“He’s probably going to get in the secret passageways,” Brutal said.
“He’s missing a hand,” Starbride said. “I don’t know if even a Fiend can regrow a limb.”
“You think he’ll be looking for something to make up for lost strength?” Katya asked. “Do you have any traps?”
Starbride looked in her satchel. “Some that I took from Crowe’s office, but nothing that Roland couldn’t get around.”
“We need to trap him down there where he’s got fewer options. If we can get him into the caverns, even better.”
“The capstone,” Brutal said. “He’ll want it more than ever now.”
Katya started toward the hole in the floor, her mind already working, but her eyes sunk to her mother’s body as if by anchor.
Hugo’s coat covered her head and shoulders, and someone had folded her arms across her waist. A few feet away, Roland’s severed hand lay upturned. Katya kicked it to the side with the rest of the rubble. Ma would have to wait for them to come back.
Katya knelt by her side, not brave enough to lift the coat. “I’ll do my duty, Ma.” Her eyes burned, but she was out of tears. “I’ll kill him.”
Chapter Twelve
Starbride
Starbride didn’t know what she could say to ease Katya’s pain. The sight of Queen Catirin lying in a pool of blood and staring at nothing, first as a Fiend and then as a woman, would haunt even Starbride’s dreams.
Another horror to add to the list.
But Katya’s look of cold determination troubled Starbride more than any memory ever could. That look was a lie. Katya had grieved, writhing in Brutal’s arms like a wild thing, and then cold, deadly calm had washed over her. Grief couldn’t be done after so short a display. Starbride had known Katya long enough, had been through enough at her side, to know that her grief would linger. And just as with everyone else, it made her do incredibly stupid things.
She could demand a Fiend from her cousins or Brutal. And would they do it? Brutal might, out of duty, and how would they live with each other? No, much more likely she would give in to rage and anger and just fly in Roland’s face and make it easy for him to tear her apart.
Starbride clenched a fist. If she had to, she’d hypnotize Katya and endure the consequences later; anything that kept Katya from killing herself.
“Will she be all right?” Redtrue asked in Starbride’s ear.
Starbride tried not to jump. “How well did you get to know her?”
“Well enough to know when she’s angry.”
Starbride smirked. That wasn’t well at all. “No, she’s not all right, but she might be someday if she doesn’t get herself killed for revenge.”
“We do what we must.”
That sounded too much like a confession. “And what have you done that you had to do?”
“Many things.”
“Not you, someone who holds her principles so close.”
“You don’t know me.”
“Go ahead and think of yourself as mysterious if it helps you.”
Redtrue bristled, then her shoulders sagged. “I’ve been around Farradains too long. They have infected me as they infected you.”
“Another lecture?”
“I used evil to fight evil,” Redtrue said between gritted teeth, though the only person who could understand them was Dawnmother, and she remained silent.
Starbride thought over the fight. She hadn’t seen Redtrue use a single pyramid save when she returned the queen to human, when she’d insisted.
“The necklace.” Starbride had guessed that the queen’s collar had kept her from removing her Fiend-suppression necklace. She’d also thought the queen had broken the necklace’s power using emotion, as Katya once had, but that didn’t have to be true. “You cleansed her necklace so her Fiend could emerge.”
Redtrue looked away. “I thought it might save her life.”
“You did the right thing.”
“No,” Redtrue said with a snarl. “The fact that you’re applauding me shows how far down their road you’ve traveled. And that it even crossed my mind to help someone become a Fiend shows that I’ve already set my feet on their path.”
“Thanks to you, Roland is wounded. After the battle is joined, you’ll be glad of that fact.”
“When the battle is done, I’ll speak to Leafclever, and if he will consent to still have me among the adsnazi, I’ll introduce you to him. Perhaps he can save you.”
Starbride rolled her eyes and moved away. Save her indeed. Couldn’t he come early and save all of them? Maybe Redtrue could subject Roland to one of her speeches. Perhaps he’d retch until he died.
