The Assassin Game Read online

  “Boo!” the Guild cry.

  “But…” He puts a foot on the center of her back and rolls her a little, back and forth. Sand sticks to her ample curves as she rolls, she looks sugar-coated. “Make no mistake, Tesh. You owe me one.”

  More laughter. A couple boyish jeers. Yuck.

  “I’m freezing, Alex—” Tesha begins.

  “Quiet!” he shouts. “What? You expected this to be easy?” He shakes his head again, relishing his power over her. “It cannot be easy.”

  The cold wetness is making me shake involuntarily, but I’m grateful to Tesha for stopping the pillowcases. And then I see what’s coming next, and I wonder why I felt glad a second ago.

  “Bring out the Dumper!” Alex cries.

  A Mask steps forward, and I recognize him immediately; it’s my dear friend, Daniel. He’s carrying a bucket, clutching it with those freakishly long, white fingers, holding it at arm’s length. I don’t think this bucket is full of seawater. Alex points to the place on the sand where he dropped the pruning shears.

  Daniel reluctantly walks over to the spot and slops something dark and viscous from the bucket on to the ground, covering the pruning shears.

  “All of it,” Alex says. Daniel sighs then jerks the bucket downward, slapping its bottom like you would a glass ketchup bottle. But the slop is stubborn. “Use your hands,” says Alex, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Daniel’s face hardens, but he puts a hand in anyway and scoops the remainder of the stuff onto the ground, the gloop dripping delicately from his slender digits. The smell has reached me now: cow. This is not going to end well.

  “Now,” says Alex. “As you know, entry into the Guild is subject to passing a test. You have received the cleansing waters, but an assassin must also be prepared to get his or her hands dirty.” Laughter. “You have until sunrise to free yourselves and return to your beds, making sure to clean up this mess so all trace of us is removed. Failure to complete this task in its entirety will render your attempted entry into this Guild unsuccessful.” He smiles. “Good luck.”

  On cue, minions extinguish the oil lamps, and we are plunged into the damp semidarkness. A second later, and they are all gone.

  “Alex!” screams Tesha. “Come back!”

  “You shouldn’t call him Alex,” hisses Martin, lying on his back and jerking his feet into the air in an attempt to dislodge the peg tethering him to the ground. “He’s the Grand Master.”

  “Yeah, and doesn’t he know it?” Tesha mutters. “Alex!” She clearly feels like she can break rank. There was that rumor about them tussling tongues last term, not long after we did, so maybe she has something on him. Didn’t help me much, and it doesn’t seem to be helping her either.

  Martin has given up on trying to pull up the peg and is now moving away from it in a kind of breakdance body-roll style. He’s not your natural athlete, but he gets a gold star for effort.

  Tesha looks at him scornfully. “What the hell are you doing, Martin? Ack!” She gives a cry of frustration. “You’re so bloody keen it’s unnatural!” She turns to me. “What are we supposed to do?”

  I shrug. I absolutely know, but I’ll give her the bliss of a few more seconds of ignorance.

  I wiggle forward on my belly. Sand sticks to me. It’s quite tempting to burrow into the sand for warmth, but I have no intention of burying myself so early on in the Game. No, I’m in this for the long haul.

  Martin’s ahead of me, with the same idea in mind. “The pruning shears,” he grunts. “We can cut ourselves free.”

  “But they’re covered in something. What is that crap on the ground?” Tesha calls.

  “Crap, on the ground,” Martin deadpans. His bungee rope is now taught. He stretches his upper body forward, then flops like a charging walrus, but the bungee pulls him back, tauntingly dragging him in the sand. “Too short!” He strains forward again, groaning, but he can’t move any farther.

  So this is our test: snake our way over to the crap on the ground, retrieve the pruning shears, cut ourselves free.

  I feel the tightness on my ankles too. I inch toward the cow poo, digging toes into the sand to give me a foothold, but I’m still a good body length away. This is impossible.

  Behind me, Tesha is getting with the program. She’s trying to bring her tied hands under her feet; yes, tied hands in front are much more useful than tied hands behind. Tesha might be fleshy, but she’s certainly supple. I try to copy her, but neither of us is successful. I’m not sure I’m willing to break my wrists, even for the Game.

