The Unknown Spy (3 page)

D
anny had tried to stay awake as the snowy fields lightened, illuminated but not warmed by the rising sun. But the air in the cab was warm and fuggy, and before long he’d fallen asleep. He slept as they hurtled along, Fairman guiding the cab through the barren lands that lay between the Upper and Lower Worlds. Few people knew the routes, and Fairman was the only one permitted by treaty to use them. Once there had been comings and goings between the Two Worlds—the angels in old paintings were in fact messengers—but war had broken out, ending only with the negotiation of a harsh treaty that promised death to those who broke it. A key term was that there be no more movement between the worlds. The Upper World was too vulnerable to attack by the Lower and its deadly
army of Cherbs, who, like Danny, had pointed faces and different-colored eyes.

Danny didn’t wake until they were on the road leading to Wilsons, Fairman perhaps intending it to be that way. The route through the barren lands was his; he probably didn’t want some little spy nosing it out and recording it for future use.

Danny stared as Fairman wound up the Wilsons driveway. The main building towered above the cab. There were turrets and buttresses and blind windows and complicated angles, all in a mixture of styles. Statues of nymphs stood in niches and gargoyles peered down from the roofline. There was snow on the ground here too, and great icicles hung from the eaves. Danny looked across the gardens to the Roosts, the dormitories built on iron legs that rose high into the trees. A thin thread of smoke rose from the girls’ Roosts. He wondered how many of his friends were there—all of them, he hoped, since they were mostly orphans and had nowhere else to go.

Fairman stood on the brakes, so that Danny banged his head against the seat in front.

“Ouch!”

“We’re here,” Fairman said. “Get out.”

“What do you do when someone pays?” Danny muttered, getting his gear together. “Do they ever get please and thank you?”

“Folks pay a high price to ride in this cab,” Fairman said, baring his teeth in an unpleasant grin. “Please and thank you don’t mean nothing to them.”

Danny shivered. He didn’t want to think what price
they paid. He got out of the cab and watched it speed off, then turned to look at the school, imagining himself to be alone. But in fact, several pairs of eyes were studying him.…

Brunholm watched with satisfaction from the Third Landing; his plans were unfolding nicely. Above his head, in a niche once reserved for the statue of the goddess Artemis, stood the siren, Vicky, mischief bubbling in her pretty eyes.

So the Fifth is back, she thought. I wonder who would pay for that information. And high above the siren’s head, perched on a crumbling gable, the black eyes of a rook gazed steadily down.

Danny thought about going over to the Roosts and meeting his friends, but he wanted to know why Devoy had summoned him back early. For nothing good, he thought sourly, particularly if Brunholm was involved. He went into the entrance hall. Unusually, there was no one behind the desk. Danny was uneasy. The porter, Valant, was always there. Danny went to the desk and rang the bell, but there was no response. He was about to turn away when he heard a groan.

He went behind the counter. Valant lay on the floor, eyes fluttering, his hand to his head, where a large bump was starting to rise.

“What happened?”

“Hit from behind,” Valant groaned. “Took me like I was an amateur. I just heard a movement behind me, then lights-out.” He sat up, fingering his head. “I must be getting old.”

“Why … I mean, what …,” Danny started to ask, but Valant’s eyes had already gone to the great board above their heads.

“Keys,” he said grimly. “He was after keys and he got them.”

Danny looked up. There was every kind of key under the sun on the board, from little padlock keys to great ornate iron dungeon keys. It was said that only Valant knew what they were all for. The porter got to his feet and set off down one of the corridors.

“He knew what he wanted and he got it,” he repeated over his shoulder.

“Which did he take?”

“The key to the Unknown Spy’s room. His wife was staying with him. If she’s abroad in Wilsons …”

Valant didn’t have to finish the sentence. The Unknown Spy and his wife had been undercover for so long that their minds had given way under the pressure. They could not remember who they had been, or what lost mission they’d been on. Everyone they met was a potential enemy. You could reason with the Unknown Spy to some extent, but his wife shot first and asked questions later. Last time she’d been on the loose there had been several serious injuries.

Valant hurried down the corridor, with Danny following. The door to the Unknown Spy’s room stood open. Danny made for it, but Valant stopped him. He took an old-fashioned flintlock pistol from his inside jacket pocket and cocked it, then, beckoning to Danny, crept slowly forward.