Dawnmother found the quickest way into the basement, leading them into the servants’ halls and then down a wide stairway. Starbride trapped the sides of the stairs, but if Roland came this way, he wouldn’t be stuck for long.
Huge vats dotted the large room, and by the smell of lye that burned Starbride’s nostrils, she guessed they’d found the palace laundry. Dawnmother took the lead again as Katya blinked with obvious confusion, all of the royals oblivious to the work that went on under their feet. Starbride couldn’t blame them, guilty of the same crime herself.
Dawnmother led them to where Roland had blown a hole in the ceiling. A trail of blood led into an adjoining room piled high with soiled linens. The trail quickly went from a trickle to a sprinkling of blood drops, and then to nothing at all. Roland’s wound had closed.
In a back corner stacked with old furniture, they found what they were looking for: a hatch of stone, now ajar, a secret way from the cellars into the tunnels beneath the palace.
Starbride and Redtrue held light pyramids, one at the front of their column and one behind. Starbride stayed on Katya’s heels as she took the lead again. This tunnel must have connected with the main path that led to the capstone, but how Katya knew which tunnel to take, Starbride had no idea. Quite a few tunnels branched off from this one, smaller paths that wound through the rock. Starbride began to hope the tunnels would slow them down enough to quench Katya’s anger, but the tendons standing out in her jaw argued against that.
When the first corpse Fiend jumped at them from an adjoining tunnel, Starbride skidded back. Katya slid forward and ducked its attack. Starbride hauled a cancellation pyramid out of her satchel, but before she could focus, Katya bashed the corpse Fiend’s pyramid with her rapier guard. It sagged to the ground, and Katya stepped over it without a glance.
Brutal moved to her side, and Starbride thought he might seek to calm her, but his eyes held the same steely determination. Starbride swore. Now she’d have to watch both of them. She didn’t know if Brutal grieved for Katya or with her, but Starbride wouldn’t let either cast their lives at Roland’s feet.
They approached a fork in the tunnel, one route ending in a short dead-end, and the other joining the much larger path that had to lead to the capstone. Redtrue called, “Stop,” from the back of the column, and Starbride hauled on Katya’s and Brutal’s shoulders, her light momentarily hidden.
The cavern shook out from under Starbride’s feet, and stone rained from the ceiling. Starbride hacked up a cloud of dust and lifted her pyramid high. Katya and Brutal jumped to their feet. Steel rang against steel as they fought someone. Starbride tried to peer through the gloom and heard sounds of combat behind her as well. They’d walked into an ambush.
But had they set off a trap, or was Roland throwing pyramids? She pulled out her suppression pyramid and focused. Katya and Brutal advanced as their opponents shrieked. Starbride stayed on their heels, leaving those in the rear to Redtrue.
Starbride gasped as the swirling dust parted long enough to reveal corpse Fiends packing the tunnel in front of Katya. At the edge of the light, something glinted. Pyramid crystal. And it was moving.
She pushed her light and suppression pyramids into one hand, grabbed for her cancellation pyramid, and focused. Whatever Roland’s pyramid had been destined for, she never found out.
“Get behind me!” Scarra called.
Starbride did as she was told, using her suppressor to drive the corpse Fiends back. She felt someone brush past her, and radiance filled the tunnel ahead. The corpse Fiends fighting Katya and Brutal dropped as Redtrue’s cleansing reached them, their pyramids turning milky white. If Starbride took nothing from the adsnazi, she told herself, by Horsestrong she’d take that.
Redtrue reached Katya, pyramid still blazing. Starbride peered past them, looking for Roland, when the ground lurched again.
Huge chunks of ceiling tore loose in crumbling shrieks. Freddie dragged Hugo out of the path of one boulder, and they forced Starbride farther backward. Katya and Redtrue stood side by side, Katya killing what Redtrue couldn’t cleanse. Starbride fought the tide of jealousy and told herself to be practical. One arm of Katya’s coat hung open, blood dotting her shirt. She needed all the help she could get.
