For Want of a Fiend (41 page)

Starbride tried to help Hugo to the edge of the fight, but he couldn’t seem to get his feet under him. Dawnmother tugged on his side, favoring his shoulder. Her head jerked up, she looked past Starbride’s shoulder, and screeched.

A grip like steel grabbed Starbride’s arm, nearly dragging it out of the socket as it spun her around, face-to-face with Darren.

His Fiendish breath chilled her as she stared into his all-brown eyes. “I was hoping I’d be the one to catch you.”

Darren’s free arm was a streak across her vision as it slammed into something she couldn’t see. She heard a grunt: Dawnmother. And Hugo was down but not out. Starbride tried to bring her Fiend-suppression pyramid to bear, aiming for Darren’s neck. She only had a moment before—

Hugo’s Fiendish form barreled into Darren, tearing him away from Starbride so forcefully it sent a shockwave through her shoulders. The two forms writhed in the dirt, one blur atop another, only distinguishable by the wings sprouting from Hugo’s back.

For a moment, Starbride could only stare. How in Darkstrong’s name was she ever going to tear them apart? When Ursula’s voice yelled, “Starbride!” she whirled around.

Maia’s claws streaked for her face. Starbride dropped. She tried to scurry backward, but Maia was on her before she could move. Searing heat rolled up Starbride’s arms as Maia’s claws dug in just below her shoulders. Starbride cried out and kicked, connecting with Maia’s legs, but her ankle shuddered under the impact, as if she’d kicked a side of frozen meat.

Maia lifted her, claws digging in harder, and Starbride’s mind screamed that it couldn’t hold, that either her skin would tear free, or her arms would come loose from their sockets.

Starbride couldn’t feel her hands, but she raised them as Maia laughed in her face. She needed to stab Maia’s neck with the suppression pyramid and focus. She struggled, straining against the agony.

Her hands were empty.

Forcing herself to look down, Starbride saw her pyramid lying in the dirt between Maia’s feet.

As Katya hurried to find her father, she couldn’t help thinking of Starbride. From the outside, she’d be able to see that the palace had been breached. She wouldn’t walk into that mess, would she?

But of course she would, if she thought Katya was trapped inside. Katya would do the same in her place. Pennynail could guide her to the meeting spot in the forest. But would she go?

Maybe if Castelle, Hugo, and Dawnmother made her. Castelle and Pennynail would probably sneak through the chaos to find Katya and her family. Maybe they could help Starbride do the same.

The time to think about it was over, though. She and Averie reached the secret doorway into the waiting room behind the ballroom. It stood open a crack. Katya crept close and strained to hear.

Someone was speaking, pontificating, by the sound.

“You have no choice but to acquiesce to our demands for a parliament,” Magistrate Anthony said.

“Oh, yes,” Da replied. He sounded tired, maybe a little injured. “Parliament at sword point. Is this how you plan to run your new government? It
will
be you in charge, I’m guessing, as the man who clearly knows and understands best how things should be done.”

Anthony chuckled. “Only if the people vote me as their leader.”

“I’m sure a pyramid will garner you lots of votes.”

There were murmurs, enough for a room full of people. Katya looked to both sides of the doorway, but no one stood in the waiting room. The curtain had been pushed aside, but there was still enough to hide behind. Katya saw the back of her father’s head. He sat on his throne on the dais. An armed man stood beside him, but Katya couldn’t count the number of people on the floor of the ballroom. She took a careful step out of the doorway and tiptoed to the curtain, not wanting to move the fabric in the wake of a dash. She stepped to the edge, just to the side of her father and waited. When no one seemed to notice, she waved Averie forward.

“I knew you would claim the people were under pyradisté influence,” Magistrate Anthony said. “Richard guessed as much.”

“Richard your assistant?” Da said, and there was sadness and anger in his voice.

“Yes, the only good thing to come from Georgie Appleton’s murder.”

“Lucky he was there for you,” Da said, “ready to step in at the last, a brilliant man you’d heretofore overlooked, the perfect man for the job. I bet everything he said was like gold.”

“This stalling is pointless. No one is coming to vanquish us at the last minute.”

Katya pressed her lips together. Her father wasn’t waiting for rescuing; he was stalling Magistrate Anthony so his family could escape. She tightened her grip on her rapier and waited for any distraction.

