Chaos Queen--Fear the Stars (Chaos Queen 4)

by Christopher Husberg

  That didn’t make the waiting any easier, though.

  Finally, Astrid heard movement outside her tent.

  “About time, nomad,” she muttered. She jumped up, but froze the moment her tent flap opened.

  Eerie red light poured into the small tent. Astrid frowned. “Trave, you need to be less sneaky about visiting me. I might accidentally kill you one of these days.”

  But the tall figure that stepped into her tent was not Trave. Instead, in the dim light of the single candle that lit her tent, strode Olin Cabral. He’d cut his blonde hair short once again, but his tall, muscular build, and abnormal beauty—the hard lines of his jaw and the way his skin seemed to glow—gave him away.

  Astrid instinctively took a step back. Her mind raced through her options. She could tear through the back of her tent if she needed to. But that might slow her down too much, and Cabral was faster than her. And if he chased her through the camp itself, even if the Odenites wanted to help her, there was not much they could do to help against a vampire like Cabral. He was far too strong and too fast for any of them, especially at night. Cabral probably wanted Astrid to run. He would love to kill a few others in addition to killing her.

  “Cabral,” Astrid said, taking the only option that seemed reasonable in the moment, “what brings you to my humble tent?”

  Cabral smiled, but his eyes remained the same: dead red lights, staring straight at her. “You, my dear Astrid,” Cabral said, his voice low. “I’d like to say I’ve missed you, but… well, the truth is I’ve been rather peeved. The attack that you and that castrated fool Trave perpetrated on my tower-house was most unwelcome. Some way to show your gratitude for all I have done for you both.”

  Cabral might be alone. Astrid and Trave had killed his latest crop of Fangs, but a vampire like Cabral always had more followers. He could have gathered them to make his approach to her, if he did not want to take any chances. Outside of her tent, Astrid heard nothing.

  She hoped Knot would not return for some time. He could not help her in a fight against full vampires at night; no one in the Odenite camp could, with the exception of Jane if she was filled to the brim with Canta’s power, or Cinzia, if Luceraf chose to empower her with strength again. But their powers were unreliable. Astrid was on her own. Even Trave, who was in the camp somewhere, could not stand against Cabral. Astrid had seen him try, and fail, too many times.

  “What do you want?” Astrid asked again.

  Cabral stared at her, unmoving. “Isn’t it obvious? I want you, Astrid.”

  Astrid shook her head. “There are powerful people in this camp. People who could defeat even you.”

  “Even if I did believe you,” Cabral said, “how would such people discover me? Your camp has no real defenses. Sneaking into it was as simple a thing as I’ve ever done. No, my dear Astrid, I don’t believe anyone will come for you.” He shrugged. “And if someone does, I’ll just kill them.”

  He lunged at her, and Astrid shot away. At night, she could run many times faster than a human, and she tore through the cloth at the back of the tent easily with her claws. She burst out into the night, her green eyes glowing—and something rammed into her from the side.

  Astrid tumbled into the dirt, rolling a dozen rods, miraculously missing the tents around hers.

  Don’t wake up, Astrid pled to the unsuspecting Odenites, all likely sleeping around her. Don’t come out to see what is happening.

  As she got to her feet, the form that had tackled her rose, too, its eyes glowing red. This one was tall, taller than most humans or vampires Astrid had seen, and thin, its limbs long and wiry. Her heart sank. If Cabral had been alone, she might’ve had the smallest chance of escaping him.

  Another red glow appeared over her shoulder. She turned too slowly, and a blow knocked her to the ground. “You’re coming with us, Astrid,” she heard Cabral say, as if from far away. “Do us a favor, and come without a fight.” As she struggled to lift her head, another blow fell, and she sank into blackness.

  4

  Triah

  KNOT HAD NEVER BEEN in Triah before, but, as he’d told Cinzia, some of the sifts that had formed him had lived here all their lives—most significantly Lathe, the Nazaniin whose body he now inhabited. Lathe would have known the city like the back of his hand, so Knot let his instincts take over. It had worked in the past: In Navone, he’d come across a network of people Lathe had used—a guard captain and an alchemist among others. In Tir, he’d found an inn where Lathe had contacts and a safebox. He hoped to find something like that now, in Triah.

