Read The Stepsister Scheme Online
Authors: Jim C. Hines
The Stepsister Scheme (7 page)
He turned to scowl into the house. “Every night, he ties a bandage around his jaw before he goes to bed. The man isn’t right in the head, I’m telling you.”
Snow slipped the coin into his hand. “Thank you, young sir.”
Danielle glanced over her shoulder as she followed Snow away from the shop. So strange to be back, to see Erik selling silver and ogling the female customers, the same as ever. “He didn’t recognize me.” Had she changed so much?
Talia cocked a thumb at Snow. “Don’t go anywhere with her if you want people to notice you.”
They stopped at the home of Margaret Weaver, on the other side of Danielle’s old house. Margaret confirmed what Erik had said. The house was abandoned, and had been for at least a week, though she occasionally heard noises during the night. She assumed it was rats or other animals. “The younger girl, Stacia, tried to take care of the place for a while, but she knew nothing of housekeeping. Don’t know where they’ve moved on to now.”
Margaret stared at Danielle. Though Danielle had spent much of the past years locked away, her stepmother had sent her out at least once a day to buy food and other necessities. These were still her friends and neighbors, far more than the people at the palace. She longed to pull off her cap and talk to Margaret, to feel like a real person again instead of a false princess.
Margaret started to say something more, when Snow piped up, “Thank you so much.” Her mirrors flashed, and then Snow and Talia were hurrying Danielle away.
“Disguise is more than clothes,” said Talia, her voice low. “You still move like a servant girl.” She studied Danielle’s old house. “Is there another way in?”
“The servant’s entrance,” said Danielle. “On the other side of the house.”
The narrow alley between the house and Andrew’s next door was damp and cool, and the fires of An-drew’s forge gave the air an acrid smell. The yellow paint on the servant’s door was dry and cracked. Yellow flakes floated on the puddle by the door.
Talia tested the handle. “Locked.”
“I don’t have a key,” said Danielle. “My stepmother never let me—”
“Step aside.” Talia dropped to one knee. Twined into the laces of her boot were several long, jagged rods and wires. She slid two of these into the lock and adjusted her grip. Taking both rods in one hand, she turned the knob with her other and pushed.
The door swung inward. Talia put the lockpicks away and drew a long, double-edged knife from her other boot. “Stay behind me.”
The kitchen was a disaster. Bits of food littered the table and floor, unrecognizable from the mold. A line of ants scurried to and from the wall, bearing away stale crumbs. It was all Danielle could do to keep from grabbing a bucket and rags from the closet and scouring the filth from her home.
The rest of the house was the same. Danielle wanted to weep. How had they done such damage in so little time? Her former home was like a hollow tree, rotten and empty. She hurried into her father’s workshop.
Gone were the fine tools that had hung along the walls, no doubt sold off for a fraction of their worth. Gone were the enormous bellows and the stacks of wood. Only the great fireplace remained, the tin hood dark with old soot. Glass crunched as Talia crossed the workshop, moving toward the front of the house.
“Someone was here recently,” she said. “Footprints in the dust and debris.” She pointed her knife at the floor, where a fragment of green glass had been crushed into smaller pebbles. “Looks like both stepsisters.”
“How do you know?” Danielle asked.
“From the limps,” said Talia. “Charlotte maimed her heel. Stacia lost a toe. They walk differently.”
Danielle knelt to pick up a curved shard of blue-and-white rippled glass. This had been one of her stepmother’s favorite vases. One of Danielle’s daily errands had been to run to the city wall and gather fresh wildflowers. She had hated this vase.
“Upstairs,” said Talia. “Erik said the attic was haunted.”
Danielle and Snow followed her up the stairs, past the second floor where Danielle’s stepsisters and stepmother used to sleep. Danielle peeked into her stepmother’s bedroom. Old bandages littered the floor, brown and yellow with dried blood and other fluids. She averted her eyes.
Talia was already climbing the ladder to the attic.
“Wait,” said Snow. She gestured for Talia to move, then hopped up and placed her hand against the trapdoor. “Your stepsisters have been practicing,” she said.
She shoved open the door and pulled herself inside. Her choker began to glow with a warm, orange light.
“What is it?” Talia asked.
“Nothing dangerous,” said Snow. “Old magic.”
Danielle followed, automatically ducking her head to avoid the rafters. Cracks of light from the shuttered window drew white lines across the floor. Over the years, Danielle had marked the floor to track the time of day. Twelve sets of lines tracked the time, one for each month. This was mid-May, and the uppermost light was a finger’s width short of the lunchtime mark. Past time for her to be down in the kitchen, preparing the meal.
“Over here,” said Snow. Blobs of black melted wax had seeped into the cracks between the floorboards. Snow drew her knife. The blade was short, straight, and sharp. The only decoration was an oval of gold, engraved with a snowflake, mounted in the center of the crossguard.
Snow used the tip to break a chunk of wax from the floor. “Plain beeswax works just as well, but they all want black candles. Or blood red. My mother was the same way. Fat black candles, cobwebs thick enough to catch a stag. I think she raised the spiders herself, just to make the place more scary.”
“What were they doing?” asked Danielle.
Snow pointed the knife at the ceiling. Smoke had darkened the wood, except for a circular area above the candles, as if the smoke had been unable to pass into the ring. “Looks like a summoning. They trapped something here.”
“Can you tell us what they summoned?” Talia asked.
“Sorry.” Snow sheathed her knife. “They cleaned up pretty well.”
Danielle stared. “My stepsisters . . . cleaned?”
Talia walked to the window. Old boards split apart as she wrenched the shutters open. For the first time since the death of Danielle’s father, sunlight streamed into the attic.
“Thanks,” said Snow.
