“Could be worse,” Henry said. “He could have given us the dictionary.”
Adam picked up one of the books as though it were a particularly rotten piece of meat.
“ ‘The Rules and Regulations Concerning the Governance and Operation of Knightley Academy,’ ” he read.
Even Henry made a face. The rules of the school. There couldn’t be anything more boring.
“Well, it is detention, what did you expect?” Henry asked.
Adam shrugged.
With a sigh, Henry uncapped his pen and began to copy the first page. Grudgingly, Adam did the same.
Hours passed. Henry’s stomach grumbled, but he ignored it.
Adam, however, moaned about how hungry he was and how boring the lines were and how his hand had cramp.
“Do put a lid on it,” Henry said. “At least we’re not being sent to a reformatory.”
“Poor Frankie,” Adam said.
“Well, there is a bright side,” Henry continued with a sardonic smile, turning his book to the next page. “Frankie will be all the way in the Alpines when the Nordlands attack.”
“Good for her,” Adam said sourly, peering at Henry’s page number. “Oi, slow down, mate. You’re making me look bad.”
“Sorry,” Henry said.
And then someone knocked on the door.
“Yes?” Henry called.
The door pushed open a crack, and Sir Frederick peered inside.
“Hello, boys,” Sir Frederick said. “Lord Havelock sent me to check how you’re getting on.”
“Page twenty-three, sir,” Henry said.
“Well done,” Sir Frederick said, holding out a stack of paper. “I’ve brought this in case you’re running out.”
“Not quite,” Adam said.
“Right, well, I’ll leave you to it,” Sir Frederick said, fumbling the door shut behind him.
“Oh good, more paper,” Adam said sourly.
Henry reached for a sheet with an apologetic smile. “Don’t give me that look. I’ve run out.”
Adam gave a frustrated sigh. “ ‘Provisions for three late students to be admitted to the first-year class pending special circumstances,’ ” Adam read disgustedly. “What does that even mean?”
“It goes faster if you don’t read it,” Henry said.
“You mean I’ve been reading this dreck for no reason?” Adam asked.
“Afraid so,” Henry said, frowning at the page in front of him:
That—the—chief—examiner—replaces—the—headmaster—until—a—suitable—replacement—can—be—unanimously—elected—by—the—board—of—trustees, Henry wrote, his index finger keeping place on the page.
He hadn’t been reading, just brainlessly copying, but somewhere in the back of his head, he’d linked the words together. And their meaning gave him pause.
“Wait a minute,” Henry said, picking up the book and flipping to the previous page.
“I thought you said it went faster if you didn’t read,” Adam whined.
Henry’s eyes went wide.
“Did you make a mistake?” Adam asked, passing over a fresh sheet of paper. “Bad luck, mate.”
“No. Wait,” Henry murmured, rereading what had to be an error in the print.
“What?” Adam asked.
Henry looked up from the book, hardly daring to believe it.
“If Headmaster Winter is fired, Sir Frederick becomes the new headmaster.”
“So what?” Adam said.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Henry said. “Look. Page twenty-three. Sir Frederick is on the board of trustees. It takes a unanimous vote to choose the next headmaster. So, hypothetically, Sir Frederick would be in charge of the school for however long he wanted.”
“But I like Sir Frederick,” Adam said.
“Right, but Lord Havelock doesn’t.”
“And?” Adam prompted.
“Lord Havelock wouldn’t sabotage us knowing that Headmaster Winter’s job was at risk—not if it meant Sir Frederick would become the new headmaster indefinitely.”
Henry frowned. If Lord Havelock wasn’t behind all of the sabotage attempts, then who was?
“So it’s not Lord Havelock?” Adam asked.
Henry shook his head. “I don’t think so. I mean, obviously Lord Havelock doesn’t like Headmaster Winter, because the headmaster let commoners into the school. Well, Sir Frederick was the one who started it all when he let me take the exam.”
“But Lord Havelock found that whatever-it-was inside Rohan’s bag,” Adam said. “Lord Havelock lost your essay. And, I mean, he’s Lord Havelock.”
