“No,” she said. “I need to go after Freddie and Hugo.”
The messenger slid down from his horse. “Here.”
“The pyradisté is a more pressing target,” Yanchasa said, standing behind the messenger’s shoulder. “If she escapes, she could create more problems for us.”
Her body felt wrenched in two directions. “Freddie and Hugo could die!”
The messenger stared. Yanchasa’s eyes narrowed dangerously. Starbride felt the adsna roar through her, threatening to steal her feelings.
“No!” she cried. The power pulsed, forcing the messenger back a step.
“You don’t want your mission to succeed?” Yanchasa asked. “Did you enjoy your time last night?”
Before she could reply, the power drained away, and the cold crashed over her like a wave. Her legs threatened to buckle. No! She wouldn’t give in this time, wouldn’t sag to the floor and beg for help or surrender to the power that stole her emotions. She stumbled toward the horse.
The messenger had to help her up, and after she was astride he swung up behind her. “Take me there.”
He aimed the horse in the right direction, and she barely held on. She tried to call for the children or the remnants, but that power wouldn’t obey her.
Starbride heard the shouts echoing off the trees long before she saw the fight. Hugo, Freddie, and the last messenger tried to use the forest to keep a mass of mind-warped villagers from surrounding them. As she watched, the messenger went down beneath a wall of swinging blades. Freddie stayed ahead of the strikes, trying to get to Hugo who swung his rapier with wild abandon.
It wouldn’t be enough. They’d have Hugo soon. Freddie would never reach him in time. Starbride flung her destruction hand out to summon fire or an earthquake or even a flash bomb, but the power felt sluggish, disobedient.
“Hugo!” Starbride cried. He couldn’t look toward her, and she knew of only one way to help him. “Get down,” she said to the messenger. Once he was clear, she rode into the fray, her horse knocking villagers to the side. Some turned toward her, weapons raised. “Hugo,” she called again, “your Fiend!”
A blade dug into her thigh, turning her voice into a howl. Her horse reared as the villagers chopped at its hide. One of Starbride’s feet slipped from the stirrup, and her arms couldn’t hold. She slid to the ground, the impact sending shockwaves through her knees. The booted feet of the villagers converged on her.
Yanchasa was there, waiting to help, but hatred for her own cowardice reared within her. A club thudded into her ribs, driving her breath out, and an acid sting rolled all the way to her core as someone buried a knife in her back. She opened her lips to call Yanchasa’s name.
A warm spray bathed her from head to toe, and the booted feet flew away as if before a hurricane. Her body folded in pain. The knife that had bitten into her dropped to the crimson-smeared grass. She lifted her head to look beyond it. The forest was a ruin of blood and body parts. The messenger was a retreating dot in the distance, and his horse lay in three tidy, oozing pieces.
Freddie perched in a nearby tree, watching with a look of awestruck horror as Hugo tore the last villager’s head off. His eyes had become pits of light blue. The spike jutting from his chin moved up and down as he breathed hard. Crow’s wings had torn the back of his coat wide open, and as he turned to look at Starbride, he bared his fangs in a snarl.
Starbride struggled to her feet with the aid of a small tree. She curled her free hand over her ribs, and her foot squelched as blood from her leg filled her boot. More flowed down her back. Hugo took a shambling step toward her.
Starbride reached for the adsna, but it eluded her still. Freddie slipped down from his tree, too far away to help her. Hugo took another step, and Starbride reached through her flesh pyramid in a way she hadn’t since she’d first felt the adsna.
She sensed Hugo’s ability to become human again—that rusty handle inside all Umbriels—and yanked on it. The magic still felt sluggish, but it grew stronger as he stalked toward her. By the time he broke into a run, it flowed again. When he neared her, she felt the rusty handle give, and he collapsed mid-step, falling into her arms and making her cry out in pain. She managed to guide him to the forest floor without dropping him.
“I can’t find the medical kit,” Freddie said.
He tugged her upright, making her stutter a cry. “What are you doing?”
