For Want of a Fiend

by Barbara Ann Wright

  “Ah, it was young Prince Bastian, not me. His royal highness wished to know when the crown prince might visit him.”

  Katya thought of the sweaty sheet and truculent attitude. “Not anytime soon.”

  Lord Vincent bowed again. “I will convey this, your Highness.” And still he stood there, waiting for her to leave before he took his own.

  “Walk with me.”

  He bowed and fell into step beside her. She wondered how quickly he’d jump to it if she ordered him to stand on his head.

  “How well did you get to know my brother while staying in his household?” Katya asked.

  “The crown prince and I often spoke of hunting and weapon craft.”

  All terribly proper, Katya assumed. “Did you ever speak of personal matters?”

  “Personal, Highness?”

  Katya waved the question away. She’d been hoping for a confidante that could pull Reinholt out of his funk, but Lord Vincent wasn’t the right person. When she glanced at him, he stared straight forward, his face mostly impassive, but years of observing people alerted Katya to his slight frown, the pinched expression around his eyes, as if her questions worried him. Maybe Reinholt had let him in on a few secrets after all, and Lord Vincent worried that if Katya demanded to know them, he would have to speak them.

  Reinholt’s sexual indulgences might be backlash from what had happened with Brom, or perhaps he’d been breaking his marriage vows for longer than she thought. Katya supposed it didn’t matter, though it took more of the gloss from the shining image of her brother that she’d carried for years.

  Chapter Four: Starbride

  Starbride stared at the box of small, delicate tools: chisels and a polishing cloth, a little pouch of sand. Their case was old and weathered, the velvet lining full of holes. “I can’t take this,” she muttered. “You love this too much.” She glanced up at where Crowe sat behind his enormous desk. Pennynail leaned on the untidy bookshelf behind him.

  Crowe snorted. “You’re my replacement.”

  Starbride wanted to argue. He was alive; he didn’t need replacing, but one look at his hunched form, at his pale face, spoke volumes. He’d never been a large man, and he was sixty-some years old before being wounded, but now he was gaunt, cheeks and eyes sunken. His breathing was almost always labored—never mind his level of activity—and his color was sallow, his forehead lined with marks of pain.

  He smiled, and his gray eyes were kind. “You are my replacement.”

  Starbride tried to smile, but his casual acceptance of death wouldn’t allow it. “I don’t know how to use them.”

  “One of the many things I’ll teach you.” He stood, and Starbride thought she heard a little grunt. She almost rose to help him, but she knew how angry he’d be, how he’d wave her off. When she saw he was headed to a little work table in the corner, she followed on his heels.

  Halfway there, Pennynail took his elbow and forced help upon him. “I’m not a baby,” Crowe protested.

  “You never want help,” Starbride said with a sigh. “Even from Freddie.”

  Crowe nearly whipped around. “What did you say?”

  Starbride bit her lip. “I’m sorry. I assumed he told you before I got here.”

  Pennynail slipped the mask from his head, becoming Freddie once more. “I was waiting for the right time,” he said in his raspy voice.

  “I don’t like being kept in the dark,” Crowe said.

  Starbride couldn’t resist a laugh. “And yet you keep others there so well.”

  Crowe shook a finger at her, but she could see his anger wearing away. “None of your lip, miss.”

  “That’s none of your lip, Princess Consort.”

  Freddie snorted a laugh much like Crowe’s. “Has Lord Vincent been putting your nose out of joint again?”

  “How do you know about Lord Vincent?” she asked.

  “Katya told the Order about him,” Crowe said, “but I’m the only one who’s met him. He wouldn’t willingly associate with commoners, but I suppose I get a pass because I’m the king’s pyradisté. Only a slight pass, mind.”

  Freddie leaned against Crowe’s desk and crossed his arms. “Sounds like a prick.”

  “You say that about every noble,” Crowe said. He glared at Starbride. “How did you get him to take off his mask?”

  “Get me to?” Freddie asked.

  Starbride lifted her chin. “I followed him.”

  “Clumsy.” Crowe glared over his shoulder.

