The Pyramid Waltz

by Barbara Ann Wright

  The large man bent Starbride’s finger back and drew the blade across the joint, drawing a thin line of blood. Starbride gave a muted scream.

  “Shh, shh, sweetheart,” the large man said. “This your first time?”

  There was a tiny sound, almost undetectable, and Katya knew without knowing that her pyramid necklace had shattered. Something inside her shattered with it. Tingles ran along her head, her limbs went numb, and then pain fractured her mind. She closed her eyes and heaved, and the bars parted like blades of grass. She stepped through, and all the unbound people stepped back, but they couldn’t get away. She would have their blood, though she couldn’t recall why. All that mattered was that they were there, fragile hearts waiting to be crushed, and she wanted to oblige them. The large man first.

  Chapter Eight: Starbride

  Katya changed. Starbride felt it in the air the way she felt a warm summer breeze turn cool before a storm. It almost made her forget the man who was going to maim her. When he stepped away, she watched Katya’s transformation.

  Horns sprouted from Katya’s brow, long and smooth. They curved over the crown of her head before pointing up at the sky. Her face had moved from pained to beautiful and inhuman, her eyes blue within blue. Unnatural cold rolled from her in waves, prickling Starbride’s skin. Her face was calm, almost serene as her clawed hands lifted. Katya crossed the room in a blur and appeared in front of the would-be torturer in a blink. She reached between his legs and clawed him from groin to chin, cutting through him as if he were warm pie.

  He barely made a sound as his insides became his outsides, and he dropped. The shopkeeper held his pyramid high, but the glittering shape had gone dark in the center. He stared at it in wonder until Katya relieved him of his head. The other people screamed and ran. Distantly, Starbride heard wood splintering from inside the shop.

  Katya darted for the masked people, one after another, killing and killing in the space of a heartbeat, her movements too fast to follow. She murdered them all without losing the calm look upon her face, and blood dotted her fair skin like motes of flour.

  At last, Katya turned a dark gaze on Starbride, and she feared that look almost as much as she had the idea of the torture.

  An old man stepped through the curtained door. “Katya, no!” He held a pyramid aloft, and Katya shrank from it, hissing.

  The large, red-robed man and young blond woman Starbride had seen in the palace hallway stepped around the old man, followed by another clothed and masked in leather. “Hold her down!” the old man cried.

  Starbride tried to cry out, fearful that these people were like the others, but she could do nothing. The big man and the young woman leapt on Katya and pinned her to the ground. It must’ve been the pyramid that allowed them to do so with her strength. Even though the large man was twice Katya’s size, he grunted as he struggled with her.

  The masked man began cutting Starbride’s bonds, and she yanked the gag from her mouth. “Who are you?” He finished cutting her loose without answering. She pushed off the table and wrapped the rag that had been in her mouth over her bleeding finger. The masked man ran back through the curtained door into the shop.

  On the floor, the old man opened Katya’s coat and shirt enough to press the pyramid to her chest, just above her heart. “Hold on, Katya.”

  Veins stood out in the large man’s neck as he strained to hold Katya down. She screamed nonsense as her horns receded into her forehead, where there couldn’t be room for them, and her features returned to normal. She breathed hard and sweated, her eyes rolling wildly. Two bloody drops rolled down her forehead where her horns used to be, and she wept tears of blood that smeared her cheeks with red.

  At last, her eyes rolled back one more time, and she lay still. Her chest moved steadily up and down. The old man jammed the pyramid back in his pocket and took a deep breath. He wiped his sweaty forehead, slicked his thin white hair back, and said to Starbride, “You’d better come with us, miss. You must have questions.”

  He was wrong. At the moment, she didn’t even have speech. The large man lifted Katya’s unconscious body and started for the curtain. When he waved for Starbride to join his party, she hesitated, not feeling very trusting as things were.

  Katya’s body was going out the door, though, and she had to make a decision. Katya had transformed into something—Starbride’s mind whispered, Fiend—but she had done it to save Starbride, and now she looked so helpless. These people seemed to care about Katya, but Starbride couldn’t be certain of their intentions, not unless she watched them. “Yes…yes.”

