by M. A. Larson
Lucky? thought Evie, her mind still haunted by visions of Javotte’s scarred, snarling face. I certainly don’t feel all that lucky.
“Nice to be together again, the four of us,” said Basil with a smile. “Isn’t it?”
Demetra twirled her hair and stared straight ahead. Maggie rolled her eyes at him. Evie just shrugged. Several weeks had gone by since their excursion into the Archives, and as urgent as it had felt that night, each passing day made the whole thing seem more and more abstract. Everything at the Academy was carrying on as normal. Evie hadn’t heard the word Vertreiben since that night, and Lankester seemed to do little more than mope along behind Beatrice like a sad duckling. She felt as though she should be doing something with the information she’d gotten in the Archives, but she had no idea what.
“So?” Basil continued gamely. “Any decisions about your branches of service? What about you, Evie?”
“No, not really. Haven’t thought about it.”
They were each off in their own worlds, despite being packed into a tight hallway with the rest of Leatherwolf Company in a training castle near the Infirmary. Glimmering suits of armor surrounded them as light snow floated through the black sky outside the windows. One by one, cadets were being called into the Great Hall for a live fire exercise.
“That’s it, Cadet, well spotted!” The Fairy Drillsergeant’s voice echoed out into the hallway. “That’s how you stay alive!” Suddenly, she appeared in the doorway. “Next! Next cadet, move!”
Rillia followed her through the door, and small pockets of conversation resumed.
“I’ve been thinking about becoming a dwarf,” said Basil. “Those cozy little beds, strange women coming into your house to tidy everything up. Yes, that’s the branch of service for me.” Demetra mumbled something, but clearly none of them were listening. Basil sighed and shook his head. “Maggie, surely you must know which branch you’d like to try.”
“Well, actually I’ve been toying with the idea of staying here. Joining the staff.”
“So you can carry on seeing Copperpot every day?” said Demetra without looking over.
“As I was going to say, I think I’ve decided against that. I’ve always wanted to live the princess dream, so I suspect I’ll go for the Towersitters.”
“Good. Excellent. And you, Demetra?”
“I dunno. I’ve been thinking about leaving the kingdoms altogether.”
“Have you?” said Evie.
“Nessa and Liv and I have been talking about joining the Cauldron Tippers.”
“The Cauldron Tippers? Are you daft?” said Maggie.
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Being a Cauldron Tipper is not a summer holiday, Demetra. You’d be out in the forest—alone—tracking and killing witches. Without your precious Nessa and Liv.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.”
“Next!” shouted the Fairy Drillsergeant.
“I’ll go,” called Demetra. She pushed through the rest of the company and disappeared into the Great Hall with the Fairy Drillsergeant.
“Well done, Maggie,” said Basil.
“What? I’m sick of her rubbing those two in our faces all the time. She’d rather watch them pick their toenails than spend time with us.”
“Well, we don’t exactly give her much incentive to spend time with us, do we?”
“Stop,” said Evie. “Just . . . stop.”
Maggie folded her arms and looked away. Basil seemed as though he wanted to say something, but just shook his head instead.
“Good! Good!” shouted the Fairy Drillsergeant. “Someone else! Come on!”
“I’m going,” said Evie, making her way to the front. She paused at the door and took a deep breath, then ducked inside. Anything would be better than standing in that hallway.
The Great Hall was a massive chamber lined with fluted columns holding up an arched ceiling. The walls were white plaster crisscrossed with the same dark wood as the ceiling. There were long tables arranged in a horseshoe, all set with dishes and cutlery. On the far wall, above the main table, two rows of ornamental shields hung. Some were red, banded with yellow and blue. Others were white and gold quadrants with black stripes. Still others featured blue lions and green dragons.
