For Want of a Fiend

by Barbara Ann Wright

  Starbride shrugged. “Maybe he just didn’t want witnesses.”

  Katya faced the great capstone and squared her shoulders. The shackles coiled on the floor like snakes. Starbride approached them with measured steps, lending the Waltz more of a sense of ritual than Crowe ever bothered with. Slowly, she snapped the shackles around the ankles of Ma, Da, Katya’s grandmother, and Hugo.

  “Help me, Katya,” Ma said. Katya nearly jumped. The silence had grown so heavy she feared she was deaf.

  Katya helped her remove her bodice and pull down the back of her chemise, leaving her chest covered, but making room for her wings.

  “It seems an almost silly consideration,” Ma whispered.

  Katya gripped her mother’s arm, suddenly so nervous she couldn’t speak.

  “Dear heart, let me go, and stand back now.”

  Katya obeyed without question, feeling very young suddenly. When her grandmother held out a hand, Katya moved toward her, and her grandmother kissed her cheek before shooing her away.

  Why did it feel like they were saying good-bye?

  Starbride collected the pyramid necklaces. Katya’s parents and grandmother leaned forward to touch the pyramid, and their human faces fell away.

  Da’s two horns curled back over his head. His eyes turned all blue, and a spike jutted from his chin. The wings of a crow sprouted from Ma’s back in four places. Her eyes shone light blue, and fangs pressed down from her upper jaw against her lower lip.

  Four horns sprouted from Katya’s grandmother’s head, two over the back, and two across the sides. Her face elongated, and fangs curled from her top and bottom lips. Her skin appeared smoother, younger, and Katya wondered if all Fiends were ageless, deathless. If they didn’t manage to kill Roland for good, would he plague them forever?

  Hugo blanched as Starbride approached him. Katya moved to stand at his back, her courage growing when someone needed her. “You might want to take off your shirt and coat,” she said in his ear. He nodded and obeyed, his eyes fixed on the Aspects of the other three.

  Starbride patted Hugo’s bare shoulder and whispered something to him. He smiled, but the look didn’t erase the pinched worry from his face. He rubbed his hands together once before he leaned forward and touched the great capstone’s side.

  His eyes were the first to turn, becoming wholly light blue without white, or pupil. A spike jutted from his chin and two crow’s wings sprouted from his back. Fangs from his upper jaw plunged down well past his chin, forcing his lips into a snarl. Katya tried to combine all the traits of each Aspect, trying to comprehend what Yanchasa actually looked like, but she knew her former Fiendish face had sported different traits than these, and Roland and Reinholt had still more.

  Katya took a deep breath and tried to banish the feeling that she was the reason her grandmother had to come, the reason Brom had murdered Crowe. If she’d held on to her Fiend, she could have prevented both incidents.

  Crowe would have told her that was nonsense. She stood to the side and watched both the pyramid and the entrance to the cavern.

  Starbride stood back from the four Fiends and picked up Crowe’s large pyramid. Her eyes went half-lidded as she focused. The capstone began to glow, and each of the Fiends groaned, a noise that made Katya’s stomach churn, as if she might void her breakfast. The glow from the capstone spread to each Fiend like creeping fungus until it engulfed them. Katya couldn’t remember anything from her own Waltz except the exhaustion.

  When the glow began to recede, Katya squinted into it. Something was wrong. Only three forms still stood. She stepped closer, but paused, not wanting to get drawn into the magic, especially now that she had no Aspect to protect her. When she saw her grandmother sagging toward the ground, held up only by contact with the pyramid, she rushed forward. The glow subsided, and the Fiends collapsed onto their backs, slipping away from the pyramid’s sides. Her grandmother slid forward, threatening to smack face-first into the ground.

  Katya grabbed her and turned her over. “Star! Brutal!” Her Aspect had withdrawn, and like the other unconscious royals, she had bloody streaks across her face, but her chest didn’t rise and fall as theirs did.

  Starbride unfastened her shackles while Brutal laid her flat on the floor. He peered under her eyelids and put his ear to her mouth. “She isn’t breathing.”

