The Pyramid Waltz

by Barbara Ann Wright

  Maia continued to frown. An angry flush climbed above her collar. “Then how did he die?” Katya asked.

  Crowe took a steadying breath, eyes unfocused as if looking into the past. “Seven years ago, a woman arrived in Marienne as a courtier. She caused a bit of commotion because she was older than average, and she’d never been to court. She’d made some money as a lawyer and bought her way in. She claimed to be the daughter of King Bastian, his eldest child, as a matter of fact.”

  “Grandfather’s illegitimate daughter?” Katya asked.

  “From what I heard,” Brutal said, “Bastian had a roving eye.”

  Crowe snorted. “Correct, but his pyradisté made sure it was only his eye that roved.”

  “Pyradisté Vanielle,” Katya said. “I remember her. I was five when she retired after Grandfather died, but I remember her.”

  “Well, what most people don’t know is that she was also Queen Meredin’s cousin,” Crowe said, “and she took care of both your grandparents’ roving eyes.”

  Brutal whistled. “The queen liked the young men, did she?”

  “Pyradisté Vanielle used to shove Bastian and Meredin in a room together when their impulses to stray became too strong,” Crowe said. “She let them fight it out, eventually to make up in the classic fashion.”

  “The old devils!” Katya said. “I’m going to ask Grandmother about that the next time we visit her on the coast.”

  “At your peril,” Crowe said.

  They all chuckled, except for Maia, who said, “Get to the part where my father died.” The words cut through their mirth like a knife.

  Crowe blanched. “The courtier’s name was Carmen Van Sleeting. She was a widow who claimed to be the daughter of Bastian and a serving girl. The common people lapped it up. One of their own and the King of Farraday? They were ready to believe, and they had a share of nobles on their side that would put this woman on the throne just to chuck her off later.

  “Carmen claimed to have letters written by Bastian to her mother, love letters marked with the royal seal. We had to get them to prove they were forgeries. There was some talk of simply disposing of Carmen.”

  “That would never have worked,” Katya said. “If she disappeared without being disproven, it would fan the flames of her claim. She had children?”

  “Three, tucked away somewhere secret.”

  “Then her death or disappearance would have bolstered their claims to the throne, especially if the people didn’t take the Waltz and Yanchasa into account.”

  “Correct.” Crowe glanced at Maia and cleared his throat. “Carmen must not have felt safe at Marienne, or she didn’t feel her letters were safe. She claimed she’d made copies, but who cares about copies? People wanted to see the real thing. She used her money to rent a house on the Lavine River, an old building downriver from Dockland, dating from the Tide Wars, and it was built like a fortress.”

  He rubbed his wrinkled cheeks and looked every bit his sixty-odd years. Katya was ashamed to find she couldn’t recall his exact age. Sixty-six? Sixty-seven?

  “Roland was determined to go with just the Order. He said a small force had a greater chance of success. Einrich was against it—he always thought Roland too reckless—but Catirin and I outvoted him. Roland was the leader of the Order, and the mission seemed a simple one.”

  Crowe tapped the knife lightly as he spoke. “It was dark when we got to the house. We waited until midnight or so. It was Roland, myself, two brothers—Roland’s friends—Arvid and Alistair, and Layra, our archer. Layra covered us as we went into the house, picking off guards from a distance. Arvid and Alistair provided a distraction inside while Roland and I went for the letters. I already knew these so-called love letters couldn’t be real. Bastian was a good man but not a great writer. He dictated, just like your father, Katya, and also like Einrich, Bastian’s handwriting was awful. If he had to send a personal letter, Queen Meredin wrote it for him.”

  Crowe moved from the knife to tracing the wood grain of the table. “So, we needed to compare handwriting, and we needed the letters to do so.” He closed his eyes, and Katya knew he was stalling. Her ears rang in the silence. Maia’s jaw clenched, and the angry flush made her cheeks bright; her eyes seemed to flicker with standing tears.

  “We got over the wall,” Crowe said, “with Layra dropping guards right and left. The brothers went one way; Roland and I headed for the top of the house. I wish you could have seen your father then, Maia. He was a brilliant pyramid-user, a wonderful pyradisté. His skill allowed us to reach the upper levels of the house far faster than mine.”

