Citadel of the Sky (Thrones of the Firstborn Book 1) (2 page)

T
he retreat
into the phantasmagory was a slow, familiar descent. Detachment came first. Tiana watched incuriously as her Regent Lisette shoved the umbrella at her cousin Kiar and took her hand.
Let’s walk
, she said.
Let’s move our feet. That’ll help.

Tiana moved her feet. The colors of the world were melting around her, but that was hardly a bother. The rain against the umbrella was the sound of a heartbeat, until that faded away as well, and she was cocooned in a comfortable world of silent, grey cotton, only perceiving the phantasmagory.

Somewhere far away, her feet were moving. That was all right. Somewhere out there was Lisette, too. She trusted Lisette, just like Father trusted Tomas. That was what Regents were for. But Father didn’t have Tomas anymore, so who was helping him walk?

One step after another, Tiana. We’ll sit here, shh, shh, it’s just me now. Lisette. Can I join you?

The soothing murmur continued as the grey veil parted, and pink hills under a yellow sky appeared. Her place. She was walking in a storm of blue and orange flowers. Somewhere far away, her feet weren’t moving, but here, a butterfly floated beside her and she caught the petals in her hand.
Pretty, don’t you think?

A silver fish swam by, familiar and far away — a cousin.
Don’t worry about her
, the butterfly said.
She’s calm, too. There are no threats now.

The grass became paving stones, became the tiles of the Palace. The storm of flowers became a salty rain. Who would Father trust? Who would kill Father’s Regent? Was Father here, all alone, lost? But Lisette was the one she could trust, and the butterfly flapped its wings and flowers drifted out.
Let’s go see
, the butterfly said.
If you’re worried, let’s see. I’m here.

She could smell the flowers as she drifted down stone corridors, up stone steps, to where they’d found Tomas. It was near Father’s rooms, very near. But no one could say Father hurt Tomas. That was ridiculous. Yet there Tomas was, his eyes wide and staring as they’d never been in life, and his body was so terrible, so twisted. She tried to pull the greyness back, tried to wash the colors away, but the phantasmagory was not kind.

The disappearing woman from the funeral, the woman Tiana thought she should know but didn’t, knelt beside Tomas and closed his eyes. There were white flowers woven into her endless midnight hair, and her eyelids and lips were painted silver. Her gaze blank, she spread her hands, and a white lamb stumbled out of her. Then she and her lamb were no more, lost in the walls closing around Tiana.

She heard a heartbeat. Was it Tomas, alive again? But no, his body was twisted and broken. What had happened to his screams? Did they echo still in the walls, trapped by the mystery?

A heartbeat. It came from under her feet, loud and insistent.

The walls closing around her slid apart to reveal a staircase down. She descended, but the butterfly could not follow. It called after her, the perfume from its wings lingering in her nose, but there was a heartbeat and it called louder. She descended past the place where the kitchens stored the meat, past the old catacombs, into the ancient tunnels where only the foolhardy went. At each landing on the calling stair, a door closed behind her.

That was scary. There were stories of ancestors lost in the phantasmagory, their bodies left behind to die slowly. Would that be her? Further down she went, into dungeons she didn’t know existed and a prison where nightmares writhed in stone.

She missed the butterfly, then.

She could no longer sense the faraway place where her body dwelled. Under the forgotten dungeon, the stairs ended at a door that was already closed. Behind it, something lived; something breathed and longed for escape. She reached out to open it.

But behind it was nothing at all.

T
iana opened her eyes
. She was lying on the chaise longue beside the fireplace in her parlor. Someone had kindled a small fire and her cousin Kiar was adjusting a lamp on the west wall. The wan, grey light streaming in from the diamond-paned window told her it was past midday. A light blanket had been arranged over her, and she was still in the gown she’d worn to the funeral, though it had been loosened.

She sat up, kicking off the blanket. “What happened? Where’s Lisette? I need her. And you.”

Kiar stepped away from the lamp, brushing her hands off. “You went further into the phantasmagory than she could follow, she said. I couldn’t find you either. Then you fell asleep. What happened?”

Tiana pushed herself to her feet. “Where is she?”

Kiar assessed Tiana until Tiana fidgeted under her stare. Kiar was a Royal bastard, but two years her elder and far more sensible. That was annoying, sometimes. “The Chancellor wanted to talk to her. He sent guards as an escort. About an hour ago, right after we got you back here. What’s going on? Why so intense?”

