Table of Contents
Synopsis
Acknowledgments
Chapter One: Katya
Chapter Two: Starbride
Chapter Three: Katya
Chapter Four: Starbride
Chapter Five: Katya
Chapter Six: Starbride
Chapter Seven: Katya
Chapter Eight: Starbride
Chapter Nine: Katya
Chapter Ten: Starbride
Chapter Eleven: Katya
Chapter Twelve: Starbride
Chapter Thirteen: Katya
Chapter Fourteen: Starbride
Chapter Fifteen: Katya
Chapter Sixteen: Starbride
Chapter Seventeen: Katya
Chapter Eighteen: Starbride
Chapter Nineteen: Katya
Chapter Twenty: Starbride
Chapter Twenty-one: Katya
Chapter Twenty-two: Starbride
Chapter Twenty-three: Katya
Chapter Twenty-four: Starbride
Chapter Twenty-five: Katya
Chapter Twenty-six: Starbride
Chapter Twenty-seven: Katya
Chapter Twenty-eight: Starbride
Chapter Twenty-nine: Katya
Chapter Thirty: Starbride
Chapter Thirty-one: Katya
Chapter Thirty-two: Starbride
Chapter Thirty-three: Katya
Chapter Thirty-four: Starbride
Chapter Thirty-five: Katya
About the Author
Books Available From Bold Strokes Books
Synopsis
To most, Princess Katya Nar Umbriel is a rogue and a layabout; she parties, she hunts and she breaks women’s hearts. But when the festival lights go down and the palace slumbers, Katya chases traitors to the crown and protects the kingdom’s greatest secret: the royal Umbriels are part Fiend. When Katya thwarts an attempt to expose the king’s monstrous side, she uncovers a plot to let the Fiends out to play.
Starbride has no interest in being a courtier. Ignoring her mother’s order to snare an influential spouse, she comes to court only to study law. But a flirtatious rake of a princess proves hard to resist, and Starbride is pulled into a world of secrets that leaves little room for honesty or love, a world neither woman may survive.
The Pyramid Waltz
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The Pyramid Waltz
© 2012 By Barbara Ann Wright. All Rights Reserved.
ISBN 13: 978-1-60282-792-9
This Electronic Book is published by
Bold Strokes Books, Inc.
P.O. Box 249
Valley Falls, New York 12185
First Edition: September 2012
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Credits
Editors: Cindy Cresap and Stacia Seaman
Production Design: Stacia Seaman
Cover Design By Sheri ([email protected])
Acknowledgments
I owe thanks to so many people, namely my husband Ross and my mom Linda Dunn. I never would have succeeded without your faith and support. To my intrepid writing group, Nia George, Erin Kennemer, Janet Mallard, Trakena Prevost, and Sarah Warburton: Without you, this book would be a shambles. Special thanks go to Pattie Lawler for being not only an outstanding reader but also a champ at talking me off the ledge. Thank you, Faye Hignight, for always checking up on me, and thank you, Kansas crew, for prodding me on Facebook.
Thanks to Radclyffe and Bold Strokes for taking a chance on me, and thanks to Cindy Cresap for her wonderful editing work. And thank you to every teacher and professor I’ve ever had. None of this would have been possible without you.
One last special thanks to my supportive pets. If I coated this book in peanut butter, you’d totally eat it.
To Mom and Ross, for always believing in me.
Chapter One: Katya
The afternoon air tasted of wood smoke, a sign of autumn Katya would have enjoyed if she hadn’t been hunting a traitor. She crouched among the ferns dotting the forest floor and took slow, deep breaths, the better to hear the slightest movement.
Birds chirped to her left, and she turned to the right where the sounds of the forest had gone quiet. She saw a flash of white, Pennynail’s Laughing Jack mask. Smeared as it was with dirt, a bit of brightness still shone through. The mask, with its ever-present grin, long nose, and rosy cheeks, seemed far too amused for the situation, as it did for every situation. He pointed to the eyeholes of his mask and shook his head. When Katya nodded, he moved back through the undergrowth as silently as any predator.
Katya took a slow step forward, her muscles threatening to cramp as she slinked. A twig snapped ahead of her, and she froze. Pennynail would never make such a noise, but it could be the other members of her team closing in. She tensed. Up ahead, a fern rustled, and she saw another flash of white, cloth this time. None of her team would be stupid enough to wear white clothing in the forest. Katya gripped her rapier. Soon, there’d be one less traitor to threaten her family.
The fern moved again, and Katya saw the traitor’s face. His eyes locked with hers, and then he was off. Katya sprang up and after him, drawing her rapier as she ran. She closed quickly, and the fleeing man spun and aimed his short sword at her ribs. Katya blocked. The traitor turned and fled, and it took Katya a moment to switch from dueling to running again.
An arrow whizzed past the fleeing man. It clipped his arm and drew a thin line of blood across his white sleeve. With a yelp, he veered to the side. Maia emerged from the bushes, her pale blond hair floating loose from its braid as she nocked another arrow. The traitor tried to turn a different direction, but a brown blur tackled him. The two forms wrestled, leaves and twigs flying from the forest floor, before they became the fleeing man face-down on the ground and Pennynail astride him. Pennynail held the traitor’s wrists together and put two gloved fingers to his forehead in salute.