  Martin’s waggling his tether again, but he can’t shift it. He moves to mine. “Help me pull my peg!” he says to both of us.

  “First time for everything.” Tesha rolls her eyes at me and falls onto her side, knickered bum in the air.

  I wiggle over to Martin.

  “It’s stuck fast,” he says, trying to pull it up with his hands behind him. “Dig around the bottom, maybe we can get them out of the ground that way.”

  “Dig with what?” I answer my own question by sitting on the sand with my back to the peg and scrabbling ineffectually with my cupped hands. Tesha joins me, and we all dig. After a minute, we’ve made a pathetically shallow hole.

  “It’s no good.” Martin grimaces as he reaches down. “It’s attached to some kind of steel ring.” He reaches farther. “Set in concrete. I think they have them here to anchor scenery to the stage.”

  Tesha swears. I don’t blame her. I’d be even more miffed if I were in my drawers. An idea hits. “Teamwork.” I sigh. “Right idea, just wrong place.” I push myself up to my feet and jump toward the cowpat until my bungee is taut. I crouch down and begin to dig a little trench. “OK. Now, Martin, come toward me and pull my rope behind you as much as you can to give me some slack. Tesha, here.” I nod to the ground.

  She looks at me, not moving. “You scare me, girl.”

  “Come on!” I say. “We have to do this. We can’t be the only initiates to fail the test; it would be so embarrassing. Plus, I’m flippin’ freezing.”

  Tesha jumps over and flops down beside me. “What do I do?”

  “Feet in this trench,” I show her. “Then stretch out on the ground on your back.”

  She plants herself on the sand reluctantly. “Now what?”

  “Now I climb up you.” I lean against the extent of my bungee. “Martin, more slack!”

  He hefts my rope and I feel the bungee slacken a little. I kneel and lean forward until I’m lying lengthways on Tesha. She’s tall and meaty. A good launching pad.

  “Hey!” she shouts from under me. “What the hell?”

  Despite her protestations, I squirm up her using her body for traction. We must look like two slugs bumping bellies. I manage to get all the way up her and put my feet against one of her shoulders, pushing myself the rest of the way across the sand to the pile of poo.

  “Ow-ee!” Tesha shouts. “You’re killing me!”

  “I’ll swap with you if you like,” I say, straining my head over the ominous pat. “In a heartbeat.” There’s a lump in the middle of the crap. The pruning shears.

  “Actually, you’re all right.” Tesha is looking at the cowpat too. Suddenly she’s realizing she has the better deal in all this. I give myself one more push and, hands stuck behind my back, I’m cobra-ing over the pile of stinking mess. Oh God.

  “Hurry up!” Martin shouts. “My arms are burning.”

  “Sometimes you’ve just got to suck it up,” I mutter.

  “What did you just say?” he shouts.

  “Suck it up.” I shudder. And then before I can stop myself, I plunge face-first into the dark-green gloop. I screw my eyes up and push the horrible stuff out of the way with my face, like a kitten with a ball of wool. Except this isn’t wool. The smell is horrendous, but the worst part is that it is warm. It actually steams. It covers my mouth
, goes up my nostrils, gets in my eyes. I splutter, blowing the stuff off my lips as best I can. I want to scream, but I have to go down again. I nuzzle the plop until I can feel something hard and cool against my cheek. I shove at it, and the handles stand up a little. There’s a loop of metal between the handles. I try to hook it with my nose, but my nose is not pointy enough. There’s only one thing attached to my head that is. My tongue.

  “No!” I splutter, but then I go for it. It’s only grass, it’s only grass, cows just eat grass and it’s only grass and festering bacteria from four stomachs and flies’ eggs and heaven knows what else oh help oh help oh help.

  I snag the loop. A handle falls toward me, and I bite it, and jackknife the hell out of there. Martin’s muscles must give way, or maybe Tesha’s shoulder dislocates, but I am catapulted out of hell and scraped along the sand, all the way back to my peg. I spit out the pruning shears at Martin’s feet. And spit and spit and spit. And suddenly with a snip my wrists are free, and my ankles too, and I can stagger off to the front row of the amphitheater and throw my guts up, tearing at my mouth with my wet pajama top to try and rid myself of the warm, stinky goo.

  Job done.

  The Game is afoot.

