The Unknown Spy (24 page)

“Oil,” he said. “Somebody’s been keeping it lubricated.” All four went for lockpicks and hairpins, but Vicky was first. In a flash she had a long hairpin in her hand and the lock was picked. The others followed cautiously.

The room was a prison cell. The windows had been barred. There was a bare wooden bunk in one corner. On the floor was a tin mug half-full of brackish water, and beside it a tin plate with a few crusts. On the bunk lay a figure dressed in a dirty paisley dressing gown with what had once been a silk handkerchief in the pocket but was now a pathetic rag. A few scraps of hair clung to the skull; a pathetic attempt had been made to smooth them. Underneath the dressing gown were badly stained trousers. The person’s uneven breathing was only just audible.

“I do believe we’ve found Mr. Blackpitt,” Vandra said.

Blackpitt was unconscious. Vandra examined him.

“There’s nothing I can do for him here,” she said. “He’s severely malnourished. Whoever’s been keeping him here hasn’t bothered to feed him.”

“What’s this got to do with my intruder?” Vicky
demanded. Vandra rounded on her crossly, but Les intervened.

“Could be everything,” Les said. “The person who’s giving you a hard time could be the person who’s keeping Blackpitt here.”

“We need to get him to the apothecary,” Vandra said.

“I need him to talk,” Vicky said.

“In that case you’d better help us,” Vandra said. Vicky sprang to the bed and scooped up the unconscious Blackpitt as if he weighed nothing at all. She was out of the door like a shot. The others ran to catch up as Vicky leapt lightly across the rooftops.

Even Vicky couldn’t carry Blackpitt down the way they had come, though his emaciated body weighed very little. Instead, she led them to a little hut on the roof, which opened to reveal a rickety-looking lift. The cage was broken and the flywheel rusted. Vicky jumped on board. The others followed, Les looking nervously at Toxique.

“You getting any feelings about this?” Les whispered.

“Nothing,” Toxique said, “but that doesn’t mean the cable isn’t going to snap.”

“Thanks, Toxique,” Les said, and immediately grabbed the side of the cage as the ground was snatched away from under his feet. With a cacophony of shrieks and groans the ancient lift plummeted into the building. Sparks and flakes of rust flew from the cable. Toxique’s mouth was moving but Les couldn’t hear him. Even the normally calm Vandra was clinging to the side of the cage. Vicky looked unperturbed and punched a button with her
fist. The lift came to a halt as if it had hit a brick floor. Toxique groaned and fell over. Les felt as if all his internal organs had been hurled downward and squashed into his feet. The door screeched open and Vicky skipped out, still holding the unconscious Blackpitt.

Les staggered to the door. They were outside the apothecary entrance. Vicky pushed in and dumped Blackpitt on an examining table in front of a surprised Jamshid.

“Fix him,” she said.

A
n hour later Blackpitt was in bed, sleeping peacefully. Vandra had ingested a glucose solution that Jamshid had prepared and injected it into Blackpitt’s veins. He had whimpered a little and held up one frail hand, murmuring “No!” before falling back on the bed. There were bruises and marks of beatings all over his body. Vandra looked furious. Les bit his lip. He knew what he would do to whoever had done this. Jamshid shooed them out of the place.

They made their way out of the apothecary toward the stairs, not willing to chance the lift. As they set foot on the first step a familiar voice sounded from a hidden speaker.

“My three favorite cadets,” it snarled, “and with the beautiful if somewhat treacherous siren in tow. Another Fifth Regulation offense this time, I think. Latrine duty for the little Messenger. He’ll be picking filth out of his feathers for a month.”

They looked at each other. Whoever it was obviously hadn’t discovered that Blackpitt had been rescued.

“Toxique,” Les whispered. “I’ve got a plan. Go to the Roosts. Get as many people as you can and line them up as if they’re welcoming a visitor coming up the front drive. Quickly.”

Toxique looked at him in puzzlement; then realization dawned. He hurried off.

