The Unknown Spy (8 page)

“Let’s go down there,” Dixie said.

“No,” Danny said, “they’d be embarrassed.”

But Dixie wasn’t listening. She smiled at Danny, then disappeared, reappearing in the courtyard right beside Gabriel, who leapt so far into the air he had to use his wings to give himself a soft landing.

“Quick,” Vandra said, “there’s a door. Maybe we can smooth things over.”

When they got to the courtyard one of the female Messengers was complaining bitterly to Gabriel.

“You promised all this would be highly confidential. ‘Oh no, Gertie, no one will ever see us!’ Now we’ll be the laughingstock of Wilsons!”

“Steady on, Gertie old girl,” the other male Messenger said.

“It’s all very well for you to talk, Waldron,” Gertie said.

“Gertie,” the other female said sternly, “you have to remember what all of this is about.”

“We were caught unprepared the last time the Cherbs attacked,” Waldron said. “We only escaped by the skin of our teeth. We must have at least one attack squadron if they come again.”

“Even if the others don’t agree,” Gabriel said.

“We won’t tell anyone, honest,” Danny said.

“Oh no!” Gertie exclaimed. “More of them!”

“Isn’t that the boy they said was the Fifth?” Waldron exclaimed.

“Really?” Gertie said, peering at Danny. “He’s not very impressive, is he?”

The other female Messenger, a small, careworn-looking creature in a frayed cardigan, appeared to be lost in thought, moving her wings in little circles and talking to herself. Dixie was watching her as she took two small jumps from the ground before rising a few feet into the air and gliding back to land. Dixie applauded.

“Not quite as good as the old days, my dear.” The lady Messenger smiled and did a little curtsey.

“Why are the Messengers so embarrassed about flying?” Dixie said.

“Most of them are blithering idiots,” the lady replied with a snort. “They’d rather sit around and knit or something.”

“What would you prefer?” Dixie said.

“To have a go at the enemy, attack from out of the sun so they don’t see you coming and knock the tar out of their filthy Cherb hides.”

Dixie looked suitably impressed by the bloodthirstiness of this outburst. She stuck out her hand.

“Dixie Cole.” The lady Messenger took her hand and wrung it with unexpected strength.

“Daisy McEachen. Absolutely charmed to make your acquaintance. If I ever need a tail gunner I’ll give you a shout—you’ll sit on my back when I’m flying and cover my back. Always nice to have a human crew member on board.”

Dixie looked delighted at the prospect, but Danny was distracted. A small piece of stone had dislodged from the parapet far above their heads and fallen at his feet. There was a flicker of something black on the rooftop. Was someone sneaking around up there?

Danny grabbed the people nearest to him—Vandra and Gertie—and drew them into the shelter of the wall beside him. Before he could shout out to the others, something flew through the air. Daisy, who had just risen into the air, gave a little gasp, cartwheeled and fell to earth. Gertie screamed. Vandra and Dixie reacted quickly, moving swiftly to try to observe the attacker.

Danny ran to Daisy. Her eyes were closed and she was breathing shallowly. A sinister-looking dart tipped with black and red feathers was buried in her arm.

“Vandra!” Danny called out. The small physick ran to his side. Gabriel had recovered from the shock and was rising cautiously into the air, his eyes alert. Vandra examined the dart, then knelt and smelled Daisy’s breath.

“Smells of marzipan,” she said grimly.

“Is that bad?” Danny said.

“Means the dart is tipped with cyanide,” Vandra said. Her face, ordinarily pale, turned deathly white, and her hand shook a little.

“Vandra,” Danny said, “if it’s too dangerous, you don’t have to …”

“I do,” Vandra said. “I am a physick.” Danny knew what she meant. A physick was a healer who healed by drawing the patient’s illness or poison upon themselves. Vandra would have to draw the cyanide on herself. Her body was strong—physicks had physical gifts that enabled them to deal with disease and toxins. But there were no guarantees, and there was no protection against pain.