  Chapter 2

  I have a very long shower the next morning.

  Too much of a risk to shower in the dead of night. In the morning, however, I scrub at my body like I’m Little Miss OCD. You can bet that I wash my hair more than once, thanking my stars that it’s short and shaggy but wishing it was not the kind of dishwater blond that picks up a hint o’ green from being dunked in dung. And yes, I brush my teeth three times, trying to erase the remnants of taste and the memories of texture. Mouthwash, floss, the works. Once done and dressed in my usual outfit of don’t-care jeans and oversized checked shirt, I don’t think I’ve entirely shifted the smell. So what? I’ll wear it like a badge. I’m extraordinarily happy because I’m in the Game.

  New term, new me. On the way to breakfast, I strut, feeling enlightened and shiny with the guilty thrill of being in the Game. I’m walking down the oak-paneled corridor of Main House on my way to breakfast in the dining hall, and I’m convinced that everyone can see my halo of initiation…or maybe they just smell me coming. It’s as if everyone in the know is absolutely aware of last night and how it changed me. Except everyone is not. Only Martin and Tesha truly know what depths I sank to. As far as the Guild is concerned, one of us somehow retrieved those pruning shears from the cowpat, but they don’t know which of us, and they don’t know how. And Martin, Tesha, and I have sworn a solemn oath on our apprenticed behinds not to tell the details. Honor is everything; they will not break our bond.

  After we cut ourselves free in the early hours, part of the deal was that we had to clean up and sneak back to school undetected. This was as important—in some ways, more so—than the initiation itself. Stealth is everything in the Game. Although the staff here know about the Game, we have to be very careful about how much we shove in their faces. They expect some disruption, and most of the teachers who actually possess a personality find it quite amusing. It’s tradition.

  However, the tolerance only extends so far, and it’s a sign of the times that certain methods of Killing have been banned outright. Laxatives—for a death by “poison”—are out. Bombs have to be extremely metaphorical. And for anyone in possession of a firearm more realistic than a fluorescent-yellow water pistol, it’s instant expulsion. We play along. As weird as this place is, nobody wants to be kicked out. Least of all me.

  I’ve been at Umfraville for three years now, since I was thirteen, and it has taken me that long to find my feet. For the first year, I spent most of my time with my stomach in perpetual knots of anxiety. Imagine it: a huge, gargoyley, mental hospital of a school, set on a remote and windswept island, and largely populated by superkids. My parents own the island, but I’m the most normal here by far.

  Umfraville Hall is the only thing of significance on the little island of Skola, off the Welsh coast. The school has been here for a hundred years, in one form or another. It was a lunatic asylum until the sixties, and then a visionary by the name of Ezra Pendleton decided to turn it into a “center of excellence” for gifted kids. Now Umfraville educates over a hundred teenagers, luminous with specialness. We have mathematicians, track-and-field athletes, world-class musicians, and master chess players. It’s an intense mixture of ego, hormones, and Geekosity In Extremis. Ezra’s still here today, old, wheelchair bound, and mad as a bundle of sticks, but he loves the school, sure enough.

  Not everyone here is genius level; some just have über-wealthy folks. And my story? Like I said, my family owns the island. When I was eight, my great-uncle died and left my parents a little bit of money and a little bit of Wales. If asked, I’m sure my parents would have preferred an island in the Caribbean or maybe the Med, but four hundred acres of moorland in the Irish Sea is what they got. There are some nice beaches here, but the sea is cold and the tides ferocious. We have cows and sheep for neighbors, and that’s it. Lonely? You can wave to the Liverpool-Dublin ferry, and when the weather is clear, you can see the nuclear power station on the mainland. When we got rich, my beloved parentals decided to stay in London but moved to a nicer postcode. Due to some kink in the deeds, they couldn’t kick Ezra and Umfraville off Skola, so what did they do? They sent their only child to school here.

  When I first arrived at Umfraville, I felt like I was drowning. I’m certainly no clever clogs, and my talents are few and modest. This is no humblebrag; it’s just the truth. I’m OK at art, and luckily I like my art teacher, Mr. Flynn. He was the first person here I felt I could talk to. Yeah, well done, Cate; befriend a teacher. But after a while, I managed to chisel out precisely two friendships with people my own age: Marcia, who is the school newspaper editor and one of the cloaked Elders from last night. She has an IQ of 156 and no idea what to do with it. She’ll probably end up running a tabloid.

