piped up, and everyone turned, knowing that it was Conrad’s father who needed to be convinced. “But it won’t work. My father wouldn’t listen. And even if he did, changing an ancient and technically useless law without reason isn’t exactly a priority at the Ministerium. Not to mention that we need the support of a majority of the House of Lord Ministers to have the law brought up for review. Getting enough signatures could take ages.”

Henry’s spirits fell. He’d been so certain that this was one thing they could really do—that finally the headlines would speculate on something good for a change. But he hadn’t thought about getting signatures, or any of the procedures involved in changing a law. It was far more complicated than he’d imagined.

Everyone drifted out of the basement training room a little less hopeful than before. What good was learning to fight if they were going to lead one another’s younger brothers and cousins onto the battlefield?

Henry gathered the sabres and waved good-bye to the other battle society members, wondering bitterly if it was even worth trying. He asked Adam as much while they gave the room a final sweep for armory blades.

“It’s always worth trying if you feel strongly enough,” Adam said, shifting his armload of sabres. “That’s why we took the Knightley Exam, isn’t it?”

“I suppose,” Henry said, unconvinced.

And then a deep voice made them stop cold.

“Francesca?”

Henry and Adam exchanged a look of panic before realizing that they were halfway down the corridor from the stairwell to the armory door and had nowhere to hide.
Please be Professor Stratford,
Henry thought desperately.

But it wasn’t. Headmaster Winter, in his dressing gown and worn-through bedroom slippers, had reached the top of the stairs. He frowned at Henry and Adam in the feeble circle of light from his lantern.

“Ah,” Headmaster Winter said unhappily. “You two.”

Henry gulped. Adam cursed under his breath.

“Good evening, sir,” Henry mumbled.

“If you’d be good enough to return those sabres to the armory,” the headmaster said mildly, “I’ll be here when you return.”

Numbly Henry and Adam pushed open the door to the armory.

“Bloody hell,” Adam whispered as they opened the weapons cabinet. “We’re in for it.”

“No,
we’re
not,” Henry whispered fiercely. “
I’m
the one who started this. Just agree to whatever I say, and you’ll be fine.”

“Absolutely not,” Adam protested. “I’m just as guilty as you are. I’ve been hauling weapons all over the school.”

“Well, we can’t tell him that!” Henry returned.

“Boys?” the headmaster called. “I think you’ve had enough time to put those blades back in their proper place.”

“Yes, sir,” they chorused miserably, shuffling back into the corridor where Headmaster Winter was waiting at the top of the stairwell.

No one said anything on the way to the headmaster’s office.

The silence remained as Henry and Adam nervously settled onto the sofa across from the headmaster’s desk, extracting a rather horrible piece of orange knitting that
had wedged itself between the cushions. Henry gingerly placed the knitting onto an arm of the sofa and tried not to despair at what was to come.

Headmaster Winter smiled sadly. “Not the most innocent of circumstances in which to be caught out of bed after lights-out.”

“No, sir,” Henry and Adam mumbled.

The headmaster leaned back in his chair and scratched thoughtfully at his patchy beard. “I don’t suppose there’s a truthful explanation either of you boys would be willing to share?”

Henry and Adam exchanged a glance, and then shook their heads.

“Hypothetically, sir,” Adam piped up, “we might have found the sabres sitting somewhere and then decided to return them to the armory.”

Henry elbowed him.

“If that were the case,” Headmaster Winter continued, the corners of his mouth twitching with amusement, “you boys would be commended for your chivalrous efforts.”

Adam went smug.

“However.” The headmaster paused, letting the word linger in the air. “It would also make necessary a thorough
investigation into what, exactly, is happening at my school. Because I would clearly have no idea.”

Henry blanched. They were already done for, he realized. Nothing good could come from this conversation. They’d been caught out of bed after lights-out, their arms full of school property. And it wasn’t as though this were their first offense. Even worse, no one was out to get them, as the case had been last term.

No, they’d blatantly disregarded the Code of Chivalry, even if it had been for a good reason. The least they could do, Henry thought dejectedly, was tell the headmaster the truth.

“You’re right, sir,” Henry said bravely. “We didn’t find the sabres. I borrowed them because I wanted to learn how to fight.”

“With a dozen blades? Sounds more like you were practicing to join the circus as a juggler.”

Henry’s cheeks went red.

“Well, the idea became, er, popular,” Adam confessed.

“How popular?” Headmaster Winter asked.

“About a quarter of the school,” Adam admitted.

Headmaster Winter’s eyebrows shot up. “Really?” he mused. “A quarter of the school?”

“More now,” Adam said, and Henry realized with
a start that Adam was right. There were thirty-one of them.

“Well, that is certainly curious,” Headmaster Winter said thoughtfully. “Although I’m not sure what, exactly, so many boys were aiming to learn by practicing with only a dozen sabres.”