For Want of a Fiend (3 page)

After Lord Vincent had returned and greeted her with frosty politeness, Starbride retreated and walked alone to her spacious apartment in the royal wing. A chance to relax in her own sitting room might make her forget how much Lord Vincent angered her. It wasn’t Katya’s fault that the champion of Farraday was an ass, but part of Starbride wanted Katya to throw him out of the palace for being rude to her.

She told herself not to be silly. How long ago was it that Starbride forbade Katya from using her title to solve problems? Not long enough, it seemed.

When she returned to her apartment, Dawnmother was folding the laundry and putting it away. She threw her long braid over one shoulder and planted her fists on her hips. “Don’t tell me you spoke with one of them again.”

“You can tell just by my face?”

“It’s the only thing that makes you downcast anymore. Which was it? Or did you have to endure the scathing of both?”

“Lord Vincent.”

“Better a bigot than the crown prince’s irrational hatred, I suppose. Easier to understand, anyway.”

“Not any easier to deal with.”

“The princess should send them away, or at least keep them from speaking to you.”

Starbride shook her head. “She has to keep the peace. And she can’t command her brother to do anything. He outranks her. Lord Vincent is polite if cold. I was naive to think all of Farraday’s inner circle would be welcoming.”

“Makes me long for Lady Hilda’s company.”

“Speaking of scheming nobles, anything interesting in the notes and letter pile today?”

“I haven’t been through the basket yet. Let me see.” Dawnmother dumped a stack of papers onto the sitting room table and shuffled through them. “Courtier, courtier, a letter from Countess Nadia, a—Oh, Horsestrong preserve us.”

“What is it?” Starbride froze as she recognized her mother’s handwriting. “Oh no.”

“I told you to write her, and now here she is, writing you.”

“Mother never writes.”

“Not unless she has something very important to say.”

Starbride took the note with trembling fingers and scanned it quickly, past the recriminations about not staying in touch, past the guilt about a mother’s worries for her daughter’s safety and well-being and straight to:

“So if you will not write, I must assume you are acting contrary to my wishes and spending all your time in the libraries of Farraday instead of out meeting people as you should. If I am to get any news, I see that I must come to you to get it. Expect me a month or so after this letter, as fast as the carriage can get me there. Your loving mother, Brightstriving.”

“She’s coming here,” Starbride said.

“Oh, good. I thought she was going to command you to return to Newhope.”

Starbride swallowed. “My
mother
is coming
here
.”

“She’ll be thrilled.”

“Yes.” But what would happen when the demands started pouring in for royal favors? Would Katya forgive her mother as once promised?

With thoughts of her mother lying heavy on her mind, Starbride returned to Katya’s private sitting room just in time for Katya’s return. A few strands of Katya’s blond hair had fallen out of its loose bun. Starbride smoothed it out, lingering at the new gray strands at her temples, a relic from their last adventure with Roland. She wished she could do something to cleanse the pain from Katya’s cobalt blue eyes, but that wouldn’t be smoothed away so easily, nor could the slight stoop in her trim, athletic body. Her coat and trousers seemed loose on her, and Starbride wondered how much weight she’d lost in the month since Roland had shown himself. Katya had always seemed like a sparkling creature out of a dream, as strong and capable as she was beautiful, but lately Starbride began to add weary to her description.

Starbride couldn’t leap into news of her mother, not wanting to add to Katya’s worries. She steered Katya to a divan and sought another topic of conversation. In her haste, she jumped to something almost as painful as her mother’s visit.

“What’s to be done with Brom?” It almost hurt to ask. Starbride had liked Brom, had seen in her a fellow outsider among the tremendously powerful Umbriels. That wasn’t exactly the truth. Brom was the daughter of a duke, nobility as well as a traitor.

“Reinholt won’t make a decision.”

“You can’t make him responsible for executing his own wife if it comes to that.”

“I think he’s the only one who
can
be responsible.”

Starbride kept herself from gaping. “It’s too much guilt. Too many chances that his children will resent him. I’m not trying to tell you your family business, but if someone else makes the decision, it will give him someone to be angry at besides himself, a little family resentment for the sake of his own soul.”

