The scene that flickered into life was one Morrigan recognized: Proudfoot House gardens, on the day of the Wundrous Welcome. The camera panned shakily across the sunny lawn and bustling dessert buffet queue, before zooming in on two people: Noelle and Cadence. They stood near a huge green gelatin sculpture, which Morrigan also recognized. Hawthorne was a few steps behind them, predictably piling his plate high with cake and pastries.
“Tacky,” Noelle was saying on the screen. She poked the gelatin, making a face. “Horrid. Who serves this stuff at a party? We’re not in nursery school.”
“Right,” Cadence replied. She had been about to grasp one of the miniature molded gelatins surrounding the bright green behemoth, but she changed strategy at the last second and began spooning bread pudding into her dish instead. “Tacky. They’re so stu—”
“Mother would have a fit,” Noelle continued, talking over Cadence. “Can you believe they’re making us serve ourselves, Katie?”
“It’s… Cadence,” said the other girl, her face falling. “Remember?”
“Do you know how many servants the Wundrous Society employs?” Noelle continued as if she hadn’t heard. “And they put on a buffet? Don’t they know buffets are for poor people?”
Something flickered in Cadence’s eyes but was quickly gone. “Yeah, exactly,” she said, her hand hovering over a serving spoon, suddenly unsure.
“Forget it. Come on.” Noelle dropped her own dish in the middle of the table, then snatched Cadence’s pudding from her and tipped it upside down on top of a delicious-looking chocolate fudge cake. She flounced out of the tent, evidently expecting her friend to follow.
Cadence took one longing look at her ruined pudding, breathed in deeply, and made an abrupt turn, coming face-to-face with Hawthorne, who’d overheard everything and was trying not to laugh.
Cadence leaned in close to Hawthorne and spoke in the same flat, husky voice Morrigan remembered her using on the twins at the Book Trial, and again on the Society official at the Chase Trial.
“Don’t you think somebody ought to drop that big green thing right on her head?”
Hawthorne nodded solemnly.
Morrigan turned to the real Hawthorne sitting beside her. He looked deeply confused. “I don’t remember that,” he murmured.
The scene changed to show Noelle, Cadence, and a group of children—including Morrigan—gathered on the front steps of Proudfoot House. The image was partially blocked by a blur of green leaves. Morrigan supposed that the camera—and the person holding it—had been hidden behind a tree.
“Is that your knack?” Noelle was saying to Morrigan on the screen. “Using big words?”
Cadence giggled helplessly, but not—as Morrigan had thought at the time—at Noelle’s cruelty. She kept glancing upward, to where Hawthorne was positioning himself in the window with the gelatin. She was laughing at what was about to happen to Noelle.
“I thought it must be wearing horrible clothes or being as ugly as a gutter rat.”
The real Morrigan sitting in the Trollosseum stands felt her face flush. It’d been bad enough hearing that the first time, surrounded by a dozen strangers. Hearing it again in the presence of hundreds was close to torture. She slid down in her seat, trying to make herself invisible.
The scene unfolded as Morrigan remembered it, climaxing with Hawthorne’s magnificent gelatin drop, at which point the Trollosseum exploded with laughter. Hawthorne grinned at Morrigan.
“Might not have been my idea, but it was still brilliant.”
Several rows in front of them, Noelle was glaring at the screen and shaking her head, her eyes narrowed to slits. She seemed utterly shocked—obviously she’d had no idea about the knack of her so-called friend.
The next few minutes of film showed an incredible scene in which Cadence wandered down a posh street with a can of bright red spray paint in her hand, spraying rude words and pictures all along the immaculate white façades of the houses. By the time she was stopped by a brown-coated officer of the Stink, almost the entire street had been vandalized.
“Stop right there! What do you think you’re doing, you little menace?”
“Art,” she said flatly.
“Oh, art, is it?” the officer asked, her eyebrows shooting up to her hairline. “Looks like crime to me. Maybe I should slap you in handcuffs!”
“Maybe you should slap yourself in handcuffs,” Cadence suggested. And the woman did, tightening them around her own wrists without a second thought.
Cadence put the can of spray paint into her hands. “Number twelve needs a bit more red. Have a nice day.”
