by Cat Marsters
“Come on, Kett. I can’t see you being the type to enjoy being whipped, and anyway, those scars are way too deep for anything fun.”
Kett swallowed. “Know a lot about whipping, do you?”
Bael gave her a grin that, annoyingly, made certain bits of her rather warm. “A little bit.” His grin faded. “And those are serious flogging marks. Must have hurt like hell.”
“It did.”
“Who did it?”
“Nosy bastard, ain’tcha?”
Bael’s hand covered hers. “Kett—I know you don’t believe me, and you don’t want this and you’re fighting it, but you are my mate. And if anyone ever hurts you, I will rip out his innards and shove them down his throat.”
His eyes were burning, fiercer than she’d ever seen, and for the first time in a long time, Kett was a little afraid.
“Thanks,” she said, pulling her hand back. “Good to know.”
Bael looked down at his food, then said, “I heard a rumor you were in the army.”
Her brows went up. “From?”
“Your sister’s boyfriend. Lot of rumors about you, Kett.”
“Discount any of them that say I’m sane.”
Bael grinned, and Kett wished she’d said something else. “Sergeant Almet, Royal First of Foot.”
Bael tilted his head to one side. “Sergeant?”
“Yeah, and that didn’t come easy, I can tell you. Peneggan’s got equality laws, but it also has a fuckload of fossils running the place.” She dipped some bacon in her egg. “You know, there were only two other women in the army at the time, and one of them was the Lyonette.”
“The…?”
“Lyonette. Heir to the throne. Mostly a figurehead. They’re too scared to let her fight.” Remembering her fierce step-cousin, Kett snorted. “More fool them. The other woman was in logistics or something. Of course, that’s not counting nurses. Nursing is a proper job for women.”
“Right.” Bael watched her eat, his own food apparently forgotten. “So what did you do?”
“Marched, dug trenches, you know.”
“No,” he laughed, “I mean to get flogged.”
“Oh.” Kett narrowed her eyes again. “I…assaulted a superior officer.” Bael raised his eyebrows and she clarified, “I ripped his balls off.”
Bael flinched visibly. “Ripped…?”
Kett made a tearing motion with her free hand. Of course, at the time she’d used claws, but he didn’t need to know that.
“He deserved it,” she said, shrugging. “He did try to rape me.” She looked up at Bael to see if that dark look was back in his eyes again, but instead he was shaking his head.
“What the fuck was wrong with him? I mean—hell, Kett, when was this?”
“About ten years ago.”
“I can’t see you being a weakling then. You were the only woman in a combat role in the Peneggan army, right? Bet they were merciless with you. And you’re hardly a pushover at the best of times. What the fuck was wrong with that guy that he thought he could rape you? Did he at least have a weapon?”
“Briefly,” Kett said, and they shared a smile. It warmed her more than it should have. If Bael had gone all possessive on her, she might have been able to dismiss him. But this?
He seemed proud of her. It wasn’t something Kett was particularly used to.
This was actually…kind of nice.
She shook herself. Kind of nice was not something she wanted from Bael. She didn’t want anything from Bael. In point of fact—
“I said I wanted three eggs, over easy, and four sausages, you fucking numbskull, not three sausages and four fried fucking eggs!”
The loud voice was accompanied by a crash, and a woman’s sharp gasp. Kett met Bael’s eyes.
“I’ve never seen a fried fucking egg,” he said easily. “Possibly we should investigate.”
Kett gave him a smile that had little to do with kindness and rolled to her feet, fork in hand, turning to face the table behind her own.
Four large men sat there, burly with fat and muscle, unshaven, grimy, stinking of fish. Traders from the river. They were all laughing at the waitress, a dumpy girl with a red face, who was now wearing the fried eggs all over her dress and half apron. The shattered pieces of the plate rocked at her feet.
“Y-you said four eggs and three sausages,” she whispered.
“Don’t think I fucking did.” The main bully had a shaven head covered with a tattoo of a leering fish. Kett was impressed—she didn’t think fish could leer.
“I think you did,” Bael said from beside Kett. He offered the trader a friendly smile, but Kett could feel the tension in his body. There was a miniature crossbow hanging from her belt, a present from Tane, and she casually rested her hand on it.
The trader rose to his feet, his smile fading. He was built like a mountain, tall and broad, his neck about the same width as Kett’s waist. He towered over Bael, who wasn’t precisely tiny himself.
The café went completely silent. A couple near the door slipped outside, and for a moment the howling wind was the only sound in the room.
“What did you say?” the trader grunted.
“I think she brought you what you ordered,” Bael said, smiling at the terrified waitress.
The trader’s three friends rose to their feet.
“Where’s your boss, love?” Kett asked the waitress, and the woman pointed to a skinny man with a pencil moustache, cowering by the kitchen door. He didn’t look like he’d be a lot of help.
