The School for Good and Evil 3-book Collection: The Camelot Years (Books 4- 6)

His expression changed. “Foxwood’s been under attack by a band of trolls, though. Dad’s a footman for the king; troll set fire to his carriage and snapped his arm in two. Can’t work anymore, so I’ve been sending my wages home so he can feed my mum and sisters. No one knows who these trolls work for. Mum wrote, asking if Camelot was going to intervene. Lots of kingdoms asking the same question, she says.” He glanced hopefully at the young king.

Tedros stood straighter. “I’m calling a summit.”

The guard stared at him. “A summit?”

“Get all our allies together and build an army,” Tedros said authoritatively. “That’s what kings do.”

“Oh.” The hope went out of the guard’s eyes. “And here I grew up with legends that your dad stormed into battle bare-chested and slayed villains himself,” he said. “Made-up stories, I bet. He must have called summits too. Can’t always trust a pen to tell the truth, can you?”

Tedros looked at him. But they were at the end of the stairway now. The guard pointed down a long dark hall. “Prison’s this way, Your Highness.”

“I’ll go on my own,” said Tedros.

“But I should take you—”

“My meeting with the prisoners is a private one, guard,” said Tedros, eager to be alone again. “You may return to your post.”

The guard hesitated. “Are you sur—”

“Go,” said Tedros sharply. “Close the door behind you. That’s an order.”

The guard didn’t flinch. “As you wish.”

Tedros watched him go—

“Guard?”

The man turned.

“What’s your name?” Tedros asked.

The guard looked surprised. “It’s Kei, Your Highness.”

Tedros gazed right at him. “I promise to make your home safe again, Kei.”

Kei smiled. “I’ll tell my mum, Your Highness. Kings don’t often make promises they can’t keep.”

Tedros watched him hustle back upstairs. He waited until he heard the echo of a heavy door closing and the thud of stone.

Then the young king stepped off the staircase and moved into the hall, the glint of his crown fading into darkness.

Tedros thought the advisors might be dead.

Moving through the stale dungeon, he’d cast his gold fingerglow on empty cell after empty cell, seeing nothing but mold-speckled walls, desiccated roaches, and rows of thick iron bars. Rulers didn’t make a habit of trapping criminals inside the bowels of their own castles, but in most kingdoms, Good or Evil, town jails were overcrowded, unsecured, and rife with corruption. (Indeed, the one and only time the Sheriff of Nottingham caught Robin Hood, the rogue escaped the Sheriff’s prison.) Kings and queens had learned to house their most significant enemies under their own roofs. But as Tedros approached the last cell, he couldn’t hear a peep from the advisors, not a word or a breath or a snore. Had something happened to—

“Long live the So-Called King,” sang a low, smoky voice.

“Long live the Cowardly Lion,” sang a high, jingly voice.

“Long live the Worthless Son,” sang a hissy third.

Tedros took a deep breath, pausing in front of the pitch-dark cell.

Not dead after all.

He lifted his glow, lighting up the inside.

Three old women leered back at him, each an identical replica of the other. Bristly salt-and-pepper hair hung down to their waists, their stick-thin legs jutting out of tattered gray tunics. Their skin was shriveled and coppery, their necks and faces elongated with high foreheads, slim noses, match-thin lips, and almond-shaped eyes. Tedros thought they looked like pale versions of the mandrill monkeys that defiled his coronation.

“A few more wrinkles since the last time you saw us,” said the low-voiced one. “Alpa, especially.”

“If anyone’s lost their looks, it’s you, Bethna,” said the high-voiced one. “Besides, we didn’t see much of the young prince before he went off to school. Avoided us like poison once we became his father’s advisors. Omeida, especially.”

“Maybe because I’m the prettiest,” said the hissy one. “Our little Tedros doesn’t like pretty girls. Just look at his princess. Got a good peek at her when she came to the castle.”

“We all did,” said Bethna.

“Before we were illegally jailed by that hideous knight,” Alpa scorned.

“Proof Tedros is his mother’s son, at least,” rasped Omeida. “They share poor taste in mates.”

The three hags cackled.

Tedros kept his cool. He’d had experience with covens trying to rile him up.

