KNIGHTLEY ACADEMY

by Violet Haberdasher

  The players returned to their ends of the piste and went again, but it wasn’t much of a contest—Knightley continued cheering as James swiftly dispatched his opponent with a final score of 5–1.

  Henry reset the scoreboard to 0–0 as James and Luon shook hands and returned their swords.

  “Well done,” Henry whispered to James, and James, his blond hair matted to his head with sweat, smiled.

  Henry readied the swords for the next pair, and when the Partisan squire called, “Rohan Mehta of Knightley Academy against Volomir Dusseling of Partisan School,” Henry clapped his hand on his friend’s shoulder and wished him luck.

  Volomir, Henry noticed, was one of the larger Partisan students, and Henry wouldn’t have thought him to be a first year.

  Still, Rohan took his place opposite his hulking opponent, giving a curt salute and waiting for the call to begin, never betraying his fear.

  Henry wished he were allowed to cheer along with his schoolmates as Rohan quickly landed a hit to Volomir’s stomach.

  With the scoreboard changed to 1–0, Henry turned his attention back to the match. Rohan, although not quite as flawless in form as Adam, was light and quick on his feet—amazingly so. He was nothing but a blur to Henry, while Volomir seemed to stand still, his sword darting dangerously around him.

  Volomir landed a hit high on Rohan’s target zone, and Henry changed the scoreboard, hoping fervently that Rohan would win.

  It was close, with a final score of 4–5, but the match went to Volomir.

  Rohan removed his mask and shook hands with his opponent, and Henry watched Volomir pander to the Partisan crowd, pumping his fist in triumph, and then galloping toward Henry and throwing down his sword.

  Rohan smiled ruefully, his chest heaving and his face trickling with sweat.

  “You almost had him,” Henry said, and Rohan nodded seriously.

  “Next year,” Rohan swore.

  The fencing competition turned to the main attraction now that the novice fencers had gone, and Henry felt as though he was constantly hanging numbers on the scoreboard as the older boys’ swords clashed and hit to deafening cheers.

  Henry realized what Rohan had meant about the Partisan boys seeming so much bigger than their Knightley opponents, and as he watched Jasper Hallworth land a crushing blow to the side of a Partisan student’s mask while fencing sabre, comprehension dawned. It wasn’t that the Partisan students were taller or heavier, it was that they all looked like athletes, their muscles thick and their hair cropped short. The Knightley students spent their free hours sitting around their respective common rooms in front of chess and checkerboards, and they looked it.

  Finally, after Henry was long sick of hanging numbers over the scoreboard, the last fencers shook hands at the end of their match, and the Partisan squire called the end results: Partisan led by two bouts.

  Bad luck, Henry thought as the other students went off to watch the choirs compete, and he stayed behind to account for the swords.

  Henry busied himself with his checklist, watching the Partisan squire on the other side of the anteroom do the same with the masks and gloves. The last of the expert sabre fencers were toweling off, and the room had a musty, postsport smell that Henry hoped wouldn’t cling to his clothes.

  “Hallo,” the Partisan squire called, nodding at Henry.

  “Hello,” Henry said back.

  “Rum luck we’ve got here,” the Partisan squire said, indicating the boxes of gear he had to sort and account for. “Whadya do?”

  “Sorry?” Henry asked.

  “Whadya do, t’get stuck with equipment duty?” the boy asked in his Nordlandic accent.

  “Nothing.” Henry said, surprised. “At least, I don’t think I did. But my head of year isn’t particularly fond of me.”

  “I’m Meledor,” the boy said, and Henry couldn’t tell if it was his first or last name, but didn’t think it polite to ask.

  “Henry,” Henry said, dragging the equipment over to Meledor’s side of the anteroom. “What did you do, then?”

  “What ha’ent I done?” Meledor laughed darkly. “Ten demerits this week at inspection.”

  “Inspection?” Henry asked.

