The Song of the Winns (10 page)

Alex gulped. “Yes, sir.”

“Then let's begin.” Moving to the left of the whiteboard,
Solomon Honker tapped his ruler three times to indicate the three maps tacked to the wall. The first was a map of Shetlock, which was a common enough sight in a Shetlock classroom. To the right of this was a map of Souris, with a purple and silver flag in the top right-hand corner. They had studied Sourian history and geography at school, and Alice recognized the diamond shape of Shetlock's neighbor across the Sourian Sea. She knew that the capital, Grouch, was roughly in the middle, just south of the Eugenian mountain range. She turned her gaze to the third map. The long, thin strip of land was a mere fraction of the size of Souris. It had a coastline running down the western side along the Cannolian Ocean, and a small part of the eastern side abutted the westernmost curve of the Sourian Sea. Along the eastern side it bordered Souris—Alice could just make out the Cranken Alps in the northeast—and its southern tip bordered Shetlock. Although she had never seen it before, Alice knew this must be a map of Gerander. It was odd to think that she had lived all her life in a country bordering Gerander—it was closer even than Souris—yet knew nothing about the place. Staring at the sliver of land, Alice wondered why exactly the Sourians were determined to occupy such a small country.

Solomon Honker tapped the ruler on a large red dot in the west of Gerander. It was marked “Cornoliana.” This, she supposed, was the Gerandan capital.

“Cornoliana,” Solomon Honker said. “Does that name sound familiar? Think of your history classes.”

Alex raised his hand. “Is it something to do with Queen Cornolia?”

“Who was . . . ?” prompted the rusty-orange and white mouse.

Alice raised her hand and said, “She was the Queen of Shetlock, ages and ages ago.”

“Just the Queen of Shetlock?” queried the teacher.

“Oh!” Alex's hand shot up.

“Raz?”

“She was the Queen of Souris too. She was Queen Eugenia's great-grandmother. No, wait, her great-great-great . . .” He shook his head. “I can't remember.”

But Solomon Honker was nodding. “Almost,” he said. “Queen Cornolia, of the House of Cornolius, was the great-great-grandmother of Queen Eugenia. So she was the Queen of Souris and of Shetlock. But what do you make of this?” He tapped the red dot of Cornoliana again.

Why would Gerander have named its capital after the Queen of Shetlock and Souris? Alice wondered. Unless . . .

She thrust her hand into the air. “She was the Queen of Gerander too!”

“Correct.” Solomon Honker tapped the ruler on the desk. “Queen Cornolia ruled all three kingdoms, though at the time they were all one kingdom called Greater Gerander. When Queen Cornolia died, Greater Gerander was divided into three lands, one for each of her children; they were triplets you see.”

“Like us!” said Alex.

“Ah yes,” said Solomon. “So you are. The young ginger
fellow with the scarf, he's your brother, isn't he?”

“That's Alistair,” Alex confirmed. Alice wondered how Solomon knew their brother.

Bang!

The ruler crashed down on Alex's desk, and he jolted backward in his chair. Alice made a mental note not to get too comfortable around Solomon Honker, even when he appeared to be approachable.

“What's your name?” the teacher demanded.

“R-raz,” said Alex.

“And are you a triplet, Raz?”

“I-I don't know,” said Alex.

“You'll find out soon enough,” said Solomon Honker. “Until then, don't assume.”

“Yes, sir,” Alex muttered. He looked almost frightened.

“Sir,” said Alice, raising her hand to draw the teacher's attention away from her brother, “what will we be doing in Cornoliana?”

“If you listened to Tobias's speech last night, you'll remember him talking about unusual troop movements in Souris.” He raised his eyebrows questioningly and his two pupils nodded.

“FIG is now focusing all its energies in two directions,” he continued. “One, finding out what exactly the Sourians are up to, and two, preparing to organize Gerandans to rise against them.”

“And you think that while we're in the palace we might hear something about the Sourians' plans,” said Alice.

“Correct.” The rusty-orange and white mouse nodded once, curtly. “And to be able to interpret the significance of what you hear, you need to understand something of Sourian politics. Let's start with General Ashwover, who is the top-ranking Sourian officer in Gerander. He effectively rules Gerander on Queen Eugenia's behalf, from the Sourian headquarters in the palace in Cornoliana. Queen Eugenia is directly descended from the House of Cornolius, remember, so she claims the right to the palace. Of course, she isn't the only heir to the throne of Cornolius. Can either of you tell me another one—someone who is directly descended from the triplet who inherited Gerander?”

Although they were still new to FIG, both young mice knew the answer to this question.

“Zanzibar!” they shouted in unison.