  “That,” Starbride said, “or a skilled point in my favor.”

  “No, it was clumsiness on my part,” Freddie said. “I didn’t expect to be followed in the secret passageways. She didn’t even have a lit lantern.”

  “Trying to learn how to see in the dark, are you?” Crowe asked.

  Starbride shrugged, but she had to shake away the remembered feeling of creeping terror. “My lantern went out, and I was trying to figure out who was in the dark with me. When I saw it was him…”

  “Your natural nosiness took over,” Freddie said, but he had a soft smile.

  Crowe ran a hand through his thin white hair, grimaced, and then touched his stomach. The wound was a month old, but they all suspected it was killing him slowly.

  Starbride tried to turn the conversation back to something he enjoyed. She tapped the box of tools. “All right, show me what I can do.”

  “Before we get to that,” he said, “I have a surprise of my own.” He reached below the table. “I got this for you.” He handed over a leather bag.

  Starbride stared at it for a moment and wondered what she needed a leather bag for, but then it hit her. It was a pyradisté’s satchel. “You…” She didn’t want to say, “bought this for me,” because of course he did. She tried to fight the welling in her eyes. “Crowe…”

  He waved her gratitude away, but her reaction brought a bit of color into his cheeks. “Whether you’re learning here or at the academy, every pyradisté needs one of those.” He cleared his throat. “Now, let’s get to work.”

  Crowe produced a lump of unworked crystal and a completed light pyramid from a drawer in the table’s side.

  “Light again?” Starbride asked. “I don’t need another light pyramid.”

  “We start with the easiest thing.”

  “When am I going to learn how to make fire pyramids or something more dramatic?”

  He didn’t grace that with an answer. Instead, he took the tools and spoke of how to knap the crystal, how to chisel and polish, of how a mind could fall into the unworked stone and see the possibilities there. “Light pyramids are good to start with because they need a certain amount of precision. Destructive pyramids can sometimes be poorly made—like the death pyramid—but that’s the lazy path. A person who can construct a poor pyramid, even one strong enough to kill, cannot construct a light pyramid because they haven’t learned precision.”

  Starbride shivered at the thought of making an ugly pyramid only designed to kill. It was like making a knife out of any old piece of metal, anything dirty enough to get the job done. She resigned herself to light pyramids before anything showier. Hesitantly, she laid the tools against the unworked crystal and began to shape it.

  *

  Hours later, the pyramid seemed clumsy to Starbride’s eye. The sides were fairly clear, but there was the odd cloudy spot. When she held it up in front of her, the apex leaned slightly to the right. She opened her mouth to point this out to Crowe, but Freddie touched her shoulder, stopping her.

  “He’s asleep behind his desk.”

  Crowe slumped in his chair, chest rising steadily. Freddie had covered him with a blanket. Starbride gathered the tools and the pyramid as well as another lump of unworked crystal, the better to practice on. When Freddie inclined his head toward the secret passageway, Starbride gestured for him to lead the way.

  After a smile and a shake of his head, Freddie did so. When they were just inside the passageway, he rested his mask atop his head, ready to pull
it down at a moment’s notice.

  “You care about him a great deal, don’t you?” she asked.

  He blinked at her.

  “The blanket gave you away.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that some things aren’t your business?”

  “Did it ever occur to you that secrets are easier to bear if they’re shared? How do you Farradains cope without bond servants?”

  Freddie leaned in close, and Starbride tried to lean away, but the cool wall of the passageway was against her back. “Sometimes, sharing a secret can get your friends killed.”

  Starbride felt her flush deepen. What would Katya do to take control of the situation? She put her palm in the middle of Freddie’s chest and pushed slowly, forcing him to straighten. “Sometimes, not sharing a secret can do the same thing. Maybe you should let your friends decide if they like you enough to risk their lives for you.” She pushed past him without waiting for a response.

  When Starbride got back to her room, she could feel the frown on her face. Dawnmother turned from whatever she was doing, and her face fell. “What’s happened now?”

