by G. A. Aiken
“Yes, yes, I know all that. But then when I was thinking about it today, I remembered that the Steppes Riders had recently sent one of their own to kill me!”
The best part of that statement, Celyn realized, was how happy and proud Rhiannon looked when she said it. Her obliviousness was what made Celyn’s job so very wonderful.
“Wait . . . what? What?” Bercelak sputtered. “What are you saying to me?”
“Oh, don’t get so upset, Bercelak.”
“Someone was sent to kill you and no one told me? Me?”
“Perhaps no one told you because you get kind of hysterical?” Gwenvael asked. But when his father turned those black eyes on him, the gold dragon picked up Brannie and held her in front of his body like a shield.
“Really?” Brannie asked her cousin. “I mean . . . really?”
“Gwenvael, put her down,” Rhiannon ordered. “And Bercelak, stop huffing and puffing. It was not a big issue at all.”
“How could it not be? They sent someone here to kill you.”
“Not really. The poor thing was kind of sad and pathetic. I just couldn’t have her executed. She broke my heart.”
Her cold, dead heart, Brannie joked inside Celyn’s head, forcing him to bite his tongue so he didn’t laugh out loud. It was a gift dragons had. The ability to talk to siblings or a parent using only their minds. It was a gift that Celyn often appreciated. More than once he’d called his kin to his side when he’d needed them most.
“I don’t care how pathetic and sad she was,” Bercelak snapped back at his mate. “She should have been executed.”
“Oh, Bercelak, clearly that’s what her tribe leader was trying to do. She sent the girl here, alone, to kill me. Not just any dragon. But me. And as someone who was left at your doorstep by my own mother in the hopes that you’d kill me, I feel for her.”
“Fine. We’ll feel for her as we string her up and—”
“No. That is not what we’re going to do. Instead, we’re going to use her. To send our message to the head of all the tribes in the Outerplains.”
“Wait.” Annwyl scratched her neck. “You want the person they sent here to die at your hand to go back and negotiate an alliance for us?”
“Aye.”
“How is that a good idea?”
“The one who wanted the girl dead was the head of her particular tribe.”
“Which tribe?” Annwyl asked.
“No idea. She said it in her name, but, my gods, that name was so long there’s no way I could be bothered to remember it all.”
“Well, that’s good.”
“But,” Rhiannon went on, ignoring Annwyl’s sarcastic tone, “we don’t want her to negotiate anything with some tribe leader. We want her to negotiate with the head of all the Outerplains tribes. They have a name for her, I just don’t remember what it is. . . .”
“Anne Atli,” Celyn stated. Then he blinked, wondering how he knew that.
“That sounds right.” She smiled at Celyn. “Your parents should be joining us any second so we can now get Bram’s perspective on this.”
“Oh, goody for us,” Bercelak complained.
Brannie, always protective of their father, started to march across the room to say something to their uncle, but Celyn caught her by the back of her shirt and yanked her to his side.
“Not now,” he warned her.
Rhiannon clapped her hands together. “They’re here!” She motioned to Celyn. “Let them in, dear boy.”
Celyn stepped away from the door and opened it, but there was no one standing there. Surprised—Rhiannon usually got that sort of thing right—he stepped out into the hallway and turned, coming face-to-face with his father.
Startled, they both jumped back, then laughed.
“Sorry, Da,” Celyn said, hugging his father.
“It’s all right.” His father’s return hug was warm and loving. Just like the dragon himself.
Against Celyn’s ear, Bram the Merciful asked, “How bad is it?”
“Not too bad. One of Rhiannon’s crazy schemes. Shouldn’t take long to talk her out of it.”
“Good. Good.”
He stepped back and then Celyn’s mother hugged him.
“Hello, Mum.”
“My sweet hatchling. Is everything all right?” She leaned back, peered into his face. “You don’t look well.”
“Went drinking with Brannie last night. I’m still recovering.”
“I thought you knew better.”
“So did I.”
With a wave of his hand, Celyn invited his parents into the war room. Once he closed the door, he turned to find Rhiannon throwing her arms open and moving toward his father with the intent of hugging the poor dragon. Something that Bercelak, after all these years, still hated.
