The Unknown Spy (5 page)

Devoy whirled around, the stiletto pointed at Danny.

“The Treaty Stone itself is discovered! The whole foundation of the Two Worlds is at risk.”

Brunholm had found his way to Danny’s side, so close that Danny could feel hot breath on the side of his face.

“There is a kingdom called Morne,” the vice principal said, his voice low and hard, “a part of the Lower World that exists in the Upper. The Stone is kept there for safety. But no longer. The Ring have discovered it.”

“We must have it, Danny,” Devoy said. Danny stared
at him, his eyes fixed on the stiletto in the headmaster’s hand. “We must!”

“Why—why me?” Danny stammered. “I mean, you have experienced spies.”

“Yes,” Brunholm said, “but none who have lived in both the Upper World and the Lower. One must travel through the Upper World to reach Morne. Your experience there is vital. Believe me, boy, if there was anyone else I could send—an adult—you would be drinking cocoa at home.”

“The under-sixteens were exempted from the treaty, in anticipation of happier times when students could cross over,” Devoy said. “The kingdom is placed in the Upper World to protect it, to keep the enemy out. Once you are there, it will require all your skills as a spy to get to the Treaty Stone before the enemy.”

“I don’t understand why the Ring wants the Stone. Either there is a treaty or there isn’t,” Danny said. “What’s to stop them from attacking the Upper World?”

“The treaty written on the Stone is binding under pain of death enforced by the Dead. You remember your oath in front of the Dead, Danny?”

Danny shivered. He remembered taking his oath as a spy, the voices whispering around him. He had no doubt that the owners of those voices would hold him to his word.

“The only way to break the treaty is to smash the Stone. That’s what the Ring want to do, and we must stop them,” Brunholm said. “If the Stone is broken, all rules are gone.”

Then Devoy spoke. His voice changed into something remote, majestic, in a way, like the light from distant stars that have been cold and dead for many years.

“ ‘Here is the treaty writ in stone. Here is the bargain sealed in blood. Death to the faithless. Death to the oath breaker.’ ”

“That is written on the Stone,” Brunholm said. Danny shivered. Who did they think he was, to send him to steal such a thing?

“You will not go alone,” Devoy said.

“You will have companions,” Brunholm said, “all your little pals except that tyke Knutt.” Seeing Danny’s mouth open in protest, Devoy interjected.

“It’s the wings, Danny. How can he go openly in the Upper World with wings?”

“We don’t have time to argue over trivialities,” Brunholm said gruffly. “Too much is at stake.”

“And yet we cannot rush into things without careful preparation, as much as time permits,” Devoy said. “Go back to your friends. Say nothing!”

Devoy looked resolute, ready to face danger, but as Danny turned to leave, he noticed a bead of blood on the man’s finger where the stiletto had pricked it.

D
anny went down the stairs deep in thought, avoiding the gaps by instinct. The mission itself was enough to take in, but knowing that he would have to leave Les behind worried him even further. When he got to the school hallway his friends were waiting.

“Well,” Dixie said eagerly, “are we going on another mission?”

“I think so …,” Danny said.

“Leave him alone,” Vandra scolded. “He’s probably been told not to say anything.”

“I bet it’s a tough one,” Les said. “Here. I thought you might be hungry.” He pressed a large hunk of chocolate cake into Danny’s hand. “I don’t mind what the mission is,” he went on, “as long as we do it together—isn’t that right, Danny?”

“As long as we’re together,” Danny said, the words out of his mouth before he realized he’d said them. He felt a dark little thrill at telling the lie, and groaned inwardly. No matter how hard he fought it, betrayal was in his blood.

“One thing at a time,” he said, changing his tone, making his voice brisk and businesslike. “Vandra’s right. I can’t discuss the mission. But we have our own mission tonight—to learn the identity of the Unknown Spy.”

I
n daylight, solving the murder of the Unknown Spy’s wife by finding out the couple’s true identities had felt like a straightforward matter. Now that the cadets were safely tucked up in the Roosts with a cold wind stirring the trees and the promise of further snow in the air, it didn’t seem such a good idea. Nevertheless, the boys met the girls on the balcony as arranged.

