For Want of a Fiend

by Barbara Ann Wright

  “Peace.” Katya hurried toward the lady in question, happy to have a captive. One lady was crumpled near the stable wall, part of her face gone from Brutal’s mace. The other lay curled in a ball, unmoving. She had a dagger sticking out of her abdomen.

  “Spirits above!” Hugo cried. “I left her alive, I swear!”

  “Evidently, she preferred this to capture,” Katya said.

  A scuff near the door made them turn. Pennynail stood there, still cradling his ribs. He shook his head.

  Katya bit her lip. She hadn’t really expected him to catch Lady Hilda, but it would have been nice. “Take these bodies away before someone follows us over here. They won’t believe an escaped hillcat stabbed one and bashed the other’s head in.”

  Brutal and Pennynail wrapped the bodies in their cloaks and carried them outside. The groom had gathered quite a crowd, including the royal physician.

  “Your Highness?” the royal physician asked. He inclined his head at the two cloak-shrouded bodies.

  Katya shook her head. “The cat was on them before we could do anything.”

  “Who did it? Who brought the animal?” someone called.

  Katya hesitated, but Starbride said, “Lady Hilda Montenegro. She’s always desperate to impress everyone.”

  Katya nearly glanced at her in surprise. “Yes, she is that.” She gestured for the two dead bodies to be loaded on a cart. “These were her servants. Spirits knows where the lady herself is now.” She turned to another servant, glad there were so many about. “Find my lady-in-waiting and tell her to make inquiries as to who the maids’ families are.”

  The onlookers seemed impressed. Lady Hilda might have gotten away, but she’d given the Umbriels an opportunity to foster some goodwill with the common people.

  Pennynail and Brutal drove the cart into the city, presumably to the mortuary, but Katya didn’t know where the two ladies would really end up, if they’d find a new home with Pennynail’s infamous pig farmer.

  *

  Lady Hilda had vanished. Dawnmother’s spying said that she hadn’t returned to her townhouse, and news of her “hillcat” had everyone in the palace keeping an eye out for her. She couldn’t stay in the city and not be called to task.

  “Someone has to be sheltering her,” Katya said to the Order that evening. Hugo attended as well as Averie. She hadn’t found any family to receive the bodies of the maids. Katya tried not to think about where they’d have to end up now.

  “She has to have a bolt-hole,” Brutal said. He leaned forward from time to time and massaged his back. “Somewhere she can go to ground. All of the nobles do.”

  Katya nodded. “Who did Captain Ursula bring in from the countryside?”

  “Mostly guards working for Lady Hilda,” Starbride said. “The Watch is holding them in the city jail. Ursula’s agreed to let me use a pyramid on them without a magistrate’s permission, on one condition.”

  “Let me guess, she wants to know what we find out.”

  “You’ve got it.”

  “Lady Hilda wouldn’t have told her guards anything, would she?” Hugo asked. “She wouldn’t share her mind with hired thugs. Do we really need to break the law to interrogate them?”

  “There’s more than ethics at stake here, Lord Hugo,” Brutal said. “If the Umbriels fall, it’s likely Yanchasa could escape and destroy Marienne or even all of Farraday.”

  “I know that.” He frowned and looked away, reminding Katya of Maia’s occasional pouts.

  Brutal must have seen the same thing. “You need to get a little hard, friend. If you can’t kill a minor enemy, how are you going to face Darren or your father?” He didn’t mention that they might also be facing Maia as well.

  “I had that maid beaten. Why kill her?”

  Brutal clucked his tongue. “What if she’d felt well enough to come to the door of the stable and throw that knife of hers? Or sneak up on us while we were preoccupied with Lady Hilda?”

  Hugo stared at the table and didn’t say anything.

  “I felt the same way as you when I first came here,” Starbride said. “I didn’t think I could really be hurt, that anyone could. I thought the danger was exaggerated, but then Lady Hilda almost attacked me in her room. You’re fighting someone who wants to kill you, Hugo. They won’t hesitate, and you have to learn to do the same.”

