1.



As one of the Five Great Families of Illustria, the Ells were pretentious enough to feel utterly at ease naming their children such impractical things as Fortuna and Remigius. The children themselves rebelled against this practice by hardly ever using their given names, except in extremely particular situations.




Like when they were very mad, for example.






“Fortuna Milantis Ells,” Remy yelled from the bottom of the stairs. “Get down here, NOW!”











Fee ignored him and dipped one pale finger into the small jar of skin colored paint. If this worked, she would curse herself for not attempting it sooner. If it didn’t she would just curse.










Remy switched tactics. “Fee,” he whined, “please come down.”



She stalked over to the bathroom door and kicked it shut. She hated when he whined.










“Fine.” His voice was muffled, “You’re the one who’s gonna get in trouble, not me.” His expensive shoes clacked against the tile as he walked away.


Damn. Even more than his whining, she hated when he was right. And Remy was a prodigy, so he was right far more often than she liked to admit.



“I’m coming!” Fee turned back to the mirror and placed the pad of her paint-saturated finger against the corner of her left eye, at the top of the first scar. Her hand shook as she hurried to cover up the line of ruined tissue with the makeup. It felt nice; cool against her hot skin. She dipped her finger back into the jar and concealed the rest of the scars the same way. Fee turned her head back and forth to check that none of the scars’ luster shone through the thick layer of goo. Satisfied, she twisted the top back onto the jar and shoved it into one of the drawers in the vanity.



“Fee!”











“I said I’m coming!” She wrenched open the bathroom door and dashed down the hall to her room. She was going to be very, very late for the first day of school. But it had worked! She was going to start off the year with a blank slate. Her schoolbag was sitting patiently on her bed where she had left it. Fee grabbed it and slung it over her shoulder. She flew down the spiral staircase and collided head-on with Remy, who was idling at the bottom.






“Ooph,” he grunted “Watch where you’re going, would you?”


“What?” Fee grinned. “Did I wrinkle your fancy clothes or something?”


“Yes, actually,” He smoothed down his velvet robe and looked up. “Why are you smiling like that? You look like insane.”







Fee stopped smiling. “Well at least I’m not actually insane,” she retorted.

“There’s a fine line between insanity and genius, little sister,” Remy said, walking towards the door. “I like to think I’m the later.”





“Think all you want,” Fee muttered, as she followed him out the door.

Outside the air was warm, heavy, and gray. It had rained during the night and little puddles of water were pooling in the cracks between the cobblestones.


Remy’s house was the largest on the block. It was the block, really. There was only one other building on that side of the street, a small bookshop where Fee liked to sit and read when Remy had patients in the house. People were always stopping by with one ailment or another; a broken arm, a sick child, a festering burn. Blood did not bother Fee, but seeing the patients’ anguished faces and hearing their whimpers of pain did, so she had taken to hiding amongst the bookshop’s creaky shelves and musty tomes until the afflicted ones either left or fell asleep on one of the cots Remy kept in the drawing room for emergencies.







The shop’s wooden sign creaked in a sudden gust of wind that did little to temper the smothering heat. Opus Books, it declared in peeling gold script.


“You know, you don’t have to come,” Fee said as they walked. “I’m fourteen. I know how to get to school by myself.”








“What, and miss an opportunity to show off how disgustingly rich and prosperous I’ve become?” He stepped delicately over a large puddle “I don’t think so.” Remy was an arrogant ass, but at least he was upfront about it.



Fee’s shiny shoes snapped against the wet stone. She pulled at the collar of her black dress. Whose brilliant idea was it to make the uniforms out of cashmere? The fabric was already plastered to her skin. The dresses might look luxurious but it rarely fell below fifty degrees in Whitewyke so most of the year it was like walking around in a portable oven.










Just then the wind ushered a vast, leaden cloud away from the sun. It was like someone had turned on the light in a darkened room; the monochrome street suddenly transformed into a sparkling wonderland. The puddles were pools of molten gold, raindrops clung to the eves like winking diamonds, and even the gaunt, spotted cat sleeping on one of the roofs looked nobler; more like a small leopard than a tom.

