The School for Thieves, page 17
The only comfort to be taken from the day was that at last he knew exactly the kind of people he was dealing with at the school—although he had been a fool to think they might be anything other than a bunch of liars. He was in a town full of trained criminals. One of the school houses was even named Duplicity! Whatever made him think he could trust any of them? Least of all the Corsair. A pirate. A thief. A liar.
He dropped his pen and crawled onto his bed, his head swimming. He needed to sleep.
At least, he thought as he pulled the duvet over him, he wouldn’t have to keep looking over his shoulder for Hoffmann. He had read the acceptance in the boy’s eyes and knew that their truce would hold. At least for a while.
* * *
Tom was shaken awake, and it felt like he was emerging from a deep, dark pool. A figure was leaning over him, large dark eyes a picture of concern.
“Come on, son,” said Locke, his rough old voice gentle. “You can’t be sleeping with a head knock like that. Easy now, sit up. That’s it.”
Tom felt like his head was about to split open as he eased himself upright. He glanced back at his pillow and saw that it was covered in blood. He began to murmur an apology.
“Forget about that,” Locke interrupted. “We need to get you along to the infirmary, have the doc take a look at you. You all right to stand? Good boy. That’s it. Now lean on me and we’ll go nice and slow. It’s a bit of a walk, but the air will do you good.”
Tom’s legs felt like lead as he leaned heavily on Locke. In the entrance hall he caught sight of Enzo standing in a doorway, dressing gown wrapped tight around him. He had obviously been the one to summon Locke.
“Back to bed with you now,” instructed Locke, and Enzo slipped away back upstairs.
It felt like an age, yet also like no time at all, before they arrived at a green door some streets away. Tom was sat in a large leather armchair, and a doctor appeared from an adjoining room. Locke and the doctor spoke for a moment, their words nothing more than muffles to Tom’s ears, until the doctor appeared just inches from his face and Tom registered that she was talking to him.
“Hello, Tom, I’m Dr. Hawthorne.” She smiled at him in a kind but businesslike way. “I hear you’ve been in a bit of a scrap. I’m going to take a look at this head wound, all right? It might hurt, but I don’t want to hear any complaints.”
Tom nodded sheepishly as she began running her fingers through his hair around the cut. It hurt, but he clenched his teeth and didn’t make a sound.
“Nothing too serious,” said Hawthorne after a few moments. “No fractures. I’ll clean it out and stitch it up. He’ll be fine.”
She stepped away to gather some equipment. “Is this the new boy the Corsair brought in, Locke?” Locke nodded, and she sucked her teeth in annoyance. “He should have been brought here as soon as he arrived. He still needs a full medical check and his inoculations. God alone knows what kind of germs he’s carrying.”
“I’ll mention it to Herr von Stuppe,” muttered Locke.
“See that you do.” She appeared in front of Tom again and bent down, inspecting his face. “Unbutton your shirt,” she instructed. “I just want to do a quick examination.”
Tom did as he was told, and he heard a little intake of breath from Hawthorne as she cast an eye over the scars on his body and the cigar burn beneath his ribs. She listened to his chest with a stethoscope before carefully prodding the large bruise from the run. Then she got him to raise his arms.
“Well, well,” she muttered as she inspected his armpits.
Locke bent close to look at some dark marks she was pointing to on Tom’s skin. “The Crimson Flu…,” he said, drawing back.
“They’re old,” Hawthorne said, lowering Tom’s arm. She touched Tom’s chin, helping him to focus on her eyes. “Have you been recently exposed to anyone with the Crimson Flu?”
Tom frowned, trying to make sense of what she was asking. “I don’t think so.” He paused. “The Rawlock,” he muttered.
“The Rawlock?”
“A workhouse. Where I was born. There was Crimson Flu there. But I didn’t get it.”
“Mmm. Well, it looks like you may have. You have marks on your skin, above the glands in your armpits, that prove it. You’re very, very lucky. Very few who are exposed to the Crimson Flu survive.”
