The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School (21 page)

The Professor scratched across his tattoos with her device. Blades sliced almost to the bone and Gogoth yelped.

‘Bleed,’ she ordered, somewhat superfluously.

Blood – blacker than red – gushed from the ruined tattoo and spattered the flagstone circle. Some fell into the spiral groove – the Runnel – and ran towards a cup-like depression in the centre. That must be the Flute.

Gogoth made a fist of bandaging himself with a handkerchief. The other conspirators practically bumped hoods over the Flute. They mumbled something like a chant…

The words were different – not English, and perhaps not even human – but the rhythm was all too familiar.

Dum-dum-dee-dum… dumdee-dumdee Dum…

Ants in your pants… all the way from France.

The rivulet of blood reached the Flute and there was a small crackle, like tame lightning…

…and Rose, running full tilt, came out of the night and charged into Bainter’s arms! The Professor and Red Flame laid hands on her too.

Whatever ritual they had performed had turned the girl around. Or turned the woods around.

Bainter sat on Rose, pinning her down. Her head was over the Flute. The Professor adjusted her razor-gauntlet again. Amy guessed she was preparing to lift Beauty’s face from her skull.

Rose made keening noises in the back of her throat.

‘That’s right,’ said the Professor. ‘Make a fuss. We can’t hear you, but the Other Ones can.’

Her implement buzzed and crackled. It generated or attracted some sort of electric charge.

Bainter and Red Flame kept up the chanting. The Hooded Conspiracy was on the point of making its ghastly oblation.

Beauty – soon to be the Girl Without the Face – kicked and struggled.

Amy let go of the tree and made herself heavy. She dived at Bainter.

She got her hands around his neck and twisted his hood so he couldn’t see out of the eyeholes. She shoved him off Rose and into the shovelled pile of snow. The girls of R.I. would have cheered her for this.

Kicking and twisting, Amy shoved the Professor into Red Flame. The buzzing gauntlet shredded the shoulder of his coat and he shrieked. He went for his revolver again, but dropped it. The Professor, also flailing, kicked the gun away and blundered against the tree. Her glove apparatus sliced bark and lodged deep in the wood. She couldn’t easily pull free.

Amy had her feet on the ground – she had pins and needles from hanging upside down too long, but tried to ignore the tingling and rubbery legs. She took Rose’s hand and helped her up.

She hoped they could run back to School and out of range of the Runnel and the Flute before the conspirators could recover and work their bleeding trick a second time. Rose didn’t waste breath asking who her rescuer was. Then again, she couldn’t ask if she’d wanted to.

However, the girls only got a few strides away from the circle.

Gogoth barred their way. He had stopped bleeding. The snout of his mask went in and out. His eyes were fixed on them and his arms were spread.

They would have to split up and run in different directions.

No, that wouldn’t work. He’d grab Beauty and the de-facing would be on schedule again.

A branch swung out of the darkness and slammed into the chauffeur’s head. He staggered and fell. A triangular, brown-and-white mask loomed in the night.

Oleander Hawkmoth had struck!

Kali tossed away the branch. She applied Kafiristani foot-boxing techniques to the fallen man. In that discipline, the most devastating blows were made with the instep.

Amy and Rose made a start into the woods.

‘Stop,’ shouted someone ahead – Red Flame!

He’d scooped up his revolver and circled round. He had them cold.

Only his coat was damaged. White shirt showed through the rents. He walked carefully towards the girls.

Amy tried to get a mental grip on him but was too distracted. She hovered a foot off the ground, but her other Abilities were exhausted.

Kali was closest to Red Flame…

…
her father!

He took aim at her mask.

His hood had come loose and been torn. His chin and mouth showed. He had very white teeth and a very black, distinctive beard.

Kali must know by now who he was.

‘You don’t understand what you’re doing,’ he said. ‘This has been set down as inevitable, long before any of us were born. It is important. For us, this is religion… a sacred duty.’

‘Then why not ask for volunteers?’ asked Amy.

Red Flame shook his head and smiled wryly.

‘A girl with no voice can’t speak up,’ he explained.

‘You cut off girls’ faces,’ said Amy. ‘That’s not religion. That’s
poppycock
!’

Red Flame thumbed back the hammer of his revolver.

Kali stood stock still, arms out to her sides.

