The Fiend Queen

by Barbara Ann Wright

  “An enviable position from any angle,” Reinholt said with a wink.

  Scarra snorted. “Go ahead and try your luck, Prince, but I’d sooner charm the trousers off the princess consort than you’d talk your way into mine.” She knelt and lifted Hugo in her arms. “I’ve got skinny here. Let me know when you want to move out.” She crossed the street to join Dawnmother.

  “So, the battle is going well for you?” Starbride asked Reinholt.

  He shrugged. “We’ve lost some people. We collected some pyradistés who were hiding in Dockland. They helped destroy this pyramid a few streets over.” He sniffed. “I thought you were supposed to be doing that.”

  “I’ve been busy fighting your uncle.”

  Maia leapt back to their side. “You’ve seen my father?” Before Starbride could say anything, Maia bit her lip. “I mean him. He’s not my father anymore.”

  Reinholt wrapped an arm around her shoulders. Maia seemed to banish his snottier side as easily as shooing a fly. “You’ve got plenty of family left, dearheart.”

  Maia shook her head. “We heard he was out fighting the army.”

  “What else have you heard?” Starbride asked.

  “All rumor, apparently,” Reinholt said. “We heard that the Fiend king, those corpse things, and even some wild Fiends were tearing through the army. But if you’ve seen Roland, it can’t be true unless he can be in two places at once.”

  Starbride told them of what Roland had done to Alphonse, turned a pyradisté into a copy of himself.

  And then, a voice inside reminded her, she’d killed him, stuck the knife in, felt his blood on her hands. And then she’d lit those people on fire, and she’d enjoyed it.

  “Starbride,” Freddie said, “are you still with us?”

  She buried the thoughts again. “He’s probably heading back to the palace. If we’re winning in the streets but his forces have the army pinned down, he’ll want to gather more resources.”

  “How can you be sure?” Reinholt asked.

  She couldn’t, but it was as good a guess as any. “He knows now that Katya isn’t with me. He might know she’s not with the army. He led the Order of Vestra. He knows what kind of jobs we’re best at. He might have guessed that Katya will go for the palace.”

  “You just want to ride off to be with your lover,” Reinholt said.

  Maia said, “Rein—”

  Freddie cut her off. “Watch your mouth, princely.”

  Starbride put an arm between them before they could burst into argument. “I’ve made my decision. We’re heading for the palace.”

  “As I was going to say,” Reinholt said loudly, “I’m glad. If we can, we should all be with the people we love right now.”

  Starbride didn’t know what to make of any supposed sincerity on his part. “Can you send groups sweeping toward the palace and the wall? If the army is in trouble, they’ll need your help.”

  Reinholt nodded, but Maia shook her head. “I’m coming with you, Starbride,” she said. Reinholt looked as if she’d just punched him in the gut. “You don’t need me out here, Rein. You’ve got enough soldiers, but I’m sure Starbride could use an archer.”

  “Glad to have you,” Starbride said. She exchanged a glance with Reinholt, one that promised she wouldn’t let anything happen to his dear cousin. He didn’t seem convinced.

  “Reinholt,” Maia said, “I’m in the Order of Vestra, too, you know.”

  After a sigh, he said, “Take the greatest care with yourself.”

  They split then, Reinholt taking the Docklanders in one direction while Starbride, Dawnmother, Freddie, Maia, and Scarra bearing Hugo moved off in the other.

  “Should we stash skinny somewhere?” Scarra asked.

  “He’ll wake in about an hour,” Starbride said. “Not to worry.” She hugged Maia around the shoulders. “I’m glad you decided to come with us.”

  “Like old times,” Maia said. “Well, almost.”

  Starbride sensed that Maia was hiding something. She never could resist a secret, and someone else’s problems would give her something to think about besides what she’d done that day. “It’s not just the fighting that’s upsetting you.”

  Maia chuckled. “Spirits know it would be enough.”

  “Even so.”

  Maia sighed and leaned so close her head almost touched Starbride’s shoulder. “I missed my monthly.”

