“To care is not a crime,” Yanchasa said, “as long as it does not turn a strong heart to weakness.”
Horsestrong couldn’t have said it better. Starbride pictured Freddie sprawled dead on the ground or gone from her life forever. She would miss him, she decided, miss his sense of humor. Of course, he hadn’t been laughing lately.
She’d have to help him remember how. “I don’t want you to kill him.”
“When it’s lawful, it’s called execution,” Ursula said.
Starbride gave her a cold look. “Killing Freddie won’t be lawful while I’m—”
“Are you about to say, ‘in charge,’ Princess Consort?” She cocked an eyebrow.
“The king is in charge. I’m just…” But what was she without Katya?
Ursula stepped forward. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine! Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Your face just, well, crumpled.”
Starbride wrenched away. She couldn’t seem to catch her breath as the world tilted. She sank to her knees as words abandoned her. The ground shifted, or was she falling? Dirt slid through her fingers as she caught herself. Ursula’s voice gave way before the roaring in her ears. She reached for Yanchasa but felt nothing. Abandoned again. All she could see was a vision of the slender bit of metal that marked the place Katya and Dawnmother had died.
She’d died there, too, leaving a power-filled corpse, just like the rest of the remnants.
Starbride slapped the ground, and it shook, the force pulsing from her destructive pyramid reverberating through the street.
Ursula shook her shoulders, shouted in her ear, and Starbride wanted her to stop, wanted it all to stop. The power had seemed like enough, but oh, it wasn’t, wasn’t, wasn’t.
“Enough, daughter.”
The world faded to quiet, and a white void passed over Starbride’s eyes, reminding her of the time she’d been blinded. Katya had taken care of her then. She could live in that memory, let it carry her away.
“Stop.”
The memories of Katya froze and faded until all she could see was Yanchasa. Pain and loss faded to a dull, tolerable ache.
No pity or anger marred Yanchasa’s face, only steely resolve. “Seek your sympathy or your rage elsewhere. Remember what little training the Farradains gave you. Remember what I taught you. Unless you’d rather be alone?”
The pain beckoned again, a world without love; a bleak, purposeless future.
“No!” Starbride grabbed for the adsna and let it flow through her. She fed her emotions into it, letting the river of power carry them away. The white void faded, and she realized she’d folded into a ball.
Awkward hands patted her back in endless little circles. “Can’t leave her alone to go get help,” Ursula mumbled. “Where’s Rhys when I need him? Maybe I can carry her.”
Before she could try, Starbride said. “Did you find Sergeant Rhys, then?”
The motion on her back ceased. “Are you back with us?” When Starbride didn’t answer, Ursula said, “Found Rhys late this afternoon. He’d been hypnotized, but when we broke the pyramid, he came back to himself.”
“Good.” Starbride unfolded and sat up.
“We should get you inside,” Ursula said. “You’re cold to the bone.”
“I’m fine.”
“I’m sorry I called you Princess Consort. I shouldn’t have done that.”
Starbride got to her feet. “Who told you?”
“Rumor. I hoped it wasn’t true, but after I saw that you’re not together, and you…” She gestured to the cracks radiating out from where Starbride had fallen.
“Carry on, Captain.” Starbride strode away, ignoring Ursula’s questions, focusing on Yanchasa’s presence, and letting nothing else enter her thoughts.
*
The idea of sleep bored her, so Starbride strolled through the city. Some voices greeted her, but most gave her a wide berth, especially once they saw the pyramids. A few saw past them and clapped her on the back. One drunk woman swung her around by the arms, and Starbride let herself be pulled into the dance until the drunk woman fell to the ground.
Master Bernard and the few pyradistés left in the city gathered around the academy, clearing the courtyard of rubble and filth. He waved Starbride over and blinked at the pyramids glinting from her skin. Instead of horror, she saw a bloom of curiosity on his face that made her want to throw her arms around his neck.
“Are you planning to work until dawn?” Starbride asked.
