Agent Q, or the Smell of Danger! by M.T. Anderson

Author:M.T. Anderson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Beach Lane Books
Published: 2010-01-28T16:00:00+00:00

THE GLOVES COME OFF

At first, hay, later rock, some cement—all of these complicated, rough surfaces . . . bobbing in front of Bvletch’s eyes as he gradually awoke . . .

The truck was passing through huge metal gates, above which hung a sign that read KRAGB VILMINGTONIKA (Wilmington Castle), SSFRT KYELPII DOCHLA! (Secret Agents Welcome!). Bvletch shook his head. The worst thing that could happen to a friend of the Resistance had happened to him. He was being hauled into the Castle for questioning. Soon he would sit before the servants of the Autarch.

“Come on,” the guards said to him, bundling him out of the back of the truck. He was sore and still dazed. He stepped gingerly on the cobblestones and stumbled. He was in a smoke-streaked courtyard. At the old windows high up, soldiers were posted. They carried big guns and peered down at him.

His whale-and-spaniel shorts were bristling with hay. It had gotten stuck in the pockets.

They led him inside.

They passed great flights of stone steps, down which the princes of Wilmington once swept with their brides and trains. Now many of the stained-glass windows had been smashed and replaced with particle board.

“The Committee is very interested in talking to you,” one of the guards told Bvletch. “They have a few questions.”

“They’ll ask real gently,” said another guard. “‘Pretty please.’”

Then both guards laughed kind of meanly.

Bvletch felt awful. For days he had been feeling bad. He had been feeling alone. He was a very tenderhearted person, and so it was difficult for him to be snooty and sarcastic to Drgnan and Grzo all the time. He hated sneering and making up insults. In a strange way, he felt better being mocked by the guards.

But now he was more alone than he ever could have imagined.

The great hall, the ballroom, the audience chamber—all these had been turned into workrooms for hundreds of agents who ran New Castle County’s spy network. The huge rooms had once been elegant, but now they were crammed with desks. On the walls were frescoes of court life in antique times, back when counts and damsels rode out to hunt for unicorns, and when all the great families of Wilmington would open wide the gates of their tall, faceless palaces and come out into the streets for festivals.

Now holes had been drilled in the paintings so that wires could pass through the walls. The head of a dancing prince on the wall had been smashed to make way for a pneumatic tube that rushed messages from one office to another. There were wires everywhere, hanging from brackets, clamped to the walls, nailed onto wooden posts. On the desks were old computers—big, lumpy monitors yellowed with age, and dot matrix printers chattering away while rolls of paper slowly chugged onto the floor, crammed with lists of allies and aliases and what free gifts they had requested for turning in their friends and family members.

Men and women from the Ministry of Silence looked up from their computers and watched Bvletch pass with disgust in their eyes, with reproach, with pity, with glee.

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