‘You were there before,’ Red Flame said to Amy. ‘In the tower. You’re the butterfly girl.’

She didn’t correct him.

‘What do you think you’re doing out of bounds, dressed foolishly, wearing
masks
…?’

This was a bit rich, coming from inside a hood.

‘Give me the Girl with the Face,’ said Red Hood. ‘Or I shoot this one.’

Rose, not exactly happy about it, was still prepared to hand herself over. Amy knew Kali wouldn’t let that happen.

Slowly, Kali raised her arms – assuming a fighting stance.

‘Stop that,’ said Red Flame, shaking his gun.

He must recognise what Kali was doing. Amy remembered the bandit rajah had been his daughter’s foot-boxing teacher – so he could probably beat her even without a weapon.

The fierceness and bravery of the hawkmoths was well known, but…

Amy tried to get a grip on Red Flame’s hand. If only she could hold back his trigger finger. She wobbled in the air and landed… the limits of her Abilities were exceeded.

She might as well have been an Ordinary.

Kali’s fingers reached behind her head.

Red Flame seemed puzzled.

‘Be still, silly chit,’ he said.

Kali took off her mask and hat. Her black hair shook out.

Red Flame, shocked, discharged his revolver… but wildly, up into the air.

He cried out and hung his head in shame. Amy hadn’t expected that.

Kali said something to her father in a foreign language…

…and Amy ran, Rose keeping pace with her.

Kali caught up with them.

‘Them rats won’t be on our tails now,’ she said.

They slowed down, not needing to risk slamming into a tree, and walked back to School. Amy grew aware of the bitter cold and the lateness of the hour. They’d missed Lights Out and would be Majored if whips caught them. She ached in her shoulders, her hands, her legs and her head. And still had a troubled stomach.

Outside Old House, Rose placed her open hand on her chest and then on theirs.

Heartfelt thanks.

She went upstairs to the Fifth Floor.

Amy and Kali, masks off, were alone together.

‘Kali, I should have said before…’

‘Yeah, I know,’ said her friend, eyes as dark as her father’s. ‘But you didn’t.’

L
ATER IN
F
EBRUARY
, nightly snowfall slacked off… but the cruel cold went on and on. School no longer resembled a Christmas card. Merry robins were in short supply. If any popped beaks out of their nests to chirrup, they’d be stiff, frosty corpses in an instant. The jolly round cheeks of Father Christmas fell off to show the sharp, malicious skullface of Jack Frost.

By day, under thin sunlight, the top layer of snow melted. Icicle spears detached from eaves, as if aimed at unwary souls passing underneath. At dusk, the temperature plummeted. Slush froze into ridged, sooty ice-crust. Captain Freezing still regularly returned from the dead, more muck-monster than snowman. There was no guessing where he’d appear.

Salt winds blew off the sea like razors. Everyone had red-rimmed eyes, made worse by rubbing. Out of doors, Amy took to wearing her Goosey Gander goggles – until she ran into Brydges. The formerly reasonable Viola whip, now a fanatic Black Skirt, confiscated the offending item and scratched a stain in Amy’s Time-Table Book. Inappropriate Eyewear. A Murdering Heathen of
École de Gryce
would have snaffled the goggles for her own use, but let Amy off the Minor. The new, humourless breed of tyrant lacked the piratical flair of the cutthroats of yesterterm. Amy was forced to concede she preferred the affably corrupt to the horribly moral.

Black Skirts went about in threes – with no more than two from a single House or Form. This meant no two could dispute rulings from on high without the third informing on the apostates. Those who joined because they fancied a change of clothes or thought skipping might see off the cold found themselves buying the rest of the parcel. They weren’t supposed to talk about ‘the rest of the parcel’ with outsiders. Black Skirts on the prowl for recruits hinted at privileges, inner circles and wonders, but Amy understood the top Black Skirts had ruthless ways of keeping the rank and file in line. No one who went Black ever came back to Grey.

The Folk Dancing Society, an obscure activities club populated mostly by Viola Fourths, was first to institute a Black Only policy. Wychwood, leading light of the FDS, couldn’t go Black if she wanted to. Her parents stubbornly refused to open the parental purse for non-essential expenses. Amy understood how that worked. Wychwood made a hash of dyeing her blazer and skirt in the Chem Lab, which stuck her with a Major Uniform Infraction. Despite deft figures and flings, she was chucked out of the FDS. Condemned to walk between the winds like a mutilated Red Indian brave, she served as grim warning to those who refused to meet the (climbing) price set by Dosson, Chappell & Co.

