In the Enemy's Service (Annals of Alasia Book 2)

by Annie Douglass Lima

  “As former captain of the guard, Talifus might.” Wennish spat out the name like a curse. He frowned warningly at Anya. “But don’t go talking to that traitor. He’d probably send you off on a wild goose chase and then tell the enemy what you were looking for and have you killed.”

  “And Talifus is still in the dungeon, as far as I know,” Anya pointed out. “I don’t think I’d be allowed in to talk to him even if I wanted to. Isn’t there anyone else?”

  “Hmm.” Wennish stared into space, his eyes distant. “I assume the king probably knew about it, and he may have told a few of those closest to him. Perhaps some of those who’ve been here the longest. Like Talanthus, the master-at-arms. Of course, he does most of his work out in the courtyard by the barracks. No, more likely someone who spends their days in the palace itself, like a member of King Jaymin’s Council of Advisors.” He paused, considering this over a bite of stew. “But really, they don’t actually spend much time in the palace apart from the semiweekly meetings. They travel a lot, taking care of the king’s business around Alasia.” He paused again, staring thoughtfully into his bowl. “I suppose Professor Dreytin might know.”

  “Who’s he?” The name sounded familiar, and Anya knew she had probably seen him around, but she couldn’t picture who he was.

  “He’s Prince Jaymin’s tutor. I think he taught the king, too, back when he was a boy. Dreytin’s been here practically forever.”

  “All right. I’ll find him right after lunch and ask if he knows about this secret room.” Anya picked up her spoon and dug briskly into her stew. She had a plan now, and an exciting one at that. Her afternoon promised to be much more interesting than her morning.

  “Maybe it would be better if Wennish asks Dreytin,” Eleya suggested as Anya gulped down a bite of stewed beef. “The professor knows Wennish, but he isn’t well acquainted with you. It might take some convincing for him to be willing to share the secret, if he even knows it.”

  Wennish looked up from his own bowl eagerly. “Does that mean I actually get to go out?”

  “No,” Tonnis and Eleya replied in unison. “You’re waiting right where you are,” Eleya added firmly. “Anya will bring the professor here to talk to you.”

  Wennish’s face fell. Anya knew that he hadn’t left the clinic since before she had arrived; Tonnis and Eleya insisted he stay inside even now that he was well enough to walk around a little. They weren’t sure how the sight of a palace full of Malornians making themselves at home where his dead friends used to patrol would affect the loyal Alasian guard. If he stayed in the clinic, there was less chance he would do something rash.

  “I think Professor Dreytin’s been put on the housekeeping crew,” Tonnis told Anya as she wolfed down her food, eager to put their plan into action. “I saw him sweeping the front steps this morning. He’s wearing a brown jacket, and he has a short gray beard. I’m sure you’ll know him when you see him.”

  “If I hurry, he might still be at lunch in the dining hall,” Anya suggested with her mouth full. “Then I won’t have to go looking for him.” She slurped up the last of her broth, ignoring Eleya’s disapproving look, and jumped to her feet. “I’ll be right back,” she called over her shoulder, snatching up the rest of her bread to eat on the way.

  Sure enough, the dining hall was still full of workers finishing their lunch, the hum of conversation in the air. Anya scurried from table to table until she spotted a man in a brown jacket sitting with his back to her. Did he have a gray beard? Yes, she saw, hurrying around to the other side to check. She would have described the beard as medium-length, not short, but maybe he hadn’t had a chance to trim it in a while.

  The man noticed her staring at him from across the table and looked up. Anya smiled awkwardly, realizing she couldn’t exactly talk to him about something important here where people would hear. Regent Rampus might have other spies among the palace workers, after all. So she hurried around the table again to speak quietly in his ear.

  The man turned to face her as she approached, obviously wondering what she wanted. “Hello,” Anya greeted him when she was close. “Professor Dreytin?”

  He chuckled. “No, I’m Sir Olling.”

