Citadel of the Sky (Thrones of the Firstborn Book 1)

by Chrysoula Tzavelas

  Kiar stepped away from the lamp, brushing her hands off. “You went further into the phantasmagory than she could follow, she said. I couldn’t find you either. Then you fell asleep. What happened?”

  Tiana pushed herself to her feet. “Where is she?”

  Kiar assessed Tiana until Tiana fidgeted under her stare. Kiar was a Royal bastard, but two years her elder and far more sensible. That was annoying, sometimes. “The Chancellor wanted to talk to her. He sent guards as an escort. About an hour ago, right after we got you back here. What’s going on? Why so intense?”

  Tiana went to her dressing room, leaving the door open, and twisted around to finish unbuttoning her dress. Her maid was nowhere to be seen. “Help me with this, won’t you? There’s some kind of sub-basement under the catacombs. There’s a fiend down there! I think it’s the one that killed Tomas. We should go find out.”

  Kiar stopped mid-reach. “Tiana….”

  Tiana fumbled. “I’m serious! I saw it. Something is down there. Something that caused that disaster at the funeral. I need to deal with it.” She yanked on the dress in frustration, and Kiar reached over to work the back buttons.

  “If there is, you don’t have to deal with it, especially when you’re so… upset. Despite what the Regency is telling people, I’m almost certain there isn’t a fiend in the castle. There would be signs.”

  “You mean, more than Tomas being murdered?” Tiana shrugged out of the formal dress and dug through baskets for an old, comfortable sundress.

  “Yes, actually!” Kiar said. “Fiends leave impressions in the Logos. I looked around a little, right after Tomas was found. All I found was us.”

  “Shut up! It’s not us!” Tiana’s composure cracked. Then she muttered, “I’m sorry.” She sought for distraction, the sundress almost over her head. “Did you talk to Twist, too?” Twist was the Royal Wizard and nominally Kiar’s tutor in the ways of the Logos. Students of the Logos could do all sorts of things, from enchanting orbs to glow at a touch, to diagnosing obscure structural problems in buildings and people. Sometimes they could change the world just by speaking sternly to it.

  At least, that’s what happened in the stories and plays. In Tiana’s experience, Twist mostly appeared places he couldn’t possibly be and gave obscure advice, and Kiar spent a lot of time staring at things and muttering.

  Kiar bit her lip, then said, “I’m sure he checked around on his own. He would have said something if he’d seen anything like that.”

  “Maybe he did, to the Chancellor.”

  Kiar worked on reassembling the formal dress on a hanger, rather than meeting Tiana’s eyes or answering her. She did that a lot these days, whenever anyone brought up Twist.

  Tiana sighed. “Well, that’s why I need you, anyway. I know there’s something down there, Kiar. Something alive. I could feel its heart beating.”

  Kiar said, “Tiana, you were really deep in the phantasmagory. Your eyes were glowing. You stopped talking, or moving. Lisette was terrified. And no one’s sure what happened at the funeral, either. It scared Shanasee into the phantasmagory too, and that eidolon….”

  “It couldn’t have actually been an eidolon. Who would disrupt the funeral like that?” Tiana said firmly.

  Kiar shook her head. “It wasn’t a familiar one, but it was definitely an eidolon. Maybe whoever spawned that eidolon also spawned something that killed Tomas. No fiend necessary. Just another undiscovered bastard, screwing up.” The hint of bitterness in Kiar’s voice was old and familiar.

  “Why is everyone so happy to believe we’re murderers? No, don’t answer that.” Tiana could feel the undertow of the phantasmagory, closer than usual. She thought she could hear the heartbeat within, calling her. Taunting her. She wouldn’t let it drive her mad. Pushing her feet into a pair of sturdy slippers, she said, “Come on, let’s go find Lisette. I need her. Do you know if there are any maps of the catacombs in the library?”

  In horrified fascination, Kiar said, “You really want to go down there, right now? You, me, and Lisette?”

  “It doesn’t have to be you, me, and Lisette. I could go by myself, without a map!” She stopped, modulated her voice. “And if there isn’t a fiend, what is there to worry about?” She narrowed her eyes at the taller girl.