She crept farther into the silent chamber. She could hear a soft tinkle to her right, the dust falling from the Fairy Drillsergeant’s wings. Other than that, there was only the soft hum of the cadets talking in the hallway. Her eyes darted everywhere. Doorways. Banquets piled high with pewter plates and cups. The stone columns blooming overhead. She could feel something dark in the room. Something evil. It was the same sort of intuitive dread she’d felt when the three witches had ambushed her in the forest the previous year. She looked along each of the tables, but found nothing out of the ordinary—
Suddenly an object popped up behind the table to her right with a metallic clang. She caught a fleeting glimpse of a wooden dummy witch before she felt the icy blast of a dark spell. She wheeled and dove behind the table next to her.
“NO NO NO!” bellowed the Fairy Drillsergeant, zipping across the room and glaring down at Evie. “On your feet, Cadet!”
Evie stood and looked across at the dummy witch staring back at her. Its arms were raised and a crude, fearsome grin had been painted on its face.
“Analyze your defensive position.”
Evie looked around and her heart sank. “There’s no angle of attack here. I should have gone for that column instead.”
“Exactly right. From behind that column, you’d have a much easier run to those windows over there or even the far door, should you need to escape. And a stone column is always better cover than a flimsy piece of wood!”
“Yes, Fairy Drillsergeant,” said Evie.
The Fairy Drillsergeant flew close to Evie’s face, so close that she could see the disappointment in her commanding officer’s tiny eyes. “Those are not the instincts of a princess, Cadet. A dim squirrel could see you haven’t been doing your best lately, and quite frankly, I’m tired of it. If your goal is to be sent home, then by all means, continue doing what you’re doing. But if your goal is to become a princess, then you’d better get it together.”
“Yes, Fairy Drillsergeant.”
“Witches’ Night is coming, and if you give this sort of an effort, I can promise it’ll be the last we see of each other.”
“It won’t happen again, Fairy Drillsergeant.”
“Good. Then I’ll see you in the morning. And I mean the real you, not this version.”
“Yes, Fairy Drillsergeant.” Evie ran to the exit at the far end of the chamber, where she wended her way through a dark corridor and emerged into the night. She began walking down the hill toward the barracks, but wasn’t quite ready to be around other people yet. She stood in the empty road with her face tilted to the heavens, listening to the particular volume of silence that accompanied the falling of nighttime snow. She closed her eyes and let the flakes land on her.
Oh, my friends. How I miss my friends.
Evie’s mother had once told her that time was like the sea, forever changing, forever pushing people toward and away from one another. Now, it seemed, she was so far from the bobbing heads of her friends in the waves that she was losing sight of dry land as well. If she didn’t swim hard for her goals, she would find herself completely at sea, just another promising cadet discharged from Pennyroyal Academy.
Swim, Evie. It doesn’t matter where, just swim.
“You’re lucky it was me who came along next and not Kelbra or Sage,” said Basil.
Evie yelped and nearly fell to the ground. “Basil! You startled me. I was just . . .”
“You were just enjoying the sensation of being alive. I could do with a bit of that myself. Care to take the long way home?”
; He nodded toward a path that wound through a snowy grove of trees at the edge of campus. They walked in, and the torchlight of the main roads faded away.
“You know, when you’re born the youngest of twenty-two boys, you sometimes feel like the Fates are just having a go at you. Then when your mother enlists you as a princess cadet, you feel like a jester in the Fates’ court. But for as existentially ridiculous as my life has been the last few years, I was genuinely looking forward to coming back this year. And there were exactly three reasons for that.”
Evie said nothing for a moment. The trail arced to the right, descending toward a lower tier of campus. “What’s happened to us, Bas?”
“I don’t know.” He kicked a stone, which skittered down the hill and left a trail in the snow. “I suppose it’s just what time does to things every now and then. Shifts them around in ways that you don’t always want.”
“You sound like my mother.”
He laughed. “It’s not easy to keep any relationship strong, really. It takes work. Trust me, I’ve got twenty-one brothers. I’ve seen every form of broken and mended relationship you can imagine.”
