A Kingdom Lost Read online

  She squeezed Hugo’s arm, knowing he would squeeze Master Bernard’s in turn. A pair of corpse Fiends stalked under a streetlamp ahead of them. Starbride bit back a curse and wished them to pass by, but as their damnable kind had done before, these lifted their heads and sniffed the air.

  Starbride pressed so tightly to the wall she was surprised she didn’t melt into it. Crowe had told her that the wretched Fiends came from the mountains to the north, where the Farradains had originally discovered pyramid magic. Maybe, he’d said, magic was part of their very natures.

  All she knew was that there were only two ways to find a pyradisté: with another pyradisté or with a Fiend.

  As one, the corpse Fiends turned in Starbride’s direction. She dipped into her satchel and hurled a fire pyramid. When it struck them, they hesitated, but not from the flames; it always took them a moment to decide what to do. Corpse Fiends were clever, but they weren’t smart, and their hesitation gave Pennynail time to strike.

  A knife streaked from the dark and shattered the pyramid implanted in one of their foreheads. The Fiend dropped without another move. Before Pennynail could throw again, the other corpse Fiend fell to the ground and rolled, putting its flames out. Maybe this one wasn’t as stupid as the rest.

  Just their luck.

  The creature howled, a deep, hollow sound that reverberated in Starbride’s ears and brought the tang of blood to her mouth.

  “Horsestrong preserve us,” she whispered. “Go!” Hugo streaked past her and stabbed the downed Fiend in the forehead, shattering its pyramid, but the damage was done.

  All through the city, other inhuman throats took up the cry like a pack of hunting dogs. Starbride and the others turned and ran. They had seconds to get away, to try to confuse the pack. At a low-hanging awning, Hugo and Pennynail gave Starbride and Master Bernard a boost to climb to the roof. It wouldn’t work forever, but it had slowed other packs before.

  Pennynail led them, more familiar with the ways of the rooftops. They dodged chimneys and rooftop hatches, keeping to buildings and houses that sat side-to-side. Starbride had some confidence in her new climbing skills, but Master Bernard would never make the jump across an alley or a street.

  They angled away from the warehouse district. If the corpse Fiends followed them, at least they’d be traveling away from the rumored pyradistés. Starbride flagged, her steps growing unsure as even terror gave way to a stitch in her side. They all slowed and crouched together against a chimney. Master Bernard leaned on his knees and wheezed.

  “Listen,” Hugo said.

  Starbride tried to hold her breath as she gripped another pyramid, ready to throw at any sounds of pursuit. The air left her in a rush as she heard the howl of the pack. “Oh no.”

  The corpse Fiends wailed together from far away, deep in the warehouse district. They’d searched for Starbride and found the hidden pyradistés instead.

  And she’d led them there. Starbride clamped her lips together. Tears wouldn’t help. Her mother had always said there was no use crying when it couldn’t be turned to an advantage. Starbride had changed that lesson. Tears were useless while someone else was depending on her. Katya wouldn’t be huddling on a roof, crying her eyes out. Starbride calmed her breathing and imagined Katya’s strong hands lifting her up.

  “Darkstrong take those monsters,” she whispered.

  Hugo squeezed her shoulder. “Don’t blame yourself.”

  “Yes,” Master Bernard said, “we have to remember who the enemy is.”

  “The Fiend king,” Starbride said, what the people of Marienne called Roland. But at the moment, knowing who the enemy was didn’t do much to assuage her guilt. If they hadn’t gone looking for their pyradistés, if they hadn’t chosen that route, if, if, if…

  If Dawnmother were there, she would have said, “Every ‘if’ is a hole in the road.” Horsestrong’s wisdom led them still, even hundreds of miles from home.

  Pennynail clapped his gloved hands softly and waved them on. There was no use dwelling; they had to get back to their hiding place before dawn.

  Their hideout had been a favorite den of Pennynail’s, back when Crowe was alive. He and his father had often waited there before meeting with contacts; sometimes, they’d interrogated prisoners there before bringing them to the dungeon beneath the palace.