Katya returned the gesture and took a few deep breaths. Now the hard work could begin. “I knew you’d be the one to nab him.”
Pennynail touched his heart and then his mask’s cheek as if he were blushing. The man beneath him squirmed.
“Bind him nice and tight,” Katya said. “Brutal and Crowe should catch up any moment.”
She kept her rapier at the traitor’s throat as Pennynail tied his wrists and ankles with a leather cord. Even bound and kneeling at her feet, the traitor snarled. “You can’t stop us.” His tongue darted out to lick a cut on his lip. “You have no idea how high up we go, how many of us there are.”
Katya slid her rapier home in its scabbard. “Educate me, Mr.…what was it you called yourself? The Shadow? That’s a fabulous name.”
He spat a wad of blood at her feet.
“Brother Brutal will be here soon. Would you rather talk to me or to a member of a strength chapterhouse?”
The Shadow swallowed and glared at her, hate burning in his eyes.
“They claim that they can read a man’s soul just by fighting him, that combat is the only path to enlightenment, that you can’t learn the universe without pain.” Katya leaned forward and fixed the man with her gaze. We
akness and fear shone in his shifting eyes and twitching muscles, but she didn’t pity him. Anyone who wanted to hurt her family didn’t deserve pity.
The sound of crunching leaves made the Shadow look to the side where red-robed Brother Brutal emerged from the trees like a bloody wall. “Ah, Brutal,” Katya said, “at last. Persuade our friend, if you please.”
The Shadow squirmed as Brutal put a hand the size of a dinner plate on top of his head. The huge monk’s fingers tightened, tilting the traitor’s head up. “If you wish a duel, I’ll give it, brother.” Brutal’s deep voice matched his massively muscled frame but contradicted the reddish cheeks of his baby face.
The Shadow’s neck muscles twitched as he tried to free himself. “Never…tell.”
Katya shrugged. “Well, it would be easier, but you don’t actually need to say a thing.”
Brutal moved to stand at his back. “Shame.”
“You’ll get the next one,” Katya said. “All we need now is Crowe.” She looked over her shoulder in time to see the Order of Vestra’s oldest member come huffing and puffing out of the trees to join them. “Are there any others? Or is our Shadow the last one?”
Crowe shook his head, leaned on his knees, and breathed hard. He straightened after a moment and ran a hand over his thinning white hair. “Give me a minute!” When his breathing slowed, he took a clear pyramid about the size of a child’s fist from the satchel at his side. “My sources indicated that this is the ringleader, and none of his toadies are about. We’d better hurry back to the city before we’re missed.”
“Do what you need to do. We’ll keep watch.”
“Hold him,” Crowe said. Brutal grasped the Shadow’s head again, and Crowe pressed the base of the pyramid to the Shadow’s forehead. The Shadow’s eyes rolled back and his mouth slackened at the touch of smooth crystal.
Katya couldn’t fight a grimace. He looked like a dead carp. “What do you see?”
“This cannot be rushed, no matter how many times you ask that it be.”
“You said it yourself; we’ve been gone too long. Hunting stags shouldn’t take all day.”
“Then you’ll have to make up an incredible story about the one that almost got away. This man’s mind is a jumble.”
“Not surprising,” Brutal said. “These people are smart. They’d teach their own how to resist a mind pyramid.”
Crowe moved his head back and forth as if searching for something. “Lucky for us, he’s not so good at it. I’m getting that one of his friends is influential, maybe nobility.”
Katya sucked in a breath. “I knew it, a traitor in the palace. That’s how his group has evaded us so long.”
“That’s all,” Crowe said. He took the pyramid away, and the Shadow went limp against Brutal’s legs. “He won’t be coming around for a long while. There was a lot to sift through, and most of it I couldn’t make heads or tails of. There was something about your father, Katya.”
“Wait, King Einrich couldn’t know who the conspirators are, right?” Maia seemed to realize what she said as soon as the words left her mouth. Blushing, she picked at her braid.
Crowe gave her a wry look. “Don’t you think he’d tell us, hmm?”
“Yeah,” Maia said. “You’re right. That was a silly thing to say.”
“Don’t worry, coz.” Katya clapped her on the shoulder. “We can’t be right all the time.”
“Wrong. You can just declare yourself right, Highness.”
“And don’t forget it.” Katya pointed a finger in mock warning. “Crowe, you and Pennynail know what to do.”
“Yes, one complimentary ride to the dungeons for our Shadow.” His smile didn’t diminish the dark circles under his eyes. “I wonder how many of the guards think it’s funny that an old pyradisté like me still goes out hunting villains.”
“Ah, but you’re the king’s pyradisté. Your duties are many and varied.”
“I notice you didn’t argue with the ‘old’ part.”
“I wouldn’t want to disappoint.”
Brutal heaved the Shadow’s unconscious body over one shoulder. “Lucky this one’s light. C’mon, it’s almost dinnertime.”
“Trust you to notice,” Katya said.