  Katya didn’t mention that she doubted if Starbride could kill yet without a second thought, but she let the words sink in.

  “I’ll…yes, I’ll keep that in mind,” Hugo said. “Still, can you see Lady Hilda sharing information with her guards?”

  “Maybe, maybe not.” Katya turned to Starbride. “If you see something about the Fiends, about Roland, in the guards’ thoughts, can you lie to Captain Ursula?”

  Starbride blinked, but then she nodded.

  “I guess there’s no way Ursula will bring the captives here?” Brutal asked.

  “I doubt it,” Katya said. “She’s desperate to know what’s going on. I imagine she’ll do whatever it takes to hold on to her leverage.”

  “Do we know if she had her pyradistés read the captives already?” Hugo asked.

  “They’re taught to wait for a magistrate. But whatever the protocol, we’d better get there soon.” Katya crossed her arms and looked to Starbride again. “I don’t like sending you into the city, not with Lady Hilda on the loose and those Fiend corpses running around.”

  “Never fear,” Starbride said. “I shall go in secret.”

  “I can go with you,” Hugo said.

  Katya resisted the urge to chuckle at his enthusiasm. “Your kind of escort would make her a little too obvious, Hugo.”

  “But thank you for the offer,” Starbride added.

  “If we want to go in secret,” Katya said, “Castelle’s out, too.” She pointed at Pennynail. “We need your particular talents.”

  He saluted, but Starbride sighed. “Fingers and toes again, isn’t it?” she asked.

  He saluted her, too, and when she sighed again, he put his masked face in his palms as if weeping. Starbride wadded a stray piece of paper and threw it at him.

  Katya scrubbed her face, dreading what she had to say now, but seeing the sense in it. “Now that the sun is down, it’s the best time to go.”

  “Understood.”

  Katya caught her elbow as she stood. “Be careful.” She tried to put all her feelings into the words, tried to make them as powerful as a guarding pyramid.

  “Promise me the same,” Starbride said, “and I’ll be as careful as you like.”

  “I promise.”

  Pennynail put his hands on his stomach as if about to be ill. Katya glared at him. “I don’t have any stray paper, so whatever I choose to throw, you’ll definitely feel.”

  Starbride kissed her quickly. Katya couldn’t watch as they walked out the door.

  Chapter Twenty-eight: Starbride

  Starbride braved the chill in her black leather outfit. No matter what Pennynail said, it was the best she had for sneaking through a dark city. Dawnmother had pinned her hair in a tight bun, making her even colder. Maybe some activity would warm her up.

  In his room, Freddie grinned at her outfit, and she gave him a look. “Don’t poke fun.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

  “Maybe someday I’ll have a grotesque leather mask of my own.”

  “It’s good to have ambition.”

  He led her down into the palace, so far that she expected to emerge into the cavern that held the huge capstone. Instead, he stopped at a blank wall that sported a single pyramid and lifted his mask onto his head. “My father never tuned this to you, so stay behind me. You can retune it later.” He blew out their lamp, and only the glow of the pyramid filled the space.

  Freddie stripped off a glove and pressed the pyramid. A section of bricks swung inward, and Freddie had to bend double to get through. Starbride ducked and followed him. She smelled the faint scent of horses, but they weren’t in the stables. She could
stretch her arms to both sides and feel walls, though the way in front of her was clear. It was a narrow corridor, almost completely black under the night sky.

  Starbride felt Freddie’s grip on her arm and his lips near her ear. “Let your eyes adjust.”

  Soon, she could make out dim shapes from the light beyond the walls. When she could see Freddie’s white mask, she nodded, and they moved quickly. The narrow space ended in another blank wall. Starbride hoped for a door, but Pennynail wedged his feet into cracks in the brick and scampered up.

  “All right,” Starbride muttered. She put her foot in the first crack and bounced, getting a feel for how well it would support her. Pennynail sat atop the wall and reached down. Starbride pushed off the ground and grabbed his hand before she could sink. Her foot slipped, and she clamped her teeth on a yelp, certain she was about to fall. She steadied after a moment and felt along the wall until she located another hold. With help, she was up and over faster than when she’d climbed Lady Hilda’s garden wall. That seemed an eternity ago. It was a good thing her pyramid satchel fit snugly to her body.