  Katya’s heart leapt into her throat. “Make her!”

  Brutal opened her grandmother’s mouth and peered inside. “She hasn’t swallowed her tongue.” He leaned her forward and smacked her on the back. When that didn’t work, he pushed on her abdomen as if working her lungs.

  “Grandmother!” Katya shouted in her ear. She turned to Starbride. “Can you use a pyramid on her?”

  “To help her breathe?” Starbride shook her head.

  Brutal laid his ear on Katya’s grandmother’s chest. “Her heart isn’t beating.” He tried pushing on her abdomen again, but nothing happened. “She’s dead, Katya.”

  Katya tried to shove him out of the way, but it was like trying to move a tree. “Get out of the way.” She knelt beside her grandmother’s head. “Grandmother.” She stroked her grandmother’s cheeks. She seemed even smaller and older than in the sitting room, but more serene, almost peaceful. “Please, Grandma. Brutal, you have to—”

  “Katya, there’s nothing to do.”

  “Oh, Katya,” Starbride said, tears in her voice.

  Katya whirled on her. “Get some more of Yanchasa’s essence from the capstone and put it in her!”

  “I won’t do that!”

  “You have to!”

  Starbride’s mouth set in a firm line. “Do you want her to be like Roland, Katya?”

  The breath caught in Katya’s throat. “No…but…” But everyone was leaving her, one after another. She fell forward into Starbride’s arms.

  Everything after that was a blur: Brutal fetching Dawnmother and Averie, and toward the end, Pennynail, all of them carrying unconscious members of her family. Just as they had done after she’d first defeated Roland, they were all bundled into the same room. Brutal laid her parents in their bed, leaving them to Averie. Out in the king’s sitting room, Pennynail put Hugo on a couch, and Dawnmother covered him with a blanket. Starbride’s arms never strayed from Katya. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Brutal leave the sitting room with a blanket. When he returned, his arms were full, and the blanket covered what could only be her grandmother’s body.

  Katya’s tears started again at the sight of the blanket-wrapped bundle. Averie came out of the bedroom, and she and Dawnmother made plans with the efficiency of lifelong servants.

  “How long will they sleep?” Dawnmother asked.

  “Not more than an hour,” Averie said.

  “We should stay in here until then,” Starbride said, her voice coming from above Katya’s head, her arms still cradling Katya close. “When the king and queen wake, they can decide what we should tell everyone about the queen mother. Until then, no one should see our faces, not until the king is ready.”

  Katya nearly sat up and stared at her. Such authority in her voice, and a course that Crowe himself would have ordered. She also showed reverence for Katya’s father, for his position, his decision. It was like she’d been born in their circle.

  “That’s good thinking.” Brutal had placed the body on another settee, at the far side of the room.

  “What about Yanchasa?” Katya said. Shame prickled her that she should fall apart when her team needed her to be strong. She cleared her throat and said the words again in a clearer voice. “Did the Waltz work? Is he pacified for now?”

  Starbride wiped Katya’s cheeks with her thumbs, a sweet gesture that almost made her pull away. She needed strength, not softness.

  “From what I could sense, it worked. I should check, though, just to make sure.”

  “Pennynail, go with her.” Katya wiped her cheeks herself and stood. With a nod, Pennynail walked toward the secret passageway again before Katya had a chance t
o remember why he might not want to go. Her shame deepened. It seemed everyone but her could cast off emotion and get the job done. “Wait, I didn’t mean…”

  Pennynail saluted her and continued toward the passageway. Starbride followed him into the darkness again.

  Chapter Twenty-two: Starbride

  Starbride lifted her pyramid from the cavern floor. She had funneled some of Yanchasa’s extra essence into each Umbriel to make up for what Katya had given back. Sharing it between them had, she hoped, guaranteed that it wouldn’t make any of them more of a Fiend. She couldn’t get the idea out of her head, though, that the extra essence was what had killed the queen mother.

  “Stop that,” Freddie said. He had the mask sitting on top of his head, ready to pull down at a moment’s notice.

  “Stop what?”

  “Feeling guilty. We do what has to be done. The old lady knew that.”

