That didn’t make it right.
Round and round in her head she’d gone, waiting for Yanchasa to have an opinion, but true to his word, he stayed silent. Starbride had nearly called on him a few times, ready for an outside opinion, someone to solve the matter once and for all, someone neutral.
Toward the end of the day, the tension in her shoulders pulled on the muscles in her neck, setting her up for a screaming headache. She’d let the adsna smooth the pain away, and the power had also taken her guilt, so she could finally think clearly.
That was when Bea had begun to lean in. The girl had been drawn to the adsna like a beggar to gold.
Starbride stood and went back into the other room. Freddie was lighting a fire in the fireplace and glanced at her curiously.
“There’s a bed in there,” she said.
He blinked at her and glanced at Hugo.
“I don’t need it,” she added before they could think whatever they were thinking. “So, I thought you could drag it out here. Or I could stay out here, and you three could have the bed.”
Now they all looked confused, and Hugo seemed a little uncomfortable.
“I’m just…I don’t want…” Starbride waved at them. “Does anyone want the bed?” How come every time she tried to do something nice lately, it turned out like this?
“The floor doesn’t bother me,” Freddie added. “Is his lordship too high and mighty for the floor?”
Hugo grinned and chucked something at him. It might have been a spoon. The place didn’t have much. The bed she’d offered was nothing but a straw mattress on a rickety wooden frame. Starbride wondered if Roland had stripped the place of supplies or if it had been someone else, some enterprising looters who’d taken everything of value. Of course, if they’d stumbled onto Roland’s encampment, they were now stiffening in the snow.
“Right.” Starbride went back inside the bedroom.
“Miss Starbride?” Hugo called before she could shut the door. “Thanks for the offer.”
She nodded. Everything she did seemed odd or wrong or not like it used to be; feeling nothing had been worlds better than this.
The adsna waited. She plucked just a touch and curled it around herself, taking the edge off her discomfort. The room seemed softer then, the bed more inviting. Maybe it was good that she’d kept it. She didn’t need to keep vigil, sitting against the wall and waiting for daylight. She could sleep, and in the morning she would feel better. Wasn’t that what Dawnmother said, that everything seemed better after a good night’s sleep?
A soft knock on the door stopped her before she could sit on the straw. Fear seized her that it might be Hugo or Freddie. “Come in?”
Bea’s small face appeared in the gap, lit by a candle held under her chin. It brought her cheekbones into sharp relief and made her seem much older, sinister even. Starbride shook the thought away.
“We found some candles,” Bea said.
“So I see.”
Bea slipped inside as if afraid she already took up too much space in the world. She shut the door softly, though Starbride doubted that Freddie and Hugo had already fallen asleep. It might be possible. Starbride had no idea how long she’d been reveling in the adsna.
“I thought you might like one.”
Starbride blinked. She’d gotten lost in herself again. “One what?”
“A candle, silly.” Her smile faltered. “I’m sorry. I know you’re someone important, and I shouldn’t…I’m sorry.”
“Do you know who I am?”
Bea’s face froze like a naughty student’s on test day. “No, Miss.”
“You already know my name.”
“Yes, Miss Starbride. You’re Allusian. I’ve never met an Allusian before. And you’re the most powerful pyradisté in the whole world.”
Starbride cocked her head. “And how do you know that?”
Bea stepped closer and lifted a hand as if to push against Starbride’s chest, but her palm hovered a foot away. “I can feel it, Miss, coming off you like…” She burst into a delighted giggle and seemed very young indeed. “It’s not like the horrid man, the Fiend king.”
“Roland. He’s just a man.”
She shrugged as if she doubted that. “He never said his name. He felt as dead as those corpses he raised. What happened to your corpses, Miss? That’s why I thought you were with him.”
“I let them die.”
Bea nodded as if this was just what she wanted to hear. “You’re comforting, Miss. I’m sorry if that’s a stupid thing to say. Thank you for freeing me. I’m sorry I attacked you. It was only because I didn’t want to die, and I was thinking about my family and what he’d do if I—”
Starbride stepped away, halting the flood of words as she frowned. Roland never trusted anyone he couldn’t manipulate. He mind-warped people into submission. She’d told herself that over and over, and history had proven her out. The only pyradisté Roland had let roam on his own had been Alphonse, and that was just Roland wearing a different skin.
And Starbride couldn’t check for that. Bea’s mind was as closed to hers as it would have been to Roland. The question was, had he had time to do to Bea what he’d done to Alphonse: hollow out her mind and lay his over the top, preserving her abilities and taking control of her body? Or did he think the threat of hurting her family was enough?
“Tell me about Finny,” Starbride said, “about the rest of them.”
Unshed tears danced in Bea’s eyes, but she did as she was told, telling stories about her mother and father, her brother, laughing about a time they’d eaten too many berries and made themselves sick.
Starbride watched her, wondering just how good an actor Roland was. In the past, he’d always revealed himself. What do you think? she asked in her mind.
Yanchasa slid into the room from the corner of Starbride’s eye, her eyes locked on Bea. “I couldn’t say. This child doesn’t seem like the vague impressions I got from Roland.”
