The Assassin Game Read Online Free

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