by M. A. Larson
“Ordinarily, close-quarters combat is a second-year discipline. But things have gone a bit away from plan, haven’t they? Being able to defend yourself when you’re in proximity to your enemy feels slightly more important after what’s happened.”
Rumpledshirtsleeves stepped onto the berfrois and took a seat on one of the benches. Two of his assistants held a tasseled umbrella over him to keep the rain away.
“What’s he doing here?” said Kelbra.
It is odd, thought Evie. With the exception of Captain Ramsbottom, other staff members never attended the Fairy Drillsergeant’s sessions.
“Remember your training, Cadet!” he called to Basil. The girls looked at one another in confusion.
“Training? What’s he on about?” whispered Demetra. Evie could only shake her head.
“Two falls to win. Ready?”
“No!” said Basil. Remington nodded and crouched into a grappling stance.
“Let’s begin.”
As rain fell gently as snow, Remington and Basil circled each other. The mud was slick and heavy, and neither wanted to give up footing. The knights began to shout for action.
“Come on, cadets! This isn’t the Grand Ball!” said the Fairy Drillsergeant.
Remington lunged, throwing his shoulder into Basil’s middle. They landed in a puddle with a splash, but Basil managed to scramble away. Remington hobbled to his feet. His leg was clearly bothering him. The Fairy Drillsergeant circled Basil, trying to spur him on.
“Twenty-one brothers and you never learned to fight?”
“No! I didn’t! They all fought one another!”
The cheers from the knight cadets grew louder as they sensed a victory for their side, while the princesses watched glumly. Evie glanced back at Rumpledshirtsleeves. He was as happy as she’d ever seen him, and it annoyed her. Of all the drills to observe, had he chosen this one just to witness their humiliation?
“A moment, Fairy Drillsergeant,” called the tailor troll. He motioned to Basil, who trotted to the edge of the lists. “Tell me, Cadet, why does a princess spin?”
“To make clothes for the needy,” said Basil, incredulous.
“Correct! That’s kindness. And as you’ve been training your heart with kindness, you’ve been training your body all the while. Remember, don’t fight the flax. Let the flax fight itself and you’ll end up with a beautiful garment every time.” He tapped the side of his nose knowingly.
“That’s it? That’s your advice?”
“Come on, before it starts to rain,” said Remington, shaking his head like a wet dog. Basil sloshed back over and they began to circle each other again. Thunder rumbled in the distance.
“Steady, Cadet . . .” said Rumpledshirtsleeves. “Don’t watch his eyes . . .”
Remington pounced, staying low to maintain leverage.
“Now! Break the flax!”
Basil reacted instinctively, jerking his arms down like he was working a flax break. His fists thumped Remington’s head, plunging him face-first into the mud.
The girls erupted in cheers. Basil turned to them with a look of utter bafflement.
Remington pulled himself to his feet, wiping the muck from his eyes. He worked his sore knee back and forth, then charged Basil again.
“Spin the drive wheel, lad!” called Rumpledshirtsleeves.
Basil wound his fist and connected with Remington’s chin, spiraling him to the ground.
“That’s two falls! Princesses win!” shouted the Fairy Drillsergeant. Ironbone Company hailed Basil, who stood stunned, a puppet without a puppeteer. The Thrushbeard cadets rained jeers down on Remington, who gave a sarcastic bow and limped back up the berfrois.
“I’ll have a go, Fairy Drillsergeant.” It was Forbes, already stepping down to the rain-soaked weeds at the edge of the lists. “And I want to fight her.” He pointed squarely at Evie.
“Brilliant,” said the Fairy Drillsergeant. “Cadet, come forward, please.”
Evie shot to her feet and charged down the stairs. She hadn’t realized it until then, but she relished the opportunity to dirty his arrogant face. She glared at him, then scooped some mud and splashed it across the front of her dress, eliciting a roar of cheers from her company. He offered a cocksure smile and shook his head.
“Begin!” called the Fairy Drillsergeant.