“Oh,” gasped Fee, her clingy uniform forgotten. Remy laughed and his teeth were pearly white in the feathery, golden light streaming down from the heavens. Fee closed her eyes and let it dapple over her face.






Remy’s laughter died away. “Fee,” he said slowly, “what happened to your scars?”











She grinned and opened her eyes. She had wondered how long it would take him to notice. “I blotted them out!”







The whole story came rushing out; how she had seen Vena and her scars seemed to have disappeared, completely vanished like they had just up and walked off her face. How Vena had told her that no, the scars were still there, she had just covered them up with makeup. And finally, how Fee had gone to the Apothecary and bought the paint and covered up her own scars.





“And it worked so well, Remy! You can’t see them at all!” She turned her head back and forth to show him, giddy with delight.






Remy cupped her chin to inspect her cheeks, “No you can’t.” He let his hand drop.












“Well, if that’s what you want…”







“Of course it’s what I want!” she said, confused by his lack of enthusiasm.

They turned down a narrow alleyway that was still dark, despite the sun’s appearance, because the tops of the roofs were so close together that they shut out the light. The end of the alley spilled out into the city’s main boulevard, the one that began down in Circle One and winded all the way up the hill to Circle Five.


Though it was still early and, until a minute ago, the world had been wet, unwelcoming place, the street already teemed with people. Vendors were beginning to set up for the day and some were already hawking their wares. Beneath the ripe smells of the market lingered the sweet perfume of damp earth.




It was fish Fee smelled. As she passed his cart, a heavyset fishmonger in a grease stained apron stuck a big, grey catfish under her nose. “Fresh fish!” he cajoled. “Sweet and moist!” The fish’s wide mouth gaped at her, its whiskers waggled, and its dead eyes stared accusingly.








“Erm, no thank you,” Fee said, before hurrying away.



Next to the fish man, a young, raggedly dressed girl surrounded by bushels of tiny red apples stood on an upturned barrel and shouted, “Apples! Sweet, crunchy apples! The best you’ve ever tasted!”








As they passed her Remy stopped. “One please.”





The girl’s beady eyes took in his expensive clothes and heavy wristwatch.

“It’s a Silver.” She held out a small, claw-like hand. Remy dropped a gold piece onto her palm and plucked an apple off the top of the closest barrel.


He sauntered back to Fee and tossed her the apple. “Here. You didn’t have breakfast.”











“I’m not hungry,” she said, but she bit into it anyway. It was not, as the girl claimed, the best apple she had ever eaten, but it was juicy and sweet and as she ate it Fee realized that her stomach had been a little empty after all.




“Thanks,” she said.









“No problem.”









“Look, I’m sorry I reacted that way,” Remy said as they walked, “If you want to cover up your scars, that’s your choice. It’s just, that’s my greatest accomplishment you’re hiding under that gunk! Most people with those scars are dead, you know.”

“I know.” Fee took another bite of the apple. “That’s the point.”



She looked up at him and said, through the mouthful of fruit, “No one at school has them. No one in the entire Fifth Circle has them.”




Remy sighed and ran a hand through his perfectly glossed curls.



“That’s because they were selfish cowards! Because seconds after the first person died from the Weeping, all the Fifths shut themselves up behind that White Wall and didn’t come out again until the whole thing was over.”



“They kicked you out, Fee,” Remy said gently “Don’t you remember?”


“Of course I remember.” She didn’t actually remember being sick at all, but people had told her what had happened afterward, when she woke up in a makeshift hospital in the Third Circle, cured and confused.






“You’re ashamed? Why? Because you didn’t just roll over and die like they expected? Those scars prove you’re a survivor.”






Remy was practically yelling. Fee knew this was because the hawkers were shouting, and the wheels of the vendor’s carts were clacking raucously as they were dragged into place, and a couple of stray dogs were barking as they chased a shrieking little boy who had fed them and was now paying the price for his kindness, and all these things made it very difficult to make oneself heard, but she still didn’t appreciate his tone.












Her face reddened. She felt rather foolish when he put it that way, but she was not about to admit that, so she just scowled at her brother and crossed her arms.

