And then, as if through some unspoken agreement, the three friends bent their heads over Adam’s piece of newspaper.
It was a different article, about shops in the Nordlands being forced to close if owners didn’t display portraits of Chancellor Mors in their windows, and about shop looting and vandalism in the dead of night—crimes targeting shops owned by immigrants and those outside the religious majority.
Adam gave his friends a shaky grin once they’d finished reading the scrap of article. He turned it over.
On the back was an innocent advertisement for collapsible top hats.
And written in black ink across the advert: wish you were here.
“Well, that’s odd,” Adam said, pulling a face. “Who’d wish I were inside of a collapsible top hat advert?”
But Henry and Rohan could see that, despite Adam’s joking manner, he too had found the article disturbing.
“I’ll bet it’s Valmont,” Henry whispered the next morning, on their way to chapel.
“I wouldn’t be surprised, after what Frankie threatened to do to him,” replied Rohan.
But at breakfast, no letters arrived. And none came the following day or the day after that.
“Definitely Valmont,” Henry whispered to his friends when Professor Lingua’s back was turned. “Two letters? I mean, it’s a bit pathetic to send just the two and then forget about it, but that’s Valmont.”
The next morning, a letter arrived for Rohan.
“He probably overheard us in languages,” Rohan commented, calmly slitting the envelope with his butter knife. “In any case …” Rohan trailed off and went quite pale.
“What is it?” Adam asked, leaning across the table and trying to make a grab for the letter.
But Rohan wouldn’t show them until they were in private, so the classes that morning and afternoon seemed to go on for an age.
“Let me see it,” Adam said the moment they’d escaped back to their room during the hour free.
Wordlessly, Rohan slammed the piece of paper onto his desk.
It wasn’t newsprint. Henry could see that right away.
No, it was worse.
It was a scrap of paper torn from a book. There was an illustration, a gross caricature, really, of turbaned men with long, curved swords and evil grins of triumph, holding up the bloody, severed heads of their enemies by the scalp.
Written across the picture in thick black letters: get out before we make you.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Rohan said stiffly, exiting the room.
Henry and Adam looked at each other, and then back down at the cartoon.
“He’s gone too far,” Henry said, “which means that we haven’t gone far enough. I say we retaliate.”
“How?” Adam asked.
“Frankie would know.”
“I suppose,” Adam said. “So, do you think we should go after Rohan?”
Henry shook his head. He was fairly certain that Rohan just wanted to be alone.
***
When Frankie climbed through their window that night, Rohan grinned.
“Oh, hello, Frankie. Glad you could make it,” he said.
Frankie raised an eyebrow. “Who are you and what have you done with Rohan?”
“How terribly funny,” Rohan said. “Isn’t she funny, Adam?”
“Who are you and what have you done with Rohan?” Adam asked.
Henry quickly filled Frankie in on the letters.
“So you think it’s Valmont?” she asked, wrinkling her nose.
“You don’t?” Henry asked.
“No, I do. I was just hoping you hadn’t made any other enemies that I didn’t know about.”
“It’s either Valmont or Lord Havelock,” Adam said. “Which do you think is the most likely?”
“Point taken,” Frankie said. “Now, how badly would you like to get him back for this? We can humiliate him, get him in trouble, scare him, or hurt him. I’d recommend the first.”
“All four isn’t an option, then?” Rohan said, smiling ruefully.
“I think I like evil Rohan,” Frankie said, and Rohan bristled.
“I agree, humiliation seems the way to go,” Henry said, rescuing Rohan from Frankie’s inevitable teasing.
“Then listen carefully …” With a wicked smile, Frankie told them exactly what she had in mind.
Come Monday morning, they were all exhausted. Henry nearly nodded off into his toast at breakfast—just like Professor Stratford used to.
“Long night?” Edmund asked, looking up from the book he was reading.
Henry yawned and shrugged. “Longer day ahead,” he said, as they had medicine, then military history, then extra fencing.