The room was in darkness, the way the Unknown Spy normally kept it, but Danny dug in the pocket of his trench coat … he was sure he’d found one in there before … and there it was, a battered metal torch. He flicked it on. The beam showed that the room had been ransacked: drawers emptied, furniture slashed open, its stuffing strewn across the floor. A body lay on the carpet in front of the empty fireplace.

“Here,” Valant said, thrusting the gun into Danny’s hand. “Keep your eyes peeled. Whoever did this can’t be far away.”

The porter went down on one knee beside the body. It was a woman. Her face was lined and her gray hair tumbled over her shoulders, but Danny could tell that she had once been beautiful. As if reading his thoughts, Valant sighed.

“Ah, that so much beauty should end like this. She’s dead.”

“Who is she?”

“No one knows her real name. She is the wife of the Unknown Spy. When they came here many years ago she was like a queen, regal and haughty and quite, quite mad. Look.”

From her back protruded a knife with a strange metal handle forged in the shape of a raven.

“The ravens have a part to play in everything. In death as in life,” Valant said, straightening. There was a flutter near the ceiling and a dark shape glided out the door. “Nothing happens here that they don’t know about.”

“Could they not tell us who did it?” Danny asked.
“Spell a name out in twigs or fly to the place where the person lives?”

Valant shook his head. “The ravens do things for their own reasons, not for ours,” he said. “And a dead human means no more to them than a dead bird lying at the side of the road does to us. No. The urgent thing now is to find the Unknown Spy.”

They found him five minutes later. He was sitting on a bench in the shrubbery, muttering to himself. He did not look up as they approached.

“She was dead when I found her, stiff and cold,” he said. “She was dead when I found her.”

“Did you see anyone?” Danny asked. The Spy glanced up, then leapt to his feet.

“You!” he exclaimed. “They told me … they said … what did they say …?” His voice trailed off. Danny and Valant continued to question him, but he would not say anything else.

Valant shook his head and took the Unknown Spy gently by the arm. “I am very sorry for your loss. She was a rare woman.” The Spy raised his head and a single tear ran down his cheek. “We had better wake Master Devoy and give him the news.”

H
alf an hour later Valant, Danny and the Unknown Spy stood in the Spy’s room with Devoy and Brunholm. Devoy was wearing a suit, but Brunholm had on an extremely loud floral dressing gown, which looked incongruous beside the cold dead body.

“Call McGuinness,” Devoy said. “We have a murderer in our midst.”

“I’ve already done it,” Valant said.

“And I wasn’t far away.” They all turned to see the Wilsons detective in the doorway behind them. McGuinness was wearing a raincoat. His gray hair was cropped close, and he had the air of having seen everything bad that people could do to each other so that nothing surprised him. He took in the scene with an expert eye, then knelt to examine the body.

“Well?” Brunholm growled. Danny resisted the temptation to tell Brunholm that even McGuinness couldn’t solve a crime in two minutes, but McGuinness merely fixed the vice principal with a thoughtful expression.

“There are two main possibilities: first, that someone wanted to murder her, and second, that she stumbled across someone ransacking the room.”

“Looking for what?” Brunholm exclaimed.

“Yes indeed, looking for what,” Devoy said, in a musing voice.

“For that, I’m afraid you’d have to ask the Unknown Spy,” McGuinness said.

“Or find out who he really is,” Danny heard himself say. The others turned to look at him.

“Well, if we find out who he is, maybe we can find out what the killer was after.”

“Makes sense to me,” McGuinness said.

“Yes, well,” Brunholm said, “you can get on with working down the normal channels, full resources of the college available to you, no stone left unturned, et cetera, et cetera.”

Danny eyed him. The slippery Brunholm didn’t seem too enthusiastic about finding out the Unknown Spy’s real identity.

Devoy turned to Danny as if seeing him for the first time.

“Ah yes, of course, young Caulfield. Well, at least you have arrived safely. I must speak to you later. It’s breakfast time now, however, and I’m sure you’re hungry. Most of the pupils have gone home for the holidays, but there are still a few here with whom you are acquainted. Skip along to Ravensdale and have something to eat. I’m sorry that your first hours back have been so distressing.”