“Is he still infectious?” asked Locke nervously.
“No,” said Hawthorne. “He’s immune now.”
“I shall inform the Corsair,” said Locke.
“Open your mouth,” instructed Dr. Hawthorne. Tom did as he was told. “You’ll need to get him along to the dentist as well, Locke.”
“What’s wrong with my teeth?” muttered Tom defensively. He hated being prodded and poked like this.
“Nothing much,” she said, beginning to clean out his head wound. “But you’ll never pull off any kind of high-level con with them the way they are.”
“Why not?” said Tom, trying not to sound like he was in too much pain as she dug a wipe into his cut.
“Many of the greatest cons in history have begun with a smile—and you must have good teeth for that. Yours need to be cleaned and whitened, and one or two might need filing smooth. Good teeth, good smile, and half the battle is won. Now,” she said, tossing the wipe to one side, “hold still. Here come the stitches.”
* * *
Over the course of the next few days, Tom had several visits to see Dr. Hawthorne and Mr. Elmore, the dentist. He was jabbed with needles, had his hair closely inspected for lice, his weight taken, and his height measured. His teeth were scrubbed and scraped, and he was given a disgusting-tasting paste that he was assured would soon have them glistening like freshly fallen snow.
Each time he returned to Guile House, he avoided the public areas and holed up in his room, sneaking down to the kitchens after mealtimes to beg the staff on duty for some leftovers. Locke had appeared on the first occasion he had done this and given his blessing to the requests.
Despite these avoidance tactics, Enzo and Jericho and all the Tenderfoots still made an effort to talk to him. Tom burned the notes they slid under his door, ignored Enzo’s tapped messages on the wall, and turned away down the nearest side street or alley when he saw them out and about in town.
He used his time alone to good effect. He placed a request at the Grey Library for a number of items that he was sure would either raise eyebrows or wouldn’t be available, but the librarian simply noted down what he wanted and told him to come back the following week to collect them. And sure enough, seven days later he returned to his room laden with a pile of reading material and several cardboard tubes containing blueprints and maps. He spread the blueprints out on his bed, tacked the maps to his wall, and then opened a new page in one of his notebooks. He now had the architectural drawings for the Guttknot workhouse, maps of the London sewer system, a book that contained high-tide charts for the Thames, another with information on shipping lanes across the Channel, and a pamphlet listing false identities for children that could be applied for via the Shadow League’s Department of Criminal Education.
“One day, with the right training, the right experience, the right planning, and the right equipment…”
Well, he might as well start planning now.
* * *
“The secret to a great fraud,” pronounced Katherine Sydow, the confidence scams teacher, two weeks later, “is trust.”
The tall, wire-thin Swede peered down at her class of Tenderfoots over her half-moon spectacles. “If people trust you, they become blind to any warning signs that may flash before their eyes. They won’t see the dangers that are staring them in the face. Not until it is too late. It all comes down to trust.”
Tom jotted down her words, then angrily circled them in his notebook. He could feel Cleo and Allegra shift awkwardly beside him at their desks.
In the time that had passed since finding out the truth about Maxine, Tom had abandoned any vague notions he had entertained about trying to escape. He had no idea where they were, which direction he might travel in, or how far the nearest sign of civilization might be. They were clearly miles from anywhere. He was marooned.
So he had to change his thinking. He could still build a good life for himself, even within the deranged system of the League. If he kicked back, he would only damage whatever future he had left. There was no glory in open resistance… only insanity or death.
With this new resolve in mind, Tom began to dedicate himself to his studies and his physical fitness like never before. When he wasn’t in class or out running, he was in his room reading, working on his plan to rescue the warehouse kids, or studying.
Every now and then he would hear Enzo tapping messages to him through the wall, asking how he was, inviting him to a study group, congratulating him on a job well done in class. Tom had picked up the basics of Morse code from reading And You Thought the Sphinx Was Enigmatic and would tap back that he wanted to be left alone. Nevertheless, Enzo persevered.
