“It was an ambush,” Angie said, her pale hands wrapped around a cup of hot tea as she sat at the breakfast table. Small and white, wearing Beyla’s clothes and a blanket around her shoulders, she looked utterly lost in Nuala’s grand salon.
It was far too late for breakfast but none of them had risen much before noon. Angie had been the only one of their midnight visitors strong enough to get out of bed. Her father, Bill the landlord, had suffered severe burns but he was still alive, which was more than she could say for several of the other villagers Bael had brought south in the dragon cabin.
“A man came into the pub. An off-Realmer. Had an accent but I couldn’t tell you what. Long scar down his face, like this.” She traced a finger down her face. Kett forced herself to stay still.
“He said he was looking for the ranch, so Durgan and Olaf said they’d walk him up there. And then we…we heard this screaming…”
Her knuckles were white. Angie had witnessed her fair share of pub brawls, had even helped break up a few, but right now she looked as if she’d seen hell.
“We went up there…some of the regulars and me, we thought maybe Olaf and Durgan’d had one too many, or maybe he was trying to rob them or something, we didn’t know. But then these men appeared…we didn’t even see where from…”
She dragged in a harsh breath. Kett couldn’t manage to look at anyone. Neither Olaf nor Durgan had been among the survivors.
“It was so instant. One minute they were running and the next they weren’t. Fast shots, right to the head. Must have been professionals. They seemed really determined to get up the road to the ranch. We all tried to hold them off, everyone in the pub came out to help, but there were too many of them and there were only five of us by then, and Jarven.” She looked up at Kett. “Bael said he’d brought Jarven here, is he…?”
“He’ll be okay,” Kett said. “Eventually.”
“He was amazing,” Angie said. “He can really fight. Was he a soldier once?”
Kett purposefully didn’t look at her parents or siblings, who all knew about the Order’s elite company of Knights. “A Knight,” she said truthfully.
“He fought them, but they really laid into him. And then-” She screwed her face up, her eyes closed. “Then I think one of them released the dragons. They kept saying…”
Angie opened her eyes and looked at Kett. “They kept saying they wanted you. That if we told them where the shapeshifter was they’d go. And by then everything was on fire, the dragons had blasted one of the cottages and it was spreading…and people were screaming…”
Nuala touched Angie’s arm and the younger woman sucked in a breath that was more of a sob. Kett nodded automatically but her brain was racing.
Bael’s men. She couldn’t deny it; the man with the scarred face haunted her. How had they moved so fast? How had they known where to go?
The Federación. Realization hit her like an arrow in the back. Who else would have the training, the manpower, the resources and, let’s face it, the determined interest in nonhuman abilities?
Bael’s men were Federación.
But he’d seemed so terrified of the organization…
“…must have hit me because I don’t remember anything else after that, until I woke up in their wagon, all tied up with the others. They kept demanding to know which one of us was the shapeshifter, but when we said you weren’t there they didn’t believe us.”
And now Olaf and Durgan were dead, and countless villagers too-thank the gods it was only a tiny hamlet-and Angie, bruised and battered, was the healthiest of the remaining survivors. The others had been burnt, cut, stabbed and slashed, and Nuala had been white-faced as she’d dealt with them.
Jarven was badly hurt. And Bael…
He’d been breathing softly and evenly when she’d left him that morning. Having spent the night alternately cursing and praying, she’d woken to spend about ten minutes just staring at him. He was beautiful in sleep, his hair dark against his white skin, a livid bruise across his cheek the only color in his face.
He’s hurt because of me.
But then I’m hurt because of him.
She wiped her hands across her face. “Right. And then what happened?”
“How did you escape?” Tane asked.
Angie took in a deep breath and let it out. “We didn’t, sir,” she said. “We were rescued. I was dozing, and I heard this absolutely maddened roar, like a dragon, and I thought, oh hell, it’s one of the ones from the ranch.”
“Just a sec,” Kett interrupted. “The only dragons we have loose are the ones we trust not to go loopy. What happened?”
“I don’t know. Maybe all the fighting unsettled them,” Angie said. “Or maybe the others were let loose by the men who attacked us.”
