For Want of a Fiend (31 page)

A strangled cry from upstairs cut her off, and the body of her officer dropped through the hole, minus his head. The laugh that echoed from upstairs had the cold tang of the Fiend in it, making Katya’s mouth fill with the taste of blood.

Ursula wiped her lips. “Everyone stay away from that hole.”

Katya glanced to her side. Starbride hadn’t followed her into the foyer…had she? But maybe she had, right under that hole, that grasping hand. Katya knelt and tried to peer through the dust into the cluster of people at the back of the house. “Star?” she whispered. No one answered. “Averie? Hugo?” She glanced to Brutal, but he shrugged. “Starbride? Has anyone seen her?”

She heard only confused mutterings or cries from the wounded. Fear clenched Katya’s gut as the laugh came from upstairs again.

Starbride helped Averie pull the wounded down the hall. One young woman cried out as they tugged on her arms, but they couldn’t do anything for her while she was half buried in rubble. Just outside the kitchen, they stopped, and Averie knelt beside the downed woman.

“I don’t know how much I can do for her,” Averie said. “I’ll look for something to use as a bandage.”

“Right.” Starbride started back toward Katya, toward where a scream had come only moments earlier.

Pennynail stepped toward her out of the gloom and pointed upstairs and then at one of the open windows.

“You want to go in an upstairs window?”

He nodded.

Starbride shook her head. “I’ll need to be close to disable the pyramids.”

He raised his arms above his head, palms flat, as if he would lift her, and then patted his shoulders, saying she could stand there.

“Well, if I lose my balance at least I’ll fall in the bushes.” She followed him toward the window just as Hugo caught up to them.

“Someone’s pulling people up through the hole in the floor,” he whispered. “Katya is looking for you.” A scream sounded down the hall again. “Sounds like it got another one.”

Starbride bit her lip. “I’d be of better use upstairs. Can you tell Katya?”

He shook his head. “I’m coming with you.”

Starbride let out a breath, annoyed at his insistence yet glad to have him along. She knelt next to a female officer slumped against the wall and holding a bloody elbow. “Can you move?”

The woman nodded.

“Go back down the hall, stay away from that hole, and see if you can get a quiet word to the princess. Tell her Starbride is all right and trying to get upstairs.” She left without waiting for an answer.

The three of them climbed out a window, and then Pennynail and Hugo boosted Starbride up on their shoulders. She wobbled, and her stomach turned over, but she leaned her knees against the stones and gripped her pyramid, fighting to concentrate.

She disabled the pyramid guarding the window, picturing it as a soap bubble she could pop. She tried to search farther inside the house and spotted an active pyramid, there and then gone. Someone was on the move. Starbride focused harder and tried to determine the type of pyramid, maybe even disable it, when pain stabbed through her skull. Her pyramid went dark, and she lost her balance. She tumbled onto the two beneath her.

“Starbride?” Hugo asked. He gently untangled himself from her. “Are you all right?”

“He…he disabled my pyramid.” She stared at the dark, useless thing, all of its magic stripped away, turning it into so much junk. “He disabled the damned pyramid that I worked so damned hard to make!”

Hugo actually took a step back. Pennynail’s mask was as cheerful as ever. Starbride glared into it. “The window is safe. Can you get us inside?”

He hesitated but then nodded. Starbride took a deep breath, glad he hadn’t gestured for her to stay put. He scampered up the wall, balanced in cracks in the stone and the window lintel, and jammed his dagger into an upstairs shutter.

After it swung open, he dropped straight down. A burst of flame shot from where he’d been, catching his long red ponytail. When he hit the ground, he rolled, and tried to smother the flames. Starbride tackled him just as Hugo threw a cloak over his head. They stifled the flames, and when they uncovered him, he tugged them flat against the house before fingering the remaining inches of his mask’s hair.

“Are you burnt?” Hugo said.

Pennynail shook his head. They all stared upward.

“He found the window I disabled,” Starbride said, “the clever bastard, and waited for you there. Two can play that.” She fished around in her satchel and found a flash bomb. “Temperance.” She lobbed her pyramid through the upstairs window.

When the flash went off, they were rewarded with a little cry. Pennynail was up the wall and through the singed remains of the window in a heartbeat. He appeared a moment later and dangled both arms down, gesturing for them to hurry up.

