by Kailin Gow
Gemma James caught the sound of the doorbell just as she was finishing an assignment for her private school. She was pretty sure she’d aced it. She thought about ignoring the disturbance to go through it once more, but then remembered that there was not anyone else home in her family’s Manhattan house. It might be a delivery, and since her dad was a lawyer, there was every chance that it might be something important that she would need to sign for, assuming that they’d take a sixteen-year-old’s signature.
Sighing, Gem stood up and made her way through the place’s expensive furnishings, pausing automatically to check her appearance in the hall mirror. It was one of those habits she had picked up from cheerleading, because you never knew when the universe might have found ways to make you look a mess. As usual, she looked perfect, not a hair of her long blonde hair out of place as it framed a face with porcelain skin and deep green eyes. She smoothed out her skirt, then checked the door’s spy hole, because appearance was not the only time you couldn’t be too careful.
There was not anyone there. Or rather, there was not anyone standing at the door. There was someone walking away, dressed in the kind of robe that didn’t make sense unless Franciscan monks had started making deliveries, but he was gone in a second or two. Gem waited a moment longer before opening the door. She looked around, and found no one there, so she looked down. When she saw the envelope, she smiled very slowly, because some moments deserved to be drawn out, then she picked it up, ripped it open and read it so quickly that it probably set some kind of record.
Chapter 1
As the car that had been sent to the airport crunched its way up the estate’s gravel drive and rattled over the drawbridge, Gem found herself quietly surprised. Even though the invitation had said that she and her fellow winners would be staying in the castle at the heart of the Wordwick game, and even though her father, who’d been there on business, had confirmed that it was very much a real castle, she hadn’t really believed it. She’d gone online and looked into English castles, only to find that most of the really big ones were publicly owned, or had been ruined in the various wars since the Middle Ages, or both.
She’d expected that the “castle” would just be a manor house with a few battlements tacked on, so her first sight of Henry Word’s home left her open mouthed. It was everything its online presence promised; a huge, sprawling circle of stone walls almost totally ringed by a moat and themselves surrounding a square bailey keep at one end, along with outbuildings, gardens, and what looked very much like a maze. From above it would probably have looked like a lopsided archery target.
Parts of the castle had obviously been updated, such as the ground floor entrance to the keep that the car pulled up to, but mostly it looked like it had stayed untouched for hundreds of years. Except that if it really hadn’t been touched, then the stonework would be crumbling and the whole place would have been overrun with plant life. Someone had obviously put a lot of effort into looking after it.
Gem got out of the car wondering how Henry Word had managed to get his hands on the place. She knew he was rich- her father had done enough work for him that she had a pretty good idea of just how rich- but even so, it seemed hard to credit. Places like this weren’t in private hands, were they? Maybe he still let visitors in. The ramp for wheelchair access to the front door was the kind of thing that they always had for visitors, was not it?
The driver handed Gem her bag and wished her a pleasant stay, but she was not really listening. She was too busy staring as she stepped through the doors and into the keep’s lobby. Her private school was quite old-fashioned in its tastes, full of wood paneled walls and old paintings, but this had it beaten easily. There were expensive looking rugs thrown over the flagstone floor, and tapestries on the walls that blazed with color. They were interspersed with painted shields, and displays of swords or fragments of armor that looked like they really were hundreds of years old. Great oak doors branched off from it through small stone arches. It looked like the kind of thing that might result if someone had told a set designer to make everything look as medieval as possible, and then given them the contents of a museum strong room to use for decoration.
Gem was so busy taking it all in that for almost half a minute she didn’t notice the four other people standing in the hallway, and she started when she noticed them. All four seemed to be around her own age. The one girl among them looked to Gem like she had gone out of her way to look as shocking as possible, and she frowned when she saw Gem. Of the three boys, the red-haired one with the freckles seemed even busier looking at the place than Gem had been, while the olive skinned one wearing torn jeans gave her a suspicious look that quickly turned to a smile. The third, who Gem had to admit was good-looking in a far too clean-cut, sure of himself kind of way, strolled over to her.
“Hi, I’m Stieg Sparks,” he announced in a Texas accent. “Most people call me Sparks. You’re here for the week?”
Gem nodded, then cocked her head to one side. She had heard the tiny note of surprise in that, and she knew the way jocks like this thought.
“What? Don’t you think I should be?”
“No, it’s just…”
“It’s just that you don’t look much like a gamer,” the girl with the multi-hued hair said.
“And who are you?” Gem demanded.
“Katherine. Most people call me Kat.”
She stuck out a hand like a challenge, and seemed surprised when Gem took it.
“Gemma,” Gem replied. ‘Everyone calls me Gem. You’re British?”
“From London. North side of the river. I suppose someone’s got to be.” She paused, looking Gem up and down. ‘So what are you doing here? Daddy buy you a way in?”
“Ignore Kat,” the boy who had given her the suspicious look said. “It will be nice having someone so good-looking around. I’m Riordan Roberts. Rio.”
