The Secret Prince by Violet Haberdasher Read Free Book Online Page A

learn in this classroom are not limited to the assessment of and defense against disease and pain. Just now you have observed a previously unknown subject—myself. You must learn to observe for yourself, to question the world, and to deduce the partially hidden answers.”
    Slowly and painfully Sir Robert climbed to his feet.
    “Your first assignment,” he said, “for I am loath to call it homework, has no due date. If you wish, you may choose to ignore it entirely. Your assignment, lads, is to ponder what you see and challenge what you believe. For under scrutiny you will find that even an open book can have a surprise scribbled in its margins.”
    With a flourish Sir Robert pulled off his mustache.
    “Horse hair and spirit gum,” he said, trying and failing to hide a smile. “There. You see, lads? You are dismissed.”
    That afternoon the great hall was filled with whispers about the new medicine master.
    “I knew all along that mustache was a fake,” Valmont drawled, picking the crusts off his sandwich. “Rather a showy move, wouldn’t you say?”
    Edmund, who was seated across from Valmont, shrugged.
    “
I
thought he was brilliant,” Henry said.
    “Well, no one asked
you
, Grim, did they?” Valmont shot back.
    “Henry?” Edmund said with a grin. “What did you think of Sir Robert?”
    Valmont shot Edmund a nasty glare.
    “Actually,” Henry said slowly, “I’d never really given it a thought what it must have been like to attend Knightley during the Nordlandic Revolution.”
    “Me neither,” Rohan said, “but everyone must have been terrified. There were so many Nordlandic sympathizers, and all of those riots…. Police knights were
killed
trying to break them up.”
    “Shut your face,” Valmont said hotly. “You don’t know anything about it.”
    “Right, because it’s
so difficult
to read a history book,” Rohan returned.
    At that moment there was a burst of raucous laughter from the second-year table. Jasper Hallworth had stuck two sizable carrots up his nose and was apparently imitating some sort of wounded sea creature.
    “Really,”
Rohan said, shaking his head in disapproval, as Adam reached eagerly for two carrots to try it himself.
    Military history that afternoon was just as horrible as everyone remembered. Lord Havelock seemed unaware that a new term had begun. He burst into the room, his master’s gown billowing, his expression as sour as ever.Without so much as a “Welcome back,” he seized a piece of chalk and began to write out an assignment on the front board.
    “You have until the end of class,” Lord Havelock intoned, “to demonstrate whether you have completed the assigned reading or whether you had more important things to attend to over the holiday.”
    At the desk next to Henry’s, Adam swallowed nervously and fiddled with his pen.
    “If I were you,” Lord Havelock said, his eyes glittering as he surveyed the terrified students, “I would be ashamed to hand in anything less than three sheets of paper. Your prompt is on the board,
gentlemen
. You may begin.”
    He stepped aside to reveal, in spiny, slanted writing, the question:
“What strategies might the French aristocracy have employed to prevent revolution? Would those same strategies have worked against the Draconian party in the Nordlands? Why or why not?”
    With a sigh Henry reached into his bag for his pen and ink. Lord Havelock had been the only professor to assign reading over the holiday—a particularly expensive and hard-to-find book called
Revolution Through the Ages: From Catastrophe to Strategy.
Thankfully, Henryhad discovered a copy in Mrs. Alabaster’s shop. Whenever business was slow, he’d hidden the book beneath the counter and read a chapter or two.
    All around Henry the other students produced copies of
Revolution Through the Ages
from their satchels. With a sinking feeling, Henry turned his attention to the blank sheet of parchment on his desk.
    As he finished the first sentence of