“Okay,” Kett sighed. She turned to the trader, who was glowering at a still-smiling Bael. “Here’s how it’s going to happen. You’re going to apologize to her, pay for your meal and walk out. All right?”
The trader turned his squinty eyes on her. “Don’t you fucking tell me what to do, woman,” he spat, making the word an insult, and Kett ached to jam her fork into his crotch.
“Not smart,” Bael said. “Really not smart. You don’t know who she is, do you?”
Kett flicked her eyes at him in sudden panic. No one ever believed she was her father’s daughter, and even if this monkey did, she didn’t expect it would do much but make him laugh.
“She is my woman,” Bael said, pride in his voice, “and if you insult her, you insult me.”
The trader peered down at Bael, breathed through his nose for a moment then roared with laughter. His big friends joined in.
Bael continued to smile pleasantly but Kett saw his outline shimmer slightly. Then, like water flowing to fill a shape, Var separated from Bael and took the form of a smallish tiger.
A tiger with canines the length of Kett’s forearm.
As if someone had stolen his voice, the trader stopped laughing, and under the laughter of his friends came the low growl of the sabertooth. It rose in pitch as the traders fell silent.
“And Var probably wouldn’t be very happy about it either,” Bael added conversationally.
“Don’t let him kill anyone,” Kett murmured, but she knew the traders could hear her. “The ngardaí cells are bloody freezing this time of year and my dad’s probably not inclined to get us out immediately.”
She let that sink in then turned to the waitress, who was doing a decent impression of a statue. “How much do they owe, love?”
“Seven and six,” the woman whispered.
“And a decent tip. Couple of sovereigns should do it,” Kett added to the trader, who was staring in horror at Var and the drool dripping from his fangs. Kett was pretty sure he was drooling over the sausages under the table, but she wasn’t about to let on.
“Pay,” Bael said, and the man fumbled for coins, scattering a handful on the table. Much more than he owed.
“Leave,” Kett said, but the door was already opening, and two broad-shouldered young gardaí stood there.
“Now then,” said the taller of them. “We’ve been told there was a disturbance going on here.”
“They got a wild animal,” said one of the traders quickly, pointing at Var
, who leaned against Bael’s legs and purred.
“City ordinances state—” began the shorter of the guards.
“He’s not going to hurt anyone,” Kett said, and shot a warning glance at Bael. “Is he?”
“Not unless he has a reason to,” Bael said insolently, watching the traders edging toward the door.
“What’s been going on here?” asked the taller garda, eyeing Kett’s crossbow. “You got a permit for that?”
The other one said, “I’m going to call for backup.”
“Call Captain Tanner,” Kett said, because he was a friend of her family and a reasonable man. He also had a sense of humor.
“Call the captain out for this?” asked the taller garda as his companion took out his scryer. “On his day off? More’n my life’s worth.”
“Well, then who’s the duty sergeant?” she asked, hoping and praying he wasn’t going to say Lya.
“DS Lya,” he said, and Kett figured she might as well hold her wrists out to be cuffed straight away. Lya was a great garda and her father’s best friend, but as soon as Bael saw her, she knew he’d give up being reasonable.
Lya was a kelf.
* * * * *
Bael wasn’t sure who this Lya person was to make Kett suddenly look so dejected. He was enjoying himself immensely, and he hadn’t even had to hit anyone yet. The four traders had taken their seats again and were refusing to look at either him or Kett or the gardaí or the waitress. This meant they could only look at each other, which Bael figured was punishment enough.
One of the gardaí took out a scryer, like the little rock device Jarven had used, to call his superior and complain about “that bloody Almet girl again”.
Bael laughed so hard he had to sit down.
But when the superior turned up, he stopped laughing. Var, who’d been sitting quietly while Bael fed him sausages, suddenly started growling.
It was a kelf.
Bael stared, but there was no mistaking it. Four feet tall, with bright blue skin and green hair, it wore human clothes but that was its only nod to fitting in. The creature had bare feet—because who would make shoes to fit feet with three long frog toes? Its huge eyes were all iris with no whites, like those of a cat.
It carried a short sword in one three-fingered hand and a garda badge in the other.
How did something that tiny kill my mother?
“Uh, Kett,” Bael said, nudging her, and she turned from arguing quietly with the café’s owner. She saw the kelf and groaned.
“Look, I’m not actually going to shoot anybody,” she said.
“Aye, but the threat’s enough,” the kelf replied. It had an accent like a Zemlyan kelf, but that was impossible. Kelfs couldn’t cross the Wall. They just couldn’t. It was why there were no kelfs in Peneggan. Why he liked Peneggan. No kelfs lived here indigenously and they couldn’t migrate.
It was impossible.