“Reason I avoided you when I was younger is because I didn’t trust you,” he said glacially. “For years, you’d been standing on stoops in Camelot’s square, preaching against my father. You called him Merlin’s puppet. You called my mother a two-faced tramp. You demanded Excalibur be returned to the stone and a new test held to find the ‘one true king.’ The king so strong and powerful he would reign forever. The king who would make Camelot great again.” Heat seared Tedros’ cheeks. “No one listened to you. Everyone knew Camelot was already great because of its king. Because of my father. No one thought of the three Mistral Sisters as anything other than demented, delusional freaks.”

Bethna gripped the bars, gnashing uneven teeth. “Then why did your father bring us here?”

“Because after my mother and Merlin left him, he became a paranoid drunk,” Tedros retorted. “He started to trust the Royal Rot. And you. He fired all his old counselors, thinking they were spies for my mother. And he brought you into his castle as his advisors because some of the things you’d preached on your stoop had come true. He began to think that you could help him become that one true king you’d spoken of. A king of infinite power who could live forever. But instead, you used him and his kingdom and watched both die. Well, now it’s my turn to watch you do the same.”

Alpa exhaled, looking bored. “Just like his mother, isn’t he?”

“Only sees what he wants to see,” said Bethna.

“Never sees the whole picture,” said Omeida.

“If only he’d listened more closely to our stoop talks,” said Alpa.

“Like his father did,” said Bethna.

“Then he wouldn’t be in this predicament, would he?” said Omeida.

Tedros had enough. “I’ve seen the ledgers. The ‘Camelot Beautiful’ funds are a fraud. You took all our gold and hid it somewhere.”

“Check our pockets,” Alpa quipped.

“Give us a good frisk,” Bethna said.

“Tee hee,” Omeida giggled.

Tedros felt his ears smoldering. “If you don’t tell me where you hid it, I’ll—”

“Shouldn’t you be asking Lady Gremlaine?” Alpa mused. “She’s the one up there while we’ve been down here minding our own business. Ask her.”

“If you can find her,” said Bethna.

Her sisters snickered.

Tedros furrowed. They knew his steward had left the castle? How? She’d only been gone a few hours—

Unless …

Kei had said Lady Gremlaine had the only other key to the prison. Had she been secretly in cahoots with these three this whole time? Had she deliberately been stonewalling Tedros meeting them? It was such an obvious idea—the advisors were the ones who’d brought her back to the castle—yet he’d never considered it until now. Lady Gremlaine had been so loyal to Camelot these past six months. Had his mother been right to mistrust Lady Gremlaine all this time? He had to find out what happened between his mother and his steward when his father was alive. …

“See that, Bethna? He’s thinking,” Alpa said.

“Like a candle without a flame,” Bethna piped.

“Should stick to what he’s good at,” Omeida chipped in.

“What’s that?” said Alpa quizzically.

“Nothing,” said Omeida.

The trio tittered.

“Shut up,” Tedros barked. “You set up the Camelot Beautiful fund long before Lady Gremlaine returned to the castle. You gave the orders to hide Camelot’s money in that fund. And you know exactly where that money went.”

“Indeed,” said Alpa, slouched against the bars, biting her blackened nails. “To an endeavor far beyond the comprehension of your puny pea brain.”

Tedros grabbed her by the throat through the bars, his fingers pressing into her larynx. “Tell me or I’ll kill you.”

“Touchy touchy,” Alpa wheezed.

“Even that ugly knight behaved better,” sneered Bethna, sidling beside her.

“Go ahead. Kill all of us,” said Omeida, flanking Alpa’s other side. “But it would be a very poor decision. Things are just beginning, little boy.”

“At the Four Point, the real story begins,” said Alpa.

“Four Point?” Tedros said urgently. “What about the Four Point—”

“You’ll need us when he comes,” said Bethna.

“Who? Your White Knight?” Tedros mocked. “In six months, no one has tried to rescue you. No loyal spies have tried to kill me. No one has made a peep over your arrest. So tell me, Sisters Freaks, who is coming that will make me need you?”

The sisters leaned in, grinning. “The Snake,” they hissed.

It hit Tedros like a blow to the chest. He let go of Alpa’s throat, fumbling for words: “Y-y-you know who he is—”

“Your father did too,” Alpa offered.