  This city had been Lathe’s home, after all.

  Not long ago, when he’d been captured by the Black Matron, and when Lathe’s sift had attempted to steal back this body, he’d had a revelation, of sorts: a vision while he was trapped in the Void—he had seen Winter, the wife he’d thought dead, fighting—winning—a battle. She was a leader. Soon afterward on the road to Triah, word had reached him of a woman leading a tiellan force against humans, and of a series of battles that had been fought. Grand Marshal Riccan Carrieri had been present for the last one, and the story went that he had defeated the tiellan woman and her forces. But now the tiellans had crowned her their queen. The Chaos Queen, people were calling her. He could only guess that she might be Winter.

  How Winter had survived the collapse of the dome in Izet, and become involved with this tiellan rebellion, Knot could not guess, and how she could possibly have become their queen, he could not fathom. She’d not been the type to seek out power. All of it, however—the vision in the Void and the rumors of a Chaos Queen psimancer over the tiellans—was enough to give him hope that she was alive.

  Now, he just needed more information, something Triah had in abundance.

  The inner city of Triah at night was unlike anything Knot had ever seen. And yet, it felt familiar to him, as if he’d seen it countless times before. Whereas most cities shut down after dusk, with only a few shadier business transactions happening at night, this city was different.

  At night, Triah came alive.

  Triah was a particularly beautiful sight at night when viewed from the cliffs that overlooked the valley. The inner city consisted of the first fifty concentric circles or so that surrounded the Trinacrya at the city’s center. It was a swathe of metropolis larger than most cities themselves, but that only made up a third of the greater area of Triah. Ring after ring of oil lights illuminated the inner city, like a field of stars right there on the Sfaera.

  Knot walked with the confidence of a local, filled with a knowledge that was not his own. Where he walked now, for example, along the Radial Road between the Ninth and Fourteenth Circles, was a lively spot, full of tea houses, inns, and shops. The students of the Citadel, their classes over for the day, were just beginning to gather. Knot had a vague memory of coming here as a student, drinking into the early hours of the morning.

  Not his memory, though. Lathe’s, most likely. Knot pulled his cloak down further over his face; it would not do to be recognized as Lathe before he got his bearings.

  Knot left the Radial Road and moved south along the Ninth Circle into Little Alizia.

  He walked past bath houses and meditation centers, Alizian restaurants, and even a chop house—an Alizian specialty restaurant, where the chefs cooked meals directly in front of their patrons in a show of acrobatic cutlery.

  He let his instincts guide him as best he could. He wanted to go someplace where his face would mean something, but not somewhere that the wrong people might recognize him. Such a thing was impossible to discern when his only guide was intuition, but he figured he’d best avoid the Trinacrya at the center of the city, and the Citadel most of all, where the Nazaniin had their base. While his only hope for real information might indeed be the Nazaniin, he was loath to contact them. He’d thought his business with them had concluded at Harmoth, but if it meant helping Winter, he would contact them again.

  The thought of her out there somewhere, alive, still broug
ht on a host of competing emotions. Hope that he might see her again. Fear that she would hate him for leaving her for dead, and guilt that he had. He’d made the wrong choice, back in Roden. Or Astrid had made the wrong choice for him—and that had saved him. If Knot had stayed to try to find Winter’s body in the ruins of the imperial dome of Izet, he would likely have been captured or killed.

  But Astrid had taken that choice from him. Once, he thought, he might have asked her to meet him in Triah to help, or even as a protection against a possible Nazaniin confrontation. But right now he was still angry with her for telling him, back in Roden, that Winter was dead. What suffering had Winter gone through as a result of it—a tiellan injured in a nation that had banished all her kind on pain of death?

  Eventually, he would let go of this anger—Canta knew he’d forgiven that damn girl for enough already—but tonight it lingered. Astrid would survive one night without him in the Odenite camp.