“Come on,” Les said to Vandra. “I didn’t want to risk having Toxique scream out when we’re sneaking up, but I want you to stay in the background, Vandra, when we make our move on whoever it is. Let’s go!”

V
icky took them back to the roof in the lift, the way up being no less terrifying than the way down. When the lift arrived, it fell back about six feet, then shot up again, striking the interior of the little hut with a crash.

“Ouch,” Les muttered as his head thumped against the wire cage. He and Vandra followed Vicky out of the lift. The wind cut through their clothing like knives. They found the shelter of a chimney and huddled behind it. Only Vicky was unperturbed, as usual. She produced a nail file and started manicuring her nails.

It felt like hours before they heard cheering coming from the direction of the front drive. It wasn’t very loud, and in fact sounded more like the grumbling of a large number of people who would rather be in bed. They waited another few minutes, then crept out. The rooftop was slippery from frost, and they had to move slowly, though the wind and the creak of aerials and dishes and
battered old surveillance equipment covered the sound of their advance as they moved toward the nest at the front of the building.

As they got close to the edge of the building, Vicky held up her hand. They could just see the outline of someone crouched in the nest. Moonlight glinted from binoculars. Down below there was another forced cheer from the gathered cadets.

Les, Vandra and Vicky approached the nest along the edge of the roof, not daring to look to their left, where the crumbling parapet had given way in places so that there was nothing between them and the sheer drop below. There was a flash of steel in Vicky’s hand. Closer and closer they crept. Les stopped Vandra. He didn’t want the physick getting caught up in a struggle; she was too important. The figure in the nest was intent on what was going on below and didn’t move.

Les and Vicky were almost at the edge of the nest when disaster struck. A small door onto the roof was flung open and Brunholm strode out.

“Hey!” he shouted. “You cadets! What are you doing up here? Get down right now!”

Things happened very fast after that. Brunholm stepped on a patch of ice and, with a howl of anger and pain, flew into the air and landed on his back. The figure in the nest whirled around. Les felt fingers like iron hawsers around his throat as he stared into a pair of red-rimmed eyes, one brown, the other bright blue. It was Rufus Ness, the spymaster of the Cherbs.

Suddenly, Ness gasped and his grip weakened. One
hand went to his shoulder, where bright red blood was spilling onto his tunic.

“So Cherb blood is red after all.” Vicky wiped her knife fastidiously with a lace handkerchief. Ness bellowed with rage and charged at her, but Vicky skipped out of the way. Les stood up and swayed, light-headed, dangerously close to the parapet. Down below, the crowd of cadets stared in silence at the combat on the rooftops.

“Don’t move!” Brunholm leveled a revolver at Ness. Ness spat on the ground and ran lightly along the parapet. Vandra tried to get out of his way, but she slipped. With a contemptuous grunt, Ness swung an arm at her. She staggered toward the brink and the rotten parapet beneath her feet gave way. There was a gasp from below, and a horrified intake of breath from Les as Vandra, without a sound, fell from view.

I
t was Toxique who later told them what happened next. He had found his fellow cadets asleep and had bullied and cajoled them out of bed by threatening to slip a mild but potent emetic into one of their meals if they didn’t come with him. He had led them to the driveway and ordered them to cheer, then watched as Vandra tumbled through the air, her fall taking an age, seeming almost graceful as the ground rushed toward her. A scream died in his throat. There was nothing to be done. Then, with the speed of an arrow, a small shape flew across the façade of the building. As Vandra turned in the air, she was seized by a pair of frail arms. The watchers held their breath as
the little rescuer struggled to maintain altitude, the weight too much for the small body, the ground approaching too fast. At the last second the rescuer found strength from somewhere, slowed, hovered in the air for a second, then fell straight into a patch of gooseberry bushes.

“Now, my dear,” the elderly Messenger Daisy had said, picking herself out of the bushes and attempting to remove several thorns from her legs, “one good turn deserves another, don’t you think?”

O
n the roof, Ness had disappeared in the confusion. Brunholm began to fire into the darkness. A ricochet struck the chimney beside Les’s head, and he had to wait until Brunholm had emptied the revolver and the hammer was clicking on an empty chamber before he could emerge from cover.