  Acidly, Kiar said, “Falling rocks. Getting lost. Us.” She paused and then said quietly, “I do know what it’s like. To feel totally driven by a desire, out of nowhere. And I know what it’s like to act on that desire. And I know what it’s like to regret it, afterwards.” She hesitated and then sighed. “And I know no wisdom in the world would have stopped me. No falling rocks, no locked doors, no hungry animals.”

  Tiana stopped dressing again. “Kiar….”

  Kiar shook her head in a rejection of sympathy and opened the suite door. “Oh, hello, Lisette. Tiana has been asking for you.”

  Lisette was walking down the hall towards the suite, flanked by four men in Knights of the Regency tabards. She looked tired and irritated, and her chestnut hair had been plucked out of the elaborate braid she’d put it in for the funeral. But when she saw Tiana in the doorway, a smile lit up her face.

  “You’re awake! I’m so glad.” She ran the last few steps to Tiana and embraced her. Then she held her by the shoulders, looking at her carefully. “What happened? What pulled you away?”

  Tiana looked at the guards behind Lisette. Normally they guarded the entrances to the Palace and accompanied the Blood or Regents on expeditions. They looked uncomfortable this deep in the residential area of the Palace. “Why did the Chancellor want to see you?”

  Lisette’s breath hissed between her teeth. “He doesn’t want any of the active Regents alone, ever again. If I’m not with you, I’m to have a Regency guard. And they’re to escort me everywhere. He was very firm. Also, he rescheduled tomorrow’s reception to next week, so no one has an excuse not to attend. And Pell’s old Regent has agreed to come out of retirement to assist the King.” Pell, one of the King’s brothers, had been dead a decade now.

  Tiana chewed her lip and considered the rescheduled reception. Then she blinked at the guards. “What, all four of them? That seems… crowded.” Tiana frowned at the guards. She recognized faces, but only recalled one name.

  That one, Lieutenant Slater, a tall, dark-haired man, cleared his throat. “Your Highness, only two of us will be escorting her Ladyship. The others are on their way to Lady Iriss. We’ll try to be inconspicuous. Oh, and….” He cleared his throat and recited, sing-song, “The Chancellor has all faith in your ability to protect your lady companion when she is with you. Our presence is merely a precaution against an opportunistic assassin.”

  Then his eyebrows drew together, and he added in his own voice, “The King’s tragedy is already too much for the Regency to bear.” He nodded at two of the guards, and they bowed and continued down the hall. “This is Guardsman Berrin. He just transferred from Stormwatch. An old friend.”

  Berrin, who was almost as tall as Slater and far broader, said, “We don’t want to get in the way of your usual pursuits, Your Highness.” Then he grinned. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to attending some of those Small-light shows, though. We’ll just be in the background. Lurking.”

  Slater said sharply, “Guardsman!” and Berrin ducked his head, still grinning.

  Tiana was taken aback. “Oh. Well… now we’re going to the library. Right, Kiar? The library?”

  Kiar sighed. “It seems as good a place to start as any, Tiana.”

  “Right,” said Tiana. She slipped past the guards and walked down the hall.

  Lisette fell into step at Tiana’s side. “Why are we going to the library?”

  Tiana glanced at the guards trailing them and shrugged. “I want to look something up. I need Kiar to translate Aunt Rinta’s catalog.” Lisette responded to her vague answer with silence and a sympathetic smile.

  The library was on the first and ground floors of the Palace. On the first floor, the paneled
double doors opened to a lofty space encircled by galleries. Four fluted columns rose from the ground floor to the frescoed ceiling. Long, narrow windows along the west wall spilled dreary light across the tables and chairs dotting the worn carpet, while Logos-inscribed, flameless lights illuminated the shelves. Rolling ladders allowed access to the hardest to reach volumes. The reconstruction and organization of the library had been a family project for the previous generation, and now, with most of them dead, it was a lovely, pleasant, rarely visited space.

  Tiana pulled her companions away from the entrance where the guards had stationed themselves, down one of the curving staircases to the ground floor. “I need to find maps of the catacombs. There’s a level underneath it, with something down there. If I find it, I can prove no one killed Tomas.”

  Lisette asked, “You saw this in the phantasmagory?” Tiana nodded, and Lisette looked thoughtful. “If you wandered into an ancestor’s construct, that could have pulled you away from me. That’s very interesting.”