He was tearing cloth. “I have to bind your wounds, but the horse with the fucking medical kit is gone!”
“Shouting’s not a good idea.” The pain beat at her, and she knew it should have been excruciating, undeniable, but she was slipping away. Hugo had almost died, and half of her still wanted to go chasing that pyradisté, but she was so tired. She sank to the ground, and Freddie went with her.
“Everyone else is dead.” He pressed something against her numb back. “I can’t stop this bleeding.”
Starbride gasped as the adsna filled her. “You don’t have to.” He jumped back with a curse when her wounds mended themselves.
Yanchasa stood amidst the trees, the bare amount of armor over her clothing. “What have you done, daughter?”
“I saved my friends.”
“I never expected betrayal from you, someone who claimed to know it so well.”
Guilt tried to worm into her, but she stopped it with a thought. “That’s a shabby trick. I betrayed no one.”
With a blink, Yanchasa stood just in front of her. He laid a spectral palm on Hugo’s head, and Hugo came awake with a start. “I understand the connection he must have for you, daughter. He carries my flesh; he must call to you.”
“He’s my friend.”
Hugo staggered upright but would have fallen again had Freddie not caught him. “What’s going on?”
Freddie shushed him, his eyes fixed on Starbride. She glanced at him, but her words with Yanchasa couldn’t wait, and she didn’t care to keep them in her head. “You’re working through me.”
Yanchasa leaned back, an unreadable look on his face. “Sometimes you lack the necessary skill.”
That made sense. Still, she’d learned so much. She felt the adsna waiting, ready to carry her feelings away, but she didn’t want to bury her disquiet. She knew Yanchasa could make it worse, could make the cold feel like a thousand knives; he could make her wounds reopen. And she’d let him in, embraced him.
She didn’t want to rid herself of him, not completely. There was knowledge and power in those bottomless eyes. And as today had proven, Roland’s forces were still at work. Surely they could come to some compromise.
“Stop working through me,” Starbride said.
He cocked his head.
“Teach me what I need to know, and let that be that.” Images reared in her mind, her doing or his she didn’t know: the awful way she’d treated Dawnmother and Katya and Maia. Starbride fought the feelings down, but one image wouldn’t go away, the shutters fluttering in the breeze. Had he been using her body while she slept?
“Don’t bother telling me that you’re all I have,” Starbride said, “Instead, consider this: I am all that you have.”
His eyebrows lifted. “Marienne is filled with your kind now.”
“And which of them will have you? Redtrue? Think again. Her very nature would make her turn tail from you and run.”
Yanchasa smiled, and she saw respect in his gaze. “Do you seek to become my teacher, daughter?”
“No. Horsestrong knows you have more wisdom for battle and strategy, but I can’t let my friends be sacrificed.”
“Sacrifice is sometimes necessary. Katya knows this.”
Starbride screwed her eyes shut. “And please stop digging through my memories. I am not Katya. I am me, and I will not sacrifice my friends!”
Yanchasa held her hands up in surrender. “As you wish. From now on, if you want my help, you must ask. I will be but a shade lingering in your mind.”
Yanchasa was annoyed, but Starbride would take irritated over imper
ious and commanding. When she blinked again, Yanchasa was gone. Starbride glanced around, unable to remember the last time she hadn’t been able to find him when she looked.
“Starbride?” Freddie asked.
She’d forgotten he was there. “Are you wounded, either of you?”
“A bit,” Freddie said just as Hugo said, “Not after transforming.”
With a thought, Starbride healed Freddie’s cuts and bruises. As Hugo said, he was whole, even if he did look a little drowsy.
Freddie cleared his throat. “What happened?”
“Put your necklace back on, Hugo,” Starbride said. “We should find the messenger, and then I need to round up the chil…the others.”
“What happened?” Freddie asked again as he tried to keep pace with her.
“Think you and Hugo can find the rest of the horses?”
He stepped in front of her. “Is it like a children’s story, and I need to ask three times?”