“What sort of numpty lets an untrained dragon loose?” Kett scowled.
“A desperate one,” Tyrnan said. “What happened after that, Angie?”
“Well, sir, then the wagon was suddenly lifted up into the air and we all went tumbling over, and I’m afraid I passed out again,” Angie said, looking embarrassed. “And the next thing I knew, this man was standing there, looking like he’d just come straight from hell, telling me it would all be all right and that he’d come to help us. And I thought he looked like your young man,” she turned to Kett, who grimaced while all the others grinned, “but he was so covered with soot and ash and it was dark, and I wasn’t quite sure. And, well, by then my pa had woken up and he, er, didn’t realize we were being rescued, so he, well…gave him a piece of his mind.”
Kett winced.
“That would explain Bael’s bruises,” Nuala murmured.
“Yes, your highness. And he looked like he’d been fighting previously, too, he had a sword and he was bleeding. Anyway, I eventually recognized him, so he untied me and I saw-well, what was left of the men who’d attacked us.”
“What was left?” Tyrnan asked.
“He’d brought a dragon with him, sir,” Angie said, evidently unaware of Var’s shape-changing abilities. “And it, er,” she glanced at Nuala and the girls, apparently trying to protect their delicate sensibilities. Kett snorted. Half an hour in a room with Tyrnan of Emreland and most ladies quickly adjusted such sensibilities.
“I’m guessing he didn’t sit them down and explain to them the errors of their ways,” Nuala said.
“I’m guessing he turned them into barbecue,” Tyrnan said.
“You guess correctly, sir.” Angie swallowed. “He untied everyone else then and got his dragon to pick up the wagon and…well. Then he brought us here. Is he all right?”
“Five by five,” Kett said distantly. Bael had rescued them all? Deliberately? Well, maybe he’d just happened upon them, but she didn’t suppose it was very likely.
Why? If it had been his men who’d attacked the village, why had he rescued them?
Still completely disgusted with herself for spending half the night crying over a man who was possibly-well, probably-involved with the Federación, she reached for more coffee and wondered whether Nuala would allow her to raid the sideboard for something to add to it.
She looked up and caught her father’s expression. “No,” he said.
“What?”
“No brandy, no rum, no gin or whatever you want to put in it.”
Kett scowled.
“Kett, you’re still very fragile,” Nuala scolded.
“I’ve never been fucking fragile in my life,” Kett said, shoving back her chair and getting to her feet, suddenly monstrously irritated. “I’m going to go check on Jarven.”
“I looked in on him five minutes ago,” Angie said, ducking her gaze shyly. “He’s fast asleep.”
“Well then, I’m going to go check on the others.”
“They’re being taken care of,” Nuala assured her.
“Well-I’m just going to go and-be somewhere else,” Kett snapped, stalking off as fast as her bad leg and her woozy head would let her.
Her father caught up to her outside the breakfast room door. “Kett, she’s only looking out for your best interests.”
“I know.”
“Don’t be rude to her.”
“Oh fuck off. If I ever stopped being rude I’d probably be dead.”
“If you don’t get some rest you may well be,” Tyrnan shot back.
“Fuck off.”
“Now there’s my little girl.”
She glared at him. “I was never your little girl.”
Tyrnan raised his eyebrows. “Sure you were, I just didn’t know about you.”
“Great father you were.” She started toward the stairs, her leg aching abominably. The tiny sensible part of Kett, buried deep inside, told her she should probably borrow a cane to lean on. The rest of her said she’d have to lose a leg to be so desperate.
Tyrnan followed at the same slow pace. “Come on, Kett, what’s brought this on?”
“Nothing. I’m just…look, I’m sorry, but I’ve been having a pretty shitty few days, in case you hadn’t noticed, and…oh hell, say sorry to Nuala for me, will you?” she added guiltily.
“She won’t mind. You wanna talk about it?”
Kett shot him an incredulous look. Her father looked horribly embarrassed, but at least he was trying.
“No,” she said, and he visibly relaxed. “But you know what I do want to talk about? How Bels and Eithne have swords and crossbows and stuff, and know how to use them.”
