The Secret Prince

by Violet Haberdasher

  “I do hope Jem and George don’t mind a bit of extra flavor,” Henry said with mock concern.

  “What do you mean, ‘extra flavor’? This is how food tastes in the Nordlands,” Adam said innocently, with another vigorous twist of pepper.

  Henry shook his head, his grin stretching wider. “We should probably eat ours before they make us swap.”

  Adam gladly picked up the slice of rough bread topped with meat and gravy and enthusiastically took a bite, gravy dribbling down his chin. Henry dug into his own supper with equal enthusiasm.

  They were just finishing the dishes when Jem and George sauntered into the kitchen and seized their plates of food. Henry waited, casually wiping a tea towel against a gravy dish that had long since dried.

  “Ugh!” Jem said, making a face. “This is disgusting.” “I wouldn’t insult Nordlandic food if I were you,” Henry said, holding back a smile.

  “You did somethin’,” George accused, pointing a finger at Henry.

  “Maybe,” Henry said coolly. “An’ maybe I’ll do it again, if yeh don’ start pullin’ yer weight.”

  George scowled.

  Jem glared.

  “Whaddaya want?” George demanded.

  “What’s fair,” Henry said. “Adam wants his pillow back. An’ tomorrow you lot are haulin’ the bags back to the train, seein’ as how we brought them up.”

  “I don’t really need my pillow back,” Adam muttered.

  Henry elbowed him. Jem and George exchanged a glance.

  “Done,” George said.

  Henry put down the gravy dish and pushed past them. Adam followed.

  “Oi, why did you tell them it was us?” Adam whispered.

  “If we didn’t admit to it, they would have punished us for the prank,” Henry returned. “That’s how you handle boys like them—show them you’re not afraid to retaliate.”

  “I suppose,” Adam said, “although you might have asked for a top bunk rather than my pillow.”

  “Bottom bunks are better,” Henry said, pushing aside the heavy wool blanket that had been strung across the entrance to their room in place of a proper door. “We can sneak out more easily.”

  “I knew that,” Adam muttered.

  It seemed as though Jem and George would never go to sleep. Jem dangled his legs over the side of the bed, his unwashed feet in Adam’s face, torturing everyone with hideous harmonica playing for an age.

  Henry and Adam read the Nordlandic newspapers they’d gotten earlier, looking for anything important or suspicious. But the newspapers were disappointing and filled with propaganda stories such as “Five Ways to Show Your Support for the Chancellor,” or inventive recipes that could be cooked with the standard food rations. At this, Henry snorted. It was a crime in the Nordlands to teach women to read, and then they put recipes in the paper.

  He flipped to the next page, an illustration of how to recognize different types of “heathens,” with grossly drawn caricatures and a list of places where heathens had been recently spotted.

  There was an article on Morsmas, the upcoming holiday celebrating Chancellor Mors’s birthday, and one on appropriate ways to celebrate, and an interview with a woman whose town had been recently searched as part of the policing agency’s new initiative.

  Twyla Ulkins, 47, was delighted when a policing agent came to search her quiet suburban neighborhood of Little Septimus, South Nordlandshire, under the new laws.

  “Now I feel safe,” said Miss Ulkins, a washerwoman. “I never know what my neighbors are up to—some could be hiding heathens in their basements! But after that nice young policing agent came to inquire, I can sleep safely with the knowledge that there’s nothing to fear here in Little Septimus.”

  Finally Jem and George dropped off to sleep. Henry and Adam changed into their plain, rumpled clothing and crept out into the hallway.

  “I’ve never had a strong opinion on the harmonica before tonight,” Adam mused. “But now I bloody loathe the thing.”

  Henry snorted. “Do you know what time it is?” he asked.

  “No pocket watch.” Adam shrugged.

  “Me neither,” Henry said.

  They tiptoed past the scullery and into the kitchen. It was nearly midnight. The kitchen was dark, the fire in the hearth banked and flickering feebly. A wooden stool was pulled up in front of the fire, and a fat bald man sat upon it, snoring loudly, with a mangy dog at his feet. A set of keys dangled from the man’s belt, stamped with the Partisan School insignia.