  Tiana flashed a smug look at Kiar, who shrugged. “I’m not a Regent and I don’t have access to Regency journals like Lisette does, so don’t give me that look. I have to base my opinions on my own experiences. The crazy, distracted, weird stuff.”

  “I’m not weird!” said Tiana, looking offended.

  Lisette said, “Kiar, the Chancellor would still like to provide you a Regent, you know. He worries.”

  Kiar flinched from Lisette’s words. “No, thank you. As long as the Regency agrees I don’t require one, I don’t want one. I don’t get lost in the phantasmagory. I don’t forget to eat. I can dress myself. And Yithiere will never legitimatize me. I like things the way they are.”

  Tiana looked back and forth between them and wondered what the fiend below the Palace was doing. Kiar and Lisette were standing around talking about unimportant things while Tomas’s murderer lurked somewhere. “Maps!” she said. “We need maps.”

  Aunt Rinta catalogued everything in the library before she died. Yithiere, her older brother, then convinced her it was a good idea to let him encrypt her work. After her death, he wasn’t inclined to share the key, but Kiar had cracked it on her own. That was the sort of thing she did for fun.

  Kiar led the way over to the catalog table, where a giant book sat open. “Any idea who to look for? Any ancestral names in the phantasmagory?”

  Tiana shook her head, choosing to believe that was a serious question. “No names. There was a woman, but… there was something strange about her. I don’t think she was real.”

  Lisette suggested, “Pell’s journals? He did rebuild most of the Palace.” Most of the Blood kept journals, although sometimes about very peculiar subjects or in peculiar forms. “Are they here, or did Yithiere remove them for safekeeping?”

  Tiana thought that was a very diplomatic way to refer to obsessive theft. “Yes, find those. Jerya says he used to roam all over the old Palace. We went exploring with him once. Just before he found you, Kiar.”

  Kiar began to thumb through the catalog. “He was building Starset then. The kitchens hated it. The maids had to deliver lunch to him and his building crew every day, and it was always freezing up that high.” She paused her turning of pages and said reflectively, “He almost claimed me as his own daughter, you know. He said, ‘But I don’t know if it will be easier for you, and I don’t know if Yithiere would ever forgive me.’ They came to look at me sometimes in the scullery. Two tall men, one nice, one scary.” She shook her head and resumed paging through the catalog. “I’m not seeing the adult Pell in here, though.”

  “Yithiere or Cathay have them, then,” said Lisette. Cathay was Pell’s son.

  Tiana said gloomily, “I’d rather not ask either of them.” Yithiere was prickly, and Cathay would want something particular in return.

  Lisette gave her another sympathetic look. “Cathay’s very persistent, isn’t he? But I doubt he’d be much of a bother today.” She sighed. “He must be thinking about Sennic’s death again.”

  Tiana scowled. “He wouldn’t let anyone get near me at the last reception. He made fun of all my suitors.”

  Lisette said gravely, “And yet, you seemed to enjoy yourself.”

  Tiana’s face warmed. “Well, it’s Cathay.”

  With a little smile, Lisette said, “Yes, I know.”

  Tiana made a mournful face. “Do you miss him? I didn’t mind, honest. I’d rather have things back the way they were.” Regents couldn’t marry, but chastity was neither expected, nor valued, in their service to Ceria.

  Lisette shook her head. “You know it couldn’t have lasted. It’s his way. I expected him to move on to you or Kiar. I wish he wasn’t so fickle, but I don’t think he can help himself.”

  Tiana grumbled, “Well, Kiar doesn’t even enjoy the receptions, so he couldn’t ruin them for her. And she’s taller. Why couldn’t he have fixated on her instead?”

  “Too blonde. He prefers brunettes,” said Kiar absently. “Here, this is a list of topics. Let’s look around in the library some more before involving anyone else.”

  “Architecture?” Lisette asked.

  “Maps?” Tiana suggested, patiently.

  “No such topic. ‘Maps’ refers to Geography.” Staring at the book, Kiar muttered, “Rinta, what was the Palace to you? The Royal Library? Pell rebuilt that as well.” She looked around the room and then back at the designation. “Over here.” She led the way to the shelf. “Up there.”