Starbride took a deep, steadying breath. “I cannot begin to explain.”
“Because I’m too stupid to understand?”
“If it gets you out of my way, yes.” She stepped around him.
“I think my horse went that way,” Hugo said loudly.
Freddie slashed a hand through the air. “I’m not leaving you alone until you give me some clue about what in the name of Ellias’s big balls is going on!”
“And I’m sure your horse went that way!” Hugo yelled.
“Both of you shut up.” Starbride didn’t know what she could say. Her feelings were still a jumble. She was annoyed and amused at Freddie and Hugo, ashamed and proud of herself. It was like having two minds, but she couldn’t feel Yanchasa however she turned. “Let’s finish the job here, let me work a few things out, and then I will try, Freddie, truly I will.” She let some of the adsna back in, letting it calm her. It was a difficult balance, like figuring out how to work a stubborn sluice gate. How much to let in and how fast determined what she felt and when. She had to keep the cold at bay, at least.
Freddie’s lips mashed together so hard they turned white, but at last he lifted his arms and then dropped them. “Come on, Hugo. Let’s go find the horses.”
Chapter Twenty-nine
Katya
Whatever she did, nothing led Katya any closer to figuring out a way to free Starbride from Yanchasa’s influence. Maia had been overwhelmed by the merest trace of Yanchasa’s personality. Roland might have had closer contact with the Fiend, but it had only driven him more insane.
Redtrue consulted Leafclever about the capstone, and he agreed that they couldn’t cleanse it on their own. It would take all of the adsnazi working in concert to change such powerful magic. And they couldn’t say what would happen to someone attached to that magic, like Starbride, and all those who carried a piece: Katya’s father, Reinholt, his children, Maia, Hugo, and now Brutal. They could be cleared of the Fiendish taint, or they might be killed.
Katya nodded when she heard. “Keep studying. We can’t act on the capstone until we know everyone will be safe.”
Redtrue frowned. “What if the only conclusions I can draw are ones you won’t like, those that will only serve the greater good?”
“I suggest you don’t speak such answers out loud.” She slid her thumb along her rapier pommel, and Redtrue left her alone.
Maybe all of Katya’s troubles would blow over, a voice inside her suggested. Yes, and maybe tiny winged spirits would deliver her dinner. The world was full of ifs, and as Dawnmother would say, every one of them was a hole in the road.
Katya decided to wander, her solution to so many problems in the past. She wasn’t surprised when her feet took her past the council chambers. With so much to fret over, it was no wonder her brain tried to find yet another set of problems.
What she needed was something to put her sword to. By the raised voices in the council chamber, she thought her father might appreciate that.
Before she reached the door, it flew open, and nobles boiled out, faces thunderous. A few nodded as they stomped past. Only Count Mathias and Countess Nadia seemed calm. Leafclever and Dayscout brought up the rear, and they seemed just as agitated as the others. At least they offered a smile before they wandered off, heads close together.
Katya found her father in his usual seat at the head of the long council table. He rested his chin in one fist and stared out the row of windows lining one wall.
“I won’t ask how it’s going,” she said.
The lines under his eyes were deeper, purple-tinged. “This isn’t a council. It’s a giant millstone, and I’m the donkey trying to keep it going round. Most of the nobles are dead set against a parliament. They see it either as the catalyst for the capital’s fall or knuckling under to the demands of the peasantry.”
“Did they catch the part where a madman was actually the catalyst, and that the peasantry helped reclaim the kingdom?”
“Call it selective memory. I think their backs are up because of the Allusians. I tried to press upon them that the Allusians are only here to look after their own interests, but some don’t believe me. I’ve told them we could learn from our neighbors, but you can guess how well that went.”
Katya slipped into a seat beside him. “As welcome as a bad smell.”
Da rubbed his chin. “Maybe if I push the Allusians on the nobles more, they’ll better buy into the parliament idea, clinging to their fellow Farradains, no matter if they’re poor.”