Passersby had begun to stare. Possibly because they made a strange pair; Fee, tiny and pale with hair like dandelion fluff, and Remy, tall, with golden skin and shiny black curls. But most likely, people were just staring because they recognized Remy and wanted to ask for his autograph.







Remy pretended not to notice this, and continued. “Do you wish I hadn’t found the cure? That I hadn’t stuck that needle in your arm?” He ran his hand through his hair again. He was going to be bald by the time this conversation was over.


“Oh yes.” Fee rolled her eyes. “And we’re back to what really matters; how you saved the world from a horrible, pestilent fate. The Great Cleanser, the Mighty Hanky, the Boy with Healing Hands.” She wriggled her fingers at him.



Remy opened his mouth to retort, then paused and cocked an eyebrow, “The Mighty Hanky? Who called me that?”








He was grinning and Fee felt the tips of her own mouth twitch up.



“Ok, I just made that up,” she admitted “You get the point!”



The real heat of the day was beginning to set in as they arrived at the queue of people waiting to pass through the gate in the tall stone wall that divided Circles Three and Four. Tender wisps of steam drifted up from puddles all over the street and fled into the sky like tiny, white ghosts. Fee kicked at the puff closet to her and it scattered like a school of minnows, only to reform a moment later when the danger was gone.











After a few moments, the people in front of them melted through the gate and into the Circle beyond. The guard at the postern, clad in the black uniform of the City Guard, stood stiff and straight as a log, and as they passed he nodded gravely to Remy.












“Remigius.”










Remy nodded back. When they were out the guard’s earshot, Fee asked who he was. Her brother shrugged. “I don’t know. I kind of just assumed he was a cousin.”

Fee glanced over her shoulder at the guard. He hadn’t moved so much as a pinky. He clearly took his job far too seriously for someone who stood at a gate all day, leering at people as they passed by. She didn’t recognize him, but Fee had lots of relatives she could not identify.








On this side of the wall the street was much cleaner, the window displays glossier, and there were definitely no street vendors or raggedly dressed girls standing on upturned barrels.










In accordance with the Fourth Circle’s strict guidelines, each storefront possessed by a striped awning and a wrought iron sign, both of which were currently weeping little rivers of rainwater that fell, plinking, into metal buckets strategically placed beneath them. Normally the awnings stretched up the hill like a row of brightly colored piano keys, but at the moment they were all dark and swollen with water from the previous night’s rain.










However, the glorious scent of freshly baked bread wafting out Fee’s favorite shop, a tiny bakery called the Silver Scone, was not dampened in the slightest. A long, jostling line had already formed outside of the Scone, waiting for the doors to open.
Fee was gazing longingly at the golden-crusted inkberry pies in the window display when she heard someone call her name.






Vena was standing in the line outside of the Silver Scone with her little brother, Adain. The red hair on both siblings’ heads blazed brighter than the flaming meringue in the bakery’s window display.







“Come in line with us!” Vena called, waving Fee over. She reached out and grabbed the collar of Adain’s shirt. He kept trying to cut the line by crawling through the legs of the people in front of them. “It’s Mellie’s birthday and Dom’s giving away free pies to celebrate!”










“I can’t,” Fee called back miserably. “First day of school.” She pulled at her uniform. It was annoying her again.








“Too bad.” The line surged forward as Dom opened the bakery’s doors. “The Third Circle School doesn’t start for another month!” Vena’s copper hair disappeared into fray.











A fresh start, Fee reminded herself. This year would be different. Better.


The White Wall rose up as the mouth-watering smell and excited babble that surrounded the Silver Scone faded away, and the goods in the stores grew more elaborate, strange, and expensive the closer they got to it. Beneath their brows of sagging cloth, the window displays boasted buckets of glinting shellglass, trays of expensive watches with faces of obsidian and jade, and piles of jewel-toned pillows filled with swan feathers. The final store in the Fourth Circle was built right up against the Wall, and in its window several live models clad in silk and velvet lounged upon small divans upholstered in equally luxurious materials.





The guard at the White Wall Fee recognized. She knew the Captain of the Guard, Garran, from her childhood in the Fifth Circle. He was a huge, burly man covered in copious amounts of dark, wiry hair, and at the moment he was lounging in an armchair next to the door in the Wall, eating a small pie with his pinky sticking into the air. Black inkberry juice ran down his fingers, weaving between the stiff, black hairs that populated his doorknob sized knuckles.