Hugo boosted Starbride into the air. She heard him grunt and felt him shake under her weight; she fought the urge to stand on his face. She grasped Pennynail and pushed off the wall as he pulled.

The room was bare of furniture, and black scorch marks dominated the walls. A man in a chain shirt lay in the corner, a neat wound in his neck. His dead eyes still bore the red rims that came from looking at a flash bomb. Starbride searched him, grimacing at the dead flesh, but she didn’t find a pyramid. She went through her satchel again; she’d only brought one disabler. Crowe would have called her shortsighted. She readied another flash bomb instead, the one pyramid she’d gotten really good at creating.

A thud came from behind her as Pennynail pulled Hugo inside. When Hugo caught his breath, he nodded at the hallway. Starbride didn’t want to take any chances peeking around corners, but she didn’t have enough flash bombs to chuck them around. She took a piece of crumbled plaster from the floor and tossed it into the hallway. A gout of flame answered her actions, just as she suspected.

Starbride didn’t wait for the heat to fade before she pitched her flash bomb. Another wounded cry came from the hallway. Pennynail leapt over the few tongues of flame that clung to the floor. Starbride ran after him and dug another pyramid out of her satchel.

A bearded man sagged in a doorway off the hall and grasped his face. He fumbled inside a satchel and clung to the doorjamb. Pennynail rammed the pommel of a dagger against the man’s forehead, and he slumped like a wet sack.

“Starbride!” Hugo cried.

The air rushed from her lungs as she pitched forward under his weight. Her knee slammed into the floor, and she threw her arms forward to catch herself. Behind her, she caught the ring of swordplay. Starbride scrambled forward, and turned to see Hugo on one knee, parrying the furious blows of a lithe, leather-clad woman. He’d knocked Starbride out of the way, and now he couldn’t get back up again.

Leather Woman ducked to the side as a throwing knife sailed over Hugo’s head. It missed her by inches and stuck in the wall, but it gave Hugo time to stand. Pennynail stepped past Starbride and moved to flank Leather Woman. She dodged to the side and kept them both in front of her, rapier snaking back and forth, and her dark eyes shifting to each target.

Starbride scooted to the downed pyradisté and tugged the satchel free of his body. She slung it around her own torso and then went through his clothes. When she found one more pyramid, she stashed it in the enemy satchel.

Leather Woman parried a strike from Hugo and gave ground as Pennynail came in for a jab. They backed her into the room they’d come from. Starbride stood to join them when she heard a crash and scream from farther down the hall. She scurried past the fight and peeked around the corner. Fiendish Lady Hilda had blown another hole in the floor, above the intruders, and as Starbride watched, she pulled a screaming man through the small space. She widened the hole with his body and turned his screams into half-conscious moans.

Lady Hilda’s head snapped up. She stared at Starbride, her too-wide mouth smiling with sharp teeth. Starbride dipped into her satchel and curled around the first pyramid she found. Before she could throw it, Lady Hilda flung the man’s body. Starbride ducked out of the way as the living missile streaked by and smacked into the wall. The body flopped down and lay at an odd angle, unmoving.

Starbride resisted the urge to run. Instead, she shouted, “Look out!” knowing Lady Hilda couldn’t be far behind the flying body. Pennynail sprinted to her side while the sharp clash of steel said that Hugo still dueled with Leather Woman. Starbride pressed herself close to the wall, out of Lady Hilda’s line of sight.

“We’ve found Lady Hilda!” Starbride yelled. She hoped the rest of the house could hear her. A clawed hand broke clear through the corner of the wall. It shredded the leather on Pennynail’s sleeve and drew lines of blood across his arm, the droplets spattering the floor. Starbride flung her pyramid around the corner, and flame blossomed.

Lady Hilda screeched and drew back. Pennynail left off clutching his arm long enough to throw a knife as she stepped around the corner. Not even singed, Lady Hilda caught the knife in mid-air, clearly more at ease with her speed than she’d been the day before. Maybe she’d never put her Fiendish Aspect away.

A yelp from behind made Starbride turn. Hugo held one leg off the ground, but he’d scored a hit. Leather Woman clutched his rapier where it entered her chest, her eyes wide as she sagged and took his weapon with her.

“Hugo!” Starbride cried.

