Once Upon a Beanstalk (6 page)

“Calm yourself, thief,” the man said. To the soldiers he snapped, “Unhand them.”

The soldiers pushed them into the dirt.

Gretel stared at the dust between her fingers, not daring to look up, wondering if each breath she took would be her last. Would the man on the horse order his men to draw their swords? Fire their rifles? But beside her, Jack stared calmly at their captor.

“What do you want with us?” He asked.

“I am called Brellek,” the man said. “I am the captain of the king’s guard, and ... well, I need your help.”

“Our help?” Hansel bit out. “Forget it. You can rot forever in the darkest pit in the underworld for all I care. We’ll never help you, you lying dog.”

Brellek’s mouth tightened, but he didn’t look surprised. “Put them in the dungeon to await trial, then,” he said to the soldiers.

“Wait,” Jack said, his voice ringing loudly in the stillness.

The soldiers paused. The captain lifted an eyebrow. Hansel and Gretel both looked at the thief in shock, but he was ignoring them. He stepped forward. “What do you want us to do?”

“Jack,” Hansel hissed.

“If I’m being given the choice of a job for the king or a hanging, I’ll take the job.” Jack crossed his arms and jerked his chin at Brellek. “So tell me. What do you want us to do?”

“
Jack.
” Hansel spoke louder this time, fury contorting his face. “Whatever you’re doing, stop it. We don’t make deals with the enemy, and this man is most certainly our enemy!”

“Your friend is wise,” the captain remarked, staring at a spot above Hansel’s head as he spoke. “You’d do well to listen to him, Hansel Grimm, because he might just save your sorry neck from the hangman’s noose if he cooperates with us.”

At Hansel’s shocked look, Brellek grunted. “Yes, I know who you are—the infamous Grimm Brothers. I’ve had spies looking for you for days now, although when I found your hovel I wasn’t sure. I needed my agent here to verify who you were.” He gestured to a young woman, who stepped from behind the tower. Gretel recognized her—she’d been at their last heist. One of the bridesmaids.

“And yes,” Brellek added. “You will hang if you refuse to help me.”

Gretel’s mouth felt dry as a desert as she tried to swallow. Hansel would be angry if she said anything, but ... she definitely didn’t want to die. “I will help you too.” Her voice rang clearly in the stillness.

Jack went absolutely still at her words, but he didn’t turn his gaze from Brellek’s.

Hansel flinched as if he’d been struck. “She’s not with us,” he said quickly, desperately. “She is nothing, just a girl we know—”

“I know all about your sister too,” Brellek said. “Gretel Grimm. She steals alongside you, and her knife-throwing skills are legendary in the taverns.”

Hansel’s shoulders sagged. He was defeated. He couldn’t defend his sister, and his partner had deserted him. “All right,” he gritted out. “Fine. We’ll do your wretched job, whatever it is, but only because I want to save my sister.”

Jack let out a shivery sigh of relief through his teeth.

“Not here,” Brellek said. He glanced at the guards. “Bring them—we’ll talk indoors.”

~

“Have you heard of the Gingerbread Man?” Brellek asked.

They were locked up in a room beneath the castle. Guards stood at the doors, and the windows were locked and barred, but the thieves were allowed to roam freely around the room, at least, and they’d been fed a decent meal. Hansel stood stone-faced by one of the windows, his back to the rest of them, but Gretel and Jack pulled up chairs close to the captain of the guard and listened intently.

“The notorious crime boss?” Jack asked.

“He’s also a giant,” Brellek said. “His real name is Agathar Black, and he’s a criminal, yes. Three days ago his men kidnapped King Lionel’s youngest daughter during her tennis lesson. He is holding her for ransom, and we believe it’s in order to disrupt the peace negotiations with Agregga.”

“I haven’t heard a word of this,” Gretel said, shocked. “The Princess Alana has been kidnapped?”

Hansel swung around and gave her a look. He seemed surprised that she even knew the princess’s name, which Gretel found insulting. She read the newspapers when she could snatch them, and she paid some attention to current events. She wasn’t completely oblivious to the politics of her country. Apparently her brother thought she didn’t even keep her eyes open when they were running all over the countryside.

Jack rubbed his hand across his forehead. “What does this have to do with us?”

