Flintlock’s face colored bright red, then purple, and finally white, contorting with rage. His moustache quivered. “For now. She’s yours for now, North. But as soon as she fails the trials I’ll be wanting to see those papers of hers.” He stroked his moustache and straightened his mud-brown uniform, looking down at Morrigan as if she were something disgusting on the bottom of his shoe. “She’ll be back to her filthy Republic before you can say, ‘Please, Inspector,have pity.’ And you, my friend, will be in so much trouble that even your precious Society won’t be able to help you.”
Flintlock marched out of the Deucalion’s foyer and down the steps of the forecourt and was gone. Morrigan turned to Jupiter, who looked as tense as she’d ever seen him.
“Can they really kick me out?” she asked, a lump forming in her throat. She thought of the Hunt of Smoke and Shadow, of its black shapeless form looming in the darkness. The back of her neck felt prickly and cold. “What happens if I have to leave Nevermoor?”
“Don’t be silly, Mog,” Jupiter said bracingly. “That’s never going to happen.”
He left the foyer without looking at her.
When Morrigan went to bed that night, her hammock had changed again, this time into a wooden bed frame with stars and moons carved into the legs. She slept restlessly and dreamed of the Show Trial. In her dream she stood silently before the Elders, unable to speak, until finally she was dragged away by the Stink and handed over to the Hunt while the audience jeered and booed.
By morning, her bed was a futon. Perhaps the Deucalion hadn’t made up its mind about her after all.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE BOOK TRIAL
Wassyoornackthen?” said Hawthorne through a mouthful of toasted cheese sandwich.
Jupiter had allowed Morrigan’s new friend to visit her at the Hotel Deucalion on the condition that he help her study for the upcoming Book Trial. So far they hadn’t studied anything but the Deucalion itself. Hawthorne especially loved the Smoking Parlor (chocolate smoke this afternoon: “to promote emotional well-being”), the Rain Room (though he hadn’t brought any galoshes and his trousers were now soaked to his knees), and the theater. Actually, not the theater itself but rather the dressing room backstage. The walls were lined with hanging costumes, and each one came with an accent and a funny walk that took ages to fade. Hawthorne was still skipping down the corridors half an hour after he’d taken off his Goldilocks costume.
Now they sat at a corner table in the Hotel Deucalion’s busy kitchen, which was full of steam and noise and chefs scrambling to fill orders. Not the best place to study for a test, in Morrigan’s opinion, but Fen wouldn’t let them eat their lunch in the library and Kedgeree had earlier announced that gravity had been suspended in the dining room until further notice.
“Wass… what’s my knack?” Morrigan had learned to dread this question. “Um, I don’t know.”
Hawthorne nodded, chewing and swallowing loudly. “You don’t have to tell me. Loads of candidates keep it a secret. Gives ’em an edge at the Show Trial.”
“It’s not that,” said Morrigan in a rush. “I don’t think I have one.”
“You must,” he said, frowning as he chugged half a glass of milk. “Your patron can’t put you in the trials unless you’ve got a knack. It’s the rules.”
A thought still niggled at the back of Morrigan’s mind. Did her knack have something to do with the curse? She longed to ask Hawthorne’s opinion, but she wasn’t even supposed to mention the curse anymore. She’d promised Jupiter.
“I think I’d know if I did.” Morrigan picked at her sandwich. She’d lost her appetite. It had been nice, she thought miserably, to have a friend for five minutes. Hawthorne would be better off befriending the dog-faced boy.
“S’pose you would.” Hawthorne shrugged. He polished off the last of his sandwich and opened up one of the textbooks Morrigan had borrowed from Jupiter’s study. “Should we start with the Great War?”
She looked up. “What?”
“Or do you want to save that until we’ve covered the boring stuff?”
Morrigan tried to keep her voice light, to cover her surprise. “So you… you still want to be friends?”
“What? Yeah. Duh.” He made a face. Morrigan felt her mouth twitch into a smile. Hawthorne was giving his friendship as if it meant nothing. He couldn’t know that it meant everything.