“Did you know about the reading room on the second level of the library?” Edmund asked.
“No, why?”
“My brother told me that it’s really good for quiet studying,” Edmund said, topping off his tea. “Since some people seem to feel that they own the main library and can be as loud as they wish.”
Henry smiled sympathetically. He knew exactly what Edmund was talking about. Theobold and Valmont had styled themselves after the older students, joking around in the library and ignoring the librarian when he told them off, much to the annoyance of everyone who was actually trying to study.
“Thanks,” Henry said. “I’ll take a look.”
Even though medicine was his favorite class, it seemed to Henry that the clock’s minute hand had lost all will to move. Finally, finally, it was time for military history, and Henry, Adam, and Rohan tried very hard not to look guilty as they took their seats.
Valmont, as usual, swaggered to the front row, alongside Theobold.
Henry’s heart thundered when Lord Havelock swept into the room.
“Textbooks out,” Lord Havelock snapped. “Turn to chapter twelve, on the crusades, and answer the end-of-chapter questions, the odds …” Everyone sighed. Lord Havelock smiled nastily. “… as well as the evens. This is individual work. You may begin.”
Henry removed his textbook, notebook, and pen from his satchel, trying very hard not to look at Valmont. He opened to chapter twelve, on the crusades, and wrote at the top of a fresh notebook page Chapter Twelve Questions, also trying very hard not to look at Valmont.
But Henry couldn’t help it—he looked.
Valmont, rather red in the face, was staring down at his closed textbook, hands on his lap.
“Mr. Valmont, is there a problem?” Lord Havelock asked.
Valmont looked up at their professor as though he could hardly believe what was happening. He shook his head.
“I said, is there a problem?” Lord Havelock asked, his voice lowering to a dangerous hiss.
“No, sir,” Valmont said.
The classroom had gone eerily quiet. Lord Havelock was a teacher who played favorites, and everyone knew that he often indulged Theobold and, especially, Valmont.
“Then why are you sitting there like an imbecile?” Lord Havelock roared.
Valmont clenched his fists at his sides. “I can’t open my textbook, sir,” he whispered.
“Show me.” Lord Havelock folded his arms and, in his billowing black master’s gown, rather resembled a bat staring down at Valmont as though poised to attack.
Valmont handed Lord Havelock the book.
Lord Havelock tried to open it, failed, and then examined the book closely.
“This has been plastered shut,” Lord Havelock announced, and although the class was too terrified to laugh, they all exchanged amused glances.
Someone had plastered Valmont’s textbook shut!
Henry wished Frankie were there to see the results of Adam’s expedition into the common room to borrow the textbook, Rohan’s foray into the kitchen for the ingredients, and his own replacement of the pilfered text into Valmont’s unsuspecting satchel.
“I suppose you’ll have to share with Mr. Archer,” Lord Havelock said, and Theobold shrugged indifferently. “You can do the odds whi
le he does the evens.”
This time a murmur rose up from the class. It wasn’t fair! Valmont’s and Theobold’s assignments had been halved.
Henry exchanged a horrified look with Adam and Rohan, then bent over his notebook and scratched out the answers for the next ninety minutes, wondering why the perfect plan had backfired.
***
“Thanks, Grim,” Valmont said after class.
“I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about,” Henry said.
Theobold caught up with them and flexed his hand.
“Yes, I’m awfully in your debt, Grim,” Theobold said. “I can’t imagine how cramped your hand must be after having to write out the whole assignment.”
Theobold and Valmont drifted ahead, laughing.
“That was horrible,” Adam said, shuddering. “Bloody horrible. It didn’t work!”
“Really?” Rohan said. “Because I thought it definitely worked. To the opposite effect.”
Collectively, they groaned.
“Was it you?” Edmund whispered to Henry as they practiced parry-riposte exercises in fencing that afternoon.
Henry grinned.