Katya was still for a moment before she pulled Starbride into an embrace. “You see so clearly, Star, even toward someone who’s been less than kind to you.”

“I feel sorry for him. To be so betrayed by someone you love, and yet…I feel sorry for Brom, too. Even though I’d be a Fiend for you, Katya, I can understand why she wouldn’t want to.”

Tears hovered in Katya’s eyes. “You’d carry a Fiend for me?”

Starbride kissed her long and deep. Here was a hurt to soothe away at last. “I’ve thought about it, thought about
her
a lot, and yes, I’d do it. And if there was some way I could give it to you if you wanted…” But since she’d drained Katya of Yanchasa’s Aspect, she had no way of knowing whether Katya could ever carry a Fiend again.

Katya laughed breathlessly. “Well, the ritual to pass the Aspect to another person requires a sexual act. That or you have to be born with it. So you’d have to lie with a member of my family while a pyradisté performs the magic, and then make love to me under the same circumstances.”

Starbride ran through the roster of Katya’s family in her head and sputtered a laugh. “That’s just…no.”

“Hugo has a Fiend, dormant because he hasn’t Waltzed, but it’s there. Crowe confirmed it.”

Starbride gave Katya a dark look.

Katya grinned. “And he loves you.”

“A crush.”

When Katya laughed, Starbride stuck her tongue out, making them both laugh harder.

“Brom’s father, Duke Robert, is coming to court,” Katya said. “If Reinholt agrees, my father will grant them a divorce and give Brom back to her family.”

“What will her father do to her?”

“Duke Robert only knows the public story, that Brom was part of a plot to take over the kingdom. Who knows if he believes it, or if he thinks Reinholt wants to throw his daughter over for someone else? As long as his grandchildren are still in line for the throne, the duke can’t really protest. My father won’t grant Brom permission to marry again. He’ll demand she confine herself to the duke’s estate in Baelyn.”

Starbride shook her head slowly and weighed the possibilities. “Roland could find her there. Even though she’s never Waltzed, he could find a way to release her Fiend, or capture her and use her as some kind of brood mare.”

“And we can’t expect the duke to protect her from a pyradisté as powerful as Roland, and yet we can’t even tell him he should try.”

“Put like that, it seems kinder to kill her.”

“I doubt the duke will see it that way. Frankly, I’d like her to live with what she’s done.”

Starbride had to wonder how many mothers would make the same choice Brom had. She’d thought she was saving her children, but she was dooming everyone else. “I’m so sorry for all of you.”

Katya kissed the top of her head. “Are you staying for a while?”

“I wish I could, but it’s me that’s dashing off this time. I have to train with Crowe.”

Katya slumped in her chair. “Everyone leaves me in the end.”

“It’s your acting. It stinks.” She jumped and yelped as Katya smacked her with a cushion. “Scoundrel!”

“You earned it. Are you taking the secret passage to Crowe’s room?”

“Oh yes. Anything to avoid your brother or Lord Vincent.”

“Reinholt takes the passages.”

“Lord Vincent doesn’t. It’s a small thing, but I’ll take it.”

After a farewell kiss, Starbride went on her way to Crowe’s study. In the dark secret passageways, she held her lantern high and recited the path in her mind while keeping an eye on the symbols that marked each intersecting hallway. It was only a few short turns, but she remembered how easily she’d gotten lost in the palace before, and that was in the hallways. At the first junction, she stopped to read the markings on all four corners and opened her lamp to turn up the wick. Before she could close it, a gust of air snuffed her light as if it had never been.

Starbride froze. Someone had just entered or left the secret passageways nearby. She fumbled in her small belt pouch for matches. A soft sound, the scuff of foot on stone, made her pause again. It wasn’t the steady boot tread of Katya or her father. It could have been anyone in the royal family or the Order of Vestra. It could have been Reinholt.

Starbride’s stomach shrank. Angry as he was, Reinholt wouldn’t actually hurt her, would he? After all, she hadn’t actually
done
anything to him.

But he was angry, and angry people were unpredictable. The dark thought led to darker thoughts as she realized
Roland
knew the secret passageways, too, and had undoubtedly described them to his henchman Darren, who was no stranger to violence of many kinds.