  Henry made a face and tiptoed past. Adam did the same, edging toward the wall and away from the dog, which opened one eye and growled in warning at the two of them. They stepped out of the kitchen and into the corridor beyond, where they were to meet Frankie.

  Henry leaned back against the cold stone wall and breathed a sigh.

  “There’s nothing in the newspaper,” Adam complained.

  “I know,” Henry said. “And that’s what worries me.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “It’s obvious that anyone with a brain isn’t relying on the Common Comrade for their news.”

  “Do you think there’s some sort of secret newspaper?” Adam asked.

  “I’m certain of it,” Henry said. “And I want to know what it says.”

  “Know what what says?” Frankie asked, startling them. They hadn’t heard her come around the corner.

  “Blimey, don’t do that!” Adam complained.

  Frankie wiggled a stockinged foot at them. “All the better to sneak with. And at least I thought to bring a candle.”

  Henry had to give her that.

  Frankie grinned, tossing her braid over one shoulder. She still wore the modest maid’s outfit, and without her shoes she seemed smaller somehow, and more delicate, as though she needed protecting.

  “What are we looking for, exactly?” Adam asked.

  “Anything suspicious,” Henry said. “Combat training rooms, weapons, odd books, secret newspapers. I’m not really certain what. Just something that we can bring to the lord ministers as proof that the conscription laws need to be changed, or that the Nordlands have violated the Longsword Treaty.”

  The three of them followed the twisting dark corridor until it deposited them in the main entrance hall, at the foot of an enormous staircase that branched in two directions.

  “Any preference?” Henry asked.

  “Let’s go to the left,” Frankie said.

  And so they went to the left, which led them to a corridor of classrooms.

  “You reckon we should look in the classrooms?” Adam asked.

  Henry shrugged, and they did, but the classrooms turned up nothing out of the ordinary. Neither did a series of study cubicles—which Henry strongly suspected used to be weapons closets—or a particularly suspicious-looking doorway that led to a cupboard full of lab coats.

  The second floor was no better.

  They were just about to give up when Henry spotted a landscape painting hanging above a stair that looked oddly familiar. “I know where we are!” Henry whispered triumphantly. “Come on!”

  Adam, who was shuffling sleepily behind Frankie, yawned loudly in response.

  Henry shot him a look.

  “Sorry,” Adam said. “I was up before dawn.”

  “We all were,” Frankie put in. “Stop lagging, Adam. You’re rubbish as a spy.”

  “Well, you’re rubbish as a runaway,” he shot back.

  “At least I can peel a potato,” Frankie retorted.

  “Shhh!” Henry warned, his heart pounding. “Nearly there.”

  He turned a corner, and there—just before a narrow stairwell—was the fish statue, and the entrance to the secret training room.

  “That’s it?” Adam wrinkled his nose, unimpressed.

  But Henry paid him no attention. He put his ear to the door and listened. Silence.

  And then, with a deep breath he pressed the bit of decoration in the wall paneling.

  Nothing happened. Henry fr
owned and pressed harder. Still nothing.

  “Frankie, can you hold your candle closer?” he asked. Frankie stepped next to him, the loose sleeve of her dress brushing against his arm as she held the candle aloft.

  “Er, thanks,” Henry said, uncomfortably aware of their closeness.

  “What’s wrong?” Adam whined.

  “I don’t know,” Henry said. “Maybe it’s locked.” He frowned at the wall for another minute, but finally had to admit that they weren’t getting in.

  “Let’s check the towers,” he said, trying not to let his disappointment show. But the first tower they checked yielded a collection of telescopes and a large astronomy chart. The second was filled with herbs drying from the ceiling, and a dozen tables, each set with a mortar and pestle.

  “We’re not going to find anything,” Adam said with anguish.

  Henry bit his lip. He’d always thought he would luckily stumble upon something the way he had during the Inter-School Tournament, and he’d never pictured the reality of finding nothing. He had no idea what to do. He just knew that there was no possible way he could return to Knightley empty handed.

