A Kingdom Lost

by Barbara Ann Wright

  She saw no waiting Castelle this time. Brutal watched over her father, leaving Katya alone with the starry night. It was clear as well as cold, and the stars coated the sky like sugar on a cake.

  Katya’s stomach rumbled, though not from hunger. It had been a long time since she’d had sweet cake. The Allusians didn’t make many sweets, though she had tasted bread made with honey and hard, brittle candy. When she thought of the chocolate mousse from home, she had to swallow several times, though that was nothing compared to when she thought of meringues. Katya grinned. If they regained Marienne, never again would she take her life for granted.

  But how could she even think about dessert when the people of Marienne were probably suffering and dying, when Starbride might be―? She dashed the thought away and resumed her pacing, willing Redtrue to hurry. She didn’t know if Redtrue would accompany them to Newhope. With Katya gone, she might stop trying to contact Marienne. Katya couldn’t wait around to find out. They didn’t have long before the snow began to fall. That wasn’t much time to raise an army and march all the way home.

  Redtrue’s door creaked open. Katya spun around. “Well?”

  “I found someone. Not your lover,” she added before Katya could ask. “But a strong mind who may have believed me to be more than a dream. I gave him instructions on how to make a dream-walking pyramid, but I don’t know how much he’ll remember. I urged him to wake and write everything down. And now that I know where he is…”

  “You can find him again.” The world seemed lighter on her shoulders. Surprising herself, she clasped Redtrue’s hands. “Thank you. I know you didn’t want to do this. It means so much to me.”

  Redtrue smiled, genuinely, it seemed and gave Katya one squeeze. “This doesn’t mean I’m going to quit berating your people and their practices.”

  “Does Horsestrong have a saying about keeping people on their toes, ready for anything?”

  She thought for a moment. “Surround yourself with friends who surprise you, and the enemy will never catch you off guard.”

  “There must be a book of these sayings that Allusian children memorize.”

  “The servant caste is required to learn more than anyone else.”

  “Are you servant caste?”

  Redtrue blinked at her. “You didn’t know? Well, I suppose you wouldn’t. It’s such a part of everything here…I just thought…”

  Katya didn’t let herself react, but she put the pieces together. Perhaps Farradains weren’t the only people who made Redtrue so touchy. Perhaps she didn’t like being constantly looked on as a servant. Katya hadn’t seen her interact with all the adsnazi; maybe some of them fell into old patterns even out in the wilderness.

  “Well, whatever you were born as, you’re a fantastic adsnazi,” Katya said.

  Redtrue grinned crookedly. “Since you haven’t seen many of us work, that seems a hollow compliment.”

  “I gathered enough from Leafclever to know that what you’ve just done is unprecedented. If it wasn’t difficult, someone would have tried it before.”

  “You have a keen mind.”

  “A compliment? From you?” Katya grabbed her chest and stepped back. “I think my ego just exploded. Stand back! I wouldn’t want to get any on you.”

  “Enough, charmer, away with you.” She gazed at Katya through her lashes. The meager light glinted in her brown eyes.

  Starbride, naked and waiting on Katya’s bed amidst a host of candles, flitted through Katya’s mind. A familiar heat bloomed through her insides, making her flush.

  “Thanks again,” Katya said lamely. She nearly jogged toward her tent. Her pulse roared in her ears, so much so that she didn’t hear any footsteps before someone grabbed her arm from the shadows.

  Katya twisted out of the grasp and leapt backward, drawing her rapier as she went.

  “It’s me!” Castelle said.

  Katya squinted at the shadow, barely making out Castelle’s features in the meager light. “What in the spirits’ names are you doing?”

  “I might ask you the same thing!”

  “Going to my tent?”

  “I saw you! Holding hands with her, flirting. The way you two looked at each other, I’m surprised you’re not over there mauling each other on the ground.”

  “What?” Katya slid her rapier back into its scabbard. “Are you…jealous?”

