The Unknown Spy (21 page)

“I wanted to get this door open too,” she said, “so I reckoned you would be here. I wouldn’t have gotten the key so fast, though. Go on. Open it.”

THE DIARY OF MATT SCALPLE

T
he key turned easily. They found themselves in a small ill-lit room dominated by a portrait of Ambrose Longford. There were photographs of Rufus Ness, Nurse Flanagan and Conal, and glass cases displaying robes that had once been worn by the Ring, according to a faded placard.

“Why the big secret about this room?” Lily said. “There’s nothing here.”

“No,” Danny said, disappointed. “I thought there might be something to tell us who our parents were.”

“What’s this?” Lily was peering at an old notebook in a small case. The case was locked, but it only took a few seconds for her to open it. She blew the dust off the cover.

“ ‘The Diary of Matt Scalple,’ ” she read. “But it’s all burned and the pages are stuck together—it’s hard to read.”

“Let me see.” Danny flipped the pages. It appeared to be an account of events leading up to a battle between the Ring of Five and the defenders of Wilsons Island. At first things went well for Wilsons; Cherb attacks were repulsed. But then it became clear that a great terror was abroad. Matt Scalple referred to rumors of villages being destroyed, of armies devastated. Then came the final page, torn and burned.

They’ve found out what it is … the terror.…It’s coming now.…Nothing can stand in his way … the power of the Fifth …

The page was torn and dirtied with what appeared to be bloodstains. After that there was nothing.

“The Power of the Fifth?” Lily said, gazing at Danny with something like wonder.

“I don’t have any power,” Danny said.

“Are you sure about that?” Lily said excitedly. “We’d make them all sit up if you did! Think about it, Danny. What we could do, if the Fifth has powers … We could take over anything—both worlds, if you wanted!”

“I don’t want to take over anything,” Danny said, “and I’m telling you I don’t have any power.”

“That’s the difference between us,” Lily said a little mournfully. “I want to take over things. I think we’re black and white, good and evil, Danny. I think the good comes out on top in you most of the time, and the bad in me. Most of the time.”

Danny wandered around the badly lit room. He didn’t want to leave it. For the first time in his life he had real family, and although he and Lily didn’t have any clues to
who their parents might be, he knew the truth must be close. The members of the Ring looked down on him and he could feel the tug again, as if they were telling him that they were his real family.

Lily sat on a low seat by the wall.

“You know what my mission is,” she said wearily. “To break the Stone, or Rufus Ness will kill me. Will you help me, Danny?”

“I have to bring the Stone back, protect it.…The treaty …”

“You’re right, Danny,” Lily said. “Wilsons is more important.”

“You’re the only family I’ve got,” Danny said desperately.

“I know.”

“If the Stone is broken …”

“If the Stone is broken,” Lily said suddenly, sitting up, “it doesn’t mean war. Not if you take your proper place at the head of the Ring of Five. You can stop them from attacking Wilsons and trying to invade the Upper World.”

“Do you think so?” Danny asked. “Do you really think so?”

“Yes!” Lily said. “We can do this!”

“I’m not sure I want to go back to the Ring,” Danny said, uncertainty flooding through him.

“Well, there is another way,” Lily said slowly.

“What?”

“If you are the Fifth, then I can also be the Fifth. I
could join the Ring in your place. With you at Wilsons and me in the Ring …”

Danny turned it over feverishly in his mind. It could work. After all, even if they protected the treaty this time, the Ring would keep coming after the Stone—and eventually they would succeed. If Danny could control events …

“You get it,” Lily said, watching him carefully. “It could work.”

“I have to think,” Danny said.

“Just don’t take too long,” Lily said. “It’s my neck on the line, after all. And talking about necks on lines, we’d better get out of here before they miss their key.”

“There’s one thing I don’t have to think about,” Danny said. “You
are
my sister, Lily. I know it in my heart.”

They left the room, closing and locking the door behind them. Danny slipped the key into his pocket. As they were walking away, he glanced back at the black door.

“I still don’t see why it should be locked,” Danny said. His eye passed over a little brass plaque, almost invisible under generations of dirt, in the shadows to the left of the door.

If he had read the plaque, he would have known why the room was kept locked. Underneath the grime, the inscription read:
This a rare example of a Room of Malign Intentions. In this room foolish or evil thoughts are intensified, while good and wise choices are pushed to the background. It was thought that this was a fitting place for a
display on the Ring of Five. The room was locked by order of the vizier after a series of attempts to overthrow him, inspired by visits to the room
.

W
hen Danny got to his and Dixie’s room he found that Dixie’s gear was gone. He went out to the corridor, where he ran into Louis.

“Where’s Dixie?” Danny demanded.

“She thought it would be better to have a room of her own,” Louis said. “It’s just down the corridor. But I think she’s gone to the library to work.”

Danny eyed the boy suspiciously. Was he as wholesome as he looked?

He spent the rest of the day searching for Dixie without success. There were libraries on the north side of the kingdom, and he went through all of the cavernous disused rooms, many of which held moldy books stuck together with damp. Evidently it had been a long time since there were outside students in the libraries of Morne.

No one bothered Danny, although people still whispered behind his back and he had the feeling that reports were going back to the vizier.

That evening as he walked back toward his room, he caught sight of Dixie in the distance.