But Bram was not alone. Ghleanna stepped in front of him, blocking the queen from getting near him.
Rhiannon pulled back her arms from her sister-by-mating. Celyn understood why, though. No point in hugging Ghleanna since it wouldn’t make her mate jealous. “Sister. How pleasant to see you. As always.”
“Rhiannon.” Celyn cringed at the way his mother bit out that one word. It was like a curse. Honestly, several centuries and these two still insisted on bickering like a pair of fight dogs over the same bone. The poor bone being Celyn’s father. “Is there something you want? Besides hugging my mate, I mean.”
“I can hug whoever I want in my kingdom. So perhaps you should move.”
“Perhaps you should make me, queenie.”
Maybe we should do something, Brannie suggested in Celyn’s head.
No need. We have our secret weapon.
What secret weapon?
“I don’t have time for this ridiculousness,” Dagmar cut in before the fight between the two She-dragons could become physical. “So let’s move this along, shall we?”
When the Dragon Queen stared at her, Dagmar pointed out the window toward the suns. “It’s getting late. . . . I have things to do, my good lady.”
“I think you might be getting a bit big for your leggings, Miss—”
“Don’t believe me?” Dagmar cut in. She dug into one of the hidden pockets of her dress and pulled out a piece of parchment. “Let me read my daily list to you.”
“Don’t bother.” Rhiannon immediately stepped away from Ghleanna. Nothing the She-dragon hated more than hearing Dagmar’s daily chores.
Smirking a bit, Dagmar slipped the parchment back into her dress. Amazing how just a little paperwork seemed to make every dragon nearly wet him- or herself at even the tiny suggestion of such boredom.
And Dagmar wasn’t ashamed to admit . . . she used that fear to every advantage she could wring from it.
While Celyn stared mindlessly at a spot on the stone floor of the war room, Rhiannon quickly went through her plan again for Bram and Ghleanna. When she was done, Bram gave a small shrug.
“It’s not a horrible idea. But until we talk to this Rider, we can’t count on her to do anything for us.”
“The idiot has a point, Rhiannon,” Bercelak said as Bram caught the back of his mate’s chain-mail shirt to prevent her from throttling her brother, while Celyn caught the back of his sister’s chain-mail shirt to prevent her from throttling their uncle. “We need to talk to this . . . person. Where is she?”
“Oh . . . I don’t know.”
Bercelak began rubbing his temples with the tips of his fingers and softly growling.
“Oh, stop it, Bercelak.”
“How do you not keep track of someone who was sent here to kill you? How is that possible?”
“I don’t know where she is. I’m the queen,” she reminded him. “I don’t need to know. But I know who does know where she is.”
“And who would that be?”
That’s when Rhiannon suddenly pointed at Celyn.
And Celyn immediately looked behind him to see if someone was standing back there.
When he saw no one, he faced the queen and pointed
at himself. “I know?”
“Of course you know. I told you to take her someplace safe.”
“You did?”
“You knew about this?” Bercelak asked Celyn.
Celyn blinked and calmly asked, “Knew about what?”
“The girl,” his queen said.
“What girl?”
“The girl I asked you to keep safe.”
Celyn scratched his chin. “The girl you asked me to keep safe . . .”
The queen sighed. “You don’t remember, do you?”
“Not even a little.”
Bercelak started to stalk toward Celyn, but Ghleanna quickly grabbed his arm, halting him.
“The girl who came to kill Rhiannon?” his mother prompted. “And she wasn’t very good at it?”
“Ohhhh! That girl.”
“Aye!” the queen cheered. “That girl!”
“Some bitch comes to kill your queen,” Bercelak snarled, Ghleanna still holding him away from Celyn. “And you did nothing?” He ended on a bellow.
“I followed my queen’s orders.” Celyn repeated the creed of the Queen’s Personal Guard. A creed that had been rewritten by Bercelak himself when Rhiannon came into power. “My duty is to follow her orders and no one else’s. For I am—”
“Shut up!” Bercelak roared.