  As they sorted through the work, Meledor told Henry how he’d failed to tuck the corners of his sheets, correctly stow his spare uniform, iron the wrinkles from his trousers, tidy his work space—the list went on exhaustively. It seemed that Partisan was far stricter than Knightley, and with more severe punishments.

  Henry listened sympathetically. He was fascinated to learn the differences between the two schools, to find out that Partisan admitted students who were members of the Morsguard—a sort of student scouts who sang songs about their chancellor, marched in parades, and took Sunday lessons in making the right choices.

  “I cannae fathom how ye get on with that brown student,” Meledor said while Henry helped him finish sorting the gloves by size.

  “Rohan?” Henry said, puzzling through Meledor’s slightly foreign way of talking. “He’s one of my good friends.”

  “And yor folk at home don’t mind?” Meledor asked.

  Henry tallied the last of the large gloves and marked down the figure.

  “Why should they?” he asked.

  “Round here we call them heathen and leave them to their own, those who don’ keep the same god.”

  “Well, that’s a rather narrow way to live,” Henry said angrily, shaking his finished tally to dry the ink. “You should get to know a person before you judge him.”

  Meledor finished his own count and followed Henry to hand in the lists to the tournament head.

  “Why don’t you educate women?” Henry asked daringly.

  “Women learn from the world,” Meledor said. “No need to fill their heads with troubles they may never encounter.”

  “Troubles like reading?” Henry asked skeptically.

  “If a man wants his wife to read, he teach her and then she reads,” Meledor answered, leading Henry through a narrow stone passageway.

  “And if she wants to learn but he won’t teach her?” Henry asked.

  “An’ if a servant in your country wants to learn but his master don’t teach him?” Meledor accused.

  “That’s different,” Henry said. “It isn’t illegal to educate the lower classes. Your government’s given privileges to half its subjects and taken them away from the other half for no good reason.”

  “All men in the Nordlands are equal,” Meledor answered.

  “Not having titles doesn’t make everyone equal,” Henry said. “I doubt you’d be friends with a boy who worked in the kitchens.”

  “If we are both ill, a hospital treats him who arrived first. If we are both hungry but cannae afford food, the chancellor provides us the same bread.”

  “But you would not be equally ill, or equally hungry,” Henry said, thinking of the thin uniforms for the school staff.

  “We are all born the same, what happens after is free will,” Meledor said, pushing open a swinging door and signaling the attention of the tournament head.

  After Henry was relieved of his squire duties, the choir competition had already ended in Partisan’s favor, and Henry found his friends consoling Edmund.

  “It’s a cheat,” Edmund wailed over the meat puree and carrots they’d been given for their afternoon meal.

  “Actually, I thought Partisan was quite good,” Adam said, causing Rohan to elbow him in the side.

  “What are we watching next?” Henry asked. “Quiz or treaty?”

  “Quiz,” Rohan said promptly. “I want to see Valmont and Theobold embarrass Lord Havelock.”

  But Theobold, Valmont, and their teammate Luther didn’t make fools of themselves at all.

  By the end of the first round, they led by three points.

  “Round two, where every question is worth double,” Compatriot Quilpp, the quiz master, called. “At what age did pre–Longsword Treaty conscription laws bind boys to military service?”<
br />
  Luther rang the bell first.

  “Knightley?” Compatriot Quilpp called.

  “Thirteen,” Luther said.

  “Correct. Two points to Knightley.”

  The audience applauded.

  “What ancient weapon is said to be a cross between a pike and a scythe?”

  Partisan rang first.

  “A gisarme.”

  “Correct. Two points to Partisan.”

  Henry played along with the quiz in his head as he watched with his friends. It was strange rooting for Valmont. Not that he was rooting, exactly. But from his conversation with Meledor, Henry was becoming less and less a fan of Partisan School. Knightley had to win the tournament. Come on, Henry thought fiercely, win!

  “What was the title of the boy who carried the banner of a knight?” the quiz master asked, and Knightley promptly rang in.

  “A standard bearer,” Luther answered.