“We were just about to call it a night,” Master Bernard said. “There’s nowhere to sleep inside the pyramid, and the dorms might not be safe, so we thought we might go back to the warehouse.”
“The hideout? Haven’t you had enough of that place?”
He shrugged. “We won’t have to be on our guard there.”
Her fellow pyramid users hiding in the dark, afraid of riffraff? The very idea offended. “I can keep you safe.”
“Thank you, my dear, but we don’t need a forest of traps.”
“I wasn’t talking about traps.” She pushed through her flesh pyramid and put out a call. The chill in the air peaked, and she sensed Yanchasa’s children hovering at the edge of the light. “Rest here or wherever it pleases you. You will be guarded.”
Master Bernard and the others glanced around. Whether they could sense the children or not, they would detect the more ominous chill. “There’s something in the shadows,” one of the pyradistés squeaked.
“Guarding, not harming,” Starbride said.
“You’ve turned them?” Master Bernard asked.
“Something like that.”
“With?” He pointed to his own forehead and then hers.
She chuckled, and Yanchasa did the same. “Rest now,” Starbride said. “Knowledge comes later.” The pyradistés hurried off to one of the dorms, and Starbride commanded the children to watch over them. “I always liked him. How much can we share with them?”
“Enough but never all, daughter. I learned the lessons of Belshreth, so you won’t ever have to.”
The lessons of Belshreth served her well the next few hours. She settled several disputes, broke up a number of fights, scared away looters, and finished collecting all the remnants. She knew she’d have to do something with the hollow things soon. Their presence disturbed the populace more than it comforted them. Still, they were useful at the moment. She set them to watch the city as they’d done for Roland, only now for Einrich.
“I hope he appreciates you, daughter,” Yanchasa said.
She tried to join in the revelry, but it never seemed to last long around her. Those so drunk they could barely stand welcomed her presence for as long as they stayed awake, but many seemed wary or too curious. She didn’t want to repeat her story over and over.
Soon after dawn, as she lingered near the palace, she spied her opportunity to find out just how much the king had come to appreciate her. Einrich rode into the square with a contingent of guards, several nobles, and a handful of Allusians by his side. He gave the lean numbers that turned out to cheer him a royal wave.
From the steps of the palace, Starbride could read the tension in the line of his back, the sorrow in his shoulders that threatened to stoop with every step of his horse. His eyes softened when they fell on her, and she shifted from foot to foot. She hadn’t realized she was so ready for him to be angry or imperious with her.
“Majesty,” she said as he dismounted. She threw in a bow.
“Starbride.” He grabbed her shoulders, greeting her as a relative even though she wasn’t, would never be.
“Be easy, daughter,” Yanchasa said.
Einrich bent to her ear. “I am grateful for everything you’ve done for me, for all of us, and for my kingdom. Please, always think of me as family.”
Starbride felt tremors begin in her body but could do nothing to stop them.
Yanchasa said, “Focus inward,” just as Einrich said, “I will always consider you a daughter.”<
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Starbride wrapped her arms around Einrich and pressed him close. She heard the gasps, and the crowd murmured to itself. One did not embrace royalty in public, but she trembled so; she needed something to hold on to.
Einrich hesitated, and she was about to push away, but his arms closed around her, and he patted her back. “There now.”
“Starbride?” several voices asked.
Starbride pulled away to see her parents coming from Einrich’s pack, and there was Brutal, Maia, and Hugo, hope in their eyes. Starbride turned away, letting the adsna flow. She showed weakness, and they were glad of it?
“They will be glad again of your strength soon enough,” Yanchasa said.
Starbride stepped farther away. “Majesty, if you have any need of me, I am here.”
He nodded once, and she thought she saw him tremble, too. “I’d like to see my family.”
The dignitaries and Allusians remained in one of the ballrooms under the watchful eyes of Countess Nadia. Starbride’s parents tried to press toward her, but she hurried away, leading the king along with Brutal, Maia, and Hugo. When Einrich didn’t speak, the rest seemed inclined to silence. Starbride welcomed it and didn’t look at them.