Gem started to roll her eyes to Kat at that line, but the other girl’s expression was not entirely friendly. Kat nodded to the remaining boy, who stood there looking like he couldn’t make up his mind whether to say anything. “Since we’re doing introductions, that’s Jack, which is apparently short for Jackson.”
Gem smiled at the red-haired boy.
“Hi. Where are you from, Jack?”
“A-Alaska. Did you know that this place was built some time in the twelfth century?” The second half of it came out in a rush, as if to make up for the nervous stutter at the start.
“Some time after 1141, following a charter of King Stephen, to be more exact,” a voice said. “It’s nice that you’ve done your research, Mr. Zusak.”
Gem recognized the voice instantly as that of Henry Word. After his online announcements, she was hardly going to forget. He must have come into the hallway through a side door. She turned to greet him with the others, expecting to look up into the already half-familiar face, and had to adjust the direction of her gaze when it turned out that Henry Word was sitting down.
He was sitting down because he was in a wheelchair.
It was quite a high tech wheelchair, obviously custom made and designed around Henry Word, but there was no escaping the fact that it was there. From the waist up, Mr. Word was dressed conservatively, even elegantly, in a suit and silk tie. From the waist down, his legs disappeared beneath a tartan blanket. They didn’t appear again on the other side.
“A small accident from my army days,” Henry word said, and Gem found herself wondering if he’d read her mind in the second it took to decide that the others probably looked just as surprised as she did. Gem realized that, in all the pictures she had seen of Henry Word either online or in magazines, not one had shown more than his head and shoulders.
Henry Word laughed then.
“I can see I’ve caught you all rather by surprise. Still, before I turn into the main topic of conversation, can I take a moment to welcome the five of you?’ his gaze flicked to each of them in turn, and Gem guessed that he was matching names to faces in his mind. “You
are all here, of course, because you have turned out to be some of the biggest fans of my little game. Congratulations on that. For the next week, you’ll be staying in what I hope you’ll find to be extremely comfortable surroundings, and you’ll get the benefit of a very special surprise.”
“What surprise?” Rio asked from behind Gem. Henry Word chuckled again.
“Ah, Riordan Roberts, I take it? Well, there is nothing to be suspicious about. In fact, I think that as fans, you will all enjoy this particular surprise. I have simply decided to allow you access to the tenth level of my game while we are here.”
Gem felt her brow furrow.
“But Mr. Word, aren’t there only nine levels?”
“That’s true at the moment,” Henry Word answered. “Anachronia is rather new. You will be among the first to play it. Still, let’s not focus on that too much now, shall we? Chef has excelled himself in the Great Hall, and I’m sure you must all be hungry after your journeys.”
He turned his wheelchair and headed back through the door he had come through, obviously expecting the five of them to follow. Gem hurried to keep up, even though what she really wanted was to demand more details from him. Well, most of her wanted to demand more details. Her stomach was happy to have dinner first. It had been a long flight.
The Great Hall was everything that the name promised. The ceiling towered upwards, and held a great brass and iron chandelier. Along with a few paintings, the walls held more shields and weapons, as though Henry Word expected an army to pop round for spares at some point, while the floors were wood that had been polished so much it reflected the light from above, making stepping on it like treading over a spray of stars.
There were two long tables, arranged with one down each side of the hall. Mr. Word showed the five of them to one table, then wheeled off towards the other, where half a dozen men and women dressed with varying degrees of formality.
“My advisors,” he explained without being asked. “There is always so much to do. Still, at least this will give you all a chance to get to know one another.”
Gem took the seat nearest to her, watching as the others arranged themselves around the table. Sparks glanced across to where Gem sat, then took the place next to Kat, while Rio wound up beside Jack.
“So Kat,” Sparks asked, “what is it like living in London?”
Gem listened to Sparks and Kat talk for a while. She had been prepared for Kat to come off as odd, given how she dressed, but from what she could tell, the other girl was pretty normal. She also got the feeling that Kat would hate it if anyone pointed that out. Particularly if Gem pointed it out.
“So I was going to get this tattoo, once,” Kat said at one point, “but my mum said no. She said I was not old enough. I…”
Gem switched her attention to the other conversation at the table. It was half a conversation, really. Jack seemed to be working hard to get Rio to talk. For his part though, Rio seemed to be ignoring the other boy as best he could.
“So whereabouts in LA are you from?”
“East.”
“What’s that like then? I bet it must be warmer than Alaska, right? Everywhere is warmer than Alaska.”
“It’s OK.”
Somewhere in all of this, food arrived, carried by waiters who looked like they might have stepped out of a professional restaurant. The food was good, certainly better than anything served up at her school, and Gem kept listening to the others as she sipped at some soup she had to slow herself to keep from gulping down. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was.
Kat and Sparks had got onto the subject of sport, where Kat had found out that the boy was a quarterback at his school. Gem could have told her that ten minutes ago. Some things were just obvious. Still, Kat seemed interested enough.
