The Fiend Queen (6 page)

The cold withdrew. Starbride sat up, her forehead and nose aching where she’d slammed into the ground. Hugo, still following the wild Fiends, blundered toward Dawnmother. Starbride lifted her pyramid in his direction. He staggered away with a hiss. Dawnmother’s eyes widened as she stared over Starbride’s shoulder, and Starbride whirled around.

Roland stood only a few feet away when he met the invisible bubble of Starbride’s suppression pyramid. He drew up short, sliding, before he hopped backward. “Pesky little gnat!”

She flung a fire pyramid at him, but he batted it away without breaking it, and Ursula had to leap from its path.

A great cry went up, several streets over, and a worried look passed over Roland’s face. Whoever was coming, they weren’t allies.

“For Dockland and Marienne!” someone yelled, and a great many voices answered.

“Is that who I think it is?” Dawnmother asked.

Freddie limped to their side. “It’s got to be Maia and Prince Reinholt.”

Starbride didn’t take her eyes off Roland. She could see him calculating the odds. Maia’s Fiend would have to stay locked inside her, but Reinholt’s was free to come out if he let it. Two royal Fiends could keep his wild Fiends occupied, and then who would keep Starbride from backing him into a corner? Even he would die if stabbed over and over and over.

“You shouldn’t have killed all your pets,” she said.

He drew two pyramids. Starbride switched focus and pounced on one, but not before he threw them both. People leapt out of the way, both from the pyramid that smashed harmlessly on the ground, and the other that bloomed into a sphere as black as ink. A deep, hollow sound echoed across the street, rattling Starbride’s teeth. The sphere winked out, taking a perfect half-sphere from a building’s side. Part of a chair fell out of the hole, leaving a view of the terrified people huddling at the back of a shop.

Even as Starbride switched her focus to her suppression pyramid, she knew Roland had gone, taking the wild Fiends with him.

“Coward,” Dawnmother said.

“Or smart.” He’d seek more easily defended ground. Like the palace. Starbride glanced in that direction before watching the Docklanders charge toward them. “We need to catch Hugo before they get here.”

Katya

The commotion from the other side of the library stopped as suddenly as it had started. Katya crept in that direction, keeping her rapier out. Redtrue followed, walking under her own power for the first time in hours. She took deep, steady breaths and smiled as if that simple act pleased her. Castelle watched their backs, her own weapon drawn and ready.

Katya stepped over books and scrolls, straining to be quiet in the cavernous space. As she emerged from between the shelves, she paused before the tables that dominated the middle of the room. The bodies of corpse Fiends and human guards sprawled among overturned chairs and splintered planks of wood. Light poured in from a window high on the wall.

The shelves on the other side of the library leaned against one another, their contents scattered across the floor. The heavy wooden doors stood closed, and Katya couldn’t recall hearing them open and shut again. Her mother was still in here somewhere, waiting perhaps, but for what?

Or maybe she was stalking them. Katya couldn’t help a shiver. Slight movement caught her eye from the leaning shelves. She nudged Redtrue and pointed.

As they drew closer, Katya recognized her mother’s small silhouette even with the crow’s wings sprouting from her shoulders. Her back was to them as she stared at something. Katya squinted. Someone else knelt in the shadows, barely visible, and Katya’s eyes went wide as she caught a glimpse of mottled skin.

The Fiend lifted its head. When it scuttled farther into the shadows, Ma stepped after it.

From Katya’s time as a Fiend, she remembered having to resist attacking her own family, Fiend drawn to Fiend. She took a step forward, ready to leap on her mother, but soft yellow light blossomed behind her, and the energy from Redtrue’s pyramid flowed over her, warm as a summer breeze. Ma stiffened as if struck by lightning, and her wings receded through the tears in her shirt and into her back, leaving only bloody trails. She collapsed, and the way stood clear for the radiance to reach the Fiend.

It shrieked, long and loud. Katya’s rapier fell from her nerveless fingers, and she clapped her hands over her ears. The noise clattered through her skull and up and down her spine like shards of pottery rubbing together combined with that metal-on-metal squeal. She tasted so much copper she was certain she’d bitten her tongue.

A bang cut through the noise, and the shriek faded. Katya tottered to her feet and bent to reclaim her rapier.

“What in the spirits’ names?” Castelle asked.