As Fee and Remy approached, Garran swallowed, burped, and growled, “You’re late.” The chair’s armrests became napkins as he wiped his wet fingers on them. “Eberhard’s not going to be happy.”







“I don’t think Eberhard’s ever happy,” Remy said, unmoved by this declaration. “Which is probably just as well. Can you imagine him smiling? It would be awful.”











Fee pictured the Chief Clandester’s wide, fleshy lips stretched tight across his wider, fleshier face. The image sent shivers up her spine.





Garran laughed. “Well you’re right about that, boy. Not that you’re ever wrong about anything, of course.” The chair groaned in protest as the giant heaved himself out of it, and avalanche of pie crumbs tumbled off his black pants onto the ground. Upright, he towered over Fee and Remy both.







Garran peered down at Fee from under overgrown eyebrows that sprouted out of his skin like tufts of tangled weed. Her fingers automatically went to her cheeks, but all he said was, “Well, you haven’t gotten any taller since the last time I saw you.”

That touched a nerve, though it was true enough; Fee had barely grown an inch since the Weeping. Her uppermost frizz didn’t even clear the top of Garran’s belt buckle.











“Well, you’re just as ugly as that last time I saw you,” she retorted.


Garran glared at her, and for a moment Fee feared she had gone too far, but then he let out a great, booming laugh. “Well, I can’t argue with that, little one.” He continued to chortle as he reached and mussed her hair with one juice-stained hand. Most of the time, Garran had the disposition of a lamb despite his ox-like appearance. Though to say so to his face still required more courage than most men possessed.

“Well you two better get on. No use making the Chief any angrier than he’s already like to be. Oh wait, your pins. Protocol, you know.” He smiled apologetically.

It only took Garran a minute to inspect Remy’s pin, which he had jammed through the thick lapel of his robe. Fee had to scrounge around her bag for several moments before she found hers. When her fist finally closed around cold, hard metal she breathed a sigh of relief.








“Here it is.” The pin glinted in her palm; a small silver eye encircled in a ring of gold. The Eye was the symbol of the Ells; it would grant her access to the Fifth Circle, where only members of the Five were allowed to go.



Garran took the Eye from Fee, and the brooch was like a speck of dust between his massive fingers. “Well, that seems to be in order.” He gave it back to her. “You’ll want to put it on before you go up to the school, though.”





“Yes, of course.” Fee fixed the Eye to upper left side of her dress, over her heart.











Garran nodded his approval, then walked up the doors in the Wall and heaved them open. Unlike the iron gates set into the other four walls, the White Wall’s doors were made of thick, impenetrable stone. Even the Captain of the Guard had to struggle to get them open.










“See you later, then,” Garran said, wiping the sweat off his face with the back of his arm.











Suddenly everything was white. The White Wall behind them, of course, and the delicate edifices all around that housed various members of the Five Families; Hadleys to the left, Hawthornes to the right, Greys and Randalls around the back, behind the schools. And the Ells too. It would take Fee exactly four minute to walk to her house, no; she corrected herself, to his house, from here. Not that she would be going there any time soon.








Though she tried to stop it, the house flashed before her eyes; its tall, spindly columns, the stone courtyard with the bubbling fountain, and the silver Eye that hung in the window next to the door.









Her room had had purple curtains that fluttered in and out of the window when it was open, a tiny flicker of color against a blank white page. Fee wondered if they had been taken down since she was carted away to die. A bitter feeling wrenched through her, but it only lasted for a moment. Then it was gone.



Fee’s school, The Conservatory, and its younger counterpart, the Prep Academy, sat on opposing sides of the wide boulevard, the same one that Fee and Remy had turned onto back in the Third Circle. The schools’ pale stone facades frowned down on passersby like a pair of disapproving parents. Just after the schools, the street marched into a wide cul-de-sac with a statue of Melvin the Grave in the center, and behind Melvin, at the very top of the hill, the five spires of the Pentad Building thrust into the sky like the grasping fingers of some great, white hand.