Brutal patted his large frame, but the muscled flesh didn’t wobble. “I’m a growing boy, growing outward, anyway.”
“I think your figure is very nice,” Maia said. When they all looked at her, she went scarlet to her ears and moved ahead to take the lead.
Crowe fell into step with Katya. “Ready to turn back into a numbskull?”
“Don’t remind me. It’s bad enough to do it. I don’t want to have to anticipate it, too.”
Ahead of them, Pennynail poked Maia in the arm before pointing off into the trees and sprinting out of sight, lost in the undergrowth.
“I’ll spot you,” Maia called.
“Need any help?” Katya asked.
“I can find him.”
“You shouldn’t encourage them,” Crowe whispered in Katya’s ear.
“Let them play.”
Crowe snorted. “And here I was thinking that the business of the Order deserved our complete attention.”
“I’ll be damned before I let my team stop having fun.”
“There he is.” Maia pointed into the trees and nocked an arrow. “I’ll just get close enough to scare him.” She took careful aim, oblivious as Pennynail loomed from the bushes behind her. He bounced his open palms off her shoulders, and she jumped with a cry, her arrow wobbling off into the brush. “Sneak!”
Pennynail covered the mouth of his mask as if stifling laughter and then swaggered ahead, his long red ponytail swaying from just above where the mask laced up the back of his head.
“You’ll get him next time,” Brutal said. Maia beamed at him before she ran to catch up with Pennynail. She tugged at one of the numerous buckles that secured his outfit and made his slender figure difficult to examine.
At the edge of the wood, the party turned toward the smoke of a campfire, this one carrying the odd scent of berries mixed with wood. They broke into the arranged clearing, and Averie stood beside a smoldering fire near their picket of horses. Her simple leather clothing was green and brown to match the forest, and the camouflage seemed to have aided her, as the stag hanging from a nearby tree could testify. “Seems we both got prizes today, Highness,” Averie said.
Katya peered at the downed animal and tsked. “One shot through the neck, nice and clean. I’m getting better and better.”
“Ready to trade one set of hunting gear for another?”
“I’d rather hunt traitors all day. Question is, are you ready to play the self-sacrificing, put-upon lady-in-waiting?”
Averie heaved an exaggerated sigh. “I never stopped.”
“Jewel of my heart!” Katya cried in mock longing. She fell to one knee. “What would I do without you?”
Averie pulled a change of clothes from her pack and tossed them over. “You’d go about naked, that’s what you’d do.”
Katya put on her best leer, but Averie laughed it off and helped her out of her black tabard and leather breastplate. Katya tucked her pyramid necklace next to her skin before she donned a leather-accented hunting shirt and buckled her rapier back on. She tucked a clean tabard into her belt, this one stiff with embroidery and bearing the hawk and rose of the Princess of Farraday. Averie smoothed her hair, forcing any stray strands into the loose bun at the base of her neck.
“There, much more regal,” Averie said.
Katya only muttered and mounted her horse.
“Your kill, Highness.” Brutal laid the stag behind Katya’s saddle. “The Shadow is similarly positioned on Crowe’s horse.”
Katya shifted away from the large dead animal. “Ugh. I’d rather have him.”
“We’ll meet you later for debriefing.” Crowe and Pennynail started down the road.
“Be careful not to be noticed!” Katya called after him.
He gave her a dark lo
ok over one shoulder. “Go and teach the wind to whistle while you’re giving out free advice.”
“You tease too much,” Averie said.
“It keeps him from descending into a sea of self-righteous grumpiness.”
“Or it hastens his descent.”
Katya shook her head, and they began the ride back to the city of Marienne, Farraday’s capital, past the fields and the homesteads, and along the main thoroughfare. Katya cast off her true self, becoming Princess Katyarianna Nar Umbriel once again, moderately fond of the people, inordinately fond of hunting and weapon-craft. She waved disinterestedly or imperiously at most of the gawkers and winked or leered at any young women. She thanked the spirits she didn’t have to play a pampered, simpering, garters-and-gowns princess. As a dark-haired peasant girl blew her a kiss, Katya also thanked her mother for deciding her persona should be a bit of a rake.
Katya caught the kiss and pressed it to her lips, but she didn’t stop. Cutting a swath through the women of Marienne had been fun for a while. No chance of children, just a trail of broken hearts. All her affairs had ended the same way, though; she could almost hear the entreaties in her head. “Princess, could you help me with… Could you convince your father to…? My brother has been trying to get into the Pyradisté Academy, and…” It went on and on. She’d trusted some of them, not with her sacred duty as leader of the Order of Vestra, but with her person, with her heart. Now, at nineteen, she simply played the part, a fact she reminded herself of as the peasant girl waved farewell.
The gate guards bowed as she rode into the sprawling palace proper, a series of long rectangles with the occasional turret or tower rising out of the jumble. Her party passed the statues of the ten spirits that lined the wide passage into the courtyard. Brutal saluted Best and Berth, twins of strength and courage, the patron spirits of his brotherhood. Katya saluted Matter and Marla, needing their sharp intellects and wisdom if she was going to find her family’s enemies.
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