Starbride tried to press through the fighters. “Katya’s hurt.”
“I’ll go.” Dawnmother shifted past Hugo. If Brutal could take Katya’s place at the front of the line, Dawnmother could see to her wound.
Another blast shook the tunnel. Starbride cursed and focused on her cancellation pyramid. Roland had to be throwing destruction pyramids at the tunnel walls, hoping to bury them.
She pushed ahead and caught sight of him again. Two pyramids launched into the air, quickly followed by a third. “Dawn, look out!”
Dawnmother leapt for Katya, knocking her into Redtrue and then to the ground. A bright flash filled the cavern as Katya fell on the flash bomb Starbride had given her earlier, the one she’d put in her pocket. Starbride focused through the pain that half-blinded her and cancelled one pyramid that arced for them, but another blasted nearly at their feet, making stone rain atop them as the cavern rocked and shifted. Dust billowed upward in waves. Before Starbride could blink away the spots dancing before her eyes, Roland’s third pyramid exploded into a sphere, engulfing the space where Katya, Dawnmother, and Redtrue had fallen.
Starbride’s stomach shrank to a hard knot. She staggered to her feet amidst swirling dirt and cries of pain. The tunnel had mostly collapsed, walls and floor only jagged hunks of stone, and the ceiling bearing a hole large enough to climb into. There, in the debris of the floor, was a perfect bowl cut into the cracked rock. The tip of Katya’s rapier lay on the edge, cut as perfectly as if it had been snapped off. The rest had been consumed in the sphere of impenetrable blackness.
Sound died in that impossible instance. The two most beloved people in her life, gone, marked only by a hunk of metal barely longer than her palm. People shouted. Some called her name and fought to protect her. Starbride couldn’t look away from that bowl, so like the one that had consumed Crowe.
Someone turned her around, and she stared into Freddie’s face. Her light pyramid glowed, and her gaze lingered on it, the first pyramid she’d learned, and she’d been so happy.
Her head rocked as Freddie shook her. “Starbride!”
She blinked at him. “I’m busy.”
“We’ve backed Roland down the hall, but we need your help!”
“I can’t leave. I’m waiting for Katya.”
He gave her such a look of pity and horror and sorrow that she laughed at him. “We have to finish this, Star, for their sakes.”
Was he allowed to call her that? She supposed they’d been through enough, but Hugo wouldn’t like it. “We can’t leave Katya and Dawnmother here.”
“Please don’t go mad on me now, Star. They’re not coming back, and all we can do is avenge them.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Like Castelle. You have to be like Castelle.”
His voice quavered as if it might break. Starbride heard Castelle shrieking as she fought. How silly. Did she think it would help Redtrue find them again?
Freddie picked up the broken bit of blade and shook it in her face. “They’re dead.”
She slapped him, hard. When he tried to speak again, she hit him so sharply her palm ached. “You can’t…tell…lies,” she said, banging her fists into his chest.
He locked his fingers around her wrists. “I’m sorry, Star.”
The floor seemed to give way around her. She was falling while standing still. She tried to picture Katya’s arms around her, to feel them as she’d often imagined during their time apart, but the feelings wouldn’t come. Roland had killed them, too.
Dawnmother would never speak to her again, never brush her hair or comfort her, never share tales and hopes and wisdom. And Katya…
“What will I do?” Starbride had never contemplated life alone, and now the whole world opened up without the two people she loved the most, the long life ahead of her empty, miserable, and pointless.
Freddie shook her again. “Stop crying! Get angry. Fight. This is all Roland’s fault!” He shoved her, and she felt rage and anguish ripening and spreading through her veins.
“Roland.” Redtrue had been right. Starbride’s feet had been set on a path, but not by all Farradains, just one, just Roland. Become evil to fight evil. At the end, even Redtrue had seen the necessity of it.
Katya and Dawnmother guided her steps but not toward Roland. That was still suicide, and she couldn’t die until she had him.