“Maybe we should leave the crime-busting to our ace detective, Mr. McGuinness,” Dixie said, suppressing a yawn.

“No,” Danny said, “it’s too important.”

“He’s right,” Vandra said. “We can’t just let a murderer prowl Wilsons. Any one of us could be next.”

By common consent, Toxique had not been included on the mission. He was hypersensitive to death, which was often useful, but he couldn’t help calling out at every hint of danger—moaning on about death and blood, as Dixie put it—which made them all nervous.

“Who’s on point of entry?” Danny asked, the term coming to him from a lesson forgotten until now.

“I am,” Les said. “There’s a cellar door under the corridor to the Unknown Spy’s room. I’ve already picked the lock. We’re ready to go.”

They set off down the stairs of the Roosts, moving silently in single file. Danny looked round his small team with approval. They were all dressed in dark clothes, high collars or hats pulled down over their eyes so that they could not be easily seen or identified. They carried a variety of equipment—there were flashlights and lockpicks hanging from belts. During the previous term they would never have been so well prepared. Danny hadn’t realized they had absorbed so much of what they had been told in class.

They kept close to walls or other shelter, moving warily and stopping to check their surroundings. When they got to the cellar door, Les quickly whipped off the padlock, the others forming a watchful semicircle around him. When he had finished, they all moved swiftly to enter, as if a part of the night had detached itself and flowed darkly through the small door.

Inside the cellar Danny lit a small flashlight and hooded it with his hand. Les indicated the direction they should go with a nod, and the others followed.

The cellar opened onto a dank little corridor dripping with water, little ferns growing from the walls.

“You sure you’ve been here before?” Vandra whispered.

“Yes,” Les said, “but you know what this place is like.”

It was always hard to find your way reliably in Wilsons. The corridors and staircases had a way of seeming to change direction, of not leading to the same place from one day to the next. You had to look out for clues as to what direction you were going in—but in this damp passage there were none. They walked on for five minutes, an uneasy feeling growing that they weren’t getting any nearer to the room of the Unknown Spy.

“It was dead easy today,” Les said. “I saw the cellar door under the Spy’s window, I popped the lock, and a manhole just inside led to the corridor outside his room.”

Danny shrugged. “It doesn’t matter, Les. We’ll follow this for a while and see where we end up. Sometimes I think the building itself is like an old spy, full of secrets and tricks and dead ends. Maybe we’re being led toward something else.”

“Yuck,” Dixie said, trying to brush a spiderweb from her hair, “maybe it’s leading us toward the biggest spider’s nest in the world. Feels like it, anyway.”

On they trudged, the tunnel walls getting older and older. Here and there were carvings, figures in relief or
etched into the stone. Though it was impossible to make out the faces depicted, to Danny there appeared to be a cruel turn to some of the features, making him secretly glad that they weren’t visible.

The cadets were just about to turn back when it happened. A sudden burst of air struck them, growing from a cold gust to a howling arctic gale. Danny felt ice sting his flesh like needles and frost form on his lips. Vandra cried out in pain and Les cursed in the distance. The cold was so intense that Danny’s flashlight dimmed and went out, then fell from his hand. In the howling of the wind they heard whisperings, dread voices speaking words that they did not understand but that were full of fear and loathing.

Danny was aware of shapes around him, haggard white faces with empty sockets where eyes should have been. At first they appeared without bodies, but then the bodies formed, frost bodies, hideously mutilated, with gaping spaces where hearts should have been, bellies rent open. They surrounded him, and he could feel hands clutching at his old raincoat, plucking at the fabric. With sudden terrifying force the hands were inside his coat. He gasped as sheer naked fear gripped him. The hands were strong and sinewy and freezing, and they would grab his heart from his chest and leave him lifeless and mutilated while they gorged on his warmth and life. He fell back onto the ground, consciousness fading. In the distance a light flared and he heard a voice cry out,

“ ’Ware old ghouls, ’ware!” Then blackness came over him and he knew no more.

* * *

D
anny woke up in a warm room, lying on a neatly made bed. There was a smell of hot chocolate, and when he raised his head he saw his companions sitting round a fire with blankets over their shoulders, sipping from steaming mugs.