The Fifth Circle’s white architecture gleamed brilliantly as the sun beat down on it. It stung at Fee’s eyes and would have blinded her, had she not kept her eyes fixed firmly on her feet as she trudged up the long, marble staircase to the Conservatory.









“Overkill,” she said, wheezing a little. The overabundance of stairs was pilfering the breath from her burning lungs, and the back of her neck was drenched in sweat. “I mean, whose idea was it to make everything white? I’d like to thank them. And by that I mean-”










“That you’d like to do them serious bodily harm?” Remy asked. He was standing a few steps above her, testing the pliability of his curls as he waited for her to catch up. “The Fifth Circle was designed by Jango Vargas. He was from Alba. They build everything white there.”

“Oh,” Fee said stupidly. She hadn’t really been expecting an answer. Of course, if there was one thing Remy didn’t know, she thought wryly, it was the meaning of a rhetorical question.










“And you can’t thank him.” Remy released a curl and it sprang back into place like a soldier called to arms. “He’s been dead for centuries.”



“Well I knew that,” Fee said crossly. She fumbled around for a new topic. Talking helped distract her from the disheartening quantity of stairs they had yet to climb.











“Do you think we’ve missed the speech?”






“I hope so, for your sake. Personally, I don’t think I’ll be sticking around for that particular bundle of wisdom.”








Fee nodded; her throat was too dry for words. She had just been thinking that it would be a good idea to head for the nearest bathroom when they reached the school, as opposed to going straight to the Atrium where everyone else would undoubtedly be suffering through Chief Clandester Eberhard’s Commencement Speech.



On the first day of school, Eberhard always subjected the Conservatory’s student body to a unique form of torture that involved him droning, uninterrupted, for two hours straight. The speech was the same every year, down to the final inflection on the penultimate word. In the words of Fee’s best friend, Iris, this made for an experience that was, “slightly less interesting than watching your toenails grow.”
The lecture was a dangerous as well as boring. Eberhard did not seem to agree with the students’ assessment of his oration as a mind-numbing waste of time, and had taken to stalking the rows of black clad pupils as he spoke, pouncing on anyone misfortunate enough to yawn or simply look too glazed over in his presence.

“Who’s that?” Remy’s voice jolted Fee out of her reverie.




She looked up, shielding her eyes against the sudden inundation of white. The huge, carved front doors loomed just a few steps above them, emblazoned with the seal of the Clandestine Brotherhood; a massive key encircled by a wreath of purple lotuses, though the lotuses on the door were as white as the rest of the building.

She didn’t see anyone. “Who’s who?”






“Right there.” He pointed towards a blank stretch of wall slightly to the left of the massive doors.











“I still don’t-” the words caught in Fee’s throat as a tiny section of stone seemed to shiver and ripple before her eyes, like a length of fabric caught in the breeze. Which, she understood almost immediately, was what it was; the fluttering sleeve of a robe, as pristinely white as the stone behind it.





The wearer of the robe seemed to step out of the wall as Fee realized he was there, as if up until that moment, he had simply been another carving in the stone. Fee felt her heart drop into her stomach as she recognized the man’s narrow, pointed face.

Fee turned to Remy. “Okay, we’re here. You can go. Really, I’m fine,” she waved her hand in front of his face. “All grown up, see? Stop treating me like a baby; I can go into school by myself. Go!”








“Is that Snicket?” Remy asked, ignoring her protestations and squinting up into the brilliant, white vacuum.









“No,” she said immediately, attempting to push him down the stairs, away from his childhood nemesis. “No. Nope. Definitely not.”
“Yes, it is.” A wide grin spread across Remy’s face. “Wonderful, I haven’t seen dear, old Sandoval in ages.” He rubbed his hands together and his dark eyes twinkled mischievously.











Fee recognized his expression as one that always preceded trouble.


“Please don’t make him mad.” She said, grabbing onto Remy’s arm. “Can’t you just go save a baby or comb your hair or something?”





Remy scowled at her. “I don’t comb my hair,” he said impatiently. “That would ruin the curls. Besides, it wouldn’t be nearly as fun as having a nice chat with my old chum.” He wrenched his arm out of her grasp and bounded up the stairs. Fee lingered on the stair for a moment, alone in a sea of shimmering, white stone. Then she sighed morosely and started after him, wondering how many extra pages of The History of Five she would be reading that night.







