A Kingdom Lost Read online

  Then, they just had to wait for him to wake. They told their story while they waited. When Ruin woke, he stammered and blinked at them. Starbride filled in the gaps as he regained his senses. Just how many times would she have to tell the same story? Like Rage, Ruin couldn’t believe that time had passed from when he’d gone to Roland’s throne room until now. Drive quietly related what had happened that night, and then Scarra and Fury told him what had happened to them. Then all that was left was for him to stare at Starbride.

  “I know you,” he said. “The princess consort, yes?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Apparently,” Drive said, “they’re the resistance.”

  A light started in his eyes. “Tell me about Rage.”

  Once again, Scarra came to her rescue. “The Fiend king shoved a pyramid in him. We found a recent scar near his…on his thigh. He couldn’t remember it. Fury and me don’t have one. When the princess consort tried to eyeball it, it blew up.”

  Starbride wished she was able to discuss death so casually. She couldn’t even bring herself to talk about what had happened to Averie.

  Ruin’s eyes grew wide. “And you think more of my people have these?”

  “And probably you,” Starbride said.

  He stripped with as much compunction as the others had, making Starbride look away from his nude, albeit superior, body. The others helped him search until they found a scar in the same place as Rage, high on his upper thigh where he wasn’t likely to notice it.

  “No wonder you wouldn’t let me into your bed,” Drive said. “The Fiend king probably poisoned you against the idea so that no one would find that scar.”

  Ruin pulled on his trousers and robe again. “You can’t get this out, Princess Consort?”

  “I can’t touch it with a pyramid. We could try and cut it out without disabling it.”

  “Would that set it off?”

  She had to shrug. All of Master Bernard’s meetings with the pyradistés they’d rescued had turned up nothing. He’d joked that if they survived Roland, they would have advanced pyramid research a thousand years. Starbride didn’t think that was necessarily a good thing. “It’s up to you whether you want to risk it.”

  “We have to know.”

  “Ruin,” Drive said, “you can’t.”

  “We need you,” Scarra and Fury said, nearly on top of each other.

  “You did well enough without me before now. I have full faith in your abilities should I die.”

  They protested again, but he waved it away. “First, we have to cleanse everyone’s minds. Scarra, Fury, go and fetch Battle. Knock quietly. Tell him there’s been a duel death, and I’d like to see him. Once he comes in, the princess consort will take care of the rest, yes?”

  Starbride nodded, secretly relieved to be taking orders, at least for a little while.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Katya

  The nobles spent the morning scrambling, trying to pack whatever meager possessions were left to them, never mind how many times they were told to take only what they needed. Da left the bulk of them in Ma’s charge. In the meantime, Katya took her father to the villages nearest Count Mathias’s and Lord Kline’s homes.

  Count Mathias’s villagers watched their lord with soft smiles and squared shoulders, respect and even idolization in their eyes. He was impressive, a huge bear of a man wearing a bear. Da was no less striking. Chameleon that he was, he took a note from Count Mathias’s book and left out any “ladies and gentleman” trappings, speaking to the villagers as a man who knew he was their liege but who also put his trousers on one leg at a time. He presented the war with the Fiends as an obstacle to be overcome and a challenge to be met. He reminded everyone of the old tales, of Farradain ancestors who’d had to defeat Yanchasa the Mighty or forfeit their lives. In the end, he gave the listeners a chance to be heroes.

  They cheered him, man and woman, and Da left Castelle to sign up recruits.

  Lord Kline’s farmers gathered quietly and listened with furrowed brows. They weren’t hardy woods-folk; they eked their lives from the soil, patiently and slowly. Da spoke to them of family, not sugarcoating what might happen to their kin if the Fiends weren’t stopped. The farmers glanced at each other nervously, but Da didn’t let up his onslaught. The hulk of Count Mathias behind him brought home the looming threat, and Lord Kline’s quiet presence added weight to his words.