  Maia’s face softened but didn’t lose its intensity. Staring at nothing, Crowe continued, “We had to use weapons at times—thankfully, not often—but we eventually found Carmen’s chamber. Roland held the door while I rifled the room and found the forged letters. More than that, I found that Carmen had been writing to various nobles, encouraging dissent, buying support where she could. She was plotting a civil war.

  “Carmen’s guards fought like Fiends, but we managed to reach the dock with all the evidence. Arvid and Alistair didn’t emerge, and we couldn’t wait for them. They’d gotten out of tight spots before. Layra picked off several of our pursuers, and Roland and I jumped into a little skiff and launched it. Carmen’s guards pursued us in other boats.

  “We were sailing into pitch, dead night,” he said, almost a whisper, “and the current was fierce. We couldn’t see the bank. We hoped to get as far away as we could and then make our way back to Marienne after dawn, but something struck the side of the skiff and jarred us. It didn’t pierce the hull, but we had to light a lantern. If we hit something like a floating tree dead-on, we’d be doomed, thrown in the water with no idea how far it was to shore, at the mercy of the current.” He shook his head, his face showing some of the desperation he must have felt back then. “The following boats had lights hanging from their bows, so we lit ours. We could see a little way in front of us, enough to avoid large obstacles. Our pursuers fired arrows, a few coming too close for comfort. Roland braced himself in the back of the skiff and tried to attack with a pyramid.”

  He paused and took several deep breaths. “They had a bigger ship that we…that we hadn’t seen. It must have come from upriver. It was a sloop…a small sailing ship with one…one mast.” He took another breath. “It had a weapon mounted at the bow, a large crossbow. The, uh, the bolts are bigger than normal.” His voice faded, and his eyes slipped shut. “Their first bolt skipped off the side and hit Roland in the leg. In the dim light, it seemed like it nearly…took his leg off. There was so much blood…” He swallowed several times. Katya bit her lip until it hurt. Maia stared at the table, her fingers white where they gripped the wood.

  “He staggered and tumbled into the water,” Crowe said, “but the strap of his satchel caught on one of the boat pegs, and the skiff dragged him, keeping his head just above water. I…I tried to pull him in, but I wasn’t strong enough. I tried to get him to help me. I pleaded with him to help me pull him on board, but he was facing away from the boat, and he seemed out of his mind with pain and shock.” Crowe wiped at the tears dribbling down his cheeks and shook his head as if denying the memory.

  “His dragging weight slowed us down. The sloop was catching up. I had the evidence in my satchel, the letters that would prove Carmen Van Sleeting a liar and a traitor.” He spoke slowly, as if in a trance. “He looked at me, and even though I could barely see his face, I knew he understood. I couldn’t pull him into the boat. I couldn’t let him hang from the side and die slowly or be battered to death by river flotsam until Carmen’s men caught us. I couldn’t cut the satchel loose and let him float. If he was recovered by the enemy, he would make too valuable a hostage.

  “I took his face,” he whispered, “and I held it under the water. I thumped his back to drive the air from his lungs. He went still, and I kept holding him. When I was sure, I cut the strap to his satchel.”

  Maia launched herself across
the table. “Murderer!” she screamed. Pennynail grabbed her. She struggled and screamed in his grasp, reaching for Crowe. “Murdering son-of-a-whore! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!”

  Crowe didn’t move, only covered his eyes and wept. “There would have been civil war.”

  “I don’t care!” Maia shouted. “You wanted to save your own skin! Bastard, murdering bastard!”

  Katya started for Maia, but Brutal got there first. He lifted Maia and wrapped her wholly in his large embrace. “Kill you!” she screamed again. “I wish my Fiend could come out! I wish it could so it could tear you apart!” Her voice broke on the last word, and her head sank over Brutal’s clasped arms as she sobbed loud and long. He turned her until her head could rest on his shoulder.

  Katya caught Brutal’s eye and gestured at the door. He nodded and carried Maia from the room.

