For Want of a Fiend (37 page)

“And yet, she’s gone to great lengths to help you recently, including putting herself in danger.”

“But was that for me or for the adventure?”

“Can’t it be both? I’m not saying I know her better than you, Katya, but time changes people. Maybe you couldn’t share your secrets when you were lovers. If she hadn’t been able to join your life as I have, it would have hurt you. But now, as an adventurer, she’s ready for the responsibility that comes with being your friend.”

Katya mulled that over for a moment. “You are the spirit of wisdom. And you are an absolute
ferret
when it comes to hunting secrets.”

“Isn’t that a rat?”

“No! It’s more like a…” Katya couldn’t think of the word.

Starbride slapped her lightly on the shoulder. “It
is
a rat!” She laughed, but when she tried to slap at Katya again, Katya ducked, and then wrapped Starbride in her arms.

“If I’m a rat,” Starbride said, “that makes you a pervert rodent fancier.”

“So that was what I saw in Castelle.”

“Ha! So now we just have to tell Castelle about the council? What about Captain Ursula? How much do we tell her?”

“I don’t know her well enough, and she puts the city first. If she discovered that the Umbriels carry part of Yanchasa, she might decide it would be better for the city if we weren’t on the throne.”

“Then we don’t tell that part. We simply say our opponent is a…friend of Yanchasa’s, a half-Fiend that wants to let Yanchasa loose.” Starbride shrugged. “It’s partly true.”

Katya kissed her long and soft. “I don’t know why we need two spirits of wisdom and intellect when we have you.”

*

They met with Captain Ursula and told her what she needed to know about Roland, leaving out the history of the Order and the Umbriel Fiends, as well as Roland’s true identity. Shocked though she was, Ursula concluded in the end that everything Katya and Starbride said made sense. The only thing she wanted to know was why Katya had bothered to keep an opponent like Roland a secret.

“Though ‘Foe of Yanchasa’ has always been a title of the ruler of Farraday,” Katya said, “it’s mostly symbolic. Occasionally, we have to face allies of the great Fiend. It’s traditional that the royal family takes on this task themselves, along with a few trusted friends. However, a few of my trusted friends are no longer with us.” Maia’s face flashed in front of her mind’s eye, but she shook her head to clear the image.

Ursula nodded slowly. “And now you’re looking for more
trusted
friends?” Her brows were down, skeptical, as if she didn’t want a special relationship with the crown.

“Allies, with the city’s best interest at heart, would be nice.”

Ursula smiled at that and promised she would make inquiries into Magistrate Anthony and his assistant, especially after Katya and Starbride told her that Fiends might be manipulating the magistrate for their own ends. She still seemed suspicious, but that might come in handy.

The tale for Castelle took less time. Since she already knew about Roland and the Fiends, all they had to tell her about was the council.

Castelle rubbed her chin. “So Roland’s plan to get the nobles on his side has failed, and now we have to try and guess his next move. Do we know his location?”

“Pennynail is looking for him. As Anthony’s assistant, he can’t hide,” Starbride said. “We need your thief catcher skills.”

“I’ve learned a lot in my years away from the palace. Sounds like we’ll need your pyradisté skills, too. So what do you need from me right now?”

“At the moment…” Katya’s words tapered off as she heard a slight scratching from her private sitting room door. Someone had arrived through the secret passage. “Nothing. But I have a feeling we’ll have news soon.”

Castelle nodded slowly. She’d heard the slip.

“I’ll see you out,” Katya said. When Castelle stood, Starbride stood also, nodding at the two as Katya walked Castelle into the hall.

Starbride waited for the door to the hall to close before she rushed to the other. There was only one person who’d wait at the door instead of coming through the regular halls. Pennynail bowed when he saw her.

“Katya will be right back, so don’t take anything off.”

He pressed the mask’s cheeks as if hiding a blush. Starbride laughed. Why was it so much easier to relax around him when he had the mask on?

Katya slipped inside a moment later. “Is there news?”

Pennynail nodded, but then plucked Starbride’s sleeve.

“Who could you possibly be that you can show her and not me?” Katya asked.

He fidgeted. Starbride shook her head. “Please don’t force this. Let some secrets lie.”