  After some time wandering, Knot found himself in a bustling area on the south side of the Seventh Circle. Inns and elegant apartments dominated the area.

  Walking along the street, seeing the lights and hearing the people inside the common rooms laughing, talking, shouting, hearing the music, it was all… it fit his mind like a glove. With any luck, he’d find an innkeeper that recognized him, that might even lead him to another safebox.

  Knot stopped outside of one of the inns. This one, like many others, offered outside seating that spilled onto the cobbled street, even in the increasingly chilly fall weather. A faded sign above the entrance read Swordpoint Inn.

  A woman drinking alone at one of the tables outside marked him immediately, and stood up.

  “You,” she said. While she wasn’t quite drunk, Knot could tell she’d had more than one drink. She had the kind of beauty that took a moment to recognize, but once seen remained; haunting, inescapable. Her dark red hair was cut short to just above her shoulders, and sharp hazel eyes stared out at him from beneath a strong brow.

  The more he looked at her, the more familiar she seemed to him. He had had dreams about this woman, he realized. Nothing specific, nothing concrete, but she’d been there, in his mind.

  A low, haunting tune began to play from inside the inn—a lute, guitar, and violin joining together.

  “You have a lot of nerve, coming here first,” she said.

  Knot had trouble reading her expression. In one moment, her eyes flashed in anger, but in the next they softened, shifting to something like affection or concern.

  “Sorry,” Knot said, unsure what else to say.

  “Damn right you’re sorry,” she breathed. Knot caught more than a hint of alcohol. “He’ll know you’ve come here.”

  She looked down the curving street, then back into the inn, then up at the windows above them.

  Knot frowned. Either this woman was mad, or they were both in danger.

  “Come with me,” she said, grabbing his arm.

  Knot hesitated. Just because he recognized this woman from his dreams did not mean she had his best interests at heart. She could be leading him into a trap. She pulled on him in an effort to get him to come with her, but Knot stood his ground, not budging.

  The woman rolled her eyes. “Look,” she said, “I know you don’t know who I am. I know you probably don’t even recognize me, but—”

  Before finishing her sentence, the woman twisted Knot’s arm, using his weight against him to slam him face first into the wall. Knot reacted quickly, stamping down on her foot with his own and then shoving backwards. He wrenched his arm around and tore it from her grasp, but she was already coming after him.

  She was quick, almost as fast as a vampire, but her eyes would have given her away by now. Astrid had explained to him that while a vampire could keep up its glamour under normal circumstances, it was almost impossible to do while fighting or doing anything that took a level of concentration.

  Knot blocked a jab, and then she had somehow swept his legs out from under him. As quickly as Knot moved, this woman moved quicker. He hit the ground hard on his back and all the air rushed out of him. She was on top of him before he could move, a dagger point at his throat.

  “Er… Sirana, is everything all right?”

  Sirana. Knot knew that name, it echoed within him, but he also knew it. A member of the Triad—the lead body of the Nazaniin, the guild of assassins and intellectuals that practically ran the Sfaera.

  Knot swore under his breath. So much for avoiding them.

  He shifted his eyes to see the innkeeper staring at them, wide-eyed.

  “Is that—”

  “It’s no one,” the woman, Sirana, said quickly. Then, down at Knot, “You would have known better than to go up against me before. Now get up, and come with me.” She hoisted Knot up, and Knot let himself be led. Wasn’t much else he could do with a dagger at his throat.

  “Sirana…”

  “I’ll pay for the damage, Fenton.”

  Sirana directed Knot away from the inn, the knife digging into his back now as she walked closely behind him.

  “Go where I tell you to go,” she hissed in his ear.

  Knot had no choice but to obey.

  * * *

  “You’re not taking me to the Citadel,” Knot said after they turned down a side street, headed toward the Eighth Circle.

  “Of course I’m not,” Sirana said. “I’m not taking you to him. Not yet.”

  Not yet. What other use could this woman have for him?