  “Oh, you with your high and mighty values. ‘I love Starbride,’” she mocked, “‘I ache for her. She lives inside me.’ What a bunch of shit. If you were just saving yourself for the next Allusian, you should have told me.”

  Katya’s fist lashed out and caught Castelle in the mouth. Castelle staggered back. Katya waited, her knuckles throbbing. She was suddenly grateful she no longer had her Fiend, or everyone in the camp might have died that night.

  “Why did you pick the one person I had my eye on?” Castelle said, her voice labored as if she had to drag the words through her anger. “Are you still trying to punish me, or did you decide it’s time for the student to surpass the master?”

  Katya sneered. “Pathetic. Get out of my way, or I’ll go through you.”

  Castelle drew herself up, and Katya thought she might attack. Good. They both needed to drain off the adrenaline. But Castelle bowed and stepped aside. “As you will, Highness.”

  Katya strode past her. Castelle wouldn’t strike her in the back. If she had that in her, she would have done so from the start instead of calling Katya out, the arrogant fool. The spiteful part of Katya wished she had kissed Redtrue then, a full kiss that would have made Castelle scream. She didn’t want Redtrue; she was only missing Starbride, but she had to admit that Castelle’s jealousy felt good. She’d inspired it in Katya many times during their relationship. It felt nice to have the shoe on the other foot.

  As Katya crawled into her blankets, she put Castelle out of her mind, focusing on the good news: they’d contacted a pyradisté. If Redtrue would keep trying, and her words suggested she would, all they had to do was convince him to find Starbride.

  In the morning, Katya had breakfast with Brutal as usual, but Castelle was nowhere in sight. “I heard you two fighting last night,” he said. “Did you hit her?”

  Katya nodded. “Did you think you’d have to jump in?”

  “If she’d pulled a weapon.”

  “She’s lost her mind.”

  “Maybe she expected this to be just another adventure,” he said. “Now that it’s life or death, she’s trying to turn it into a conflict she knows.”

  “Fumbling her way into women’s beds and then getting pissed about it?”

  “Something like that. Want me to have a word?”

  “Let her have a word with herself. We’re going into Newhope today, and if she can’t keep herself in check, she can stay here.”

  When they finished eating, they packed their meager gear. Castelle sported a bruise on the corner of her mouth. Katya wished she could make it permanent. Maybe that’s why she’d gotten the tattoo near her eye.

  Leafclever and Redtrue accompanied them toward Newhope. Katya was glad to see it, glad of the opportunity to keep an eye on Redtrue’s progress. Whether Castelle was happy about it, Katya couldn’t tell. Castelle didn’t look at Redtrue either.

  Katya rode close to her father. “Did Leafclever drop any hints about what he’ll say to the council?”

  “No, though he does understand that I’m not the only one making decisions about the government in Farraday. Dayscout told me that some of the nomads in the north will be coming down. They’re hearty fighters, and we could use their strength.” He leaned close. “Other than lending their voice, have you seen any way the adsnazi can help us? Their nature-conscious approach is all very well-intentioned, I’m sure, but what the deuce can they do in a fight?”

  “They hate pyradisté pyramids. Maybe they can cancel them like Crowe could. Roland won’t be able to get a leg under him if the adsnazi keep darkening his weapons.”

  “Hmm, yes, could be qu
ite handy.” He sighed. “I’m not looking forward to speaking with our tagalong nobles again. Every one of them is going to want to be a general.”

  “That’s not a problem. There’s the general in charge of latrines and General Horse Picketer.”

  “Yes, and no doubt they’ll create some new posts like general in charge of shouting and time wasting.”

  “Make one of them in charge of uniforms or horse barding; that ought to keep them busy.”

  After they shared a quick laugh, Da rode toward Leafclever, leaving Katya alone with her thoughts. It lightened her heart that events were finally in motion. Up until then, it had seemed like every step she’d taken had been away from Marienne, but now she could finally go toward it.