She tried to emulate the crouch Remington had done, mirroring Forbes’s every move. His arm shot toward her and she slapped it away. The girls howled with delight.
“Why are you so obsessed with me?” she said.
“Don’t flatter yourself. I only brought you down here because I have something to tell you.”
She saw a tightening in his jaw a fraction of a second before he lunged. It was the same thing her sister used to do when they would spar in the meadow. She sidestepped and grabbed his arm, using his own momentum to throw him to the mud. Jeers poured from one side of the berfrois, cheers from the other.
“That’s how you comb the flax,” she said with a smirk. He pushed himself up, rain streaming from his hair, and wiped the sludge from his face. He was not smiling.
He came at her straightaway, catching her around the shoulders. Her arms were pinned in his embrace. He began forcing her to the ground, and she wasn’t strong enough to stop him.
“Are you going to listen or do you actually want to fight?” he asked.
She gritted her teeth and focused all her energy into breaking his grip, but to no avail.
“Work the treadle! Then hang the fibers!” called Rumpledshirtsleeves.
She drove her heel into Forbes’s boot, which slackened his hold just enough for her to sweep her arms up and break free. Her elbow caught him square in the nose.
“Gah!” He staggered back, hands at his face, but didn’t fall. She charged at him. He rooted himself like a tree and she slammed into him, bouncing away to the mud. It knocked her wind away. He grabbed her dress and hauled her to her feet, pinning her arms behind her back. Slowly, her lungs began to draw thin streams of breath. “Now listen to me and listen closely,” he whispered, blood running from his nose. “It was Malora who let those wolves in. She wanted me to help her get some sort of revenge on you and Remington. I couldn’t care less about either one of you, so I told her to bog off.”
Her breathing slowly returned, but the fight was over. His words staggered her more than any attack could.
“Just thought you should know,” he said. Then he threw her to the mud and stormed back to the berfrois, the knights cheering him along.
“Knights win!”
Evie struggled to her feet, battered and beaten. She trudged back to the benches where her eyes found Malora’s, as cold and gray as the rain.
When they’d arrived back at the Academy from Callahan Manor, Evie had noticed that several things were different. The most obvious was that not everyone had returned. Ironbone was eight cadets fewer, and it had been lucky compared with some of the other companies. But other things had changed as well. Malora never seemed to get past whatever had been ailing her at home. Her silky confidence had withered into a constant cough and a permanent scowl. She and Evie hadn’t spoken a word since discovering they were sisters. Even Kelbra and Sage afforded her a bit more distance. The Queen had proclaimed a foreshortened year because of the attack. Several weeks of training would need to be condensed into days. The Grand Ball would proceed as planned, but after only one more lesson. The end of term was now even closer than it had seemed, a thought that filled Evie with dread. The Helpless Maiden, for all its mystery, loomed.
Remington seemed different as well, like a veil of melancholy had fallen over him. She decided to try to find out why at Sir Osdorf’s only remaining lesson before the Grand Ball. They sat together on a stone bench beneath a willow outside the Piper of Hamelin Ballroom. It had been a rough practice, with neither of them able
to anticipate what the other would do. Remington’s knee was clearly bothering him, and a constant barrage of Osdorf’s fury only made matters worse.
“Is something the matter?” she said, finally breaking a heavy silence.
“How do you mean?” He leaned down to rub his knee.
“You just seem a bit distracted, is all.”
“No. I’m perfectly fine.”
She frowned in frustration. Why can’t humans just say what they mean?
“Aside from the fact that I’ve dedicated my life to killing your family, of course.”
She looked up at him, stunned.
“Do you understand that I’m going to be a knight, Evie? My sword will kill your kind or they’ll kill me. Those are the only two outcomes.”
“But they’re not my kind.” She felt like she was sliding down a muddy hill, desperately grasping at the weeds. “They’re not.”
“And you’ll still say that when I’ve lopped off their heads?” He pulled his leg back and let out a deep exhale. “I have something to tell you. I should have been honest from the beginning, but, well, I wasn’t.”