  The next hours in the city were a whirlwind of stops and starts, turning away from light and noise and diving through alleys or scaling walls and fences. Starbride discovered such a variety of smells as she never hoped to experience. At one point, Pennynail helped her up the front of a small townhouse, one among an entire row of them. When she reached the roof, her muscles gone to liquid, she collapsed in a heap and just breathed for a few moments.

  After too short a time, she felt a touch on her arm. In the weak light coming from the street below and the stars and moon above, she saw Pennynail kneeling over her. He gave her another pat as if to ask if she was all right. She nodded. They hadn’t spoken aloud since his words near the palace. She had to trust he knew what he was doing, where he was going. He led her to the side of the house, near where a dark dovecote waited, and pulled her into a crouch. Starbride looked past the roof to the back of the well-lit Watch house below, a destination that seemed miles away. Pennynail seemed determined to sneak up on it completely, not taking the chance of coming within the reach of its brightly lit white walls until they were on top of it.

  Starbride scanned the houses abutting the townhouse, all of them with no access between. If they wanted to come at the Watch house from behind, the only way seemed up and over. But the back of their townhouse didn’t sport as many climbing holds as the front had. She held her arms out as if to say, “What now?”

  Pennynail laid a finger beside the mask’s long nose and walked to a short doorway, more a raised hatch that rose from the house’s roof. He took a length of rolled-up leather from his belt and pulled out several long, slender pieces of metal. Well, he’d been a thief, by his own admission. Only natural he’d have a set of lock-picks. Starbride wished the light was better so she could see what he did with them. She’d only ever read about housebreaking. As the chill wind touched the sweat on her face and neck, she couldn’t contain a shiver.

  After several soft sounds from the door, Pennynail had it open. Starbride held in the urge to leap forward, the cold flooding through her. Pennynail pointed ahead. She squinted in the gloom. A slight glint betrayed the presence of more metal. Pennynail lit a match, and Starbride’s eyes widened. A bear trap rested just beyond the hatch. Evidently, the occupants of the house had tired of nighttime visitors. Starbride let her mouth hang open, shocked that someone would set such a trap for a human being, and wondered at the same time if they’d ever caught anyone.

  Carefully, she and Pennynail stepped over the bear trap, and he shut and locked the hatch as soundlessly as he’d opened it. He extinguished his match, and Starbride commanded her light pyramid to glow very softly.

  As she glanced down a long wooden hallway, the realization of what they were doing hit her. They were in someone’s house! She mashed her lips together to prevent an outcry, a demand that they leave. The invasion of privacy had her stomach flip-flopping. Fear prickled over her scalp, but other emotions bubbled to the surface. Exhilaration crawled through her body as she followed in Pennynail’s footsteps.

  She fought the urge to hold her breath and moved as silently as she could. Through an open doorway, a bed sat on one side of a narrow room, its occupant not more than a lump. Starbride had the grace to be appalled at her grin. She was a prowler but nonetheless thrilled; her mother would have been horrified, but the owners were unaware. She could rearrange their house, and in the morning, it would be as if they’d been visited by a ghost.

  When Pennynail finally unlocked the back door and let them out, Starbride’s legs almost gave out. She gripped his arm as hard as she dared, and when he turned to her, the manic grin on his mask made sense. She echoed it with her own.

  Pennynail relocked the door, and Starbride turned to find a small yard, one side occupied by a huddled gaggle of geese. She put out her light, and Pennynail gave the birds a wide berth as he led her to the shed. One quick climb and they were over, right into the yard of the Watch house.

  A shadow separated from the others at the back of the building. “I should arrest you for trespassing,” Captain Ursula said. She lit a lantern. “Don’t tell me you went through that house or I’ll make you turn out your pockets.”

  Pennynail had frozen into a statue.

  Starbride took the lead. “Okay, I won’t tell you that.”

