“Passages it is.” Katya’s body demanded she rest and let someone else take care of Farraday’s problems, but there were too many people depending on her. If the wild Fiends were fighting the army or protecting Roland, Katya had to do something about them.
After Castelle changed Katya’s bandage, they took to the secret passageways again. Ma and Castelle helped Redtrue limp along. Katya took point, rapier drawn and holding a lantern they’d found in the abandoned room. Her back ached with every step, but that didn’t alarm her as much as the numbness inside, as if someone had hollowed her out.
Katya heard the hint of footsteps over Redtrue’s labored wheeze. She set her lantern down and backed away, staying low and hoping the flickering flame would mask her presence. The footsteps paused before they clattered into a run. Castelle took her place at Katya’s side, sword out. A corpse Fiend barreled around the corner and leapt for them, its gray lips pulled back in a snarl.
Katya tried to catch its charge, but her shoulder gave, and she fell to one knee. Castelle grunted as she tried to bear the corpse Fiend’s weight alone. She staggered, tripped over Katya, and then rolled away. Katya hacked at the corpse Fiend’s knees while Castelle aimed for its pyramid. It ducked to the side and let out a ghastly howl.
The howl echoed in the corridors, and a heartbeat passed before a number of Fiendish throats took up the cry. Desperation and adrenaline pushed Katya up. As the corpse Fiend dodged Castelle, Katya thrust with all her strength and shattered the pyramid in its forehead. It dropped lifelessly to the stone.
Katya grabbed her lantern as Castelle hauled Redtrue upright.
“We need to get out of here,” Ma said.
Castelle chuckled, though it had little humor. “Nice of the corpse Fiends to make our decision for us.”
The closest door led into a storeroom cluttered with furniture. It would have to do. After everyone was inside, Ma and Castelle stacked furniture against the passageway door. It wouldn’t stop anyone determined, but it might convince a near mindless corpse that Katya and her friends had gone another way. Katya only hoped that if Averie heard the howls, the furniture would fool her, too. “Not likely,” she muttered.
The door to the hallway creaked as Katya opened it, but no one lingered in the hall. The unadorned walls and uncarpeted floor indicated the servants’ section. Maybe Katya had gotten lucky for once and found someplace Roland wouldn’t bother to guard.
Chapter Two
Starbride
The silence seemed to close around Starbride until nothing distracted her, not the pain that pounded through her temples, nor the distant sounds of fighting. She’d stuck a knife in Roland’s puppet, the last of the Sleeting brothers. If she turned, she’d see him dead in the street behind her.
No one spoke. It felt like an invisible wall separated her from Dawnmother, Hugo, Pennynail, and Master Bernard. After everything, were they afraid of her? Or maybe they just worried. She’d never know if they said nothing.
“Say something!” she cried as she whirled around.
Hugo and Master Bernard took a step back. Dawnmother’s dark brown eyes creased with concern. “Star, are you all right?”
“It’s war! You’ve all killed people!”
“It’s not the killing.” Hugo spoke slowly and smoothed his brown curls away from his forehead, looking younger than his fourteen years. “We do what we must, but you didn’t have to…”
Pennynail pushed his laughing Jack mask onto his head and became Freddie again. “We don’t have time for this. What’s done is done.” Anger burned in his green eyes and the taut line of his lean body. He loosened the collar that hid the pink scar around his neck. Combined with his raspy voice, no one could mistake the fact that he’d been hanged and lived to tell the tale.
Dawnmother and Hugo gawked at him. Master Bernard just blinked, clearly not recognizing him as the Dockland Butcher.
“Starbride,” Freddie asked, “can you keep fighting? Because we have to move faster than this. Talking can come later.”
“I feel…oh.” She pressed her forehead with the heel of her palm as pain roared in her ears.
“Your headache?” Master Bernard asked. “From days ago?”
“Stress is—” Dawnmother started.
Starbride walked away. It didn’t matter what the cause was. Freddie was right. They had to keep fighting. She headed toward the nearest echoing cries of pain.