“But we’re supposed to be… making valuable alliances and… and all that stuff they said at the Wundrous Welcome.” Morrigan carried their empty plates to the sink, narrowly dodging the sous chef as he rushed past with a dish of steaming mussels. She felt duty-bound to make sure Hawthorne understood. “I doubt I’m a valuable alliance.”
“Who cares?” he said with a laugh, turning back to his book. Morrigan felt a surge of relief as she sat down again. “I think we should start with the Great War, because there’s loads of blood and guts. First question: How many heads got chopped off at the Battle of Fort Lamentation in the Highlands?”
“No idea.”
He held up a finger. “Trick question. The highland clans don’t chop off heads in battle. They chop off torsos, hang their enemies upside down, and shake ’em until their guts fall out.”
“How nice,” said Morrigan. The Free State really was a very different place from the Republic. Hawthorne rubbed his hands together, his eyes shining. He was only getting started.
“Next question: Which famous Sky Force pilot was roasted to a crisp by an enemy dragon during the Battle of the Black Cliffs? Ooh—and a bonus question: Which tribe of cliff-dwelling savages gobbled up his toasty remains when they fell out of the sky?”
A week later Morrigan walked up the long driveway to Proudfoot House for the second time, once again fighting the urge to turn and run. The bare, black-trunked trees lining the drive seemed even more menacing this time. Against the pale sky their spindly branches were like spiders looming above her, ready to pounce.
“Nervous?” asked Jupiter.
Morrigan’s only answer was a raised eyebrow.
“Right. Course you are. You should be nervous. It’s a nervous sort of day.”
“Thanks. That makes me feel loads better.”
“Really?”
“No.”
Jupiter laughed, looking up at patches of gray sky through the tree branches. “I meant it in a good way. Your life is about to change, Mog.”
“Morrigan.”
“In a couple of hours you’ll be one step closer to getting your little gold pin. And when that happens, the world will open up to you.”
Morrigan wanted to take heart from his confidence, she really did. She wanted desperately to feel that she could do this. If even a fraction of Jupiter’s belief in her was justified, she would have colonized the moon and cured every disease in the realm by summertime.
But it was no good, because she still hadn’t figured out whether or not he was a madman.
“The written part’s the hardest,” said Jupiter. “Three unseen questions, total silence, nothing but a pencil, paper, and a desk. Just take your time, Mog, and answer honestly.”
“You mean correctly?” Morrigan asked, confused. Jupiter didn’t seem to hear her.
“Then there’s the oral component, but it’s nothing to worry about—just a little quiz. More of a conversation, really. Again, take your time. Don’t be afraid to make them wait. The Elders want to see what you’re like. Just be your charming self and you’ll be fine.”
Morrigan wanted to ask what charming self he was talking about, and whether he’d perhaps confused her with some other Morrigan Crow he’d met somewhere, but it was too late. They’d reached Proudfoot House, and patrons weren’t allowed into the examination hall. She was on her own.
“Good luck, Mog,” Jupiter said, punching her lightly in the arm. Morrigan joined the stream of candidates climbing the marble steps. Her feet felt leaden. “Go forth and conquer.”
The examination hall was the biggest room Morrigan had ever be
en in, filled with row after row of rectangular desks and straight-backed wooden chairs. Hundreds of candidates filed in, one after another, and sat silently as Wundrous Society officials handed out booklets and pencils. Morrigan craned her neck trying to spot Hawthorne, but no luck—the desks were allocated alphabetically, and she supposed he was all the way back in the S section. She gave up and read the front of her booklet.
WUNDROUS SOCIETY ENTRY EXAMINATION
BOOK TRIAL
SPRING OF ONE, THIRD AGE OF THE ARISTOCRATS
CANDIDATE: MORRIGAN ODELLE CROW
PATRON: CAPTAIN JUPITER AMANTIUS NORTH
When every child had the exam paper, a Society official at the front of the hall sounded a glass chime. With a chorus of rustling, they opened their booklets. Morrigan took a deep breath and turned to the first page.