He shrugged. “It’s a tough old world. They should be able to defend themselves.”
“Against what? They never leave the house without bodyguards.”
Tyrnan drummed his fingers on the stair rail as Kett started her slow ascent. “Look, if you really want to know, they asked to learn. They said they wanted to be like you.”
Kett stumbled and would have fallen if he hadn’t caught her. “Don’t say shit like that when I’m halfway up a flight of stairs,” she grumbled.
“Sorry. It’s true though.”
She stared blindly at the neat edge of the carpet covering the marble steps. Beyla and Eithne wanted to be like her? “But-why?”
“Well,” Tyrnan took her arm and started helping her up the stairs, “I don’t recall exactly, but it was sometime after you beat up your husband. Apparently they found that impressive.”
“He deserved it,” Kett said vaguely.
“Yeah. That’s what they found impressive.” He sighed. “Look, Kett…I know I treat them differently than how I treated you, but…well, finding out he has a teenage daughter can bloody terrify a man. I didn’t do things very right with you, did I? I wanted to do better with them. Wanted to stop them making mistakes like-uh-”
“Like I did?” Kett supplied dryly.
“Well, yeah. I mean, I’m proud of you and all, but I really wish you’d stop nearly getting yourself killed. And while I think you dealt with the cheating husband admirably, I’d kind have liked it better if you hadn’t married the bastard in the first place. You deserved better.”
“Thanks for telling me so at the time,” Kett said, still mulling over the “proud” bit with some astonishment.
“Would you have listened?”
She glanced at him, saw his half smile and returned it. “Look, just go easy on them, okay? They’re grown-ups now. Let Eithne marry her garda. He’s a good kid.”
“But he is just a kid.”
“Do I have to remind you how old you were when I was born?”
“Yes, but that was-” He saw her expression and said quickly, “Er, unplanned. I just want her to be safe and happy.”
“And not thrown in jail for nearly killing her cheating, lying, scum-sucking weasel of a husband,” Kett said.
“Exactly.”
“Well, if he cheats, I’ll kill him for her. How’s that?”
“I’d really rather prefer it if all my kids could stay out of jail in the future,” Tyrnan said despairingly.
“In that case, I’ll make it look like an accident.”
He smiled at that, and she smiled back and patted his arm, releasing herself from his grip as they got to the top of the stairs. “Dad, she’ll be fine. And yes, I did just call you Dad. Try not to faint and fall down the stairs, I ain’t coming after you.”
Tyrnan laughed, shaking his head. “Where are you going?” he asked as Kett turned to go.
“Really ought to talk to Bael.”
“Should be fun.”
She grimaced.
“Want me to come with you?”
She stared.
“All right, okay, I just thought I’d ask,” her father said, holding up his hands defensively.
“He’s probably still asleep. But if you hear anyone screaming, then you can intervene.”
“Never a dull moment, eh Kett?”
“No,” she sighed. “I like dull moments. They’re peaceful and quiet and people aren’t trying to kill me.”
He moved to ruffle her hair, she ducked and started away.
“Hey, now your sisters are trying to be like you, does this mean you’ll start being like them?” Tyrnan called after her.
Kett flipped him the finger and walked away to the sound of his laughter.
As she rounded the corner, the scryer at her belt vibrated. She picked it up and the shiny face resolved to show Chance, beautiful as ever, riding through the snowy Peneggan countryside. Her cheeks were pink and her hair streamed pale and glossy from beneath a fur-trimmed hat.
Just looking at her made Kett feel fresh from that tower cell.
“Kett! Should you be out of bed?”
Kett scowled. “I’m fine,” she said. And before her cousin could chastise her, added, “Where are you?”
“A few hours away. How’s your young man?”
“Will everyone stop calling him my young man? He’s at least the same age as me,” Kett snarled.
“He’s alive, at least,” Chance said calmly.
“How do you know?”
“Darling, I always know.” Before Kett could tell her how damn annoying that was, Chance added, “We’ll be there tonight. Striker’s coming in too.”
Kett groaned. “Why?”
“I asked him to.”
“Why?”
“He can be very useful, darling. He probably knows exactly what’s going on, if we can get him to spill the details.”
