The Pyramid Waltz

by Barbara Ann Wright

  Katya’s too-large eyes roamed over Roland before she spat something in a language that grated on Starbride’s ears and blasted her with wind so cold it made her ache.

  “Even more beneath you?” Roland sneered. “We’re kin in more ways than one, both blood, both Fiend. Why fight one another? We should be fighting them!” His finger stabbed at Starbride where she lay on the ground.

  The creature said something else.

  “Prove it,” Roland answered. He stooped with a speed like the wind, picked Starbride up by the back of her gown, and hauled her to her feet. She cried out and tried to pull away; her wounded side cried with her. Roland grabbed her throat. She clutched at his wrist but knew she couldn’t move him. He shook her lightly at the monster that used to be Katya. “Kill this one, and I’ll believe you.”

  The Katya-Fiend stepped away from the pyramid, each of its steps making Starbride shiver. It stared into her face with no recognition, not even of one human to another. With one of its icy talons, it traced a line down her cheek, a cold that burned. Starbride gasped, but Roland’s pressure around her throat wouldn’t let her scream. Terror howled inside her, but she couldn’t close her eyes.

  Something pricked at her senses, and she turned her gaze to the Fiend’s throat. The pyramid necklace still hung there, intact. But how could it be intact with the Aspect full upon Katya, with so much of Yanchasa’s essence? Starbride fought to swallow some of her fear. If even a little of Katya remained, there was hope.

  Starbride forced herself to look the Fiend in the eye, to fight against the cold. She willed herself to see Katya standing there, but inside, she screamed and screamed. She couldn’t do it. How could she possibly? This monster was going to kill her and everyone else in the world! She bit her lip until blood trickled down her chin, a bit of warmth before it froze. She let the numbness seeping into her bones fill her emotions, let her stomach become a black pit.

  “Kill her!” Roland said.

  The remains of Katya’s coat still held the butterfly pin. Katya—lover, friend—was somewhere inside, hiding just behind that pyramid necklace. Starbride spoke to her, not to the monstrous face in front of her. “I love you.” She put a finger to the pyramid necklace and fell into it, speaking to the soul inside.

  The Fiend drew back, surprise lighting its awful face. The Fiend was surprised, but Katya wouldn’t be. Inside the necklace, Starbride felt her fight.

  “Do it,” Roland insisted, shaking Starbride again. The Katya-Fiend turned its murderous gaze on him.

  Starbride nearly laughed. “I wouldn’t do that.”

  “No one asked you, peasant.” He made as if to fling her to the ground. Katya’s hand appeared between Starbride and the floor, quicker even than Roland, and the clawed hands settled her more gently.

  Roland backed away, his features twisted by disgust. “All that power and you’re still just a human at heart, niece. All that mayhem in you and you waste it being tender. You’ve learned nothing. You’re not capable, and you’re not worthy to be my kin.”

  Katya was in front of him then, no blur, just a rush of cold as if she’d disappeared and reappeared. Roland even blinked before she bashed him, hitting him so hard that he flew against the far wall and left a trail of fast-freezing blood in his wake. He bounced off the stone and landed in a heap but rose again. Darren jogged to Roland’s side and held his sword in front of both of them. All other activity in the room had stopped. It was quiet as Roland pressed his hand over the bloody gash in his clothes.

  Roland drew himself up as if he might fight, but quicker than Starbride had seen, he grabbed Darren and raced for the doorway. Maia stepped into his path, bringing him up short. Starbride thought Maia wanted to stop him, but she cried, “Father, don’t leave me!” and leapt for him, her arms out.

  “No!” Starbride reached for them, but Roland gathered Maia in his other arm and dashed through the doorway. “Katya, stop them!”

  Katya blinked and knelt. She didn’t understand, was fixated on Starbride somehow. She lifted Starbride in ice-cold arms and cuddled her close. Starbride pushed back as the cold burned her, but Katya’s arms were like steel. Starbride clutched the back of Katya’s neck and fought not to squirm. Pennynail’s face loomed over Katya’s shoulder, and he pressed something into Starbride’s palm.