  *

  Katya and her father traveled straight to their borrowed house. The children were ecstatic to see their aunt and grandfather, more agitated than Katya had seen in a long time. Days of safety had apparently brought back memories of home. Lord Vincent reported that they’d been crying often, asking not only about their mother but their father as well. He’d comforted them as best he could, but Katya could tell he was troubled by the fact that they were so disturbed.

  Katya didn’t think she’d be any better at comforting them than he was, but she gave them a cuddle and promised they’d be all right, all she could offer at the moment. When little Bastian cried that he wanted Starbride, Katya held him close and said, “Me, too.”

  All through the day, the Allusian council had been gathering. Katya and her father joined them after a quick change of clothes. They met in Newhope’s largest community building, a structure that had seen every kind of crowd: courts, funerals, any gathering with at least a hundred people, even weddings if it was raining outside.

  Members of the council filed in and took chairs in no order Katya could discern from where she stood beside the wall with her father, Castelle, and Brutal. Dayscout sat near the rear, talking with people as they entered. Katya spotted Allusians dressed in Farradain style and some that wore flowing, multicolored garments like the adsnazi. Some were sparklingly bejeweled; others wore aprons spattered with mud.

  All of them mingled together, though, even Brightstriving and Sunjoyful when they arrived. They seemed too preoccupied greeting the others to notice Katya. When her father started to speak, she was certain their eyes would be locked on her.

  Just before Dayscout moved to the front of the room, other Allusians trickled in. These wore leather and sported blades at their hips. Most had pulled their hair behind them in horse’s tails or braids. Some kept it very short, but the one in front—a tall, powerfully built woman—had hardly any hair except for a short stripe running from her forehead to her nape. Katya recalled Starbride once telling her that women who’d taken up the sword in Allusia often shaved their heads.

  “Must be the nomads,” Da muttered.

  The shaved woman met Katya’s eye and regarded her with a hard, black gaze. She and her people sat far from everyone else. The room had gone quiet at their entrance, and Dayscout’s clap in the sudden silence made many people jump.

  He said a few words in Allusian before he switched to Farradain. “Thank you all for coming,” he said. “We meet today to discuss the situation in Farraday. Our neighbors need our help, and we must decide what sort of help to offer them. I will let Farraday’s own king make its case.”

  The room stayed quiet as Da walked to the front. He was dressed in what Katya called medium-regal, the best they had: embroidered black coat of good quality, a pin with the hawk of Farraday and a slim circlet that Ma had commissioned from a jeweler in Newhope, maybe even Sunjoyful himself. She’d traded some of her own meager jewelry to have it done.

  Da held his arms out as if inviting the company in and spoke a few words in Allusian. The members of the council glanced at one another. Near the front of the room, Leafclever smiled.

  “You might think I learned that this morning,” Da said, “a clever ploy by a crafty neighbor trying to buy your regard. In truth, I learned it long ago, when Dayscout and I became friends. From the beginning of my reign, I knew Allusia and Farraday would remain linked.

  “We have a history,” he said above a brief murmur. “And like all families, it’s not an altogether happy history.” That got a few laughing snorts. “The kings and queens of old saw Allusian crystal and nothing else, and they were willing to go through your people to get it.

  “I knew differently. My father knew differently. During our reigns, our people have grown closer, linked by trade, by marriage in some of our border towns…and by love within my own family.”

  He gestured at Katya. She met the room’s regard with steady eyes, though she didn’t look toward Brightstriving and Sunjoyful.

  “Before our troubles began,” Da said, “I saw our two lands moving closer. I thought we would mingle slowly, harsh feelings softened by time, but the murderous usurper has made that impossible. He is a pyradisté, and he hungers for the crystal in your mountains. He will not be sated with how our miners have sought to leave your people in peace. He will challenge your people like the Farradain kings of old, but he will do it with Fiends, creatures made from nightmares, as the adsnazi can attest.

