Page 4

Was one of them turning in our direction?

Nicki frowned in concentration, and the horse behind the turning figure let fly an enormous sneeze.

As snot-based distractions go, a horse’s nose can discharge a truly massive amount. The sneeze victim’s companions stirred into motion like disturbed bees, brushing at his clothes until he pushed them off. After a moment, they opened the keep’s great doors and went through, vanishing from our sight.

“Well done,” I told Nicki. Drusilla clapped her on the back, and my youngest sister grinned through the quietest cough she could manage. “Let’s split into two groups,” I continued. “Yudit and Winifred, come with me. We’ll slip into the back passages and see what we can overhear. Drusilla, Alexandra, and Nicki, stay by the entrance and be ready to follow if anyone leaves. Remember that we’re only here to gather information. Keep quiet, and don’t let them see you.”

Four brisk nods and an emphatic sniff answered me. We separated into the smaller teams and started sneaking up the hill. Toward whatever murderous fuckers had decided to hold a meeting in an abandoned keep.

The evening had gotten interesting. In the worst possible way.

Chapter Two

Have Fun Storming the Castle

We went slowly, crouching in the concealment of the tall, unkempt grass. The second group veered away, heading for the front gate while Yudit, Winifred, and I went toward the back wall. Following my plan.

There hadn’t been a vote to put me in charge. Yudit was older than me, Drusilla was better suited to this kind of stealth mission, and Winifred was a bossier person by nature. I’d never understood how, nonetheless, it always ended up this way.

The back wall at the top of the rise towered over us as we crept forward. A lofty expanse of ivy-covered black stone. It had been built to withstand the assaults of an enemy army, and despite its age, it showed little sign of weathering. The stonework stood solid and unbroken, and the only openings were at the very top—narrow, angled apertures for defensive archery.

Both of my sisters kept close. Yudit followed directly in my footsteps. As long as we stayed together, we’d keep each other’s powers in check, and no one in the keep would glance outside and spot sunflowers or amaryllis popping up for no reason, or a mysterious trail of dead and rotting grass.

We were both pretty terrible at covert operations without the other nearby. Forever paired together, she and I. Whether we wanted it that way or not.

When we reached the bottom of the wall, Winifred frowned at the arrow-slits high above her. She looked distinctly unimpressed. Her jaw twitched with the urge to make complaints: No horizontal cross-slot, no fishtail recess at the base, limited field of view for the archer—what incompetent architect designed these? It wasn’t difficult to guess what she wanted to say; I was very familiar with her opinions on the subject. She could be passionate about windows.

Flawed as the arrow-slits might be in most ways, they’d been built right in one respect. They were far too narrow for attacking soldiers to force their way inside, even if a ladder brought them close enough to try it. A child wouldn’t have been able to squeeze through.

But there are attacks that cannot be anticipated, no matter how much care has been taken. I nodded to Winifred, and her expression changed to one of concentration. She flapped her arms in complicated mystic patterns, drawing invisible sigils in the air. As far as I’d ever been able to tell, the motions were completely unnecessary. Winifred enjoyed putting on a show.

With a faint creak of stone, the lowest window in the wall stretched and grew, masonry blocks shouldering each other out of the way to make room. In seconds, the window was large enough for any besieging warriors to stroll right in. Or any spies.

My turn.

Yudit moved a good distance away to give me space. I grasped the clinging ivy at the tower’s base and let my senses expand, feeling for my connection to the plant, pressing my will into the subterranean roots drinking the moisture from the soil, the leaves exhaling their green scent into the night air. I told the ivy to thicken, strengthen, to send its sticky aerial roots deep into every crack and crevice in the rock. Greenish-white flowers bloomed across its length in umbrella-like clusters.

As annoying as my fairy-granted abilities could be, there was still something satisfying about making a plant blossom and grow. A part of me that gazed at the flowers and thought, I did that. I added a little bit of beauty to the world. Or at least that was what I thought when I was doing it deliberately. My gift of plant growth, and Yudit’s curse of decay, have never been completely under our control.

When the vines were as thick around as my forearm, I judged them strong enough for climbing. I clambered up and peered through Winifred’s window. Not a soul was on the other side, only a dark room that smelled faintly of dust. I slipped inside and motioned for Winifred. I didn’t need Yudit by my side when I was standing on a flagstone floor. Not right away. The flowers will break through solid stone if I stand in the same place for long enough, but it takes a while. And Yudit had to come up last if this was going to work.

Winifred ascended with astonishing rapidity; she was solid with compact muscle, and as agile as a cat. Winifred liked to be well prepared for any danger, and was up exercising every morning while the rest of us were still lying abed. As she was fond of reminding us. Constantly.

I couldn’t help but take her point, though, when Yudit started making her way up. She didn’t have much time; the ivy began to wither beneath her hands as soon as she touched it. Before she’d made it a third of the distance, the vines were noticeably thinner. I gave it maybe twenty seconds before they couldn’t hold her anymore. And she was moving far, far more slowly than Winifred.

Hurry the fuck up, sis, I thought as I gripped the ivy at the top, doing my best to strengthen it while Yudit struggled to suppress her own abilities. Our powers were straining to negate each other. The plant was reverting to its original, fragile state as the flowers wilted and the new leaf growth turned brown and dropped away.

Five seconds left, at most. She was still a good body length below the window, and the vines were as thin as matchsticks.

“Move faster,” I said in as loud a whisper as I dared.

“Trying,” Yudit grunted as she pulled herself up the final few feet.

Just below the window, the ivy ripped completely away from the wall. I seized her forearm as she fell, my hipbone slamming into the windowsill with bruising force as I took her weight. Winifred grabbed her other arm, and together we pulled her through.

She dropped to the floor, taking a moment to catch her breath.

“Are you all right?” I asked.