“But now that I’ve met you, I’m sure you can free my family,” Bea said. “You’re more powerful in every single way!”
It was hard not to be flattered. “Some part of me did admire his sense of purpose, even as I called him a madman.”
“What was his purpose, Miss?”
“To rule the kingdom.”
“Is that your purpose, too? Are you the Fiend queen?” She said it as if she didn’t care one way or another, as if such things were outside her sphere, and Starbride guessed they had been, most of the time. That was until a lunatic had visited her village, enslaved her, and then either killed or mind-warped the rest of the population.
“Does it bother you, what you did?” Starbride asked.
Bea dropped her head. “I feel bad for the people, and even more so now that they’re dead, but he made me do it, I swear.”
It seemed a child’s excuse, but Bea was little more than a child. She’d probably just reached the age where she’d have been tested by those that searched Farraday for potential pyradistés. Her own people had no such process. They’d left her out in the cold.
“I believe you, child,” Starbride said. “You don’t have to worry about the Fiend king. I’ve taken care of him.”
“I knew you had, Miss, first time I felt your power.”
Starbride smiled. Awe and admiration were nice after all the confusion and accusations. “You should get some rest.”
“I was wondering if I could rest in here with you, Miss.” Her eyes were needy, like a child asking to be let in after a nightmare.
“Sleep. I’ll watch over you.”
Bea climbed into the bed and squeezed into a corner. “There’s plenty of space. I used to share with my brother, so I’m good at not snoring or flailing about.”
“Fine,” Starbride said as she settled against the wall.
“Do you think my family is all right?”
“Anything is possible.”
“Finny will be eight at spring’s start.”
“You can
always look for them.”
“Can you help me look?” Bea said softly. “Can I stay with you when we get to Marienne? And we can all look? You and me and Freddie and Hugo?”
And all the royalty of Farraday. She didn’t think they’d take too kindly to one of Roland’s former helpers moving into the royal wing, never mind that she’d helped under duress. “I live in the palace.”
“The palace has serving rooms, don’t it?”
Starbride sighed. “There’s a place where every pyradisté in Marienne goes to learn. That’s where you’d be safest.”
Bea shifted on the bed, making the battered old frame squeak. “Can’t be safer than near you.”
Well, that was the truth. And Starbride didn’t really want to let someone so powerful out of her sight. “Where’s that quiet sleeping you’re famous for? We can decide everything when we return to Marienne.”
Whether Bea accepted that or not, she quieted down, and Starbride leaned her head against the wall and closed her eyes.
Her feet thudded amongst Wallux’s army, but the screams were faint to her ears, tall as she was. The wind roared around her, coming down off the glaciers and whistling past like the shrieking of some giant beast.
Another soldier exploded beneath her foot. This form was fearsome and unstoppable, but it was also slow. She pushed the adsna through the crystal that made up her body, and the ground quaked beneath her. Jets of fire spurted through the chasms in the ice and stone and incinerated her foes.
Still, some of them were getting away. Her army could only pick off those she left behind, or they risked getting trampled.
Starbride grabbed a hunk of her own crystal and ripped it from her body, molding it into a smaller version of the fearsome beast she now was. The caressed crystal took on shape, and she pulsed through that with flesh magic, setting an unnatural heart to beating and a low, animal brain to thinking. She poured bits of her own psyche into it, making a tiny, brutal copy of her more malevolent instincts.
It grinned at her with needle-like teeth. She commanded it to leap into the army’s midst. She shaped more, made them brutal, fast, and cunning, with just enough wit that they wouldn’t get themselves killed straightaway. Most importantly, she tied them to herself, her malformed little children, making them extensions of her own body that would obey her call of flesh.
Starbride woke up gasping. Night still reigned outside, and there was something else out there as well, a nearly imperceptible uptick in the chill.
She tried to remember what it had been like to create life, so different from what she’d imagined. But she’d not only created life; she’d controlled it. What if she’d called the children in her sleep, countermanding her earlier orders? She searched for Yanchasa, but he was still hiding.
No, the children were gone. She’d just been thinking of them as she’d drifted to sleep, and that must have summoned Yanchasa’s memories. She felt through the flesh pyramid, but there was only Bea sleeping peacefully, and Freddie and Hugo slumbering in the next room.
Starbride laid her head back against the wall. It was only a dream. But something pricked at her memory until she lifted her head and stared at the light dusting of snow on her boots.
Chapter Thirty-one
Katya
Katya strode through the palace halls, happy to be delivering some good news for once. Groups of adsnazi, aided by Master Bernard and Captain Ursula, had tracked several of Roland’s copies by the pyramids they carried. They’d managed to neutralize the pyramids, but so far, all of the copies had either forced the Watch to kill them or had killed themselves. Still, it was progress.
Katya knocked on the door to her father’s study and winced at his bleary, “Come in.”
He bent over a sheaf of papers and rubbed his temples much as she always did.
“Da,” she said softly.
He lifted his head and blinked at her. “I wasn’t asleep.”
She grinned. “How’s it going?”