  Lamps lit the way as she eventually led him to the entrance of an apartment on the Eighth Circle. The building was tall, at least three stories, made of stone and wood.

  Sirana pressed the dagger deeper into Knot’s back, forcing him up the steps until they were standing before a wooden door.

  “I know this house. There’s an anteroom just past this door, with a painting in it,” Knot said. He knew this place in the same way he knew the height of Triah’s three sets of walls, or the distance between the Citadel and the Parliament building, or that he could move at an all-out sprint for just under three minutes before he collapsed. “A painting of Cranen’s Bridge— by a woman named Hracen, I think.” Cranen’s Bridge spanned the river at its widest point in Triah—he could picture it in his head. Large stone pylons jutting into the water beneath it, and towers rising above.

  Oddly Sirana did not respond. Instead Knot heard the jangling of keys, and for a moment considered making a move while Sirana fumbled with them. But he knew this place. He knew her.

  Sirana opened the door, and they walked into the anteroom.

  In the light from the street, Knot saw the painting hanging on the wall to his right. He felt a curious sense of displacement at the sight of something he both had and hadn’t seen before.

  The door shut behind them, and Sirana secured it with several locks. As she stood up from her task their eyes met. The anteroom was not large; they stood within two paces of one another. Sirana closed the gap between them. He could feel her breath on his face, smell the strong but not unpleasant odor of it, her haunting beauty close, just fingers away. Had he not been too full of suspicion, had it not been for Winter, and Cinzia— bloody Cinzia, too, for Canta’s sake—he might have bent to kiss her then and there. But he didn’t. For a moment there was pain in the bright green of her gaze. Then the look was gone, and she swept past him and into the next room.

  Knot followed her, knowing the next room would be the sitting room. Beyond that, a dining room. The stairs to his left went both up and down; down to the kitchens and servants’ quarters, and up to an office and a training room of sorts— with weapons, obstacles, and a sparring zone—and then up again to the bedrooms.

  “Sit,” Sirana said as she walked into the sitting room, toward a table at one end and a number of glass containers. “I’m sure you’ll want a drink.”

  Knot recognized all of it, and yet none of it looked familiar. It was an impossible contradiction, one that almost made him nauseous. He took several d
eep breaths before he responded.

  “Nothing to drink.” He sat in one of the chairs, a large stuffed leather piece that was surprisingly comfortable. “Thank you,” he added, for some reason feeling bad that it came as an afterthought.

  Sirana sighed, pouring herself a drink anyway. “You don’t drink, then?” she asked. “Or you just don’t want to right now?”

  “I avoid it,” Knot said. Always had, at least since he awoke in Pranna. It clouded his senses, and he could not think of a single circumstance where he wanted such a thing.

  “Let me guess,” Sirana said, taking a sip of Cordonat. “It clouds your senses?”

  Knot stared at her. It took effort to stop his eyes from widening.

  “You used to say that all of the time,” she said. “But, then again, it didn’t stop you then. Things change, I suppose.”

  “You knew Lathe,” Knot said.

  Sirana laughed, but the sound was harrowing. She masked a great deal of pain.

  “Yes,” she said quietly, after a moment. “I knew Lathe.”

  They sat in silence for a moment. Knot figured it best to give this woman time; she did not seem to mean him harm, at least not yet. She had removed the threat of the dagger. Other threats might be lurking elsewhere, but Knot had not sensed any. As far as he could tell, the two of them were alone in the apartment.

  “That was always your chair,” Sirana said, nodding at the chair in which Knot had sat. She moved to another nearby. The two were angled toward one another. “This was mine. Do you remember that?”

  Knot shook his head. “I…”

  “You remembered the painting,” Sirana said. “You sat in your chair.”

  “I remember some things, like the painting,” Knot said. “And other things about this place. Physical, tangible, visual things. Other things are instinctual. Sitting in this chair might be one of them. Finding you at that inn—”

  “We were regulars there,” Sirana said.

  “Those things are intuitive. Wouldn’t garner meaning from them, if I were you.”