The glow from Redtrue’s pyramid faded. “It fled rather than be cleansed.”

One of the library doors had been knocked clean from its hinges. The noise was bound to attract some attention. Katya slid her rapier into its scabbard and picked up her unconscious mother. “Let’s get moving.”

Katya hated to backtrack, but the servants’ halls had been the safest place they’d seen. They didn’t try to find Baroness Jacintha again but stopped in the first room they came to.

The small chamber had been a storeroom, but someone had picked it clean. A few empty sacks littered the bare stone floor. Katya laid her mother on them and settled against the wall, her wound praising her for getting off her feet.

“Should we not leave your mother with the baroness and continue our pyramid hunt?” Redtrue asked.

Katya had thought of that, but leaving her unconscious mother with people she didn’t know rankled. They’d had no choice with Brutal, but Katya at least wanted her mother awake for the decision.

“She’s too powerful a weapon,” Castelle said.

“We can’t let her transform again if we can help it,” Katya said. Still, Castelle was right. And Ma had been right about her presence attracting the wild Fiends’ attention. Katya had been able to keep the Fiend from harming her friends, but once the pyramid was destroyed, it had gone straight to the only other Fiend in the room. “You said the wild Fiend didn’t want to be cleansed, Redtrue. What did you mean? How can a pure Fiend be cleansed?”

“With its Fiendness stripped away,” Castelle asked, “wouldn’t it be nothing?”

Redtrue frowned hard. “The energy I felt from that pyramid was akin to the Fiends. Since the one who grabbed your leg fled once the pyramid was destroyed, I think it was calling them. The question is, why was the pyramid affecting me so?”

“Because of your purity,” Castelle said.

Katya rolled her eyes and caught Redtrue doing the same. “Now that you’re well,” Katya said, “can you sense any other pyramids nearby?”

Redtrue took another pyramid from her bag and focused. After a moment, she nodded.

As much as Katya craved rest, she knew they couldn’t linger. The fight would still be raging in the city, and she didn’t know when Roland might return. Of course, with Redtrue free from her affliction, Katya thought their odds against Roland were pretty good. Redtrue seemed to have a knack for overcoming Fiend energy. As Katya tried to wake her mother, she hoped that Roland
would
come back soon. Maybe they could end the fight sooner than anyone thought.

It usually took an hour to recover from turning into a Fiend, but Katya shook her mother gently, trying to hasten the process. She began to think that leaving Ma with Jacintha was the only cause left to them when her mother blinked and tried to open her eyes.

“Oh,” Ma said as she struggled upright, “my head.”

In the past, Katya had awakened from her Aspect feeling tired but never with the fatigue on her mother’s face. Powerful weapon or not, could they risk her transforming again? Would they even be able to wake her?

“I trust we got what we were looking for?” Ma asked.

Katya told her of the battle.

“I don’t remember any of that, but I’m glad I was useful.” She climbed shakily to her feet. “What’s next?”

Katya hesitated, afraid that if she suggested her mother stay behind, she’d be in line for a scolding. And if her mother wanted to risk her life, who was Katya to say no? It was just a question of putting one more person she loved in danger.

Ma glanced up, and something in Katya’s face must have betrayed her thoughts. “You want me to stay behind.” There was no hurt in her words, just a statement of fact.

“If you turn into a Fiend again…”

“I feel the difference now compared to before,” Ma said. “But I still might be able to distract any wild Fiends while remaining human.”

“I can do that, too.”

“Let me distract. You do the stabbing.”

It was a good argument, but Katya couldn’t quite give her blessing.

“You are the leader here,” Ma said. “If you order me to stay behind, if you think I’ve done as much as I can, I’ll stay.”

Her own mother taking her orders; it boggled the mind. But in the end, it wasn’t a question of safety and danger. Nowhere in the palace was safe. “No, you come with us.”

Ma squeezed Katya’s arm. “I had every faith that you were as brilliant as I thought.”

Katya barked a laugh, and when they piled into the hallway again, her heart was a little lighter.

They found another of Roland’s hypnosis pyramids on the floor above them. Redtrue cleansed it through the wall. Katya’s earlier excitement came rushing back, even with all they’d suffered. The faster they could cleanse these pyramids, the faster they could regroup with Starbride and then the army outside the walls of Marienne.

