by M. A. Larson
“I suppose I could just fly, but I wouldn’t want to make anyone jealous.” She gave Evie a wink. Then she lifted off the ground and deposited herself onto the phantasm’s back. It snorted and stomped, just like a real horse.
“I’ll ride alone, then, shall I?” said Marline. She snatched the reins from Forbes and mounted one of the horses. Her hawk circled down from the tree and landed on the saddle behind her.
Evie glanced at the two horses, then at Demetra and Basil huddled near each other. She closed her eyes, deeply pained. “Fine. I’ll ride with Forbes.”
“Thank you for welcoming me to the team so graciously,” he said, climbing atop one of the horses.
“Who says you get the reins?”
“I’m a far better rider than you. Get on.”
Evie’s face darkened, but she knew he was right. She’d spent a fair bit of time on her horse, Boy, the previous summer, but Forbes had been riding his entire life. She grudgingly took his hand and got on behind him.
Basil and Demetra gave each other an awkward look. “Well, I’m not really bothered,” said Basil. “Do you want to drive?”
“If it’s all the same to you,” said Demetra. “I still get a bit scared of horses if I’m not in control of the reins.”
“By all means,” said Basil. He helped Demetra up, then climbed on behind her.
“Shall we get on with it, then, before those monsters return?” said Forbes.
“A word to the wise,” said Malora. “It’s time for you to start worrying about witches instead.” And with that, she rode silently up the stony hill into the forest.
• • •
As the day began its final stretch through the late afternoon, someone finally broke the silence. “This is utterly ridiculous,” said Forbes. “I’ve studied navigation under the best mapmakers money can buy, and we’re out here traipsing after a witch.”
Evie was snatched from her thoughts. The group was still following Malora, but now they’d reached a relatively flat bit of forest. The red leaves carpeting the ground looked like waves in the sea, with strange, curved trees sprouting up all around like fishing hooks.
“Shouldn’t we at least see Marburg in the distance by now?” he said.
Malora slowed her phantom mount until she was riding next to Forbes and Evie, upsetting their horse. “I liked you better when you could only oink.”
He scowled at her but said nothing.
Malora turned to her sister, her eyes as shimmering yellow as topaz gemstones. “Have I told you the worst part of all this, Sister? It’s looking back on my childhood and feeling so utterly stupid. The conversations with Mother about the evils of the witch as she prepared me for the Academy—I wish you could have been there for those. It must have revolted her to have to say the things she said. ‘Witches are evil, and only princesses can defeat them!’” She chuckled and shook her head. “And she never once talked about what would happen when I actually became a princess. There were no stories of what a great hero I’d be and how I could help save the realm from the horrors of the witch. Because that part was never actually meant to happen. The Seven Sisters say they wanted to turn me into a Princess-Witch, but in truth, none of that mattered. They only cared about getting what they wanted.”
Evie felt a cold chill rush through her heart. “What did they want?”
“What they always want. Information. They wanted a way to see inside the mind and heart of a princess so they could learn how to defeat her. I’m nothing but an experiment. An instruction manual for that army they’ve got up there in the mountains.”
“Army?” said Forbes. “What are you talking about?”
Malora’s face stretched into a grin. “You were right, Pig-Boy. We should have been in Marburg by now. I’ve decided to bring you on a little detour, but I think you’ll be pleased that I did.” Her grin curled down at the corners. “Not far now. Just up ahead.”
Against Forbes’s complaints, they rode on for the better part of an hour. Behind the clouds, the sky steadily dimmed. Finally, Malora’s spectral horse began to move just a bit faster. She rode to the edge of a hilltop and stopped, turning back to face them with a smile. “Come. See.”
Evie’s fingers clenched Forbes’s cloak. The horse walked up the hill and joined Malora’s. The others followed. On the far side of the hill, the earth sloped away into a great pine valley. Just below them, in a crease between hills, there sat an enormous pile of sticks. Someone had deliberately put them there, forming a crude structure.