“More of the same. You seem in a chipper mood, my girl. Good news on the Starbride front?”
Well, at least she could end their conversation with something positive. Nothing said they had to start there. She sat and told him what she knew but also that it had led them no closer to a solution.
He shook his head. “It’s a bit beyond me, really, all this pyramid stuff.”
“You’re working on juggling three political factions who all want disparate things. Nothing is beyond you.”
“I can do human things, ordinary, non-magical things. For all this other business, I had Crowe. It’s why kings and queens have always had pyradistés all their own. This is quite a pickle.”
Katya burst out laughing, but there was no humor in it. Her good news paled in comparison to all the bad, and she suddenly felt as if she’d accomplished nothing. Worse, she felt as if she’d been wasting time chasing Roland copies when she should have focused on Starbride.
After the battle had been won and Roland had been taken care of, they were supposed to have run away for a little while, just a day or two, maybe to the small cabin they’d met in before Katya had infiltrated the palace. No danger, only the bliss of each other’s arms. Then she could have happily thrown herself into prickly government issues or rebuilding Marienne or comforting the populace or burying the dead.
When Da laid a hand on her shoulder, she realized he’d come around his desk to perch on the front. “We’ll work it out, my girl.”
“How?” She willed the tears roughening her voice to stop, but they hovered in her eyes. “All I can think of is how things should be, how nice it would be if problems solved themselves, but every time I think of Star…” She swallowed past the fist that had grabbed hold of her throat. “Da, what if I’ve lost her? What if we went through all this, city taken and retaken, Roland captured, my love still alive, but still lost?” She dissolved as Da put his arms around her. She balled her fists in his coat and wept so hard she couldn’t manage any sound past her choking.
“That won’t happen, my girl, it won’t.”
She couldn’t force her voice to work, so she just knocked one fist against his chest.
“I don’t know how,” he said, “but I’m a king for spirits’ sake, my wishes must count for at least twice a normal person’s.”
She couldn’t even laugh.
“If our finest magical minds can’t figure it out, I don’t know what I can do,” he said, “but I’m willing to put my thoughts to it.”
Katya stood and tried to step away, stumbling over her chair. She steadied herself on the arm. “You’ve got a government to run, Da.” She wiped her face on her sleeves.
He knocked her arm down and gave her a handkerchief. “Your mother would be appalled.”
She breathed through a chuckle and then took another breath and another. She blurted out the news about the Roland copies just to get a little distance.
He praised her too much, the exaggerated pride reserved for small children who had accomplished simple tasks, but a knock on the door saved her from having to confront him on it.
A messenger waited outside, one of those who’d gone with Starbride, and Katya sank into her chair to listen. Starbride had found her objective, hadn’t foreseen any problems, and the messenger had been able to return to them unharmed due to his corpse Fiend escort.
After the messenger left, Katya rubbed her chin and stared at a spot on the floor, desperation threatening to choke her again. “She’ll be back soon.” She laughed again without humor and wondered if she’d forgotten how to do it correctly. “We’ve all got good ideas about why certain solutions won’t work for the Yanchasa problem. The best idea I’ve heard so far is to sneak up on her and bash her over the head before letting the adsnazi try to cleanse her.”
Da looked thoughtful. “I suppose Starbride could use magic to cleanse any kind of poison you might give her.”
“I’m not going to let anyone hurt her, Da!”
“A sneak attack might be the only
way, my girl.”
She just kept staring.
He returned her look with one of glacial patience. She bet it had set many a noble’s teeth on edge. “No one’s saying they would really hurt her,” he said.
“Because hitting her over the head will just tickle.”
He exhaled slowly. “There are people who know how to do such things better than others. Your Pennynail comes to mind, though I guess he’s Freddie Ballantine now.”
Katya cocked her head. “That didn’t surprise you at all, did it?”
“I knew Crowe far longer than you. I knew he had a son.”
Katya blinked slowly. “Freddie Ballantine is Crowe’s son?”
“I guess there’s no particular reason to keep that secret any longer. I don’t know where young Freddie got that Ballantine business. Perhaps it was his mother’s name or one of his friends. I know that when the Dockland Watch tried to hang him, he had help escaping.”
“Crowe helped a convicted murderer escape execution? Rule-abiding Crowe?”
“Oh, he didn’t tell me what he had to take time off for, but I figured it out. Crowe always liked to imagine he was smarter than me or more observant, and I was happy to let him think so.”
“He said he kept secrets from us for our own good,” she said.
Da shrugged. “And I believe that he believed that. It was enough for me that Crowe trusted Pennynail or that he knew his son was innocent. He had a certain sense about people. I trusted that. And he liked Starbride, which is why I think we should go to any lengths to help her back from wherever she’s gotten to.”
And they were back to this again.
Da patted her knee. “No maudlin thoughts. We’ll figure out a way.”
Katya thought of Freddie sneaking up on Starbride. She winced as she imagined Starbride’s eyes rolling up, face going slack. “She’s tougher now. Stronger. If she senses what Freddie’s up to, or if the first hit doesn’t work…”
“Her guard will need to be down.”
The Fiend Queen Page 28