  Murmurs instead of cheers ran through the crowd when Da stopped speaking. He lifted his hand for silence. “I know you fear for your crops, for those who will be left behind. Do not take what I ask lightly, for a heavier task has never been undertaken. Foulness is growing within the land, a pestilence whose ally is time itself. Give the usurper room to grow, and he will overwhelm us all, burying you and your families under the bootheel of evil, subjugating you and yours to his cause through any means necessary.”

  “But why?” someone in the front blurted.

  “No one knows,” Da said softly, and they all had to lean in. “What used to be a man is now a creature, and all that creature cares for is seeing others suffer.”

  The farmers glanced at one another as if they couldn’t conceive of such a thing. Lord Kline stepped forward. “As our families have always said, we pluck the weeds where we can.”

  Da patted him on the shoulder. “Lend us your arms so that we might all be safe to pluck the weeds another day.”

  They had fewer recruits than in the last village, but then, the farmers had fewer people to give. There were no shows of bravado as these signed up. Katya sensed that was how war should have been: without applause.

  After Katya saw her father back to camp, she met up with Castelle again and ventured south into the countryside, wanting to visit the next closest village before nightfall and scout around. As they neared the cluster of buildings, she noticed doors flapping open in the wind. No one stirred in the streets.

  “Berg, go,” Katya said. The former thief rode ahead, staying in sight as he meandered down the main street, peering left and right.

  When he returned, he said, “No bodies, no people. Nothing.”

  The wind shifted, and a horrible stench floated past Katya’s nose.

  “Something’s dead nearby,” Brutal said.

  When the smell came again, Katya nudged her horse in its direction, a large barn near a farmhouse. The doors banged shut when the wind picked up. When next they blew open, a carrion bird arced through, screeching as it flew over Katya’s head.

  “Spirits above,” she whispered. The air was thick with putrescence and a sharp, coppery tang. Katya pressed her sleeve over her nose and signaled a halt. Blood had trickled down the slope in front of the barn, forming a macabre little stream in the dust.

  “I’ll go,” Brutal said.

  “Stay in sight.”

  He dismounted, pulled his mace, and jogged to the side of the barn before inching close to the doors, just enough to peer inside.

  The color drained from his face. Katya’s grip tightened on her pommel. Brutal didn’t blanch for much. Still, he didn’t bolt and run, just leaned back, his pale face the only indication that, whatever he’d seen, it was bad.

  He stalked to Katya’s side. “It’s bodies.”

  “You’ve seen—”

  “No.” He wiped his bloodless lips. “There’s nothing but bodies. It has to be the whole village.”

  Katya dismounted.

  “Don’t,” Brutal said, but he stayed by her side.

  She had to see. She couldn’t shake the sense that she owed someone…something. If the entire village lay dead within the barn, the least she could do was see them, remember them.

  Light trickled between the slats of the walls. Katya pressed her hand to her face so hard it hurt. Even then, she could taste them as she breathed through her mouth.

  She had expected orderly rows, but the villagers had been heaped in the center, piled on top of one another, eyes wide open, faces stretched in pain and horror, limbs and b
lood and innards mingling. She couldn’t tell where any one ended and the others began in the red and black sludge.

  Katya raced around the barn. Her stomach emptied in heave after heave.

  Brutal rested one large palm on her back. “Why not leave them where they fell? Why do this?”

  Katya spat in the dust. “If they were trying to send a message…”

  “In the open, they’d have been easier to find.”

  “Maybe the corpse Fiends… No, this took thought. Corpse Fiends would have left them to rot in the streets. This was Darren.”

  “Thrice bedamned son of a whore.”

  “He did it so they wouldn’t rot as quickly,” Katya said. “So they’d still have…impact when we found them.”

  Castelle’s boots crunched in the dirt as she approached. “Is it as bad in there as it smells?”

  Both Katya and Brutal nodded.

  “We’ve found tracks, feet and horses, at least a dozen.”