“I know,” Henry said, biting his lip. He was missing something big, something important.
“If it’s not Lord Havelock, then who?” Adam asked.
“That’s the question,” Henry said.
Suddenly, Adam cursed.
He’d been pressing the tip of his pen against the sheet of paper so hard that it had burst, splattering ink all over his hands.
“Bad luck,” Henry said sympathetically.
“I’m going to wash up,” Adam said, his non-ink-splattered hand on the doorknob. And then he stopped.
“What?” Henry asked.
“Is the door supposed to be locked?” Adam asked.
“No,” Henry said, trying the knob himself. “I mean, Sir Frederick was just—”
Sir Frederick!
But no, that was impossible. Sir Frederick was their friend.
But then, the more Henry thought about it, the more sense it made. Sir Frederick would become the new headmaster if Headmaster Winter were fired. Sir Frederick hadn’t believed Henry about the combat training in the Nordlands and had tried to convince Henry that what he’d seen was a prank. Sir Frederick had found Frankie in their room the other night and had promptly dragged them off to see the headmaster instead of looking the other way. Sir Frederick had asked what page Henry was on before shutting the door, had known what Henry was about to find.
“Hello, Henry?” Adam asked.
“Sorry,” Henry said. He was still holding the doorknob and had been staring off vaguely in the direction of the ceiling. “Sir Frederick.”
“What about him?” Adam asked.
Henry gave the doorknob a last, desperate shake. “He’s locked us in, if you haven’t noticed.”
“Right, but why?”
“Adam,” Henry said evenly, “I don’t think Sir Frederick is on our side.”
“What?”
“Think about it,” Henry said, the words tumbling out of him. “He’s been behind everything—getting me into Knightley in the first place and giving Headmaster Winter the idea to admit commoners, which of course meant that Headmaster Winter could be fired. And then he would be the new headmaster.”
Henry frowned.
It was like a riddle he’d only half figured out. Everything still wasn’t connected, but he’d at least decoded part of it.
“But why would Sir Frederick go to the trouble of getting us into Knightley just to turn around and make sure we got kicked out?” Adam asked, scratching his head. “He can’t want to be headmaster that badly, can he?”
Henry shook his head. He was as baffled by their new knowledge as Adam.
“We need to see Sir Frederick,” he said. “I have to hear it from him. I just … I mean, I’m certain it’s Sir Frederick. He’s the only one who stands to gain anything by any of this, but I just can’t believe some of those things he did: your necklace, the nuts in Rohan’s muffin, the unblunted sword.”
Sir Frederick had seemed so kind. That day when he bandaged Adam’s arm, when he’d given them biscuits and tea, the way he ruffled Henry’s hair and called him “my boy.” Had it all been a lie?
Henry felt sick. His stomach heaving with revulsion, he kicked the door in anger. “How are we going to get out of here?” he asked, turning around and glaring at the room.
“The window?” Adam asked sarcastically. They were on the third story of the main b
uilding. “Naturally you’d go first.”
“How can you joke at a time like this?” Henry asked.
“The same way you can sit calmly and read a book when we’re suspended,” Adam returned, prowling the room and prodding at the bookshelves.
“What are you doing?” Henry asked.
“It’s different here. The design. Don’t you see?”
Henry looked. There was a break in the paneling on the bookshelf, but that could have been from anything.
“Maybe,” Henry said doubtfully.
“No, I’m serious,” Adam said. “Look. You can see light through here, and why else would there be only two dictionaries on this shelf ?”
Adam pushed and prodded at the bookshelf, convinced that it was a secret passage. Finally, he slammed his hand against the larger of the two dictionaries in disgust.
“I give up,” Adam said, as the bookshelf clicked open, revealing a passage.
Henry stared.
“Impossible,” Adam breathed.
“Adam, you’ve done it,” Henry said.
“I have my moments,” Adam said with a self-satisfied grin.
Behind the bookshelf was a rickety stairway leading upward.
Henry followed Adam up the stairs, which were lit dimly by a single electric wall sconce. The stairwell was steep, and the climb exhausting.