  Knightley was still up by three.

  “Which ancient knight was famous for his orders to massacre every occupant of castles taken by force?” the quiz master asked.

  Partisan took the point on this one, and the crowd cheered, as the whole match now depended on the next—and final—question.

  “Final question,” the quiz master said. “Which ancient order of knights is responsible for the idea of the ‘note of hand’?”

  Henry nearly laughed aloud. Knightley had this!

  Valmont hit the bell.

  “Knightley?” the quiz master asked.

  “The Knights Templar,” Valmont answered.

  “Correct!” the quiz master said. The room erupted in cheers.

  Henry grinned and clapped along with his friends, even though the results didn’t matter to the overall tournament score, even though it was just novice level and they weren’t particular friends with the boys on the team.

  Valmont, at the front of the room with the rest of the quiz team, was smiling hugely, as though he were back at the Midsummer School for Boys all those months ago and his name had just been called on that fateful morning in the dining hall.

  THE SECRET OF PARTISAN SCHOOL

  The announcement was made just before dinner, and no one was surprised that Partisan had won the Inter-School Tournament.

  “They bloody cheated,” Adam grumbled.

  “At what?” Rohan asked, clapping along politely with the rest of the Knightley students.

  “How should I know?” Adam whispered back.

  Henry didn’t mind that they’d lost. Of course he’d wanted Knightley to win, wanted it very badly, but the more he thought about Meledor and his ten demerits, about the depressing food and the Morsguard, he had to admit, the Partisan students could use something to celebrate.

  But then, come to think of it, so could he.

  Because those rumors, the ones in the gossip magazines that he’d always been certain were nothing more than gross exaggerations? Now he wasn’t so sure. Being there in the Nordlands, and seeing just a small piece of how things were, Henry could easily believe that anyone caught educating women would be given three years’ forced labor or that shopkeepers would be required to display portraits of the chancellor in their windows.

  As the students got ready for bed, Henry couldn’t wait to get back to Knightley Academy in the morning. He wanted to make sure Frankie hadn’t killed her grandmother, for one thing, and he wanted to see Professor Stratford and tell him about the Nordlands.

  “Our last night in these sleeping sacks,” Rohan said cheerfully, pulling the top half up to his chin.

  And finally, with much whispering, and hushing of the whisperers by those who were trying to sleep, the hall quieted.

  Henry turned over onto his side, watching the silhouettes of the other sleeping boys rise and fall in the gray-blue darkness. But he didn’t close his eyes or try to fall asleep himself. Instead, he waited until he was certain that no one would notice, and then, as quietly as he could, Henry slipped out of his sleeping sack.

  With his boots in his hands, he tiptoed through the sleeping minefield of students and crept carefully into the hallway. He didn’t know what he was looking for, or what he expected to find. He just knew that there was something off about the Partisan School, and something oddly familiar about their headmaster.

  The corridors were frigid at night, and Henry followed the clouds of his breath down the corridor, toward a faint glow in the distance.

  The glow, when he reached it, turned out to be a spluttering candle lighting the way down a stairwell—a maids’ stairwell. He stayed to one side of the stairs so they wouldn’t creak. At the bottom was a cabinet of bells and pulleys, each neatly labeled with a corresponding room. And beyond that, a smoky hearth and a threadbare armchair.

  All of the doors were locked, and so Henry crept back up the stairs and went in the other direction down the corridor.

  He’d found the classrooms.

  Scarcely daring to breathe, Henry turned the knob on one of the doors and pushed it open.

  It was just a classroom, nothing special, although instead of desks, the seating was arranged in the style of an amphitheater, in raised levels. The textbooks on the master’s table were plain old military history, the same as he’d seen on Lord Havelock’s bookshelves.

  Henry sighed.

  He could be caught at any moment, and he had no idea what he was looking for—if there even was anything to be looking for.

  Feeling foolish, Henry closed the door to the classroom and headed back down the corridor in the direction from which he’d come.