“Fan-fucking-tastic,” Kett said. On top of everything else, she had to deal with Striker.
Bael dreamt of Kett in a cell, bloody and emaciated. Her head lolled, her eyes dull, and her bones protruded through her skin. Her flesh seemed to shrink as he watched, turning gray and then green, rotting away from her bones. Her eyeballs popped. Her lips peeled back in a fleshless grin.
“Kett…” He reached for her but as his fingers touched the stone-cold flesh of her shoulder, it crumbled like ancient brick.
Horrified, Bael leapt back, but her whole body had turned to stone now, a statue lying on the floor. “Kett!” he cried, and reached out to her again, but the statue crumbled, turned to dust and scattered.
Symbols danced on the edge of his vision, flickered and faded, but when he turned his head to see them they flitted away.
“Kett,” he mourned, and the dust on the floor blew away in a sudden breeze. “Kett!”
Bael woke sharply in Kett’s bed, alone. The sheets smelled of her, but the room was empty and dark.
Night had fallen, and the last thing he remembered was crashing into the pantiled roof of Nuala’s house, unable to keep flying or gripping the tattered wagon any longer.
…flesh shrinking, rotting, turning to stone, crumbling…
But she was alive. He could feel her, out there in the city somewhere. His whole body was tuned in to her.
His whole body, which ached in a thousand ways.
He sat up, wincing, and peered through the gloom at the clock on the mantel. Just after eight in the evening-he’d been asleep all day.
For all he knew, he could have been here for weeks.
He stretched-no, definitely not weeks. His body felt as battered and bruised as it had when he’d collided with the roof. Maybe a little worse. What he really needed was to see Kett, wrap her in his arms, kiss her and stroke her and, well, basically shag her rotten. That always made him feel better.
Except the last he’d seen of Kett, she was half-dead and not inclined to even talk to him, let alone touch him.
She fucked another man.
But he still wanted to see her. Needed to see her. To make things right between them, or at least as right as possible.
Slowly, carefully, he picked up the clothes Nuala had given him for Yule and let Var’s wings take him silently-and painfully-from the house. He flew as far as he could manage toward the south of the city, an unknown instinct guiding him toward Kett, then came down in an alley and walked the rest of the way as a human.
The city of Elvyrn was noted for its gentility, and yet Kett seemed to have found the seediest part of it. He found her in a tavern whose sign was so faded and dirty as to be unintelligible, its clientele mostly large tattooed men and weary women in gaudy outfits.
Kett was slumped at a table in the corner, her back to the wall. She saw him come in, turned her head and ignored him.
Bael bit his lip. Well, he hadn’t expected it would be easy.
Her tankard was empty but since Bael was standing at the bar, Kett didn’t want to go over and get a refill. Not just yet. She saw him talk to the grizzled bartender, gesture to her and buy a bottle of the stout she’d been drinking. She figured stout was practically food anyway, so didn’t count as alcohol. At least, that was her excuse if Nuala smelled the fumes on her breath when she got home.
She half wished she’d sat with her back to the room, all the better to ignore him, but years of habit were hard to break. No Knight worth her tattoo would ever turn her back on a bar room.
She lit up a cigar and allowed her gaze to settle on the couple at the next table. The woman was probably Kett’s age but looked ten years older, her skin tired and thin under its layers of powder. Her hair was badly dyed, there was a sore on her lip and her breasts spilled out of her tight, patched-up dress. The sailor on whose lap she was sitting had his hand up her skirt.
The woman was staring into nothingness with such a bleak expression on her face it chilled Kett.
Through the smoke of her cigar she saw a figure approaching. By his scent, by the way he moved and by her body’s total attunement to his, she knew it was Bael.
He poured stout into her tankard without looking at her, without saying a word, then walked on past her into the next room, where she saw him take a cue from the rack by the snooker table.
Kett took a thoughtful pull on her cigar. She watched the doxy at the next table turn and kiss her sailor with plenty of tongue, all the while never losing the desolate expression clouding her eyes.
Kett stood up, steadying herself on the table. The sailor jeered, probably assuming she was drunk. She wasn’t even nearly there. But her leg was paining her as she limped across the stained rushes soaking up beer spills on the floor of the public bar.