  Starbride had expected any hideout of Pennynail’s to be in one of the seedier parts of Marienne, but he surprised her with a cellar under a high-end clothing store. With no homes or apartments crowding it, there was no one to notice their comings and goings, and it was two streets away from any taverns or bars. The owner had been a friend of Crowe’s, someone he’d done a favor for, one large enough that he now helped his friend’s son, even though helping enemies of the Fiend king would mean his death.

  To keep the owner safe, Starbride and her allies never entered the shop. A secret door in the delivery yard led down into the large cellar. Starbride took a deep breath of the cool night air before she descended.

  The heat from too many people occupying too small of a space washed over her. The non-pyradistés among them had collected food and water recently, so no one went hungry, but there wasn’t enough room.

  They’d divided the space with hanging blankets, and low-burning lanterns revealed lumps of sleeping bodies on the floor. Starbride wound past the hangings and stepped over sleepers until she reached the far end. A small room stood separate from the rest by a stone wall with a stout door, a place where she and her friends could discuss the future without alarming the others.

  “I’ll check on the wounded,” Master Bernard whispered as he left them.

  Starbride nodded and entered the small room at the back. She cast a longing look at the worktable, anxious for any work that would distract her from their failure that night. She and the other pyradistés were attempting a new kind of pyramid, something that would hide them from the corpse Fiends, and they needed it soon.

  Crowe had taught her how to make pyramids that would suppress a Fiend, a technique handed down from kings’ pyradistés through the ages. With the Fiends that the royals carried, it was a necessary evil. Starbride taught it to those who now hid with her. There was no use in hiding Fiend magic anymore. Still, she didn’t share the fact that the Umbriels had always been part Fiend. The populace of Marienne knew of Yanchasa the Mighty, the great Fiend. They knew the Umbriels kept him asleep in some fashion, but they didn’t know that the royals could only accomplish this by bearing Yanchasa’s Fiendish Aspect.

  The people thought Roland was the only one living who was part Fiend, that he’d consorted with Yanchasa in order to gain its power. They had the right road, but the wrong end, as Horsestrong had said. Roland was only evil because he’d merged with his Fiend when he’d been near death. The ugly truth was that any of the Umbriels could have been in his place if they’d suffered the same fate. Starbride shivered to think of it.

  The suppression pyramids Crowe had taught her could repel a Fiend, but Starbride hoped for something that would let her detect the corpse Fiends from a distance, hide her nature from them, and repel them, too. Fiends were attracted to pyramid magic, but they were also highly susceptible to it. It was a trade she hoped to take full advantage of.

  At the moment, it would have to wait. Pennynail followed her into the small room, and Hugo waited outside. He stood on tiptoe as she closed the door, as if hoping to catch a glimpse of Pennynail’s naked face.

  “We need to move soon,” Starbride said.

  Pennynail pulled off his mask and became Freddie Ballantine again, one of the most infamous criminals in Marienne’s history. Everyone else thought him long dead, and he preferred it that way. At the moment, Starbride did, too; she didn’t need her allies abandoning her for the company she kept.

  Freddie scrubbed through his short red hair, reminding Starbride so much of his father, Crowe, that she couldn’t contain a sad smile as he loosened his collar. She glanced at the wide rope scar around his neck, the wound t
hat left him with a rasp of a voice.

  “If you want to move,” he said, “there’s one good option.”

  “I’m not leaving Marienne without Katya.”

  He sighed, and she could tell he was as tired of having this conversation as she was. That didn’t matter. He could urge her to leave Marienne until he turned blue. The memory of Katya’s hands lifted Starbride out of her depression, but she couldn’t continue her fight without the hope of one day feeling Katya’s arms around her again.

  Shortly after the city had fallen, Freddie had sneaked out to the forest, to a regular rendezvous spot for the Order of Vestra, but no one had been there. Freddie had suggested Starbride and their friends head for the countryside anyway, but if Roland was holding Katya and her family, Starbride would not abandon them.

  “If anyone else wants to go,” Starbride said, “I’m not going to stop them.”

