41. Hunted （for Sport）
Somebody has inexplicably given Alistair a megaphone.
The squeal of feedback is the first clue, and then Briar and the others go upstairs to Eugenia’s spare bedroom to risk peering through the curtains there, and discover that he’s standing up on the lawn with a crowd gathered around him.
He’s too far away to make out any details except for the large, white bandage wrapped around his neck.
‘Today, we’re all running the gauntlet,’ he says, his voice tinny in the amplification, the sound bouncing off the walls of the nearby buildings.
‘Because there are people within our walls who wish to destroy everything we’ve worked for - who’ve been plotting, behind the scenes, to disrupt our way of life.
Ruin our rituals. Try to make us back down.
Now, they’ve taken things too far. A pip is dead.
’ Briar can’t hear the response to this, but based on the movement of the crowd, they can imagine it.
‘But we won’t back down. We’re Templetonians.
Our power is God-given, passed down for hundreds of years.
It is our job to maintain order in a thankless world.
Anyone who wants to act against this school has to go through me.
’ He takes a panting breath, the megaphone squealing.
‘Scholars - renew the vow you made to Temple when you first entered these hallowed halls. Pips - now’s the chance to fucking prove yourselves.
Your only task is to find and subdue Briar Jones, Tate Adams, Crispin Westby, Hadley Watson and . . . and Sebastian Wolfe.’
Briar can see scholars turning to each other, putting their heads together, muttering at this latest development. Maybe they’re afraid. Next to them, Bastian lets out a little huff of irritation.
‘Bring them to us and you’ll be richly rewarded,’ says Alistair. ‘And pips - any of you who help us bring these people to justice, for killing one of your own, will be exempt from the rest of the Trials, and ascend to scholarship immediately.’
‘He knows,’ Bastian says, livid. ‘That fucker. He knows, and he didn’t tell me. All those meetings with the board this term that he said I wasn’t senior enough to attend . . .’
‘Never fuck a fucker,’ Hadley says, very wisely.
The crowd on the lawn disperses in all directions, and Briar shifts back from the window, letting the curtain fall into place.
‘I think our best bet is the tunnels,’ says Tate. ‘Confusing as hell, but that could be to our advantage. Exit closest to the staff car park, and then we get in Genie’s car and floor it through the barrier.’
‘I don’t think that’s actually the sort of thing people do in real life,’ says Westby, and Tate shrugs.
‘Better plan?’
‘No.’
‘Then we’ll floor it through the barrier.’
‘We’re going to need a distraction,’ says Briar. ‘To even make it out of this house.’
Hadley side-eyes Bastian. ‘Wolfe,’ she says. ‘Think you could make something explode?’
Bastian crosses his arms and arches an eyebrow. ‘Apparently it’s almost all I do.’
Briar doesn’t like watching Bastian slip out of the back door alone, but he’s hardly an easy target, and he’s reclaimed his slightly blood-soaked cape to lend him a touch of anonymity as he crosses the grounds.
Briar’s seen him Work before, telling an entire lawn full of scholars to avert their eyes, and succeeding.
They have a plan. He’ll be fine.
‘He’s fine,’ Hadley says, watching Briar linger by the back door. ‘Worry about yourself, and the Orphling.’
Orpheus, with the survival instincts of a lone duckling, has apparently decided that he’s coming with them all - which is sweet, if catastrophically misguided.
‘If things go south,’ Briar says to him, ‘just pretend you don’t know us, okay?
Or that you . . . single-handedly tracked us down, and you were going to turn us in. ’
They all wait by the front door, tensed for the signal - and then have to clap their hands over their ears when something detonates with such volume and intensity that Eugenia’s window cracks, one pane divided neatly into two.
‘Jesus,’ says Hadley. ‘It’s like having the key for the nuclear codes.’
Westby is aghast when they see that it’s the library that’s taken the brunt of Bastian’s distraction, every beautiful Gothic window now lying shattered on the lawn.
But Bastian knows what he’s doing. The risk of a threat to precious texts is enough to draw a crowd - and in the chaos and confusion, Briar and the others are able to make a break for it.
The tunnel entrance is perhaps only twenty or thirty feet away.
It feels like a marathon as they run, exposed, but once they’re inside, it’s almost worse; the walls seem to close in, a bottleneck, no chance of escape until they reach the first fork and choose a direction on a whim.
Briar’s heart pounds so hard and fast, it feels more like a hum.
They’re rabbits in a burrow, prey, waiting to be discovered teeth-first by the snarling jaws of the loyal scholars.