Brellek sighed. “The king is afraid that a raid on Black’s facilities will look bad in the peace negotiations. This treaty has been twenty years in the making, and he can’t afford to botch it up now. But he isn’t about to let his daughter remain in the clutches of that slime ball, either. He needs someone to steal her back—quietly—so the negotiations can proceed as planned. But my men specialize in brute force, not pick-pocketing. That’s where you three come in.”

“You want us to steal back the princess from the Gingerbread Man? From Agathar Black?” Hansel shook his head and laughed. “What kind of
stupid
do you think we are? That’s a suicide mission—”

“We said we’d do it,” Jack interrupted.

Hansel’s jaw flexed, but he just turned back to the window.

“Excellent,” Brellek said.

~

Later, the thieves huddled over the map of Agathar Black’s mansion while Brellek sat with his back against the wall and his boots propped on the windowsill, never taking his eyes off them as he smoked his pipe.

They were discussing plans, and everyone—including Hansel—was cooperating, but the tension between the boys was so taut Gretel could’ve danced across it like a tightrope.

“We probably won’t be able to get in
through
the windows with the beanstalks,” Jack said, tapping the map. “Because according to this he keeps an archer posted there at all times. We’d be picked off like rabbits from above. Any ideas, Hansel?”

“You’re an idiot,” Hansel hissed at him under his breath. “What were you thinking, making a deal with the devil like that? You should have let me handle it. We could have broken our way out of prison and been scot-free by now!”

“I’m thinking disguises.” Jack continued as though Hansel hadn’t just spoken at all. “Dressed as servants, perhaps. Handymen. Something. Once we’re inside, we can pull a Grimm Special and escape from the tower with a beanstalk after we’ve overpowered the guards. They won’t be expecting an attack from inside, so we might be able to do it.”

An idea wiggled in the back of Gretel’s mind. There was
something
she was supposed to be remembering ... something was going on this weekend. She shifted in her chair, shooting a glance from Hansel’s irate expression to Jack’s deadly calm one.

“We could have pulled the Grimm Special here instead,” Hansel whispered. “Gone out through the tower windows—”

“I can hear you, you know,” Brellek said without taking the pipe out of his mouth.

Hansel shot him a glare, but he clamped his lips shut. Jack raised both eyebrows at the captain of the guard’s comment, but he didn’t look up from the map.

“Any ideas, Gretel?”

She blinked. “Me?”

“Why would she have an idea?” Hansel snapped at him. “She’s not the brains of this operation, Jack. And you’re not the leader, I might add.”

“Shove it, Hansel,” Gretel said. “I have ideas. The beans out the window—the
Grimm Special?
That was originally my idea.”

“Fine, then. Tell us the plan. Enlighten us all with your brilliance, little sister.”

Unfortunately, Gretel realized too late that she’d spoken a little hastily. Her mind was blank as an ugly stepsister’s dance card. She cleared her throat. “Well …”

Jack and Hansel waited. Brellek watched them all, smoke drifting from his nostrils like steam from a tea kettle. The clock on the wall ticked, and the TV in the corner fizzed, spitting little bites of music and sound into the silence.

“So much for that,” Hansel said to Jack with a roll of his eyes. “I told you—”

The TV.
A memory flashed across her mind, and she sat up straight, tapping the table for their attention. “Wait a second. I do have an idea.” She talked fast as the thoughts filled her mind and spilled out her lips. “Agathar Black is getting married this weekend—it’s been in the news all week. He’s spending buckets of money, hiring the finest royal wedding service in the kingdom, the whole shebang.”

Hansel shrugged as if to say
so what
, but Jack braced his elbows on his knees and leaned forward, fixing his eyes on hers. “Go on.”

“It will be chaos. You know how weddings are. Guests everywhere, hired help—we can sneak in without anybody batting an eye. We could even pretend we’re part of the hired staff. There’ll be dozens, perhaps hundreds of new faces wandering around.”

Most of their heists were during weddings for a reason. There was no better time to take something from under a person’s nose than when their attention was diverted by stressful, crazy, or chaotic events. And what was one of the most important, stressful, and crazy days of a person’s life?

“Brilliant,” Jack said.

“I don’t like it,” Hansel grumbled.

From the corner, Brellek spoke. “It’s the best idea I’ve heard all day. Good thinking, thief.”