Vandra bent her head, her incisors protruding. She drew the dart from Daisy’s arm and plunged her teeth into Daisy’s shoulder, just above the wound. She stiffened, spasms running through her body. Danny looked on helplessly. Behind him he heard a shout. A figure dressed in black was running across the rooftop, beside one of the huge crumbling chimneys.

“Gabriel,” Danny said, “can you get me up there?”

“Put your arms around my neck!” Gabriel said.
Danny embraced the Messenger’s frail neck, wondering if the body beneath him would bear his weight. Danny had once flown on the back of Conal, the Seraphim, who had borne him easily, but Seraphim were strong. Aside from being elderly, Gabriel was weakened and his muscles atrophied from disuse.

Gabriel’s back seemed to bend as Danny climbed on. There was a strong odor of mothballs from his jacket, but his wings were surprisingly powerful and bore them upward with great beats. When they got to the level of the roof, Danny could feel Gabriel tiring. As they cleared the parapet a snowy gust drove them across the rooftops, Gabriel desperately fighting against it. The swirling wind carried them out over the edge. Gabriel faltered and Danny lost his grip. For one sickening moment he clung by one hand to the collar of Gabriel’s coat, his legs dangling over a drop of a hundred feet.

With an enormous effort Gabriel was able to get Danny onto his back again, but the wind forced them across the roof, blowing snow from the slates in great whirling clouds around them.

“Can you land?” Danny shouted over the howl of the wind.

Gabriel’s answer came in gasps. “Too much … turbulence … can’t see landing spot.” Neither did he see the great redbrick chimney rearing up in front of them. With an impact that drove the breath from their lungs, they struck and started to fall. Danny braced himself, but they landed in a drift of snow that had piled up against the chimney breast.

Gabriel groaned and tried to shake snow from his feathers. Danny leapt to his feet.

“Are you all right?” he said. Gabriel nodded. “Stay here, then.” Danny looked around to get his bearings. The rooftops of Wilsons were vast, great peaks and troughs rising and falling. There were chimneys and buttresses with windows in them, doors that looked as if they had been locked and sealed forever. Clusters of aerials and dishes hinted at mysterious purposes. The chimney they had hit was the very chimney where Danny had seen the attacker. He cast around on the roof for footprints and found small neat tracks leading away. He began to follow them.

The attacker had been able to run lightly over the snow, but Danny found himself blundering, slipping into gullies and catching his shins on objects hidden under the snow. He tripped over a roof peak and slithered down the other side on his belly, landing chin-first on a patch of ice. He rolled over to find himself looking down the barrel of an ancient blunderbuss. The gun was held by a small red-bearded man wearing a parka. There was rope looped over his shoulder, and climbers’ crampons hung from his belt.

“Getting very busy on the rooftops this morning. Unauthorized entry all over the place.”

Danny got to his feet, eyeing the blunderbuss warily.

“I’m a pupil at Wilsons,” he said. “We were in the courtyard down there and someone attacked us with a dart. I was chasing him.”

“One of these?” the bearded man said, holding up a dart tipped with red and black feathers.

“Yes.”

“He threw one at me too.”

“Good thing it didn’t hit you,” Danny said. “It’s poisoned.”

“Is it?” The man raised an eyebrow. “So what makes you think you can come up here willy-nilly? These rooftops is highly organized places. You can’t just be running about.”

“Sorry,” Danny said.

“There’s lead flashing that’s hard to fix and there’s expensive copper sheeting and slates and tiles, not to mention the aerials. Looking after the roofs is a full-time job.”

“I’m sure it’s hard,” Danny said, guessing that the little man looked after the roofs, “but they look like very well-cared-for roofs.”

“Do they?”

“I’ve never seen better-looking roofs. Look at the way they’re keeping out the snow,” Danny said.

“Snow is difficult,” the man said. “Causes expanding, and we all know what expanding leads to.…”

“Yes, of course,” Danny said. “Expanding leads to … leads to …”

“Leaks!” the little man said. “The roof man’s mortal enemy! Leaks and drips.”