  The old man inclined his head deeply, an expression that spoke of respect. Outside, the masked man drove up to the front of the shop in a horse-drawn cart. The others bundled Katya’s body in cloaks and loaded her inside.

  “Clean up,” the old man said. “Don’t forget their horses.” The other two men walked back into the shop, and the old man helped Starbride into the cart while the young woman took the reins. They drove through the city streets for a few moments without speaking.

  “Cimerion Crowe is my name,” he said at last. “Everyone calls me Crowe.” He gestured to the young woman’s back. “She is Maia.”

  Starbride shut her mouth on the questions he had just answered. “Starbride.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “From Katya?” Starbride swallowed. “From Princess Katyarianna Nar Umbriel?”

  “I am King Einrich’s pyradisté, and sometimes, I am hers.”

  “A bodyguard?”

  “Unofficially.”

  Starbride nodded, but anger burned in her. She welcomed it. It chased away the terror that wanted her to run for Dawnmother’s embrace. “Why did you take so long to come?” She tied the rag tighter around her finger. How much of her flesh would this man and his friends have allowed her to lose? Enough so that she could never write again? Never feed herself? Never speak?

  “We didn’t know anything was wrong until Katya’s necklace…” He trailed away. “Never mind about that now.”

  “Thank you for rescuing…us.” She’d nearly said, “Thank you for rescuing me,” but Katya had done that. Or had she also been rescued from Katya?

  “You’re welcome.” He said no more until they entered the royal stables. When the doors of a barn closed behind the wagon, Crowe and Maia surprised her again by lifting Katya’s body between them and then moving to the back of the barn, to a wall that abutted the palace. A touch here, a pull there, and the wall slid open. “This way,” he said.

  Starbride gasped, about to exclaim about another secret passage, but then she remembered that Hanna’s Retreat had been Katya’s secret. She helped them carry Katya through long passages and stairways, past intersections, all of it sealed within the walls of the palace. Small symbols marked the way, but Starbride was more lost than she had been in the regular hallways with their carpets and pieces of art. When they emerged into a large, opulently furnished room, she had no idea where she was.

  The other woman Starbride had seen going hunting with Katya rushed toward them. “Spirits above! What—?”

  “Not yet, Averie,” Crowe said. “Katya will be fine. Let’s put her down on the settee.” They did so, and Averie and Maia unwrapped her. “Let’s have a chat in the other room, Miss Starbride.”

  Starbride glanced at Katya as Averie unbuttoned her coat and Maia brought a bowl of water to the settee’s side.

  “We’re in her apartment,” Crowe said. “This is her private sitting room. You couldn’t have gotten past the pyramids that guard it if you hadn’t been in our company, and it will be equally hard to leave. I protect the royal family, and I must ask, for their sakes, that we talk before you go.”

  Starbride focused on the possibility of explanation. “Then speak.”

  Crowe gestured for her to follow him. In the formal sitting room, the furniture looked incredibly uncomfortable, all straight backs and hard seats with a table big enough for six people. Crowe gestured for Starbride to take a
seat on one side and then sank into a chair across from her.

  He took a pyramid from his pocket and placed it on the table between them. Starbride eyed it with caution and didn’t speak.

  Crowe cleared his throat. “She’s told me…a little about you, and what she said is the reason we’re sitting here. I could have blanked your mind and left you anywhere.”

  Starbride eyed the pyramid again, remembering the way the shopkeeper’s pyramid had gleamed, though it had done nothing to her. “And? What do you have to say?”

  “What did she look like to you?”

  Starbride didn’t have to think about her answer. “Even the Allusians have stories of Fiends, creatures from before humanity.”

  “They’re quite real. Have you heard about Yanchasa?”

  “Are you saying that Katya—?”

  “Tell me what you know.”

  “I’ve studied Farradain history. Yanchasa is supposed to be a terrible Fiend that once threatened this land, but surely this is legend, parable.”