“That’s why he gave you your test,” said Bethna.

“A test you failed,” Omeida cracked.

They hewed together, like a three-headed serpent.

“War is coming, little boy,” Alpa crowed.

“War between the Lion and the Snake,” said Bethna.

“The winner will be the one true king,” Omeida added.

They jammed their faces between bars: “The one with Arthur’s blood.”

Tedros felt nauseous, his heart sucked into his throat. It was what the Lady of the Lake had told Sophie. The same two words.

“I don’t believe you,” he said, faking calm. “No one has Arthur’s blood besides me.”

“The Snake does,” Alpa corrected.

“You’re lying,” Tedros attacked.

Bethna yawned. “Only a half-wit confuses lying with the withholding of information.”

“Tell me, then,” Tedros pressured. “Tell me who the Snake is.”

“Tell you where the money is. Tell you who the Snake is. Tell tell tell tell,” Alpa mimicked.

“Besides, it’s obvious,” Bethna taunted.

“Staring at you right in the face,” said Alpa.

“Only you don’t want to see it,” said Omeida.

“Should we spoonfeed the poor boy?” Bethna simpered to her sisters.

“Only if he feeds us better food,” Alpa proposed, picking up a brass cup of murky water off a rusty tray in the corner of the cell. She shunted the tray towards Tedros under the cell door. It had a bowl of gruel crawling with ants.

“Done,” said Tedros.

“Ham and mashed potatoes?” said Alpa, wide-eyed.

“Done.”

“Chicken livers and wine?” said Bethna, hopefully.

“Done.”

“Caviar and rampion salad?” said Omeida, breathless.

“Done, done, done. You have my word,” Tedros hurried, his face glowing red. “Tell me who the Snake is. Now.”

“Tell him, Alpa,” Bethna sighed.

Alpa sipped her water, eyes on Tedros. Then she stalked towards him, step by step. “Should have just asked your mousy old mum. She knows everything no matter how dumb she plays,” she crooned, glaring hard. “But a deal is a deal, little boy. You want to know who has Arthur’s blood? Then listen closely. …”

She slipped her face through the cell bars, her nose almost touching his. “The Snake’s name is …”

She splashed her dirty water in his face. “Ring a king a bees will sting so dance a timba tumba!”

Her sisters screeched laughter.

“Fools,” Tedros spat, wiping his face. “You’re as crackbrained as you were when you were raving on your stoops for coins. Let’s see how you do with no food for a week!” He kicked the tray back under the bars, sending bowl and gruel flying and the women cowering. Vibrating with anger, Tedros turned for the stairs. “No one in this world has my father’s blood but me. You hear me? No one! No uncle or brother or sister—”

“Or son?”

Tedros stopped dead in his tracks. He whirled back towards the cell, staring into its dark, empty silence.

“What did you say?” he breathed.

He lit up the cell with his glow, but the sisters had flattened against opposing walls with catlike smiles.

“What did you say!” he shouted.

“Bush banana poo the panda!” sang Alpa.

The three Mistrals danced like hags around a cauldron. “Bush banana poo the panda!”

Tedros slammed the bars, yanking at the door, trying to get inside. “WHAT DID YOU SAY!”

But the three sisters just hopped and sniggered as Tedros ripped at their door the way he had his father’s sword until at last he showed his teeth through the bars—

“I’m going to kill the Snake,” he vowed. “And then I’m going to kill you.”

He raged down the hall and up the stairs. Breathing fire, Tedros threw his weight against the stone door—

It didn’t move.

“Kei!”

He wasn’t waiting to build an army. He wasn’t waiting for summits or wizards to be a king. He wasn’t waiting for anything anymore. He’d ride to the Four Point right now and find this Snake.

Blood pumping, Tedros pummeled the door, drowning out the cackles from the dungeons below.

Tonight the Lion would roar.

17

SOPHIE

The Map Room

Sophie should have been thinking about the Snake.

The Snake that had Arthur’s blood. The Snake that had terrorized the Woods. The Snake that had killed their friend and would kill them next.

And yet, she couldn’t stop thinking about hydrangeas.

