The Secret Prince (26 page)

He knocked smartly.

“Come in,” the lord minister called.

Henry opened the door to the compartment and bowed hastily. “Sorry to disturb you, my lord minister, but we’re just reaching the border inspection,” Henry said. He was worried about Frankie, and nervous that she’d be caught, and wasn’t really thinking. But he realized his mistake instantly. The knock, the bow, the phrasing, even his accent, were all wrong.

Lord Marchbanks and his secretary, Withers, gawped at him. Thankfully the insufferable valet was off somewhere, being insufferable.

Suddenly Lord Marchbanks’s face broke into a broad grin. “Oh, that was very good,” he said.

“I’m sorry, sir?” Henry asked, his heart racing nervously.

“Someone’s taught you to behave properly, boy, though I can’t fathom why you’ve chosen to play the part of a
campagnard
all morning.”

Henry frowned as he considered the lord minister’s words. He realized the trap almost immediately. “Er, I don’t know that word,” Henry lied.

Lord Marchbanks raised an eyebrow. “No? It means ‘an uneducated country lad.’ ”

“Well, sir, it ain’t English,” Henry said.

Lord Marchbanks waited patiently. “I mean, that wasn’t in English, my lord minister,” Henry corrected as the train screeched to a stop.

“What do you think, Withers?” Lord Marchbanks asked.

The secretary, who was preoccupied with a stack of papers, looked up and blinked owlishly.

“Never mind,” Lord Marchbanks said with a sigh,
and then turned his attention back to Henry. “Here is what I think.”

Henry gulped, waiting for it. Because if Lord Marchbanks looked, he’d see that Henry’s hair, while mussed, was cut to school standard. That his left hand bore the unmistakable callus caused by too much writing, that his fingernails were square and even, that he did not appear to regularly miss meals.

“I think,” Lord Marchbanks continued, “that you’ve been to school, boy.”

Henry nodded. That answer was safe, at least.

“Your accent is not regional but taught. Don’t look at me in surprise. I speak with foreigners nearly every day at the Ministerium who have learned English such as yours. A most curious puzzle.”

Henry desperately grasped for a plausible story, and borrowed one he’d read in a detective story. “Please, sir, it’s not a puzzle at all. I was at school, my father died, and I had to take to working because of my younger brothers. The other boys get on me for the schooling, so I try to sound as though I haven’t any.”

Lord Marchbanks’s frown disappeared, and Henry breathed a sigh of relief. The story was plausible, but more than that, it was boring.

“I’ll thank you to speak the King’s English from now on,” Lord Marchbanks said, losing interest.

“Yes, sir,” Henry said as the door to the compartment opened and a Nordlandic patroller stepped inside.

“Inspection,” he barked.

Lord Marchbanks picked up his copy of the
Royal Standard
and promptly disappeared behind it.

Henry flattened himself against the wall, realizing that at any moment Frankie could be discovered.

But the patroller, in his thick wool uniform and tall, furry hat, merely glanced at the lord minister, his secretary, and Henry before retreating back into the corridor and slamming the door behind him.

“Well, that was unpleasant,” Lord Marchbanks said. “That will be all, er, Harry.”

“Yes, sir,” Henry said with a polite but carefully unschooled bow.

Once the train was moving again, Henry couldn’t help but grin triumphantly, despite his recent humiliation. Frankie had gotten through the border inspection. They weren’t caught. Lord Marchbanks thought he was Harry, a down-on-his-luck boy with too many mouths to feed. And in just a half hour more, the train would arrive at Partisan Keep.

Henry ducked back into the storage car, bringing the half of his lunch he’d saved. “It’s me,” he whispered.

The tarp rustled, and Frankie peered out at him. Her hair was coming down from its neat pins, and she looked pale and frightened. “Are they gone?” she asked. “We’ve started moving again.”

“We’ll be there in about fifteen minutes,” Henry said.

“That was terrifying,” she said. “I thought they were going to find me.”

“Well, they didn’t,” Henry said, sitting down on a crate and passing Frankie the bundle of food.

She eagerly unwrapped it, and then her face fell. “Is this all?” she asked.

Henry winced apologetically. “It’s half of mine. Plus two biscuits left from Lord Marchbanks’s tray.”

At this, Frankie bit her lip. “It’ll do,” she mumbled. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” Henry said uncomfortably.

Frankie took a bite of the bread.

“So,” Henry finally said. “Are you going to tell me why you ran away?”

“You know why.”

“I think I do,” Henry admitted.

“Then guess.”

“The battle society, and your chaperone, and, well, me.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Frankie muttered.

“So I’m wrong?”

“No.”

Henry nodded slowly, digesting this piece of information.

“You’re the first boy who has ever talked to me like I was a person,” Frankie continued. “And then when we started fighting that day after chapel and everything got so complicated, I just thought—Never mind.”

“Thought what?” Henry pressed.

“Why are you going out of your way to help me?” Frankie asked suddenly.

“I don’t know,” Henry said, considering. “I suppose because Adam’s practically in love with you.”

“Wh-what?” Frankie spluttered.

The train began to slow.

“I have to—” Henry grimaced and glanced toward the door.

“I know.”

“I’ll be back if I can, but if not, I’ll bring food with me tomorrow. Can you manage until then?”

Frankie gave Henry a mournful look, her lower lip
trembling. “Oh, God, I’ve made a mess of everything, haven’t I?” she said as the reality of the situation hit her full force.