After prep one night, Amy went back to her cell to find Frecks sporting full Black. She was looking herself up and down in the mirror inside her wardrobe door. Though cut from the same pattern, the black blazer seemed tighter in the waist than the grey. The glossy material caught the light. Dark rainbows rippled across Frecks’ lapels.

Kali lolled on her bed in green silk pajamas, chewing gum and reading
Black Mask
. She looked away as Amy stepped into the room. Since the unmasking of Red Flame, Kali and Amy were on the outs. Amy felt lasting, urgent shame, but was also ticked off with her friend. Kali made no attempt to see things from Amy’s point of view. Really, what was she supposed to do? She had only
suspected
Kali’s father. It wasn’t until the skirmish over Beauty at the Runnel and the Flute that she’d known
for certain
he was up to his beard in the Hooded Conspiracy. Besides, Kali was always going on about how she would bump off the old man when she had the chance. It wasn’t as if she didn’t believe him complicit in all manner of wickedness, not least the death of her mother. Still, Amy nagged herself, uselessly…

She should have told Kali her father was behind her kidnapping.

Then they’d still be friends.

Frecks going Black wasn’t going to help dissipate the poisonous atmosphere either.

Light Fingers sat in her rocking chair, embroidering a green shawl with moth-wing patterns. She rocked harder than usual, repeatedly stabbing the cloth with her tiny needle as if she were doing it harm. The chair had a creak which became a whine if Light Fingers was in a mood.

‘It’s just new kit,’ said Frecks, raising her voice over the rocking. ‘Not as if I’m going to take up skipping like a loon. Though I could do with shedding some of this unwanted avoirdupois.’

Frecks had been sold on Black when Martine of the Fourth, one of Desdemona’s first converts, said it was slimming. Frecks was infected with the belief she was growing thick in the midriff. The notion had been maliciously planted by the cunning Viscount Ralph. Frecks had spent a martyr’s Christmas spurning the mince pies, plum pudding and chocolate bon-bons her brother cruelly scoffed in front of her.

Now, she smoothed her shiny skirt tight across her hips and was satisfied.

‘…and, one thing you have to say for the Black Skirts is…’

The whining creak stopped. Light Fingers tossed her embroidery aside and pushed out of the cell.

‘I don’t know,’ said Frecks. ‘Some people are getting tetchy-touchy…’

‘In spades, sister,’ said Kali, glaring pointedly at Amy.

Black might not make Frecks look thinner, but she was more commanding in her new uniform. Amy saw how her friend was changing. After leaving School, she would be reborn. Debutantes didn’t have names like Frecks. When presented at court, she’d be Lady Serafine.

A stunner, but cold.

And Kali was a princess. Her people owned palaces and commanded hordes when the forebears of Alexandra Vansittart and Sidonie Gryce were painted blue and living in mud huts. She would be a bandit empress.

Lips red as blood could easily look like lips red with blood.

The cell had been cosy, not just for its small fire, piles of quilts and the scent of Kali’s herbal gaspers… but for the warmth of shared friendship. That seemed to be chilling. No daring night-rescue or flight into masked adventure could put magic oil back in a broken lamp. The Moth Club was in danger of dissolving.

‘I’ll go and see what’s the matter,’ Amy said.

‘As you please,’ said Frecks, distracted by the way the sharp shadow of her tilted hat brought out the sparkle in her eye. ‘Any de-wettening of the blanket would be appreciated.’

Amy went out into the passageway.

The low, soft patter of the skipping rhyme came from Inchfawn’s cell. Surely, there was no jumping in there? She looked through the open door. Inchfawn and Frump sat on a bed, patting themselves and each other in a complicated pattern while reciting the ‘ants in your pants’ mantra. Both were Black Skirts.

Shivering, Amy passed on.

Light Fingers was at the end of the corridor, by a window, face turned away. In the dark reflection, her cheeks were wet.

‘Emma,’ said Amy…

Christian names were little-used at Drearcliff – saved for moments of intimacy. This seemed to qualify.

Light Fingers knuckled away her tears and turned.