  “Oh!” Anya clapped a hand over her mouth, embarrassed. “Sorry. I don’t suppose you know where I can find the professor?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact I do.” Sir Olling turned and nodded toward the other end of the room. “He’s sitting facing us at that table there by the left side of the kitchen. In the brown jacket; see him?”

  Anya craned her neck. “Yes, I think so. Next to the woman in gray?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Thanks.” Anya made her way across the room, dodging the kitchen workers who were starting to clear away dishes as people finished. The professor was just standing up to leave as she hurried around behind him and tapped him on the arm. “Excuse me, Professor Dreytin?”

  At the same moment, Anya felt a firm hand on her own arm. “There you are,” exclaimed a cross voice. “It’s time you got back to work.”

  Anya turned. It was Phenniel, the traitor cook. Whatever happened, she couldn’t let him guess what she was up to.

  “I’m about to go back to work, sir,” she replied politely. “I just took a quick break to eat and to bring lunch over to Eleya and Tonnis and their patient. Now I’m back to help clear off the tables.”

  “Then why are you wasting time stopping to talk to people?” Phenniel demanded. The professor had turned and was gazing down at her curiously, probably wondering the same thing.

  “Because – because Tonnis told me to bring Professor Dreytin a message,” Anya explained, the excuse coming to her as she spoke. She turned back to the professor. “He said to tell you to stop by the clinic after lunch, because he has the next dose of your medicine ready now.” She hoped the man would understand and play along. If he asked questions or looked confused, Phenniel would realize she was making this up. “You know,” she added hastily, “that brew you drink for your – your–” She trailed off, unable to think of an appropriate condition.

  “My rheumatism,” the professor supplied, coming smoothly to her rescue. “A hard word, I know; and even harder to spell. Hardest of all to live with. Thank you; I’ve been hoping he would have it ready. I’ll go and take it now before these old bones have to get back to the broom and mop bucket.”

  “And you’d better get your young bones back to the dishes,” Phenniel ordered, steering Anya firmly toward the kitchen.

  Anya, who had hoped to accompany the professor and join in the conversation, dragged herself disappointedly back to the sink.

  It was nearly half an hour later before anything interesting happened. Phenniel, who had been overseeing the after-lunch clean-up without actually doing any work himself, had stepped back into the dining hall, where she could hear him talking and laughing with one of the soldiers just beyond the doorway. As though she had been waiting for the right moment, another worker stepped quickly into the kitchen through the side door.

  “Pardon me,” the woman announced to no one in particular, “but I’m told the little girl is available to work where needed today. We’re shorthanded in the housekeeping department, and my orders are to have her come and help clean the floors.”

  Anya hurriedly reached for a towel to dry her hands. “All these new soldiers keep tracking in mud all the time,” the woman explained apologetically to the other dishwashers as she ushered Anya out the door. “Dreytin’s waiting for you over by the barracks,” she added, pointing, when they were out in the courtyard. “You’re supposed to help him with the sweeping up on the sixth floor, or something.”

  “All right.” Anya kept her voice and expression casual, as though she didn’t suspect there was any more to it than that, but secretly she was elated. So the room does exist! And Professor Dreytin knows where it is! Why else would she be assigned to the sixth floor with him?

  Anya hurried in the indicated direction, and sure enough, the profe
ssor was standing in the palace doorway just across from the barracks, holding two brooms and a dust pan.

  “Here you go,” he told her brusquely, handing her one of the brooms. “You’re to work with me the rest of the afternoon.” There were a couple of soldiers loitering nearby, so Anya merely nodded dutifully and followed him into the palace. He said nothing as he led the way along a corridor and up some stairs, Anya hurrying to keep up with his firm strides. Every time she opened her mouth to ask a question, a soldier or worker would pass, so she finally gave up and simply waited to see what he would show her.

  Two more Malornians were standing in a doorway talking when they finally came up to the end of a long hallway on the sixth floor. The professor, however, showed not a trace of disappointment or frustration. “You start sweeping at this end,” he instructed Anya, “and I’ll start at the other. Make sure you do a nice thorough job of it. I’ll come check your progress in a bit, and I don’t want to see a single speck of dust left.” He sounded so stern that she could easily believe he was a teacher. Had he been this strict when he had taught the prince his lessons?

