Stepsister(68)

And if the very fact that he was alive wasn’t bad enough, at the midday meal, which had been the usual thin and tasteless affair, Isabelle announced that she would be riding to Paris tomorrow to try to see her stepsister. Fate had to pretend to be happy about Isabelle’s wish for a reconciliation. Avara hadn’t pretended at all, but Isabelle had promised to do the morning milking before she left and to be back in time for the evening one. Plus it was Sunday, supposedly a day of rest, and so there was little Avara could say about it.

The horse, the boy, now the stepsister—was Isabelle forging the paths to them herself? Or had Chance drawn them on her map? He still had it, of course. What if he’d somehow learned how to make stronger inks? Fate shuddered to think of the chaos that rogue would unleash with such power at his fingertips.

“Three horses she brings here from the slaughter yard. Three!” Avara fumed, driving the heels of her hands into the dough so hard the table rattled.

Fate could bear no more of Madame’s tirade. “Have you seen Losca?” she asked, rising. “I have some mending for her.”

“She’s probably in the garden. Seems to be her favorite place,” Avara replied. “Now there’s a girl who causes no trouble. She’s quiet, helpful, and she eats like a bird.”

Avara said more, but Fate, already outside, didn’t hear her. Losca was indeed in the garden. She was sitting in the tomato patch, pulling fat green caterpillars off the plants and stuffing them into her mouth. Her cheeks were flushed. The neckline of her dress was soaked with sweat. She looked exhausted.

“Where have you been?” Fate asked.

Losca, her mouth full, couldn’t reply. Instead, she picked up something lying on the ground next to her and handed it to her mistress.

Fate’s eyes lit up when she saw what it was—Isabelle’s map.

“You wonderful girl! How did you manage this?” she asked.

Losca swallowed her caterpillars, then explained to Fate, in her high, harsh voice, that she’d flown to the Chateau Rigolade early that morning before the household was awake. She’d squeezed through an open bedroom window and had silently glided down to the dining room. The map had been lying open on the table there, but Chance was slumped over it, snoring.

A decanter of cognac stood on the table nearby him. Playing cards and a pile of gold coins were next to it.

Staying in her raven form, in case she had to escape quickly, she'd clasped a corner of the map in her beak, then carefully tugged it out from under Chance, inch by inch, until it was free. Chance had grumbled and twitched in his sleep, but he hadn’t woken. After rolling the map with her beak, Losca grasped it in her talons and flew back out of the window. Landing in the tomato patch hadn’t been her intention but flying for miles with the map had made her so ravenous, she’d felt faint.

“Rest, Losca, and eat your fill,” Fate said. “This fine work of yours deserves a special reward. We shall go walking in the woods tonight to see if we can find a dead thing crawling with nice, juicy maggots.”

Losca smiled and went back to snatching caterpillars.

Fate hurried to her room and spread the map out on her table. With a bent, shriveled finger, she traced Isabelle’s path. Relief washed over her face as she saw that though Isabelle had forged detours, the main path of her life was unchanged and so was its ending. Chance had not managed to alter them. The wax skull was the blue-black of a crow’s wing. In four days, five at the most, Fate estimated, it would turn as black as the grave.

Yet Fate knew that now was not the time for complacency. What if the girl actually managed to get an audience with her stepsister? What if Ella forgave her and invited her to live in the palace?

“Perhaps it’s time to hurry things along a bit,” Fate mused aloud. “Perhaps I can shorten four or five days to one.”

She sat down at her table, picked up a quill, and dipped it into an ink bottle. With sure, practiced movements, she hatched in new contours to the existing landscape. When she finished, she highlighted the hills in Doom, a murky gray, and shaded the hollows with Defeat, a purple as dark and mottled as a bruise.

As she worked on the map, Losca walked into the room. She had recovered from her exertions. Her eyes had regained their bright beadiness; her cheeks their usual pallor.

“Ah, Losca! I’m glad you’re here,” Fate said.

She explained to her that Isabelle was riding to Paris tomorrow, and that she wanted her to fly out early in the morning and lay a little groundwork for the girl’s trip. When she finished speaking, she returned to Isabelle’s map, but instead of rolling it up and putting it away, she scowled. Something was still missing.

She reached for another ink, bright red Destruction, and stippled it liberally over Isabelle’s path.

“Yes,” she said with a satisfied smile. “That should get the job done. Perhaps instead of trying to stop the girl from changing her fate, it’s time to send her rushing headlong towards it.”





Seventy-Five


The fox ran ahead of Isabelle.

Then she stopped and sat on a tree stump at the side of the road, as Isabelle, riding Nero, caught up to her.

“It was you, wasn’t it, Tanaquill?” she said, stopping Nero a few feet from the stump. Unlike Martin, he was not afraid of foxes.

The fox blinked her emerald eyes.