“Have a nice day, ma’am.” With that final, dead-eyed statement, the officer’s gaze slid past Cadence like oil over water and landed on the glossy white front door of number twelve, which didn’t stay white for much longer.
It was extraordinary, the things Cadence could make people do. It wasn’t nice, Morrigan thought, it wasn’t decent or honest—but it was extraordinary.
Morrigan had the uncomfortable experience of watching herself on the big screen yet again when Cadence’s film showed the debacle of the Chase Trial in its entirety, from the stampeding rhinoceros to Fen’s daring rescue to the moment of devastation when Cadence convinced the race official that it was she who ought to go through to the Fright Trial and not Morrigan.
But the film went further. It showed another conversation, a very different one, in which Cadence convinced the official that one of the unicorns was in fact a Pegasus in disguise. She pointed to its glowing silver horn—the perfect specimen of a genuine unicorn horn—and said, “See? Someone’s glued an upside-down ice cream cone onto its head. I can’t believe you didn’t spot this earlier. And its wings have been tucked away.” She pointed to the unicorn’s flawless white flank, which was decidedly wingless.
Morrigan was speechless. It was Cadence who’d gotten her through to the Fright Trial. She’d snatched away Morrigan’s spot and then given it back to her—just like that. Why? Did she feel guilty?
Scene after scene of manipulation and trickery followed. The film showed that it was Cadence who had convinced the high-five twins, way back at their very first trial at Proudfoot House, to quit before they’d begun. She’d even persuaded Elder Wong to act like a chicken during her Book Trial (a scene that was received with uproarious laughter from everyone but Elder Wong).
In the end, though there were mixed reactions from the Elders and certainly a lot of disapproving faces in the audience, they had no choice. Cadence Blackburn didn’t just have a knack, she had a gift. A weird, mean gift. But a gift nonetheless.
“Number one!” said Hawthorne as Cadence’s name lit up on the leaderboard, bumping Anah down to second place, Hawthorne to fifth, and Noelle to eighth.
There were only three groups of five to go. Morrigan had given up looking for Jupiter and started looking for an escape route. As soon as her failure and humiliation in the Show Trial were complete, she’d have to make a run for it.
She hadn’t seen Inspector Flintlock, but she felt certain he was somewhere in the stadium, biding his time. Waiting for her to fall on her face so he could seize his moment and arrest her.
At last the final group was called. Morrigan made her way down to the arena gates with four other candidates. Hawthorne tried to go with her, but the ever-present clipboard-toting Wundrous Society officials shooed him back to his seat.
Morrigan was on her own.
She stood in silence as the first three candidates performed. The girl with very long hair stood in the arena and—to the horror of the crowd—chopped it all off, just above her ears. Moments later the hair began to regrow itself, and in mere minutes had fully replenished to its former length. Morrigan, like everyone else in the audience, was amazed. But apparently not the Elders. As Jupiter had predicted all the way back at the Wundrous Welcome, the girl did not make it into the top nine. She heaped both piles of hair—the one on the floor and the one on her head—into her pull-along wagon and moped out of the Trollosseum.
A ballet dancer. No place on the leaderboard.
A boy who could breathe underwater. No place.
Then it was Morrigan’s turn. The Wun official held the gate open for her.
She could leave now. The thought struck her like lightning—she could just turn and walk away. This was her last chance to avoid humiliation (followed by deportation from Nevermoor, followed by certain death), and she could do it—she could spare herself what was bound to be the worst moment of her life so far—if she just turned and walked away.
Do it now, she thought. Just go.
“Ready?”
A whisper in her ear. A squeeze of her shoulder. She looked up.
A ridiculous ginger head. A pair of twinkling blue eyes. A wink.
“Yeah. I’m ready.” She hesitated and then asked—one rushed, desperate, final attempt to get an answer before everyone else in the Trollosseum knew—“What is it, Jupiter? What’s my knack?”
“Oh, that.” He blinked owlishly at her, as if she’d asked the least important question in the world. “You don’t have one.”
Then he stepped boldly into the arena, expecting her to follow.
“Captain Jupiter North presents Morrigan Crow of Nevermoor.”