The Ring of Five (12 page)

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the house was surprisingly warm and dry. It was dusty, and the windows were so dirty they were hard to see through, but there were faded cushions on the window seats, and two battered armchairs arranged in front of a stone fireplace. It smelt pleasantly of sun-warmed planks and wood fires.

"Here," Les said, producing a package from his inside pocket. There were cheese and pickle sandwiches and a large slice of chocolate cake, along with a bottle of lemonade.

When they had finished Danny lay back on a window seat, basking in the warm pool of sunlight coming through the window.

"Good place, this," he said. "How did you find it?"

"I don't remember," Les said.

"What do you mean?"

Les stayed quiet for a minute, then spoke in a low voice, staring out the window.

"When my mum and dad were killed I ran away from our house. I just kept running and running. I didn't know where I was going. Don't even remember that much of it. I was found here the next morning. Wilsons took me in."

Les had mentioned his parents' death before, but Danny had barely registered it. Now he looked at his friend and could see the pain in his eyes.

"What happened?" he asked gently.

"I don't really know," Les said. "The Cherbs came in the night. My mum or my dad must have got me out. All I remember is the Cherbs cheering and the house

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burning and me running as fast as I could. It was during the Uprising."

"The Uprising?"

"It's what they call the time when the Ring of Five emerged and joined up with the Cherbs. The Ring were looking for control of the Lower World and all. My mum and dad and the other folk there rose up against them. They thought they would win the fight. They didn't. They were put down by the Cherbs, and the Ring got control of most of the Lower World."

"I'm sorry about your mum and dad," Danny said quietly, a sudden wave of homesickness washing over him. His mother and father didn't seem very good at being parents, but he would have given anything to see their faces.

"You want to go home," Les said. "I don't blame you. I probably would too. I suppose Wilsons is my home now. Most of the cadets lost someone in the Uprising."

"Dixie too?"

"Her mum and dad died in the fighting. The Cherbs near broke through into the Upper World. Her mum and dad held out for hours till help arrived. She don't talk about it."

"What about Wilsons?"

"It's kind of all that's left. There's a ceasefire and an agreement that nobody crosses the border into the Upper World. But Master Devoy, he reckons the Ring is only waiting for an excuse to attack."

That name again. The Ring of Five. Danny didn't

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know anything about them, but every time he heard the name a shiver of fear ran down his spine. And there was something else--a dark thrill that made him turn his head away in case it showed on his face.

"Who are they? The Ring, I mean?" Was it his imagination, or did the sun suddenly dim slightly as he spoke the name? Les looked troubled.

"The Ring," he said, almost under his breath. "I ... I think I'd better let Master Devoy tell you about the Ring."

"Why?" Danny could see that Les was picking his words carefully.

"The Ring ... well, nobody from the Upper World is supposed to really know anything about the Ring, and when ..."

"When I go back home, you mean, after this evening?"

"It's not that I don't trust you," Les said, looking embarrassed.

"What you're saying is, if you told me, I might not be allowed to go back?" Danny said.

"That's what I was trying to say." Les breathed a long sigh of relief.

"Don't worry," Danny said. "I won't make you tell me if it means that I have to stay here!"

"Okay," Les said. "Time we were heading back."

"What's on this afternoon?"

"We just got one class this afternoon. IE."

"IE?"

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"Illegal Entry. How to break into a place."

The two boys made their way back to Wilsons through the trees.

"So--you're kind of adopted by Wilsons, then?" Danny asked.

"Sort of."

"What about Dixie?"

"Dixie? She has an aunt and uncle at home she could stay with."

"Why doesn't she?"

"Dixie wants to be at Wilsons. When her mum was dying Dixie promised she'd help to put an end to the Ring. She's here because of that promise."

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THE KNIFE OF IMPLACABLE INTENTION

They cleared the gloom of the trees and emerged onto the lawn just in time to hear Blackpitt announce the beginning of the IE class.

