Once Upon a Beanstalk (5 page)

She dressed quickly, dragged a comb through her hair and splashing water over her face. She stumbled for the breakfast table just in time to bump into Andrew in the hall.

“Morning,” he said, smiling.

“Morning.” She yawned, and he chuckled.

“How are you feeling?”

“Better.” When he offered his arm, she took it with a smile. They walked to the dining hall together, and Penelope didn’t miss the queen’s raised eyebrow as they took their seats.

“My dear,” the queen said as Penelope sipped her orange juice. “You look tired. Did you sleep well?”

“Truthfully, I barely slept at all,” she said. Andrew was watching her, and she allowed a small smile to cross her lips.

“Really?” The queen said. She considered this, and then gave Andrew an imperceptible nod.

Penelope was baffled at the nod, or at the significance of her getting no sleep, but there was no mistaking the grin that spread across the prince’s face. Apparently she’d passed some sort of test. She glanced at Tom, who was once again seated by her glass at his own little table. He was eating blueberries with a tiny fork and knife.

“It seems there might be another wedding here in the future,” she said in a whisper. “But this time, mark my words. I am
not
doing undercover work.”

Crime
did
pay, but sometimes in the wages of a beggar, Gretel Grimm mused as she took a bite of the moldy bread in her hand. Ever since that bad job a month ago, they’d been down on their luck, and the only things her brother had been able to successfully swipe lately was somebody’s extremely unappetizing lunch.

Perhaps
unappetizing
was the wrong word.

It was disgusting.

Gretel tossed the moldy bread aside and rummaged through the basket for anything else that might taste better, but all she found was a pair of bruised peaches. She hurled one at the wall in frustration, but before the fruit hit the stones a hand shot out and snagged it. Jack, the third and newest member of their team.

He raised an eyebrow at her, lifted the peach to his lips, and took a bite.

“This is a perfectly good peach,” he said, in the kind of tone her father would have used with her if he hadn’t abandoned them to a witch in the woods a lifetime ago.

“It’s bruised,” Gretel muttered.

Jack shrugged. He ate the entire thing, bruises and all, then sucked the juice from his fingers and tossed the pit through the grate that peeked out onto the street above. It was supposed to serve as some kind of miserable excuse for a window in their current digs, but it let in more dust and street-stink than light.

Her brother Hansel slouched in a chair he’d set atop the table, his eyes level with the grate, keeping tabs on the world above. He was picking a lock with a hairpin without looking at it. He jerked when the peach pit grazed his nose.

“Watch it,” he growled at Jack, without looking down.

The TV set in the corner sputtered and fizzed, spitting occasional sound-bites into the air amid the white noise. They needed to get a decent antenna, but that would cost money.

Bored almost out of her mind, Gretel propped her chin in her hand and gazed at the screen. A reporter was discussing the recent rash of royal weddings to use a popular wedding service—R & R something or other. She remembered it from the last job—the one they’d botched.

“The exclusive service is now being approached by other clients, like the wealthy Agathar Black,” the reporter said. Gretel leaned forward to squint at the fizzy screen, wondering if she’d recognize any of the people the camera was showing. They’d done enough jobs at weddings, perhaps she would know a few of the faces.

Before she could get a good look, Hansel leaned over and switched the channel to a news report.

“Hey,” Gretel snapped. “I was watching that!”

He ignored her. He was probably just miffed about seeing the wedding stuff, seeing as how they’d screwed that job up.

With a sigh, she settled back to watch the new channel. A goblin in a dark purple suit was detailing the peace attempts between the king and the kingdom of giants, Agregga. As he gestured at the map behind him, the tips of his ears wiggled. Gretel smiled in spite of herself.

Jack tugged his chair closer to hers, his eyes on the screen with sudden interest. She scooted over a bit to give him room—he was always getting close, and she was always getting away. It was a perilous dance they’d been performing since the day they’d met. She didn’t think Hansel noticed, or he’d probably have punched Jack in the face by now. But Gretel didn’t mind it. In fact, she rather liked it, although she would rather eat rotten peaches than admit as much.

