The Stepsister Scheme

swore she felt something scurry past her fingers.
    “Watch your step.” Talia’s voice sounded more distant, no longer directly beneath her.
    A few more rungs, and Danielle’s feet touched hard-packed earth.
    “Don’t move.”
    There was no light. Danielle kept one hand on the ladder. “Where are we?”
    “Far below the palace. Another twenty feet to the north, and you’d be swimming.”
    A crack of white split the darkness, widening into an arched doorway. Danielle covered her face. After so much time in this pit, the light was as bright as the afternoon sun. She blinked, trying to clear her vision. Surely the blurring of her eyes deceived her.
    “Princess Danielle. Welcome.” Beatrice Whiteshore, queen of Lorindar, gestured for Danielle to enter.
    Danielle stared. “What are you doing at the bottom of my privy?”
    “Waiting for you.” The queen stepped aside, smiling as Danielle stepped from a damp, dark underworld into a realm of luxury equal to anything she had seen in the palace.
    The room was as large as Danielle’s own chamber. The walls were whitewashed wood, trimmed with gold. The floor was polished marble. But where her own room felt open and spacious, this place was... cluttered.
    Black-lacquered bookshelves lined the wall to the left. Floor to ceiling, the shelves were packed with more books than Danielle had ever seen. On the opposite wall, weapons of every variety hung from velvet-padded hooks and pegs. There were swords, knives, bows and crossbows, spears and chains, sticks of every size, and many other items Danielle couldn’t begin to identify.
    Oil-burning lamps sat in tiny stone niches in the wall. Curved disks of polished silver reflected the light into the room, making the steel weapons gleam.
    Danielle’s attention was drawn to what looked like a flattened spindle which hung between an oversized ax and a chained, spiked club. The spindle resembled a wooden cross, with white cord wound around the long end. Talia picked it up and tested a loop of the cord. She gave a satisfied grunt, adjusted her grip on the handle, and flicked her wrist. A lead weight snapped out from the tip and thudded into the door, drawing the line behind it like a whip.
    “What is that?” Danielle asked.
    “Talia brought several unusual weapons with her when she arrived,” the queen explained.
    “It’s an assassin’s weapon, a zaraq whip,” said Talia. She drew in a bit of the line, then thrust the bare wooden tip forward like a knife. “It’s not sharp, but a strike to the throat will leave a man helpless or dead, depending on how hard you attack.”
    Danielle started to respond when a sparkle of color overhead caught her attention. A map of Lorindar covered the ceiling. The map was beautiful, a work of art to rival the mosaics in the throne room up above. Highways, rivers, and footpaths crisscrossed through woods and mountains. The palace was a clear crystal on the northeast tip of the island. The ocean shone like actual water.
    When she looked closer, Danielle could make out the individual tiles of lapis lazuli that made up the seas. The blue tiles cut a line through the center of the island, marking the great chasm. Flakes of amethyst formed a wide ring across the chasm, outlining the boundaries of Fairytown. The Colwich Swamps to the south were a kind of dark jade. Lines of blood-red pebbles marked the roads, from the Coastal Highway along the west shore to the King’s Road leading southeast, to Dragon’s Port. She followed the roads, mentally retracing the journey she and Armand had taken.
    A black shadow drifted away from the coast, near the palace. At first, Danielle took it for a spider, but closer examination showed it to be a tile of polished slate cut in the shape of a ship. “It’s moving!”
    Talia finished winding the cord back around her whip. “Probably the Sparrowhawk . They weren’t scheduled to depart for another hour, but Captain Williamson has always been an early riser. Especially when he’s angered another local husband or brother.”
    “Talia spends a great deal of time reviewing the state of the kingdom,” said the queen. She took Danielle’s arm and gently pulled her through the room. “Come, let me show you the rest of our little home beneath the castle.”
    Danielle held the pigeon with one hand as she followed the queen through an archway in the far wall. The room beyond was even larger and more magnificent than the first. Danielle stumbled over a stone lip