A sudden image of Evie’s dragon family popped into her mind, and she was filled with sadness. She felt a similar longing for them that she did for her friends. A longing for what her family had once been when she was younger and things were simpler.
“Maggie and Demetra aren’t the only ones who have changed this year, you know,” he continued. “You have as well.”
She gave him an incredulous smile. “I most certainly have not.”
“You don’t make near the effort you did last year. Except when it comes to sword fighting. But with the princess training . . . I think your heart’s still in it, but your mind isn’t.”
“Lies and slander,” she said. They walked on in silence for a moment as the snow continued to fall. “Oh, shut up.”
When they’d gotten back, Evie lay awake long after everyone else had fallen asleep. Her hands were folded behind her head and she stared up into the darkened timbers of the ceiling. She was frustrated. About as frustrated as she’d ever been.
She was the one who had seen those three women murder the innkeeper’s wife. She was the one who had received the threatening letter and the wolf’s fang. She was the most vulnerable cadet there, since, as Beatrice herself had said, her name was known across the land. And yet there she was, stuck inside the Academy while evil forces might or might not have been closing in on her out there in the cold, wintry world. Would it be the Vertreiben who would come for her first? Lankester’s version of the Vertreiben, a murderous, angry band of shadow cadets? Or would it be Calivigne and her witches, whose silence felt more ominous by the day? Or, as Lankester had intimated to Beatrice, would it be a diabolical partnership between the two?
She lay in bed and stared at the ceiling and felt completely and utterly powerless.
She rolled onto her side and thought about the trip to the Archives. King Callahan’s face came to her. The man who had died trying to save her from a dragon attack. The King of Väterlich . . .
Her breathing stopped. Her eyebrows clenched. She sat up in bed and threw back the covers.
Perhaps she wasn’t powerless after all. She may have been trapped inside the Academy, but there was still something she could do out there in the real world. There was one way she could take a swipe at the witches, and possibly the Vertreiben, from behind the wall. And if her gamble paid off, it could be quite a big swipe indeed.
She climbed out of bed and felt around Maggie’s windowsill until she found a quill, an inkpot, and a parchment. Then she crept down the aisle to the latrine, where several candles still burned in their sconces. She sat on the floor with her back against the wall and began to write.
When she’d finished, she crept back down the aisle to the door. She carefully eased it open and stepped out into the night. Her bare feet crunched through the wet snow as she hurried around the back of the barracks to a small storehouse. She gently opened the door and stepped inside.
“Basil!” she said in a loud whisper. “Basil!” She shook him until he snorted and his eyes popped open.
“Evie?” He frowned, pushing himself onto his elbows. “What are you doing?”
“I need you to send this for me.” She held up the parchment.
“What? Now? Who are you writing to that’s so important you’ve got to wake me up?”
“Anisette.”
“Evie,” he said with a sigh. Then he rolled his neck with a crack. “Why in the world are you writing a letter to Anisette in the bloody middle of the night?”
“Because I am the Queen of Väterlich,” she said. “And I want her to tear my ancestral home apart.”
LEATHERWOLF COMPANY was gathered at the edge of a courtyard behind a castle somewhere in the second ring of campus, a huge, blocky thing modeled after the fortress at Delsund. The courtyard, a hundred yards wide in every direction, was bordered by a wall of creeping ivy. The rest looked as though it had been frozen in time. An empty fountain sat in the middle, green and black with water stains. Skeletons of trees sprouted up around it, with overgrown pathways leading to a staircase and the castle gates. The days had remained cold in the last few weeks, the air brittle. Brushings of snow lined the branches of the pines that were scattered across campus.
Six more Leatherwolf girls had boarded coaches home in that time. Evie had paced through the days, searching her correspondence each night for a return hawk from Anisette. The letter she’d had Basil send had given Princess Camilla permission to go to Callahan Manor, of which Evie, as Queen of Väterlich, was now the rightful owner. Callahan Manor was the home in which Evie had lived until the dragons had taken her. And she wanted Camilla and Anisette to search every inch of it for any clues and information about Countess Hardcastle that might be hidden there. She’d hoped they might find something that could give the princesses a new piece of intelligence about the Seven Sisters. But thus far, she hadn’t heard a word.