Two groups of townspeople fought one another in the neighboring square. One side was easy to identify, all red-robed strength monks. Starbride picked out the first monks she’d freed from Roland’s mind control, Scarra and Fury, fighting near the front, both using staves along with kicks and punches. She knew the leader of the chapterhouse, Ruin, was probably somewhere in the press.
Starbride had hoped their opponents would be corpse Fiends, an enemy they’d taken the measure of, but these looked like ordinary people. None sported Starbride’s colors—the hawk of Farraday clutching a pyramid—the only way the citizens of Marienne had to tell friend from foe.
Still, that didn’t mean these people were helping Roland willingly. As Hugo and Freddie charged into the fight, Starbride pulled a pyramid from her satchel, one that could detect other pyramids in use. Beside her, Master Bernard did the same while Dawnmother kept watch.
Starbride’s skull screamed as she concentrated, the pressure so great she felt as if it might crack in two. The world faded to grays in her augmented sight, and she spotted the golden glow of Master Bernard’s pyramid, but little forks of lightning flashed across her vision. Her concentration began to crumble. She snarled and focused harder, but the gray edges of the world began to blacken.
“I see something,” Master Bernard said.
“Where?”
He tried to tell her, but she could barely hear. With a curse, she shoved the detection pyramid back in her satchel. She couldn’t focus with the pain, and if she couldn’t use her pyramids, what good was she?
Since the onset of her headache days ago, only two events had made her feel better: being with Katya and killing Alphonse. And, a small voice inside her said, she still had destruction pyramids. She didn’t have to focus to use them.
Starbride marched closer to the fighting, dipped into her satchel, and threw a flash bomb into the midst of the mind-controlled enemies. She closed her eyes against the bright flash and then opened them to see several people fall, but the residue from the flash made her pain spike. She dragged another pyramid out and threw without thinking, and fire bloomed in the attackers’ midst.
Her headache quieted, leaving room for guilt to punch her in the gut. These people weren’t beyond help like Alphonse had been. Master Bernard had said he’d seen something, maybe the pyramid responsible for their behavior. The smell of burning flesh washed over Starbride, and she fell to her knees in the street.
The attackers didn’t scream as they burned. Those hypnotized by Roland were always happy, sublime even, no matter what they did. When she’d first seen them, they’d strolled happily and fought happily, and now they died the same way. They probably would have starved to death while grinning like fools.
Dawnmother’s arms went around her, pulling her away from the fighting. Master Bernard stepped around her as he threw a flash bomb. She could feel the pain creeping up on her again.
“Did you free them?” Starbride asked.
Master Bernard glanced back at her. “I found an explosive pyramid and cancelled it. I don’t know where these people were hypnotized, but it wasn’t here.”
It didn’t bring her any comfort. “What’s wrong with me, Dawn?”
“Maybe we should stay away from the fighting.”
“But the pain.” It wasn’t enough to say it. No words could explain. With the agony lessened, she knew one truth. “I can’t abandon everyone, Dawn.”
The look in Dawnmother’s eyes said it all. It wasn’t abandonment if they had to divide their time between helping her and fighting for their lives.
“Wait here,” Dawnmother said.
Before Starbride could speak, Dawnmother ran toward the fighting. With pyramid magic on the monks’ side, the fight was over within moments. Dawnmother hurried back, dragging Scarra and Ruin. Both monks peered anxiously into Starbride’s face.
“You said she was hurt,” Scarra said. She tilted Starbride’s face up. “Where?”
Ruin looked her up and down.
“You know pain,” Dawnmother said. “Her head has been splitting open for days.”
“Let’s get off the street,” Ruin said.
Starbride tried to pull away. “I can’t leave!”
Ruin snatched the satchel from his shoulder and passed it to Dawnmother. “Are you sick enough that I’ll have to carry you?”
Starbride pictured herself being hoisted through the street like a sack of flour. If he was willing to take her seriously…
“I’ll get the others,” Master Bernard said. Ruin led her through a storefront, Scarra and Dawnmother just behind. He made her sit on a countertop, the contents of which had been looted, and the owners of the shop were nowhere to be seen.