It was blank. As was the second page, and the third. She flipped through the rest of the booklet and found that there were no questions anywhere.
She raised her hand and tried to catch the eye of an official to tell them there’d been a mistake, that she’d been given a blank exam, but the woman at the front of the room was oblivious.
Morrigan looked at the first page again. Words appeared.
You’re not from here.
Why do you even want to join the Wundrous Society?
Morrigan glanced around to see if any other candidate’s booklet had grown a brain and started asking impertinent questions. If they had, nobody seemed surprised. Perhaps their patrons had warned them.
She remembered what Jupiter had said to her—Just take your time, Mog, and answer honestly. With a sigh, Morrigan picked up her pencil and began.
Because I want to be an important and useful member of soc—
Before she’d finished writing it, the sentence was scratched out by some unseen pen. She gasped.
Nonsense, said the book. Why do you really want to be in the Wundrous Society?
Morrigan chewed on her lip.
Because I want a little golden W pin.
The words scratched themselves out again. A corner of the page began to blacken and curl in on itself.
Nope, said the book.
A tiny tendril of smoke coiled up from the smoldering edges of the page. Morrigan tried stamping it out with her hand, but it wouldn’t stop. She looked around frantically for a glass of water or an adult to help her, but none of the officials seemed disturbed. In fact, they seemed to be tranquilly ignoring the fact that not only Morrigan’s, but several other candidates’ exam booklets were in various stages of combustion.
One boy’s paper burst into flames and burned out completely, leaving nothing but a pile of ash on his desk. An official tapped him on the shoulder and motioned for him to leave. The boy slumped out of the hall.
Honest answers, thought Morrigan quickly, and grabbed her pencil again.
Because I want people to like me.
The paper paused in its journey to self-destruction. It hovered in a flickering, smoldering state that usually preceded the whoosh of flames.
Go on, said the book.
Her hand shook a little.
I want to belong somewhere.
More, the book prompted her.
She took a deep breath, thought of the conversation she’d had with Jupiter the day after Morningtide, and wrote:
I want brothers and sisters who will stand by me forever, no matter what.
The damage began to slowly reverse itself, the clean white paper creeping back and reclaiming its burned corners. Relieved, Morrigan loosened her death grip on the pencil a little. After a moment, the second question appeared.
What is your biggest fear?
Morrigan didn’t even have to think about that one. Total no-brainer.
That dolphins will learn to walk on land and shoot acid out of their blowholes.
The words violently scratched themselves out and the paper once again began to char. Nearby, a girl shrieked as her own booklet conflagrated. She was sent out of the examination hall with singed eyebrows.
Morrigan racked her brain as the corners of her booklet turned to ash. She’d told the truth! Land-dwelling acid dolphins were her biggest fear, they had always been her biggest fear, except—well, no. She’d always said they were her biggest fear. Probably because her biggest fear, the real one, was too awful to talk about. She bit her lip and committed a new answer to the page.
Death.
The book continued to smolder.
Death, she wrote again. Death! It’s obviously death!
And then, a brain wave—
The Hunt of Smoke and Shadow.
But the book kept burning. Morrigan grabbed it, wincing as it scorched her fingers, and wrote in the last tiny patch of white space left:
Being forgotten.
The book unburned a little.
Go on, it said.
That nobody will remember me. That my family won’t remember me because
Morrigan paused, her pencil hovering above the smoky page—
because they’d rather forget that I ever existed.
The book smoothed and whitened, uncurling its pages until they were once again pristine. Morrigan waited patiently for her third and final question. She glanced around the room and saw that roughly a quarter of the desks were now empty but for little piles of ashes.
And how, asked the book, will you ensure that people remember you?
Morrigan thought for a long time. She leaned back in her chair and watched silently as small fires broke out all around her and a few dozen more candidates were made to leave the hall. Finally, she wrote the most honest answer she could think of.