“I knew it!” Edmund said, missing a beat with his riposte so Henry’s sword landed a hit. “Sorry, let’s go again. I wasn’t ready. But anyhow, Luther said he thought it was some second years putting Valmont in his place for the business with the library, but I knew it was you and Adam.”
“Shhh,” Henry said, parrying again. Edmund’s riposte connected and they switched roles, Edmund parrying this time. “It wasn’t just the two of us.”
“Not Rohan?” Edmund whispered, with a parry so anemic that Henry nearly lost his balance on the riposte.
“And Frankie,” Henry admitted.
Edmund’s grip went slack.
“The girl?”
“It was her idea.”
“No!”
“Mr. Grim! Mr. Merrill! Have you perfected the move already?” the fencing master snapped.
“No, sir,” Henry said.
“Sorry, sir,” Edmund said fearfully. “It just takes some getting used to, fencing a left-hander.”
Good save, thought Henry.
“Then watch me,” the fencing master said, taking Edmund’s place opposite Henry.
Not so good save, thought Henry with a gulp.
Henry adjusted his stance and saluted the fencing master.
“No need for formalities,” the fencing master said. “And riposte!”
Without warning, the fencing master’s sword shot out, and Henry deflected the blow, then came back to center and struck, the master turning away Henry’s sword.
“Good,” the fencing master grunted at Henry, moving on to the next pair of beginners. The intermediates were in the corner, doing lunges in full gear. It looked horribly painful.
LOCKED IN THE LIBRARY
The textbook incident should have been the end of it. Henry, Adam, Rohan, and Frankie should have shrugged, chalked it up to bad luck, and gone on with their evenings as usual—playing cards, helping with one another’s homework, telling jokes, and generally pretending that they had never declared war on Valmont in the first place. There should have been a stalemate.
But that isn’t how it happened.
The letters, although not specifically addressed to Henry, Adam, and Rohan, continued to arrive in the morning post.
For “the occupants of the triple room, first-floor corridor, Knightley Academy,” there came an envelope containing a note quite possibly written in human blood. The message: your time here is finished.
Henry flushed it down the toilet, but the next morning, another letter arrived, stuffed under the door to their room: you’re going to fail.
Henry, Adam, and Rohan tried their best to ignore it. After all, what else could they do? Reignite a prank war that could get them all in trouble? And anyway, it was just silly messages—it wasn’t as though Valmont had done anything to back up the threats …
Two days later, Lord Havelock kept Henry after lessons.
Henry gave his friends a brave look and waved them ahead as he approached Lord Havelock’s desk at the front of the room.
“Can you tell me,” Lord Havelock began, and Henry nearly forgot how to breathe, “on what topic you chose to write your quarter-term essay?”
“On the plague, sir,” Henry said, puzzled.
“Just on ‘the plague’?” Lord Havelock asked with a threatening smile.
Up close, Henry could see the graying stubble on Lord Havelock’s cheeks, could smell a sinister, spicy pipe tobacco clinging to the professor’s tweeds.
“No, sir,” Henry said. “Specifically, I wrote about how Eastern and Western military conquest led to the opening of trade routes, which, in turn, brought the plague to the West and thus killed so much of the population that anyone left over was no longer restricted by the rigid class system, because there was no competition for land or resources.”
Lord Havelock frowned. “I received no such essay from you.”
Henry was horrified. What had happened to the essay? He’d worked so hard on it, staying in the library even long after Adam had left, and Adam always took forever because he pooled ink when he was nervous.
“Well, I turned it in, sir, yesterday, along with everyone else.”
Henry tilted his chin up, eyes meeting Lord Havelock’s, willing the professor to believe him.
“I received no such essay from you,” Lord Havelock said again, and Henry hung his head.
He wouldn’t be kicked out of Knightley Academy—he’d flunk out. Just like the letters had warned. Just like Valmont wanted.
“But there has been some tomfoolery as of late,” Lord Havelock continued, and Henry glanced up, hardly daring to hope, “and from your description, I have no choice but to conclude that you did indeed complete the assignment and hand it in on time.”
