Knowing Frieda wasn’t a great mage gave them some hope that she wouldn’t put up much of a fight once they found her. Unlike past enemies, such as Gondoleery Rattrapp and the High Priest Justine herself, Frieda Stubbs was an amateur villain. Thus, the group wasn’t too worried about what would happen when she finally appeared.

That was probably a mistake.

Brought to a Boil

When Frieda Stubbs heard the attackers coming, she painted herself invisible and snuck out the back door of the kitchen, crossed the lawn, and climbed into a leafy tree on the border between Artimé and Quill, where she could watch everything that was happening. She was sure Garrit would bark out some orders on her behalf, and her people had been trained by the best—Florence. So she knew they’d fight for her and for their own peace and safety from the Revinir while Frieda planned her big move. Frieda hadn’t expected the dragons, but they didn’t seem to belong to the Revinir, so that put her mind somewhat at ease. And it was a bonus to have Thisbe show up. Perhaps she’d be able to do away with all the Stowes at once—it would certainly make her life easier. She worried for a while that Fifer Stowe wasn’t among the outcasts who had attacked. But a short time later she saw the spitting image of Nadia Stowe coming from the jungle with her awful birds and that stomping mastodon statue.

With that creature about, Frieda decided to stay put for a while. Perhaps she’d let her enemies think she had run away. Of course they’d assume that, and they’d grow complacent and careless. Everyone underestimated her. But they were in for a shock, because Frieda was finally going to get revenge for what that awful pirate girl had done to her.

Life had been especially hard the past few years, seeing Thisbe and Fifer Stowe grow into young women. They looked more like their mother every time they came back from stirring up trouble in the land of the dragons. They had the same unusual black eyes and black wavy hair. Fifer, who wore her hair long, especially resembled Frieda’s old neighbor who had come so abruptly and so suspiciously to Quill from a pirate ship.

Nadia had been aloof from the beginning, Frieda remembered. But she’d picked up on the rules of Quill quickly enough and tried valiantly to follow them. But the girl should have been declared Unwanted from the moment she’d stepped into the Wanted neighborhood where Frieda’s family lived. Nadia didn’t belong there. Frieda had known it from the start when she’d witnessed Nadia speaking to birds in the farm area of Quill. The birds seemed to speak to her, too. And there was a whole flock of them that fluttered high overhead, trapped outside of Quill by the barbed-wire ceiling that covered the island. They moved when Nadia moved. It was unsettling. And then there were the sparks that flew from her eyes, which she tried to hide. But Frieda had seen them.