Professor Anemone walked around surveying the girls. “Not so much squinting . . . A little less nose, dear . . . Oh my, absolutely beautiful!” She was talking about Beatrix, who lit up the room with her dazzling smile. “That, my Evers, is a smile that can win the heart of the steeliest prince. A smile that can broker peace in the greatest of wars. A smile that can lead a kingdom to hope and prosperity!”
Then she saw Agatha. “You there! No smirking!”
With her teacher looming, Agatha tried to concentrate and duplicate Beatrix’s perfect smile. For a second she thought she had it.
“Goodness! Now it’s a creepy grin! A smile, child! Just your normal, everyday smile!”
Happy. Think of something happy.
But all she could think of was Sophie on the Bridge, leaving her for a boy she didn’t even know.
“Now it’s positively malevolent!” Professor Anemone shrieked.
Agatha turned and saw the whole class cowering, as if expecting her to turn them all into bats. (“Do you think she eats children?” said Beatrix. “I’m so glad I moved out,” Reena sighed.)
Agatha frowned. It couldn’t have been that bad.
Then she saw Professor Anemone’s face.
“If you ever need a man to trust you, if you ever need a man to save you, if you ever need a man to love you, whatever you do, child . . . don’t smile at him.”
Princess Etiquette, taught by Pollux, was worse. He arrived in a bad mood, hobbling with his massive canine head attached to a skinny goat’s carcass and muttering that Castor “has the body this week.” He looked up and saw girls staring at him.
“And here I thought I was teaching princesses. All I see are twenty ill-mannered girls gaping like toads. Are you toads? Do you like to catch flies with your little pink tongues?”
The girls stopped staring after that.
The first lesson was “Princess Posture,” which involved the girls descending the four tower staircases with nests of nightingale eggs on their heads. Though most of the girls succeeded without breaking any eggs, Agatha had a harder time. There were a number of reasons for this: a lifetime of slouching, Beatrix and Reena intently watching her with their new Kinder Smiles, her mind chattering that Sophie would win this with her eyes closed, and the absurdity of a dog barking about posture while teetering on goat legs. In the end, she left twenty eggs bleeding yolk on marble.
“Twenty beautiful nightingales who will not have life . . . because of you,” said Pollux.
As class ranks appeared over each girl in ethereal gold clouds—Beatrix 1st, of course—Agatha spun to see a rusted “20” hover over, then crash into her head.
Two classes, two last-place ranks. One more and she would learn what happened to children who failed. With her plan to get Sophie home crumbling by the minute, Agatha hurried to her next class, desperate to prove herself Good.
Shingles wouldn’t keep Cinderella from the Ball. Shingles wouldn’t keep Sleeping Beauty from her kiss.
Staring at her pustuled reflection in her desk mirror, Sophie forced her kindest smile. She had solved every problem in life with beauty and charm and she would solve this one the same way.
Henchmen Training took place in the Belfry, a dreary open-air cloister atop Malice tower that required a thirty-flight ascent up a staircase so narrow the students were squeezed into single file.
“So . . . nauseous,” Dot panted like an overheated camel.
“If she pukes near me, I’m throwing her off the tower,” Hester crabbed.
As she climbed, Sophie tried not to think about pustules, puke, or putrid Hort, who was trying to cram beside her. “I know you hate me,” he pressed. She lurched to the right to block him. Hort tried the left. “But it was the challenge and I didn’t want you to fail and—”
Sophie thwarted him with her elbow and raced up the last few steps, desperate to prove to her new teacher she was in the wrong place. Unfortunately that teacher was Castor.
“’COURSE I GET THE READER IN MY GROUP.”
Even worse, his assistant, Beezle, was the red-skinned dwarf that Sophie had slapped on the ladder the day before. Upon seeing her blistered face, he giggled like a hyena. “Ugly witch!”
Head off center on his massive dog’s body, Castor wasn’t as amused. “You’re all revolting enough as is,” he groused, and sent Beezle to fetch honeysuckle, which promptly restored the villains’ faces. While they groaned in disappointment, Sophie heaved with relief.
“Whether you win or lose your battles depends on the competence and loyalty of your henchmen!” Castor said. “Of course some of you will end up henchmen yourselves, with your own lives depending on the strength of your Leader. Better pay attention then, if you want to stay alive!”
Sophie gritted her teeth. Agatha was probably singing to doves somewhere and here she was about to wrangle bloodthirsty goons.
“And now for your first challenge. How to train . . .” Castor stepped aside. “A Golden Goose.”
Sophie gaped at an elegant gold-feathered bird behind him, sleeping serenely in its nest.
“But Golden Geese hate villains,” Anadil frowned.
“Which means if you can train one, then taming a mountain troll will be easy,” Castor said.
The Goose opened its pearly blue eyes, took in its villainous audience, and smiled.
“Why is it smiling?” Dot said.
“Because it knows we’re wasting our time,” Hester said. “Golden Geese only listen to Evers.”
“Excuses, excuses,” Castor yawned. “Your job is to make that pathetic creature lay one of its prized eggs. The bigger the egg, the higher your rank.”
Sophie’s heart raced. If the bird only listened to the Good, she could prove here and now she didn’t belong with these monsters! All she had to do was make the Goose lay the biggest egg!
On the Belfry wall, Castor carved five strategies for training henchmen:
1. Command
2. Taunt
3. Trick
4. Bribe
5. Bully
“Now don’t go bullying the blasted bird unless you’ve gone through the other four,” Castor warned. “Ain’t nothin’ stopping a henchman from bullying back.”
Sophie made sure she was last in line and watched the first five kids have zero luck, including Vex, who went as far as grabbing its throat, only to see the Golden Goose smile in return.