  “Yes, Professor,” she replied meekly, and began to sweep.

  The soldiers watched them for a few minutes before one of them finally disappeared into a room and shut the door behind him. The other came strolling down the hall in a leisurely way. Approaching Anya, he deliberately stepped in her dust pile and kicked it across her feet, chuckling as he strolled past her. Anya couldn’t resist the urge to stick out her tongue at his retreating back before bending with a sigh to sweep up the dust for the second time.

  When they were alone, the professor nonchalantly walked over and inspected the area she had finished. “Not bad. Brush it all into the dustpan now, and we’ll get started on some of these rooms.” As he emptied the dust into a large potted plant sitting in a corner, Anya wondered for a moment whether they were actually just here to sweep. He sounded so serious about it. Was it really an act?

  Professor Dreytin ushered her into the third doorway on the left. The room had no windows, and Anya waited while he took a candle from his pocket and lit it from a torch mounted on the wall in the hallway. Shielding the little flame carefully with one hand, he followed her into the room and pushed the door shut behind them. Anya’s spirits soared with hope once more. Surely he wouldn’t be shutting the door if they were only going to clean.

  She looked around eagerly. By the dim light of the candle, she could see that they were in a plain little room, empty except for a square table and four chairs in the middle. It was too small and too far from any of the kitchens to be a dining room. A meeting room, maybe? In any case, it didn’t look as though it were used very often. The surface of the table felt dusty to her touch, and a trace of a cobweb dangled from one shadowy corner of the ceiling.

  The professor pulled a second candle from his pocket, lit it from the first, and handed it to her. “We’d better each take a light,” he told her in a low voice, “in case one of them goes out.”

  Anya grinned in excitement, feeling more than ever like a character in an adventure story. “Where are we going?” she demanded. This was obviously not the secret room itself.

  The professor paused and turned to gaze seriously into her eyes. “Wennish assures me you can be trusted. I hope so, because what I’m about to show you is a secret that, to the best of my knowledge, only two other living people know about. One of them being Prince Jaymin, and his future safety could depend on this remaining a secret.”

  “I won’t tell, I promise,” Anya assured him, hopping from one foot to the other in her eagerness.

  He put a firm hand on her shoulder to settle her. “It’s more than just that. When you come here on your own, you must be extremely careful. If anyone sees you or follows you, it could mean danger later on to the prince, even if we do someday defeat the Malornians. You shouldn’t even talk about the location with those who know the room exists, like Wennish. I’ve spoken to him and Tonnis and Eleya about it, and they understand the need for secrecy. They won’t ask, and you mustn’t tell. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.” But Anya wasn’t certain she did. How could it be dangerous to Prince Jaymin if friendly, loyal people knew where a secret room was?

  “You’ll understand better after you’ve seen it,” the professor assured her, probably reading the confusion in her face. “Now come this way.” He gestured for her to follow as he used the flat edge of the dustpan he was still holding to pry open a thin door that Anya hadn’t even noticed in the opposite wall. It had no handle and was nearly invisible until it stood open.

  “We’ll leave the brooms in here,” the professor told her, propping his against the wall in what looked like an empty closet barely big enough for the two of them. The door had a handle on the inside, and he pulled it closed. It didn’t click shut, but Anya was sure that from the other side, it once again looked like part of the wall.

  Professor Dreytin bent and felt along the floor until his fingers found a large ring that had been lying flat. When he pulled it up, Anya saw that it was a trapdoor handle.

  “This is so exciting!” she couldn’t help but whisper, hardly able to contain herself at the sight of a narrow flight of stairs leading steeply down into the darkness.

  “Pull the trapdoor shut behind you,” the professor instructed, carefully squeezing himself into the little square hole and starting down the steps. Anya obeyed, clutching her candle as she lowered herself in after him.