  “Corpse Fiends aren’t known for their equestrian skills,” Katya said. “It’s probably other locals, terrified out of their minds. This message wasn’t just for us.”

  Da would say to burn the barn where it sat. It would take too much time to bury everyone. And news of the massacre would spread. All they could hope to do was stay ahead of it and use it if they could to drive home the danger and let people know that their monarchy wouldn’t abandon them, even in death.

  And what comfort could that bring? Darren was probably on the move, promising people that if they stayed out of the war, they would be spared. How many would listen? How many would be willing to leave their families behind with such a monster on the loose?

  “We have to find him,” Katya said. “We can’t leave him out here to do this. We can’t leave what he’s done unanswered.”

  “Agreed,” Brutal said, “but where do we look?”

  “And what do we do when we find him?” Castelle asked. “He was nearly a match for the three of us on his own. He might have more allies by now.”

  “We almost had him last time,” Brutal said.

  “That was then! Who knows what tricks he’s amassed?”

  “Enough,” Katya said. “He’s not the only one who’s gathered allies.”

  “You think Redtrue and her adsnazi will help us?” Castelle asked, and Katya couldn’t tell whether the idea pleased or repelled her.

  “Today all we have time for is to try and warn the nearest village.” Katya glanced at the barn. “And to give these people whatever rest we can.”

  They lit the barn, set two of Castelle’s friends to watch it, and rode hard for the next village. When they arrived, they found another small gathering of houses amidst a host of fields, but the streets were just as empty as the last.

  Katya feared the worst until she saw movement inside the closest house. “Look there.”

  “It might be Darren,” Castelle said.

  “Good.” Brutal lifted a hand to his mouth. “Hello! Anyone home?”

  The door on the outermost house opened, and a man paused half-in and half-out, as if to ensure he could leap back inside. “Go away!”

  “What happened here?” Katya called.

  “We don’t want none of your fight!” the man yelled. “Just leave, or…we’ll attack!” He darted back inside.

  “With what? Pitchforks?” Castelle muttered.

  “Damn,” Katya said. “Either Darren’s been here, or they’ve seen the barn. We can’t stand here yelling at closed houses. We’ll come back when we have Darren’s head on a pike.”

  “Tell us where he went,” Brutal called, “and we’ll leave you in peace. We’ll kill him, and you and yours will be safe.”

  Nothing stirred for a moment, but then another door opened slowly, just farther in. A woman stood framed in it, and there was movement around her knees as if children tried to see past her. “He went southeast,” she said. “He marched in like the king of shit-eating grins and promised us bloody hell if we sided with anyone who came after. He killed the best two hunters we had like they weren’t nothing. And now their kids are in here with me, never to see their ma and da again.”

  Anger blazed from her eyes and not just at Darren, but at Katya and everything that had happened since war had landed on her doorstep.

  “We can’t bring anyone back,” Katya said. “But we can see to it that he doesn’t make any more orphans.”

  The woman’s chin shot up. “You do that, Miss Fancy. I’d like to see his head on a pike.” She slammed back inside her house.

  “Well,” Castelle said. “Do we head southeast, Miss Fancy, or report to camp?”

  “I’m not an idiot,” Katya said. “We wait out the night, get reinforcements, and then find his track.” And then Darren would pay for the people he’d killed both before and after he’d become a Fiend. He’d pay for all the trouble he’d caused Katya’s family, for siding with Roland, for having Carmen Van Sleeting for a mother, and following in her traitorous footsteps.

  *

  Katya nearly slept through the report to her father. He finally ordered her to bed, but she couldn’t sleep before she washed the smell of the barn from her skin.

  She scrubbed herself as well as she could with a bucket of water colder than a Fiend’s heart. She couldn’t help but be reminded of the few times she’d bathed with Starbride, and the one time she’d been so tired that Starbride had bathed her. Such thoughts almost made the water seem warm.