“Oh, stop it, Bercelak!” Rhiannon snapped. “We have no time for this.” The queen smiled at Celyn. “Now, dear boy, where did you put that pale little girl? In that cute pub in town?” She snapped her fingers. “Or that lovely house by the river?”
“Uh . . .” Everyone was staring at Celyn again, so he had no option but to admit the truth. “Well . . . since she did try to kill you, my queen—”
“Gods, Celyn!” Rhiannon gasped. “Tell me you didn’t kill her!”
“No, no! You ordered me to keep her safe. So that’s what I did.”
Gwenvael snorted, easily spotting the hole in that story in seconds. He was so much smarter than any of his siblings gave him credit for. “And what exactly did keeping her safe entail, cousin?”
Celyn cleared his throat. “I . . . uh . . . I put her in the Garbhán Isle . . . jail.”
Rhiannon’s eyes grew wide as Annwyl and Talaith gasped in horror, Dagmar groaned and rolled her eyes, and Gwenvael laughed outright. The prissy bastard.
“You put that woman in jail?” Rhiannon yelled.
“She tried to kill you!”
“Oh, come on! She didn’t try very hard!”
“That’s not the point! Auntie Rhiannon—”
“Don’t you dare!” she snapped. “I gave you strict orders. And as my guard—”
“You gave me vague orders. ‘Keep her safe.’ That’s what I did. Because behind bars . . . where was she going?”
Dagmar lifted her hand and silenced everyone. Honestly, Celyn wanted to know, who really ruled the Southlands?
“It may not be that bad,” Dagmar said calmly. She focused on Celyn. “How many days since you put her in jail?”
“Uh . . . eight or nine . . .” Celyn cleared his throat. “. . . months ago.”
“Months?” Izzy roared. “You left a human female alone in a jail for months?”
“She tried to kill my queen!” he reasoned.
Rhiannon dramatically threw up her arms. “She’s probably been raped to death by now!”
“Rhiannon!” Talaith snapped.
“Don’t blame me, little girl. It’s your human males with no self-control. They see a pussy and they just have to fuck it!”
“Mum!”
“Oh, pipe down, Morfyd.”
“I’ll go get her,” Celyn stated, trying to keep everyone calm. “I’ll go get her.”
“Don’t you mean get what’s left of her, cousin?” Gwenvael asked.
Finally sick to death of the prissy royal, Celyn started to stalk across the room to cut his tongue out, but Brannie grabbed him by the hair and led him through the doorway and out into the hall.
“We’ll be right back,” she said before closing the door.
“I hate him,” Celyn snarled. “I hate him. I hate him. I hate him.”
“Be grateful he’s just a cousin and not one of our brothers.”
“If he was one of our brothers, he’d be scale-less, bald, and alone.”
“Let’s just go, brother,” she said, pushing him toward the exit.
As they walked, Brannie chastised, “I can’t believe you left some human female alone in a jail run by human men.”
Celyn winced at his sister’s words. “None of this is my fault!”
“How is this not your fault?”
“It simply slipped my mind. I have a lot of things to worry about and some female who attempted to kill my queen was not exactly top of my list. And I don’t need to hear this from you, sister.”
“If she’s dead or damaged—”
Celyn halted in the middle of the courtyard they were now in and faced his sister. “Please stop.”
Brannie blinked and gazed up at him, her smile fading. “Gods, Celyn . . . you feel terrible about this.”
“Wouldn’t you? I mean”—Celyn rubbed his once-again-throbbing forehead—“she tried to kill my queen. But I did mean to go back for her. I just . . . I forgot.”
Brannie placed her hand on Celyn’s shoulder. “Brother, you can’t blame yourself for this. She was an assassin.”
“Not a very good one.”
“That doesn’t change anything,” Brannie said on a laugh.
“Still, if anything has happened to her at the hands of those humans . . .”
Brannie took his arm. “Come on.”
“Where to?”
“Where do you think? To get your sad little assassin.” She tugged his arm. “Don’t walk, brother! Run!”