  It was a good thing she didn’t mind enclosed spaces, she thought, because the stairway was only about two feet wide, and the sloping ceiling was so low that Professor Dreytin had to bend his head as he walked. She counted fifteen steps before the way leveled out into an equally narrow hallway.

  “How did you ever find this place?” she wondered, hurrying after him.

  Glancing back at her over his shoulder, the professor chuckled. “I didn’t find it. Do I look like the sort of person who would go exploring empty rooms and discovering hidden doorways and trapdoors? No; Prince Jaymin and Erik found this passageway a few years ago.”

  “Erik? Who’s he?”

  “My other pupil. The prince’s young friend and bodyguard.”

  The prince had a bodyguard who was just a boy? Anya was intrigued. “Did he get killed in the Invasion?”

  “I certainly hope not. Unlikely, considering that no one found his body. I’m guessing he and the prince somehow escaped together. Actually, I thought they might have hidden in here that night, but when I checked the next day, there was no sign of them.”

  “So how did they find this place?”

  “Oh, they were playing hide-and-seek or tag or some such thing one morning before their geometry lesson, and they stumbled upon the secret closet. Being the young boys they were, they decided that exploration was a higher priority at that moment than angles and hypotenuses.” The professor chuckled. “Of course I had to give them a good scolding when they showed up half an hour late for their lesson, but I couldn’t say I blamed them. I was once a young boy myself, after all; though I realize that’s probably hard to believe. Anyway, I think Erik would have preferred to keep their discovery a secret, but when I asked where they had been, the prince was so excited he couldn’t keep from announcing that they had discovered a way to watch his father in the throne room. I was concerned they had been doing something dangerous, so I made them show me what they had found. Imagine my surprise when they brought me here.”

  “But how do you think this whole secret passageway got here in the first place?” Anya demanded, following him around a sharp corner and down a second staircase.

  “I’m sure it was put in when the palace was built hundreds of years ago,” the professor told her matter-of-factly. “Of course, there’s no sign of it in the floor plans that the king’s secretary keeps on file. I checked. My guess is, someone paid the architect to arrange a way to spy on the king. A would-be assassin, perhaps, or some palace worker who hoped to profit from info
rmation about judgments the monarch passed from his throne. As you’ll see, it’s easy to both watch and listen to anything that goes on in the throne room.”

  The passage leveled out into another corridor, but only briefly. Then they rounded a second corner and descended another staircase, this one longer than either of the first two.

  As she made her way carefully along behind the professor with her candle, Anya pictured the prince and Erik – probably a little younger then than she was now – exploring this place for the first time. How excited they must have been to discover such a secret!

  “So you never told anyone else?” she wondered aloud.

  “I did, actually,” the professor told her. “After they first brought me, I felt duty-bound to inform the king, as a matter of palace security. His Majesty came up to see for himself and was quite intrigued. After that he made sure Captain Talifus kept the whole area well -guarded, though I don’t believe he actually told the captain why. A wise move, considering what we know about Talifus now.” Anya could hear the frown in the professor’s voice.

  Abruptly, her guide stopped at the end of a short hallway before what appeared to be a blank wall. “Be careful,” he warned her, his voice lower than before. “We can’t talk once we’re in there, or anyone down in the throne room will be able to hear us. And we should take off our shoes too, and leave the candles out here so no one will see the light.” He set his candle in a little stand on a low shelf carved into the wall to his right, obviously placed there for just such a purpose, and bent to pull his shoes off one at a time. Anya followed suit as he inserted one finger into a hole she hadn’t even noticed in what looked like solid stone wall just beyond the shelf. He pulled gently, gesturing with his other hand for her to back out of the way, and another hidden door swung open toward them.

  This room was small and circular, with the strangest floor Anya had ever seen. Instead of being flat, it rose up in the middle like a steep hill. It was the same shape, she realized, as the top of the domed ceiling in the throne room, which must be directly below. There was a round hole about a foot in diameter at the top of the hill – like the crater of a volcano – through which she could see light glowing. A stiff carpet, probably placed there to muffle any sounds, lay spread over the part of the floor nearest her, rising up the hill nearly to the top.