Seven for a Secret (7 page)

War was like that. And history. And countries. Anyone might draw clear margins around a thing, set it apart, treat is as discrete and contained inside its borders. But the map was not the territory, and as soon as you got close to one of those arbitrary lines, you found all the things they cut across. Cause and effect were a spiderweb, where every choice and every reaction ran into every other one, and you could not tug one without tearing the next.

Abby Irene rested her fingertips on the carved leather cover of a closed book and called out, “You were gone a long while.”

Sebastien finished unwinding his cloak and passed it off to Mrs. Moyer. “I had a long and edifying conversation with Mr. MacGregor, and then I had to atone for rudeness to an old friend of the blood. Then, despite the rain, it seemed provident to wait for darkness when darkness was so near. Have you ladies settled on what you’d like for tea?”

Abby Irene made a left-handed, irritable gesture. “Whatever it is, I shan’t taste it. What did Mr. MacGregor say?”

Sebastien came across the threshold and settled like a windblown leaf into the chair just inside. It was a narrow-legged Queen Anne, embroidered yellow chrysanthemums on pale Chinese brocade and dark wood carved to elegant curves. Abby Irene kept it—and kept it beside the door—
because it was extraordinarily uncomfortable. The wampyr never seemed to notice.

“He’ll contact the human resistance with your information,” Sebastien said. “He’s obtained a list of the girls in the Bund. There are twenty-one. Six in the oldest group, the rest younger. We will suggest local cells be instructed to contact their families and learn what they can about the young women—”

The wampyr stopped abruptly, hands resting on his knees as he leaned forward. “Hmm.”

“Sebastien?” Phoebe asked, perhaps a little too much the ingénue for a woman of her age.

He smiled, an expression not calculated to express happiness. “I infer from your expressions that you’ve uncovered some further evidence of catastrophe in my absence. Out with it, my loves.”

Phoebe glanced at Abby Irene, who shrugged. So Phoebe said, “Why would a Prussian militia recruit English girls? Collaborators? Why trust them?”

“If we still like Abby Irene’s theory, many royal guards are traditionally mercenary organizations,” Sebastien said. “And yet, I gather that’s not what you’re driving at.”

Abby Irene gummed her lower lip while Phoebe explained. “I think you’ll find, when that information comes from the families, that these girls do not have a great deal of choice in their assignment. But if they’re allowed to walk the streets without supervision, then they are granted privileges as a means of controlling them and winning them over. Which means that whatever means of control their commanders have over them is not physical.”

“The families?”

Phoebe nodded. “What else?”

“That seems a very fragile strand by which to rope someone you hope to forge into a bulletproof killing machine. But if they are taking the girls at a young age—”

“Eleven or younger,” Phoebe said.

Sebastien winced. “Early enough to remake their philosophies, I imagine.”

Abby Irene stroked her hands over the book before her. She had marked the relevant page in her leatherbound book with a ribbon. It took her both hands to lift it, and before she could try to extend it Phoebe had lurched out of her chair and was beside her, lifting it off her hands. Abby Irene would have growled, but she was out of breath, and she didn’t recover it until after Phoebe had delivered the book into Sebastien’s hands and returned to her own chair. He found the ribbon—really, Abby Irene could have marked the page with nothing more than the scent of her hand, and he would have found it, but it was nice to observe the social prevarications—and parted the covers.

As he bent to read, Abby Irene said, “Binding oaths. A Wyrd.”

“That’s forbidden magic,” Sebastien said, his gaze traveling down the center of the page. “It’s mind control. Outlawed in every civilized nation.” He shook his head.

“Because the Chancellor is so concerned with laws, except the ones he has a hand in writing. Laws for deportation, detention, eugenics, medical experimentation, final solutions to invented problems—”

“Phoebe,” Sebastien said, raising his gaze. “I am sympathetic to your disgust, and, as it happens, in complete agreement.”