  Starbride rubbed her forehead and tried to iron out her expression. “They still think I’m naive.”

  “Well…”

  “I know, your life for mine and also the truth.”

  “They’ve lived here longer than you, Star, lived their roles longer than you have.”

  “I don’t mean all that,” Starbride said. “I mean their secrets. They still feel they have to warn me about them. I’ve seen through all their tricks, and still they have to warn me.” She tried to imitate Freddie’s raspy voice, “Secrets can get people killed.”

  “Who was that supposed to be? Crowe? That’s not funny, Star, the man is dying.”

  “No! It’s…” She hadn’t been forbidden to tell. Still, she never could keep all of a secret from Dawnmother. She still didn’t understand why the Umbriels would want to keep a secret from Dawnmother. Her bond to Starbride made her the most trustworthy person they could hope for. “I know who Pennynail is.”

  “Who?”

  “A name I didn’t recognize, and I doubt you would either, but somehow, I suspect he’d be mortified if I told you. I just asked him what his relationship was to Crowe since he seemed to care about the old man, and he treated it like a kingdom secret. I know about the Fiends and the Order, but this is a kingdom secret.”

  “He told you not to be so nosy, I suppose.”

  “That was the gist.” She shuddered. “He got very close to me to do it.”

  “He didn’t hurt you!”

  “He was just trying to intimidate me. So I did my best to intimidate him back.” She pulled the newly created pyramid from her satchel and wished she’d had something a little more substantial to seem intimidating with.

  “You should tell the princess.” Dawnmother marched to the bed and began tidying a room that was already tidy.

  Starbride stared into her ugly pyramid. Freddie Ballantine was a criminal, that much was clear, and if he was as famous as he thought, Katya would recognize his name. Katya would have to deal with the fact that an outlaw was a major part of her Order. “I can’t do that.”

  “Why, in Horsestrong’s name?”

  Starbride sighed, feeling like a fool. “Because he was right. Secrets are necessary sometimes. Telling Katya would put too much pressure on her.”

  “You get so angry when she decides what you can and can’t handle. Now you’re doing it, too.”

  “Payback?” Starbride asked with a smile.

  “It’ll end in tears.”

  Starbride suspected she was right, but there was nothing to be done about it at the moment. She took the next few hours and tried to shape her light pyramid into something serviceable. When she tired of practicing, she researched the pyramids she wouldn’t attempt for a while. If she was going to be the Order’s primary pyradisté, she needed to learn all she could. She made several notes, questions to ask Crowe about the four categories of pyramids: destruction, mind, utility, and Fiend magic, everything that could help the Order and anything she could think of to ward off the knowledge that she’d probably have to use what she learned sooner than she thought.

  Chapter Five: Katya

  After Katya ditched Lord Vincent, she went back to her parents’ rooms. Even though he’d mocked her, Reinholt was right about one thing. She couldn’t leave him alone in his breakdown; she had to tell the king and queen. What the crown prince did affected them all.

  She rubbed her temples as she walked and wondered how long she’d flounder from one crisis to another that day. All the striding through the royal quarters almost made her long for the languorous gossip mongering she’d foisted onto Hugo. It was already wearing on into evening, and her stomach rumbled, reminding her that business or not, she’d have to eat soon.

  Once her father had returned from a meeting and her mother had ordered them tea, Katya blurted her thoughts. “I’m worried about Reinholt.”

  Da slumped in a chair as if the world was too heavy. “I know what you mean, my girl.”

  Katya bet that he didn’t, not exactly, and she really didn’t want to elaborate.

  “He’s been so sad,” Ma said, “so angry. I just don’t know how he’ll ever be happy again.”

  “That’s my fault,” Da said. Katya and her mother protested together, but Da shook his head. “No, it is. My father kept me close, the tyrant, all lessons, all politics, and all the time.” He sighed and rubbed his bearded chin. “I didn’t want to be like him, so I made Reinholt constantly visit the provinces, always meeting people, always making contacts. It made him beloved, but his nannies and tutors gave him everything he wanted. And now the only girl he’s ever really chosen has broken his heart.”