  Starbride gripped the smooth sides of a pyramid as Katya’s wings began to flap. The monster wanted to take her somewhere, and Darkstrong knew what would happen when they arrived. They lifted from the ground, and Starbride fell into the pyramid, knowing suddenly what it was for. Crowe had once pressed it to Katya’s heart to make the Fiend retreat, but that wouldn’t be enough this time. It needed blood. “I’m sorry.” She ran her free hand down the icy cheek.

  She rammed the pyramid into Katya’s back and pushed all her spirit into it. She focused, and saw what the pyramid was meant to do as if it were a gigantic switch. She pulled, but it fought her. The Fiend wanted to stay. Starbride ground her teeth and used her desperation as leverage. She would get Katya back, or they’d both die in the effort.

  The switch flipped. The Katya-Fiend screamed, and everything went white again as Starbride crashed to the ground.

  This time, as everything faded to normal, Starbride heard shouting. Someone was calling her name. “Here,” Starbride said, and Dawnmother struggled through a gray haze to her side. The royal family was still splayed about the room. King Einrich had returned to normal. Brutal, Brom, Cassius, and Layra were unmoving heaps. Averie held her bloody arm, and Pennynail carried a bleeding Crowe over to Katya’s sprawled body.

  Starbride put a hand over her own bloody side and struggled to turn. Dawnmother helped her, and they crouched close to Katya.

  Crowe glanced at them with tears in his eyes and agony on his face. Pennynail pressed both hands to Crowe’s free-bleeding stomach. “You had to stop her,” Crowe said. “If she’d gotten out of the cavern, who knows how we would have gotten her back?”

  Starbride shook her head. She couldn’t think about that now. “Will she be all right?”

  Dawnmother rolled Katya over once they’d removed the pyramid and covered her wound. Her face had returned to normal, but she slept, haggard lines on her face and silver hairs at her temples. Lines of blood left streaks down her forehead and cheeks.

  “I don’t know,” he whispered.

  Starbride clutched the pyramid she’d used. “Is Yanchasa’s essence in here?”

  He shook his head, his face pained, bewildered, and sad, too many hurts piled on top of one another. “I don’t know.” He took the pyramid. “Pennynail, put this under Katya’s coat. It should keep the Fiend at bay for a time. She can’t carry that much of the Aspect in her forever, though. We have to find a way to bleed it out.”

  “We need to get everyone some help,” Dawnmother said, always the practical one. She nodded at Crowe’s stomach. “You most of all.”

  “I’m gut-shot. I don’t have long, but I need to instruct Starbride before I die.” He grabbed one of Starbride’s hands with his blood-slicked ones. “You have to put what she took from Yanchasa back into the capstone.”

  Starbride blinked. He spoke of death and monumental tasks so casually. “Surely there must be something we can do for you?”

  “Nothing.”

  Dawnmother clucked her tongue. “Don’t give up so easily.”

  “Listen to sense—”

  “No.” Dawnmother put her fists on her hips, a posture even Starbride didn’t argue with. “People like us have a duty to each other much like the duty to those we serve.” Crowe’s jaw dropped. Dawnmother nodded as if that meant an end to the discussion. “Everyone here is wearing plenty of clothing. Let’s start making bandages.”

  Starbride nodded, and Dawnmother cut her skirt off just above her knees, using the fabric and petticoat to bandage Crowe even as he protested.

  “Help me hold him down?” she asked Pennynail. He nodded.

  “I have tasks I need to perform!” Crowe shouted. />
  “Do them as we work,” Dawnmother said. “You’ll live. You’re louder than any dying man has a right to be.”

  Crowe sputtered until he sighed, his face resigned. “The central capstone is Fiend magic, and it holds Yanchasa in his prison. You’ll need to create a conduit between it and the pyramid that we used to suppress the extra Fiendish essence Katya absorbed. Once we’ve done that, we’ll put that extra essence back where it belongs.”

  “Then she’ll be herself again?”

  “If we get it in time.”

  Starbride bent over Katya, tucked the necklace more firmly around her neck, and kissed her, a gentle brush of the lips. With a hand over her own seeping bandage, she helped put everyone to rights.