“What is it?” she said warily.
“I have killed a dragon before.”
The corners of her mouth quivered. Blood pulsed inside her head. “You lied.”
“I did.”
She looked away, to the white cobblestones beneath the steps to the ballroom.
“I was a boy of eleven. We’d gone to my uncle’s palace at Fiddlehead Downs for some business of my father’s. My brother and I went off toward the seaside to explore with a pair of old swords my uncle’s captain of the guard had given us. We ended up on a little trail through the forest and followed it along for quite some time, half a day or so. He wanted to turn back, but I . . . I don’t know, really, I suppose I was asserting my status as elder brother and I made him continue on. Not long after that we found a strange black substance on the ground. It looked like tar or something, the kind you find bubbling up from the ground in Devil’s Garden. I had to know more, naturally, so we followed its trail and found . . .” He took another deep breath and slowly let it out. “. . . a dragon. She’d been wounded somehow, and gone into the forest for protection. That’s my theory, anyway. Regardless . . . she never heard us coming.”
From the corner of Evie’s eye, she saw his head drop. He paused, picking at a fingernail. “She nearly tore my brother in half. I’m sure it upsets you to hear that, but those are the facts.”
She found herself at a complete loss. She didn’t want to hear another word of the story, but couldn’t find the words to stop him.
“To be honest, I don’t really remember much beyond that. I drew my sword, and . . .” He raised his hands and let them fall as words failed him, too. “It’s a bloody business, killing dragons. Bloody and awful.”
Evie’s stomach churned, and she thought she might be sick. She leaned forward, elbows on her thighs, and cupped her forehead in her hands.
“I hate that people see glory in what I did.” His voice had taken on a hard edge. “There’s no glory in it at all. I only wanted to keep her from killing my brother.” An owl’s call echoed from somewhere beyond the ballroom, one long hoot and two short. “I was born where I was born to the family I was born to. I was always going to be a knight. But it’s never been something I relish. I thought I’d come here, put my head down, and do my duty, but . . . but now I know you, and nothing’s what I thought it was.”
The owl sang again. After a long silence, made heavy by the undeniable, unchangeable fact that he had not killed his last dragon, she finally spoke.
“Nothing is what I thought it was, either.”
She roamed alone outside the barracks long after leaving him. Images of her dragon father after the crash, bloodied and injured, swirled through her head. Despite everything she had learned about her family, she didn’t want to see her father in pain. Yet there he was and there was Remington, sword in hand, ready to slash the life out of him.
When the light from the barracks had dimmed to almost nothing, she finally ventured inside. She had gone numb. The only thing she wanted was a dreamless night. She passed Demetra, then Maggie, both sleeping peacefully, both handling their familial complications far better than she ever could. She slipped off her left shoe, then her right, and then she stopped dead.
Her Grand Ball gown, the piece she had built from whole cloth and had been honing and refining for months, was in tatters. It hung haphazardly, with seams torn out and panels ripped away. Colored dye had been splashed down the front.
Her nostrils flared as that old, buried dragon anger began to ignite. She looked across the barracks, and in the dim light of the few remaining torches, she found Malora staring back.
“Just because your mother married a king doesn’t mean you’re not trash.”
Evie’s anger pulsed through her lungs, then her jaw, and finally her eyes. She glared across the room with such force that Malora leapt from her bunk and sprinted for the exit. Evie bolted after her, and they burst into the night, their bare feet sending up cold sprays of mud and dewy grass as they streaked across Hansel’s Green.
“Get away from me!”
Evie dove. Her fingertips slapped Malora’s calf just enough to trip her up. She leapt onto her back and they writhed through the sodden grass, each fighting for leverage.
“Get off!” shrieked Malora, clawing at the turf to pull herself free. But Evie’s anger had taken control. She grabbed a fistful of raven-black hair and drove Malora’s face into the mud. Months of frustration and helplessness poured from her hands into the body struggling beneath her. The relief was overwhelming.