When they do run into someone, it’s a group of pips travelling in a pack, quick to scream when they find themselves face to face with their quarry.
Hadley almost sounds kind when she says, ‘Why don’t you try that way?’ and sends them happily off down the tunnel, none the wiser.
They turn at another fork, then through a small cavern. Briar’s almost sure they glimpse ancient restraints on the stone wall before they move on, rusted chains now dangling and impotent, but it’s not worth dwelling on.
‘I think . . . I think we’re under Eden,’ Tate gasps, as they run. ‘So that means—’
‘Stop right there.’ Two cloaked Mons are blocking their path. Briar comes to a sudden and complete stop; Hadley’s still moving, and is about to say something when Tate, glued to the spot just like Briar, says, ‘Relax.’
It’s Ease - but more powerful than Briar’s ever seen it. One of the scholars bends at the waist, sways like he’s being crushed by a hydraulic press, and ends up slumped against the wall, brows smoothed with the comfort of easy dreams.
Briar had absolutely no idea that Tate had it in him.
‘Run,’ Hadley says to the Mon still standing. He doesn’t move, but Briar can tell he’s fighting the urge, fighting Hadley’s Conduct with his own. If he succeeds, they might be in trouble.
‘Is that you, Crossby?’ Westby says. His tone is almost conversational. ‘Did you get the new edition of Heritage Railway? Exciting stuff about that recommissioned loco.’
This is baffling - but what’s even more confusing is that the Mon, Crossby, says, ‘Yes, and did you see - they’ve reopened the southern valley line, now that they’ve finished those landslip repairs.’
‘I didn’t, actually.’
‘Oh! I’ll go and get it for you.’
And he actually does, happily leaving his associate slumped against the dark wall of the tunnel.
‘What the hell was that?’ Briar asks, and Westby taps his nose, looking pleased.
‘Attention,’ says Westby. ‘I use it to lock in, when I’m studying. Very effective when aimed at a pre-existing fixation, and he’s always talking to Miller about bloody steam trains.’
They keep running.
After just a few hundred yards, Briar holds out an arm to stop the others. They can feel something very familiar in the air: a hot, resonant hum, an invisible wave that’s fizzing against their skin and rattling their molars.
‘Can you feel that? It’s Bastian.’
They’d never been able to sense it before, but now they understand something of the Work, it’s like static on Briar’s radio.
‘Honestly,’ Hadley hisses. ‘One shag and you’ve supernaturally imprinted on each other.’
‘I think we’re nearly there,’ says Tate. ‘It feels . . . lighter, that way. Don’t you think?’
Briar does, but they can’t leave. Not if Bastian might be down here, when he’s supposed to be up there, waiting.
Hadley jerks her head towards the exit. ‘I’m not dying down here for Sebastian Wolfe.’
‘I can’t leave him. Can you . . . ? Take the keys. Start the car.’ Briar tosses them to her and she catches them.
‘Will you be all right on your own?’ Tate asks, and Hadley snorts.
‘Get fucked, Adams. Come on, pip.’
But Orpheus shakes his head, sticking stubbornly to Briar’s side.
‘Fine. It’s your funeral.’
Briar takes a deep breath, and follows the feeling.
The tunnel wall on their right gives way from thick-packed dirt to rock, and then the rock begins to thin in places, pockmarked with small holes, letting out the noise of people talking.
They all keep going, stepping carefully, until they reach a gap just big enough to spy through; Briar puts their eye to it and discovers a small cave, about the same size as the one that had held the chalice full of class A drugs.
Inside this one, a group of older scholars - half caped, half not - are standing in a tight circle around somebody obscured from view, every one of them rigid with concentration, muttering.
Alistair is there, smoking a cigarette with affected calm, a spot of blood showing through the bandage at his neck.
‘They’ve got Bastian,’ Briar whispers to Tate, the words leaden in their mouth.
Alistair takes the cigarette from his mouth and says, ‘Why don’t you tell me where they are?’
Bastian almost sounds amused when he says, ‘Get fucked, Alistair.’
A jolt of surprise ripples around the room, and Alistair says, ‘He shouldn’t be able to do that, you shirking fucking hacks. Concentrate.’
Briar shifts along, very carefully, until they have a view of Bastian in profile, kneeling on the wet stone of the floor like an unwilling sacrifice.
‘I really can’t understand why you’d throw it all away like this,’ Alistair says, turning back to Bastian with something almost pleading in his tone. ‘I mean, fuck, Bastian - we were so close. A couple more weeks, and you would have had everything.’
‘Not everything,’ says Bastian.