“You three, get in my carriage!” shouted the Fairy Drillsergeant. She pointed at Kelbra, Essendotter, and Basil.
Kelbra and Essendotter dutifully trudged to a battered and beaten carriage and climbed inside. Basil, however, didn’t move. “You aren’t really going to . . . crash it, are you?”
“Indeed I am,” she replied, with no smile to be found. “Or do you think princesses always arrive on time and with perfect hair?”
“Of course not, Fairy Drillsergeant, it’s just—”
“Good. In you go.”
Basil must have heard the implicit threat, because he took one last look at the rest of the company, then went to the carriage and climbed inside. The door clicked shut behind him.
“Remember, cadets!” shouted the Fairy Drillsergeant. “When there are magic spells flying, you’ve got to keep moving! Stone still is stone dead!” And with that, she gave three sharp snaps of her wand, and three streams of glowing light shot out from the end. They zipped across the courtyard and bounced off the walls, and soon were zigzagging everywhere. “This is a live fire exercise, cadets!” The light swirled from black to white and back again. The rest of the company screamed and dove to the ground as one of them soared past with a sizzle that sounded like flame hitting water.
“Oh, relax,” said the Fairy Drillsergeant, scowling with disgust. “It’s only a simulation, it won’t kill you. See?” She shot a blast at Cadet Rillia, who fell to the snow with a scream, writhing in pain. “Hold on tight, cadets!” She aimed her wand at the carriage and gave it a flick. The wheels began to turn. The carriage picked up speed, bumbling across the rough ground as the simulated magic spells continued to carom around the courtyard. Evie and Demetra both watched nervously as Rillia slowly began to catch her breath.
The carriage rattled over a tree root, nearly toppling onto its side. Evie gritted her teeth as it raced toward the fountai
n. With an extraordinary crash, the carriage flipped onto its top and wobbled to a stop. Basil had been thrown cleanly through the window. He sat up, holding his head, and looked around to get his bearings. The other two, meanwhile, managed to get the door open. They crawled out, using the axletree to swing themselves to the ground. Kelbra pointed to Basil, then motioned toward the right of the castle’s main entrance. Then she signaled Essendotter to the left. They nodded and ran for cover behind the dead trees. Kelbra dropped to her stomach as one of the spells soared past her head, then scrambled for the cover of a snow-dusted tree. Slowly, the three of them worked their way closer to the castle gates, the spells ricocheting and twisting around them in all directions.
A chill ran up Evie’s arms as she thought about the real-world scenario that would produce that many witches’ spells.
Kelbra was pinned down behind a dead elm, one of the spells swirling wildly in front of her. Finally, she stepped out into the open and put her fists on her hips.
“What in blazes . . .” muttered the Fairy Drillsergeant.
The black and white flashes swirled around Kelbra, but she stood with her head high. Slowly, an imperceptible shield began to form in front of her. The magical spells glanced off of it with showers of golden sparks.
“Come on, Kelbra!” shouted Sage. “You can do it!”
But her compassion began to falter. Despite her best efforts, the spells started to slice through the shield until it was gone. One of the bolts slammed into her back, throwing her face-first into the snow.
“Stop! Stop!” shouted the Fairy Drillsergeant. She waved her wand and the whorling magical spells vaporized into the air. “Congratulations, Cadet! You are now dead!”
Kelbra rolled over and wiped the snow and dirt from her face. She was clutching her back and grimacing in pain. “I was trying to use my compassion!”
“Well, that wasn’t the mission, was it? The mission was to get inside that castle so you could rescue the king! Has he been rescued? NO! He’s just sat there in his throne room window and watched you die!”