“No, not at all.” Henry gingerly reached out and patted her shoulder. “You’re the only girl Fergus Valmont is afraid of. You can beat some of the best boys in our year at fencing, and you speak Latin. If there’s anyone who’s brave enough and clever enough to get through this, it’s you.”

Frankie looked up at him, her eyes brimming with tears. “Do you mean that?”

“It’s the truth,” Henry said. “I—I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Good luck spying,” she whispered.

“Thanks,” Henry said, retrieving his and Adam’s satchels from where they’d stashed them earlier.

“You make a ridiculous servant, by the way,” she said. “You’re all wrong for it.”

“I’d like to see you do better,” Henry retorted, closing the door.

19

T
he Partisan School was an ancient stronghold left
over from the days of the Sasson conquerors, with slits for windows to deflect the course of harmful arrows, and a moat gone to sewage. Instead of modern electric light, Partisan used old-fashioned torches, which lit the way up dozens of sagging stone steps and through an enormous wooden door that rather resembled a drawbridge.

But Henry and Adam didn’t enter through the enormous wooden door. Instead they carried the envoy’s bags from the train station up through a grubby back entrance to Partisan Keep and deposited them in the east wing guest rooms.

After the third and final expedition, they were exhausted. Adam flopped onto what was to be Lord Priscus’s bed, burying his face in the quilt.

“Get up!” Henry whispered fiercely. “What if someone sees?”

Adam whined but slid off the bed, patting the covers straight. “I’m exhausted,” he complained.

“Well, we’re not getting much sleep tonight.” Henry neatened the stack of luggage. “Come on. Time to find out where we
won’t
be sleeping.”

To Henry’s and Adam’s horror, their sleeping quarters turned out to be a small, narrow room off the scullery with two sets of bunk beds. Having taken both of the top bunks, Jem and George grinned when Henry and Adam pushed open the door.

“Did yeh have a good time with the bags?” George asked, pillowing his head in his hands. Henry shook his head and angrily slammed his satchel onto the bunk below George.

Adam gingerly approached the bed beneath Jem. “Oi, there isn’t a pillow,” he said.

“Sorry.” Jem grinned nastily.

“Borrowed it.” “Hey, Adam,” Henry called. “Need me to fetch you some more pillows?”

And even though it wasn’t funny, really, the two boys shook with laughter. They ducked into the scullery to get it under control.

“I’m going to kill you,” Adam muttered, gasping.

“With what, Jem’s knife? Or were you planning to smother me with your pillow?” This set them off again. It felt wonderful to laugh, even for just a moment, at the horrible indignities of their day. After all, they were in the Nordlands, dressed as Ministerium Hall lackeys while the rest of their friends were back at school—except for Frankie.

“Do you think Frankie’s all right?” Henry asked nervously.

“She better be,” Adam said.

They had the next hour free, as the envoy was sequestered in a meeting room with Yascherov. Henry and Adam had planned to poke around Partisan Keep, but they hadn’t bargained for it being Saturday, or the weather turning rainy.

Partisan students choked the corridors and sat on staircases, laughing and joking, playing harmonicas or penny whistles, and flipping through magazines.

When they caught sight of Henry’s and Adam’s ridiculous livery, they leered.

“Er, maybe this was a bad idea,” Adam muttered, admitting defeat. “We’re not exactly inconspicuous, mate.”

“I know,” Henry said, running a hand through his hair in anguish. “Ugh, this is useless.” They headed back in the direction they’d come, but as a last-minute thought, Henry held open a door that led out the side of the castle.

“What are you doing?” Adam whispered.

Henry shrugged. “Aren’t you curious?”

“About what?” Adam asked.

“Well, this is the capital.”

They started down the steps carved into the hill, which took them through a twisting stone passageway flanked by two crumbling watchtowers. The passageway ended abruptly, blocking their path with a heavy iron gate topped in nasty spikes. A hulking boy in a Partisan School uniform, his chest decorated with gleaming badges, peered out of the watchtower.

“Aye?” he called. “Ye want to pass?”

“We’ve been sent on an errand in the city,” Henry called back.

The boy shrugged and twisted what looked like a ship’s wheel made of metal, sliding the gate aside just narrowly enough for Henry and Adam to squeeze through.

And just like that, they were in Romborough.

It was an ancient city, with buildings still intact from the time of the Sasson conquerors, and ruins that dated back even earlier. At the bottom of the hill, as if in miniature, they could see the steam engine idling in the station, gleaming alongside two dingy Nordlandic cargo trains.

“What do you want to do?” Adam asked.

“Count the seven pylons?” Henry joked.

Adam snorted. After the Romans had disassembled Stonehenge, seven of the pylons had been erected to form the border of what was now known as the Old City, the most ancient part of Romborough. As they headed down the central road, they passed the first of the pylons, erected outside a rolling and ancient graveyard. Beyond the graveyard was a stone church, its roof perfectly round, its windows simple slits.

Most of the buildings were festooned with the Nordlandic flag, the three serpents and the star, which billowed over the packed dirt road. A horse-driven omnibus clattered past, crammed full of miserable-looking passengers and squalling babies.

Many of the shop fronts bore portraits of the chancellor, with his dark pointed beard and cruel gaze. Still
more shop fronts were boarded up, or closed for no discernible reason.

Perhaps because of the gray sky, very few people stopped to linger in the streets. They scuttled along, disappearing into the entrances of the narrow closes—the covered alleyways that lined Cairway Road. Henry and Adam received more than a few odd glances due to their livery, but everyone seemed too afraid to be caught staring.