  Starbride waited for more and finally said, “Your monthly what?”

  Maia rolled her eyes. “You know. What happens to all women every month?”

  “You haven’t bled, you mean?” When Maia nodded, Starbride sighed. Maia could be sick, she supposed, or it could be some after-effect of being a Fiend for so long. But no, she knew what it meant. “Oh, Maia.”

  “When I was a Fiend, I didn’t notice if I bled or not. Such things seemed beneath me. But Darren, before he went chasing Katya, he and I…” She pressed her lips together so hard they turned white. “The Fiends liked it with each other once we’d merged with them.” She looked up as if she could make the tears sink back in her head.

  “Is everything all right?” Freddie called.

  “We’re fine.” Starbride pulled Maia closer. “But it’s been months.”

  “I know.”

  The weight she’d put on, Starbride had taken it as a sign of health, and Maia’s loose coat would conceal any small bulge. “Perhaps—”

  “If you say I shouldn’t be coming with you, I’ll shoot you.”

  “Does anyone else know?”

  Maia shrugged. “When I suspected, I talked to an herbalist, but he says it’s too late to get rid of it. Anything he could give me might kill me, too.”

  “I’m so sorry, Maia.”

  “I can’t hide it forever.”

  “You won’t have to. Katya will understand. And you have a long time to decide what you wish to do after it arrives. Focus on today.” Good advice if she could only continue to follow it herself.

  *

  They fought through two more groups before Starbride saw the palace in the distance. She hadn’t realized how far from it they’d come. She hadn’t been this close since they’d decided to sneak inside.

  They didn’t have the muscle to break down the front door and charge in. Starbride briefly regretted that she didn’t have Roland’s talent with mind pyramids. Maybe she could have hypnotized a few people over to her side instead of simply freeing them.

  She shook the thought away, blaming it on any lingering feelings leftover from her headache. Roland had always said he wanted his people to be happy. That’s why he’d claimed to have taken over the kingdom and hypnotized the populace. And people were happy under his rule, whether they liked it or not, even when they were on fire.

  Starbride doused that thought and wondered if anyone lamented the loss of bliss when she freed them, if they preferred it to the fear and anguish that accompanied war, if even false peace was better than horror.

  No, better to be free, she decided. She couldn’t really consider losing Katya—the thought was just too painful—but she’d always want to keep her memories. No doubt the populace of Marienne largely agreed with her, though she’d never have known it by how hard they struggled against freedom. The desire to remain hypnotized and to press others into it was another gift of Roland’s. He wouldn’t have to watch the entire city if it was also watching itself.

  By the time they reached the palace, Hugo was awake again, his fatigue lifting with every step. The royal stables were abandoned, just as Starbride hoped. She’d decided to take the same route Katya had planned on, increasing the chances that they might stumble upon each other in the palace’s great jumble. They scaled the gate and hurried into the barn nearest the palace walls. Redtrue would have had to cancel a pyramid to get inside the secret passageways, so Starbride knew the way was safe, but when she saw what now guarded the door, she paused.

  She’d expected to see the darkened side of a cancelled pyramid, but this one was a sof
t, milky white. Starbride whipped out her cancellation pyramid, hoping she wasn’t too late to catch a trap. The world faded to grays, and she looked for the golden glow of an active pyramid, but this one emitted a pure white radiance. Power flowed through it, shining like a beacon, but there was no purpose behind it.

  “What is it?” Dawnmother asked. “What’s wrong?”

  Starbride had to shake her head, and they kept moving. Anything Redtrue had done was a puzzle to figure out later.

  Freddie led them to the ballroom Katya had wanted to visit first. Light spilled into the secret passageway, the door clearly open. Freddie crept toward it and peeked around the corner before hurrying to Starbride’s side. “Someone broke down the door into the passageway.”

  “Is there anyone left in there?”

  “Just bodies.”