Starbride focused on her light pyramid and commanded it not to stop glowing. It took longer, but it obeyed, never to darken again unless broken. She pressed it into Freddie’s grasp and drew another, keeping it out along with a suppression pyramid. “Stay alive.”
Starbride ran from the fight, ducking down another tunnel and bolting toward the capstone. She ignored Freddie’s cries for her to come back. They were on their own. They were all on their own, now and forever.
Any corpse Fiends she passed, she suppressed long enough to run by. She heard someone chasing her and then the rattle of blades as whoever it was found the corpse Fiends.
When she reached the capstone cavern, she tore through Roland’s traps, desperation and determination giving her the strength she needed. She stepped over the remains of the door that had once stood there, that she’d forced Roland to break down when she’d locked it from the inside. She could feel the capstone reaching for her, ready to give up its power.
The cavern’s jaggy stalagmite teeth had always reminded her of some vast creature’s maw, but now the creature seemed welcoming rather than threatening. The capstone glowed softly. In her mind, she heard Katya saying, “I’ll do my duty.”
Starbride knew her duty. She set her light and suppression pyramids on the floor. Raw power licked her palms as she placed them on the capstone’s cool sides. She’d never fallen into this pyramid directly. That was only for those who Waltzed. She’d acted through another pyramid, wanting to stay as far from Yanchasa’s foul essence as she could.
Now she sought that essence and gave her mind to the capstone, seeking the power that would let her kill Roland, tear his throat and rip out his eyes. End him.
Starbride sank into a world of white murk, the vast void that always accompanied absolute pyramid communion. A presence lingered in that void, and she felt its powerful attention turn upon her, pinning her spirit in place with terrifying knowledge.
“Welcome, daughter,” it said in a voice made of two whispers, male and female. “I’ve waited so long for you.”
Chapter Thirteen
Katya
Darkness surrounded her, still as a grave. Katya’s heart filled her throat, and she flailed, trying to beat against the coffin that held her. She opened her mouth, ready to roar that it had been a mistake. She wasn’t dead.
Her right arm hit nothing. Her left arm was trapped. Beneath stone? Katya’s head swam as she tried to remember. They’d been fighting corpse Fiends, and Roland had
done something. Thrown a pyramid? The ceiling had come down on her head. Dawnmother had tackled her out of the path of falling stone, but then the flash bomb had gone off, and the floor had opened. They’d fallen. She felt the stones now, beneath her back, dotting her chest, everywhere.
“Star?” she said, a hoarse croak. The air was made of dust.
“Is that you, Princess?”
Katya turned toward the voice and sat up. The stones rolled away from her, and she pushed the larger one from her arm. “Dawnmother?” She rolled her wrist, sore but unbroken.
“Is Star here?”
“I don’t know. Have you found anyone else?” They were both silent until Katya heard a groan from her left. “Who’s that?” She stood and felt her way over. Under the debris, the floor seemed smooth. They must have fallen into another tunnel. Katya groaned at the thought of how much backtracking they’d have to do. She heard stones shifting. “Dawnmother?”
“Here,” came from her side.
Light blossomed. Redtrue lay in front of them, grasping a pyramid and trying to shift a small block of stone off her chest.
Dawnmother and Katya helped free her, but she grasped her side and whimpered. “I think some of my ribs are broken.”
“How about you?” Katya asked Dawnmother.
“Just bruised. How is your arm?”
Katya looked to where one of the corpse Fiends had gotten past her guard. “Stopped bleeding. Probably because of the dirt.” Katya put her hands to the sides of her mouth. “Star?” When her voice didn’t echo, she took her first good look around. “I don’t know much about caverns, but I’m pretty certain they don’t form in cubes.” At least it was tall enough to stand up in. She looked up at what was undeniably a ceiling, though it sported the hole they’d fallen through, now packed with stone.
“We can’t go back that way,” Dawnmother said, a hint of fear in her voice.
“We’ll find a way.” They’d lost Roland for the time being, but she could still hope the others were giving him hell. The fall had robbed her of some of her rage.
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