“You poor, misguided young fool,” Da said. “I was considering your parliament idea, I really was—crown and commoner working together for a brighter future—but this violence won’t serve that cause.”

“Then what cause does it serve?”

“That of a tyrant.”

“I told you, only if elected will I—”

“He doesn’t mean you,” a new voice said.

Katya peeked under the curtain rather than around it. Magistrate Anthony’s young assistant, Roland in disguise, had walked into the room.

“I prefer to think of myself as a visionary.” Roland smiled. “Hello, brother. Believe it or not, I am finally glad to be rid of this façade.” His features blurred until he became Roland again, only his beard was longer, the color slightly altered, but the face she would never forget.

The room erupted in a tizzy of voices. The man who’d been guarding Da let his sword dangle between his knees. Katya sprang forward and knocked the guard off the dais. She skidded to a halt, grabbed her father off the throne, and yanked him toward the curtain. He made a strangled yelp and clutched his side.

Katya ignored his pain. Averie was beside her, bow trained on the crowd that now divided its attention between Roland and Katya.

Roland lifted a pyramid. “Now, now, niece, no running off until the party’s over.”

Katya froze. If that was a flame pyramid, he could kill them all. She’d have to wait until he was distracted.

“What is this?” Magistrate Anthony bellowed.

Katya nearly sang his praises and prayed that Roland would focus on him.

“Richard,” Magistrate Anthony said, “what are you—”

“Come, fool, you’ve had your moment in the sun.” Roland chuckled. “Parliament indeed.”

Magistrate Anthony’s supporters didn’t know who to target. Everyone muttered and gestured, growing louder by the second. Averie trained her bow on anyone close, and Katya kept in front of her father, rapier at the ready. Roland’s gaze was still on her. She couldn’t even sidle for the passageway door.

Magistrate Anthony and the others advanced on Roland, shouting now. He raised an eyebrow. The doors behind him banged open, and in walked a host of gray-skinned people. No disguises this time, the Fiend-filled corpses marched with purpose. Pyramids glinted from their foreheads, and cold poured from them in waves. They leapt upon the crowd.

Katya pushed her father toward the exit. Before she could take two steps, the waiting room curtain burst into flames. Katya staggered back; her father grunted again. Roland, Fiendish face on, leapt onto the dais.

“I told you,” he said, and his voice brought the tang of blood to Katya’s mouth. “Once the party starts, you stay for the duration.”

Katya stabbed for Roland’s heart. He shoved the blade wide. A shudder rolled up Katya’s arm, as if he’d parried her with a steel bar. She swung again, but he knocked the blade away with the same lack of effect. He smiled as the room erupted in screams. Out of the corner of her eye, Katya glimpsed the townsfolk trying to fight the lesser Fiends, but they weren’t having as much success as they’d had with her unarmed father.

“Roland,” Da said, “if there is any of my brother left within you—”

“Oh, there is.” Roland blinked back to his human form for half a moment. Katya struck, but he ducked to the side. When he straightened, he wore the Fiend’s face again. “See?” With his arms out to the side, he advanced.

Katya gave ground, but they were running out of dais with the fire on one side and the lesser Fiends on the other. Averie guarded Da’s back, shooting at any of the Fiends that came too close. Sweat rolled down Katya’s face, and she blinked it out of her eyes.

Roland laughed. “The Fiend knows more about ruling than we ever will, brother. They once held this entire land under their sway. I want my family to embrace their nature, to rule as they should have done from the beginning, without bowing to any constraints.” He sneered at Katya. “Well, not you, not anymore. That Allusian tick sucked the Fiend out of you, didn’t she? You’re not even one of us.”

To her horror, the words stung, but Katya lifted her chin. “The Allusian tick and I look forward to thoroughly killing you.”

He smiled, seeing right through her bluff, but it was the best she had. Maybe she could clear a path through the lesser Fiends and get Da into the hall, but they’d have to get away from Roland first.

Magistrate Anthony tottered up the steps. He bent over his stomach, as if nursing a stab wound. “This isn’t what I wanted!”

Who he was speaking to, Katya never knew. Roland ripped his head from his shoulders with one clawed strike. He didn’t even have the courtesy to look while he did it, smiling all the while.

A flash of blinding light from the door caught everyone’s attention.