I don’t know.
And after a moment’s hesitation, she added one more word:
Yet.
In an instant, all three questions and answers disappeared from the pages and were replaced with a single word in large green letters.
PASS.
Morrigan paced back and forth in an antechamber of Proudfoot House. Around a third of the candidates had failed the written examination. The rest were put into smaller groups and shepherded into rooms to await the next part of the Book Trial.
In Morrigan’s group there was a boy hugging his knees to his chest and rocking back and forth, an energetic pair of twins firing questions at each other and high-fiving aggressively, and a girl slumped on a chair with her arms folded.
Morrigan recognized her; it was the friend of Noelle’s from the Wundrous Welcome, the one who couldn’t stop laughing at how hilarious Noelle wasn’t. Her black hair was twisted into a thick braided knot at the back of her head. She watched the twins through hooded brown eyes.
“What are the three major exports of Upper Zeeland?” shouted one of the twins.
“Jade, dragon scales, and wool!” shouted the other. They high-fived. Noelle’s friend scowled.
A woman with a clipboard entered the room, her heels click-clacking on the wooden floor as she bustled over to the group of children. “Fitzwilliam? Francis John Fitzwilliam?” she read from her list. The boy in the corner looked up at her and swallowed. Sweat beaded on his brow. He rose unsteadily to his feet and followed her out of the room, tapping his fingers on his thighs and staring at the ground.
“Who was the first Nevermoorian to walk on the moon?” shouted one of the twins.
“Lieutenant-General Elizabeth Von Keeling!” shouted the other. They high-fived. The girl with the braid breathed fiercely through her nose.
Morrigan closed her eyes and concentrated on naming the twenty-seven boroughs of Nevermoor. “Old Town,” she whispered to herself, “Wick, Bloxam, Betelgeuse, Macquarie…”
She could do this. She was prepared. She’d read every history and geography book she could get her hands on, and she’d made Kedgeree quiz her over and over the night before. She might not know much about the exports of Upper Zeeland (wherever that was), but she felt sure she knew enough now about Nevermoor and the Free State to get through to the next trial.
�
�Delphia,” continued Morrigan, looking up at the ceiling. “Groves and Alden, Deering, Highwall…”
“They’re not going to ask about the boroughs,” said Noelle’s friend. Morrigan was surprised to hear her voice—it was lower, huskier than she expected. At the Wundrous Welcome she’d sounded like a giddy hyena. “Every idiot knows what the boroughs are called. We learned that in nursery school, for goodness’ sake.”
Morrigan ignored her. “Pocock, Farnham and Barnes, Rhodes Village, Tenterfield…”
“Are you deaf or stupid?” asked the girl.
“Where do the time zones of the Unnamed Realm intersect?” shouted one of the twins.
“Center of Zeev Forest, Fifth Pocket of the Free State!” shouted the other. They high-fived.
Morrigan squeezed her eyes shut and resumed pacing. “Blackstock… um… Bellamy…”
She was stopped by a soft wall of person. She opened her eyes in surprise and found the woman with the clipboard looking down at her. “Crow?”
Morrigan nodded gravely, straightened her dress and shoulders, and followed the woman to the interview hall. Halfway there she glanced back and saw Noelle’s friend talking to the twins.
“You’re going to fail,” she was saying to them in her husky voice. “You’re completely unprepared. You’re not going to remember a single thing. You’ll never get into the Society. You might as well just go home now.”
Morrigan looked up at the woman with the clipboard to see if she would go back and say something, but the woman’s face was blank and uninterested, as though she hadn’t heard a word.
“Go on,” she said, giving Morrigan a little push. “They’re waiting for you. Stand on the cross.”
The High Council of Elders sat at a table in the center of an empty hall. As Morrigan approached they murmured among themselves, taking sips of water and shuffling through papers.
“Miss Crow,” said the spindly, wispy-haired Elder Quinn, adjusting her spectacles. “Who is the leader of the Free State?”
The Trials of Morrigan Crow Page 13