Pennyroyal Academy (11 page)

“I don't understand. You're one of the best in the company—”

“But I'm not my sister, am I? I'll never be my sister. I can't even ride a bloody horse.” She took a deep breath and looked out the window, and the daylight lit up the pain in her eyes. “I used to go riding all the time until my horse threw me. I don't even remember why it happened, but I'll never forget it. I couldn't breathe. I tried to scream to my father that I was dying, but I couldn't speak.”

“Are you seriously crying?” said Malora, incredulous. Kelbra laughed, and so did a few others.

Evie glowered at her. “Quiet, Malora, can't you see she's scared?”

Malora's jaw tightened in anger, but she didn't say anything.

“My father picked me up and put me back in the saddle. I still couldn't breathe, but he said I had to toughen up and keep riding. The horse threw me again, and I . . .” She swallowed back the horrible memory, but couldn't stop tears from falling. “The look on my sister's face . . . like it was somehow
my
fault . . .”

“Forget your sister. This is for you. None of us is going to make it through this place without confronting our fears.”

“
Bloody hell, girls, all you have to do in this exercise is FALL!
”

“You just have to step through and do it, that's all there is. Besides, you can't go home. What if you're the Warrior Princess?” said Evie with a smile.

Demetra laughed and wiped her eyes. “And afraid of a horse? I think Basil might have better odds.”

“Hey!” he said. “I'm sitting right here!”

A blast of wind shot through the window. “All right,” she said with a shiver. “All right.” She put her hands on either side of the arch and stepped into the window.

“Look, there's your horse there,” said Evie, pointing to Demetra's knight at the courtyard's edge. “That horse is going to keep you alive, do you understand?”

Demetra nodded. She looked out at the distant horizon, where the charcoal clouds sawed the Glass Mountains in half, and she was gone.

Her screams pierced the campus, and behind Evie the girls who were already nervous about the fall shifted uncomfortably. Down the side of the tower, Evie saw a glimpse of whipping golden hair and a galloping horse, and then she was on its back riding into the green expanse beyond.

“
That's what I like to see, Cadet! Perhaps I've underestimated Ironbone Company, have I? Who's next?
”

Evie didn't wait for discussion. She stepped onto the rain-smoothed stone and crouched in the window. The winds swished in and out of the lookout room, playing havoc with her balance. From these heights, the undulating peaks and valleys of the Dortchen Wild looked like a tempestuous green sea. She could even see the slight curve of the earth as she looked from one end of the world to the other. She closed her eyes, ignoring the pig snorts and laughter behind her, and let the wind rush across her face. She pulled the dragon scale from her dress and put it to her lips.

“For you, Father,” she whispered. And then she leaned out into empty air and fell.

As she plummeted toward the ground, she had none of the terror of her fall from the cliff. This was different. She let the wind push her arms away from her body and felt the adrenaline course through her blood. With her eyes closed, she could almost imagine that she was flying. It was a blissful weightlessness she had never experienced before, and it felt so entirely
right—

Her body slammed to a sudden stop, and her neck snapped forward.
I've missed my horse,
she thought.
I'm dead.
She tried to inhale, but could only manage a tiny wheeze of air. She opened her eyes and saw . . . grass?

“WHAT IN BLAZES DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?” screamed the Fairy Drillsergeant, so incensed that her voice rasped away to nothing.

Gradually, Evie's lungs began to draw air again. She looked around and realized she was floating only inches off the ground, spared from a horrible death by the magic in the Fairy Drillsergeant's wand.

But why am I above grass and not cobblestones?

“ARE YOU TRYING TO GET YOURSELF KILLED?
ANSWER ME, CADET!
”

“I . . . I'm sorry, Fairy Drillsergeant, I don't know what happened.” She coughed, and her breathing returned to normal.

The Fairy Drillsergeant flicked her wand and Evie fell the last few inches to the ground. She pushed herself to her knees, and that's when it dawned on her.

I've just flown.