“Where’s Vicky?” he asked.

“Gone after that murdering scum,” Brunholm growled, pocketing the gun. A skylight in the roof was open and there was fresh blood on the entrance. “Let them go. Neither is any great loss.”

A
n hour later Devoy and Brunholm sat in the library of the third landing while Les, Vandra and Toxique told him what had happened.

“The levels of punishment were severe, I see that now,” Devoy said. “My thoughts were with Danny and Dixie, and I wasn’t paying attention to what was happening
right under my nose. It shakes me to my core to know that Rufus Ness infiltrated Wilsons. He was obviously responsible for the assassination attempts on you, Les—he must have planted the idea of killing Les in the Unknown Spy’s head—and the attempt on poor Daisy.”

“And me,” Brunholm put in. “That crossbow is a Cherb trick, all right.”

Devoy had been standing in front of the fire. Now he moved across the room until he was in front of the Mirror of Limited Reflection, which showed his face but none of the room behind him. He was indeed shaken to the core by the fact that Ness had been at large in Wilsons, might even still be there. He looked up at the portrait of Ambrose Longford. It had been an achievement in itself for the Ring to get Ness into Wilsons, but Devoy knew Longford always had a larger scheme up his sleeve.

“What about the Unknown Spy’s wife?” he asked.

“Ness, without a doubt,” Brunholm said. “It was done to turn the Unknown Spy against Knutt.” He looked at Les with dislike. “Though why he would go to so much bother to get rid of a mere Messenger boy …”

“Quite,” Devoy said, “no offense, of course,” he said to the reddening Les, “but it seems unnecessarily complicated. If he wanted to kill Mr. Knutt—and we are all glad that he did not, of course—why did he not just kill him and be done with it?”

“Unless,” Vandra began hesitantly, “it was a double bluff. We were meant to think he killed the Unknown Spy’s wife as a way of getting the Spy to kill Les, whereas in fact the attempt on Les’s life was a cover for getting rid
of the Unknown Spy’s wife, if you know what I mean …,” she concluded lamely.

“Excellent,” Devoy said, “you’re starting to think like a spy!”

“Yes,” Brunholm said, “it makes sense, but why?”

“Why indeed,” Devoy said. “How did Ness get into Wilsons? He couldn’t have done it on his own. Blackpitt is the announcer now, but in his early years he was an exceptionally efficient and cautious agent. Ness would have needed help to overpower him and to take over his position.”

“Excuse me,” Toxique said, “but we did find out something. We know that the Unknown Spy’s wife was an expert at the Sibling Strategy, but we don’t know what that is.”

Devoy’s expression did not change, although it came closer to changing than it had in many years. His eyes gleamed. Longford always had another motive, a hidden agenda. And these children had stumbled upon it. The Sibling Strategy? How could he have been so blind?

CRYING

T
he walls of Morne towered above Danny and Lily. Danny sprawled in the snow, panting, then leapt to his feet.

“Run!” he said. “They’ll be hunting us!”

“It’s all right,” Lily said. “They don’t leave the walls of Morne. Ever. That little door we came through is for visitors.”

“What about Macari?”

“The tunnel to his chip shop is part of the place. He never actually left the kingdom.”

“Still,” Danny said, “we need to get going. Night’s coming on. We have to get to the shelter of the town.”

The urgency of his own voice surprised him. It was as if he needed to get away before he became fully aware of what he had done. That moment wasn’t far off. Outside
the walls of Morne, the influence of the Room of Malign Intentions was wearing off quickly.

There was a loud rumble like distant thunder. The ground around them shook a little. A small piece of masonry fell from the wall above them and landed at Danny’s feet.

“What’s that?”

“It’s the kingdom getting ready to relocate,” Lily said. “It’s breaking free of the mountains.”

There was another loud rumble and this time a tiny maze of cracks ran along what had looked like a seamless join between the castle and the bedrock it stood on.