And they did. All the way to the jail.
Chapter Seven
Branwen the Awful—a name she was immensely proud of because her own mother had given it to her after a particularly brutal battle—pulled open the jail door and walked inside, her brother behind her. The building wasn’t very large, but Annwyl kept control of crime with the fear of her wrath. Those who went beyond some mild stealing, ended up executed faster than they could imagine.
Well-lit and relatively clean, this jail didn’t stink of death and pain like many others Brannie had been to over the years. There were no guards at the front. And no one was manning the wood desk.
With her hand on the hilt of her sword, Brannie slowly and carefully made her way down the hall toward the cells. She didn’t bother to turn to see if her brother followed suit. Battle readiness was trained into each Cadwaladr offspring from hatching. Being close in age, Brannie and Celyn had been trained together by their older siblings, cousins, and mother, while their father, however, had patiently taught them how to read and write.
Brannie held up her hand to halt her brother and tilted her head to the side to hear a little better. But she needn’t have bothered. A burst of raucous male laughter had Brannie charging down a hall filled with cells. She turned a corner and quickly stopped, holding out her arm to again halt her brother.
At least ten well-armed guards stood outside the doorway of the last cell at the end of the hall. They had their backs to Brannie and Celyn, busy being entertained by whatever nightmare was going on inside that room.
She silently indicated to her brother how many men she saw and that they were all armed. They both eased their weapons from their scabbards and moved down the hallway toward the laughter.
Brannie locked on to the one who would be her first victim. He wasn’t the biggest, but she could tell from the way he stood, he was the best trained among them.
Holding her blade in both hands, she raised it high near her shoulder and centered her body so that when she was ready, she could charge with ease. But before she could take that next step, her brother caught her shoulder, his fingers briefly gripping and releasing. Together, the pair walked up behind all those guards. Brannie went up on her toes to
look over the tallest of the human males; her brother didn’t have to bother.
Is that her? she mouthed to her brother. And Celyn nodded.
Brannie blinked and looked again.
Pale-skinned with bright blue eyes and long, pale-blond hair that reached down her back, she wore a shirt and leggings made from deerskin, and fur boots. The woman had one leg pulled up onto the chair she sat upon and one arm wrapped around her calf. The other hand held a mug of ale as she regaled the men who were supposed to be guarding her.
“Another,” one of the men begged.
“All right,” she said. “One more from before the time of the first Anne Atli. The story of Olezka Tyushnyakov.”
“How do you pronounce these names?” one of the men laughingly asked.
“He was very big man,” she said in what Brannie knew to be a very thick Outerplains accent. “Arms like chest of oxen. Legs like stumps of trees. And strong. He could take sword made of hardest steel and break it between his giant hands. Many said he had no heart, he had no soul. But he did. All men do. But Olezka did have weakness.”
“Women?” one called out.
“Ale?” called out another.
“Too obvious.” She leaned in, glancing around as if she was about to tell them a deep, dark secret—and the men leaned in with her. She had their absolute attention and it wasn’t simply because she was a woman. “Kittens.”
The men reared back. “Kittens?”
“Kittens. Little, fluffy kittens. He adored them. Had hundreds, all around his hut. He had many wives, but they all hated him because of the damn kittens. So much fluffy fur. Impossible to clean.”
“Well . . . what happened?” one of the men pushed.
“He went out hunting one day and when Olezka Tyushnyakov returned, he found his children crying, some of his wives dead . . . but what made him truly angry? His kittens were dead.”
The men, these guards, gasped in horror. Brannie looked at her brother, but all he could do was shrug.
“So what did he do?” a guard asked.
“He knew who had done this to him.”
“Who?”
“His brother.” More gasps. “And because it was someone who had once been close to him, his rage . . . it could not . . . would not be contained. He exploded and laid waste to an entire region. He left no one alive. Not man. Not woman. Not even child. They all burned.” She raised one finger. “All except his brother . . . he wanted the man to see just what he had wrought. And the kittens.” Her head tilted a bit as she let this last part sink in. “He protected all the remaining kittens.”