His eyes snapped to her at once, and he reclaimed his rapier before he crossed to stand beside her. Lady Hilda hesitated before three people instead of two. From below, Starbride heard Katya bellow, “Starbride!”

“Up here! We’ve found Lady Hilda!”

She had just enough time to stumble backward as Lady Hilda rushed them.

Katya started toward the stairs, but Captain Ursula pulled on her arm. “Wait!”

“Get off of me!” All that mattered was reaching Starbride, but Ursula’s grip was like steel.

Brutal grabbed a huge piece of debris and chucked it up the stairs. He grunted, bent double, and grabbed his back. The debris hit the top of the staircase and rolled down, rattling all the way across the steps.

Halfway up, the middle of the staircase exploded. Katya raised an arm to protect her head as debris pattered over them. She looked in awe at Ursula. “How did you know?”

“Seemed safe to assume.”

“Katya!” Starbride screamed from upstairs.

“I’m coming!” Katya darted up the stairs, not caring if even the spirits got in her way. Brutal stayed at her side, and the others clattered behind her. They leapt or edged around the hole in the center.

On the second floor, Katya rounded a corner just in time to see Lady Hilda rake her claws across Pennynail’s chest and send him crashing into Starbride and Hugo.

The surprised cries of those who’d never seen a Fiend echoed around her, along with footfalls as several people retreated down the stairs. Castelle and Ursula stood fast, each of them murmuring, “Spirits above!”

Lady Hilda crouched as if to spring up and run away again.

“Not this time!” Katya lunged just as Lady Hilda jumped through the ceiling. Her rapier pierced Lady Hilda’s thigh and continued clean through, sticking in a wooden beam. Lady Hilda shrieked. Stuck halfway through the wood and plaster, she yanked on the rapier but couldn’t pull it free. Katya tried to push farther into the wood, though Lady Hilda’s thrashing threatened to shake her arms loose from their sockets.

Brutal grabbed Lady Hilda’s uninjured leg and yanked, trying to wedge her into the hole she’d created. She shrieked again and kicked, but Ursula helped him pull. Castelle stabbed Lady Hilda in the stomach and gut, over and over, with her off-hand.

Someone behind them fired a crossbow bolt into Lady Hilda’s chest, and with one final pull from Brutal and Ursula, she fell from the ceiling in a rain of plaster dust and wooden shards.

From where she’d collapsed, she swept out with her claws, and everyone jumped back. Castelle pulled on Katya’s shoulders, making her lose her rapier in Lady Hilda’s thigh but keeping the claws from opening her up.

Starbride yelled, “Shield your eyes!”

A glittering pyramid arced through the air and landed squarely atop Lady Hilda’s head. Katya closed her eyes just in time to miss the flash. She hoped everyone else had the sense to do the same. Lady Hilda shrieked again, but it had a ragged edge, as if her strength was fading. While Castelle still blinked, Katya grabbed her sword and aimed to slice Lady Hilda’s head clean off her neck.

“Princess Katyarianna, stop!”

At the top of the ruined staircase stood Duke Robert with several of his guard.

Katya blinked at them. “What in the spirits’ names are you doing here?”

Breathing hard, his hunched form even lower, he pulled a scroll from out of his coat. “By order of the noble’s council, I am taking Lady Hilda Montenegro into custody.”

Katya turned back to Lady Hilda. She’d pulled the bolt from her chest and the rapier from her thigh and appeared human again, though bloody, disheveled, and dirty. She smiled, almost reclining in the debris in the tattered remains of her clothing.

“I see you got my note,” she said.

Duke Robert nodded “Lady Hilda has asked to be tried by the noble’s council as is her right.”

Katya shook her head. “She’s guilty of treason. She belongs to the crown.”

“She has the right to be tried by the council of her choice,” Duke Robert said. “You do not have carte blanche to execute people, Highness. No Umbriel does.”

Katya almost winced at the reminder of what Reinholt had done, and what Duke Robert probably suspected the Umbriels had done to Brom. But by the spirits, she was so close! “You don’t understand what she’s become.”

“I think, Highness, it’s you who don’t understand. I’ll take her now. I have my own pyradisté to guarantee she won’t escape.”

Katya tightened her grip on the borrowed sword. She glanced at Brutal. He narrowed his eyes; he was with her. If he could stand, Pennynail was with her. Starbride would always be by her side, and Hugo would follow her lead.