Tiana went to her dressing room, leaving the door open, and twisted around to finish unbuttoning her dress. Her maid was nowhere to be seen. “Help me with this, won’t you? There’s some kind of sub-basement under the catacombs. There’s a fiend down there! I think it’s the one that killed Tomas. We should go find out.”

Kiar stopped mid-reach. “Tiana….”

Tiana fumbled. “I’m serious! I saw it. Something is down there. Something that caused that
disaster
at the funeral. I need to deal with it.” She yanked on the dress in frustration, and Kiar reached over to work the back buttons.

“If there is,
you
don’t
have to deal with it, especially when you’re so… upset. Despite what the Regency is telling people, I’m almost certain there isn’t a fiend in the castle. There would be signs.”

“You mean, more than Tomas being murdered?” Tiana shrugged out of the formal dress and dug through baskets for an old, comfortable sundress.

“Yes, actually!” Kiar said. “Fiends leave impressions in the Logos. I looked around a little, right after Tomas was found. All I found was us.”

“Shut up! It’s not us!” Tiana’s composure cracked. Then she muttered, “I’m sorry.” She sought for distraction, the sundress almost over her head. “Did you talk to Twist, too?” Twist was the Royal Wizard and nominally Kiar’s tutor in the ways of the Logos. Students of the Logos could do all sorts of things, from enchanting orbs to glow at a touch, to diagnosing obscure structural problems in buildings and people. Sometimes they could change the world just by speaking sternly to it.

At least, that’s what happened in the stories and plays. In Tiana’s experience, Twist mostly appeared places he couldn’t possibly be and gave obscure advice, and Kiar spent a lot of time staring at things and muttering.

Kiar bit her lip, then said, “I’m sure he checked around on his own. He would have said something if he’d seen anything like that.”

“Maybe he did, to the Chancellor.”

Kiar worked on reassembling the formal dress on a hanger, rather than meeting Tiana’s eyes or answering her. She did that a lot these days, whenever anyone brought up Twist.

Tiana sighed. “Well, that’s why I need you, anyway. I
know
there’s something down there, Kiar. Something alive. I could feel its heart beating.”

Kiar said, “Tiana, you were really deep in the phantasmagory. Your eyes were glowing. You stopped talking, or moving. Lisette was terrified. And no one’s sure what happened at the funeral, either. It scared Shanasee into the phantasmagory too, and that eidolon….”

“It couldn’t have actually been an eidolon. Who would disrupt the funeral like that?” Tiana said firmly.

Kiar shook her head. “It wasn’t a familiar one, but it was definitely an eidolon. Maybe whoever spawned that eidolon also spawned something that killed Tomas. No fiend necessary. Just another undiscovered bastard, screwing up.” The hint of bitterness in Kiar’s voice was old and familiar.

“Why is everyone so happy to believe we’re murderers? No, don’t answer that.” Tiana could feel the undertow of the phantasmagory, closer than usual. She thought she could hear the heartbeat within, calling her. Taunting her. She wouldn’t let it drive her mad. Pushing her feet into a pair of sturdy slippers, she said, “Come on, let’s go find Lisette. I need her. Do you know if there are any maps of the catacombs in the library?”

In horrified fascination, Kiar said, “You really want to go down there, right now? You, me, and Lisette?”

“It doesn’t have to be you, me, and Lisette. I could go by myself, without a map!” She stopped, modulated her voice. “And if there isn’t a fiend, what is there to worry about?” She narrowed her eyes at the taller girl.

Acidly, Kiar said, “Falling rocks. Getting lost. Us.” She paused and then said quietly, “I do know what it’s like. To feel totally driven by a desire, out of nowhere. And I know what it’s like to act on that desire. And I know what it’s like to regret it, afterwards.” She hesitated and then sighed. “And I know no wisdom in the world would have stopped me. No falling rocks, no locked doors, no hungry animals.”

Tiana stopped dressing again. “Kiar….”

Kiar shook her head in a rejection of sympathy and opened the suite door. “Oh, hello, Lisette. Tiana has been asking for you.”

Lisette was walking down the hall towards the suite, flanked by four men in Knights of the Regency tabards. She looked tired and irritated, and her chestnut hair had been plucked out of the elaborate braid she’d put it in for the funeral. But when she saw Tiana in the doorway, a smile lit up her face.