“You think they’ll come to an agreement?” Jack asked her. He was always asking her questions like that, questions about politics, questions that made her think. She couldn’t quite tell if he was trying to trip her up or if he really wanted to know what she thought.

Gretel shrugged. She didn’t know much about the nation of Agregga or giants, except that the latter were big and frequently had bad beards and worse tempers.

“I’ve been there once,” Jack said. “Agregga, I mean.” His eyes glazed over like he was remembering something, and then he shook his head.

“What was it like?”

Jack smiled briefly, the kind of smile she’d learned meant he wasn’t going to say much more on the subject. “Big.”

The program ended, and a commercial for a reputable fairy godmother service started playing. When a testimonial from a beaming girl standing with a giant pumpkin flashed across the screen, Hansel rolled his eyes and turned the TV off. “Stupid rich people, with their stupid problems,” he said aloud as he went back to his lock-picking.

The silence in the room, complete except for the
rasp rasp rasp
of the hair pin in the lock, was deafening. Gretel was bored again.

“When’s our next job?” She asked.

The lock sprang open in Hansel’s hands, and he smiled a tight, satisfied smile before turning to look at her. “Stop asking me that. I told you. We need to lay low for another week or so before we head out. Our money will last at least that long, anyway.”

“Bored, sweetheart?” Jack asked. “I can teach you to juggle.”

Gretel gave Jack a half-hearted glare. He’d only been with them two months now, and she didn’t entirely trust him, but her brother Hansel insisted that was part of his charm. “You can never completely trust a good thief,” he always said, which couldn’t be true because she trusted Hansel implicitly and he was the best lock-picker and thief in the kingdom. Jack, on the other hand ... he had a gleam in his eye and a dimpled smile that he used far too much, especially with her. Too much smiling made people suspicious. Specifically, it made Gretel suspicious. What did anybody have to be that happy about?

“Don’t call me sweetheart,” she said.

“Shhhh,” Hansel said, straightening and peering out the grate. Jack and Gretel both tensed. She suddenly couldn’t breathe. Was it the police?

After a five-second eternity of listening, Hansel leaned back in his chair. She relaxed. Jack started whistling again.

“Looks like I haven’t lost my touch,” Hansel commented aloud as he tossed the lock aside. “The locksmith said this was his toughest one yet, but I got it open in under three minutes—”

Someone kicked the door in before he could finish.

Hansel jumped up and grabbed his chair in both hands like a cage fighter. A knife appeared as if by magic between Jack’s fingers. Gretel sprang for the bed, her hands fumbling beneath the pillow for her dagger. She whirled, ready to throw it, but the cloaked figure in the doorway held up both of his gloved hands. He was unarmed.

“Please,” the man said, his voice low and sharp as steel. “There’s no need for violence.”

Hansel jerked his head, and they all lowered their weapons a fraction, but they didn’t put them down. “What do you want?”

The man surveyed them with a flick of his eyes. “I’ve heard that the finest thieves in the kingdom could be found here. The Grimm Brothers.”

“Who wants to know?”

The stranger didn’t answer that. He glanced over the room, no doubt noticing the dirty grate, the broken furniture, the threadbare blanket on the bed.

“I have a job for you,” he said. “An easy one, if you are who you say you are.”

“I never said who we were,” Hansel growled.

“Meet me tomorrow at six o’clock behind the marketplace, under the clock tower,” the stranger said. He sounded amused. “I will give you details then. Don’t be late.”

He turned to go, then stopped and reached for his waistband. The thieves lifted their weapons again, but only gold flashed in the cloaked man’s hand.

“Some of the payment,” he murmured. He flipped the coin at Jack, who snatched it out of the air without breaking eye contact with him.

“You will receive the rest upon completion of your assignment,” the man said. Then he slipped through the door and disappeared up the stone steps to the street.

Hansel started after him while Jack turned the coin over and over in his fingers, his brow furrowed with thought. Gretel stuck her dagger back under her pillow and went after Hansel, but when she reached the street her brother and the cloaked man were both gone.

~

“He disappeared into the crowd,” Hansel reported when he came back a few minutes later. “I trailed him for a while, and then he was gone—” He snapped his fingers. “He has the feet of a thief, I can tell you that.”