  Starbride moved before he could say more. People lay scattered across the floor. Some bore small, bloody stab marks; others appeared to have been ripped apart, but by what, Starbride didn’t know. She recognized none of them and couldn’t help a sigh of relief, even with death all around her. Two corpse Fiends sprawled on the floor near a large chair, and the pyramid that dominated the room had turned the same milky white as the one before.

  Starbride ran a finger down the pyramid’s smooth side. “What is she doing to them?”

  “As long as she’s disabling them, does it matter?” Dawnmother asked.

  “I suppose not.” But she planned to work it out soon.

  “Someone broke in here, too,” Hugo called from the door to the hallway. He pointed to the splintered edge next to the lock. “They bashed in from the other side.”

  Starbride looked back to the bodies, most of them in a line from the secret passageway to the pyramid. “Katya had to fight when she came in here. She barred those doors, but someone broke them down and chased her into the passageways.”

  Dawnmother gestured to one of the ripped bodies. “And the corpse Fiends did this?”

  “Why would they attack their own?” Scarra asked.

  Freddie waved from the passageway entrance. “You need to see this.”

  By the light of her pyramid, Starbride stared at the dried brown stains streaked across the stone underfoot. “They’re hurt,” she said softly.

  “We don’t know anything yet,” Freddie said. “This could have been caused by someone following them.”

  But why would Roland’s mind-warped guards drag their fellows along? They were more likely to leave the wounded behind, and corpse Fiends didn’t bleed.

  Hugo squeezed Starbride’s shoulder. “We won’t know until we follow.”

  They followed the bloody drag marks. When they ended at a door that led into the palace, Starbride nearly crashed through.

  Freddie grabbed her arm. “Let’s get ready first.”

  “Any idea where we are?” Scarra asked. “I had no idea the palace was so much fun for sneaking.”

  “We’re somewhere in the courtiers’ quarters,” Freddie said. “Everyone ready?”

  They readied weapons or stood clear. Starbride tried to banish the image of a pile of bodies on the other side.

  When Freddie toggled the switch, they barreled through, ready for anything but the sight of two courtiers who shrank back, screaming as Hugo and Scarra burst into their midst.

  Starbride lifted her hands to quiet them, but Maia pushed past her, crying, “Brutal!”

  Starbride followed her to a blanket-wrapped mound on the floor, torn between staring at Brutal’s too-pale face and the arrow sticking out of his chest.

  Chapter Seven

  Katya

  After she covered Averie with the tapestry, Katya numbly fought another group of guards at the top of the stairs. Luckily, her opponents weren’t that skilled, and she could let her body react from memory. Spirits knew she didn’t remember the fight after it was over.

  Ma shepherded them into some noble’s former apartment. Katya sat on a slashed footstool and just watched the others. Castelle had bled through her bandage. She winced as Redtrue peeled the sticky fabric away. An oozing line led from her hairline to her jaw, the skin around it puffy and angry. She’d have quite the scar.

  The room’s furniture lay overturned, the art smashed. One survivor hid in a corner: a slender wingback chair upholstered in pale blue damask. Katya wondered if the looters had missed it, or if they’d thought the shiny silk too beautiful to destroy.

  “Let me look at your wound,” Ma said.

  “It’s fine.”

  “It’ll give me something to do with what’s left of this shirt.” She slipped the ruined garment off. Even with the tears in the back, her coat provided plenty of coverage.

  Katya took her own coat off, and her mother tugged her shirt up. Obeying came easier than arguing, but Katya found it difficult to care about the wound, the war, anything. She tried to summon anger again, tried picturing Averie’s dying face and Roland’s smirking one, but…nothing.

  “You did what you had to, Katya,” Ma said.

  Yes, what Roland had made her do, but her brain refused to be goaded. “I don’t feel guilty.”

  “Then what?”

  “I’m waiting to fly into a rage.” If she’d still possessed a Fiend, her pyramid necklace wouldn’t even be tingling.

  “And that would help us how?”

  Katya could only shrug.

  Ma sighed. “Time enough for rage and remorse later. You need your wits. Try being cold and calculating if your emotions won’t support you.”