“You’re awake! I’m so glad.” She ran the last few steps to Tiana and embraced her. Then she held her by the shoulders, looking at her carefully. “What happened? What pulled you away?”

Tiana looked at the guards behind Lisette. Normally they guarded the entrances to the Palace and accompanied the Blood or Regents on expeditions. They looked uncomfortable this deep in the residential area of the Palace. “Why did the Chancellor want to see you?”

Lisette’s breath hissed between her teeth. “He doesn’t want any of the active Regents alone, ever again. If I’m not with you, I’m to have a Regency guard. And they’re to escort me everywhere. He was very firm. Also, he rescheduled tomorrow’s reception to next week, so no one has an excuse not to attend. And Pell’s old Regent has agreed to come out of retirement to assist the King.” Pell, one of the King’s brothers, had been dead a decade now.

Tiana chewed her lip and considered the rescheduled reception. Then she blinked at the guards. “What, all four of them? That seems… crowded.” Tiana frowned at the guards. She recognized faces, but only recalled one name.

That one, Lieutenant Slater, a tall, dark-haired man, cleared his throat. “Your Highness, only two of us will be escorting her Ladyship. The others are on their way to Lady Iriss. We’ll try to be inconspicuous. Oh, and….” He cleared his throat and recited, sing-song, “The Chancellor has all faith in your ability to protect your lady companion when she is with you. Our presence is merely a precaution against an opportunistic assassin.”

Then his eyebrows drew together, and he added in his own voice, “The King’s tragedy is already too much for the Regency to bear.” He nodded at two of the guards, and they bowed and continued down the hall. “This is Guardsman Berrin. He just transferred from Stormwatch. An old friend.”

Berrin, who was almost as tall as Slater and far broader, said, “We
don’t
want to get in the way of your usual pursuits, Your Highness.” Then he grinned. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to attending some of those Small-light shows, though. We’ll just be in the background. Lurking.”

Slater said sharply, “Guardsman!” and Berrin ducked his head, still grinning.

Tiana was taken aback. “Oh. Well… now we’re going to the library. Right, Kiar? The library?”

Kiar sighed. “It seems as good a place to start as any, Tiana.”

“Right,” said Tiana. She slipped past the guards and walked down the hall.

Lisette fell into step at Tiana’s side. “Why are we going to the library?”

Tiana glanced at the guards trailing them and shrugged. “I want to look something up. I need Kiar to translate Aunt Rinta’s catalog.” Lisette responded to her vague answer with silence and a sympathetic smile.

The library was on the first and ground floors of the Palace. On the first floor, the paneled double doors opened to a lofty space encircled by galleries. Four fluted columns rose from the ground floor to the frescoed ceiling. Long, narrow windows along the west wall spilled dreary light across the tables and chairs dotting the worn carpet, while Logos-inscribed, flameless lights illuminated the shelves. Rolling ladders allowed access to the hardest to reach volumes. The reconstruction and organization of the library had been a family project for the previous generation, and now, with most of them dead, it was a lovely, pleasant, rarely visited space.

Tiana pulled her companions away from the entrance where the guards had stationed themselves, down one of the curving staircases to the ground floor. “I need to find maps of the catacombs. There’s a level underneath it, with something down there. If I find it, I can prove no one killed Tomas.”

Lisette asked, “You saw this in the phantasmagory?” Tiana nodded, and Lisette looked thoughtful. “If you wandered into an ancestor’s construct, that could have pulled you away from me. That’s very interesting.”

Tiana flashed a smug look at Kiar, who shrugged. “I’m not a Regent and I don’t have access to Regency journals like Lisette does, so don’t give me that look. I have to base my opinions on my own experiences. The crazy, distracted, weird stuff.”

“I’m not weird!” said Tiana, looking offended.

Lisette said, “Kiar, the Chancellor would still like to provide you a Regent, you know. He worries.”

Kiar flinched from Lisette’s words. “No, thank you. As long as the Regency agrees I don’t require one, I don’t want one. I don’t get lost in the phantasmagory. I don’t forget to eat. I can dress myself. And Yithiere will never legitimatize me. I like things the way they are.”

Tiana looked back and forth between them and wondered what the fiend below the Palace was doing. Kiar and Lisette were standing around talking about unimportant things while Tomas’s murderer lurked somewhere. “Maps!” she said. “We need maps.”