“An old beaver’s dam,” sighed Forbes. “Well worth the trip.”
“Go on,” said Malora, nudging her skeletal head toward the structure. “You’ll like it, I promise.”
Evie swung herself off the horse. After so many hours riding, the ground felt strange beneath her feet. The muscles in her back and legs ached. Malora suddenly appeared next to her, floating to the ground as her horse disappeared in a swirl of leaves.
“You don’t have to come,” said Evie, looking up at the others.
“Yes, they do,” said Malora. “They’ll like it, too.”
Marline dismounted, as did Demetra and Basil. Forbes, however, sighed and remained on his horse. One by one, they followed Malora down into the furrow. The wooden hut was much bigger than it had looked from above, with sticks spearing out of it like a morning star.
“What is this?”
“Come and see.” Malora crept inside through a small doorway.
Evie turned back to her friends, who were all looking at the hut with apprehension. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”
She walked slowly to the doorway. As she neared, she could smell the biting stench of black mold inside. She closed her eyes for a moment, just to gather her courage, then ducked through.
Malora stood to the side, watching Evie. Cracks in the walls of the hut let only traces of dusky sunlight in. The mold spores in the air nearly choked her. A cursory glance revealed several broken tables, shattered vials of many different colors, and parchments scattered everywhere, as though someone had left in a hurry. On the far side of the room, there was an overturned cauldron.
“What is this?”
“Do you remember when I told you how stupid the witches had made me feel? Well, this is where they did it to me all over again.” She looked across the ransacked hut. “This is where they planned the whole thing.”
“Planned what?”
Malora stalked around the room, glaring at the detritus as she passed. “While you and I were off dancing with the Vertreiben, the witches were here planning their assault on the Academy.”
Evie’s whole body shuddered. Calivigne has been here. In this very room.
“The witches knew what I was doing with the Vertreiben, and they let me go on doing it. They used me to distract you. Me and Javotte and all the other fools.”
“What are you talking about?”
“They thought it would be the Vertreiben who would drive you out of the Academy and into their hands. They hadn’t expected you and me to have a secret meeting at the Drudenhaus. And yet it somehow still turned out beautifully for the witches, didn’t it? Just wait for poor stupid Malora to finish being a distraction, then launch the attack.”
Evie’s eyes flitted around the hut. There were books and parchments and stacks and stacks of documents. “All this . . . belongs to the witches?”
“Every scrap.”
Evie began to leaf through a stack of cracked parchments on the table next to her. There were maps. Lists of names and villages and kingdoms. Portraits and sketches. Handwritten notes and diagrams of carriage coaches. Her mind lurched from one thought to the next. “This isn’t supposed to happen. This level of detail . . . of organization. Witches are supposed to work alone.”
“Wait until you see the really good stuff.”
Her eyes snapped over to her s
ister. “What do you mean?”
Malora took a casual step over some scattered debris to where a small wooden shelf had collapsed from rot and rain. She picked up a stack of parchments tied with twine and tossed them at Evie’s feet. “I believe these are yours.”
Evie picked up the stack and pulled the twine open, her heart thumping. She unfolded the first parchment. Dear Evie, it read. I do hope my letters are reaching you. I’m a little surprised you haven’t written back yet. I like to think you’re too busy writing to Remington. She quickly scanned to the bottom of the letter. The closing read, Your friend, Maggie.
She flipped to another and found the same looped handwriting. Then another. And another. “These are all letters from Maggie to me, but I’ve never seen them before. I don’t understand.”
“The witches intercepted them.”
“What? But why? What possible value could these letters have to them?”
“They didn’t want the letters,” said Malora, smiling.
Slowly, the witches’ plan began to reveal itself in Evie’s mind. “They wanted me. They thought they could make me worry about Maggie enough to ride south.”
“Yes, but then you rode east instead, didn’t you? I hear they were none too pleased when they learned you’d gone to see the blond rather than the redhead.”