As soon as they’d disabled the pyramid, they moved on, taking the secret passageways when they could and sneaking past any guards. In the halls, Katya kept everyone close to the walls, ready to dive for cover. When they reached one of the grand staircases that spiraled up into the third floor, Katya took the lead as they climbed single file along the outer wall. Long tapestries hung almost to the floor as they ascended the staircase, each suspended by ropes tied to hooks hidden behind the black iron rail. Castelle kept her blade out; Redtrue held her pyramid. Ma clutched her long knife, but her other hand hovered in front of her chest, ready to remove her pyramid necklace.

Katya caught a hint of movement above them, just around the curve. “Down!” she whispered.

The air whooshed above her head, and an arrow
thunked
into a tapestry where her head had been.

“Back, back!” Katya said. They scuttled down the stairs and moved to the inner rail where the archer would have to move closer to see them.

The arrow didn’t bear Averie’s signature green fletching, but it had to be her. Katya lamented again that the adsnazi didn’t use destructive magic and that she hadn’t brought Pennynail.

Averie didn’t call down the stairs. Mind-warped into a killer for Roland, she had no use for taunts. And she held the high ground. Katya could picture her waiting, bowstring half drawn, ready to pull at the first sight of them. They could find another way up, Katya supposed, circle back down, then cross over several hallways, and up another staircase.

And then Averie would know they had gone and would wait for them at another point. She could call for more guards. Time was on her side.

“Follow close behind me,” Katya said in Redtrue’s ear. “When I give the word, throw a pyramid.”

Redtrue balked. “I do not use—”

“Any damned pyramid! It doesn’t matter what it does.”

Redtrue frowned but stayed on Katya’s heels as they tiptoed up the stairs, just at the edge of the well-worn carpet.

When Katya saw a shadow ahead, she crouched. “Now.”

Redtrue’s pyramid sailed upward, and Katya raced behind it, hoping Averie’s instincts weren’t completely lost. Averie leapt out of the pyramid’s path. The crystal smashed harmlessly on the wall.

Averie managed to fire an arrow, though only at a quarter draw. It clipped the leather at Katya’s shoulder, but she pushed through, swinging as she came, trying to catch Averie on one knee. Averie blocked with her bow and launched backward, into the steps, using the incline to push herself up.

A man in chainmail darted around her and swung at Katya. She ducked out of the way and then leapt for Averie as Castelle barreled into the chain man.

Katya drove her rapier into Averie’s thigh. Her face creased in pain, but she jerked her leg clear. Averie thrust inside her coat pocket and dragged forth a pyramid to drop at Katya’s feet.

Katya leapt backward, hoping she wouldn’t be caught by her own trick. “Look out!” Her foot snagged the carpet, and she slipped. Redtrue caught her arm before she could roll down the steps. Fire roared to life on the carpeted staircase, catching one tapestry alight and giving Averie time to scamper upward, the flames between them. She nocked another arrow.

Castelle and the chain man were caught on Katya’s side of the fire. Katya dragged Redtrue behind the two, and Averie’s arrow thudded into the back of her own man. He yowled in pain, and Castelle took him through the neck. Katya helped hold his body like a shield, but they couldn’t walk him through the flames.

When Averie’s next arrow clipped Redtrue’s sleeve, she ducked, cursing. Beyond the crackle of flames, Katya thought she heard the clatter of more feet on the stairs.

“We have to rush her or retreat,” Castelle said.

“Push the body toward her on my mark.” Before Katya could give the order, the flaming tapestry above Averie’s head dropped like a wet blanket, engulfing her in pounds of burning fabric. Katya looked to where Ma still held the frayed end of the rope.

“Castelle, cover my back!” Katya dropped the body and ran through the patch of burning carpet. She kicked at the struggling lump under the tapestry. Steel rang behind her, and Katya looked long enough to see Castelle fighting a woman in boiled leather. The howl of a corpse Fiend came from above, but as soon as it rounded the corner, Redtrue’s pyramid flared, turning it into an empty puppet. The lifeless body rolled down the stairs.

Ma joined Katya, and they put the fire out by beating at the flames and at Averie still struggling inside the tapestry. Soon the fire was just a smolder, and the lump an unmoving, smoking hulk. Castelle had beaten the guard, but not without a jagged wound down the side of her face. Redtrue pressed a bandage to Castelle’s cheek and forehead, trying to staunch the bleeding.