At twenty-one, Sandoval Snicket was only two years older than Remy. They had gone to school for a few years, until the point the Clandesters had run out of things to teach Remy that he hadn’t already learned on his own. As school boys, they had hated each other with a fiery animosity that the passage of time had yet to quench. Remy still loved to antagonize his former classmate, which was unfortunate for Fee, as Snicket also happened to be her teacher. And after every run-in between her teacher and her brother, she always found herself laden with an inordinate amount of homework.










“You’re late,” Snicket said, by way of greeting as they approached. He was small and shrewish, with the clever, tawny eyes of an owl and stringy, brown hair that had the unfortunate characteristic of always appearing unwashed, even when it wasn’t.










Snicket ignored Fee completely and turned to Remy. “All that money and you couldn’t buy yourself a watch? Or have you simply risen above trivial things like being on time since you left school?”
“Good to see you as well, Sandoval,” Remy said brightly, grabbing Snicket’s hand, fluttering sleeve and all, and pumping it up and down with far more enthusiasm than was necessary. Snicket wrenched his hand away as if he’d been electrocuted.

Remy appeared not to notice this and continued, “In answer to your question, the second one. Definitely. I have risen above.” He bowed grandly with lots of flourishing hand motions. “Besides I have a watch, see?” He held up his wrist to display a heavy, gold timepiece, its obsidian face flashing in the sun.



Shut up, Fee thought despairingly, but Remy wasn’t done yet. “You can have it if you want,” he said innocently, gesturing to the watch. “I see that you don’t have one. And I do have all that money. I keep finding silver pieces in my socks, curious I know, but the point is I can afford to buy myself a new one new.”



Snicket was glaring daggers at Remy, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides, as if he would like nothing more than to wrap them around her brother’s neck and strangle him.









Fee added five pages of homework to her estimate.





“I would never adorn myself with such garish ornamentation,” Snicket snapped. “I am a man of the White. I live a life of simplicity and service.” He thrust his chin into the air.









“Yes, I know.” Remy patted Snicket on the arm consolingly, as if he had just informed them of the death in the family. “I’m so sorry.”




Ten pages, Fee thought dully, as Snicket swelled up in indignation. He deflated just as quickly however, managing to compose his face into an expression of implacable disdain, as opposed to fury. “If you need material possession to make yourself feel superior that is your folly and I pity you. I, however, am rich in the wisdom that comes with knowledge and humility”





Fee had to suppress a snort at that. After Remy, Snicket was the least humble person she knew. That was probably why they clashed so much; the world could only tolerate so much ego at any given time.






“Personally, I prefer to have lots of nice things and all that other wisdom stuff,” Remy replied airily. “Although, I haven’t found humility to be of much use.”


“I didn’t come out here to get into a juvenile debate with the Savior of the Kingdom.” Snicket spit out Remy’s moniker like it was an unpleasant taste on his tongue. He turned to Fee. “The Chief’s speech is nearly over. I was sent to collect you. Oh, don’t look so happy.” Clearly, Fee’s attempts to squash her delighted expression had failed. “Chief Clandester Eberhard has been notified of your tardiness,” Snicket’s thin lips curved into a razor sharp smile. “And he is most displeased.”











Fee’s grin melted off her face faster than butter on hot bread. In her head, she was still been planning to loiter in the nearest bathroom until the speech was over, only joining her classmates as they exited the Atrium in droves to go to their respective classes; just another black uniform among the masses. She had never contemplated that her absence would be noted. Stupid, she thought, stupid, stupid, stupid.










Snicket looked nearly as delighted as Fee had felt a moment earlier. His amber eyes, crinkled with glee, looked more predator-like than ever; almost reptilian.

“Well we better not keep him waiting any longer, then,” Fee said, stubbornly attempting to smother her dismay beneath a façade of bravery. Her hands, fiddling nervously at her sides and dripping with sweat, must have given her away however, because Snicket’s grin just widened.








“Best not,” he said, and waving his hand toward the door.



