Stepsister(48)

“Perhaps I was too liberal with my use of Smallsoul on Avara LeBenêt’s map,” she said to herself, drumming her fingers on the table.

Smallsoul—a dusty, dry black ink—was versatile. It could prompt miserliness, or, if applied properly, shrink the soul. It was also useful in curbing the artistic impulse, but one had to be careful; a little went a long way.

Fate closed her eyes and imagined a delicate porcelain cup of steaming espresso brewed from dark, oily beans. A plate of buttery anise biscuits. A velvet-covered chair for her old bones to sink into.

Ah well, it wouldn’t be too much longer before she left Saint-Michel for good. Progress was being made. A drunken fool had burned the Maison Douleur down for her, and Isabelle and her family were now destitute. They were stuck here on the LeBenêts’ farm, which meant Fate could control the girl. Chance no longer had the upper hand.

She rose now, moved to the old stone sink, and dumped the coffee down the drain. She rinsed the cup, dried it, then walked outside. Avara and Hugo were already in the fields; Isabelle, Tavi, and their mother, too. The three women had been here a week already.

As Fate bent to admire the late-summer blooms on a straggly rosebush struggling up the wall of the house, Losca landed above her on the roof.

The crone smiled, delighted to see the sly creature. “Where have you been? Impaling field mice with that sharp beak? Snatching hatchlings from their nests? Pecking the eyes out of dead things?”

Losca shook out her feathers. With barely contained excitement, she started to chatter. The crone listened, rapt.

“Two hundred miles west of here? Volkmar’s moving quickly; that’s good. The sooner this is behind us, the better.”

Losca bobbed her head. Then chattered again.

Fate laughed. “That’s two pieces of good news! The horse is with a widow, you say? And the stables are crumbling?” The crone nodded. “She probably doesn’t have much money. A few coins should do the trick. I can’t do the deed myself—too much blood—but I know a man who can. Well done, my girl! Chance found the first piece of Isabelle’s heart, and put the boy right in her path, but the horse is one piece he won’t find. And without all three, she won’t gain Tanaquill’s help.”

She reached into her skirt pocket. “Here we are!” she said, pulling out a gangly spider. She tossed it to Losca, who greedily snapped it out of the air.

Fate started for the barn. She would ask Hugo to hitch up a cart so she could go to the village and set her plan for the horse in motion. She was pleased, certain that it would only be a matter of days, a fortnight at the most, before she was ready to leave.

Volkmar was coming closer.

And she wanted to be long gone when he arrived.





Fifty-Three


Isabelle straightened—her face to the sun—and stretched, trying to ease her aching back.

Her callused hands were as filthy as her boots. The sun had bronzed her arms and added freckles to her nose and cheeks, despite the old straw bonnet she wore. Her skirts were hitched up and knotted above her knees to keep them from dragging in the dirt.

“Isabelle, Octavia, does my hair look all right? What if a countess or duchess should pay us a visit?” Maman asked anxiously.

“Oh, I’m sure one will, Maman. After all, cabbage patches are a favorite destination of the nobility,” Tavi said.

“Your hair looks lovely, Maman. Pick up your knife now and cut some cabbages,” Isabelle said, shooting her sister a dirty look.

As she did, she noticed that Tavi, who was one row over but well behind her, was bent over a cabbage, peering at it intently.

No vegetable can be that interesting, Isabelle thought. “Tavi, what are you doing over there?” she asked, jumping over her row to her sister’s.

“Nothing!” Tavi replied quickly. “Just cutting a stem!”

But she wasn’t. She’d pressed a large outer leaf flat and was using a sharp stone to scratch equations across it.

“No wonder you’re behind!” Isabelle scolded.

Tavi hung her head. “I’m sorry, Isabelle,” she said. “I can’t help it. I’m so bored I could cry.”

“Bored is better than dead, which is what you’ll be if we don’t eat, again, because we haven’t filled the wagon,” Isabelle scolded.

Madame LeBenêt had decreed that the three women must load the farm’s large wooden wagon with cabbages every day or there would be no supper for them.

“I’m sorry,” Tavi said again.

She looked so miserable that Isabelle softened. “You and I can go without a meal or two, but not Maman. She’s getting worse.”

Both girls cast worried glances in their mother’s direction. Maman, sitting on the ground, was patting her hair, smoothing her tattered dress—the same silk gown she’d been wearing the night of the fire—and talking animatedly to the cabbage heads. The hollows in her cheeks had deepened. Her eyes were lackluster. There seemed to be more gray in her hair every day.

Since their arrival at the farm, she’d only slid deeper into the past. The few moments of clarity she’d had on the stairs of the Maison Douleur as it had gone up in flames had not come again. Isabelle blamed it on the trauma of losing their home and all their possessions, and on the hard life they now lived. But she knew there was more to it, too; Maman felt she had failed at a mother’s most important task—seeing that her daughters made good marriages—and that failure had unhinged her.