  “It’s his first time,” Katya said softly. “His first broken heart.” She thought of her own heart, broken several times. Still, she didn’t know if those experiences would help if Starbride ever left her. No, not just left, betrayed. Katya shook her head and tried to rid herself of the black pit the idea opened inside her.

  “We won’t let him wallow,” Ma said. “Let’s order dinner, a family dinner. We’ll have one every night if we have to, and we’ll make sure he comes. I’ll go to his apartment and drag him here if I must.”

  Katya thought of the voices of at least two lovers and shook her head. “I’ll, um, I’ll get him.”

  “And it would be better, perhaps, if Starbride were to skip this dinner.”

  Anger bloomed in Katya’s chest, and she missed the warning burn of her pyramid necklace that kept her Fiend inside.

  Ma held up a hand, forestalling Katya’s argument. “I know it’s not fair, but we’re trying to pull Reinholt out of a slump. And he’s angry at Starbride.”

  “Irrationally so,” Katya said.

  “I know that, my girl,” Da said. “We both do. He’s extremely jealous.”

  “Yes,” Ma said. “And we must make him some allowances.”

  Katya clenched her fists behind her and paced. “Starbride is a member of my family.”

  Before Ma had a chance to speak, Da piped in with, “Quite right. And she’ll understand, my girl, I know she will.”

  Katya gave her father a fleeting smile and then sighed. “I’ll go and tell Reinholt.”

  She’d drag Reinholt to the family dinner and then she would rush from it as quickly as possible and spend the rest of the evening with Starbride, apologizing until she was blue.

  On the way to Reinholt’s room, Katya stopped by her own and sent Averie with a note to Starbride. It was the coward’s way out, but if she had to see Starbride’s disappointment, Katya would be angry at Reinholt before she even reached his room. Make him some allowances; the thought made her grind her teeth.

  She didn’t bother to knock. Reinholt wouldn’t have gotten any new servants in a few hours. Everything was as she’d left it, but the door to the bedroom was slightly ajar. Katya heard voices. If Reinholt was still occupied, sh
e was leaving.

  But the voices didn’t sound passionate. They were just two men talking, and one said, “Are you certain this is the best course for you, Highness?”

  Katya recognized Lord Vincent’s voice. She edged closer.

  “Thought you never questioned your betters, Vincent,” Reinholt said.

  Katya crept toward where the bedroom door was open a crack. She shifted until she could see them standing by Reinholt’s bed. He swigged from a wine bottle and wore a loosely tied silk robe.

  Lord Vincent clasped his hands in front of his immaculate coat, the breast embroidered with crossed swords held by the hawk of Farraday, the champion’s crest. “I would never question you, Highness, but my station does permit me to worry for you.”

  “Have you been speaking to my family about your worries?”

  “Her highness the princess expressed some concern for you as well.”

  “Did she?” Reinholt took another swig. “And what did you tell her, eh?” He grabbed Lord Vincent’s upper arm. “Did you tell her this wasn’t the first time I’ve been unfaithful to my wife?” He stepped close, their faces inches apart. “Did you tell her there are some needs a wife can’t fulfill?”

  “No, Highness,” Lord Vincent said, so softly that Katya had to read his lips.

  Reinholt kissed him. Lord Vincent didn’t react, and Katya tensed. She couldn’t let Reinholt force himself on anyone, even someone too hidebound by tradition to refuse the desires of a prince.

  Before she had a chance to storm in, Lord Vincent’s arms curled around Reinholt’s shoulders and pulled him closer. The bottle slipped from Reinholt’s grasp as the two embraced. When they broke away, they were both breathing hard.

  Reinholt barked a laugh. “Spirits above, Vincent, no one kisses like you do.”

  Lord Vincent smiled his enigmatic little smile. “Thank you, Highness.”

  Katya backed up quietly until she stood just inside the sitting room door. “Reinholt?”

  He opened the bedroom door wider and smiled when he saw her, but his smile hadn’t lost its bitter edge. “What do you want now, Little K?”