Finally, though, she heard Malora’s choked gasps, and her anger evaporated. She threw the hair aside and let her stepsister up. As she sat there in the wet grass, her tears finally came out in sobs. “Why are you so horrible to me? I never did anything to you!”
Malora pushed herself onto her elbows. Between gasps, she spit out mud, then flipped onto her back and tried to catch her breath.
“We’re meant to be sisters,” said Evie, her fury turning to heartbreak. “Why would you ever do that to your sister?”
“I don’t know, all right? I didn’t mean to, I just—”
“Of course you meant to! That doesn’t make any sense!”
“I didn’t.” She sat up and wiped the grass from her face. Her voice was soft, thoughtful in a way Evie hadn’t heard before. “I don’t know why I do half the things I do. It just . . . happens and I can’t control it. I’m sorry.”
Evie wiped away the last remaining tears. In the darkness, after a flurry of emotion, the numbness had started to settle in again.
“I know I’m meant to be a princess,” continued Malora. “I’ve known it since the day I was born. But sometimes I just feel so rotten inside. And then I do rotten things.”
Evie leapt to her feet and charged back to the barracks.
“I didn’t mean to!” called Malora, but Evie was through listening.
The next day she sat on a hard wooden stool in Rumpledshirtsleeves’s cottage, missing every word he said.
“A shallower curve in your sleeve pattern will generally provide you greater range of motion for hand-to-hand combat. Far more importantly, it will maintain the sleek, fitted look we all seek—”
The cottage door creaked open. The cadets, who sat at dress forms in a half circle around their instructor, turned to see who it was. Two people stepped inside, a man and a woman, wearing the muddied wool and leather of the peasantry. Their faces were haunted, their eyes ringed with purple exhaustion. Malora coughed, eyeing them with barely disguised contempt.
“Mother? Father?”
It was a girl called Cadet Amaryllis, the same girl who had returned the dragon scale necklace on the first day of term. Evie knew her only slightly, but had always felt gratit
ude toward her since that encounter. She could only imagine what might have happened had someone less kind found the scale that day.
“You’ll pardon our interruption, sir,” said the father, taking his hat in his hands. “Amaryllis . . .”
She hurried across the room to embrace him. Something about these people, the echo of death in their eyes, sent a chill through every cadet in the cottage.
“Our kingdom, Goldharbor, she was taken three nights ago by witches.”
“Oh,” said Demetra softly, her hands going to her mouth. Amaryllis collapsed into her mother’s arms in despair.
“It’s all gone.” He didn’t seem to be speaking to anyone in particular, just staring off at some unseen horror that existed only in his memory. “They took dozens of our people off into the forest . . . burned the rest to the ground . . .”
Amaryllis’s mother shepherded her to the door. The father turned to follow.
“Where will you go?” asked Rumpledshirtsleeves.
“To the north. They say that’s where Princess Middlemiss is, protecting the refugees.”
And with that, he led his daughter into a world smothered beneath furious black clouds.
Amaryllis’s wails echoed in the cottage as the cadets looked back to Rumpledshirtsleeves, but even he seemed a bit wobbly after what had just happened. Evie was the only one who hadn’t yet turned away from the door. Someone she knew, someone who came here just as she had, an anonymous person of common birth, someone she had bled with on the training field, would now be wandering a witch-ravaged countryside looking for comfort and protection. It brought Princess Middlemiss right off the page. This was not a story. It was real. It was the thing she was working to become, and it had never felt so impossibly far away.
“Why don’t we leave it there, shall we?”
The cadets gathered their things, and the whispers began.
“A word, please,” said Rumpledshirtsleeves, his droopy eye fixed on Evie. Demetra gave her a grim smile and a squeeze on the shoulder as she and Maggie left. Once the door fell closed, Rumpledshirtsleeves put his hands on his hips and hung his head. “At times I feel such unbearable sadness . . . For a world with so much beauty, there is just so much cruelty.”