Forbes sat on his mount near the tower, a look of utter bafflement on his face. Somehow, she had overshot him, overshot the entire courtyard, and had ended up in the middle of the field.

Fates be praised, I've just flown.

She caught the eyes of Maggie and Demetra, both looking back at her with astonishment.

“GET IN THERE AND RUN THAT STAIRCASE UNTIL I TELL YOU TO STOP! I WILL NOT HAVE . . .
WHATEVER THAT WAS
IN MY COMPANY!”

Evie staggered to her feet. Her muscles felt weak and shaky. She started to run back to Joringel's Stem, and a smile bloomed across her face. With each quivering step, it grew bigger and the Fairy Drillsergeant's screams faded farther away.

I did it, Father. I flew.

As she passed through the tower door and started up the turnpike stairs once again, the exercise slowly returned to normal operation. Evie ran the stairs, up and down, for more than an hour. And she felt so light and free that she could have easily done twenty more.

I flew, Father, and I am your little girl after all.

E
VIE SAT
on a low wall bordering one of the Academy's many baileys, this one accented with spindly, leafless fruit trees. The unhewn stone of the wall was dry, though heavy black clouds above bulged with rain. Her breath puffed in the crisp air as she turned another page of her book. She had spent so much time reading about Princess Middlemiss and other contemporary princesses that she had fallen behind on her actual class work. She didn't mind having to catch up, though. The story she was reading now had her riveted. It told of Princess Pennyroyal's very first discovery of courage, a seminal event in Princess History. She had only been two years older than Evie was now when it happened. A wicked witch had enslaved her village and killed her beloved grandparents, who had raised her from birth. This act triggered something inside her that had snuffed her fears and allowed her to stand face-to-face with the witch. Armed with nothing but her own courage and the memory of her grandparents, Pennyroyal had become the first princess ever to drive a witch from a kingdom. It was the purest display of courage Evie had ever heard told, made all the more miraculous because of where she was reading it. She ran a hand over the flagstone wall, pocked with divots caused by years and weather. It had new meaning to her now. Every stone, every building, every concept in this Academy could be sourced to the story she now read.

“
Volume Three: A Narrative History on the Origins of Courage
by . . . Volf. Sounds absolutely horrendous.”

Evie looked up to find Remington, dressed in a black tunic beneath his black leather Thrushbeard doublet. A tarnished bronze scabbard at his hip housed a sword.

“Hello,” she said.

“Aren't you a bit cold out here?” He cupped his hands and blew into them.

She closed her book and said nothing. Perhaps it was that she had been so deeply engrossed in the book, or perhaps it was something else, but she found herself at a bit of a loss for words.

“Oh, that's right,” he said, eyeing a flapping banner in the distance, “you don't particularly feel the cold, do you? I remember that from our first frigid swim together.”

Something near a barren apple tree across the way caught her attention. Three girls in emerald tunic dresses, shivering and pretending not to, seemed to be having a chat. But Evie noticed that they kept glancing over. Remington followed her eyes and saw them, too.

“Bloody hell . . .” He shook his head. “All right, ladies?” he called, and they scattered, mortified to have been spotted. “Honestly, what is it about your kind? They seem to think I'll be their Grand Ball escort if they only lurk about and make me uncomfortable enough.”

“Perhaps they're waiting to see if you'll need rescuing from a witch,” said Evie. Immediately after the words were out, her face fell. She had meant it to sound flirtatious, but then realized she had no idea how to do that. Still, her worry vanished when he laughed.

“Is that so? Well, when the final songs are sung, we'll see who saved whom.”

Their eyes held for a moment, and neither spoke. It was only a second or two, but something remarkable passed between them. His swagger fell away and she glimpsed a completely different person underneath.

“Besides, I've retired from the witch game,” he said in a clumsy attempt to cover the moment. “I'm on to dragons now.”

She cringed, and her spine straightened just a bit.

“Speaking of which,” she said, “I believe you owe me an apology.”

“Do I?”

“You lied to me when we first met. You said you weren't a knight.”