  “Fight alongside us,” Da boomed, once again shouting down mumbling. “Help me reclaim a kingdom that will be forged by all of us, Farradain and Allusian, governed by a council such as this. Help me protect your lives, your families’ lives. Together, we can defeat the usurper and then…we will thank him.”

  Da paused, giving the council time to glance at one another. Katya noticed that the nomads watched Da with little smiles on their faces as someone translated for them.

  “We will thank him for ushering in an era which would have been many years in the making had he not shown his face, an era of peace and prosperity between our peoples and the birth of our new, joined kingdom.”

  Dayscout began the applause, and the others followed suit. It wasn’t the cheers Katya hoped for, but no one was booing either. When Leafclever stood, the council fell silent again. He crossed to where Da stood and placed a hand over Da’s heart. “This man believes what he says,” Leafclever said, and then spoke in Allusian.

  He smiled at Da and dropped his arm. The council erupted in mumbles, each of the occupants turning to speak with one another. It was certainly the most subdued council Katya had ever seen. No one was on his or her feet screaming at anyone else.

  She heard snatches of debate from those closest to her. Leafclever had apparently given his support, at least partly, and now the council discussed. She edged a little closer to one group speaking Farradain and heard them weighing the notion that they’d continue to have a say in how their own land was run as well as a say in how Farraday worked. Some spoke of the money to be made. Others worried about Fiends invading their land.

  One of the nomads stood, the woman with the mostly-shaven head. The hall fell silent as they noticed her. She spoke in Allusian, and a shorter woman next to her translated.

  “Hawkblade say, why you never come before?”

  Da shook his head. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  After another quick exchange, the small woman said, “Now you speak of riding together, now that trouble come. Without us, you ride alone, neh? You like that enough before.”

  Katya held her breath.

  “You speak the truth,” Da said. “If not for our current troubles, I would not be here talking of joined governments. But I believe such an arrangement was always in our future. In my own city, politicians had put forth the notion of a parliament, where the common people have a say in how they are governed. If it were not for the usurper, the idea would be long in forming.”

  If Reinholt hadn’t ordered a member of the populace murdered, the idea of a parliament might have been even longer in coming. Da didn’t add that, however.

  Hawkblade laughed and said something else. “Everybody here think money, maybe, but it not buy wind or ground or sky. You say Fiends come for us.
Maybe we wait, and they pass on like you.”

  “The usurper will not die on his own,” Da said. His calm features went sad for a moment. “No one knows how long a Fiend can live. Maybe they are eternal, never aging, never dying. He does not value the wind or ground or sky. He does not value coin. He values crystal and power and the dead. He will not stop until he has all the land under his sway and a host of corpses to experiment on. Do not fight for me or for Farraday or Allusia. Fight for your very lives, for whatever you hold dear. Come with us into the countryside, if you do not believe. Come with us into Farraday and see for yourselves. I’m sure the usurper will oblige you.”

  When this was translated, Hawkblade sat down. Her movements were fluid and sure. If her parents had wished for her to be a weapon, it seemed she’d succeeded. Katya wondered why she didn’t have a better translator. Maybe she didn’t trust anyone else.

  The rest of the council looked to Leafclever, who nodded. Katya frowned at that. Was he reading her father with a pyramid somehow? She thought they’d forbidden that sort of thing. And she hadn’t seen him with a pyramid yet.

  Dayscout spoke next, in support of committing troops and resources to reclaiming Marienne. He spoke of not only what it could give their people, but what he felt was right as far as one human being helping another.

  Then the council discussed again, individuals standing now and again to ask questions. In the end, for a myriad of reasons, they agreed. Katya overheard one group saying it was too great an opportunity to pass up. After all, if they retook Marienne, Da would have to give them what they wanted or risk his own army turning against him. Katya had to pretend she hadn’t heard, but it was a good concern to keep in mind. She just had to hope that when the Allusians saw the Fiends for the first time, they’d fight for what was right instead of what they wanted. At the very least, they’d fight for their lives.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Starbride