The room was plain and tidy, everything in its place: shirts folded perfectly on a shelf, a single polished silver trophy on the mantel, some military decorations in a frame on the wall. He looked up to see Valant watching him, concern on his face.

“If you’re wondering where you are, you’re in my quarters,” Valant said. “You’re damn lucky to be alive, wandering down in the Butts on your own.”

“Sorry,” Les said with a weak grin. “That was my idea, actually. Thought it was a bit of a shortcut.”

“Thought you would avoid my beady eye in the hallway, more like,” Valant said. “However, no harm was done.”

“Who—or what—were they?” Vandra asked.

“They were ancient spies and traitors. The Dead of Wilsons. The Unquiet, they are called. You met them when you took your oath.”

“They were horrible,” Dixie said, “full of holes and all.”

“I suppose some of them were horrible,” Valant said. “The fact is that in medieval times spies were hanged, then drawn and quartered. They had their entrails and
sometimes their hearts cut out and held up in front of them.”

“You’d be a bit shook up after that,” Dixie said.

“They wandered the earth, haunted by their own cries of agony, unable to rest,” Valant said.

“But … they found their way to Wilsons,” Danny said slowly, “the only place in the Two Worlds where their treachery does not render them outcast, where they can have peace from their own screams.”

“Very impressive,” Dixie said.

“I could hear it,” Danny said, “in their voices.”

“They gathered around Danny,” Vandra said. “We thought they were going to kill him.”

“Really,” Valant said. “I thought you had just stumbled across them by accident—they are inclined to roam the Butts a bit. They seem to like it there. Has that dungeon feel, I suppose.”

“What are the Butts?” Danny asked.

“The secret passages that connect all the different parts of Wilsons—
if
you know what you’re doing, which obviously you four do not. I wonder why the Unquiet took a fancy to Danny here.”

“I don’t know,” Danny said. “All I remember is that they were cold, very cold.”

Danny remembered the chill, sinewy hand that had reached under his jacket. He reached into his jacket to feel the place where it had touched him, and to his shock, his fingers closed around a small parcel wrapped in what felt like oilcloth.

“Is everything all right, Mr. Caulfield?” Valant was looking at him curiously.

“Yes, yes, fine,” Danny said hastily. “I just thought for a moment they’d taken off with my heart.”

As his friends laughed, Danny hastily tucked the package into a more secure place. Was it underhanded not to tell his friends that the ghost spy had put something into his coat, or was he merely being cautious? He told himself that he was being cautious, but a part of him felt sneaky. It was one of the things he hated about the spy side of himself, the way he always had to mistrust his own motives.

“Are you going to tell Devoy about this?” Les asked Valant nervously. “It’ll be a Third Regulation offense at least.”

“What were you doing in the Butts?” Valant demanded. “Tell the truth!”

“We thought we could help find the killer of the Unknown Spy’s wife,” Vandra said. Valant looked at her sternly.

“If I smelled a lie you would be in Master Devoy’s study before your feet could touch the ground,” he said after a pause, “but I believe you, and I think that Master Devoy has enough to worry about without adding a bunch of amateur detectives to the list. Now, if you’re feeling a little less chilly, I suggest we get you back to the Roosts before you are missed.”

“Er, how do we do that?” Les asked.

“Here,” Valant said. “I think I can entrust this to …” His eye swept over the four, barely pausing at Dixie and
Les, dwelling for a while on Danny, then landing on Vandra with a thoughtful look. “… our physick here, who has a trustworthy if rather melancholy look.”

He handed her what looked like a glass ball.

“What is it?”

“A precious thing,” Valant said, “so I’ll expect you to take care of it. If you want to find your way back through the Butts, then tell it so.”

Vandra gave him a dubious look and turned to the glass. “The Butts,” she said shortly, as if it was a trick. But the glass started to cloud over immediately. It turned a murky brown, then a drippy gray, and a network of paths appeared on it.

“Where are we?” Dixie said, poking her head over Vandra’s shoulder. Straightaway five tiny figures appeared in the top left-hand side of the globe, enclosed by the walls of a room. The lines on the map showing the Butts shimmered and moved as Danny and his friends watched, sometimes merging with each other, sometimes turning back on themselves.