“Dixie!” he called. She was intent on a book, but when she heard his voice she looked up and disappeared. When he got to the spot where he had seen her, the open book was lying on the ground, but there was no sign of her, no matter how much he called her name. He picked up the
book. It was an old leather-bound tome, and the title, embossed on the cover in faded gold letters, was
On Treachery
. Danny had the uncomfortable feeling that Dixie had meant for him to find it.

T
he next few days passed without incident. Dixie was obviously disappearing every time she saw him, and her room was always locked. Danny didn’t know what to do with himself. He went to the storeroom both nights, but there was no sign of Lily. He saw her during the day, but she was always with the Cherb, who glared at him if he got too close.

On the third day he met the chancellor, Camroc, in a corridor. Camroc was bustling along but stopped when he saw Danny.

“Are you still here?” he said in surprise.

“Yes, well, I’m, er, still studying,” Danny said, “and I’ve still got to tell the vizier what the mountain says.”

“Of course,” Camroc said. “I’m getting so forgetful. That’ll be during the Leaving Ceremony in two days.”

“The Leaving Ceremony?” Danny asked, puzzled.

“Yes,” Camroc said, “there will of course be music and the singing of the old songs.” Camroc looked off into the distance and hummed a few bars, and for the first time Danny realized that there was a strong smell of red wine from Camroc.

“What is the Leaving Ceremony?” Danny asked. Camroc looked at him in surprise.

“It’s when the kingdom of Morne moves to a new
location. The rain forest, I think, this time. Canoeing on the Amazon to look forward to, boy!” Camroc burst into song, a strange, harsh noise in an unknown tongue, not without a certain wild beauty. Danny stared at him. He had two days to make up his mind: would he steal the Treaty Stone and bring it to Wilsons, or join forces with Lily?

M
any miles away Agent Stone rubbed his tired eyes, put down the book he had been studying and sighed.

“What is it?” Pearl asked.

“It should be one of the great discoveries,” he said, “the existence of a whole new world, separated from ours by space and time. The old legends begin to make sense, the stories of the gods and the underworld—so why am I so worried all the time?”

“Maybe because the fate of both worlds now rests on the shoulders of a small boy,” Pearl said, “and that boy is …”

“Our son?” Stone said.

“Don’t say that,” Pearl said. “It isn’t true.”

“Perhaps not in a strict sense,” Stone said, “but he has no one else.”

“He might have been better off without us. With us around he didn’t have to look far to find the meaning of betrayal. We cheated him from the start.”

“Then we must make up for that,” Stone said.

“If we can,” Pearl said, sitting down and staring into the ashes of the fire. “If we can.”

THE IRON MAIDEN

T
ry as they might, Vandra and Toxique could not get Les to tell them what familiar thing he thought had changed in Wilsons.

“I have to be sure first,” he said. “What if I’m wrong? It would be terrible if I was wrong. I have to talk to someone on the staff.”

“Who would you talk to?” Toxique asked.

Vandra snorted. “Not Brunholm, anyway. And Duddy’s not much use.”

“What about Valant? Or Spitfire?”

“No,” Les said with a frown, “I’ll have to go right to the top.”

“To Devoy?” Vandra said.

“To Devoy,” Les said grimly, then, as if to himself, “but what if they’re all in on it?”

* * *

I
t was no surprise to Vandra and Toxique when Les got out of bed that night and sneaked out of the boys’ Roosts. They had concealed themselves on the roof of the girls’ Roosts to watch for him. Les was so lost in thought as he passed them that they could have dropped something on his head and he wouldn’t have noticed. Once he had descended the stairs they jumped down and followed him. He made a beeline for the main building. Vandra and Toxique had learned much about tracking in Wilsons, but they didn’t need any of their skills, Les was so wrapped up in his mission.

They followed him through the front door, past Valant’s empty desk and into the gloomy corridors that led to the heart of the building. They soon lost sight of him in the shifting shadows, and when they came to a fork they argued about which branch to take until a raven flew over their heads and into the left-hand branch.

“I think that settles it,” Vandra said, and they followed the raven. On they went, passing one of the interior courtyards where the Messengers exercised, the lighting getting dimmer and dimmer, until they were almost in darkness.

“I don’t like this,” Toxique said, his voice rising. “I think someone’s going to attack!”

The lights went out altogether. Toxique shrieked as a wiry arm wrapped around his neck. Vandra fell heavily against the wall but recovered quickly enough to grab a
torch from her pocket. When she turned it on, she saw Les choking Toxique.

“Les!” she shouted. “It’s us!” Slowly he released Toxique.

“Sorry. I thought it was … Never mind. You’d better come with me now. But stay outside when I’m talking to Devoy.”

They jumped at a clanging noise from nearby.

“What’s that?” Toxique whispered, a hysterical edge to his voice. They heard the sound again.

“Take it easy, Toxique,” Vandra said, but there was something sinister about the noise.

“It’s this way,” Les said. He set out determinedly. With a glance at each other, Vandra and Toxique followed.

The noise was coming from the other side of the teachers’ common room. They crept through it. The Unknown Spy watched them silently from his barred window. They could almost feel his eyes on them as they tiptoed past, approaching the front of the house. Toxique looked terrified.

“The noise …,” he said. “It’s coming from that room—you know the one.”

“The torture chamber,” Vandra said grimly.