  Chapter Thirty-five: Katya

  Katya was falling. Or was she floating? Difficult to tell; life had become a great haze. Pain arced through her body, making her nerves sing. A lovely face hovered in front of her. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” it wailed. That didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. She would kill every thrice-bedamned one of them.

  Silence. Pain was gone. Rage, gone. A silver sea spread out before her, through her. “Focus,” someone said. Someone she knew well? Brutal? No. “Focus.” Crowe, it had to be Crowe.

  “I’m trying,” another answered, soft and feminine. Terrified. “I don’t want to hurt her again.”

  Crowe’s voice, calm and steady. “If you can’t do this…”

  “I’ll do it. I love her. I’ll do it right.” Starbride’s will. Starbride’s determination. Ah, love. Katya loved her, too, but she couldn’t speak, couldn’t do anything with the silver sea covering her. When it drained away, the rage would come again. They’d drown in seas of blood. She’d smile as she watched. Maybe she’d taste them. She’d—

  White light and then nothing. Nothing and then a sky full of stars. Something was taken from her, and she couldn’t even make a grab for it. She was hypnotized by the stars. She had such a little bit left.

  “Watch what you’re doing,” Crowe said.

  “I don’t know how to stop!”

  “Spirits above.” Had he been whispering the entire time? Had his voice always been so small? “What have you done?”

  “I fixed her. Did I fix her?”

  Soft hands held Katya’s face. Was she broken? Something was missing. Where had the stars gone?

  Katya awoke with the certainty that there was a rock in her back. Without opening her eyes, she maneuvered a hand under herself until she felt the wad of bandages just smaller than a croquet ball.

  A flood of memories rolled over her. Her uncle Roland, her transformation, which usually took all memory with it, but this time her awareness had returned, and she remembered Starbride’s stricken face and her family’s plight. She opened her eyes.

  Cots and bandages and bowls of water dotted the room; she wasn’t alone in the makeshift infirmary in her apartment. Crowe lay on a cot beside her bed, his bare chest swathed in bandages. Brutal sat up in a cot against the wall, one side of his face purple, with a bandage around his head. Averie sat on a settee next to him, a bandage around her arm and a bruise on one cheek. When Brutal turned in Katya’s direction, he nodded slowly.

  “Good to see you awake,” he said.

  Katya eased to a sitting position. “I touched the pyramid. I communed with Yanchasa, but then…” She’d done something, but what? She only hoped she hadn’t turned on her friends and forced them to stab her in the back. “What are you all doing in here?”

  “We thought it best to keep all the wounded together.” Brutal eyed her, a little warily to her eyes. “You yourself again? Sure?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “It’s fine,” Averie said. “Starbride took the Aspect out. She’s sure she got it all.”

  Katya touched her chest but felt no necklace beneath her shirt. There wasn’t a pyramid in sight. “You mean the extra essence? That I siphoned off Yanchasa?”

  “No,” Brutal said. “She didn’t know when to stop. She says she got it all. She put it back in the capstone.”

  Tears hovered in Averie’s eyes. “You almost died so many times. We…I was so worried.”

  Katya stared at her. No Aspect. No Fiend. That which her parents had passed to her, that which all Umbriels possessed, gone. What did that make her?

  The door cracked open, and Starbride stepped inside. Dawnmother held her elbow. “Slowly, Star. You’ll open your stitches.”

  Katya remembered that, a hidden pyramid under Starbride’s skin. Starbride sat down carefully on the bed. “How are you feeling?”

  “Did I hurt you?”

  “You saved us. Better still, no more Fiend! I don’t know how I did it. Crowe’s not sure, either, but just think, you don’t have to worry about it ever again.”

  “Yes.” No more Fiend, maybe no more Umbriel. How could she lead the Order of Vestra if she didn’t have what the original leader of the Order had possessed?

  The rest of Katya’s family came through the door, minus Brom. Katya winced. She remembered that part, too. Ma hugged her gently, kissing her on the temple. Da squeezed her hand. “Vestra herself would be proud.”

  Katya shook her head. She wasn’t so sure. Reinholt stared at the wall and said nothing. “How’s everyone else?”