  “I suppose we could give Lord Marchbanks the newspaper,” Henry said.

  “What does that prove?” Adam asked, at the same moment that Frankie demanded, “What newspaper?”

  Quickly Henry explained.

  “But you said it yourself,” Frankie said. “It’s a perfectly innocent paper.”

  “It proves there’s some other newspaper out there, filled with incriminating articles,” Henry argued.

  “Maybe,” Frankie said, her hand on her hip. “Or maybe it proves that no one in the Nordlands is interested in politics. They just want to be left alone to enjoy their quiet, boring, equally equal lives.”

  “She does have a point there,” Adam said.

  Henry shook his head angrily. “No. There has to be something. We’re just not looking hard enough.”

  “We could check the armory,” Adam suggested.

  Henry considered this. It wasn’t a bad idea. But by the time they found the armory, even Henry was yawning, although he forced himself to keep going.

  The equipment room was dark, its cupboards looming. Adam grabbed the handle of one of the cupboards and yanked. “Locked,” he moaned.

  Henry bent down to inspect the lock, and then took a few lengths of wire from his pocket. “Can either of you …?” Henry asked.

  “I brought my own,” Frankie said, smirking as she removed a hairpin from her braid. She set to work on one of the cabinets, and Henry set to work on another.

  “Don’t mind me,” Adam said. “I’ll just sit down here on this nice bench and have a nap.”

  “You will not,” Henry said. “Someone has to have a look at the armory.” Adam sighed and trudged through the archway into the armory.

  Henry gave the bit of wire a sharp twist. He heard part of the mechanism click.

  “I could have a look around the maids’ quarters in the morning,” Frankie offered.

  “Thank you,” Henry said, frowning at the lock and giving the wire a final twist. The cabinet clicked open. But it was full of disappointingly ordinary practice foils and sabres with blunted bits on the end.

  Frankie managed to open her cabinet a moment later, but it contained nothing more than masks and gloves. “Maybe there’s a false back?” Frankie asked.

  Henry glanced over. “There isn’t enough depth,” he said, sitting down on the bench and putting his head in his hands. “I was so certain,” he mumbled.

  Frankie quietly closed the cupboards and sat down next to him. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “So we’re going to be expelled.” He hadn’t truly believed it until that moment, but the more he thought about it, the more obvious it became. They’d been caught wandering Knightley after lights-out, had faked ill, and had run away to the Nordlands to prove the unprovable—to say nothing of the battle society.

  “I could go back with you,” Frankie said, so softly that Henry thought he’d misheard.

  Henry looked up. “What?”

  “Instead of going off on my own, I could go back with you and Adam, to Knightley. You’d be quite the heroic young knights, returning from your quest to rescue the foolish young maiden from the clutches of an evil foreign ruler.” Frankie bit her lip.

  It was a generous offer, Henry had to admit. And it was certainly a sacrifice on Frankie’s part—one he’d never considered asking her to make. But returning to Knightley with Frankie in tow would certainly give Lord Havelock pause in expelling them.

  “Saying that we’ve found you doesn’t change anything that really matters,” Henry pointed out.

  “It changes your being expelled, and that matters,” Frankie said. “Besides, I can run away again if I feel like it.”

  Henry sighed. Maybe Frankie was right. After all, they had to make the best of their situation somehow. And then Adam appeared in the doorway.

  “Find anything?” Henry asked.

  “No,” he said, shuddering. “Unless you count a bloody huge spider.”

  “Let’s go to sleep,” Henry said. “Whatever this school is hiding, we’re not going to find it.”

  “I’ll see you in the morning,” Frankie promised as they closed the door to the armory.

  “It is morning,” Adam complained, yawning.

  20

  THE EMPTY COMPARTMENT

  By the time Jem and George began to carry the luggage back down to the train, Henry was ready for the day to be over. Mr. Frist had woken the boys unforgivably early, filled their morning with the small but hideous tasks of ironing cravats, waking the members of the envoy with fresh jugs of water and towels for their nightstands, and bringing up tea. He then left them at the mercy of the valets while the rest of the envoy closed themselves once again in a meeting room with Yascherov and his men.