Solomon Honker smiled briefly. “Correct!” Then . . .
bang!
The ruler smacked down on Alice's desk. “But you will raise your hands before speaking and you will address me as ‘sir.'”

By six o'clock, when Solomon Honker finally called a halt to the lesson, Alice thought her head would explode with all the information crammed in it. After a break for lunch, they'd spent the whole afternoon studying the history of the Sourian occupation of Gerander from the Sourian point of view, since that was what Raz and Rita would have learned.

“If I'd known that an undercover assignment would be worse than school I never would have volunteered,” Alex groaned as they made their way to the cafeteria for dinner.

They found Beezer and Ebenezer already there. Ebenezer was his old cheerful self, Alice was pleased to see.

“I've been shadowing Serena this afternoon, learning the ordering system and so on,” her uncle explained. “She'll be leaving the day after tomorrow. She's given me some of the recipes from her restaurant. I'm really looking forward to trying them out.”

They had just carried their plates, piled high with cheesy crepes, to one of the long tables when an all-too-familiar figure came toward them.

“Oh no,” groaned Alex under his breath.

“Why it's my two favorite pupils,” Solomon Honker said.

“Hello, sir,” they chorused politely.

Their teacher had exchanged his somber blue bow tie for a cheery candy-striped one. And that wasn't all that had changed. “What's all this ‘sir' business?” he asked jovially. “We're not in the classroom now—call me Solomon Honker.”

“Yes, Solomon Honker,” Alex and Alice said obediently.

“Have you tried the Stetson Camembert yet?” he asked over his shoulder as he moved off toward the buffet. “It's delicious.”

“Is that your teacher?” Beezer asked. “He seems nice.”

“Nice?” Alex snorted. “What he was like just then—all cheerful and friendly—is the complete opposite of what he's like in the classroom. He kept yelling and banging our desks with a ruler.” Alex slammed his fork onto the table, making them all jump. “He's like that mouse in the book that Alistair talks about. You know, the one with two completely different personalities.”

“Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?” suggested Alice.

“Yeah, him,” said Alex. “He even looks like two different mice, with his white top and his orange bottom. It's like two mice were cut in half and their tops and bottoms swapped.”

“He's probably just playing a part,” said Beezer. “Like you'll have to play a part when you're undercover. You'll be servants, remember—you'll have mice yelling at you and barking orders.”

Alex looked more glum than ever. “So much for the exciting life of a spy. It looked like so much fun when Sophia and Horace were doing it. Remember, sis?”

Remember? Alice had no trouble remembering Sophia and Horace. It was forgetting them that was proving difficult. . . .

But if Alex was concerned about anything more than having orders barked at him, he didn't show it. He polished off his cheesy crepes with relish then, seeing that Alice was just pushing hers around her plate, said, “Don't you want yours, sis?” and scooped them off her plate without waiting for a reply.

Alice didn't even bother to protest.

That night, Alice's sleep was haunted with dreams. She was running down the shadowy corridors of the palace in Cornoliana, pursued by some nameless dreadful thing, and around every corner she turned she was confronted with Sophia and her partner, the doleful Horace. Sophia of the silvery fur was laughing her silvery laugh and saying, I will always be a step ahead of you. And then Alice saw the silvery flash of the knife in Sophia's hand and—

She awoke, panting. Sophia and Horace were nowhere near Cornoliana, she reminded herself. They were in Souris, or maybe Shetlock. Not Gerander. With the help of this calming thought, she breathed slow and deep and fell asleep again, then slept dreamlessly until she was woken by sunlight pouring through the window.

7

Never Vanquish'd

H
uddled next to Tibby Rose under the overhang of the rock, Alistair drifted in and out of a restless doze; he had too many anxieties gnawing at his brain to allow him to really relax. The first, and most urgent, was the situation he and Tibby Rose were in: lost in an unforgiving terrain with no hope of rescue and no idea where they actually were. As the wind howled around their meager shelter, Alistair knew there was a very real possibility that they would not make it out of the Crankens alive. But if they didn't, who would rescue his parents? Alistair reached for the ends of his scarf, now encrusted in ice. The paths through Gerander would remain a secret as long as his scarf was lost in the Crankens. There would be no help for Emmeline and Rebus on Atticus Island, no safe passage through Gerander for FIG members. He tugged at his scarf and felt it tighten and rub around his neck, and remembered Slippers Pink rubbing her own neck
as they'd said good-bye in Stetson just over twenty-four hours earlier. She had sensed something wasn't right. Was this what her “sixth sense for danger” had been warning her about? Were she and Feast Thompson waiting and worrying by the source of the Winns, wondering why Oswald hadn't yet delivered Alistair and Tibby Rose? Or were Slippers and Feast in trouble too? Had the Queen's Guards discovered them?