“Of course, over here, what we’d call football, you’d call soccer. Me, I’d rather just skate. You can take a board anywhere. Still it must be pretty cool.”
Sparks said that it was, though to Gem, he didn’t sound very convinced of it. Maybe Kat heard it too, quickly taking the conversation off into music. They didn’t have many of the same tastes, but then, Gem suspected that not that many people would have managed to have exactly the same musical tastes as Kat. There were bands there that she’d never even heard of, and Kat seemed almost pleased when Sparks admitted that he hadn’t heard of them either.
Between the two conversations, not to mention the arrival of yet more food, it was not easy to give much attention to what was happening on the other table. Still, Gem glanced across. Henry Word seemed to be discussing business with his advisors over dinner, and Gem wanted to see what he was like when he was not greeting visitors.
He seemed to be almost as friendly with his advisors as he had been with the five of them out in the lobby. He laughed and he joked, but Gem could still tell that he was very definitely in charge. The others deferred to him constantly, and he seemed to be very much the center of attention. Pleased to have found out that much about him, Gem turned her attention back to eating. Some of the other cheerleaders at school might have made fun of her for putting away so much, but they hadn’t just spent hours on a plane, and this food was too good to miss in any case.
Besides, lurking behind it all was the thought that once they had finished dinner they might get to hear more about Anachronia, Henry Word’s new Wordwick level. It was a thought that made Gem’s fork practically fly over her plate.
Sparks tried to keep up as Kat talked, but it was not easy. He found himself glancing hopefully at the other girl, Gem, but she just seemed happy to sit and watch the whole thing…
Rio watched her too. He was not sure what a little pretty rich girl like her was doing there, but he was certainly glad she was…
Jack was surprised that the other boy didn’t have more to say. Hadn’t he looked up the history of the castle before he came here? Jack kept going anyway, hardly noticing that Rio was not listening…
Kat kept talking, hoping to find a way through, before finally giving up. It was not like she cared. She was there to win a game, after all…
Through it, Henry Word watched them all. They were young, of course, but everything said that they should be perfect. Even so, he hoped that this would work…
Chapter 2
Eventually the dinner ended, and even Gem found herself full. Most of Henry Word’s advisors drifted off when he announced that he was going to take the five winners on a tour of the castle. The only one who stayed was a balding man in slightly frayed tweed, whom Mr. Word introduced as Dr Percy Brown, his personal physician.
“Percy has been vital in keeping me running well enough to produce Wordwick, as well as making more than a few contributions himself. Hopefully he’ll also make sure that I don’t get you all hopelessly lost while I show you round.”
“Lost? Hah!” Dr Brown stuck his hands in his pockets in a way that reminded Gem of one of her teachers. “You designed half of this place yourself. It’s the rest of us that have to worry about getting lost.”
“Well then, another tour should help, shouldn’t it?”
Gem and the others followed in the two men’s wake as they started back towards the lobby. Gem found Sparks beside her as they walked.
“So what do you think of Henry Word?” he asked softly. Gem shrugged.
“He seems very confident,” she whispered back. “But I guess he would be. His father was rich, and he’s built up an empire of his own.”
“You know a lot about him.”
Gem wondered if she should mention that her father worked as his lawyer. Sparks seemed nice enough, but from the way he’d first greeted her, she suspected that he would think that had had something to do with her getting to be here. Kat had almost said as much.
‘I just did some research.”
If Sparks was going to say anything back, he was cut off as Henry Word drew to a halt.
“Right then, this is the lobby. From here, you can get to a few places that might interest you. If you would
, Percy.’ He nodded to a door, and Dr Brown opened it. Behind it stood a large, carpeted room filled from floor to ceiling with bookshelves. Instead of ladders to access the higher shelves, there were mechanical arms, similar to the ones found at fairgrounds to grab prizes, and connected to small screens with joysticks. Gem guessed that was probably easier for Mr. Word than having to call someone over every time he wanted a book. Probably more fun, too. A ring of great oak desks dominated the middle of the room, forming a circle around a marble bust of a man’s head. Briefly, Gem thought it might be of Henry Word when he was younger, but there were enough subtle differences that she decided it had to be a relative.
“My father, William Ralph Word,’ Henry Word announced. ‘I thought I should have a statue of the old boy somewhere. There’s a complete run of everything his newspaper empire put out too, though if you want something that won’t put you to sleep, there’s a lot of other stuff too.”
He wheeled around and headed for one of the other doors. Gem got the feeling that Henry Word liked having everyone hurry to keep up. He threw open the next door, and they all scrambled through. It was a recreation room, Gem noticed, with a row of old-fashioned arcade machines along one wall, a pool table in the middle, and a few chairs off to one side surrounding a sleek looking music station. The chairs looked like the sort that more or less swallowed you up when you tried to sit down, so that you needed at least two attempts to get up.
“We usually keep the pool table set up for nine-ball,” Henry Word said. “Don’t play against Percy though. He’s something of a pool shark.”