* * *
Life at the school was a relentless rush of information and experiences. There were so many traditions for Tom to get his head around, so many strict ways of doing things and also surprising amounts of leniency and freedom to do as he pleased and to wander where he wanted around town.
There was a whole language of the school—and, he supposed, the League—with which he had to familiarize himself. There were nicknames for parts of the town, from the sluice gates that opened the valley’s glacial river on to the canal system at the north end of the town known as the River Run, to the Wasteland for the old railway terminus (Tom had guessed correctly) where he’d had his encounter with Hoffmann and his cronies. Rival houses were known among the students as Arthritis (Artemis), Stupidity (Duplicity), Boogey (Ghost), Pigswill (Swindle), and Tom’s personal favorite, Anus (Janus). On and on it went. There was so much to take in, and time seemed to fly past.
On Thursday evenings and all day on Sundays, Tom worked as a shop assistant at Morgenstern’s Museum of Magic. He had settled into his role there very quickly. Not only did Bill Morgenstern, who ran the shop, appreciate Tom’s various street-magic skills, but he enjoyed teaching Tom new tricks, and the two of them spent many happy hours testing out the shop’s numerous devices—from water-tank escapology to vanishing cabinets and bullet-catching.
One Thursday evening at the beginning of December, with sleet pattering the lead-paned windows of the Museum of Magic, Tom and Morgenstern were busy setting up the Yuletide window display—a fortune-telling automaton bedecked with holly and ivy.
The two of them heaved the heavy clockwork figure into a glass case, wound it up, and then began to hang decorations and candles by the window while the automaton twisted its hands over a crystal ball and printed fortunes came rat-a-tat-tating from a slot at the base of the case every few minutes.
A radio by the fire played Yuletide jazz, including the latest hit from Boo Randal, who had emerged from New France to take the Empire’s music scene by storm. As the final bars of “Old Mister Yule” faded out, the League News at Nine (Paris time) began. Tom listened absent-mindedly to a story about Prussia, then a report on an assassination in New Avignon. Then it cut to an interview with Vincent Crowe in London. Tom looked up.
“Master Crowe,” began the reporter. “Will you tell us more about this latest repositioning within the British Colonial Government and how it will benefit the League?”
“It would be my pleasure,” came the smooth reply. “I have had a little side enterprise—for a number of years now—as minister for workhouses here in London. I am delighted to say that all these years of effort are starting to pay dividends as I have recently been promoted to a senior position within the Colonial Government in Westminster. The League can now directly dictate policy within these wretched isles in any way we see fit—whether that is to squeeze every last centime we can out of the populace, or to stir up trouble for the Empire. Perhaps we’ll do both!”
“You all right, Tom?” asked Morgenstern.
Tom was very pale. “Did Crowe say he was minister for workhouses?”
“In Britain?” said Morgenstern. “Oh yes, he’s been doing that for a long time. It’s not a major project for him, I don’t think, just a side hustle.” Morgenstern wound another wreath of holly around the top of the automaton’s case. “But it’s turned out to be a real gold mine. He gets virtually free labor, and each workhouse is actually paid by the boroughs to clean up the streets of waifs and strays and vagrants. It’s given Crowe huge political sway in the major cities—and now he’s landed a senior position in the Colonial Government. Great news for the League, eh? Here, where are you going? We’ve not finished the display yet. Tom? Tom!”
But Morgenstern’s cries fell on deaf ears as the door to the shop slammed shut and Tom disappeared into the sleet.
* * *
Lying in bed that night, Tom picked at the fire that burned inside him. He had always hated the Pitbull for his brutal cruelty. The enjoyment he had seemed to take in others’ pain.
Crowe’s cruelty was different—colder, with a detached calculation.
He looked at the blueprint of the Guttknot that was hanging on his wall beside the map of the London sewers and thought about his friends imprisoned inside. They were just cogs in a wheel to Crowe, numbers on a ledger that earned him money and power. Was this the truth at the heart of the Shadow League? That ordinary people were there to be exploited? Or was this just a characteristic of Crowe’s branch of the League—the Shadow Politicos? He didn’t yet know.