“The whole castle’s crawling with them,” she whispered to Agatha, nodding at the thousands of pom-pom-shaped flowers in pink, purple, and yellow blanketing every inch of Castle Jolie. “I loathe hydrangeas, Aggie. They look like human brains. Just being around them makes me faint—”

“Shhh!” Agatha snapped, then kept on whispering to Nicola.

Sophie stewed as the chain gang pulled her along, deeper into the royal castle, the young pirate named Thiago with the tattoos around his eyes leading them on foot. The other pirates had remained outside the castle on their horses, sneering down at the crew as they shambled through the open doors like dead men walking to the gallows. Sophie watched the boys deliver each kid a demeaning kick in the bum—Hester, Anadil, Dot, Hort, Bogden, Willam. … But when it came Sophie’s turn, sunburnt Wesley simply smirked and gave her a frightening little hisssss.

Which made it all the more foolish that with the Snake moments away, Sophie was offended by flowers. But it wasn’t really the hydrangeas that were bothering her, though she did hate everything about this castle: its birthday-cake colors, its cloying, candy-cane scent, its treacly portraits of the royal children frolicking with dogs, and its endless loop of music, playing Jaunt Jolie’s annoyingly catchy anthem through flowered walls (“Tipple Top, Joy and Jaunt / Come and Be Jolie!”). No, the real reason Sophie was annoyed was because she’d just saved everyone’s noses in the pavilion with her brave performance and no one seemed to care—especially Agatha and Nicola, who kept whispering to each other like Flopsy and Mopsy.

Sophie couldn’t fault Agatha for having another friend. Aggie was perfectly free to consort with whoever she pleased, including a first-year Reader with a bad attitude.

So why, then, did Sophie feel so upset?

She’d been so distracted by her reunion with Agatha and all the action of their new quest that she hadn’t noticed a creeping emptiness returning—the same emptiness that had made her impatient with her students at school, increasingly bored with her Dean’s duties, and eager to comb Camelot’s tabloids for sordid rumors about its new king.

And yet, Sophie hadn’t been able to put a finger on why she felt this way.

She was happy being Dean, wasn’t she? That was the Ever After she’d worked so hard to find and at the end of this quest she’d go right back to it, just like Agatha would go back to a wedding and a crown. Yet unlike Agatha, Sophie would have no one by her side … well, at least not the way that Agatha had Tedros.

But that was fine with her. Truly. She might flirt with delectable Everboys at parties and ogle a few of her own sultry Neverboys during school assemblies, but she’d learned her lesson with Tedros and Rafal. No boy could ever really understand her. She was too strong and empowered and … complicated. Boys always wanted her to change and she didn’t want to change. Not when she’d finally figured herself out. She’d be far better off staying out of that swamp for a long, long time.

No, the only person Sophie needed was Agatha. Agatha understood her. Agatha balanced her. Agatha didn’t expect her to change. Which is why Sophie had been so happy these past few days with her best friend back in her life. But seeing Agatha confide in this Nicola girl the way Agatha had once confided in her made Sophie realize how fragile this happiness was.

It was ironic, really. Agatha would have been happy living in Gavaldon forever with Sophie. But it was Sophie who had been determined to leave and find her own life.

Now it was Agatha who had her own life.

A life that didn’t depend on Sophie anymore.

She heard Nicola whisper her name and Sophie promptly goosed Agatha with her knee: “Are you two talking about me?”

Agatha scowled. “We’re talking about our plan to fight the Snake!”

“So now I’m not good enough to help you plan?”

“I’ll tell you the plan if you’re quiet,” Nicola said.

“See how she talks to me?” Sophie mewled to Agatha.

“Because you’re acting like a mopstick,” Agatha scolded.

“You ungrateful Brutus. Not one word about how clever I was out there defusing those vile men, not one word of appreciation—”

“Sorry, we’ve been busy planning how not to die—”

“I remember when instead of gossiping about me with first years, it was me and you who made plans!”

“You are the plan, you idiot!”

“What?” Sophie blurted loudly.

The chain yanked to a halt. Slowly the two girls looked up to see Thiago glaring daggers at them from the head of the line.

Dark silence fell over the hall, punctured by gay sounds of singing: “Tipple Top, Joy and Jaunt—”

The pirate stabbed his sword into a flowered wall and the music squawked and petered out. He gave the girls a last glower of warning and the death march resumed.

