THE BEETLE OF TRANSMISSION

Devoy and Brunholm left the cadets alone for the next two days, and they spent their time in the Roosts, by common consent ignoring the main building. For some reason the danger they had faced from the Unquiet looked even more terrifying now that it was over. Although they spent a lot of time together, in many ways they were separate. Danny struggled with the fact that Les would have to be told he was not going on the mission. And behind everything was the thought of the parents Danny did not have.

On the third morning they were awakened by a familiar voice.

“That’s right, campers,” the voice said, “term starts again tomorrow, so let’s see a little enthusiasm! Breakfast in ten minutes, and a First Regulation offense for stragglers—let’s go!”

“Put a sock in it,” Danny muttered.

“I heard that, Cadet Caulfield, but your ungracious remark cannot dim my renewed passion for life at Wilsons Academy of the Devious Arts.”

All that day the other pupils drifted back, full of stories about the holidays—trips taken, parties thrown. But there were also tales of worried adults gathered together in groups, talking intently, and some pupils said that their parents had employed security guards.

It was in this atmosphere that the summonses arrived. First Danny was called to Devoy’s office. He returned silent and downcast, and when Dixie asked him what had happened he snapped at her.

“No need to bite my head off,” she said, but then her summons came. She also was silent and unapproachable when she came back. Next it was Vandra’s turn. Les greeted her when she came in, but she walked straight past him, her face set.

“What’s up with you lot?” he said. “You’d think somebody had died or something.”

But no matter how much he asked, none of them would tell him what had taken place. He went off on his own, muttering. Danny watched him go. There was an old summerhouse in the woods where Les went when he needed to think, and Danny reckoned that was where he was going.

Les didn’t come back until teatime and sat at the far end of the table in their house in Ravensdale, trying to look unconcerned.

After tea, Danny walked back to the Roosts on his own, his thoughts troubled. He wished Devoy would move ahead with the mission. He needed action. As he approached the stairway to the Roosts, a figure detached itself from the shadows. Danny’s hand went to the pocket of his trench coat, but there was no need. It was the detective McGuinness.

“Glad to see you’re wearing the coat,” McGuinness said approvingly. The coat had once belonged to the master spy Steff Pilkington, and although shabby, it had many strange and wonderful qualities. It wasn’t exactly fashionable, and Danny wouldn’t have been caught dead in it in the Upper World, but slipping it on every morning had become one of the few reassuring routines he had in the unreliable world of Wilsons.

“Did you find out anything about the Unknown Spy’s wife?” Danny asked.

“My investigations are making some progress,” McGuinness said, “despite the presence of some freelance investigators muddying the waters.” Danny felt his face turn red.

“However,” McGuinness continued, “there is something you might be interested in. Come with me.”

The detective led the way back into Wilsons and down the corridor to the Unknown Spy’s room.

“He has taken temporary lodgings with Master Devoy,” McGuinness said. “The killer left no clues, but as to your idea about finding out the Spy’s identity … look.”

He handed Danny a calendar. There was nothing unusual about it that Danny could see until he noticed that the fifth day of the month was circled. He flipped through the calendar. The fifth of every month was circled.

“And there are many calendars, decades of them,” McGuinness said. “Look at this.” He held up a copy of Spy News (Incorporating Covert Times). Every time the number five was printed on the page, it had been circled or underlined or had a question mark beside it.

“Everything’s the same,” McGuinness said, holding up a shirt on which the size—5—was circled.

“My guess is that he’s trying to remember something, and that something has to do with the Fifth.”

The detective’s wife, Cheryl Orr, was a spy and had helped Danny escape the Ring. Danny realized that McGuinness knew everything about his being the fifth member of the Ring of Five.

“Me?” Danny said.

“Yes. He has no memory of his life before Wilsons, but something appears to be gnawing at him. Every time he sees the number five a thought is stirred, but he can’t quite grasp it. It’s not much to go on, but until we find what the killer was looking for …”

Danny walked back across the lawn to the Roosts. Before he got to the bottom of the ladders he saw Dixie and Vandra. They were obviously waiting for him.

