The Ring of Five (11 page)

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"Backgammonchessblackjackgocontractbridgetexashold'em."

"Er, chess, a bit," Danny said, surprised.

"Chess, a bit." Docterow looked down at him as if there was a bad smell in the room. "You either play chess or you don't. Which is it?"

"Er, play," Danny said.

"Get a chessboard from the cupboard," Docterow commanded. "Toxique? Make sure Miss Cole deals the cards fairly."

Danny looked over. Dixie was dealing a game of poker--probably the Texas hold 'em Docterow had been talking about. He watched her as she riffled the cards expertly from hand to hand and dealt to a group of other cadets. Les was at another table, holding a hand of cards. He looked over at Danny and grinned.

"Bridge," he mouthed. Danny was surprised. He thought bridge was a game for old people.

Toxique sat down opposite Danny and set out the chess pieces. He didn't look Danny in the face, and kept muttering under his breath. Danny could hear words like "death" and "suffering."

Danny wasn't really a chess player. He knew that the bishop moved diagonally, and that the pawns were the least important pieces, and that the object of the game was to capture the king, but apart from that he wasn't very good, and he could see straightaway that Toxique was an expert player. He cut apart Danny's defense from the start, and Danny thought that the game would only last for minutes. But then he noticed something. Every time Toxique

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had the opportunity to capture one of Danny's pieces, he turned aside. It was almost as if he couldn't bring himself to knock them off the board. Once Danny saw this he was able to attack Toxique's king with ease and soon had won the game. The next game went the same way, except that Toxique's muttering increased. Docterow watched the game for a minute and raised his eyebrows when Toxique passed up a chance to take Danny's queen.

"You have to be ruthless, Toxique." He hissed the word "ruthless."

Danny started to feel sorry for the boy. He had stopped muttering now, so when he spoke, Danny almost jumped out of his seat.

"You're not a Cherb, are you?" he said in a low voice.

"No," Danny said, "of course not."

"I can tell these things. Just by looking at your face. Look at Les. He's going to cheat Spectre. He's going to slip a card out of his sleeve and deal it to him. I can see it in his face."

Danny looked. Les's face was absolutely still and unreadable. Yet Toxique was right. Watching carefully, Danny could see that when Exspectre asked for a card, Les swiftly and expertly shook one out of his sleeve and into his palm.

"Vandra's got a terrible hand," Toxique said, "but she's bluffing that she's holding aces. Dixie knows she's bluffing and she's about to call her out."

Exactly as Toxique had forecast, Dixie called Vandra's bluff and won the hand.

"That's incredible!" Danny exclaimed.

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"Not very," Toxique said. "I can tell something else from your face."

"What?"

"That you're trying to get out of here."

Before Danny had a chance to reply, Docterow came up behind them again. He moved Danny to the poker game. To Danny's surprise, he found that he was good at it.

"Poker is a game of the mind," Docterow said. "You have to learn how to read your opponent's face while concealing your own thoughts."

"Danny's too good at this," Dixie said, "I don't know how to read his face."

And indeed Danny found that he could keep his face very still. Soon he was winning hand after hand.

The next class was geography. As Danny began to file into the classroom he saw a woman with bushy hair standing at the head of the class. She was wearing old-fashioned goggles pushed up onto her forehead. When she saw Danny she reached behind herself and snatched up a wooden-backed blackboard duster from under the blackboard. In the same smooth movement she threw the duster at Danny's head. It ricocheted off his temple with a resounding thwok, half stunning him and sending him staggering several paces backward.

Beside him he could hear Les's low whistle at the aim and execution of the throw.

"That Spitfire," Les said, his voice full of admiration, "what a woman!"

"Get that boy out of my classroom," the woman said, her voice clear, almost musical in contrast to the violence

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of her actions. "There should be no uninducted cadets in this class." She peered into the gloom at Danny. "Are you all right, dear? I threw underarm since you're a new boy." Danny nodded groggily. "Good, good," she went on. "Now kindly leave the room. Knutt, replenish the ammo." Les hesitated, then picked up the duster and brought it back to her. He came back to Danny and steered him by the arm out the door.

"See you after class," he whispered apologetically.

Danny stood uncertainly in the corridor. Every time he went somewhere on his own something happened to him, and he was getting a little tired of it, so he resolved not to move. There was a comfortable-looking armchair with a strangely shaped back in a little alcove off the corridor, so he sat down in that to wait for the others to finish.

He found a pile of well-thumbed magazines on the table beside the chair, and he picked up the top one and began to look through it. It was called
On Wings of Gold
, and it was full of photographs of Messengers getting awards for things like ballroom dancing and quilt making and flower arranging. There were advertisements for ointments to rub on aching wing joints, and a product promising to "bring out your natural feather color," with a lady Messenger half turned and smiling broadly as she showed off a very unnaturally bright pair of silver wings. Danny particularly liked the ad that said "Fed up with carrying those heavy wings around all day?" and showed a grumpy Messenger sporting what looked like a corset worn backward.

The next magazine in the pile was called
Perils of the

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Air
and seemed devoted to showing how dangerous flying was. There were drawings of spindly Messengers plummeting to the ground, or in midair collisions, or being struck by lightning as they flew perilously near to thunder clouds. There were pages of stories about real-life disasters--whole squadrons of Messengers who took off and were lost over the "Bodminster Triangle," and a tale of a flight of Messengers lost in snowy peaks who survived for days--with dark hints that some of the survivors were driven to eat the others.

