The Stepsister Scheme

flipping forward over his head. When he was halfway down, one of his paws slipped and he tumbled through the air, hitting the ground next to Danielle.
    Danielle knelt to check on him. “Are you all right?”
    The rat emitted a short squeak and began to clean his whiskers. He seemed unhurt, if a bit dusty.
    “Hold still,” Danielle said as she climbed onto the rat’s back. She drew the extra loop over her waist as Talia had done, then grabbed the harness in front of the shoulders. The rat’s back pressed uncomfortably against the bulge of her stomach. “I’m ready. Take me to Talia.”
    Riding a rat was very different from riding an aviar. Talia’s makeshift harness held her securely to the rat’s back, which was an improvement over the winged horses. But with Wind, Danielle had never worried that her mount would suddenly lose her grip on the sky. The rat had already fallen once. She kept herself as still as she could.
    The worst point was when a millipede the size of her leg crawled onto one of the enormous bolts securing the beam to the stone. Fortunately, the rat let out a long, broken squeak, and the millipede backed down. Magic sword or no, Danielle wasn’t ready to battle giant insects while mounted on ratback.
    “Give me your hand,” said Talia.
    Danielle reached up, and Talia helped pull her and the rat onto a horizontal beam. Talia had taken out a glass bottle, which she shook vigorously. The water brightened into the same blue light Danielle had seen in the pool below.
    “Handy stuff,” Talia said. She handed the bottle to Danielle and began untying her whip from the rat. “The more you stir it up, the brighter it gets. I wouldn’t want to drink it, though.”
    Like the walls, the space between the wooden ceiling and the stone above was full of cobwebs and dirt and dead bugs. Thick planks were nailed to the beams below. Dried plaster welled between the cracks like whitecapped waves frozen in winter.
    Danielle hopped onto one of the planks. The ceiling held her weight easily. “The common room is this way.”
    They walked in silence, with Danielle occasionally giving the bottle another shake to renew the light. Her clothes were already damp with sweat, thanks to the warm, musty air. The extra weight of pregnancy didn’t help either. Such a tiny thing, but her lower back already ached.
    She kept one hand on her sword as they walked. Distance was impossible to judge, shrunken as they were with no landmarks. How far did they need to walk?
    She turned back to the rat and whispered, “Take us to the common room.”
    The rat chittered and tilted his head. He turned around, obviously confused. Of course. He wouldn’t know what the common room was.
    “The sleeping girl in the glass box,” Danielle said. “Take us to her.”
    The rat darted ahead, leading them through a narrow gap above the junction of three support beams. Danielle held her breath as she clawed her way past dusty cobwebs.
    “Ah, the glamorous life of a princess,” Talia said, combing web from her hair. “I can see why your stepsisters were so envious.”
    Danielle grinned and hopped onto the ceiling boards on the other side.
    “So how do we get down?” Talia asked. “I watched the rat climb down to get you, and I don’t think I want to try that ride.”
    The rat was already scrambling over the next beam, running toward the far end of the room. A faint dripping echoed through the cramped space as they passed another pipe.
    They climbed over four more beams before reaching the end of the room. The rat hurried ahead, stopping in front of a protrusion of square-cut stones. “The fireplace,” Danielle said. “That must be the chimney.”
    She turned around, trying to orient herself. If the fireplace was there—She ran to the left, where the chimney disappeared into the rough rock of the cave, presumably carrying the smoke and heat to a nearby crack in the stone. “Snow should be right beneath us.”
    The rat squeaked and darted to a spot near the corner of the chimney. Danielle followed. As she approached, the planks grew grittier where bits of plaster had crumbled.
    “It’s probably been weakened from the heat of the fireplace.” Talia drew her knife and jabbed it between the planks, gouging a chunk the size of her fist. “The plaster is dry and brittle all through here.”
    Danielle covered the glowing bottle. A thin crack of light shone from one side of the chimney, where some of the plaster had fallen away. The