  But he could have sworn he’d never passed that suit of armor before, and that it had been a portrait, not a landscape, hanging above the stair. It was late, though, and he hadn’t slept … probably it was just his imagination running wild.

  Henry made the left turn that would bring him back to the servants’ staircase.

  And then he panicked. He’d found the entrance to the school library. Which meant that he was completely and utterly lost.

  Trying to keep calm, he went back the way he’d come, attempting to find something he recognized. But the long corridors of endless doors all looked the same, and it was as though the eyes on the portraits followed as he made wrong turn after wrong turn. At every step, he half expected to be caught out of bed—rather, out of sleeping sack—or worse, to be stuck wandering Partisan Keep all night, trying to find his way back to bed.

  Finally, Henry found a part of the castle that he thought he recognized. That door there could have been the supply room from the fencing that morning, and that stained-glass window looked vaguely familiar.

  But what was that?

  What seemed at first to be an innocent-looking decoration in the wall paneling turned out to be a hidden doorway, left ajar.

  The Knights Templar had been fans of secret passages, allowing them a safe getaway from invaders, and clearly Partisan Keep had been built with the same idea in mind. It was probably nothing more than a small hiding chamber barely large enough for two people. Nonetheless, something made Henry push open the panel and step inside.

  The hidden chamber was cavernous.

  A torch flickered in one of the two holders along the far wall, sputtering its last sparks of light, and in the dim light Henry could make out a cabinet full of weapons.

  Not blunt-tipped fencing foils or sabres, but real, true weapons, the kind you saw depicted in gruesome battle scenes on woven tapestries or stained-glass windows. The sorts of weapons that had been illegal for the past hundred years.

  On the left wall: burlap-covered mannequins with red targets painted across their chests. And on the right wall a neat row of charts hung from rusty nails. Henry stared at the first chart, marked hand-to-hand combat, reading the list of names, looking for one he knew. There! Volomir Dusseling, the hulking first year who had beaten Rohan in foil fencing, marked as number six.

  Number six what? Henry wondered, and then he realized what this place was: he’d found a room that wasn’t
supposed to exist—the place where Partisan students were trained in combat!

  It was illegal! It was beyond illegal; everyone knew that combat training was forbidden by the statutes of the Longsword Treaty, that so long as no citizens were trained in combat, there would be peace between all countries that had signed the treaty.

  And the Nordlands had broken it—this room was definite proof of that.

  His heart pounding, Henry tried to think what he should do. He needed proof. One of those lists should work nicely … but did he dare take one?

  If he did, it would be instantly obvious that someone knew about the combat training. He could inadvertently start a war.

  But would anyone believe him without proof ?

  Suddenly, Henry heard footsteps in the corridor, footsteps getting louder.

  He pressed himself against the nearest wall, trying not to make a sound. There was a good chance that whoever was coming down the hall would pass right by.

  The footsteps stopped, and Henry heard a flurry of furious whispers:

  “You’re certain you dinnae remember to lock it?”

  “Aye.”

  “How could you be so stupid?”

  “I thought I heard—”

  “Thought you heard what? Knightley students creepin’ up behind ye?”

  Cruel laughter.

  Henry peered out into the corridor.

  Two huge Partisan boys were at the far end, arguing.

  And just a meter away from where Henry hid was a staircase. If he could only make it unobserved …

  Holding his breath, Henry leaped around the corner and, still barefoot, ran furiously down the staircase.

  It was a mystery to Henry how he finally made it back to his sleeping sack, or how he even fell asleep at all, but the next thing he knew, he was opening his eyes to the gray light of early morning and to the other students packing their belongings.

  Henry rolled up his sleeping sack, his head fuzzy from lack of sleep. And then the past night came rushing back to him: the combat training, the treaty, and how, in the panic of almost being caught, he had left the room with only his word as proof.

  After a breakfast of tasteless porridge, Henry and the other Knightley students weren’t particularly heartbroken to board the train back to their school.