  Crowe wiped his cheeks. “At dawn, I returned to Marienne and found out that Carmen Van Sleeting had fled to her homeland in the north. The Guard pursued her, but her kin got to her first. To get the king off their backs, they sent us her head. The nobles who’d colluded with her were taken care of silently, mostly with threats. The problem seemed to be solved, just at a terrible cost.” He touched the knife. “Carmen and her guards must have found…Roland’s body…before they fled. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that our two captives are her children and that the mysterious bearded man is as well.”

  “Seeking revenge,” Katya said.

  “We robbed them of a mother and a throne.”

  Without warning, Katya’s mind conjured a clear memory of a picnic when she was ten. Da, Roland, and Crowe stood under an oak tree, laughing together, enjoying a rare family moment in the royal garden. Grandmother had come from the coast, and she and Ma relaxed on cushions and sipped white wine under a bright red awning. Grandma and Grandda, her mother’s parents, played croquet with Katya, Maia, and Reinholt. It was two days before Da’s thirty-fourth birthday, and the family celebrated privately before the city’s public celebration. There would be a ball Katya wouldn’t be allowed to go to.

  She’d been pouting, she smiled to remember, and Grandma and Grandda played with her to try to lift her spirits. But as she watched the three men, Crowe and Roland in their black pyradisté cassocks and Da in blue and deep purple, she was happy. Uncle Roland winked at her, and her father called her over and lifted her up. “Here’s my fearless girl!” he’d said, and she was the luckiest little girl in the world as the three men she worshiped grinned at her.

  Two years later, one had died by another’s hand. And now, seven years after that, the killer finally admitted it to her. Katya’s eyes swam as she stared at Crowe, and he met her stare with his own-tear filled gaze. “I loved him like family,” he said. “More than I love your father, Katya. Roland was like a son. I couldn’t…I couldn’t just watch…” He mashed his lips together and tucked his chin into his chest. Pennynail laid an arm across his shoulders.

  Katya tried hard to be angry, tried it for Maia’s sake, but the damnable thing was that she understood. It was a hard choice, but the Order of Vestra was made of hard choices. He’d made one that she might have to make herself one day. Katya stepped toward them, and both Crowe and Pennynail looked up at her. The Laughing Jack mask was the same as always, but Crowe’s face was white and anxious, as if he feared she would plunge her rapier into his chest. Even then, he didn’t move, and Katya knew part of him wanted her to do it, as if death would somehow absolve him.

  Instead, she opened her arms, offering consolation but not forcing it on him. His lips trembled, and he heaved himself from his seat and embraced her. As he trembled and wept, he seemed so fragile. Pennynail helped support him from the side, and for a time, all of them did nothing but grieve.

  “So, that’s why you’re always so mean to Maia?” Katya asked at last.

  Crowe wiped his face. “I couldn’t be kind to her. I couldn’t have her like me. I don’t deserve her friendship or her love. It’s also why Queen Catirin is more than brusque with me, at times. She loved Roland like a blood brother instead of one by marriage. She blames both herself and me for his death, since we all agreed he should go.”

  “It was his decision.”

  “Say that over and over, and it won’t make us feel any better. Roland was always putting himself in danger, always attacking straight on. He thought Einrich was too soft. They had some terrible arguments. Roland wanted to experiment on traitors to see if he could…retrain them into being loyal using mind magic.”

  Katya’s mouth twisted at the thought. “That’s a little darker than I recall.”

  “When it came to protecting his family, he could get very dark indeed. He and Catirin shared that a little, I think.” He stared at the wall. “She was always trying to find him another wife after Maia’s mother died. She threw countless dinner parties and fetes, all to find him a good bride.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “She thought he was lonely. Well, she didn’t know about Layra.”

  “Uncle Roland was having an affair with someone in his Order?”

  “It started when Maia was about three. He never found a way to break the news to Catirin. Layra wasn’t a noblewoman, and she didn’t have the cash or connections to be a courtier, but she was Roland’s friend, had been for years, and they just sort of…found each other. She wouldn’t have married him anyway, even if they’d gotten approval. She couldn’t stand the restrictions of court life.” Crowe shrugged. “Everyone in the Order knew. We just kept it from your mother and father.”