  “Even Allusia has stories of Fiends, that’s what you said.”

  Starbride put a hand to her forehead and tried to stop the world from spinning so quickly. “We have many stories, and that is all they are.”

  Crowe gave her a long stare. “Yanchasa is very real. It rests, but it was once awake. Long ago, the first king summoned it to help him conquer Farraday, but it was too much for him. To keep it from destroying the land and everyone in it, the king’s sister Vestra and her husband took some of Yanchasa’s essence into themselves, weakening it enough to trap it. The husband went mad, but Vestra passed this essence on, just as all Umbriels pass it, both to spouses and children, in the form of the Aspect.”

  Starbride’s belly went cold. Laughing, joking Katya had a Fiend inside her? “That can’t be true. The king and queen?”

  Crowe gazed at her steadily.

  “But…why?”

  “They can pacify Yanchasa, keep it asleep, because they carry its essence.”

  “But Fiends are…evil, aren’t they?”

  “I’ve never met a true one, but that’s the rumor. The Aspect in the Umbriels is muted, buried beneath the surface of their minds. When the Aspect takes hold, the Fiend possesses their body and mind, and they can’t remember what happened afterward. The Aspect emerges when they’re enraged or during a ritual called the Waltz, which they perform to pacify Yanchasa every five years.” He scrubbed his hands through his hair. “Though they all carry the Aspect, it can only present after they’ve participated in the Waltz.”

  “They can’t be a Fiend until after they’ve Waltzed?”

  “Correct. Katya Waltzed the first time five years ago, when she was fourteen.”

  “Those men, the ones that tried to…” She couldn’t say it out loud. “They acted like they had something to prove to the masked people, something to show.”

  “They probably wanted to reveal Katya’s Aspect, perhaps to prove why the Umbriel line shouldn’t be allowed to rule.”

  “But if only those with the Aspect can appease Yanchasa…?”

  “Some are convinced that Yanchasa no longer exists, that it’s a child’s tale to keep the populace in line and the Umbriels on the throne. Now it seems that some people think a monster shouldn’t rule, even if he keeps a worse monster at bay.”

  Starbride rubbed her temples and tried to put her thoughts in a row. “Katya’s always been so kind to me.”

  Crowe leaned across the table and patted her hand, a gesture that surprised her. “She’s a kind person. The Aspect emerged because she cares about you.”

  “Would she have hurt me?”

  He held her eyes for a moment. “Though Katya’s worry for you brought it out, the Fiend cares about little but slaughter.”

  “Yes, I saw it in her eyes.”

  “But she didn’t attack you first, did she?”

  “True. I was the easiest target.”

  “A part of her remains, even through the Aspect. It looks so painful. It’s a blessing that they don’t remember it. The name ‘Waltz’ is a macabre joke, the sort the Farradains seem to love.”

  “The Farradains?” She studied him; his skin was duskier than other Farradains she’d seen. “Are you servant caste?”

  His gaze bore into her. “My life for them.”

  “And also the truth.”

  “My father was Farradain, but my mother was a servant of Allusia. She named me Cinnamoncrow.”

  Starbride nearly laughed, even with everything. The name was worse than hers! “Your mother wished you to be a crow?”

  “We lived in the hills above the northern salt flats, and the crow was a useful bird. You could follow it to water or food, and my mother had a poetic touch to her soul. She wanted me to be useful more than anything, as she was useful to her mistress.” He rubbed his chin and smiled. “My father visited us in the winter. He was a pyradisté under Katya’s grandfather, and when my mother died, I came to live with him and entered the Umbriels’ service.”

  “Your life for theirs.”

  He nodded. “Though at times, I have to hide the truth for their protection.”

  “Do the Umbriels understand an Allusian servant’s bond?”

  “Their servants are hired. They can understand a pledge, but they still need proof. I’ve proved myself time and again.”

  Starbride pressed the cool surface of the table and took a deep breath. “It’s a lot…all of this, but thank you for telling me about yourself.”