  Ursula gestured with her chin at Pennynail. “Your masked friend doesn’t talk?”

  “He can’t say anything at all,” Starbride said. She tried to think like Katya. “His face was burned by acid, and it robbed him of his voice.”

  “Oh. I see.” She retreated to her all-business stance. “My captives are this way.”

  Pennynail tapped Starbride’s shoulder and pointed to the ground. He’d stay put. Starbride nodded. That was probably best. He attracted too much attention. She supposed she’d be safe enough in a Watch house.

  She followed Ursula through a space teeming with officers. As before, they seemed far too busy to speak with her, all except Sergeant Rhys, Captain Ursula’s right hand, who leaned against the doorway they approached. Starbride wondered how he always managed to look so languid, as if he had all the time in the world. Or maybe nothing upset him. Pennynail managed that very same posture. Maybe before he’d been a thief, he’d tried being a member of the Watch.

  Sergeant Rhys led them into a hallway lined on one side with a row of cells, reminding Starbride of the dungeon, but there were no glittering pyramids here, no pall of underground depths. These cells had bars fronting them and moonlight leaking through the small barred windows at their rear.

  Torches burned at intervals along the other wall, a holdover from before the Watch house had gotten lamps. It said something that Ursula hadn’t bothered to replace them, probably that she didn’t have the funds to do so.

  Sergeant Rhys approached the bars of the first cell and opened the door. “You.” He pointed at one of the men inside, the closest to the bars.

  The man looked to the others before stepping into the light. One of his cellmates laughed at him, drink tanging the sound. The other just turned away. They were both dressed in homespun, but the man Sergeant Rhys singled out wore well-worn leather.

  He rubbed the blond stubble on his cheeks. “What do you want with me?”

  “Step out,” Ursula said.

  “Can’t have no tribunal in the middle of the night.”

  “We want to give you a chance to tell your side of the story.” She gestured to a closed door at the end of the hallway.

  As they led him past the other cells, three men and one woman dispersed among the other captives came to the bars to watch him go. The one on the end tried to grab the blond prisoner’s arm, but he ducked out of the way.

  “Keep your mouth shut!” the man at the end of the cells commanded. The blond prisoner just stared at him and then continued on his way. Everyone who’d watched his progress wore the same kind of well-worn leather. Starbride wondered if s
plitting them up into different cells really did that much good.

  Behind closed doors, Sergeant Rhys guided the prisoner to a chair on one side of a small table.

  Ursula leaned to Starbride’s ear. “The only reason I’m allowing this is because they attacked us like you said they would and because they know about the unrest in my town.”

  Starbride smiled at “my town.” “It’s good that you care.”

  Ursula frowned and then gestured at the prisoner. Sergeant Rhys stooped with surprising speed and wrapped one arm around the blond prisoner’s neck, getting him in a chokehold. The prisoner tried to kick up from the chair, but Sergeant Rhys held him in place.

  Starbride darted forward, drew her mind pyramid from her satchel, and pressed it to the prisoner’s forehead before Sergeant Rhys made him black out.

  She fell into the pyramid immediately, but instead of occupying the small crystalline space, she fell through it, into the mind beneath. The prisoner’s thoughts and murmurs of memory engulfed her like warm water. Starbride fought panic and focused, settling the memories into their threads, one leading to another, all the way back to the beginning of his life. She looked at the whole of the threads and knew him as Christopher Allen.

  Starbride focused on Lady Hilda, and the threads reformed, each memory connected with her becoming one long line. Starbride spun the memories and looked for one in particular, letting the images play in her own mind’s eye.

  Lady Hilda had hired Christopher and his fellows to take her to and from her country estate. The pay was good, the food outstanding, and the actual combat minimal. It was a dream, much better than anyone in Christopher’s family had been able to get. Starbride sped forward, fighting against getting caught in memories not hers.

  She saw Duke Robert’s caravan, the one that carried Brom, and felt Christopher’s anger at joining it. He’d been protecting Lady Hilda for a long time. He and his fellows were more than capable of keeping her safe on a jaunt across the countryside.