“But using the Allusians like that would alienate them, yes?”
He shrugged. “They like the parliament idea. If I can get Dayscout to go along, perhaps we can perform a routine to get everyone looking the way we want.”
“I don’t envy you.”
He sighed. “I miss Cat.”
Katya’s heart thudded. They hadn’t really talked of Ma since the day they’d all been reunited. “Me, too. She always had clarity.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
They chuckled before bowing their heads in the face of all they had lost. Katya watched her father struggle with emotion even as she did. “When will we have the…” She took a deep breath. “The funeral.”
“Tomorrow.”
“So soon?”
“Not soon at all, my girl, as these things go.”
Katya couldn’t help but remember her grandmother’s funeral, when events in the capital had come to a head, spurred on by Roland. She wondered if the glass carriage used to carry the royal coffins was still in one piece.
“We’ll gather quietly at the crypt,” he said. “Family, friends, and a few nobles waiting outside. I thought you’d want to inter Averie at the same time.”
Katya hiccupped through a nod. It was probably best to avoid a show of wealth when so many people in the city had lost someone. They couldn’t all have a state funeral, and it was best not to remind them of that fact.
*
When Katya emerged from the palace early in the morning, she stopped cold. The glass funeral carriage rested at the bottom of the stairs, empty but polished and ready. Reinholt stood beside it, and Katya just kept herself from lunging at him. Their father had come up with a simple, effective way to keep the populace from resenting the royals anew, and Reinholt stomped all over it.
When he saw her, he grinned. “I did consult him, Little K.”
She skidded to a halt and forced herself to look at the noticeably empty carriage. One glass side had been left out. “What’s going on?”
“This isn’t for Ma. My friends and I have been circulating through the town, telling everyone this is a day of mourning.” He looked up at the sky. “Come on. We’re late.”
He climbed up into the carriage’s seat and waved her aboard. She climbed up slowly, giving him a sidelong glance. The remaining side to the carriage rested beneath them. “Where is Da?”
“He’ll meet us at the crypt.”
Katya kept her frown as they drove through the streets. When a woman stepped forward from the meage
r crowd and set something in the open side of the carriage, Katya watched her warily. She wiped tears from her cheeks, glanced at Katya, and nodded.
She stepped back, and Katya saw a rag doll, one button left in its dirty white face, sitting upon the velvet lining inside the carriage.
As they continued, more people came forward to lay objects in the carriage until they had to stop and put up the side. Even then, people put their keepsakes on top. Sometimes they just touched the carriage as it rolled by, darkening the glass with fingerprints. A day of mourning; she finally understood. Reinholt invited the populace into their grief instead of hiding from them. It let them know that their monarchy mourned with them, that their leaders had lost people, too.
“Clever, Reinholt,” Katya said.
“Not all of us are thinking with our crowns, Katya. People need this.” When she stared at him, he returned the look, but his held a hint of defiance. “I’m serious. Of the two of us, who is more in touch with their feelings?”
Bad feelings, she’d give him that.
When the carriage was overflowing, people started laying things behind the driver’s seat or at Katya’s and Reinholt’s feet. Katya put them beside her, but soon she had to walk in order to make room, and by the time they reached the graveyard south of Marienne, Reinholt walked, too, leading the horses.
A crowd followed them to the graveyard gates and stopped. Maybe they thought the less people to disturb the dead, the better. The gravediggers had been operating overtime. Unclaimed bodies now rested in a mass grave near the back, and that was where Reinholt steered the glass carriage. They paused before a large pit, gaping black like a wound in the earth. Da waited with Maia and Brutal. Off to the side stood Countess Nadia, Baroness Jacintha, Dayscout, his servant, and a few others. More townspeople gathered at the fence to watch.
“Today we bury the dead,” Da intoned, “so that the living might continue.” Old words, said at gravesides since Marienne’s beginning, only not by loved ones, not by the king. The gravedigger said them before he cast in the first shovelful of dirt.
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