The Secret Prince Part 11

"Not to me," Henry said fiercely. "When I worked in the kitchens, I had loads of books. Traded a few hours' sleep for a few hours in the library. But sitting and wishing for everything to be different only makes you bitter. Memorizing books can't change the way things are."

"So you think we should put these back on the shelf and go down to the common room?"

"No, I think we should learn to fight."

Derrick stared at Henry in shock, and then laughed hollowly. "And how do you plan to do that?"

"The Lance," Henry said. He'd been thinking about it ever since that evening in the kitchen, but he hadn't dared to admit it. Too late now. The words were out, and Derrick was waiting for an explanation. "One of the kitchen boys mentioned this pub, down in the village. They take bets on boxing. We could learn to fight there."

Derrick snorted. "You'll get yourself killed. Or expelled. Probably in that order."

"Well, there has to be some way. If the Partisan students can prepare for war, so can we."

"What are you talking about, Grim?"

And so Henry explained about what he had seen in the Nordlands, and how no one had believed him without proof. When Henry finished, Derrick stared thoughtfully at the copy of Pugnare, tracing the letters with his fingers.

"That's what we need," Derrick said. "A combat training room."

"I think we're standing in one," Henry noted.

"Yes, but this doesn't count," Derrick said. "It's just an ordinary cla.s.sroom. You said it yourself, we have nothing but some old books."

"And four desks, a bookcase, and three trunks," Henry pointed out, as though it made a difference.

"Hmmm." Derrick sized up the steamer trunks, and then got to his knees, prying open the latch on the largest one. The lid creaked open and Derrick held the guttering candle aloft, peering inside. "Grim. Come look."

Henry put down the stack of books and went to see what Derrick had found.

The trunk was filled with shields. Some were ancient, cast from heavy bronze, with fierce spikes. Others looked like hammered silver. Most were dented, and many were cracked. Together there must have been more than a dozen.

Wordlessly Henry and Derrick each threw open one of the two remaining trunks. Henry's was filled with quivers of practice arrows and ancient longbows. There was even a target, worn nearly to dust from hundreds of punctures. Derrick's trunk contained an a.s.sortment of things: two crossbows, a scythe, the metal tip of what might have been a gisarme, a broadsword, a sabre covered in what the boys dearly hoped was rust, and a case of daggers, their points dulled with age.

Henry and Derrick exchanged an uneasy glance. Now they knew why this cla.s.sroom had been sealed off and forgotten. Back when Knightley Academy had closed down its archery ranges and tilting courses, the weapons hadn't been destroyed. They had simply been left to gather dust-until needed.

Derrick reached into the trunk and took out the broadsword, examining a dull black stone at the hilt. Henry removed a circular shield and the rusty sabre, guessing at the correct grip, since they weren't due to learn the weapon until second year.

"Well, have a go," Henry urged, and Derrick stared at him in shock. "Go on. Haven't you always wondered?"

"Not really, no," Derrick said nervously, glancing back and forth between the broadsword in his hand and Henry's shield. "Maybe we shouldn't have come up here."

"It's too late now." They both knew that Henry wasn't talking about their explorations of the school.

"You could get hurt," Derrick said.

Henry shrugged. "I've seen you fence. We're about the same level, and that sword looks three times as heavy as our practice blades."

Derrick hefted the weapon. "Four times," he admitted.

"If you land a hit, we'll stop," Henry promised.

Derrick gave Henry a dubious look and began to settle into his on guard position, before realizing that the broadsword was too heavy to be handled like a foil. With a frown he choked up on the grip using both hands, as though it were a cricket bat.

Henry gulped and positioned his shield, giving a couple practice slices with the sabre.

"I can't," Derrick said, putting down his sword.

"How can we lead the others if we can't do it ourselves?"

"Lead the others?" Derrick blanched.

"You know, run a combat club-group-whatever you want to call it."

Derrick laughed hollowly, setting his weapon back in the trunk. "I can't be in charge of something like that. Be serious, Grim. My father's the Lord Minister of Foreign Relations. Can you even imagine the scandal?"

"So what was all of this?" Henry asked angrily, his shield clattering to the floor. "Just a game? We're too far in to stand around and laugh."

"Maybe you are, but I can't tarnish my record with something like this. Imagine if word got out-a future lord minister running an illicit combat training ring."

"But-," Henry said, his brain spinning to make sense of what had just happened. He'd thought that Derrick was different from the other boys, that Derrick was adventurous and daring and unusually perceptive. But when it came down to it, nothing bad or out of the ordinary had ever happened to Derrick Marchbanks.

"I'm not questioning whether or not it's a good idea," Derrick quickly amended. "I mean, we seem to have opened Pandora's box here, and I'd be b.l.o.o.d.y glad of some weapons training should this problem with the Nordlands continue sliding toward war, but I have obligations to the Ministerium. My place isn't leading the rebellion; it's fixing the problem."

"So go fix it, then!" Henry nearly shouted.

"You know I can't!"

They glared at each other, no longer in agreement, or able to see eye to eye. Henry couldn't believe how wrong he'd been about Derrick. And then the guttering candle died, leaving Derrick holding a lump of faintly smoking wax.

"We should go," Henry said, wrapping his blazer around the stack of books. "The others will start to get suspicious."

It was surprisingly easy to make the trophy case look, once again, as though it were part of a long-neglected wall of a rarely explored corridor. In a rather sour silence the two boys headed back toward the dormitory.

"You're clever, Grim," Derrick said, breaking the silence as they pa.s.sed the hall of armor on the ground floor. "You could do it, you know."

Henry shook his head. "Not by myself. You saw how I was at drills. I can't give orders."

Both boys paused, staring at the suits of armor, a row of unarmed ghostly sentinels. Now Henry knew exactly where their weapons had gone.