She hung back as Einrich lingered over his wife’s body where it lay in the corridor. He didn’t remove the coat from her face but bent close and whispered something. Maia knelt by her uncle’s side, and Starbride stared at the floor. Maybe they’d feel better if she burned the queen’s body to ash. Would they grieve less with nothing physical to mourn?
Had that helped her?
If she could only set the adsna roaring through them, it would wash away their grief. “The people of Belshreth must have never felt sadness,” she whispered.
“You will feel all again one day, daughter, when the pain is less. Let the adsna be a balm. And for them,” Yanchasa said, pointing at Einrich, “there’s always mind magic.”
She cocked her head and wondered what Roland’s vision of eternal happiness for the kingdom would look like in the hands of a master.
At last, Einrich signaled Brutal to bear the queen away until she could be seen to. Some of the servants had already returned to the palace and some of the housekeepers as well, everyone eager, it seemed, for their lives to return to normal.
Starbride let Maia and Hugo take the lead as they ventured into the dark basement and then the caverns beneath the palace. Being this close to the capstone, to Yanchasa’s physical body, made power hum in Starbride’s ears, and she felt the comforting presence surround her, blocking out pain. They stepped over the bodies of fallen remnants, no one giving the poor dead things more than a glance.
At the bowl-shaped divot in the cavern floor where his daughter had been obliterated, Einrich stayed silent. More of the cavern had come down during the fight, and the floor was littered with stone. Starbride let the adsna flow until it screamed, and she felt hollow.
“I don’t know if this cavern is safe, Majesty,” Hugo said.
Maia clung to Einrich’s arm. “Perhaps we should come away, Uncle.”
Einrich pressed his palm to his mouth. Starbride thought he might collapse, but he exhaled and straightened. “You said you captured Roland, Starbride.”
“Yes.”
“Show me.”
She led the way, her belly warming in anticipation of his gratitude.
Roland’s screams had become a wheeze. Maybe the pyramid inside him kept him from healing. When he saw his brother pinned to the cavern floor, one-armed, sweating and writhing in agony, Einrich stopped mid-stride. “What have you done to him?”
“Less than he did to your wife and daughter, Majesty.”
He turned a cold eye on her at last, and she welcomed it. When he turned back to Roland, she saw rage pass over his face. She thought he might stride forward and kick what little life remained from his brother, but he held himself rigid, fists curled at his side. Maia and Hugo approached their father with a myriad of expressions on their young faces.
“Why have you left him alive?” Einrich asked.
Starbride shrugged. “For the pain, and for you, of course. I thought you might want to have a hand in his death or at least witness it.”
Einrich put his arms across Hugo’s and Maia’s shoulders. “I am not such a man. But he is too dangerous to keep captive for public execution.”
At his feet, Roland opened his eyes and shrieked, “The pain!”
“End this torture,” Einrich said.
Starbride dropped to Roland’s side and opened his belly to remove the pyramid. The others gasped as they watched.
“How did you…and why?” Hugo asked.
Maia pressed her mouth as if she might be sick.
Starbride looked between their stricken faces. Roland had caused them such pain, and they felt only horror at seeing him tortured. She felt as if she would have understood that once.
“Do you want to do it?” Starbride asked.
Hugo and Maia didn’t answer. Einrich’s tendons stood out in his jaw. “I can’t.”
Starbride saw the problem: he had no weapon, and strength alone wouldn’t prevail against Roland’s Aspect. Very well. She would make it easier for him.
Starbride’s flesh magic skittered along Roland’s body as he sagged against the stone, still held by the remnants. He tried to speak, but she laid her destructive palm over his mouth.
His old wound called to her. The blow that had nearly severed his leg so long ago was still a part of him, the limb held in place only because he had merged with his Aspect. It made him slower than he should have been. The Aspect had caught him at the cusp of life and death, making him more corpse than man, the reason he’d needed his daughter to pass along the Aspect to others. If Starbride removed Yanchasa’s gift, his leg might separate from his body.