She took a cue from the wall and watched Bael rack the balls.
“One drink?” she asked, when he didn’t say anything.
“More if you want.”
His eyes were on the table as he gestured to her to take the first shot. She did, sighting down the cue to the dirty white ball, breaking the neat triangle of reds and pocketing a couple.
“Going to take more than stout, you know.”
“Even Tennison’s Famous Milk Stout?”
Kett potted the black. “Even that.”
He retrieved the black and watched her pocket another red.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Kett paused before lining up another shot at the black. She potted it, retrieved it, and took aim at the next red without lifting her gaze from the table.
“I didn’t know you were the shapeshifter.”
Kett said nothing.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
She shrugged, which hurt, and bent to the table again. “Why didn’t you tell me you work for the Federación?”
Another silence, while the noise of the pub swirled around them.
“Firstly, I don’t,” Bael said, “and secondly-why would you think I do?”
Kett straightened up and looked Bael in the eye for the first time since he’d walked in. She put down her cue, loosened the neck of her shirt then pulled it off over her head.
The other patrons of the public bar whooped. Bael stared at her upper body, naked but for the plain bra she wore and the stitches in her shoulder. Kett knew she looked like hell, that the recently infected dog bite on her shoulder stood out in livid relief, that her ribs were multicolored, the gash on her hip visible above her low-riding jeans. She knew she was still a little too thin, too pale, too unhealthy-looking.
She wanted Bael to know it too.
She pointed to a faded scar on her side. “Federación did this,” she said, and tapped her upper arm. “And this. And I think there’s one on my leg.”
Bael stared.
“I gave out a few scars too,” she said. “Sliced open one guy’s face. He returned the favor by locking me in a tower. Your tower. And attacking a village. My village. Same man, Bael.”
“I don’t-”
“They kidnapped your king’s sister,” she said, “and several-several people I know.” She still couldn’t tell him about the Order. Not quite yet. “Chance, Striker and I went in after them. A castle in the Bascano Mountains. Euskara.”
“I know where the Bascan- Oh,” Bael said, shock and pain clouding his expression. “I had a house there,” he said, his face ashen.
“The Castillo de la Montaña?” Kett asked, and he nodded, seemingly anguished.
“Albhar told me it had burned down. He said… I had no idea that’s what they were using it for. I swear I didn’t!”
Kett said nothing.
“Listen, they’re my enemies too. They kidnapped the king’s sister, they nearly killed my queen-your cousin!”
No “nearly” about it, Kett thought, but kept that to herself too. “Nice patriotic sentiments from someone who’d never even met another of his species until recently.”
“They’re still my people.” Bael looked aggrieved and Kett grabbed her shirt, pulling it on and ignoring the pain the movement caused.
“No, your people are the ones who killed my people at the dragon ranch,” Kett said viciously, leaning over the table and miscuing so badly she nearly ripped the felt.
“I swear I didn’t know-”
“Didn’t know, Bael? Didn’t know?” She threw the cue at the table. “That doesn’t stop them being dead!”
He flinched, but Kett was on a roll now.
“And what was that you said? About stopping to help me? If you hadn’t stopped, they’d still be alive!” she yelled.
“If I hadn’t stopped, you’d be dead!” Bael yelled back.
“So?” Kett shouted, but couldn’t think of anything to add to it. Bael looked as if he might be about to smile, for which she’d have had to kill him, but he was saved from further attack by Kett’s scryer, which buzzed at her belt. She snatched it up, snarling, “What?” and realizing too late it was probably her father or Nuala, ready to disapprove of her location.
But it was Chance. “We’re about twenty minutes away, darling. Where are you? Looks like a dive.”
“It is,” Kett said. She made herself take a deep breath to calm down. “I know who attacked the ranch.”
“Who?” Chance asked, all business.
“The Federación.” She dug her nails into her palm and, not sure if she was correcting or clarifying, added, “Bael’s men.”
For a second, Chance’s lovely face was frozen in shock. Then she shook herself. “Oh darling,” she said. “We’ll be there in five.”