  When she finished, she fell into her bedroll, but someone cleared their throat outside her tent. Katya rubbed her temples. “Who else has died?” she called. “Because that’s the only thing I’m coming out for.”

  A mostly shaven head appeared in the tent flap. “Then I will come in,” Redtrue said.

  Katya shot upright. Since she had a tent to herself, she slept only in her shirt. She fought the urge to clutch the blankets higher, glad she hadn’t yet put out the lantern.

  Redtrue glanced at Katya’s clenched fists. Half her mouth quirked up. “Do you fear I’ve come to seduce you?”

  “I…didn’t… What can I do for you?”

  “What did you do for Starbride?”

  Katya’s mouth worked for a few moments. What was it about Allusian girls that left her speechless? Redtrue’s smile said she was joking, well, mostly. “If I call for Brutal, he’ll haul you out of here by what little hair you have left.”

  Redtrue burst out laughing. “I merely wanted to test the resolve of your affection. I have my answer. I have contacted my pyradisté again.”

  “What news?”

  “I wish I had him here so I could give him a good, hard smack. He insists I am not real. When asked if he wrote down the instructions I gave him, he says yes, but isn’t sure he should be listening to a ‘dream.’ He thinks himself insane.”

  “Wonderful. And this is progress?”

  “Tsk. When I finally do speak to Starbride, I will ask her if you were always so gloomy before you left your home. I convinced him that if he is insane, he loses nothing by doing as I say, as he cannot become more insane.”

  “Hmm, did he say he’d look for Starbride?”

  Redtrue shook her head. “He says it is difficult to move about in your Marienne. These corpse Fiends you’ve spoken of can sense his abilities. I…fear for him.”

  Katya let the silence linger. She feared for everyone. And if Roland’s corpse Fiends could sense Starbride somehow… “I hope you urged him to be cautious.”

  “The great lover does not wish to give up caution in order to find her dearest lady?”

  “The pyradisté can’t find her if he’s dead.”

  “Ah, and here I thought you might care for his well-being.”

  “You’re one to talk!” Katya said. “I’ve seen how you treat someone who shares your bed, let alone complete strangers.” Spirits, she must have been tired to give her brain leave to speak whatever it wanted.

  Redtrue’s mouth fell open. “What happens in my bed is none of your bus
iness!”

  “But the well-being of my guards is. If you’re going to treat Castelle like a servant, please do me a favor and just bar her from your bed altogether. She’s gotten better at hiding her sulking, but I know she’s not completely over you.”

  Redtrue’s spine stiffened so much that Katya expected it to lift her off her rear. “And why do you not simply command her not to sulk?”

  “I did. But in case that doesn’t work, I thought I’d talk to you as well.”

  “You…bet on both horses?”

  Katya sighed heavily “I’m not asking you to love her. All I’m asking is that you talk to her, tell her what kind of relationship you’re looking for—”

  “I would think my actions speak for me.”

  “Some people need to hear it aloud.”

  “Whenever we talk, we…”

  Katya thought back to something Starbride had once said. “End up in a hayloft together?”

  Redtrue barked a laugh. “Something else learned from your Starbride?” She got to her feet. “I will think on what you said; that is all I can promise you.”

  “If this pyradisté does find Starbride,” Katya said, “she might not believe him. Tell him to call her Miss Meringue.”

  Redtrue nodded once and then left.

  Katya tied the strings of the tent behind her, blew out her lantern, and collapsed, too tired to even reflect on everything that had happened that day.

  Chapter Twenty

  Starbride

  Starbride stretched her neck and back; it had been a long night. Halfway through freeing the monks, she’d stopped paying attention to names or faces. She’d hypnotized them and then cleansed their minds, one after another, over and over. Whenever one awakened, Starbride was allowed a short reprieve as Ruin handled their initial shock and surprise—Starbride could have recited his speech from memory by the end—and they were hustled away. As dawn peeked over the horizon, Starbride cleansed the last one.