In spite of the shocking sight of the dead woman, Danny was in fact very hungry, and he was delighted to take himself off to the little village called Ravensdale, some of whose houses had been converted into canteens for the pupils. He made his way along a maze of corridors, remembering to look out for signs indicating the way, such as the ravens painted on the floor pointing south. When he reached the curtained entrance to Ravensdale, he took a deep breath before entering.

He found himself on an ancient street with old houses on either side. Above his head a raven cawed. Otherwise nothing moved. He glanced at the names on the house doors as he walked: T
HE
J
EDBURGHS
. T
HE
K
AMIRILLA
. If you walked to the top of the deserted street you would find a gallows. But Danny wasn’t going that far. He saw a door with C
ONSIGLIO
D
EI
D
IECI
on it and gratefully plunged in. The Consiglio was his assigned dining place.

The first thing to greet him was the smell of frying bacon. The second was squabbling voices.

“You’d eat it if it was a blood sausage,” a thin raggedy-looking boy with wings was saying to a pale-faced girl whose prominent incisors made her look like a vampire.

“Leave Vandra alone, Les,” said a blond girl with a slightly absent look on her face, while a dark-haired boy with sallow skin studied a piece of bacon suspiciously.

“Er, I’m back,” Danny said. The reaction was instant. The blond girl ran over and threw her arms around his neck, covering him in crumbs and butter. Les, the winged boy, leapt up with a huge grin on his face, while Vandra, who was a physick, a healer with a vampiric appearance, bared her incisors in a smile that if you didn’t know her would be truly terrifying. (Although if anyone had been looking, they would have seen a hint of color creep into her cheeks at the sight of Danny.) Even Toxique, the trainee assassin, thrust the piece of bacon he had been studying into his mouth so that he could shake hands with Danny.

Dixie, the blond girl, disappeared and reappeared at the other side of the table beside the physick, who glared at her crossly.

“Do cut that out, Dixie.”

“I can’t help it; I’m excited. We didn’t know if you were going to come back,” Dixie explained to Danny.

“I wasn’t sure myself,” Danny said. “Devoy sent for me to come back early, I still don’t know why.”

“I see blood,” Toxique said suddenly, “blood and death.”

Toxique had the Gift of Anticipation and could often tell what was just about to happen.

“Give it a break, Toxique,” Les said.

“Honestly,” Vandra said, “I thought you’d gotten over all that blood and death stuff.” Toxique looked abashed, but Danny grasped his arm.

“You’re right,” he said quietly, “there
is
blood and death in the air.” He told them about the Unknown Spy’s wife.

“Blimey,” Dixie said, “things have a habit of happening around you, did you ever notice that?”

“Least it makes life interesting,” Les said. “It’s been pretty boring around here since the holidays started and everyone went home.”

“Boring, boring, boring.” Dixie rolled her eyes.

“Christmas was nice,” Vandra said. “Devoy got us all presents, as usual, and we had a nice meal.”

“Except the meal was in Brunholm’s rooms,” Les said. “Toxique was convinced the man was going to poison the lot of us. We had to listen to Brunholm sing ‘Good King Wenceslas.’ Not for the fainthearted.”

“The lady was murdered,” Toxique said quietly. “We need to find out who did it, and why. Could be one of us next.”

“He’s right,” Vandra said. “If Devoy brought you here early, then something’s up, and the murder could be connected. We must put our heads together and think about it.”

“Perhaps not solve the murder,” Danny said. “McGuinness is working on that. But if we could find out
about the Unknown Spy and his wife, who they really were …”

“Good idea,” Dixie said brightly. “How?”

“We need to get a look around the Unknown Spy’s room,” Les said. “Stands to reason there’s got to be answers there.”

“Danny isn’t doing that today,” Vandra said. “Look at him—he’s out on his feet.”

“Here,” Les said, sliding a dish of bacon, sausage and fried egg toward him. “That’ll set you up.”

“Whoops,” Dixie said, “how was your Christmas? Never thought to ask.”

Danny stuck a fork into a sausage and took a great bite, as much to avoid answering Dixie as from hunger. He was aware of Les watching him with concern. When finally he’d finished eating and they were all walking together down the Ravensdale street, he found Les beside him.