“What is it?” he said. They drew him aside into the shrubbery.

“What did Devoy tell you today?”

“I’ll tell you what he told us,” Vandra said furiously. “We’re to pretend that we’ve fallen out with Les, that we’re not friends with him anymore.”

“It’s for his own good, and for yours, he says,” Dixie added bitterly. “I said we’re friends and Brunholm puts this sneery face on and says it’s about time we learned that spies don’t have friends. That it will be a valuable lesson for us.”

“We’re going on a mission and leaving Les behind,” Vandra said miserably.

“I know,” Danny said, having had the same brusque lecture from Brunholm and Devoy. One part of him was relieved that the secret was in the open. Another part was irritated that he was no longer the only one who knew.

“Well, what are we going to do about it?” Dixie asked.

“I don’t know,” Danny said. “There’s something wrong about the way they’re going about it. They’re saying that it’s best that Les not get too attached to us, because we’re going away.”

“But when did Brunholm start caring about hurt feelings?” Vandra said.

“Exactly,” Danny said. “So what is he up to?”

“I don’t care what he’s up to,” Dixie said crossly, “I’m not going around pretending that Les isn’t my friend. I’m going to tell him everything.”

And without waiting for the others, she started up the staircase to the Roosts. Vandra and Danny looked at each other, then ran after her. Dixie disappeared, reappearing at the top of the stairs.

“It’s really irritating when she does that,” Vandra said, breaking into a run. Dixie waited for them, then burst through the door. Les was standing on the other side and Dixie took a step back in surprise.

Les looked at each of them in turn, then burst out laughing.

“What’s so funny?” Dixie demanded.

“Your faces,” Les said. “I was going to let you say your bit, but I couldn’t keep my face straight, the way you burst in.”

“We were just going to say—” Vandra began.

“I know what you were going to say,” Les interrupted. “I’ve been listening to you for the last ten minutes.”

“How?” Danny said.

“Reach into the left-hand pocket of your skirt,” Les told Vandra. She did so with a suspicious look on her face, then withdrew her hand, looked at it, shrieked loudly and jumped back. From her hand fell a small black object that started to move slowly away from them.

“Don’t step on it!” Les cried, moving forward rapidly and scooping it up.

“Ugh!” Vandra said. “What is it?”

“It’s a Beetle of Transmission.”

“What on earth is that?”

“You need two of them. The hearer has one and the listener has the other. Look. The hairs on their bellies vibrate in time to our voices. When one beetle vibrates the other picks it up, and it comes out as sound.”

Half fascinated and half repelled, Danny, Dixie and Vandra stared at the beetle, which Les held upturned in his hand. As Les spoke, the dense hairs on the device’s underside rippled in time to his voice.

“You put the other one to your ear and you can hear what’s being said near the other one, as long as it’s not too far away, of course. Here.”

He took another fist-sized black beetle out of his own pocket and handed it to Danny. Danny took it gingerly, feeling the hard shell cold against his hand, the legs moving against his palm. He turned it over and saw the little hairs on its belly rippling.

“Put it to your ear,” Les said, holding the other beetle to his mouth. Trying to quell his feeling of revulsion, Danny put the beetle to his ear, shuddering as the hairs touched his ear. Les whispered into the beetle’s belly, and Danny jumped as he heard his friend’s voice clear as day.

“I know what you’re up to.…”

Danny’s surprise was quickly followed by annoyance. What did Les mean? He couldn’t know all Danny’s secrets.…

But when he lowered the beetle from his ear and saw his friend’s cheerful open grin, he felt ashamed.

“I could hear what you were talking about down below. You’re going on a mission and they don’t want me to go with you.”

“You don’t sound upset,” Vandra said, puzzled.