The back pages of
Perils of the Air
were given over to handy hints on what to do if someone closed a car door on your wings, and how to avoid getting sucked into the intake of a jet engine. Danny was so fascinated that he didn't notice when a tall shadow fell over him.

"Errr ... hem!" The throat clearing was like a gunshot, and Danny leapt to his feet in surprise, scattering magazines all around him. A Messenger stood in front of him. He was tall with long sideburns, and wore a threadbare lounge suit with black shoes that might once have been elegant but were now scuffed and battered. He had a long nose, and he looked down it at Danny as though he was sighting along the barrel of a gun.

"I knew things had gone to pot at Wilsons," he said, his voice like that of a professor who has found his prize student cheating, "but I didn't think we had gone so far as allowing a Cherb to sit in my chair, reading my magazines."

"I'm not a Cherb," Danny said, hurriedly picking up the magazines.

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"I suppose not," the Messenger said. "If you were I would have had a knife in my throat by now. Where did you come from, anyway?"

Danny hesitated. He wasn't really sure where he was, which made it difficult to say where he had come from.

"Never mind," the Messenger said with a mirthless chuckle, "you're probably one of Brunholm's nasty little schemes. Excuse me, please."

He sat down in the chair and breathed a sigh of relief as he sank into it.

"Much better."

Danny could see now why the back of the chair was strangely shaped--it was so that the Messenger's wings would fit.

"What's your name?" Danny asked.

"Gabriel," the Messenger said, "if it's any of your business. Come here; at the very least you can make yourself useful."

Danny moved closer. Gabriel pulled his own lower eyelid down, revealing an expanse of red-veined eyeball.

"Look closely," he growled. "Any sign of illness, yellowing or pus?"

Feeling a bit queasy, Danny peered into the eye.

"Looks okay to me," he said, withdrawing as soon as decently possible.

"Okay?" Gabriel barked. "Are you a doctor? How could it be okay?"

Gabriel, looking exhausted from his outburst, opened a magazine entitled
Wing and Feather Diseases
and commenced to ignore Danny.

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Half relieved, Danny sat down on the floor. After a few minutes he decided that Gabriel wasn't going to speak to him again, so he cautiously slid a magazine from the bottom of the pile. This one was much older than the others. The paper was brittle and the colors were faded, and it was a moment before Danny realized he was holding it upside down. He turned it round the right way and squinted at the title.

Epic Journeys
, he read. Must be epic journeys to the bathroom, he thought, if this lot were involved. He looked at the cover. At least on this one the Messenger was actually flying and wasn't about to crash or burst into flames or something. In fact, the Messenger looked exhausted but determined. He was wearing goggles, and ice had formed on them and on the edges of his wings. There were singe marks on the feathers as well, and orange bursts of flame in the background, as though someone was firing on him. Then Danny's eyes widened. He rubbed them and stared again.

"It's you," he exclaimed, "on the cover. It's you!"

"What? Eh? How did that get there? Give me that!" Gabriel snatched the magazine from Danny's hand and stuffed it into his pocket.

"You were flying!" Danny said. "And people were shooting at you ..."

"You are mistaken, young man," Gabriel said stiffly, "and if you repeat this allegation of, of flying, then I will speak to Master Devoy himself."

"You can speak to him all you like," Danny said, "I'm out of here tomorrow."

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Gabriel looked around, then bent down to Danny.

"Listen, boy," he whispered hoarsely, "what will you take to keep quiet about this?"

He straightened and began to fish in his pockets, but no matter how frantically he looked, he only came up with fluff and old tissues and a tube marked
Feather Gel
, which he stuffed quickly back into his pockets.

"Wings are decorative--that's all," he said, and Danny could see that he was upset. "All this flying nonsense ... it's all in the past. It's not talked about. Simply not talked about."

"You've nothing to be ashamed of," Danny said.

"I'm not ashamed of anything," Gabriel said, looking anxiously up and down the corridor to see if anyone was coming.

"If you don't want me to mention it, I won't," Danny said.

"Really?" Gabriel seemed surprised.

"Honest."

"Well, thank you," Gabriel said, eyeing Danny suspiciously. But before he could say anything else, Blackpitt announced, "Class over," in a bored voice, and the door of the classroom burst open, the corridor filling with chattering cadets.

"Hello, Gabriel," Les said with a grin, "how's the wings hanging?"

Gabriel gave him a disgusted look and turned away. Les shrugged. It was obvious that Gabriel didn't think very much of him.

"Tell you what," Les said, not seeming particularly

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worried by Gabriel's low opinion, "why don't we go outside for lunch. I've, er, come across a bit of grub."

"I've got some things to do," Dixie said, with a mysterious look. "I'll see you later."

Danny looked around. He wasn't sure if he really wanted to go outside, but no one else seemed to be taking Les up on his offer.

"I'll go," he said, and was rewarded with a pleased look from Les.

Danny followed Les out onto the lawn, half regretting his decision as the wind flung a handful of sleet into his face.

"Come on," Les said. "I want to show you something."

Les plunged into the trees opposite the lawn and Danny followed him. It was dark under the trees, and it was a while before Danny realized that they were following an overgrown path. The gravel had grass growing through it.

"I think I'm the only person who ever uses this," Les said, pushing branches aside and holding them to let Danny through.

After about five minutes the path emerged into a clearing. The trees surrounded it, cutting out the icy wind, and pale sunshine broke through so that the air felt warm. In the middle of the clearing was an old summerhouse, its wooden walls faded and its windows cracked and cobwebbed. Les made his way toward it.

The door of the summerhouse was stiff and squeaked in protest when Les put his weight against it, but inside