He glanced around the bailey in confusion, as if only now realizing where he was. “This is the training academy, is it not? Or else I've been horribly misled.”

“I heard about your . . . that you've . . .” She choked on the words. “
Killed a dragon.
”

“Where did you hear that?” he said, his face darkening. “Honestly, the gossip is endless. No, my lady, I haven't killed any dragons. Or giants or tigers or sea serpents, either.”

She studied his face, trying to read his truthfulness. His anger over the rumor seemed genuine. Was it possible it really wasn't true? They stood there a moment, neither sure what to say, until finally the bong of a bell echoed deep in campus.

“Ah, the chimes of the late cadet, forever ringing, forever ringing,” he said as his eyes lightened and his smile returned. “Try not to freeze out here. I didn't rescue you from a witch only to see the elements get you.”

He flicked his dark eyebrows, and then he was gone. A smile crept across her face as she watched him go. If Maggie really was mistaken, if he hadn't actually killed a dragon . . . well . . .

Her smile blossomed until her lips parted and she was beaming. As she was replaying the conversation in her head, three figures in green dresses scurried past, and she burst out in laughter.

That night in the Dining Hall, she caught herself staring over at him all through supper. Unless she consciously forced herself to listen to her friends—and tonight's topic of conversation was Maggie defending to all others that the white-furred snowbear really did exist in the lands of the south—her eyes always found their way back across the room to his table.

Over the next few days, her thoughts kept returning to the bailey.
He hasn't killed a dragon after all.
And with that fact dispensed, he came to mind at meals, during drills, in classrooms, and in the Infirmary. But unlike the distractions she had battled during her first few weeks at the Academy, this one was quite welcome.

Anisette turned many nighttime conversations to the knights. She and Maggie seemed to take particular pleasure in teasing Evie about Remington, which usually drove Basil out of the barracks to his storehouse. But Evie kept her feelings to herself, and responded with nothing more than a smile.

She was smiling still as she and her company followed the Fairy Drillsergeant up a rain-slicked road to the Armory, a brown dome that lay on the ground like a fallen shield, glinting in the wet.

“Inside, all of you,” said the Fairy Drillsergeant, who seemed in an even fouler mood than usual.

The cadets poured through the iron-studded doors and into a vast circular chamber with a low, curved ceiling. The walls were ringed with every type of armor and close-combat weapon imaginable. Spears and spikes and swords and maces and shields. Pennyroyal banners streamed down the walls, separating the various families of weaponry. The center of the Armory was dominated by a worn sparring pit of scarred cobblestones, crisscrossed with the chinks and slashes of weapons slapping rock.

“We get to fight!” said Anisette. As cadets wandered the room inspecting the weaponry, she and Basil started arguing about the merits of a broadsword versus a great sword.

Evie, however, stopped just inside the doorway. Something across the room unsettled her. Two large statues, one around ten feet and the other half that, rested beneath a thin slit window. The smaller of the two was a little girl playing with a frog, her face permanently frozen in the wonder and innocence of childhood. The larger was a witch, feeble and cloaked. The way the statues were positioned, the little girl faced away from the witch, blissfully unaware of what was forever creeping up behind her.

“Gather round, ladies, gather round,” said the Fairy Drillsergeant. Her sparkling dust fell atop a wooden rail that ringed the sparring pit, broken sporadically to allow fighters to enter. “Right. Hessekel. Gisela. Step forward, please.”

No one moved. The girls looked around in confusion.

“That's right. They're gone. I discharged them last night.”

The shock was palpable. Evie had been partnered with Hessekel in a drill about navigating enchanted forests a month ago, but hadn't spoken to her since. Gisela she didn't know at all. Yet they were Ironbone girls, and now they were gone.

“The Grand Ball has only one winner,” said the Fairy Drillsergeant. “The rest of you will have to fight your way through the Helpless Maiden.” She folded her arms behind her and began floating slowly back and forth. “It's time to get serious, ladies. The world is falling apart out there. Remember Marburg? Where we first met? The witches are there.”