  Starbride supposed it was true, but she’d hold on to her guilt for a while longer. It had so much grief to keep it company. Starbride hugged the large pyramid to her chest as though she wanted to hug Katya again. Their promises to keep from dying echoed in her head.

  As she’d done during the Waltz, Starbride fell into the pyramid in her arms, and used it to touch the capstone’s magic. She didn’t go deep, didn’t want to encounter Yanchasa any more than she had to. Before the Waltz, the capstone had roiled with the great Fiend’s energy, barely containing it. Now the energy felt subdued, almost placid. Starbride eased her focus. “Yanchasa is asleep.”

  Freddie only nodded. He was too busy staring at the divot in the floor.

  Starbride pulled his mask down for him. “Let’s get back.”

  When they returned to the royal apartment, Hugo was awake and trying to sit up with Dawnmother’s help. “What happened?”

  Dawnmother patted him on the back. “Just rest.”

  Starbride nodded at Dawnmother to keep tending him and followed Katya into her parents’ bedroom. They were sitting up in bed.

  “Da,” Katya said. “I’m sorry, but Grandmother is…”

  Starbride took her hand. “She passed away, King Einrich. I’m so sorry.”

  To her surprise, King Einrich didn’t cry like he’d done for Crowe. He simply sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed his temples. “She knew,” he said. “It’s why she didn’t want to see the grandchildren. She didn’t want them to ask where she’d gone.”

  “I thought so, too,” Queen Catirin said.

  Katya took several deep breaths. “I should have seen it.”

  “Katya,” Queen Catirin said, “don’t blame yourself.”

  “Maybe she didn’t want you to worry,” Starbride said.

  “That’s why she said she was proud of me,” Katya said, “because she knew it would be the last time she could say it.”

  “She said that because it’s true,” Queen Catirin said.

  Katya shook her head. “I should have seen it.”

  “We’ve had too much loss,” King Einrich said, “more than our share, but…” Tears threatened his voice, but he swallowed them down.

  “I know, Da. Duty.”

  King Einrich kissed her on the top of the head. “You do know, don’t you, my girl.”

  “What are we going to tell people?” Katya asked.

  “That age took her. She’s had her state funeral planned for years.”

  “That was her to the hilt,” Katya said.

  Starbride suddenly wished she’d known the old lady better. “Well, no one will question why the crown princess is staying in Marienne now, with all the funerals.” As soon as the words left her, she thought of how callous they were. “I’m sorry.”

  “No, my dear, no apology necessary,” King Einrich said. “My mother would have said the same thing.”

  They spread the news through different channels; it couldn’t be doubted when it came from so many quarters. The queen mother had collapsed while taking tea in the king and queen’s apartment. She’d come to support the crown in its time of transition, but the trip to Marienne had been too hard on her. Many of the older nobles praised her as they had during the reign of her husband. In death, she was still the epitome of nobility.

  Queen Mother Meredin was laid to state the next afternoon with all the pomp the kingdom could muster, almost as much as Queen Catirin would get if she died while King Einrich still ruled. They used a glass carriage, a contraption that cost a fortune, so very Farradain. When the gilded, inlaid coffin was placed inside, it was covered with so many flowers that Starbride could barely see through it. It reminded Starbride of Appleton’s funeral, though he hadn’t rated the glass carriage, and the royals gathered on the dais again; the black bunting and armbands were back.

  As Starbride watched the carriage roll by, she remembered the first time she’d seen the Umbriels gather in front of the palace. They’d waited for Reinholt’s entrance into Marienne, just before Roland attacked them beneath the castle. How the crowds had cheered the crown prince then. Now, scant months later, those same crowds were eerily silent as the glass carriage rolled by. Many wept, caught up in the pall of sadness that always surrounded a funeral.

  “As a kingdom,” King Einrich said to the crowd, “we’ve suffered much tragedy recently. My mother, my pyradisté, and of course, our own Mr. Georgie Appleton, three persons who lived for the good they could do Marienne.”

  “Appleton lived for the people, not you, Umbriel!”