"I want to tell Conrad what we saw," Derrick admitted.

"Fine," Henry said coolly.

"Unless you think-"

"Do what you want, Marchbanks." Henry quickened his pace and, ignoring the commotion in the common room, threw open the door to his room. He dumped the stack of books onto his bed, and then picked up the training manual and tried to think what to do. With a tinge of regret he tore the cover off one of the mystery novels Mrs. Alabaster had given him for Christmas and placed it over the training manual. He hid the rest of the books under his bed.

As Henry carried the training manual into the common room, he realized that, despite the eight months that had pa.s.sed since he'd last mopped a corridor, nothing had really changed. He was still that odd serving boy who stole books and dreamed of a different world, and, despite the events of the past two weeks, he was still very much an outsider.

11.

THE TRUTH ABOUT VALMONT.

You should have told us earlier," Rohan said the next morning as they got ready for chapel in the gray dawn. "Although I did wonder what you were doing with your nose buried in that detective story all night. You just finished it last weekend."

Henry shook his head at Rohan's sharp observation. Somehow he wasn't quite as upset with Rohan anymore. At least Rohan had refused to partic.i.p.ate from the outset, rather than giving flimsy excuses at the last possible moment.

And anyway, ever since the disastrous cricket match, Rohan hadn't been quite so keen on his friendship with James. James had acted as though he'd lost a dear relative to an unexpected tragedy, rather than a friendly game to a group of older boys who were predictably better at it.

"I know, and I'm sorry," Henry said.

"It's all right." Adam plucked the book from beneath Henry's pillow. "Oi, you never said it was in Latin."

"The rest are in English."

"Just once I'd like to find a book in the library written in Hebrew." Adam knotted his tie shorter than regulation and tucked the skinny end into his shirt, in the way they weren't really supposed to.

"I didn't know you read Hebrew," Rohan said, fastening his cuffs.

Adam shrugged. "This is actually the first year my textbooks are in English," he admitted, shouldering his satchel. "Everyone ready?"

Henry stared at Adam in surprise. No wonder his friend always seemed to finish the reading ages after everyone else.

"How come you never said anything?" Henry asked.

"I went to the yeshiva," Adam said. "I thought you knew."

"But that's just the name of a school, isn't it?" Henry frowned.

"It's a type of school," Adam clarified. "And it isn't important. Did you really mean it about learning combat?"

"I did."

Rohan gave them both a severe look. "Breaking school rules isn't enough? Now you want to break the law?"

"It isn't illegal to study combat, technically," Henry whispered as they joined the other students on the way to chapel. "It's illegal to be instructed. So if no one is teaching us ..."

"I don't like this," Rohan said, shaking his head.

"None of this would have happened if you hadn't been dead set on no longer being friends with Frankie," Adam pointed out.

"Do shut up, Adam," Rohan said primly.

Henry snorted. He'd missed his friends terribly.

At supper that evening the first years were unusually subdued. The second years bent their heads and whispered furiously. The third years alternated between silence and bursts of heated debate. And the fourth-year table sat empty, as it had all week; the boys were off serving apprenticeships. But Henry suspected they too were sitting around the dinner table trying to make sense of the news.

That morning the gossip rags had run another staggering headline: POLICING AGENCY QUESTIONS NORDLANDIC HOUSEHOLDS. Dimit Yascherov, the head of both the Partisan School and the Nordlandic Policing Agency, had issued orders for household inspections. Every home in the Nordlands was to be visited and checked, its inhabitants catalogued and a.s.sessed. Those deemed to be fit for certain government projects would be transferred immediately to a new work detail.

"Maybe they're building roads," Edmund said, pa.s.sing the basket of rolls. "Or hospitals."

"Be serious, Merrill," Derrick scoffed. "It's most likely just an excuse to scare everyone into following the laws."

"How do you figure that?" Rohan asked.

"It's like that prison Sir Franklin mentioned in ethics today. I forget the name."

"The Panopticon," Henry said.

"Right, the Panopticon," Derrick continued. "If you think that a police agent could arrive on your doorstep at any moment and a.s.sign you to an unnamed work detail, you're going to be terrified to do anything wrong, because you feel like you're being watched."

"That's not really what Sir Franklin was talking about," Henry argued. "He was saying how if watch-men can't be seen, they don't truly ever have to be on duty, and society governs itself."

"Not society," Derrick returned. "Prisoners. They've already been caught by the law once. They already know what it's like to be scrutinized by these watchmen or whomever. So the threat works because they know what to fear."

"Maybe," Henry said.

"Not maybe," Derrick argued. "I'm right."

"Sorry, Henry, he is," Rohan mumbled.

Henry glanced curiously at Rohan-was that why he'd become so fanatical about following the rules? Because he knew all too well the consequences of breaking them?

And then a fierce argument broke out at the third-year table between Theobold's older brother and a tall, confident-looking boy with an earring. The boy with the earring hauled back and punched Arch square in the jaw.

Sir Franklin and Lord Havelock hurried over and pulled the boys apart.

"Nordlandic sympathizer," Arch spat, rubbing his jaw.

Back at Henry's table Edmund had gone quite pale. Theobold, however, was seething. As the professors marched the two third years out of the dining hall, they pa.s.sed by the first-year table.

"Peter-," Edmund began.

The boy with the earring shook his head. "Don't worry about it, kid," he called over his shoulder.

Henry and Adam exchanged an amused glance, even though it was anything but funny. Who would have thought that shy Edmund's older brother was so, well, daring?

"I can't believe we're doing this," Rohan muttered as he, Henry, and Adam crept through the corridor. They had just half an hour until lights-out, but Henry had insisted on waiting for Adam to finish the reading for Medicine.

"There better be leftover trifle," said Adam.