“Thank you, sir,” Henry said, feeling a rush of gratitude toward Lord Havelock.
“However,” Lord Havelock said with that dangerous smile, “as I have nothing to grade, you must do the assignment again. And I’ll want a different topic. Whatever happened to your essay, I’m sure its disappearance was provoked, and this will teach you not to let it happen again.”
“Yes, sir,” Henry said, relieved and yet exhausted at the thought of redoing the essay. “When shall I rewrite the paper?”
“Tonight,” Lord Havelock said. “I shall inform our librarian that you are to stay as late as you’d like past curfew.”
“Yes, sir,” Henry said.
And then Henry spent a far from delightful free hour in the library, going through the books to find a new topic for his essay.
At supper, Rohan asked Henry where he’d been.
“The library,” Henry said with a sigh, indicating the pile of books at his side.
“I’m guessing this has something to do with Lord Havelock?” Rohan asked.
“And Valmont,” Henry said darkly, stabbing violently at his pork tenderloin until it was full of little holes from the fork tines. “It seems my quarter-term essay was misplaced, so I’ll have to do it over, on a different topic.”
“That’s really awful, mate,” Adam said. “If I had to do mine over, I’d die.”
“I worked so hard,” Henry said. “It isn’t right. It isn’t as though he got in trouble for the textbook either. I mean, he said it himself: we did him a favor. So he does me this nasty turn in response?”
Henry shook his head, upset and disgusted at Valmont. The letters he could take. The letters were nothing, really. But this? He could have been expelled.
“At least Lord Havelock didn’t give you a zero,” Edmund said, sliding closer on the bench so that he joined Henry and his friends.
“True,” Henry said. “But that isn’t the point. Just look at him over there, drinking his cider like he hasn’t a care in the world.”
They all looked.
“He’s only a bully,” Edmund said, shaking his head. “The
obold’s by far the worse of the two. I promise you.”
“How do you mean?” Rohan asked, but Edmund just shook his head.
Henry wrote his essay in the study room off the second level of the library, the one Edmund had told him about. It was a small room, the size of his dormitory, with an oval table and squashy upholstered chairs going bald in the seats. There was one small window near the ceiling, heavy wooden paneling, and a wall of bookshelves nearly bare save for a few dictionaries and a decaying book of maps.
Hours passed, and Henry fell into the rhythm of his paper, not noticing that the cup of tea he’d brought had gone cold hours before, not noticing that a moth fluttered in the corner by the dictionaries, not noticing that the side of his hand had become gray with ink stain.
Finally, Henry capped his pen and read over his essay.
It was good. Possibly even better than the first. And he was exhausted.
If Henry owned a pocket watch, he would have checked the hour. Instead, he gathered his things, stretched his stiff legs, and turned the doorknob.
The door was locked.
Oh no, thought Henry.
He tried the knob again, but it was no use. He’d been forgotten, and worse, locked in for the night.
“Hello!” Henry called, pounding on the door.
No answer.
For a good ten minutes, he pounded and yelled. But no one came.
And no one was going to come, he knew, so he better make himself comfortable for the night.
With a sigh, Henry pushed two of the squashy armchairs together into a makeshift bed and climbed in, covering himself with his coat. From that angle, the small study room looked spooky, with its dark walls cast in shadow. Henry closed his eyes, wondering what time the door would be unlocked the next morning, and if Adam and Rohan would wake up and realize he hadn’t been back to the room.
Henry woke to the sound of a muffled click, a soft creak, and then the rather louder sound of a maid shrieking.
Henry bolted upright.
It was Liza, from the kitchens, a thick ring of keys attached to her belt.
“Hello, Liza,” Henry said, stretching and running a hand through his sleep-rumpled hair. “Could you tell me what time it is?”
“Quarter past six,” she said. “Whatchoo doin’ sleepin’ in the library, Master Henry?”
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