"I didn't realize the time," Les said anxiously. "We better get going!"

They sprinted across the lawn and in through the side doors and plunged down a stone staircase.

"All the good stuff is in the basement," Les shouted back over his shoulder as they took the steps three at a time.

They raced along a corridor with doors opening off it every ten feet or so. Danny caught glimpses of a laboratory through one door; from behind others came the sounds of machines, and in one case what sounded like

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gunshots. Les skidded to a halt in front of a forbidding black door studded with brass nails.

"We're late," Les said.

"We can just apologize," Danny said.

"It mightn't be as easy as that." Les fished in his pocket for a set of lockpicks. As he flicked through them, Danny reached out for the brass door handle. It turned and the door swung silently open.

"See," Danny said, "easy." Les gave him a strained look, and as Danny made to step into the dark corridor beyond, Les pushed him back.

"I'll go first," he said. He moved gingerly over the threshold, checking each step before he put his foot on the ground and feeling the walls with his hands. Danny looked at him as if he had lost his mind. It was just a little corridor, and all they had to do was go through it into the classroom, where they could just apologize to the teacher. He opened his mouth to speak, then heard a small metallic sound. He looked up at the ceiling. A heavy metal spike that tapered to a deadly point was plummeting from the ceiling, heading straight for the top of Les's head.

"Look out!" Danny shouted, and dived forward. His shoulder caught Les in the small of the back, just below the wings. With an "Oof!" Les was thrown forward through the curtains at the other end of the little corridor, while behind them, Danny heard the spike strike the ground with a clang.

Danny slowly lifted his head. They had landed at the front of a class, right beside the instructor's desk. Danny

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could see faces looking down at him--Dixie grinning, Vandra looking stern and Smyck smirking.

"This must be our new pupil," a smooth voice said. Danny raised his eyes to see an oily-looking little man standing over him. His black hair was brushed over to one side and flattened down, and his beady eyes shone with malice and amusement.

"He and his thieving little friend," the man went on, "have provided us with a valuable lesson: when one is breaking into a premises, one must be ready to react to added defenses. Boys and girls, you do not drop your guard just because you are in the house and ready to plant your listening device or steal your secret documents. Take a seat, Knutt and Caulfield, and next time try to be prompt. My name, by the way, is Exshaw."

As they picked themselves up Les grinned at Danny. Danny didn't return the grin.

What sort of a place is this, he thought, where the punishment for being late is a spike through the back of the head?

The two boys dusted themselves off and sat down at desks at the front of the class.

It was a review class, and most of the cadets looked bored, but Danny was fascinated. It was all about finding hiding places in someone else's house. Danny would have thought of under the bed as a hiding place, or under the floorboards. But he would never have thought of hiding a gun in the toilet cistern or important top-secret papers in the freezer. Exshaw talked about things being hidden in plain sight. How he had searched in vain for a secret

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document in a house one night, only to find out afterward it had been framed and hung on the wall. His eye had passed over it, thinking it was a certificate for something or other.

There was a test then. Each person in the class was given a silver disc the size of a large coin. Then Exshaw stood up and went to the door.

"Now, my little minions," he said, "I am going to turn out the lights and count out one minute, which is the time you will have to conceal that silver disc somewhere in the classroom." Without any more warning Exshaw pressed the light switch and the room was plunged into total darkness. There was dead silence, save for the odd faint rustle. For the first time Danny truly realized where he was--the children around him really were trainee spies! They were moving in silence and stealth in the darkness where ordinary children would have giggled or cried out in fear.

There was no time to waste, he decided. Instinct once more prompted him. He moved forward in the dark, toward the front of the class.

Thirty seconds later the light came back on. All the cadets, including Danny, were back in their seats, varying expressions of innocence on their faces. Exshaw prowled around the classroom. He seized discs from light fittings, from behind pictures, and from between the pages of books. Then for several minutes he didn't find any.