“Tell me what’s wrong,” Ruin said, and even though they looked nothing alike, he reminded her so much of Crowe that she nearly burst into tears. Freddie had been right when he’d said that leaning on someone was intoxicating.
“My head, there’s so much pain, and I’ve been hurting people.”
He peered closely into her eyes, and she focused on his gray hair. “Were you hit in the head recently?”
“Not that I recall.”
He glanced at Dawnmother. She shook her head. Ruin dragged his lower lip through his teeth. “If it’s not from an injury, I don’t know what I can do for you.”
“There are herbs,” Scarra said.
Starbride felt like shouting, but Ruin shook his head before she could. “If the pain on her face is any indication, I think we’re beyond herbs.”
Starbride could have hugged him, but the agony spiked, taking her breath away. She heard voices, but it sounded like hundreds, thousands, screaming all at once. Someone touched her shoulder, and she clawed blindly before her hands were captured in a grip like stone. When she tried to jerk away, different pain sang through her shoulders across old scars caused by Fiendish claws.
It dwarfed the feeling in her head, and she opened her eyes. Fury had hold of her arms. Behind him, Scarra held Dawnmother, saying, “He won’t hurt her,” over and over.
“Are you yourself again?” Ruin asked.
Starbride could only blink at him.
Ruin let her go. “You had the most monstrous expression on your face. Like when the young lord turned.”
Starbride’s eyes widened, and she felt over her face for horns or fangs.
Dawnmother wormed out of Scarra’s grasp. “You did not turn into a monster, Star.” She glared at Ruin until he backed away. “You were out of your mind with hurt, nothing more.”
“But it makes sense,” Scarra said. “You haven’t busted your head, you’ve never felt this before, and we know the spirits’ bedamned power of the Fiend king’s fuc—um, pyramids.”
“Master Bernard is not affected,” Dawnmother said.
“And I don’t have a Fiend,” Starbride added.
Scarra shrugged. “Perhaps it only nails Allusian pyradistés.”
“Adsnazi,” Starbride mumbled. Redtrue hadn’t seemed in pain, but Starbride hadn’t been around her long, and she was newly come to Marienne. At the moment, Redtrue might also be in agony.
In the palace, leaving Katya without a magic-user.
Starbride pressed her forehead and tried to think. When Master Bernard led the others inside, Dawnmother filled them in on the discussion. Scarra and Ruin stared at Freddie without his mask on, but he spoke too quickly for them to ask questions.
“Starbride,” Freddie said, leaning close to her ear, “you set those people on fire.”
Did she? She barely remembered anything except that the ache had stopped for a short while. “I…”
“I can knock you out,” he whispered.
One quick blow to the head and she’d have merciful darkness. No more chances of hurting people; she wouldn’t even be awake for her splitting skull.
Katya would never do it. Katya would call it cowardly. She might urge Starbride to do it out of love, but she’d never take that path herself.
As if reading her mind, Freddie said, “Better to miss the fight than to make it harder on your allies.”
He was right, she knew he was, and the pain built in her head again, ballooning behind her eyes. “Hurt me,” she said.
“What?”
“Just do it! Pinch me or something.”
She felt the pressure on her leg, but it was tiny compared to the swells cresting in her brain. “Harder!”
She heard shuffling feet, and then a hot pinpoint bloomed just above her elbow. Her eyes jerked open as the rage in her skull subsided. Ruin pressed her arm with his thumb and forefinger.
“Pressure point,” he said as he released her. “Other pain dulls the one in your head, does it?”
She nodded, and hope seemed to appear before her. “I can fight.”
“If someone else is hurting you?” Hugo asked. He frowned as if the very idea appalled him.
Starbride hopped down from the counter. “Show Dawnmother, please.”
Ruin had a quick word with Dawnmother, showing her the points on his body and hers. Starbride stepped to the front of the shop. The other monks milled, waiting for Scarra and Ruin. She’d kept them talking too long. They needed to get out in the street again.