A squad of armed guards, led by Earl Lamont, ran through the doorway, several cassock-clad pyradistés among them. While Roland looked at them, Katya grabbed her father’s arm and ran into the press, Averie right behind her.

One of the Fiends slaughtered a man in Katya’s path. She swung for its forehead, and cut through the pyramid, but she didn’t stop to watch. Da tugged on her arm. Katya spun, thinking he might be in danger, but he picked up a short sword.

She’d never seen her father armed before. He swung at a nearby Fiend as it reached for him. The swing was unpracticed, as if he’d learned at one time and then forgotten. Katya yanked him off balance and pushed past him.

“Stay clear, Da!” She lopped the Fiend’s arm off. Averie shot it in the head, and it crumpled.

“I’m not helpless,” Da yelled.

“Pretend you are!”

Earl Lamont appeared through a break in the fighting. He held an ancient looking broadsword, but swung it with more practice than her father had. Dimly, Katya recalled that he’d been the champion during her grandfather’s reign. Now, the younger men and women around him did most of the damage. They encircled Katya, her father, and Averie.

“This way, Majesty!” Earl Lamont said.

A clawed hand shot out of the crowd and took the old man through the neck, fingers bursting through his skin. His mouth was open as he half-turned, eyes wide, but they dimmed as he fell.

Roland stepped into the gap, squarely in front of the door, his confident smile in place.

Captain Ursula tried to stab Maia from behind. Maia kicked back, perfectly balanced on one leg and still holding Starbride aloft.

Trying to block out the pain in her shoulders, Starbride lifted her legs and pushed against the Fiend’s chest. Maia tried to pull her in closer. The claws dug through Starbride’s skin and stuck along the way as if hitting bone. Starbride kept repeating to herself that it wasn’t bone, that couldn’t be true, and that no matter how much crippling ache rolled up her arms, she needed to get free.

With one last shove, she went weightless, and flew from Maia’s grasp. The ground hitting her back was almost enough to drive the agony of her shoulders out of her mind. Together, though, the pain coupled with the breath driven from her lungs crippled her.

She chanted at herself to get up, get up. She had to move. She saw her pyramid lying in the dirt and pushed toward it; her torn skin cried out for her to stop. She could almost feel the blood pooling beneath her.

Someone plucked up the pyramid and then grabbed around her waist and pulled her up.

Starbride looked into Dawnmother’s face, but Dawnmother watched the battlefield. She heaved Starbride to the side. Starbride tried to hold on, but her arms wouldn’t obey her.

Maia grabbed Dawnmother’s legs and yanked them out from under her.

“No!” Starbride crashed to the ground, but forced herself to hang on to Dawnmother. She fumbled into her satchel and threw the first thing she found, her mind falling into it without thinking.

Maia burst into flames. She danced away, howling, before she rolled in the dirt. As she fell, Ursula and Pennynail ducked in and stabbed her over and over.

Dawnmother shouted, “Down!”

Starbride tried to obey, but something hit her from behind, and she toppled at Dawnmother’s side. A painful shudder ran up her spine again, along with a sharper, warning pain. Dawnmother grabbed Starbride’s hands and pressed the Fiend-suppression pyramid into them before she rolled Starbride over.

Hugo stood over them, his features twisted in Fiendish malice, his all blue eyes without recognition. A line of claw marks across his face slowly oozed blood, but as Starbride watched, those wounds closed. His coat and shirt had been torn away, and his skinny boy’s chest was pale, as if carved from marble. His black crow’s wings fluttered lightly, and his fangs already forced his lips open, but they grimaced farther, as if he was trying to smile. He reached for Starbride, impossibly fast, but Dawnmother shoved against Starbride’s back, forcing her past Hugo’s arms to smack into his chest.

Starbride grunted as her nose connected, and she felt blood trickle down her face. Hugo’s arms closed around her. Starbride lifted her arm with every ounce of will she possessed and got it between them. Hugo’s neck didn’t hold the key. She could get him anywhere. She pressed the smooth side of the pyramid against Hugo’s chest, felt the point just prick his skin.

Inside the pyramid, Starbride could see the two sides of Hugo, the Fiend and the human, the one asleep under the influence of the other. She focused hard, but it felt like trying to turn a rusted handle; the Fiend bucked, fighting her. As Hugo shrieked above her head, Starbride pushed harder and flipped that handle, pushing the Fiend down and bringing out the human.