Katya gave her a wry look. “Who are you again?”

Starbride turned to the private sitting room door. “Promise you won’t peek?”

“I’ll be awaiting your news.”

Once inside the sitting room, Starbride leaned against the door. She didn’t want to lock Katya out of her own room, but she had to prevent any surprise inspections.

Freddie pushed his mask on top of his head. “I guess I’m lucky I don’t have to keep my voice down.”

“What news?”

“Roland isn’t hiding at Magistrate Anthony’s house. They’ve rented a warehouse at the edge of Marienne, near the road to Dockland. I watched it overnight, saw quite a few people coming and going. I think we may have our first dissident hideout.”

Starbride clenched a fist. Just like the attack on Lady Hilda, they had an opportunity to get ahead of their enemies, maybe even surprise them. Pennynail gave her as many details as he could, and then they let Katya into the room.

Her dark looks vanished when Starbride filled her in. “Finally! We’ll get Captain Ursula to clean out the warehouse while we wait for Roland to show himself.”

“Katya…”

“I’m going, Star.”

“This isn’t some jaunt outside the city; this is going after Roland himself—”

“Jaunt? You’re calling hunting Lady Hilda a jaunt now?”

Pennynail saluted them before hurrying toward the secret passages again. Starbride waited for the door to close before she rounded on Katya.

“Is this what you felt like all the times I insisted you be protected?” Katya asked. “It’s hard to breathe.”

“Thank you for understanding that.”

“Good, since I understand, it’s settled. I’ll take care of any courtly duties before we go. I’ll send Castelle to collect Ursula. Get all you can from Pennynail, then we’ll all meet here with Brutal and Hugo. We can fill Averie and Dawnmother in later.”

Starbride closed her mouth on her argument. The comment about knowing how she felt did her in. Protection could be suffocating, especially when she could take care of herself. She supposed Katya could do the same, but she had to try one more tactic.

“What would your father say?”

“Are you going to tattle on me, Star?”

“Crowe said I would have to develop a closer relationship with Einrich, reporting to him and so on. Would he have you locked away?”

Katya’s face tensed for a moment before she seemed to see the teasing in Starbride’s face. “I didn’t know you wanted to bring chains into our relationship. If I die, my family won’t have you thrown into the dungeon.” She put a finger to Starbride’s lips, sealing in a protest. “I know that’s not what you’re really worried about, but you do realize that you’d be safe, don’t you?”

Starbride nodded, swallowing her vehement denial that she was worried for her own skin. “As long as you trust me to guard your back, I won’t go tattling to your father. But I will insist on disguises for all of us, convincing ones.”

“I don’t do them any other way.”

*

Starbride had been researching everything about how to contain a Fiend. She didn’t want to be surprised by Roland again. The next time she encountered him, if he let her get close, she was going to hit him with the kind of pyramid Crowe had been using for years, the kind that siphoned off a Fiend’s energy, that turned the Umbriels back into their human selves. The kind that had let Starbride drain Katya’s Fiend in the first place.

She made several. One for Roland, her most powerful, but another for Maia if Roland unleashed her Fiend. After what had happened with Lady Hilda, Starbride had little doubt that he’d already done that. She hesitated to bring it up to Katya, but suspected Katya knew already. The only reason Maia hadn’t come back to them was because her Fiend didn’t want her to.

That led her to how Roland was unlocking Fiends in the first place without the owners performing the Waltz. Not only unlocking, she reminded herself; he’d taught Lady Hilda how to control it. Lady Hilda’s pyradisté might not choose to answer, and she couldn’t use a mind pyramid on him. She left him in Freddie’s capable hands. Crowe hadn’t been fond of torture, but Freddie would know whatever tactics he’d used to get information out of an uncooperative pyradisté.

Lady Hilda’s body was another story. Freddie helped her bring it to the dungeon where they laid it on a slab of stone that seemed made for holding bodies. Starbride didn’t want to ask.

“What are you looking for?” Freddie said. “You can’t use a mind pyramid on a dead person.”

