The Fiend Queen by Barbara Ann Wright

Author:Barbara Ann Wright [Wright, Barbara Ann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781626392922
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books
Published: 2015-01-18T17:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-one

Katya

Katya, Redtrue, and Dawnmother limped through the larger tunnels leading toward the palace. Katya gritted her teeth at their slow passage, at still being out of the sun and air. They passed smears of blood and dead corpse Fiends. The tunnels were littered with debris, especially the one Katya thought they’d fallen from. She saw the bowl-shaped divot in the dirt and frowned. Someone had thrown a disintegration pyramid, and she had no idea who might have been caught in the blast.

“Come on,” she prompted them, and they leaned on one another as they sought the way out.

When they reached the laundry still unmolested or greeted, Katya didn’t know what to think. They’d seen no sign that anyone had been digging for them, but the tunnels weren’t crawling with enemies either.

They wound through the basement and climbed the stairs, and as Katya reached the top, she heard a shriek. She turned toward the noise and drew her knife but saw only the back of a fleeing woman in livery and a bundle of sheets left behind.

“Well, unless Roland has hypnotized people into doing the laundry, that’s a good sign,” Dawnmother said.

The return of servants to the palace could only mean one thing. “She’s won. Starbride did it.” She beamed at the others until even Redtrue gave her a small smile.

The reasons why no one searched for them could wait. They found the fastest way up and into the halls. Katya headed for the greatest collection of voices and found a large room near the entrance of the palace practically bursting with people. A few of them screamed when they saw her, and she pulled up short.

Countess Nadia rushed forth from the pack. “Highness! We heard you’d been killed!”

“By whom?”

“The usurper, of course.” She looked back and forth between them. “You look as if you’ve crawled out of your graves.”

Dirty, sweaty, bloody, she bet they looked exactly the part. “Where is Starbride?”

Nadia hesitated, and Katya resisted the urge to grab her lapels. “She is not dead,” Katya said, putting force behind the words to make them real.

“No, no, I’m sorry. She’s not dead.”

“But she thinks you are.” Brightstriving emerged from the crowd like a ship before the waves. She bowed, and her husband followed her. “Where have you been?”

Katya almost laughed at the archness in her tone, but she was too tired. “Do you know where Starbride is now?” Her heart ached at the thought of Starbride thinking her dead. Guessing at Starbride’s fate while they’d been apart had been bad enough, but to know of her demise? It had to have been the disintegration pyramid. They’d fallen just as it went off. The whole kingdom probably thought she was dead, her father included.

“Starbride went into the city,” Brightstriving said, “to help people.”

Nadia gave her a sideways glance, though Katya couldn’t imagine why. “And my family?”

“Your father went to look for your, well, I would say body, but we thought you’d been consumed by a pyramid, Highness,” Nadia said. “I am so sorry to hear of the queen’s death.

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