  Tiana pushed the rolling ladder over and climbed up, pulling out a thick folio. It was loosely packed with documents and folded diagrams, and half its contents slipped out of the folio to flutter to the ground. On the floor above, Slater leaned against the railing, watching casually, until she glared at him. Then he raised his hands, lowered his eyes, and turned his back.

  She handed the rest of the folio to Lisette and climbed down. “They’re not going to like us taking you to the catacombs, off the usual strolls. After all, we could be planning to murder you. I’ve read that in Cylisse, Royal guards protect the royalty, they don’t protect people from the royalty.”

  Not looking up from gathering the scattered documents, Lisette said, “No one thinks you’re going to hurt me. Well, no one you should listen to, anyway.”

  “Yes, Tiana,” Kiar added. “It’s just another missed bastard. You know how much trouble they cause.”

  Tiana frowned at Kiar. Was she trying to pick a fight? Lisette handed the sheaf of papers to Kiar to sort, looking exasperated. “The two of you are quite the pair today. Kiar, no one thinks it’s you, either. The Chancellor thinks that it’s a bastard of the King who recently discovered his powers and is angry at being overlooked for so long.”

  Tiana was shocked. “There’s no such thing. Father’s never been with anyone else since Mama left.” But Lisette just smiled in her soothing way.

  Kiar, however, said, “That doesn’t explain what happened to the other Regents. Or provide a motive for killing them, either.”

  Tiana sighed and took the book from Kiar. She went to the nearest table to spread out the contents, trying to pay no attention to the conversation.

  Lisette said, “They were very different deaths! The Chancellor is assuming those were still natural.” She glanced up at the guards. “He’s just being careful.”

  Tiana unfolded a thick sheaf of paper and announced loudly, “Maps of the castle. With…” she peered closer, “notes on the construction. And dates. Old dates. When it was built, I suppose.” She shuffled through the stack, tossing useless maps aside. Kiar grimaced and gathered them up again.

  “Here! The catacombs!” Tiana sat down and smoothed the paper, focusing. Lisette read over her shoulder, and Kiar leaned across the table on the other side, reading upside down. “He says people used to live down there. Hundreds of years ago.” She ran her finger across the fading penciled lines, tracing the common strolls.

  Kiar flicked at her fingers. “Don’t touch, Tiana. You’ll make them fade faster. I’ll get a
scribe to recopy them in ink.”

  Tiana flipped through several pages of the catacombs and then back to higher levels of the castle, poring over the diagrams. Finally, she sat back, running her hands through her hair. “There should be a down staircase. I don’t see that symbol, though.” She fought against the rising tide of frustration that brought the thump-thump of the beating phantasmagory with it.

  “Here, let me look.” Kiar pulled the map away. “Well, this is a down staircase symbol.” She flipped quickly through the catacombs maps. “And no, there aren’t any marked on the catacombs.”

  “Always so fast, Kiar,” complimented Lisette.

  Kiar’s cheeks turned pink. “No, I’m not,” she muttered, and flipped through the pages again. “Here, there’s a door marked on the edge of the map. And here’s another one.” She leaned in to read the writing. “One’s locked. The other leads to a collapsed stairway. He thinks there’s a flooded sub-basement. The masonry there dates from… at least six hundred years ago. He’s got a note to return and investigate further, but I guess he never got around to it.” She looked up and her smile was brief and pleased.

  “Locked doors are not a problem,” said Tiana happily. “Come on. Let’s get some lights and go see. If you can memorize it, we can leave the map here, Kiar.”

  Kiar’s smile flashed again. “I don’t have your father’s gift for memorization. But I can recopy it. Hold on.”

  Chapter 3

  And Through The Stone

  Parts of the catacombs were clean and well-lit, with lamps maintained by the housekeeping staff. The main promenade was popular for strolling, and past generations had left a wealth of art on the walls to admire. Someone was employed to take care of those. Most days there was always somebody down here, cleaning or doing a restoration. Not today, though. Today was a day of mourning, even for the staff.

  Both ancient frescoes and contemporary murals lined the wide corridors, illustrating the great victories of the Blood. The lamps occupied niches in the wall. Old sculpture and dusty crockery were casually displayed in some of the rooms that opened off the main promenade, alongside damaged carvings and wall segments rescued from one renovation or another. Tiana paused alongside one, looking through the archway at the broken mural someone was painstakingly reassembling.