  “We’ve done what we can for Crowe.” Brutal bent to inspect Crowe’s bandages. “But he’s going to need the healer again. I’m good for a quick patch-up, but this needs more herbs and such, and he’s had a busy few days.”

  “I’m perfectly fine,” Crowe whispered, his eyes closed.

  Dawnmother sighed, and she wasn’t the only one, but whether they were exasperated by Crowe’s stubbornness or his deteriorating condition, Katya didn’t know.

  “Rein.” Katya didn’t know what to say but needed to say something. “I’m…”

  He glanced at her, his face white and pinched. “She’s in the dungeon. She knew what would be asked of her when we got married. Maybe I should have married her a year earlier than I did. She could have Waltzed right away then, instead of four years later.”

  Da patted Reinholt’s shoulder. He looked older, the world heavier on his back. He stooped and touched Crowe with more gentleness than many expected from him. “You’ll be up and around in no time, old bird.”

  “Don’t lie to me,” Crowe said, his eyes still shut.

  “You will live,” Brutal said, “but you’ll never regain your strength entirely.”

  Crowe opened his eyes. “That’s closer to the truth.”

  “It is the truth,” Dawnmother said, “but only if you want it to be. Darkstrong sought death, and so he found it. You must want to live. For now, you need rest.”

  “We all do,” Averie echoed.

  Katya shook her head. “My back aches, but I don’t need to sleep.”

  “I can sleep on my own,” Crowe said. “I don’t need more of that healer’s foul-smelling draughts.”

  “You rival Starbride’s parents in difficulty,” Dawnmother said.

  “Who made you the healer, anyway?” Crowe glared at her with one eye.

  “The same person who gave me so much sense.” She glared back at him. Crowe had met his match when it came to being pushy. And unlike everyone else, Dawnmother seemed to have no interest in tiptoeing around Crowe’s feelings.

  Ma leaned over to pat Crowe’s hand. “The royal physician has agreed with her on everything so far.” Dawnmother nodded and crossed her arms.

  Crowe shut his other eye and mumbled something unintelligible.

  Dawnmother shrugged. “Mulestubborn will have his way.”

  Crowe opened both eyes to glare at her that time.

  “How’s your wound?” Katya said to Starbride.

  “Hurting but healing. Luckily, the pyramid was small and not that deep.”

  “I’m sorry all of this happened to you.”

  “It was worth it.”

  Katya smiled, and she tried to mean it, tried to lose herself in love, but she kept
searching for something inside herself, something she’d never been without, something she’d never find again. In the sudden silence, she frowned as she noticed the gaps in the room. “Where’s Maia? And where’s Pennynail?” They threw nervous glances like bolts. “Where are they?”

  Reinholt answered first, maybe not as aware of others’ pain while lost in his own. “Maia went with Roland. She chose him over us, just like…her.”

  “Oh, my poor cousin. What are we doing to look? Where—?”

  “She’s not in the city,” Brutal said. “That’s where Pennynail is. He’s looked everywhere. It’s like they vanished.”

  “He left us a parting gift, though,” Reinholt said, and the smile on his face was anything but friendly.

  Starbride gave him a nervous, agitated glance before she looked back to Katya’s face. “He saved me, Katya. He’s done everything he could to help.”

  “You don’t need to appeal to her,” Da said. “We’re not holding the boy at fault.”

  “What in the world are you talking about?” Katya glanced from one of them to the other.

  “Lord H…just Hugo,” Starbride said. “Free of his father’s influence, he’s decided he wants nothing to do with Roland’s schemes.”

  “Because he’s half in love with you.” Reinholt sneered. Starbride’s cheeks turned red.

  Ma gave him a sharp glance. “That’s enough, Reinholt.” He turned away and walked across the room.

  Katya touched Starbride’s cheek. “He’s still here?”

  “Under guard for his own safety,” Da said. “Until we’re sure, Katya, but Starbride has used a pyramid on him under Crowe’s instruction. They found nothing.”

  “He’s a good boy,” Crowe said.

  Brutal nodded. “He almost broke Roland’s control when he saw his own sister. He said he’d had his memory hidden and a new one put in. Left to his own devices, out of his father’s control, he made his own decisions. And I thought he had a thing for Maia, but it was half-remembered recognition.”