“When we first ambushed her at the stable, she said that I’d missed one. I have to assume she meant one pyramid since I disabled the active pyramids she and her maids were carrying.” She picked up a pair of scissors and cut Lady Hilda’s dress up the middle. “Roland couldn’t have just taught her how to bring her Fiend out and control it. Crowe trained me in how to sense an active pyramid, but maybe Roland used something very subtle, very small.”

When Lady Hilda’s naked body was exposed, Starbride had to breathe deep as Timat’s memories tried to resurface.

Freddie looked over her shoulder, his expression flat. “I don’t see anything, and there’s all there is.”

“He hid something inside of me once. We need to look for scars.” As they examined the body, Starbride tried to tell herself it was anything but a dead person. Maybe a dead animal, or a bundle of wood, or a painting, something she could just look at without having to think about.

They found only old scars and the wound in her neck. Freddie peered at that. “Can you bring a light pyramid over here?”

Starbride knelt beside him and brought the light closer. Her bile rose at the sight of the bloody hole, but Freddie bent closer and tugged at the skin. Starbride clamped her teeth together harder.

“Do you see it?” Freddie asked.

She couldn’t come closer, she couldn’t. But Crowe would have done it immediately. Starbride forced herself to have tunnel vision and edged closer. All at once, she saw it, tiny sparkles within the wound. Disgust blew away before curiosity. “Glass?”

Freddie stuck one of his slender knives into the wound and pulled out a shiny fragment. “Crystal. Here’s your pyramid.”

“Roland killed her right where he’d put the pyramid that controlled her Fiend. He knew we’d be looking.” She grinned at Freddie. “But he underestimated you.”

“Leaves us nothing to study, though,” Freddie said.

“But now we know where to look. If I get a hold of someone else who can control their Fiend, I need to aim for the back of their neck.”

“I’ll clean all the crystal out and then hand her over to the knowledge chapterhouse. There’s nothing for them to find anymore, but it might make them happy.”

“If that’s what Katya and her father want, sure. What are you going to do with her pyradisté?”

He gave her a wry look. “Do you really want to know? My father used to tell me that Prince Roland advocated a firmer hand with prisoners. My father disagreed, and King Einrich felt as he did, so they didn’t use torture. Now, though, I think Roland had a better idea.”

Starbride shuddered. “You think the man that’s trying to kill us all had the better idea?”

“Well, then, not now. Now he’s a monster. But he might never have ‘died’ if he’d been let off the chain a little.”

“Are you saying this is my decision?”

He shrugged.

Starbride bit her lip and turned away. “Do as you will.” She hurried out of the room, not ready to face the consequences of what’d she just done.

After all, she had a page to take from Roland’s book as well.

Starbride dug through Crowe’s notes and books, stayed up half the night, and figured out how to devise a pyramid that would bend the eye of the viewer, ensuring a disguise. Crowe had never attempted it, mind magic not being his forte, but Starbride wrestled with the problem.

Through a good deal of trial and error, she projected her thoughts into a pyramid and then focused them outward, so that anyone not a pyradisté would see what she wanted them to see. The trick was to make the false features in her head match Katya’s and hers. So a woman of Katya’s height and build, but slightly different features, different hair and eyes, a broader nose, fuller lips. Starbride added a scar for good measure.

She made herself Farradain, blond like so many of them, with thinner, sharper features, remembering Katya’s rodent reference. By the time Katya had worked out a plan with Captain Ursula and Castelle, Starbride was ready to try her pyramids out.

Katya had darkened her hair, completely concealing the new gray at her temples, and instead of wearing it in her customary bun, she had a long braid that went down her back. She wore the simple clothes of a laborer, as well as the heavy leather smock that let her conceal a chainmail shirt under her clothes. When Starbride arrived, Katya was practicing drawing her rapier and scowling at the smock as she did so.

“I can’t move my arm properly,” Katya said. “I think the smock will have to go. But laborers don’t often go around in chainmail.”

“I have the answer. With my help, the only people who’ll be able to see the chainmail are pyradistés. And we’ll never fool Roland into thinking you’re not you.” She activated her disguise pyramid and left it on.

Katya took a step away. “Star? What did you do?”

Starbride turned the pyramid off. “I learn fast.”

“And how do I know that’s really you now and not a disguise for that other woman?”