They all looked at the gold piece, which was still in Jack’s hand.

“It’s a lot of money,” Hansel said slowly. “Think of what we’ll be able to do with the rest of it.”

Jack’s eyebrows shot to his hairline. “You’re not seriously considering meeting him tomorrow?”

Hansel lifted the coin from Jack’s fingers and held it to the light, thoughtful. “You think it’s a trap?”

“Of course it is,” Jack said. “And this money is the bait.”

Gretel took the coin from her brother and turned it over. This was more money than they’d seen in a month. They could buy a whole store full of food, a decent TV, a better room.

“So you think we should just walk away, huh?” Hansel asked, his voice tight.

Gretel looked up from the coin. Jack and Hansel were glaring at each other.

“We’re thieves,” Jack said. “We don’t do jobs for other people. We steal what we need for ourselves, and that’s it!”

Hansel scowled. “Sometimes I think you forget your place, Jack.”

Tension filled the room, wrapping Gretel up like a giant’s fist. She looked from her brother to Jack. A muscle in Jack’s jaw twitched, but he didn’t say anything. Everybody knew that Hansel was in charge.

“All right then,” he muttered finally. “So we meet him tomorrow night.”

Gretel let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Hansel gazed steadily at Jack another moment before letting his shoulders relax.

“All right.”

~

The sun was sinking behind the rooftops of the city when they set out for the next evening. They were on foot, which Jack had complained about, but Hansel insisted they needed to keep the gold for other things like food and rent.

“We can’t run as well on foot,” Jack had said, but he’d been ignored.

Gretel accompanied them despite Jack’s protests. She carried a pocketful of stones with her, dropping one at each block they passed. She rolled them around between her fingers, feeling each one before she let it go.

“I’ve been doing jobs with you for years now,” she said as they walked. “I’m part of the team too.”

“It’s the Grimm
Brothers
,” Jack muttered.

Gretel leveled a glare poisonous enough to wither beanstalks at him. “The name—and the obvious implication that we’re a group of men only—is part of our cover, and you know it. And my last name actually
is
Grimm. What’s yours?”

Jack frowned. His past was something he didn’t talk about. He dropped the discussion.

When they reached the appointed place they stood in the shadows of a bakery, staring at the big hand of the clock tower as it clicked to the six. They were all nervous, even Hansel, although he was pretending his best not to look it. Gretel could always tell when he was frightened. Jack crouched against the wall while Hansel paced, glaring at the ground. He paused, spotting something, then bent and scooped a pebble from the ground.

“Gretel, what is this?”

She licked her lips nervously. The habit was a leftover from her childhood, and she didn’t really like to talk about her past anymore than Jack liked to talk about his. “I … er … a stone?”

Hansel’s eyes narrowed. “Are you dropping things to make a trail again? You need to stop that. We aren’t lost, you know. We aren’t children anymore. We’re in the city, and we know exactly where we are and where we’re going.”

“It’s a hard habit to break—”

She was the first one to see the soldiers streaming around the sides of the clock tower. She stumbled back with a gasp, pointing. Both boys stepped forward, fumbling for the knives at their belts. The soldiers kept coming, at least a dozen of them.

Realizing a fight was useless, they turned together to run, but the clatter of hoof beats behind them and the clank of metal armor signaled another troop.

Jack shoved Gretel behind him as the soldiers surrounded them. Hands grabbed them, holding them fast, twisting their arms behind their backs. Hansel struggled until one of the soldiers hit him across the face with his rifle, and Gretel closed her eyes as her brother fell to his knees. One soldier seized him in a chokehold while another trained a rifle on him.

They waited.

A man on a white horse appeared from behind the clock tower, his cloak thrown back to reveal his face. A scar ran from his left eye to his chin. He smiled mirthlessly, and Gretel recognized him. It was the cloaked stranger from the day before.

Jack had been right.

It was a trap.

Hansel’s face turned a mottled red. He struggled against the soldiers holding him, spitting with fury. “You set us up. You fed us lies! If I ever get free, I’ll cut out your lying tongue!”