  But Katya had always depended on passion. She let her feelings guide her just as much as her thoughts, just like her father, her brother, her uncle. “Be like Lord Vincent, you mean.”

  “He gets results.”

  But he was always the one taking orders, not giving them. “Redtrue, where’s our next target?”

  “Close.” She pointed down the corridor. “In that direction. There is another I did not sense before, and there are many above our heads in the opposite direction.”

  “Those will be guarding the royal apartments,” Ma said.

  “Best we pick off these isolated ones first,” Katya said. “They’re more likely to be Roland’s handiwork.” Cold and calculating. But the image of Averie’s face wouldn’t be banished so easily, though it brought her no feeling at all.

  *

  Their next target stood in the middle of a large alcove, with floor-to-ceiling windows and stone benches lining the walls. Redtrue cleansed the pyramid from around a corner while Katya hid and watched. As the pyramid turned milky white, the handful of guards milling around it stopped and stared at each other, brows drawn in confusion.

  It could be that these hadn’t been permanently mind-warped, only hypnotized. And since Redtrue had cleansed so many pyramids already, the hypnotized people might awaken.

  The guards looked at one another and at their weapons with shock or suspicion. One woman in leather let her sword clatter to the floor and touched her armor as if she’d never seen it before. “What in the spirits’ names is going on?”

  The others murmured. Katya backed up, ready to leave them to it, but Castelle stepped around before Katya could grab her.

  “What are you all doing here?” Castelle barked. “Put down those weapons and get out of here, double time, or it’ll be the cold comfort of the Watch for you!”

  Metal clanged against stone, and footsteps hurried away. Katya couldn’t help but smile.

  Castelle had only half a grin, and it seemed to pain her. Her eye hadn’t swelled shut, but it might yet. “I’ve had to roust enough thief catchers out of taverns in my time.”

  “I wonder if that’s where Einrich learned the art of bellowing as well,” Ma said.

  They headed downstairs, targeting the lone pyramid Redtrue had felt from above. Katya sometimes felt as if they were going in circles, but Redtrue needed to be within a certain distance to detect the pyramids, even if that distance was over or under where she stood. And the more powerful the pyramid,
the easier she sensed it. When she was close, she didn’t need her detection pyramid at all.

  Once they’d defeated the next target, Redtrue searched again and shook her head. “I sense many above us and the very powerful one far below. No, wait, there is one more, in the path of the powerful one. I missed it before.”

  “We’ll cut back across near the library,” Katya said, but she hoped it wasn’t so far below them that it was in the caverns. She wanted to keep Redtrue as far from the capstone as possible.

  In the hallway past the library doors, someone moved. Katya hurried her party back around the corner. “Is it Fiends?”

  “There is something.” Redtrue’s pyramid went dark, and she gasped, clutching the wall for support.

  Katya recognized cancellation when she saw it, and Roland had no pyradistés besides himself. But if he was alone…

  Redtrue muttered and dug in the bag slung across her body. Katya peeked around the corner and caught someone on the other end of the hall doing the same, a red-haired man. So, Roland had some guards after all. She ducked back and considered charging forward. No, better to let Roland come to them.

  “Princess?” someone called, a young voice, but one she recognized, though she hadn’t heard it in months.

  “Lord Hugo?” She looked around the corner again, and he stepped out, waving to her, of all things.

  Her mind raced. If he’d been captured, he’d be mind-warped.

  Starbride turned the corner, a pyramid held out in front of her as she searched the hallway.

  “Star.” Katya leapt out of hiding, and the block in her head dissolved, her emotions tumbling through like water. Sheathing her rapier, she strode down the hall, not noticing that there was anyone else present until she put her arms around her beloved.

  Starbride chuckled into her shoulder. “I missed you, too.”

  Katya kissed her quickly and winced as Starbride’s embrace caught the wound on her back.

  “You’re hurt?” Starbride asked.

  “Nothing that won’t heal. How did you find us?”