  And then there’s Daniel, again Guild, the “Dumper.” Poor, lovely Daniel. Alex gets off on tormenting him, but Daniel rarely complains about much. That’s one of the reasons I love him. He plays the violin, wonderfully, but is terminally shy. He finds it almost impossible to hold a conversation with anyone apart from me or Marcia. He was at the Lausanne Conservatory, but he’s killing a couple years here because his parents want him to get straight As and a sense of proportion.

  I get along with most of the people here now, you know? Many of them are loners anyway. Hothouse kids who never got to learn how not to chuck sand in the playground. Apart from the athletes, of course. They band together. Go team! It’s like elves and orcs around here, the geeks and the jocks. And me in the middle. Invisible.

  But not today, finally. Today, I am Guild. Today, I am in the Game. Today, I am part of Killer.

  As I turn the corner, a lively hubbub emanates from the dining room. It’s louder than usual, because it’s a Saturday, and the kind of Saturday that only happens around here a handful of times a term. People are excited about escaping to the mainland. There’s a causeway to this island, and today the tide is right.

  Twice a day a window opens up when it is safe to cross the causeway. On Saturdays we have lessons until midday, and all pupils have to be back on the island by 9 p.m. at the latest. So if the tide is out for a decent chunk of time, a bus is scheduled to take us to the mainland at lunchtime and back again in the evening. This timing only works out about once a month, and sometimes not even that, as there are fairly ridiculous safety margins in place to account for wind and foul weather and the inevitable naughty folks who are late for the return journey. There’s nothing much on the mainland—a few shops, a café, a pub that doesn’t always check IDs—but at least it’s not school.

  So yes, the dining hall is humming, and there’s the smell of toast, which always makes my mouth water—except on the mornings when I’ve spent the night apple bobbing in excrement.

  As I enter
the hall, I see the tables at the far end have been commandeered by the Guild. Most of them see me walk in, and those that don’t have soon been elbowed. Alex is center; he flicks sandy hair out of his eyes with a toss of his head and beckons me over, slowly. As I approach the open spot on the end of the last table, I see Martin and Tesha sitting there, both with a steaming bowl of oatmeal in front of them. My stomach lurches. Oh, I have so exhausted my tolerance for things that steam. But everyone at my table has the same gruel. I scan down the line of faces. I’m last. I sit, and someone places a bowl in front of me. I grit my teeth.

  “Dig in!” Alex shouts. Every pair of eyes in the dining hall is on us as I lift the spoon out of the bowl. There’s something other than oatmeal on it. I gingerly pick it out of the oats.

  A wristband of black, plaited leather, with a neat silver clasp at one end.

  I look around me; everyone has the same surprise.

  A cheer goes up from the Guild, which prompts some cheering and clapping from the rest of the school, eventually dissolving into laughter and whooping.

  “Have a happy death!” someone cries.

  “Aaaaargh!” a fake yell sounds out. More laughter.

  “All right, all right!” Mr. Flynn—I mentioned, he’s my art teacher—drew the short straw and is on dining hall duty today. He’s one of the good ones though. He pretends he thinks the Game is ridiculous, but you know that if he was seventeen again, he’d totally be running the gig.

  I can’t help the smile from spreading over my face. I suck the oatmeal off my band, wipe it down, and clip it around my left wrist. All down the table, kids—apprentices—are doing the same. I marvel at the inky-black of the leather, and the clean silver glistening against the brown of my summer tan. There’s plenty of space for it there, because I think I lost my watch last night. That sucks, and I’m not in any particular hurry to retrace my steps and dig around in the sand for it. For now I’m more than happy to replace it with the black band. Game rules state that if I get Killed, the band will be cut off and nailed to the common room bulletin board. Some other members of the Guild have a bloodred knotted thread from last year. Alex has a very faded multicolored ribbon from the year before. Apprentices picked from lower down the school are few and far between; only Alex, my friend Marcia, and another boy called Carl are on to their third Game, but Alex is the only one who’s never been Killed, hence he has all the bracelets. I like this year’s trinket. There it will stay, hopefully, for the duration of the Game.