  Everywhere, heads turned, and people babbled confusedly. Katya stepped up beside her father and scanned the crowd for the speaker. Starbride dipped into the concealed pocket of her dress.

  “Parliament!” someone else shouted, as lost among the faces as the first speaker, though it sounded like a woman’s voice. “We need a parliament!”

  Heads nodded now, though most still seemed curious rather than angry. “Did the queen mother suggest it, too?” a third voice yelled. “Is that why she died?”

  King Einrich’s brow darkened. Behind them, the gathering of nobles and courtiers gasped. The crowd rumbled now. Starbride could almost see the idea of King Einrich killing his own mother spreading through the crowd like wildfire, as absurd as it seemed.

  “Please,” King Einrich said. “Ladies and gentleman—”

  “Monster!” the female voice shouted.

  “Murderer!” another said.

  Starbride fought to keep from gaping. Where had this come from? Had this dissent been gathering all the while, only the Umbriels hadn’t seen it?

  The king’s Guard spread into the crowd, some of whom tried to push them back. Several officers of the Watch were coming at the crowd from the city side, catching the people in a dangerous vise.

  Katya pulled on Starbride’s sleeve. “We need a distraction, now.”

  Starbride turned as King Einrich called for order. His voice was lost in the angry shouts below them.

  Starbride scanned the nobles and courtiers. Among them stood the masters of the city’s chapterhouses and academies. She hurried for Master Bernard of the Pyradisté Academy.

  “Master Bernard!”

  “Whatever’s going—”

  “You’re lighting the academy earlier than expected.”

  His response was cut off by gasps from those around them. From out of the crowd, something flew at the dais in a high arc. Katya leapt in front of her father and bashed a piece of fruit out of the way with her rapier guard.

  “Now!” Starbride said. “Master Bernard, please!”

  The Guards at the side of the dais surrounded the royals. Starbride spotted Lord Vincent carrying Vierdrin and Bastian toward the palace doors.

  Master Bernard lifted one hand. On the roof of a building across the square, a woman turned toward the pyramid rising from the streets of Marienne and waved a red flag.

  Katya yelled at the Guard to pull back from the crowd, but there was no way to tell the city Watch to do the same. Every second felt like hours until the central pyramid of the Pyradisté Academy glowed like
fire.

  Heads turned. Starbride glanced that way herself as the capstone of the pyramid shone bright white, the light so powerful that it bounced along the clouds like a living thing. The crowd fell silent as quickly as if they’d been shut off by a switch.

  “We are all Farradains!” King Einrich boomed. “There is no strife that we cannot handle together. No problem which cannot be overcome through discussion.”

  “He’s right!” someone called from the crowd. Starbride recognized Captain Ursula as she was hoisted up on the shoulders of her fellows. She raised her arms as if directing a choir. “We meet and we talk. That’s how we get things done. If we resort to violence, we’re no better than the worst wharf rat in Dockland.”

  That got them thinking. Some resident of Marienne might have less than his neighbors, but he always had more than the people in Dockland. If Captain Ursula had been in arm’s reach, Starbride would have been tempted to kiss her.

  The crowd muttered, but no one threw anything. The Guard and the Watch waved them to disperse. They went, leaving nothing but the glass coach with its flowers and coffin. When the path was clear, the black-clad driver rushed the coffin toward the stables. All that was left was to get the royal family back inside the palace. They walked, all of them acting as if what had happened outside was of no consequence. The nobles and courtiers crowded around them and spoke of the stinking rabble and how it didn’t know its place.

  As Starbride rejoined the Umbriels, she tried to deter such words. It was just what the “stinking rabble” would be most upset about.

  King Einrich waved such comments away. “I thought it rather thoughtful that the crowd offered me something to eat.” He had them laughing soon enough, but the older nobles still seemed scandalized and stared into the city as if they’d never seen it before. Some appeared frightened, but most were angry, even offering to teach a few lessons if that was what it took.

  “Three voices from out in the crowd,” Katya said in Starbride’s ear, “two male, one female, both impossible to spot and yet still loud. Augmented by a pyramid?”