  “Patrols have increased. I think it’d be easier to sneak into Marienne than out of it, and Roland’s got those corpse Fiends scouring the countryside. If he doesn’t have Katya or her family, he’s damn sure looking for them.” He nudged Starbride with one booted foot. “Or he’s looking for you.”

  “He’d be quite happy to kill you, too, you know.”

  “If we pushed hard, we could all make it past the patrols together.”

  She put on a beatific smile. “I’m not leaving without Katya.”

  “What was it that Dawnmother always called my da? Donkey something?”

  Dawnmother opened the door, sliding through to join them. “Mulestubborn,” she said. “A name I will gladly pass to you if you insist on badgering my Star.” She handed them both a cup of tea. Starbride was tempted to stick her tongue out at Freddie, but she held the impulse in.

  “I should have known whose side you’d take,” Freddie said.

  Dawnmother patted him on the shoulder. With her ever-present cups of tea, Dawnmother’s quiet presence soothed Starbride’s nerves. Even with everything that had happened, she didn’t have a black hair out of place from her simple braid, and her loose-fitting shirt and trousers were as neat as ever.

  There was a slight commotion outside, a loud conversation. Starbride opened the door enough to peek out, and Hugo blundered in. His eyes fell on Freddie’s face, and Freddie cursed. Dawnmother stepped deftly between them, but Hugo only blinked. Before he could begin to process what he’d seen, Starbride pushed him out the door.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Captain Ursula and Sergeant Rhys are here.”

  Starbride glanced behind her. Freddie had his mask on again. “Bring them in, please, Hugo,” she said, hoping to deal with what he’d seen by ignoring it.

  Roland had kept the city Watch and the king’s Guard mostly intact. He’d just replaced the Guard with corpse Fiends. Rumor had it that he would do the same with the Watch, but he clearly didn’t consider them as great a threat as the Guard, commoners as they were. She found it predictable that the very people he’d used to bring the Umbriels down now hardly rated his notice.

  Still, people seemed wary but content enough not to try to stand up to their new king. Even those that were fearful of Roland recognized that crime had become almost non-existent since he’d made even the pettiest infractions punishable by death. She’d heard some of them say that only miscreants and lawbreakers had to fear the Fiend king. She wondered if they’d be singing the same tune once Roland decided that even speaking one’s own mind was a crime.

  Captain Ursula took a seat on one of the cots in the small room. Rhys leaned against the wall, languid as ever. With Pennynail’s long legs stuck out in front of him in an equally relaxed pose, the two could have been twins, in spirit if not in looks. Hugo squeezed into a corner near the worktable, making the space seem very small indeed.

  “What’s happened?” Starbride asked.

  “I got a letter commanding all captains of the Watch to report to the palace.”

  “Time to go into hiding, then?” Starbride asked.

  Ursula’s lips quirked up. “Not just yet. Soon after I got that letter, I received another missive cancelling it.”

  “But that’s good, right?” Hugo said.

  Ursula frowned. “It’s behavior contrary to the Fiend king’s norm. That means it’s bad for us. If we can’t predict what he’ll do…”

  “He can catch us off guard,” Starbride finished. “He’s got something more important planned.”

  “Like killing all of you,” Ursula said.

  Starbride’s stomach dropped. “Or he’s found Katya.”

  “If she’s hiding in the city,” Rhys said, “we’d have found her by now.”

  “Why?” Hugo asked. “The Fiend king hasn’t found us! And Princess Katyarianna is adept at hiding, or so I’m told.”

  Starbride didn’t argue with him. Katya was adept at not being seen, but not as much as Pennynail. He’d have found her, or more likely, she would have found them. That meant she was either out in the countryside, imprisoned in the palace, or…dead. “Horsestrong preserve us,” she muttered. Her eyes fell on the worktable again. There was a reason for everything Roland did, so if he wasn’t going to bother turning the Watch into corpse Fiends…“Maybe he doesn’t want to drain his essence.”

  “What was that?” Ursula asked.

  “When he makes a new corpse Fiend, he has to pull the energy, the essence, from somewhere. If he drains his own, he gets weaker.” He had Katya’s cousin Maia to pull from, or Darren, but perhaps he didn’t want to weaken any of them. “He needs to recharge.” Her stomach hit her feet again. “He has plans for the capstone.”