Fee nodded bravely to Remy and said “See you after school.” Despite all her previous efforts to get him to leave, at that moment she would have given anything for him to go with her. Faced with Whitewyck’s number one celebrity, Eberhard’s wrath was bound to be somewhat pacified. Please save me, she thought, sending him a pleading gaze.










Either Remy didn’t get the message or, more likely, he chose not to act on it. He waved cheerfully, turned, and strode down the steps three at a time, his crimson cloak unfurling behind him like a bloodstained banner. Set against the glistening white stone, this made for a very dramatic picture. Exactly, Fee was sure, as he had intended when he put it on.








Traitor, she thought.








“Well, come on,” Snicket said. Fee dearly wished to wipe the self-satisfied smirk off his face. She contended herself with marching courageously to the entrance of the school. Even this small display of valiance was ruined when the doors proved much heavier than she remembered, and she was forced to stand aside as Snicket, sniggering, opened them for her.








Relatively humbled by her battle with the door, Fee crossed over the massive stone threshold, and into the antechamber beyond. It was like walking into a big, dark icebox. In seconds the beads of sweat on the back of Fee’s neck transformed into tiny, glacial streams that dripped down her spine and made her shiver.



Fee twitched as the great stone doors crashed shut behind Snicket and peered blearily around the room. All she could see was a foggy, gray miasma, occasionally punctuated by dark, slowly-moving shadows.






As she waited for her eyes to adjust, Fee’s other senses kicked into overdrive. Eberhard’s booming voice was filtering through the walls all around her. The Chief had just reached the part in his speech where he attempted to scare the students into being better pupils. “Will you leave the kingdom to be ruled by a hoard of ill-educated Firsts?” he roared. “What about the monarchists? They’d love nothing more than to get their hands on you lot and chop your pretty little heads off.” At that point Fee guessed that someone yawned because the Eberhard deviated from his spiel to yell, “Not interesting enough, for you, eh? The loss of your head might actually be an improvement. The country’s going to the dogs if any of you hooligans end up on the Council, to the dogs!”









Fee was distracted from the Eberhard’s tirade by a sharp poke between her shoulder blades. “Go on,” Snicket hissed.







“Are you sure we shouldn’t wait until the speech is over?” Fee tried to keep the hopefulness out of her voice. “I don’t want to interrupt.”
“No,” replied Snicket immediately, “Now.” He pushed her toward the door.

Sending him the most malevolent glare she could summon, Fee shook his hand off her shoulder and strode to the door of her own volition. She grasped the doorknob. The metal was hot against her skin. It was also wet, which Fee thought was strange until she realized that it was her palm that was wet, not the knob.



“Go on,” Snicket said again, and Fee could tell from his tone that he was enjoying her trepidation. She looked over her shoulder at her him and his yellow eyes were glowing eerily in the darkness. Revenge, they said.




Fee squared her shoulders, her grip on the doorknob turning viselike. She turned the knob. The door seemed to swing open in slow motion, it hinges emitting a drawn out, high-pitched moan as a flood of bright light burst through the widening crack.













The room’s reaction to her untimely arrival was like a maneuver in a highly choreographed dance routine; simultaneously every head in the Atrium snapped towards the sound of the opening door. Fee would have been highly impressed with their harmonization save for the fact that the owners of all of those heads were now staring at her with far more attentiveness than they had previously allocated to listening to Eberhard’s speech. And, unfortunately, so was Eberhard himself.

Fee was only allowed to linger in the doorframe for a moment before Snicket shoved her out of it. Her shoes clapped against the marble floor as she stumbled, shattering the stale silence in the huge, circular hall into a thousand jagged pieces. Fee winced as the sound echoed painfully around up the Atrium’s cream-colored, gilded walls, around the alcoves in those walls that housed busts of all the previous Chief Clandesters, and across the domed glass ceiling that showed puffy white clouds drifting across a bright blue sky.









“Well,” said the Chief Clandester, his oily tenor carrying loudly across the hall. “So nice of you to join us, Ms. Ells. Thank you so much for gracing us with your presence. ”











Eberhard was a great, burgeoning grape of a man, an appearance aggravated by the deep purple color of his Chief Clandester’s robes. The number of hairs on his head was dwarfed by the number of his chins, and the buttons that held his robes together looked ready to pop under the strain of his protuberant midsection. The funny, little Chief’s hat that looked something like a tiny bedside table wobbled precariously atop his boulder-like cranium.