Suddenly, in front of Henry, Adam gave an odd little laugh. “I don’t believe it!”
“What, you’ve found a hidden combat training room?” Henry asked, half joking.
“It’s that gruesome unicorn tapestry,” Adam said.
The stairwell filled with light.
Henry frowned. What was Adam going on about?
He found out soon enough.
The exit to the hidden stairwell was located behind that horrible tapestry outside Lord Havelock’s tower classroom—hence the steep stairs.
“I knew I always liked this thing,” Adam said, dusting off his uniform and giving the unicorn tapestry a friendly pat back into place.
Henry nearly laughed. “It’s still creepy, if you ask me. Let’s go.”
“Remind me again,” Adam panted, following Henry down the proper stairwell, “why we’re going to seek out Sir Frederick now that we’ve decided he’s evil?”
“I have to hear it from him,” Henry said. “I have to know why. It just doesn’t add up. We’re missing something.”
“Can’t we just miss it all together and, I dunno, not accuse Sir Frederick of sabotaging us since he could, you know, hurt us?”
“Don’t you want your necklace back?” Henry asked.
“Too right, I do.” Adam said. “Lead on.”
Henry led on.
It was nearing the end of second lesson, according to Rohan’s pocket watch. They should make it to Sir Frederick’s office just as that day’s hour free began.
Sure enough, as Henry and Adam crossed the quadrangle and pushed open the door of the thatch cottage that held Sir Frederick’s office, boys spilled out into the corridors, filling the main building with noisy chatter that filtered through the half-open windows.
Henry ached to join the other students. To spend his hour free in the first-year common room and bet silly trinkets on the outcome of a checkers game. To stand on the sidelines before a cricket match and hope to be chosen toward the beginning. To have a laugh with his roommates and sneak down to the kitchens for extra tarts and try not to snicker at the boys who fell asleep in chapel. To put on his fencing mask and wield a practice sword at lessons. To have his favorite pudding at supper, and earn a perfect mark on an essay. To be normal.
But that door had long closed and left him standing on the outside of those happier school days, carrying around an unwanted and unasked for burden.
Henry stopped outside Sir Frederick’s office, wishing he just had a simple question about that day’s lesson.
“Go on,” Adam urged.
With a deep breath, Henry raised his fist and knocked.
“Come in,” Sir Frederick called.
Henry pushed open the door and Sir Frederick paled as though he’d seen a ghost—two ghosts.
“How—,” Sir Frederick began, and then composed himself and said, “have you run out of paper again?”
“Not quite,” Henry said, “although you might ask how we let ourselves out of a locked room.”
“Ah,” Sir Frederick said. “How clumsy of me. Had Lord Havelock not locked the door?”
“Neither this time, nor the last,” Henry said with a small smile.
“What is it you’ve come to see me about?” Sir Frederick asked, his eyes glittering, daring Henry to say the words out loud, to give them power, to make it real.
Adam coughed and looked away. Henry bit his lip.
“I was, er, reading page twenty-four of the rules of the school,” he began. “And it occurred to me—to both of us—that you would become the next headmaster if Headmaster Winter lost his job.”
“That’s true,” Sir Frederick said with a wary frown.
“It also occurred to us that, well, the person who has been doing all of these things, sabotaging us …” Henry stopped. There was no use being polite. Not now. It was too late, and he was in this too far to turn back. “That it was you,” Henry finished.
Sir Frederick didn’t deny it.
“And why would I do that?” Sir Frederick asked mildly, but his gaze betrayed his indifference, and for the first time, the medicine master looked sinister.
“I don’t know, sir,” Henry said.
“A clever boy like you,” Sir Frederick said, as though scolding a small child, “and you can’t even venture a guess?”
“I wouldn’t know where to begin, sir,” Henry said. “I was hoping you’d tell us the reason for the letters and my being locked inside the library overnight and the nuts in the muffin and the unblunted sword and stealing Adam’s necklace—which, by the way, he’d like back. Because we trusted you. I confided in you. And I can’t imagine why you’d betray us like this.”