What he did know was that he hated Vincent Crowe. He had hated him from the first bizarre moment they had met in the entrance hall to the Spike. But now he knew that he had stared into the face of someone truly evil.
Chapter Sixteen THE YULE CHALLENGE
In mid-December, the first snows of winter had begun to fall in earnest, covering the forest in brilliant white and gathering thickly on rooftops and in the streets around town. Frost formed spiderweb patterns on Tom’s bedroom window every morning and glistened on paths that had been cleared across lawns and streets between snowfalls. Heavy winter overcoats and boots became the sartorial choice around town, with many students choosing to also wear thick Russian-style fur hats, adorned with small pin badges in their house colors.
Early one morning, one week before Yuletide, the entire school was summoned to the square around the Spike for an interhouse competition ahead of the Yule holiday. The sky was dark and starless, sunrise still hours away; storm lanterns dotted around the ranks of gathered students were blazing, and the street lights that lined the edges of the square were burning brightly.
The students, assembled into their houses and separated by rank, stood in lines, dressed in the same uniform that Tom had worn the day he had met Jessica Chaffinch. This was the first time Tom had ever seen the full student body and teaching staff gathered together in one place. There were at least six hundred students—maybe as many as seven.
It was bitterly cold, and the lines of students trembled in the biting wind. Ahead of them on a platform erected by the doors to the Spike stood the teachers, all in heavy winter coats, scarves, gloves, and fur hats. They were drinking steaming mugs of coffee, seemingly oblivious to their shivering charges.
At last the doors of the Spike opened, and Siegfried Templeton emerged. He marched swiftly onto the platform, to a lectern at its center. A dead hush fell over the square.
“Good morning, good morning,” called Templeton with a hurried wave of his hand. “Welcome to the Yule Challenge. You will compete by grade for house points, with the usual cascading points system. The length of time it takes to complete the challenge will vary depending on your grade—and your ability, of course.” He appeared to study some notes in front of him before looking up again, almost surprised to see that the students were all still standing there. “Very good, that is all. Best of luck. Mistress Novgorod will give you further instructions.” With that he made his way back down the steps and through the doors to the Spike.
The Guile House Tenderfoots were lined up beside the second-grade Greenhorns. Tom could see Matthias Hoffmann, just a few feet away, turn to whisper to the vanilla-haired Dorling.
“Inspirational, isn’t he?” Hoffmann muttered, a sneer on his thin lips.
“The sooner he’s gone the better,” Dorling hissed back, but Hoffmann, his eyes locked on the closed doors of the Spike, didn’t appear to hear.
“Sixth-grade Apprentices,” cried Mistress Novgorod, who had taken up the position behind the lectern. “Make your way to the Grey Gate with Master Ritter. Fifth-grade Initiates, to the Twisting Caves with Mistress Skarsgard. Fourth-grade Colts, to the River Locks with Mistress Inksetter. Third-grade Fledglings, assemble at the North Tower Gates with Master von Stuppe. The second-grade Greenhorns are with me; I want you at the Grey Pit. And the first-grade Tenderfoots are with Master Mordechai at the Red Wall.” She clapped her hands together sharply. “Move.”
The students broke from their lines, moving like a swarm of ants in different directions. As Tom and the other Guile Tenderfoots darted down Blade Street, they were joined by Tenderfoots from the other houses. There was some jostling for position as they swept down the narrow street and Tom tried to take in some of their faces, but it was dark and everyone had their hoods pulled close over their heads, meaning he caught only the briefest glimpse of those next to him.
The Red Wall—so named because it had been a place of execution in past wars—was a section of the town’s southern perimeter located by a wide, cobbled crescent. The wall was higher here than in most other parts of the town, around forty feet tall and pitted with holes—musket-shot punctures, Tom had been told—and the occasional iron ring bolted to the stonework, where it was said enemies had once been chained before being shot.