Flesh held the answer, but Roland had barely scratched the surface of its uses. Starbride flexed her power and fused the leg back on to his body. Roland cried out against her palm, and she pressed down harder.
Einrich and the others shouted, wanting to know what she was doing, but she didn’t bother to speak. They’d see soon enough.
When she was done with the leg, she searched him for other wounds but found only the missing hand. That she thought he should keep as a reminder.
“Ready to have some of your essence back?” she asked.
“What are you talking about?” Einrich asked. “What are you giving him?”
Yanchasa answered, “Ready, daughter.”
Starbride focused on flesh again, on the rusty handle that lived inside all Umbriels and would turn them back into humans. She had cleansed one person of it before, had taken every ounce of Katya’s Aspect and returned it to its rightful owner.
Starbride remembered Katya’s energy as a ball of utter darkness, accessible only through Crowe’s Fiend pyramid, but Starbride saw it in Roland for what it was: a collection of flesh energy nestled in the brain, spread from there throughout the body, and she had the siphon waiting in the center of this room.
Starbride tapped the energy, and it poured from Roland. He arched against the remnants’ arms, his eyes rolling back in his head. Starbride used herself as a conduit, letting his power cascade with the rest of the adsna until it came to rest invisible in the capstone. When she’d drained him, he collapsed against the floor, blood leaking from his eyes, ears, and nose.
Yanchasa’s laugh echoed inside Starbride like the peal of a golden bell. “The second gift you’ve given me, daughter!”
“The least I could do,” Starbride said.
Roland lay still, unconscious but breathing, his cheeks pink with health beneath the blood, and his face never to hold its Aspect again. She sat back on her heels and commanded the remnants to withdraw.
“Miss Starbride?” Hugo said.
Maia fell to her knees. “Oh spirits.”
Einrich grabbed Starbride’s shoulder. “What have you done?”
She smiled up at him. “Made it easier for you.” She
looked to Yanchasa who was staring at the capstone, eyes narrowed. “What is it?”
“What do you mean?” Einrich asked.
“I think we should move away from here, daughter,” Yanchasa said. “I have an uneasy feeling.”
Starbride glanced at the capstone and reached out with her senses but felt nothing. Perhaps the adsnazi were entering the city. If they cleansed the capstone, she didn’t know what might happen to the person who slumbered within. Yanchasa could be freed, she supposed, but it was just as likely that Allusian meddling would kill or hurt him in some way.
“Dearest daughter,” Yanchasa said, face shifting between maternal and paternal smiles.
“Starbride? What have you done?” Einrich asked.
Starbride gestured one of the remnants forward, and it scooped Roland into its arms. “Shall we retire to the dungeon?” she asked. “Maybe you can have that execution you wanted.”
They only stared at her, open-mouthed. She supposed she’d have to get used to that.
Chapter Nineteen
Katya
Katya stumbled through the tunnel, hardly seeing what was ahead. A few hours of sleep hadn’t been enough, but Horsestrong and all ten spirits couldn’t get her to stop and rest again. When she saw the shadow partially blocking the tunnel, she thought she’d finally become tired enough to hallucinate.
But Dawnmother said, “What’s that?”
Katya pulled up short and blinked away fatigue. Something sat against the wall, large enough that they’d have to step over it. “Legs?”
“Attached to what could only be a body,” Redtrue said.
Katya drew her belt knife as they crept closer. A musty smell washed over her, past the dry scent of stone and dust that had tickled her nostrils since she’d come to this place. As soon as light fell over the body, Katya put her knife away. This was one corpse, at least, that wouldn’t be getting up to attack them anytime soon.
The skeleton had a few leathery patches of flesh still attached to its face, though its limbs were bare of skin, and its clothing had gone to rags. All had turned the same grayish brown as the surrounding stone.
Katya knelt in front of the empty sockets. She couldn’t tell if this had been a man or a woman. It wore trousers and a shirt of an indiscriminate color, but the make was utilitarian and without adornment. A curved knife lay near the skeleton’s outstretched fingers; the others curled in its lap.
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