The Pyramid Waltz (13 page)

“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?”

“She just needs rest. Crowe said you might be thirsty.”

With a swallow, Starbride realized she was. “Yes, thank you.”

Maia crossed to a cabinet and pulled out a decanter of dark amber liquid and two glasses. As she poured two fingers of liquid into each glass and set them on the table, she shook her head. “Please don’t tell them I did this. They wouldn’t approve of my drinking liquor, but I think we deserve it, don’t you?”

“We certainly do.” She tipped hers back in one swift swallow. Lights danced in front of her eyes as the strong stuff burned down her throat. She slapped the table and grimaced.

Maia’s surprised face dissolved into a grin. She followed Starbride’s example and then stuck her tongue out and coughed, doubling over in her seat.

“Are you all right?”

Maia nodded, still coughing, her face red. “How’s your finger?”

“Blood hasn’t soaked through the rag. I think it stopped.” She didn’t unwind the makeshift bandage, though, not yet. “How long have you known Katya?”

“Since I was born. We’re cousins.”

Starbride paused before she burst out laughing. “I’m meeting royalty left and right, and I still haven’t learned how to greet them. Shall I bow?”

“Please, don’t. Any more sudden moves today and I might collapse.”

“Do you often serve as Katya’s bodyguard?”

“Yeah, though sometimes, I don’t feel up to the job.” She pushed her glass around on the table. “I have the Aspect, but I’ve never done the Waltz. After seeing…that, I never want to. I don’t want to become that.”

Starbride cocked her head to the side. Maia might have been the king’s niece, but she looked like any other scared girl at the moment. “This isn’t the cure for fear, you know,” she said, tapping the decanter.

“One more and we’ll call it good enough.”

“Agreed.” After they both knocked back another glass and coughed around the strength of the liquid, Starbride asked, “How does the Aspect get passed to spouses? The children I understand.”

“It’s a ritual. While the person with the Aspect and their partner are, um, being intimate, a pyradisté uses a special kind of pyramid on them. Right as they…you know, finish, the pyramid shares the Aspect between them. I’ve never done it.”

“I see.” Starbride frowned and tried to fight the pictures her mind conjured.

“I suspect the pyradisté hides behind a curtain or something. It’s so the non-Umbriel person can produce children that will have the Aspect, though it won’t present until—”

“Until the Waltz,” Starbride finished. “So, your children will have it?”

Maia shook her head. “I’m the cut-off, two removed from the throne.”

Starbride leaned back in her seat, her mind more at ease. Even though Katya could turn her into a Fiend, she wouldn’t bother. Starbride could never bear their children. She held her cool palms against her warm cheeks. “Do you know where I can find pen and paper? I need to write my maid.”

“I can get it for you. Crowe said not to tell her about the Aspect.”

“I know. I won’t.”

Maia fetched the writing materials after she put the decanter away. She didn’t leave as Starbride wrote a quick note about having dinner in Katya’s apartment. She didn’t know quite what she would say later. Her finger protested being bent, and tears threatened again at the thought of what she’d almost lost. “Waiting to read it?”

“I was just keeping you company.”

“I’m sorry. I’m just a bit…rattled.”

“I know what you mean.”

Starbride folded the note. “Could you show it to Crowe, please?”

“He didn’t ask for that.”

“I have to prove myself worthy of your family’s trust. Right now, this is all I know how to do.”

Maia took the note into the private sitting room and then emerged a few moments later. “I’ll take it to your maid myself, since Averie’s busy. Crowe says to please come in whenever you’re ready.”

Starbride smoothed her hair from her face and stood. She unwound the rag from her finger. The cut had gone from bleeding to oozing. With one pull, she tore a small strip from the rag and tied it tight around the cut. She was alive, and she was whole.

She paused at the door. There was still time to call for Crowe and his pyramid instead of going in, to back out of Katya’s life. It might work.

With her chin lifted, she stepped through the door.

Six-year-old Katya played with little Maia on the sitting room rug. Three-year-old Maia focused on her wooden horse, oblivious to the events in the next room, but Katya couldn’t ignore the sound of their family arguing.

“How can one woman be so hard to find?” Da yelled.

“Untie my hands!” Uncle Roland yelled back. “If you want this done faster, give me leave to do what I need to do. Set me loose! You and all your damned rules, Einrich, I—”

Crowe spoke then, and even though Katya couldn’t make out his words, she knew he was telling everyone to calm down. It was important to be calm; bad things happened if you weren’t.

From the corner of the room, someone horrid whispered. Maia didn’t seem to notice, but Katya saw the short table in the dark with the shadowy figure bound to it.

No.

Uncle Roland came in from the other room and scrubbed his fingers through his hair. Maia ran to him, and he scooped her up. She played with his bearded chin, so like Katya’s father’s beard, but lighter brown. He sat at the dining table, Maia in his lap.

“Where’s your brother?” he asked.

“With his tutor.” Katya sat across from him. “He can’t play until later.”

“You’ll have your own tutor soon enough.”

Katya rolled her eyes. “Boring.”

With a chuckle, he pulled a pyramid from his pocket. Maia squealed and reached for it, and he deftly moved it away from her grasping fingers. “I made this for you, little K. Reinholt’s too old for it, I suppose. Can you guess what it does?”

Katya eyed the glinting sides of the pyramid, and icy fear seized her until she almost shrank away. The pyramid would hold her mind; it would keep her still while the horrid, whispering person approached the table-bound figure in the corner.

No.

Roland touched the pyramid’s apex, and it rotated on its own, painting the room with twinkling pinpoints of light. Maia giggled and clapped. “It’s perfect,” Katya said.

Roland chucked her under the chin. “Do you know what else I can do with it, little K?”

She shook her head, returning his grin with one of her own.

“I can cut up your friend.”

Katya fell back from the table, down and down, over and over, the horrid whisperer coming for Starbride, saying “Shh, shh,” as he did so.

“No!”

“Katya!” Starbride cried.

Katya opened her eyes to her sitting room ceiling, the entirety of it painted like rose-tinted dawn. Starbride leaned over her. She wore the same clothes as when…

Katya bolted upright, her head swimming. “Star!”

Starbride laid a steadying hand on her shoulder. “I’m all right.”

“Are you? What happened?” The knife had been cutting into her finger, so close to ripping it off. Katya swallowed to stop the rising bile.

“I’m fine,” Starbride said, though her sad smile hinted at a lie. She had a bandage at the base of her index finger. “
Completely
fine. Your friends rescued us.”

Katya touched Starbride’s chin, sliding her thumb over the smooth skin. She couldn’t remember anything but the bars and the unfolding horror in front of the cage. “Did I pass out? Oh! I called you Star. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right.”

“What happened?”

Starbride stared for a moment without speaking, reminding Katya of Crowe. She picked up a necklace from the side table; the broken remains of a glass ornament dangled from the chain. Katya felt her shirt and the lack of necklace underneath. A pyramid rested on a nearby table, and she could feel the calming waves flowing from it. “Oh, spirits, what did I do?”