Henry stopped to catch his breath, his chest heaving with anger. He stared down at his boots, and when he looked up again at Sir Frederick, he forced his mouth into a thin, determined line and willed his eyes not to show uncertainty—or fear.
“You boys are so selfish,” Sir Frederick crooned. “It’s always about you, isn’t it? All your little problems and disasters, and you never think that maybe this is part of something bigger.”
“Like what?” Adam asked with a derisive snort. “The Nordlands?”
Sir Frederick’s eyes narrowed.
“Perhaps,” Sir Frederick allowed, but Henry could see that Adam’s offhand comment had landed perilously close to the target. “What you boys need to do is consider the greater good, to think of what it would accomplish if you were expelled.”
“Let me think for a moment,” Henry said, his voice dripping with disdain. “I’d be out on the streets, Adam would disgrace his family, but oh, you’d be head- master.”
“Precisely,” Sir Frederick said with a dangerous smile that forcibly reminded Henry of Lord Havelock. “Because once I am appointed headmaster, I will completely open Knightley to common students. Think of it: a new era of Knightley Academy, where the school is no longer a bastion of the elite but an attainable prize for smart, ambitious boys. Boys like yourself.”
“But Headmaster Winter would open the exam to everyone if we succeeded,” Henry said with a frown.
“Would he?” Sir Frederick asked, raising his eyebrow. “Would he really? Or wouldn’t it just be two or three places reserved for commoners, a good show put on for the trustees?”
“Headmaster Winter would take everyone who was qualified,” Adam said with a frown, as though already unsure.
“You poor, ignorant boy,” Sir Frederick said, shaking his head sadly, his gaze filled with pity. “Headmaster Winter is unprepared for what’s coming. His motivation for opening the exam is all wrong.”
“And how is yours any differ
ent?” Henry retorted.
Sir Frederick smiled serenely and held up his hand. “Patience, my boy. Do you remember what you told me about the Nordlands? About the boys of Partisan School being trained in combat?”
“You said you didn’t believe me,” Henry accused.
“I lied.” Sir Frederick shrugged. “A war is coming, and those who can’t see it are blind to the ways of the world. War is inevitable, yes, but it is also for the best.”
Henry raised an eyebrow and exchanged an incredulous glance with Adam. How could war ever be for the best?
“Look what the Nordlands have done,” Sir Frederick continued. “Look at the wonderful world they’ve created. No aristocracy! All men as equals! The Nordlandic cause is worth fighting for. Imagine this tired, set-in-its-old-ways country led into the new century by a man like Yurick Mors!”
Henry gave an involuntary shudder. He could imagine it, all right.
Imagine it the way he dreamed up nightmares the night before an exam, the way he dreamed up horrible things he wished he could forget.
“And we’re to be the sacrifice?” Henry asked.
“Of course not,” Sir Frederick said. “I’m protecting you the way I’d protect my own sons. If you stayed at Knightley, you’d have to fight. And surely Lord Havelock has told you what would happen then.”
Henry knew all too well what Sir Frederick was talking about.
“Commoners captured in battle can be killed or tortured, while members of the aristocracy have to be ransomed and treated according to their status,” Henry said, as though in the classroom, reciting back what Lord Havelock had taught them on the first day of class.
“I’m saving you,” Sir Frederick insisted. “Giving you the opportunity to come over to the right side before it’s too late.”
“It’s already too late,” Henry said.
“We could run a military hospital,” Sir Frederick continued. “On the front lines. We could save lives.”
“Whose lives?” Henry insisted. “Boys our own age who have been plucked from their classrooms and forced to fight by ancient conscription laws? Or an army of Knightley students, all commoners, all sent off to command their peers, slaughtered on the battlefield while their aristocratic schoolmates are captured and given feather beds?”
“The greater number of common students we have at Knightley, the easier it would be for a Nordlandic victory,” Sir Frederick urged. “Don’t you want to be part of it all? To tell your grandchildren that you built their world, that you abolished the tired aristocracy and had a hand in making all men equal?”
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