Talia looked around the room, then shook her head. “There’s nothing here. Let’s check the bedrooms.”
Danielle was already climbing down the ladder. She ignored her stepsisters’ rooms, heading for the ground floor.
“Where are you going?” Talia asked.
“To find Charlotte and Stacia.”
Snow cocked her head. “How?”
“I’m going to ask my mother.”
Danielle rounded the back of the house when shock froze her in place. She had expected to find the garden in similar disarray to the rest of the house. Weeds overshadowed what crops her stepsisters had bothered to plant, and she could see slugs on some of the leaves from here. But where neglect had begun to reclaim most of the garden, the hazel tree in the corner—her mother’s tree—had been deliberately assaulted.
Bent and broken branches dangled from the central cluster of the tree. What leaves remained were brittle and brown. Clumps of dirt bordered a deep hole at the base, as if an enormous dog had tried to dig the entire tree from the earth. The entire right side of the tree appeared burned, little more than a blackened skeleton.
Danielle remembered when this tree had been nothing but a single twig of hazel, which she had planted in memory of her mother. She had come here for weeks, weeping and praying and remembering her mother’s final words.
Remain pious and good, and I shall watch over you from heaven.
The tree had grown swiftly, sending up a clump of thin trunks which were soon as thick as her waist. No doubt her stepmother would have chopped it down long ago had she known what it represented, but the garden, like so much else, had been Danielle’s responsibility.
Danielle hopped over the low fence. “Mother?”
“What’s wrong?” asked Snow.
Danielle ignored her. Months before, these branches had rustled in response to Danielle’s prayers, clothing her in the magnificent gown she had worn to the ball.
“Charlotte knew,” she whispered. She had said as much, back at the palace, but Danielle hadn’t realized what that meant.
“There’s something else in that tree,” Snow said.
“My mother’s spirit.” Slowly, Snow’s words sank in. The tree wasn’t yet dead. Danielle rushed forward.
“Princess, wait!” Talia shouted.
The ground shifted. Danielle grabbed the tree for balance as her feet sank into the soil. The branches were hot. The bark felt like it would sear her skin.
Danielle tried to step back, but the earth had swallowed her feet to the ankles. The branch in her hand snapped away, and a wisp of smoke rose from the broken end.
Talia sped into the garden, drew her knife, then stopped. “Should have brought an ax.” With an expression of disgust, she slammed the knife back into its sheath. “Burn this thing to the ground, Snow.”
“No!” Danielle shouted. “You can’t!”
Several branches swung about, twining around Danielle’s wrist. She yanked back hard enough to pull free, but lost her balance and fell. Her head landed among the rhubarb even as the dirt sucked her feet deeper.
“Maybe you haven’t noticed,” Talia said, “but this tree is trying to kill you.” She grabbed Danielle beneath the arms and pulled. “What are you doing, Snow?”
Snow was hurrying back from the well beyond the garden. Rope trailed from the bucket in her hands. She ran to Danielle’s side and tossed the water at the base of the tree.
Steam hissed from the earth, and the grip on Danielle’s legs loosened. Talia grunted and pulled. Snow grabbed her other arm. Together, they wrenched Danielle from the ground, though her boots remained behind.
“That’s your mother?” Talia asked as she retrieved her knife. “And I thought my family had problems.”
“No,” Snow said before Danielle could answer.
“That’s got to be what Charlotte and Stacia summoned. Probably to destroy Danielle’s mother. It’s trapped within the tree, along with her spirit. They’re still fighting, and judging from the look of those branches, she’s losing.”
“Can you save her?” Danielle asked.
Snow grinned. “If I can’t outcast a pair of stuck-up novices, I’ll—”
“Less boasting, more casting,” Talia said.
Snow pointed to the bucket. “Gather as much water as you can and soak the dirt around the tree. Don’t get too close.”
“How close is too close?” Danielle asked.
“If the tree tries to eat you, you should probably back up.”
Danielle stood by the fence, clutching the knife Talia had given her in both hands. She didn’t know what good the knife would be if things went wrong, but this way she didn’t feel quite so helpless. A full water bucket sat on the ground beside her, along with several pots they had fetched from the house. Her bare feet and trousers were dark with mud, as were Talia’s.
Snow stood facing the sky, exposing her pale throat to the sun. A thin beam of sunlight shone from the central mirror of her choker. Her traveling cloak was draped over the gate, the fur soaking up muddy water.
As Snow muttered, the sunbeam gouged strange, sharply angled symbols into the dirt. White frost crusted the characters, defying the heat of the sun.
“What are you doing?” Danielle whispered. Her vision blurred if she looked too closely at the words in the earth.
“This is similar to the summoning spell your stepsisters cast. If my magic is stronger, it should draw the creature from the tree.” She frowned. “I think it’s a demon of some sort. Ethereal, which means it probably came from one of the lower dimensions. Maybe a Myrakkhan, or possibly a Chirka, though they’re not really in season. They usually hibernate through the spring and summer. Still, they—”
“The spell, Snow,” said Talia.
By the time she finished, frost circled most of the garden. The words curved round and round, shrinking as they returned to the starting point by the tree.
Snow gave a sheepish shrug. “I always run out of room at the end. I start out writing too big, and then—”
“Will it work?” asked Danielle.
“Sure.” Snow brought her hands together. “Your stepsisters did the hard work, bringing the demon into our dimension. Now that he’s here, all I need to do is call him, and he’ll be trapped within the bounds of the spell.” She gave a short, sharp whistle. “Come here, boy. Come here, little fire demon.”
Talia raised an eyebrow.
The branches of the hazel began to shake, and withered leaves floated to the ground, but nothing else happened.
“It’s fighting me,” Snow said. Her lower lip protruded slightly, hinting at a pout.
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