“You don’t have wings, otherwise you’d know,” Les explained. “There’s always stuff you can’t do. The whole point of being a spy is that you don’t stand out, right? This must be a mission in the Upper World, so it’s only logical that you can’t have a boy with wings.”

“We reckon there’s more to it than that,” Vandra said. “Brunholm is up to something.”

“He’s always up to something,” Les said with a shrug.

“The Upper World,” Dixie said. “Super, absolutely super!”

“Can’t have that many physicks up there either,” Vandra said, touching one of her incisors self-consciously.

“It’s all right, Vandra,” Danny said. “You’ll look perfectly normal, or almost—I mean, there’s lots of variety in girls.…”

“When you’re in a hole, stop digging,” Dixie said. Danny saw tears in Vandra’s eyes.

“But none of them are as beautiful as the Wilsons girls,” Danny said.

“Yeuch!” Dixie said. She pulled a face, but Vandra beamed at him.

“We’ll make a deal,” Danny said. “When Brunholm’s around we’ll ignore Les. It’ll keep Brunholm onside, and maybe we’ll be able to find out what he’s up to.”

Behind them the door opened and Toxique came in. There was no point involving Toxique. His doom-laden pronouncements were completely out of his control, and he was likely to talk out of turn at any moment.

“Girls shouldn’t be in here,” Toxique said shortly, and went over to sit heavily on his bed.

“Girls don’t want to be in here,” Dixie said, turning with a flounce. “Smells of boy!”

She walked out, followed by Vandra. Danny sat down beside Toxique.

“What’s wrong?” he asked gently. Toxique was the only pupil who had stayed at school over the holiday even though both of his parents were alive. His father thought it would harden him up. Toxique’s family were professional assassins going back many generations, and the heavy burden of following in their footsteps had fallen on Toxique’s shoulders. His father believed that he lacked the necessary ruthlessness and didn’t hesitate to tell him so in frequent letters.

“Another letter,” Toxique said glumly. He pulled it from his pocket and read.

“ ‘For generations this family have been the assassins of choice when the termination of a king or prime minister has been called for, though we were not too proud to end a peasant’s existence if required. Our service has always been discreet and efficient. Our profession is as essential to the smooth functioning of society as that of a lawyer or an architect.…’ ”

“I get the idea,” Danny said, “but it’s just the normal stuff, surely?”

“Well, that is, but listen to this: ‘No one in our family has ever reached the third term of his or her first year at Wilsons without carrying out at least one termination. This happy tradition is in danger of being broken, and I am sure that even you do not want the burden of being the first failure. Please choose your subject and carry out all necessary steps to maintain the tradition by the end of term.’

“He wants me to bump somebody off,” Toxique said in despair. “What am I going to do?”

“When did this come?” Danny asked.

“Four days ago. I haven’t been able to concentrate on anything since.”

“Let me think about it,” Danny said. “We’ll sort it out. I promise.”

“You mean that?”

“I do,” Danny said, wondering what he had let himself in for.

“The door is going to open in a few seconds,” Toxique said absently, “and some faces you won’t want to see are going to walk in.”

To Danny, Toxique’s Gift of Anticipation was much more valuable than his being an assassin. He was never wrong—and this time, unfortunately, was no exception. The door opened and their classmates Smyck and Exspectre walked in, the first boy tall and thin, the other small with large dark-rimmed eyes that made him look, as Les said, like a bush baby.

“We’re back. What’s wrong with Toxique?” Exspectre said.

“Probably assassinated that freak Dixie by mistake when she went invisible,” Smyck said with a laugh.

“Leave it out, Smyck,” Les said.

“If you picked him for your ‘subject,’ ” Danny said to Toxique, “I think I’d side with your dad. Sometimes family tradition is a good thing.” Toxique gave a wan little smile but his gaze rested thoughtfully on Smyck, long enough for the tall boy to look uncomfortable and hurry off.

“I was only joking,” Danny said. “You do know that, don’t you, Toxique?”