"That's the easy meat out of the way. This is where it gets interesting." He grinned, showing neat little teeth like a row of pearly white buttons. Vandra was the next to

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be caught. Danny gasped when he realized that the silver pendant she wore around her neck was in fact the disc. Dixie was caught next. Danny thought that her disc was in plain view, standing on its edge on her desk. Then he realized what she was doing. She was turning it gently with a pencil as Exshaw moved around the classroom, so that the thin edge was always toward him, making it invisible. Finally she touched it a little too hard and it fell to the desk with a clatter. In the end there was only one disc left unfound.

"Show me where it is," Exshaw said. Every eye in the classroom was fixed on Danny. He stood up, his heart in his mouth. He didn't know what instinct had prompted him to do as he had done. He walked up to the head of the class and stood in front of Exshaw.

"Put your hand in your left pocket," Danny said. Without removing his eyes from Danny, Exshaw reached into his pocket and removed the disc. He raised one eyebrow a millimeter.

"Of course. The best place to conceal something is on the person of the searcher. But how would our little newcomer know that? Unless of course he has the soul of a spy to begin with. Do you have the soul of a spy, boy?"

"Er, no ... well, I don't really know," Danny stammered. Exshaw stared at him intently for a long moment, then looked at his watch.

"Class over for today. Let's finish up before that tiresome twit Blackpitt starts to pontificate at us."

The cadets streamed out of the class. Danny was in a slight daze. Why had he thought to plant the disc in

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Exshaw's pocket, and how had he known to move so swiftly and silently in the dark?

"The evening meal will be early," Blackpitt intoned in his best crackly station announcer's voice, "on account of an induction this evening at eight o' clock. All welcome. Reservations not required."

The cadets headed for Ravensdale, where each table had an array of cold meats, chicken wings, pickles and bread fresh from the oven. Danny didn't feel particularly hungry and picked at the food. If anyone made any remarks to him about being a Cherb, he didn't notice. He murmured thanks when Dixie told him how she loved the way he had put the disc into Exshaw's pocket.

"Looking worried there," Smyck called across the table.

"Worried by what?" Danny said.

"The Hall of Shadows won't like a Cherb," Exspectre said, his pale eyes fixed on Danny.

"What is the Hall of Shadows?" Danny asked, with an uncomfortable feeling that he hadn't asked enough about the induction.

"Not allowed to tell you," Les said. He would not meet Danny's eyes.

"All you have to do is tell the truth," Dixie said, "or at least don't tell a straight lie. The shadows always know."

"Gone a bit pale, Cherb," Smyck jeered.

When they were finished, Danny decided to wander out of Ravensdale and into the school on his own. He was aware of ravens watching him, but he was already used to it. He looked around and saw Les and Dixie in

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conversation. When he was sure they weren't looking his way, he nipped around the corner and walked quickly to the front door.

Outside, sheets of fine sleet were blowing across the grounds. It was so cold that the sleet was lying on the grass without melting. He had intended to walk for a while and have a last look around before he left, then go to the boys' Roosts and pack his suitcase, but the sleet was falling so heavily that soon he found himself blundering around the lawns, hardly even able to see the gray bulk of Wilsons.

He had just made up his mind to go straight to the Roosts when his shin struck a rock.

"Ouch!" he exclaimed. As he put his foot to the ground, he realized too late that he had struck the stone parapet at the top of a set of decorative steps. His foot slid out from under him, and two things happened very quickly. The first was that he slid down the steps with an ugly series of impacts that drove the breath from his lungs. The second was that a long black knife whistled through the air above his head and buried itself with a thwunk in the trunk of a tree just behind where he had been standing. In the sleet Danny could see a shadowy figure moving swiftly away.

"I've had enough!" He'd been kidnapped, forced into spy school and almost murdered three times, all in two days. With a roar he leapt to his feet and raced toward the spot where he had seen the figure.

Whoever it was had left clear tracks in the sleety