Evie felt a cold pall sweep over her. She had nearly done exactly what the witches had wanted. She even remembered feeling guilty for choosing to go to Demetra’s home instead of Maggie’s. But there had been one thing, one detail, that had decided it for her, and may have indeed saved her life. Demetra had mentioned in her letters that her father knew Evie’s human father, King Callahan. One offhand comment had altered her decision, and may have altered the entire course of her life.
“Evie?” said Demetra, peering in the small doorway. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she said, though in truth, her mind was still reeling. “Yes. Come inside.”
“What is this place?” said Demetra with a cough.
“It’s a witch encampment,” said Evie. “It’s where they planned the siege. All this stuff . . . It could be invaluable to the princesses.”
“It certainly could,” said Demetra, flipping through some nearby parchments. “But what are we supposed to do with it all? We’d need horses and carts to even make a dent. And it’s already getting dark.”
“We can’t just leave it.” She looked around at the wealth of information they’d be forced to abandon. “We’ve got to search the place. Let’s take this stuff outside where we can get a proper look at it. Anything important goes in our saddlebags.”
She and Demetra took armfuls of parchments, books, paintings, ledgers, and other ephemera out into the softening daylight. Marline jumped down from the overhang to help, while Forbes and Basil took two horses and patrolled the surrounding forest. Much of what the girls discovered was too damaged to be of any value. The ink had faded away or the parchment was too rotten or brittle.
Malora watched them from a slate boulder nearby, one leg folded across the other. “Don’t be too choosy. There must be plenty of valuable information there.”
“Shame we can’t bring the lot of it back,” said Marline. “There’s things in here the Queen herself probably doesn’t even know.” She held up a parchment, shaking her head in amazement. “Look at this.” She showed Evie the hand-drawn map. There were black scratches showing routes of attack. “It’s the whole bloody ambush right here.”
Evie, meanwhile, was nervous. The longer they took sifting through the witches’ cache, the darker the sky was growing. And they still had plenty of forest to traverse. She started on a new stack of documents. The first was a list of ingredients for some unnamed potion—lutewart and trolls’ tongues and other such unpleasantness. Then, beneath that, she discovered something odd. It was a painting, only slightly smaller than the average parchment. And it was of extraordinary quality, though the edges were water-stained and withered. The painting depicted roughly twenty women in white Pennyroyal Academy uniforms. Each wore a tiara in her hair. The parchment was muddy and faded, nearly broken where it had been creased, yet the likenesses were startlingly lifelike. But none of that was what troubled Evie. What troubled Evie was that all but four of the women’s faces that remained had been crossed out with a large red X. “What d’you reckon this is?”
Marline glanced over as she put the map in her saddlebag. “Class portrait. We all get them after we’re commissioned. Can’t bloody wait for mine.”
Demetra looked over Evie’s shoulder at the class portrait and gasped. “No!”
“What? What is it?”
She snatched it out of Evie’s hands. Her eyes were filled with terror. “No!”
“Demetra, what’s wrong?”
“That’s my mother! Right there, it’s my mother!”
Evie looked at the face in the portrait. It was the same woman with whom she’d ridden from the Blackmarsh to Waldeck the previous autumn. Cadet Christa, it said below. Thankfully, her face was not emblazoned with an X.
“What is this?” said Demetra, shaking the parchment at Malora. “Why are they all crossed out?”
“I’ve no idea,” she said with a bit too much elation. “Perhaps they’ve won some sort of prize?”
“This isn’t funny! What are they going to do to my mother?”
“Lower your voice,” said Malora. Her smile faded away, and her eyes suddenly became much more intense. “I’ve no idea why those people are crossed out.”
“Look here!” said Marline as she took the portrait from Demetra. “This says Cadet Middlemiss! She was in your mum’s class? Aw, blast, the rain’s eaten her away.” She rubbed the disintegrated edge with her thumb where Middlemiss’s face had once been.
“This isn’t the time, Marline,” said Evie.
“Right.” Her excitement fell when she realized how scared Demetra was. “Sorry.”