Agatha and Nicola stared Sophie down.

Sophie reddened. If she was indeed the team’s plan to fight the Snake, now she’d have to do it without knowing what the plan was.

Steeling herself, she followed the line into the Royal Keep, the king and queen’s private residence, as evidenced by the preponderance of children’s bedrooms, cozy sitting rooms, and opulent bathrooms. Sophie peeked in, unnerved by an unmade bed, an open wine bottle in one of the sitting rooms, a wooden toothbrush askew by the sink. Signs of life but no one living there.

At the front of the line, Hester coughed in surprise, snagging the chain.

Sophie followed her eyes, as did everyone else—

The library was coming into view, a two-floor yellow-and-pink rotunda cased in glass. Inside the library, three giant steel cages hung from the high ceiling, each packed to the brim with maids, guards, stewards, and members of the royal family. Two shirtless teen pirates, one thin and dark, the other hoggish with pig-colored skin, were perched on the railing of the second floor. They took turns kicking the cages as hard as they could and watched them swing back and forth, tossing all the people inside like marbles while they screamed and cried, though Sophie couldn’t hear any of it through the thick glass.

The pirates looked bored.

As one of them punted a cage, Sophie saw the King of Jaunt Jolie tumbling inside it, his royal robes slashed and stained, his crown-points speared with rotted fruit, as he tried to grip onto two bawling boys—the same little boys Sophie had seen playing with the dog in the foyer painting. (The dog was cowering beneath a woman’s blue gown in another cage, anticipating the next kick.)

The line pulled Sophie forward and the library started to recede from view. Through the glass she met the eyes of the king, who spotted her as his cage stopped swinging. His eyes watered as he clasped his hands, appealing to her for help, his tear-stained boys tucked at his sides. Sophie could only gawk back like a tourist in a sadistic museum being pulled to the next display.

This man’s wife has been killed for satchels of gold, she thought, sickly. Were these his boys? Sophie felt her own eyes grow wet. His now-motherless boys? Sophie thought of Honora’s two young sons, just like these, who her father, Stefan, loved so much—

Agatha elbowed her and Sophie saw her best friend nodding subtly at the next cage about to be kicked. The one with the dog cowering beneath the woman in the blue gown. Only now Sophie got a good look at the woman’s petrified face and gasped. It was the same face they’d seen on that poster in the pavilion.

The one stamped EXECUTED.

The Queen of Jaunt Jolie was alive?

Astonished, Sophie and Agatha watched the queen try valiantly to reach through her cage bars and touch her children and husband as their cage swung past—

The chain jerked Sophie and Agatha forward and the library was out of sight.

Dragged ahead, Sophie thought back to the Lady of the Lake, who’d looked just as tortured as the Queen of Jaunt Jolie. The Snake could have killed the sorceress in Avalon, but instead he’d drained her magic and left her feckless and afraid. He could have killed this queen too, but instead he peddled news of her death. And he could have left Avalon without a trace, but instead he’d left that map in Chaddick’s hands to taunt them. …

He’s always one step ahead. Like Evelyn Sader and Rafal used to be, Sophie thought. And this one plays games too. Just like them.

An unsettling thought crossed her mind. But why? If he has Arthur’s blood … if he thinks he can pull Excalibur … why play games?

Sophie held her breath. Was it really Camelot’s crown the Snake was after? Or was he after something else? Something … more?

The line halted in front of her and Sophie broke from her trance to see golden double doors at the end of the hall.

They opened magically, revealing a room Sophie couldn’t quite make out from this far back in line.

Suddenly her cuffs split open. So did Agatha’s, and the piece of chain between them levitated into the air, turning black and shiny like an eel before it flew off into the room, vanishing from view.

“You two,” Thiago said, pointing a grubby fingernail at them. “Come here.”

Sophie and Agatha clasped each other’s hands.

The tattooed pirate gestured ahead with his sword, directing the two girls through the gold doors. Holding hands tighter, Sophie and Agatha stepped out of line and entered the room. They looked back at the pirate and the rest of their friends still chained in the hall, gaping through the doorway.

“He’s waiting,” Thiago said darkly.

Agatha swiveled to Nicola, eyes wide—

The door slammed shut, leaving Sophie and Agatha inside alone.