She’d been building up to a fine tear and now she stopped, hands on her hips, and breathed out sharply under a glower. She shook her head and let her arms go limp, palms pressed to her thighs. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry. But you understand—”

“Yes,” he said, and closed the book upon his finger. “Abby Irene—”

Abby Irene lifted her chin, knowing she resembled a hound on a scent. “You think I’d mind-control those children? Sebastien. But what if we could promise to spirit their families to safety? Do you think that might make a difference in their loyalties?”

Sebastien tossed his head like a restive horse. “There’s another solution.” He turned away from Abby Irene and Phoebe, as if uncomfortable with the pronouncement he was about to make. He stood, and went to the window. Beyond it, the night hovered. Abby Irene knew what he saw, invisible rain drumming on the planished street, the dimpled
ripples broadening.

“The suspense,” Phoebe said dryly, “is killing us.”

The book cradled against his chest, he turned away from the rain. “It was you who called me the Scarlet Pimpernel, mi corazón. We’ll go and get them.”

Abby Irene heard her own intake of breath and saw Phoebe’s spine stiffen. Phoebe said, “And if the Prussians are using their families to control them?”

He folded his other arm over the book, as if it were some wholly inadequate piece of armor. “We smuggle out Jews.”

Abby Irene felt a chill settle into her belly. “Sebastien,” she said. “I think you may be unrealistically optimistic about your chances of convincing these young women to come away.”

He lifted his chin, disapproval creasing his forehead. “And also, you want to use them as a weapon against the Chancellor. Which you cannot, if we rescue them.”

“Wartime rules,” Abby Irene said, and made herself meet his eyes. “What’s a couple dozen lives, Sebastien, measured against millions?”

4.

The afternoon drill ended with forty-five minutes of catechism in the rights and duties of Prussian officers and Prussian women, which Ruth had memorized to the point of dreaming it. Which was a lucky thing, because she could barely keep her eyes open for the duration of the lesson. The question-and-response seemed endless, chants like a litany, and she knew she would hear it echoing in her head for hours afterwards.

By dinnertime, it appeared all was forgiven. Or expunged in Ruth and Adele’s hard work and suffering. They took their places among the other girls without remark, though Ruth caught the littlest ones whispering at the bottom of the table. Their own agemates—Beatrice Small, Joan Mapes, Katherine Ressler, and Jessamyn Johnson—simply kept their eyes lowered and their hands folded, waiting for Herr Professor to take his place at the head of the table. It was Jessamyn’s turn to sit in the hostess’s place at the foot of the table, for which Ruth was grateful. She did not think that she could manage to support a spirited conversation among the youngest students today.

It was all Ruth’s willpower not to fall on the bread and butter like a starving wolf while they waited, but poor table courtesy was another way to earn demerits, so—even though her stomach was rumbling loudly enough that Beatrice shot her a sidelong smile—she folded her hands in the lap of her dress and bowed her head while Herr Professor said Grace. When the bread was passed, she broke it into dainty pieces dabbed with butter, eating in small ladylike bites.

This was part of the discipline, too. Ruth felt Herr Professor’s gaze upon her every time she lowered her eyes to her plate, and so extended herself in courtesy to the girls sitting across from and beside her. Manners, decorum, strength, courage, loyalty.

The virtues of a mastiff dog.

She owed it to her family—to the world—to excel. Adele would understand, when it was done. Adele would forgive her.

Practice occasioned another costume change. Pleated knee-length skirts and tennis shoes were at least quick to slip into, and Adele was the best in the class at braiding hair. When she did it, the process might bring tears to sting Ruth’s eyes, but the braid stayed put.

Ruth smoothed her blouse over her wolfskin in the mirror, frowning critically at her reflection. She needed larger shirts. Adele came up beside her, pushing her braid aside to kiss the side of her neck, and Ruth slipped an arm around her waist and tugged her close. She felt the prickle of Adele’s wolfskin through her blouse, too, and leaned her head on Adele’s shoulder.

Adele kissed her ear. „Do you think anyone will do it tonight?”