And all of Fee’s false courage failed her as she set eyes upon him for the first time in months. “Um, you’re welcome,” she replied. Forsake it all, had she actually just said you’re welcome? You’re welcome?





Eberhard’s pale, bulging eyes narrowed. He clearly thought she was being as much of a wise-ass as Remy would have been in her place, though Fee’s rudeness was the product of anxiety, not ego. “I mean, I’m sorry I’m late,” she said hurriedly, trying to make up for her slip. The excuse she had prepared about a medical emergency in the Third Circle died in her throat as Eberhard galumphed toward her from the other side of the room. He was approaching much faster than one would expect a man of his size to move. Fee barely had time to blink and he was upon her.



“Miss Ells,” Eberhard said silkily, stroking his many chins, “I do hope that neither your brother’s fame nor your father’s station has caused you to begin thinking too highly of yourself? Hm?”









“Um…” Fee said. “No?”









“Good. Because I would hate to have to remind you that you are not as smart as your brother or as Gifted as your father.” As Eberhard spoke a barrage of ripe-smelling spittle escaped his thick lips and lodged itself on Fee’s face. It took every ounce of restraint in her body not to wipe it off.






“I know that,” she said quickly. “I only-”






He held up a hand to silence her, “As of now, you are nothing. Perhaps someday the Eye will choose you, though I seriously doubt it. But until then, you are nothing. You are not special, you are not important. The only things that make you different are those ugly scars on your face.” Fee’s hand automatically skimmed the ridge of her cheekbone until she remembered that the scars were covered up. Apparently, Eberhard had failed to notice this.






Just as Fee was opening her mouth to protest, to say that she didn’t think she was special, or important, or anything else like that, Clandester Prendergast sidled up to Eberhard’s elbow and began whispering in his ear.





In her dazed state, Fee failed to catch a word of what Prendergast was saying. Eberhard, however, seemed highly displeased. His bulgy eyes narrowed to mean-looking slits as he listened, and his gaze slide away from Fee to rest on one of the hallways that jutted out of the Atrium at carefully placed intervals like spokes sticking out of the hub of a giant wheel. Fee turned slowly, following the Chief’s gaze until she found what he was looking at.








A tall man with a thick beard and a head of wavy black hair was standing in the doorway just to the left of the one Fee had come out of. He was watching the proceedings with his arms clasped imposingly behind his back, an impassive expression on his handsome face. Dressed opulently in dark blue and black velvets, and framed by the gilding around door, the man looked like the subject of a life-sized portrait. He was someone Fee knew very well and not at all. Her heart sank at the sight of him.











“Well,” said Eberhard, laughing nervously as Prendergast stepped away, “I think that’s quite enough lecturing for one day. You understand your wrongdoing, Ms. Ells, don’t you? You won’t do it again?” He didn’t want for an answer and Fee did not attempt to provide him with one. “Why don’t you just run along to the rest of your section now, that’s a good girl.” He stuck one pudgy hand out of his purple robes patted her awkwardly on the head, the many rings that adorned his fat fingers cracking painfully against her skull.









Fee turned abruptly and walked over to where Iris and the rest of their section were standing. Fee’s heart was pounding in her ears; what was he doing here? She hadn’t seen him in over a year and now he was showing up, unannounced, at her school? Fee had to remind herself to breath as she took her place in between her cousin, Oswald, and Iris, who was biting her fingernails clear down to the beds as she was like to do when she got anxious.







“Stop that,” Fee whispered, brushing Iris’s hand away from her mouth. Iris just stared at Fee with her huge, brown doe eyes. It was not just Iris, glancing around the Atrium, Fee noted that ever pair of eyes in the huge hall was glued on her. Their gaze no longer bothered her. There was only one pair of eyes in the room that Fee cared about. Eyes just like her own; forever drifting between navy-blue and the almost black color of the sky at midnight. Pools of spilled ink against skin as pale as the grave. The Soothsayer’s eyes. Her father’s eyes.