* * *

Twenty miles away, on the other side of the channel of water that separated Wilsons from its enemies, Conal the Seraphim stood in front of three others. On the left was Rufus Ness, the leader of the Cherbs, a brutal character with a cunning look who, like Danny, had one brown eye and one blue. On the right stood a glamorous woman in a red dress. She was smiling, but Nurse Flanagan’s smile did not touch her eyes. In the middle stood a man of medium height with a gentle, almost chiding smile on his face, as if he was a teacher who had found a child doing something bold but was waiting patiently for a reasonable explanation. He was Ambrose Longford, the leader of the Ring.

“You fled because of a flock of birds?” Ness said incredulously.

“Not birds,” Conal said, his yellow eyes glittering menacingly. “Ravens!”

“They are dangerous,” Longford said to Ness. “More than you know.”

“Surely not so dangerous that they should send our Seraphim fleeing with their tails between their legs,” Nurse Flanagan said with a little laugh.

“They make a poison with the filth from the bottom of their nests and coat their beaks with it,” Conal said. “It is deadly.”

“Particularly to Seraphim,” Longford added. “The avian part of their genetic make-up is particularly susceptible to the poison. You did the right thing, Conal. Imagine what would have happened to the treaty if the countryside of the Upper World had been littered with the corpses of Seraphim,” he told the others. “Would you be casting doubts on the courage of the Seraphim then, or would you be running for your lives with the whispers of the Unquiet in your ears, Rufus?”

“Perhaps it was the intention of the ravens to undermine the treaty,” Nurse Flanagan said, again with that little laugh that had no real amusement in it, “to portray us as treaty breakers and leave us at the mercy of the Unquiet.”

“Perhaps. Were they there to guard Danny, or were they using him as bait to lure us into an attack? We will probably never know. All I can say is that the ravens will have to be watched in this matter.”

“The real problem is that we did not capture the boy,” Rufus Ness said impatiently.

“Yes, Rufus, but I have been thinking, there’s more than one way to skin a cat.”

“What do you mean?” Ness demanded.

“Wilsons will have worked out by now that we are seeking the Treaty Stone.”

“Why would they think that?” Nurse Flanagan said, examining a highly polished nail.

“Because they know it is the only way we can destroy the treaty and invade the Upper World. If the Treaty Stone is found and broken, then the treaty ends.”

“The Upper World will be ours for the taking,” Rufus Ness said with a satisfied grunt.

“The problem is that the Stone is held in the Upper World. We are not permitted there,” Conal said.

“And you failed in your first secret mission to the Upper World anyway, so there’s no point in trying that again,” Nurse Flanagan said smoothly, drawing an angry glare from Conal.

“Enough,” Longford said. “Squabbling will not bring us the Stone.”

“What will?” Conal said.

“Not what, but who?” the leader said. “I know how Devoy’s mind works. He will want to find the Stone and hide it from us. So he must send someone who is permitted in the Upper World and is used to its ways.”

“The boy!” Ness said. “He wouldn’t dare send the Fifth.”

“He might not, but Brunholm will persuade him that the Fifth is the only person for the job. Doubtless he will send that ragtag group, the physick and the blond girl and that miserable Messenger boy.”

“Are they not barred by the treaty?” Nurse Flanagan said.

“There is a loophole. Those who drew up the treaty did not think that anyone under the age of sixteen was a threat, and at the time there were children to be moved from the Lower to the Upper World, so they are exempt. Another reason why Danny Caulfield is the obvious choice.”

“I see,” Nurse Flanagan said. “So what is your plan?”

“If Danny succeeds in stealing the Treaty Stone, then we must get it from him. We have planted the seed of treachery in him. With the right persuasion, he will join us and bring the Stone with him.”

“You sound very sure about that, considering that his friendship with the others won out over us the last time. He did not betray them,” Conal said sourly.

“We went about it the wrong way before. We must make sure that his friends abandon him. He will feel betrayed, and that in turn will make him betray them. Then he will join us and the Ring of Five will be complete—and will hold absolute power!”