~

Gretel adjusted the microphone in her ear for the third time as they crouched in the wagon at the edge of Agathar Black’s property, earning a scowl from Hansel. Jack and Brellek were off talking out of earshot, and she was left with jumpy Hansel, who was so tense he snapped every time she breathed wrong.

“Stop that,” he said, slapping at her hand. “You’re going to draw attention to it if you keep fiddling. Just leave it alone.”

She dropped her hand, muttering under her breath about annoying older brothers. The piece chaffed against her skin, and it felt like it was about to fall out. Since most operatives were grown men, there wasn’t one in her size. Plus the hot sun was beating down on her head like the heat from a furnace, making the black jumpsuit she wore under her costume itch against her skin as the sweat from her arms and back soaked into it.

Unfortunately, despite all the equipment, none of them were armed with so much as a butter knife. Agathar Black had metal detectors on all the doors. She already missed her dagger.

Their disguise? Musicians for the wedding. Gretel was wearing a plain black evening gown. Hansel and Jack wore tuxes. It was a new look for them both—and she had to admit she rather liked it on Jack. He cleaned up nice. Gretel eyed him from the distance, watching as Brellek reached out and put one hand on his shoulder.

She frowned. That seemed awfully ... friendly. She thought Brellek was the enemy?

“You got quiet all of a sudden,” Hansel said, startling her. “What are you looking at?”

She whirled to face him, her heart thudding. Should she tell him what she’d seen? “I, er…”

Footsteps crunched on the ground behind her. Jack and Brellek were back. She fell silent.

“Remember,” Brellek said as he reached them. “Get in, get the princess, and get out. Nothing fancy. No extracurricular activities—and by that I mean
no stealing
. In case you think I’m joking, we’ll be checking your pockets afterward.”

Hansel snorted with derision, but Jack only nodded. “We understand.”

“Maybe we should go over the plan again,” Brellek said.

“It’s really going to be very simple,” Jack said. “We ride in with the rest of the wedding people, ditch them to search for Princess Alana, free her, overpower the archer at the windows, and slip out on a beanstalk from the beans in Gretel’s pocket. Your men will cover us from the trees while we cross the moat. Easy as kissing a frog.”

“What if something goes wrong?” Brellek said, frowning.

“Relax,” Hansel drawled, smiling his most crooked smile. “We’re professionals.”

That thought didn’t seem to give Brellek any comfort, but he didn’t comment further. He just pulled out his pipe and stuck it between his teeth with a grunt.

They waited by the road until the wedding planner’s vans pulled up. A short, wiry man wearing a crooked hat and a shrewd expression waved to them through the windshield, and Brellek nodded. “That’s Rumpel,” he said. “Just follow him—he’s your ticket inside.”

The thieves hopped into the back of the last van in the wedding planner’s caravan, and the vehicles pulled away. Gretel peered through the window at the captain of the guard. Brellek watched them placidly, smoke drifting up from his mouth. He shrunk smaller and smaller in the distance until they turned a corner and lost sight of him completely.

Jack and Hansel settled on the floor of the van. Gretel stayed by the window, her stomach suddenly tied up in knots. She stared at the landscape rattling past. Thorn bushes grew everywhere, big snarls of prickles and scaly leaves that cast shadows across the road and blocked out the sun. In the distance, Gretel could see Agathar Black’s mansion.

As they got closer, the details became clearer—gaudy windows overlooked a lip of land bordered by a moat. A metal drawbridge studded with spikes protruded from the wall like a deadly tongue waiting to snap them up. She saw an archer at one of the windows looking out, and in the moat a stray ripple betrayed the presence of crocodiles. Something that could kill her seemed to be lurking everywhere she looked.

This was the most dangerous heist they’d ever attempted. Gretel’s chest grew tight with sudden terror, and her hands began to sweat.

Hansel seemed to be having similar thoughts. “If we screw this up, we’re dead,” he muttered, his eyes tracing the spikes on the moat. “Why are we doing this again?”

“Because if we refuse to do it, we’re dead,” Jack said. He was the only calm one.

“I’ve heard stories about this guy,” Hansel continued. “He kills his enemies, hangs their bodies on the wall to rot, and when the sun has bleached the bones white as flour he grinds them up and has his servants bake them into his bread. He literally
eats
the people who piss him off, Jack.”