She handed the class portrait back to Demetra and moved off to check some more of the documents. Evie took Demetra’s hands. “She hasn’t been crossed out. I’m sure she’s all right.”
“We have no idea how old this is! It could have been sitting here for months! Oh, Evie, what if something’s happened to my mum?”
She collapsed into Evie’s arms. “We’re going to get through this, all right?” said Evie. “We’ll figure it out together.”
“Mothers are overrated anyway,” said Malora.
“Mind your tongue,” snapped Marline. “Or I’ll mind it for you.”
Malora sat back on her stone and cackled.
“Look,” said Evie. “Something’s written on the back.”
Demetra turned the portrait. Scrawled across it in black ink were the words Beatrice said it was this one—ALL MUST GO. She and Evie looked at each other in shock.
“Beatrice?”
“Mount up!” came a distant voice. “We’ve left it too late! We’ve got to go before it’s full night!” It was Forbes. He and Basil were riding up from the forest. Evie only now realized how difficult it was to see them.
“We’ve done all we can here,” she said. “Let’s go.”
Forbes and Basil reined to a stop, their eyes wide against the falling night. “Well?” said Basil.
Marline began stuffing his saddlebags with documents as quickly as she could while Evie helped Demetra onto his horse. “Demetra’s had a bit of a shock, I’m afraid.”
“What is it? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” said Demetra. “Let’s talk about it later.”
“Of course,” said Basil, but now he looked as worried as the rest of them.
“We’ll have to go the rest of the way at night,” said Forbes.
“It was worth it,” said Evie. She shoved the stacks of documents she thought might be the most valuable into the saddlebags until they couldn’t ho
ld anymore, then took Forbes’s hand and climbed up.
Malora had conjured her phantom horse and was waiting right in front of them, her yellow eyes casting an eerie dim glow. “Shall we?”
“Hang on, not yet,” said Marline. She whistled sharply. A moment later, a streak of wind flew through the darkness. The hawk dove straight at Malora. She screamed and fell off her horse as the hawk looped back up into the air. With a shout of rage, a puff of black smoke billowed out from the witch’s chest. It lanced into the sky, striking the hawk like a lightning bolt. The bird plummeted, hitting the ground with a stony thump.
Marline stared at the bird-shaped statue planted in the moss. Then she looked at Malora with shock. “What’d you do that for?”
“It attacked me!”
“He did not. I was just having a laugh!” In an instant, she was off her horse and kneeling by her hawk’s statue. “What’ve you done?”
Malora stood with a scowl, brushing the leaves off. She mounted her horse as Marline lifted the stone bird off the ground, then gently secured it to the back of the saddle. Once the final strap had been tightened, she walked calmly over and stood beneath Malora. She pointed a finger that was at once accusatory and threatening.
“The moment we’ve saved the Academy, I’m going to cut you down. And for the rest of my life whenever anyone mentions your name, I’ll cut them down, too.”
As she turned and walked back to her horse, a delighted smile bloomed across Malora’s face. “Ooh, well, I’ll certainly look forward to that.”
Marline climbed onto her horse. “It’s coming.”
“She loved that bird more than I’ve ever loved anything,” said Forbes to Evie in a low voice. A heavy stillness followed as the night finally snuffed out the daylight.
“Let’s just go,” said Evie.
They rode in silence for hours, over moonlit hills and shadowed valleys. The darkness and the chill in the air and the threat of witches in the trees gave each of them enough solitude to get lost in their thoughts. Evie’s went to something Malora had said back at the witch encampment. I’m nothing but an experiment. An instruction manual for that army they’ve got up there in the mountains. Lieutenant Volf had taught them that witches were reclusive creatures who preferred to be alone. But recently there had been more and more instances of witches working together. This, a secret army somewhere in the mountains, would be an entirely new level of cooperation. She wrestled with all the different elements of it as they continued north through the pines. Where had Malora heard about that? And could she be trusted? Could it possibly be true?