  “Now you know a secret of mine to go along with Katya’s. She doesn’t know about, or barely recollects, my heritage. I’ve been Cimerion Crowe for a long time. It was easier to adapt to them.”

  Starbride understood. She wouldn’t change her name, as much as she hated it, but she wanted to adapt to Farradain law. To deal with them, it seemed the best way. “How long will she sleep?”

  “A few hours. I can escort you back to your room. Or if it’s all too much for you, I can arrange for you to go back to Allusia.”

  Tempting, for half a heartbeat, until she looked at the clothing Katya had given her, a gift from the heart. “My mother wouldn’t like that.” She couldn’t abandon Katya, not even after what had happened or nearly happened. They were forming a bond she couldn’t deny.

  “Starbride, you don’t need reminding, but I’m going to do it anyway. The Aspect is a secret. I don’t know how those people in the shop found out, but that problem is being dealt with.”

  “And if I tell, I will be similarly dealt with?”

  His kind eyes were steady. “It would pain me, but yes.”

  He would protect the family, his life for theirs, his life for their secrets. “And Katya?”

  “I would suffer her hatred.”

  “Hatred?” Feelings swarmed Starbride’s chest, too many to name. Katya would hate someone she trusted on Starbride’s behalf? “How do you know?”

  “I made the pyramid that she wears around her neck, the one that is supposed to keep her Fiend from emerging, even with her anger. If she changed to save you, she broke it using emotion alone.”

  Starbride matched him stare for stare. “I’ll send a note to my servant about where I am, and then I’ll stay until she wakes.”

  “I can still make you forget.” He tapped the pyramid. “It will be hard for her, but she can pretend she never met you, and this day will seem like a bad dream.”

  Starbride touched the pyramid’s smooth side with one finger. She wasn’t so sure Crowe’s pyramid could touch her, not if the shopkeeper’s couldn’t. “She cares for me, and she would pretend not to know me?”

  “If it would protect or comfort you, yes. I know her very well. Memory erasure works in threads. I couldn’t take just this day. I would have to take every encounter involving the princess from your mind.”

  The burden of responsibility would be gone, but so would all the little moments, the bright eyes, the easy smile. “No, thank you.”

  He retrieved his pyramid and
went into the other room. Starbride breathed deep as the day’s events roiled within her, free to coil around her mind now that she was alone. Crying by oneself was useless, she knew that. Her mother had drilled it into her. What good were tears with no one to see them? What good…?

  When the first drop landed on the leg of her trousers, darkening the fabric, it shocked her. And then there were more, pouring down her face, unstoppable. She covered her mouth and wept, keeping her voice down to a moan when it wanted to howl, and crying until her eyes and throat ached, until her face turned hot and puffy.

  That man, his touch on her skin, the knife slicing her finger, then Katya’s Fiend, fear upon fear, that terrible cold, and then Katya’s collapse. And all the knowledge? She’d wished to know the secrets, and now part of her wished she’d never asked, had never been in a position to ask.

  Katya had become a Fiend to protect her. It had to mean something, maybe everything. If Katya had hurt Starbride, whether she remembered it or not, would she ever forgive herself? Would she blame herself for even being in a position to hurt Starbride?

  Katya would pretend to forget her if Starbride decided that course was best. Katya could keep herself away when she clearly didn’t want to, could ignore their flirty conversations, and could forget kissing Starbride’s hand. It spoke of great affection but also of tremendous acting skill. Could she fool anyone? Even Crowe?

  Starbride shook her head and told herself that she wouldn’t be so easily deceived. Katya couldn’t fake the transformation into a Fiend, something Starbride had seen with her own eyes. Katya cared for her, more than a little, and Starbride realized that she felt the same.

  “Ah, Mother,” she said as she dried her eyes on her sleeves, “you got your wish, though it wasn’t exactly what you would have chosen. Would you be of two minds, I wonder?”

  The door cracked open, and Maia peeked through. “Hello?”

  “Hello.”

  “I’m…my name is Maia.”

  “I know.” She smiled to put her at ease. “How is Katya?”