They’d sneaked into the palace before.

Starbride gripped the matches but didn’t light one. She pressed her back against the cold stone and waited as light crept down a hallway nearby. Her fear lessened with the light, even though Fiendish eyes would still need it to see. She suddenly thought of how silly she’d look if the queen turned the corner to find her cowering in the dark. She should have brought a light pyramid with her. Maybe then she could’ve given a lame excuse about wanting or needing to practice in perfect darkness.

Pennynail crossed a junction several halls away from hers, his masked face unmistakable. Starbride’s stomach unknotted at once. Here was one secret she had yet to deduce, who Pennynail was and where he spent his time. Her feet began to move almost before her mind caught up. She’d have to stay close behind him or risk losing her way in the dark.

She tried to tell herself to turn back. She’d gotten into trouble too many times by following Katya or the Order, but it was too late; after two or three turns, she no longer had any idea where she was. Starbride hurried to catch up. Pennynail’s soft leather boots made almost no noise in the darkness, but Starbride wore slippers, even quieter.

They reached a narrow spiral staircase, somewhere she’d never been. Her heart pounded, and her palms started to sweat. Thoughts on how she would get back to familiar territory drowned in the idea of an adventure, a discovery of something even Katya didn’t know.

Before she could reach the top of the stairway, she felt the
whoosh
of another door opening, and then the light was gone. She swallowed and continued to climb while feeling in the darkness for a way out. She prayed to Horsestrong that there was only one door, and that it led into the palace rather than into another dark passageway. If she lost Pennynail, well, no one knew where she was. They wouldn’t find her in the endless passages. Even if she lit her lamp, she wouldn’t be able to find her way; she’d wander, lost and lonely until she eventually starved in some forgotten hallway with the walls of the palace crushing her on all sides.

Thought abandoned her. She stumbled ahead, tripped, and barked her shin on a step. She smacked into a wall that gave under her pressure, and she fell with a cry as the door opened and dumped her into a circular room.

A red-haired man stared down at her. “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked in a voice that wasn’t much more than a harsh rasp. His brows came down slowly, surprise turning to anger.

Starbride scrambled up and glared back at this man who spoke as if he knew her. She opened her mouth to tell him to mind his own business when she took her first good look at him, at his leather outfit and the slender knives in their sheaths. “Pennynail?” she asked, anger fading into astonishment. “You’re—”

He put his fists on his hips. “Were you following me?”

There was no way to dress it up. “Yes.” She looked him hard in the face, trying to see why he might want to hide it. He had a rough scar around his neck, but his face wasn’t marred. Narrow and lean, he seemed handsome enough. His red hair was short; the long ponytail he sported must have been attached to the mask. He had sideburns that almost reached his jawline, and penetrating green eyes that hadn’t ceased their glare. He was older than Starbride, than Katya and Brutal, maybe Reinholt’s age, mid-twenties. She wondered then if it was really Reinholt that had introduced him into the Order, and hot on the heels of that thought was the realization that she was being rude.

“I’m sorry. I…can’t resist a mystery.”

He sat down heavily on a tattered chair. All the furniture in the room had seen better days. Perfectly round, the space was dominated by the column of stone that housed the stairway. The rest was full of odds and ends, bits of junk perched on rickety tables. One shuttered window offered the only other way out. Starbride realized they must be inside one of the towers. She hadn’t known that the palace towers held rooms at all.

“I suppose you’d have found out soon enough,” he said. “Crowe’s grooming you to fill his shoes, and since I help Crowe with difficult jobs…” He gestured at her.

“Difficult jobs?”

“Like disposal.”

“Disposal of…” She realized he meant killing people, and her stomach turned. Crowe led prisoners to the dungeons, which she supposed meant that he “dealt” with them, with Pennynail’s help. “Ugh.”

“I thought you might feel that way.”

Starbride fought hard not to squirm. It was still difficult to believe this man knew her. Pennynail knew her. She was comfortable with him, but this person? Her mind flashed on the time Pennynail had helped her undress when he’d posed as her in order to capture Darren. He’d unlaced her dress, had seen the back of her underwear…