  Henry ached from lack of sleep and too little food, but he knew that Adam was fairing even worse.

  They’d caught sight of Frankie in the kitchens when they’d returned the tea services. She was being sent on some errand to Romborough and had winked at them as she’d picked up an enormous wicker basket. At least she seemed to be doing all right.

  Henry and Adam gave the guest rooms a final sweep for personal effects left behind and, finding none, returned to the kitchen, where the cook was packing the food hamper for the journey.

  “Off with ye,” he said without even so much as a glance at Henry and Adam.

  Somehow downhill wasn’t quite so bad as up, and they managed to wrestle the hamper down to the train station without too much of an ordeal—although Adam did whack his shin rather hard a few times.

  Steam billowed impatiently from the train as Henry and Adam deposited the hamper in the kitchen car. They could hear Jem and George arguing over the luggage, which had apparently gotten jumbled up. Henry grinned.

  “Shall we stash our bags?” Adam asked.

  “Might as well.”

  They passed Mr. Frist, who called after them, “Train’s leaving in three minutes, boys!”

  Henry slid open the door to the servants car and then knocked on the door to the storage car, sliding it open. “Frankie?” he called.

  There was no answer.

  “Are you there?” Henry called, lifting up the corner of the tarp to reveal her hiding place.

  It was empty.

  The train whistle shrilled, making Henry jump. “She’s not here,” he said, trying to think.

  “Well, where is she?” Adam asked.

  “She was sent on an errand,” Henry realized with a gulp. “I don’t think she came back.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t think?” Adam accused.

  Henry closed his eyes, trying to remember. “The basket she took wasn’t back in the kitchen when we got the hamper,” Henry said finally.

  “What do we do?” Adam asked, panicked. “The train’s about to depart!”

  “We can’t leave her!” Henry said.
>
  “Well, we can’t stay in the Nordlands, either! What about school? What about money?”

  “I’m not stranding her here,” Henry protested. “We’ll figure something out if we stay. There will be another envoy next month.”

  Adam went white. “A month,” he moaned. “My family would panic. Not to mention, I’m a rubbish servant, and Jewish to top it off.”

  “You go back with the envoy,” Henry said quickly. “Tell the headmaster what happened. I’ll stay with Frankie.”

  Adam shot Henry a look of pure anguish as the train whistle sounded again. “Henry, you can’t leave me! They’ll ask questions!” he wailed.

  Henry grimaced at this. “Cover for me as long as you can. Say I’m feeling poorly.”

  “Wait!” Adam cried, but the carriages had already begun to groan at their couplings.

  Henry stepped onto the hitch between the cars. “I have to go,” he said. “I’ll sign on as a servant at Partisan. It’ll be fine.”

  “It won’t!” Adam exclaimed. “I’ll be expelled if I turn up at school without you! And what if the headmaster doesn’t believe me and thinks you two have run off together?”

  Henry gulped. He hadn’t thought of that. The compartment shuddered as the train began to roll forward. “I don’t know what else to do!” Henry cried in exasperation. “I’m sorry. I can’t leave her.” And with that he jumped onto the tracks.

  “Henry!” Adam called, and then took a deep breath to steel his nerves. “Wait! I’m coming with you!”

  As they watched the train depart without them, Henry was struck with the horrible realization of what they’d just done. They were stuck in the Nordlands—for a month. The three of them.

  Henry bit his lip and brushed off his livery. “We should get out of here,” he said.

  Adam groaned. “I just jumped off a moving train. Give me a minute.”

  “It wasn’t moving!” Henry protested.

  Adam glared.

  “It wasn’t moving that fast,” Henry amended.

  Adam climbed to his feet and shouldered his bag.

  “I can’t believe you stayed,” Henry said.

  “Neither can I,” Adam said, and snorted. “The starvation must be making me mental.”