Several girls gasped, and Demetra called out, “No!” Evie's mind immediately went to the three little girls dancing on the high street. And what must their faces look like now?

“Marburg will be exceedingly difficult for the witches to take—Princess Gabriela is one of the best there is—but the simple fact that they're there is troubling. And that's why we're here today. I want to give you a taste of a second-year drill to remind you what your training is all about.”

Those three laughing faces spun through Evie's mind, whirling faster and faster to the fiddler's tune.

“What is a princess's first option when confronted by a witch?”

“Evasion,” said a smattering of cadets. Even as a chorus, their voices were grim.

“And if she's seen you?”

The little girls vanished, replaced by yellow eyes veined with red.
If she's seen you, it's too late.

“Perhaps you'd opt for a sword, yes?” The Fairy Drillsergeant flicked her wand and a massive broadsword sailed across the room, the steel throwing off sparks as it clanged into the far wall and spun to rest. “A pike perhaps? A mace?” A swirl of the wand launched a wooden spear and spiked ball through the air. Evie glanced at Maggie, and even she looked frightened. “Any witch worth her salt has far more powerful magic than I do. Those weapons,” she said, thrusting a finger across the room, “are useless. Your battle isn't fought in a tower or village. It's fought in here.” She thumped her chest with a closed fist. “And your weapons have been with you since the day you were born.

“The witch's weapon is fear. She aims to put as much into your heart as she can before she takes it. Either that or she'll simply turn you to stone. If that sounds preferable to death, it is not. The skin hardens to rock. The blood stops flowing. The living flesh is petrified, but the mind is not.” The dull patter of rain was the only sound in the cavernous Armory. None of the girls moved. Most stared at the discarded weapons strewn across the floor.

“The witch uses fear, but so do we. And there's nothing she fears more than love.” She continued her slow patrol, locking eyes with whichever cadet was in front of her. “She has no answer for it.
That
is the magic of a Princess of the Shield.
That
is how you defeat a witch. Whoever scares the other in the core of her heart first, wins. That's the game.”

She aimed her wand and gave it a flick. The statues began to grind across the floor into the sparring pit. Several girls screamed and covered their ears from the horrible grate of stone on stone. Finally, the statues reached the center of the pit, and the horrific sound stopped with a lingering echo.

“These statues were created to simulate real-world conditions. Our dissident witch helped us design and enchant them to feel authentic. When you step into this ring, you need only remember two things: compassion is your shield, and courage is your weapon. If you can't draw it, you'll feel hers. Know yourself and trust yourself, ladies. Let's find out who you really are.”

Evie studied the malicious grin on the witch's face. Her eyes were wide, hungrily looking down on the innocent girl.

“Cadet Magdalena, step forward, please.”

Maggie entered the pit through a gap in the rail. The floor had the slightest of grades, like a shallow bowl, sloping away to the center where the statues now rested.

“Are you frightened, Cadet?”

“Yes, Fairy Drillsergeant.”

“Wait 'til you've got to find your courage with a twelve-foot mountain witch standing above you.” She flicked her wand again and the statues came to life, a small billow of dust wafting off each. The horrible grinding of stone resumed. “
Do your best, Cadet!
” she shouted over the din. The figures moved slowly, as though submerged in quicksand. From Evie's vantage point, she could see most of the right side of Maggie's face, and there she saw fear.

“
Courage cannot coexist with self-doubt!
” shouted the Fairy Drillsergeant.

Maggie stood alone before the moving statues. She didn't move, just stared at the unfolding scene. The witch eased her shoulders back, and her cloak slipped slowly to her feet. The little girl reached out a delicate hand to stroke the frog's back.

“
What's she feeling, that little girl? Does your heart ache for her?
”

The little girl's head turned, agonizingly slowly, and the lightness in her eyes faded, replaced by an expression of pure terror, an anguished scream. The witch, meanwhile, raised her bony arms, her eyes and mouth pulling even wider until her face was a distorted mask of horror. Spider legs of fear crawled up and down Evie's body.
And I'm not even the one in the pit.