  Katya leaned against the table in wonder. It was so hard to imagine the uncle in her memory having a romance with anyone. Roland had always been so…solitary. “What happened to Layra and the brothers?”

  “The poor brothers never made it out of the house. Layra escaped, but when she heard Roland had died, it broke her heart. She wanted nothing more to do with the Order. I told Einrich about their relationship, and he paid for Layra to move far out into the country, which was her wish, to a little farm. We used to exchange letters, but we fell out of practice as the years went on.”

  Katya began to pace, her mind done with grieving and leaping to the puzzle in front of them. “Did you use ‘temperance’ as the code for a flash bomb back when Roland was alive?”

  “Um, I can’t recall. I think so. Why?”

  “Because some of our traitors seemed to know it. They weren’t caught by the flash.”

  “You think it’s Layra that’s been feeding the traitors information? But…why would she work with the children of the woman responsible for Roland’s death?”

  “We don’t know that Darren or Cassius are Carmen’s children. And even if they are, revenge makes people do funny things. Use the pyramid on our captives, and then I want you to get in touch with Layra. Find out if she’s still where she’s supposed to be.”

  His face was still pale and his eyes fever bright, but he nodded. “As you will.”

  “Right. I’m going to check on Maia.”

  When she reached Maia’s door, she found Brutal outside rather than inside where she expected him to be. “She sent me out,” he said. From inside the room, Katya heard a distinct thunk. “I figured that when it went quiet, I’d try again.”

  “Breaking things, is she?”

  He shrugged. “Try your luck.”

  “Thank you, Brutal, for seeing to her.” Brutal nodded, but his baby face stayed pinched and worried. Katya knocked on the door.

  “Go away!” Maia said from inside. There was another thunk.

  Katya cracked the door open. “I’m coming in.”

  “I don’t want company!”

  Katya stuck her head inside. Several green-fletched arrows jutted from the wardrobe in the corner. Katya stepped in and shut the door behind her. All the wooden surfaces in the room had a few arrows sprouting from them. Maia stood on the center rug, her face red and puffy. Her bowstring hummed as she pulled back for another shot.

  Thunk. A
n arrow lodged in the dresser. “I said I don’t want company.” She glared at Katya and then pulled another arrow from the quiver on the bed. “Unless you want to send that murdering bastard in here.” She sank an arrow into her headboard.

  Katya leaned against the bare stone wall, out of the line of fire. “You’re running out of ammunition.” She glanced at the wall opposite. The portraits of Maia’s parents and of Roland with the infant Maia had been spared the deluge of arrows, though one had been shot in the frame.

  “I’ve got other weapons.” Maia fired another arrow in the headboard and hit it dead center before she flipped open the lid of the trunk at the foot of her bed. “Throwing daggers.” She tossed a brace of knives onto the bed. “I’ve even got this.” She held up a carved wooden case. “It’s a blowgun like the ancient Uanai used to use. I had a historian make it for me. I thought it might come in useful someday. Fires teeny-tiny poison needles.” She chucked it back in the trunk and then threw her bow in, too.

  Katya didn’t know what to say. She had no idea that Maia researched new throwing weapons, especially poisoned ones. Maia’s aim was unparalleled, and Katya needed that, but she didn’t want Maia thinking of death all the time. “Maia.”

  Maia ignored her and slipped one of the stilettos free of its sheath. Jerking her arm to the side in a blur, she launched the knife at a table mirror and shattered it into a dozen pieces.

  “That’s enough, Maia,” Katya snapped.

  Maia turned, her body vibrating as if she were a bowstring, her face swinging between sorrow and defiance. “He…he…” Her lip quivered, and strands of hair floated around her head, much like the baby in the portrait behind her. Katya stepped forward and wrapped her in an embrace. Maia stiffened, and Katya thought she might push away, but then, with a sob, she melted in Katya’s arms. “He killed Da.”

  “I know, coz.” Katya tightened her grip, feeling her own tears. She stared at Roland’s portrait and mourned the fact that she’d never get to speak with her uncle as one adult to another, that they would never lead the Order of Vestra together.