Ruth shrugged, and let her arm slide free as she turned to the door. „There’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?”

Downstairs in the long high-walled garden, the class shivered under a striped awning that kept off the rain but not the chill. Ruth and Adele were not the last to come down, though, and even Katherine, who was, still arrived four minutes early. Herr Professor would be punctual, which meant the girls had a few moments to straighten their shoulders and adjust one another’s collars and hairpins, and wonder what might be under the canvas tarpaulins covering a single long table set against the wall. They would not lift the edge of the drop cloth, however. Not where Herr Professor might see.

By the time the sliding door from the headmaster’s quarters opened and Herr Professor appeared framed against the light, his uniform cap tugged low and his greatcoat collar turned up against the rain, the girls had lined up side by side in two rows. It pleased him when they were ready for him.

Neither rain nor cold seemed to affect him as he descended the steps from his patio. He carried a swagger stick under one arm. His glossy boots clicked decisively on stone as he strode along the walk through thumping raindrops.Ruth would have given anything to cross her arms over her chest. The wind iced through her thin cotton blouse. Her whole body was goose pimples and shivers, and the only way to keep her teeth from chattering was to clench her jaw. Judging by what similar tautness did to Beatrice’s face, perhaps it made Ruth look stern.

She knew this was to toughen them, but it didn’t make her hate it any less. Still, she kept her chin up as Herr Professor’s gaze skimmed across her. He spoke in German; whatever he said, Ruth let the words wash over her. The response was ritual, always the same: Protokoll, Dekor, Kraft, Mut, Treue! She had to unlock her jaw to chant in unison with the other girls. Protokoll, Dekor, Kraft, Mut, Treue! Protokoll, Dekor, Kraft, Mut, Treue!

Over and over, until the words had no more meaning than the ones Herr Professor bellowed. Ruth did not want the words to have meaning. She did not want to believe them.

She did not want to believe them in German. In English, they were her life.

Or, she thought calmly, her death, more likely. But that was okay.

It would be worth it.

She was still clutching that thought to her breast as if it were warm when Herr Professor held up a hand to interrupt the call and response. With the others, Ruth fell silent. She pressed her arms against her sides as if to trap some ghost of warmth—a useless gesture—and tried not to shiver too loudly as she waited.

Herr Professor scanned the girls, inspecting each one’s uniform and deportment with a gimlet eye. Adele and Jessamyn, he each tapped with his swagger stick, but lightly, to improve their posture. Ruth would like to do the same to him, but she thought she kept the fantasy from illuminating her expression.

Finished, Herr Professor set his shoulders and said, „You know you have been chosen for a great purpose. A great destiny. You have each risen to a tremendous challenge, and each proved yourselves worthy of the glorious Prussian Empire.

„But now you must rise to an even greater and more terrible task, my children.”

A new kind of shiver tightened Ruth’s spine. Her arms twitched, as if to fold around her. Only with an effort did she straighten them.

„You must become Sturmwölfe. Tonight is the night when you cease to be students, and become warriors.”

He passed between them, moving at last to the mysterious long table. With gloved hands, he grasped the tarp and flipped it back, somehow arranging the fold so it fell with military crispness though the gesture seemed casual.

Ruth bit back a gasp. Six long poles lay on the table—spears, each tipped with a glittering steel blade like a beech leaf, four-edged and as long as her hand. The spears also each had a crossbar lashed a third of the way up the shaft and a wrapped leather grip at the butt.

Six. One for each student.

„Choose your weapons,” Herr Professor said. „And then we will go and meet your enemy.”

The spear was heavier than Ruth expected, the butt as thick as her wrist. She propped the shaft against her shoulder, as Herr Professor demonstrated, and steadied it with her left hand crossed over her chest. The rain had not abated. It soaked Ruth’s hair, plastered her blouse to her girdle, and when they left the paved path, trooping like ducklings after Herr Professor, it wet the lawn so mud oozed through the grommets and the canvas walls of her tennis shoes and her feet slid against the rubber soles.