  “The what?” Ursula asked, impatience creeping into her voice.

  Starbride took a deep breath. “Do you remember what Katya once told you about the Umbriels being the ‘foes of Yanchasa the Mighty’?”

  “She said it was a symbolic title,” Ursula said, “but that sometimes her family had to defeat the thing’s allies.”

  “Good job they did with that,” Rhys muttered.

  Starbride ignored him. “They face the great Fiend in a very real sense. It rests, asleep, under the palace in a giant pyramid, and they have to keep it there.”

  Ursula slowly arched an eyebrow. Behind her, Rhys had a smirk on his face.

  “Hmm,” Starbride said, looking back and forth between them. “I imagine my expression looked just like yours when Crowe first told me about it. It sounds really stupid out loud. There’s a ritual, using Fiend magic, a type of pyramid that only the king’s pyradisté and a few others know about. But now the Fiend king has polluted this magic to merge with a Fiend.”

  It was only partly true. She kept back the history of Farraday, how the first king had loosed Yanchasa, and how it took the might of all his pyradistés to contain the great Fiend. She didn’t tell them how the Umbriels carried Yanchasa’s essence buried deep within them and how an Aspect of that essence could manifest, and they could become mindless Fiends.

  “But,” Hugo said, “isn’t the ritual performed every five years? That hasn’t passed since the last time the ritual was done. So…the Fiend king can’t fiddle with the capstone and Yanchasa until the right time, yes?”

  “I wouldn’t put anything past him,” Starbride said. “From what Crowe taught me, no one is supposed to be able to commune with Yanchasa except during the ritual. But a pyradisté can always sense the greater Fiend; I’ve done it.” She shuddered at the memory of the cold, inhuman touch. “He shouldn’t be able to draw on it.”

  “But he’s done the impossible time and again,” Rhys said.

  Ursula stared at her sergeant as if he’d grown another head. “You understand all this, Rhys?”

  “Nothing much surprises me anymore, Cap.”

  “Lucky you.” She smoothed her dark blond hair over her shoulders. It had gotten a little longer since Starbride had first met her. If it grew any more, she’d have to put it up somehow to keep it out of her face. The thought reminded her of Katya’s tidy
blond hair, and she had to close her eyes a moment to keep herself together.

  “So if he tries to play around with this capstone thing,” Ursula said, “how do we stop him? You’re not suggesting we go into the palace?”

  They couldn’t let Roland become a greater Fiend. Maybe he’d gone mad enough to try to let Yanchasa out. Or maybe he had a new plan altogether. Whatever it was, they couldn’t let him complete it.

  Starbride sat up straighter, imagining Katya’s hands on her shoulders again. “We may have to. It’s our turn to strike at him.”

  Chapter Three

  Katya

  Katya watched at the rail as Captain Penner put the Spirits Endeavor into port at Pomanse. The city lights barely penetrated the layer of mist shrouding the harbor at dusk. They dropped anchor in deeper water and waited for a small boat to transport those bound for shore.

  Pulling her coat tighter around her, Katya fought not to shiver. She waited in silence with Brutal, Castelle, Captain Penner, and the purser for the Spirits Endeavor. They’d sailed halfway to Allusia and hadn’t found a safe haven. Roland’s forces hunted them through the countryside. They’d had one narrow escape at a port closer to Marienne when they’d put in for supplies.

  Captain Penner kept her crew on the ship, not trusting them to keep their mouths shut, especially after they’d had a few drinks. To quiet the grumbling, Katya had bought extra beer for when the sailors were off duty. So far, it had worked.

  Katya still needed to go into the city, though. She needed information the captain couldn’t get. She also needed to get off the damned ocean for a while.

  Once on dry land, Katya, Brutal, and Castelle left restocking the ship to Captain Penner and the purser. Lord Vincent and Castelle’s fellow thief-catchers from Marienne protected the rest of the royal family on the Spirits Endeavor, trusting that they’d be safer on the ship. Pirates wouldn’t dare come so close to Pomanse with its small navy of patrolling ships and catapults lining the shore.