“Miss Starbride—” Hugo started.
“They’re wearing my colors, Hugo. I can’t let them fight without me.”
“But you’re injured.”
“Time enough to settle it when this fight is done. Once Dawnmother knows what she needs to know, I’ll be myself again.” It might serve as fitting punishment for the people she’d killed. With the hurt dulled, she remembered it more clearly now: the light fading from Alphonse’s eyes, the screams of those she’d set aflame. Their smoking husks littered the street even now. How did Katya do it, kill without remorse? The thought that they were enemies didn’t give her any relief, and she realized that every time she’d seen someone killed she’d been thankful it hadn’t been her that had ended them.
A bit of Alphonse’s blood still clung to her fingertips, around her nails.
“Maybe, um, maybe you did them a favor,” Hugo said.
Starbride squeezed his arm. “Don’t throw away your principles for me, Hugo.”
“No, I mean it.”
“You don’t, but thank you for saying it.”
“This isn’t worth debating,” Freddie said as he joined them.
Scarra stepped closer. “I agree. Death is the whore that gives us all the clap eventually.” When they stared at her, she blushed. “Well, that’s what my da used to say.”
Different mindsets, different upbringings. They could argue around and around forever. Master Bernard patted Starbride’s shoulder. “Time heals all,” he offered.
Starbride supposed that would have to do. After the battle was won, they’d have time for both joy and sleepless nights filled with guilt. Time enough for all things, healing, too.
Dawnmother curled her fingers around Starbride’s elbow, ready to do what needed to be done, though Starbride could see that it pained her.
They split off, Ruin leading his monks down another street, the better to cover more ground. Master Bernard went with them, while Scarra stayed at Starbride’s side.
“Just in case you need more pressure points,” she said, giving them a wide grin.
Thick and muscular, she was as tall as Freddie and probably stronger, quite an asset, never mind that she seemed to take most of her speech from Darkstrong himself. She’d recently cut her blond hair close to her head, though it didn’t make her angular features any less striking.
“Your eyes
are straying,” Dawnmother said.
Starbride barked a laugh. “I can admire anyone I want.”
“She does cut a nice figure.”
“Now whose eyes are straying?”
“I don’t have a princess waiting for me. Perhaps you have a weakness for blondes.”
“Just one.” Dwelling on Katya, even for a moment, helped keep the pain at bay. She just hoped the pressure points would continue to work. She couldn’t fight while stabbing herself in the leg. If it got that bad, she supposed she’d have to take Freddie up on his offer.
A boom sounded a few streets over, the same as they’d heard just before Alphonse. Starbride shook the thought away. Before they’d killed the corpse Fiends, Dawnmother had been convinced the creatures had called something with their otherworldly howls. Now it appeared that whatever it was had caught up to Starbride again.
Everyone looked to her. They weren’t out here to avoid a fight. With renewed purpose, they headed toward the sounds of the explosions now peppered with screams and the rumble of collapsing masonry.
“Those have to be explosive pyramids,” Starbride said.
“Well, maybe there’s a spirits fuc—forsaken rogue pyradisté running around.” Scarra said.
“It’s Roland,” Starbride said. She could almost feel him, and the thought of fighting him made the pain fly from her mind. The thought of killing him carried no guilt. Maybe it would even cure her. Starbride left her mind open to that possibility, and she smiled as the screams drew nearer.
Chapter Three
Katya
It was a hard choice between caution and speed. With Katya’s wound and Redtrue’s malady, avoiding confrontation seemed safest, but the fact that they were being hunted in the palace halls—and that the rest of the town depended on them to defeat Roland’s pyramids—cried out for speed.
Katya had to settle for something in the middle. Ma supported Redtrue and crept along slowly, led by Katya, who held her blade ready while Castelle ranged ahead of them, scouting.
Castelle paused at a corner. Her athletic body tensed, and she leaned far back against the wall on the balls of her feet. After listening for a few seconds, she hurried to Katya’s side.
The Fiend Queen Page 2