“Shocking,” Danny said as the man lowered his gun. “And the attacker …”

“Gone,” the man said shortly. “Must have had a key to one of the roof doors. That’s the only way you can get up and down.” There was a clattering, clanking noise from behind him. They turned to see Gabriel. The
Messenger had tried to take off and the wind had blown him into one of the clusters of antennae, where he had become completely entangled. The little man lifted his blunderbuss to his shoulder. Danny dived forward and knocked the barrel off target just as the roof man fired. The shot went harmlessly upward.

“What are you doing?” Danny cried.

“Look at my good aerial!” the roof man cried. “I haven’t seen such a mess since the great storms of ’thirty-nine. Pesky birds!”

“It’s not a bird, it’s a Messenger!” Danny exclaimed as the roof man tried to reload.

“I don’t care what it is, get it out of my aerials,” the man grunted. With a supreme effort Gabriel wriggled free of the aerials and dropped to the rooftop in a tangle of wings and limbs. The roof man lowered his gun and clambered up among the antennae, straightening and redirecting them with care.

“Come on, Gabriel,” Danny said, “we’d better get out of here. Sorry about your aerials, Mr. Roof Man.”

“Come up here with nothing to do but make trouble,” muttered the man. “Why can’t they stay on the ground?”

“You didn’t happen to see what the attacker looked like, by any chance?” Danny asked as he clambered onto Gabriel’s back.

“Small and fast-moving was all I seen,” the roof man said. “Too busy watching out for his darts to get a right look. Well rid of the likes of that off the roof.”

Still grumbling, he did not look round as Gabriel half launched himself, half stumbled from the roof, then
glided unsteadily toward the ground, lost for a moment in a flurry blown from a ledge. Danny could see the three Messengers and his friends below. Daisy was sitting up, supported by Gertie, but Dixie knelt beside Vandra, who lay pale and still on the ground.

T
he roof man moved to the edge and looked down at the small group. The cross-old-workman persona had vanished. The face that looked down was now cold and cunning, the eyes glittering with malice. He scratched at the ginger beard and part of it came away. He took one of the darts from his pocket. The physick had saved the Messenger from his poison, but if it had cost her her life, then it would have been a good day’s work. Besides, the man had plenty more darts. “Plenty more darts,” he said to himself in a voice that the Unknown Spy would have recognized. Then he turned and skipped lightly across the snow-covered roof.

AN OATH

D
anny knelt beside Vandra. She looked dreadful, her pale face gone gray, her chest barely rising and falling and spasms racking her every few minutes while she grimaced with pain.

Dixie had gone to get Valant. They returned with two wheeled stretchers and lifted Vandra onto one. Daisy was able to get up onto the other by herself.

“The poor dear,” Daisy said quietly, “she saved my life. I will not forget that.”

Valant and Gabriel wheeled the stretchers quickly along the quiet corridors of Wilsons, then stopped in front of an ancient cage elevator. There was only room for the two of them and the stretchers.

“I will take them to the apothecary,” Valant said. “You may visit the physick in the morning, not before. She
needs rest and whatever assistance she can be given there.”

Danny watched as the elevator clanked upward into the gloom. He didn’t say anything to the others, but he was determined to find the person who had hurt Daisy and put his friend in danger.

They met Les coming across the lawn.

“What happened?” he demanded. As Dixie explained, she was interrupted by a quiet voice.

“Probably the same person who attacked the Unknown Spy’s wife.” McGuinness was leaning against a tree beside them, his coat fading into the color of the trunk so that he was virtually invisible.

“What makes you think that?” Danny said.

“These kinds of incidents are rare in Wilsons, and both required a close knowledge of the layout of the school, which, as you know, can be complex. Speed and cunning have characterized both attacks. And they have both been successful, or would have been, if not for the physick. This is a professional at work, make no mistake about it. The question is why? Answering the why of a crime almost always leads you to the culprit.”

“Lead me to him,” Les said angrily, “and he won’t bother anyone ever.”

“She’ll get better, Les,” Dixie said, putting her hand on his arm.