“Kett,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. “Did I eat something funky, or is that a kelf?”
“She’s a kelf,” she said, as if he’d asked her what a particular kind of sausage was called.
“And…we’re still in Elvyrn?”
She sighed, her patience clearly short. “It’s a long story,” she said, and flicked her eyes irritably at Var, who continued to emit a low, rolling growl. “Can you shut him up?”
“It’s a kelf.”
“Yes, well done.” She turned back to the owner. “Look, you got big guys like that coming in here, straight off the river, ain’t seen a woman for weeks, of course they’re gonna cause trouble. You need to start standing up for your staff.”
The kelf watched her with a smile. “Giving legal advice, Kett?”
“Hardly. I’ve just had it with stupid men attacking stupid women. Do you need to be here?”
“You’re causing a breach of the peace.”
“Kett is a breach of the peace,” Bael muttered, and the kelf gave him a sharp look. He’d forgotten how acute their hearing was.
“And you are?”
“I am,” he replied.
“Bael, stop pissing around,” Kett snapped.
“It’s a kelf,” Bael said. “What the hell is it doing dressed as a garda?”
For the second time that day, the café went totally silent.
“She is a garda,” Kett said. “Moreover, she’s a sergeant.”
“And I could put you in the cells for that,” said the kelf.
“Just you fucking try,” Bael snarled, and Kett threw out her arm to hold him back.
The kelf continued to regard him calmly, its huge eyes unblinking. Bael swore at it and Kett’s expression grew stonier.
They avoided being arrested, mostly because the kelf seemed to be a friend of hers. Bael vaguely remembered Kett saying her father was a great friend of the kelfs, so maybe that was why.
But even after the traders had been sent on their way, the gardaí had dispersed and he and Kett released, he still couldn’t get an answer out of her about the kelf. Halfway up the hill toward Nuala’s, she snapped, “Look, you’ll have to ask Lya, all right?”
“Lya?”
“Detective Sergeant Lya. The kelf.”
“But how is it—”
“She.”
“All right, she. How is she here?”
“Ask her.”
“You know I hate kelfs.”
“Yeah, but why? And don’t give me that crap about them not liking Nasc. That’s no excuse to not like them back.”
“Bloody is.”
“Bloody isn’t, Bael.” She stopped to glare at him in the middle of the street. “Look, I’ve had enough of this. I knew you were going to react like this when she turned up. This morning you told me you’re a Nasc Mage. Well, you don’t fucking act like a Mage, you act like a child. And you wonder why I don’t want to be your mate. I don’t do children.”
With that, she spun on her heel and stalked off, leaving Bael slightly bewildered, not to mention a little turned on, because Kett stalking was a damn sexy sight.
But self-preservation kicked in and he realized that saying so would probably earn him a kick somewhere sensitive, so he walked after her at a slower pace, thinking.
* * * * *
He found her in her room, packing a kitbag with a few clothes and a lot of weapons. “Going somewhere?”
“Home.”
Okay. He sat down on the bed and watched. “Kett,” he said after a while. “Listen. I know you like kelfs, and your father is this great friend of theirs, but they just don’t like Nasc. Ask your cousin. They hate us.”
“What, every kelf hates every Nasc?”
“As far as I can tell, yes. They think we’re unnatural, that we mess with the natural order of things.”
“You mess with any kind of order,” Kett grumbled.
“You know what I mean. They serve humans, but they consider themselves better than animals. And we’re halfway between the two.”
“Shouldn’t that make you their equals?”
“You wanna sit down with a kelf and debate this? They cross the street to avoid us. They deliberately ignore our requests. And you saw that kelf in Nihon, it shot me—”
“You tried to pounce on it!”
“Yeah, but tell me this, if you or your friend Miho had pounced on it, would it have shot you?”
Kett just glared at him.
“They might not be violent toward humans—”
“A kelf would never hurt a human,” Kett said, as simply as if she was stating that grass was green.
“But they’d hurt a Nasc.”
“Only if provoked. Severely provoked.”
“One of them killed my mother,” Bael said—and Kett went very still for a moment.
“Impossible,” she said. “They don’t hurt—”
“Humans, yes, I know. But my mother wasn’t human, was she? She was Nasc.”
Kett folded a shirt, unfolded and refolded it, and then threw it down on the bed and stared at him.
Of course, Albhar had come up with a new theory, but Bael was having trouble believing him. Albhar wanted the shapeshifter for his own ends; if it really had killed Bael’s mother, he’d have said so years ago.
No, it had been the kelf. Bael was sure of it.
“It was serving my parents,” he said. “I never met it. I rarely spent much time with them when they were away—and they spent a lot of time away. All I knew was that my father sent word my mother had been killed in an accident. When he came home, he told me it had been their serving kelf. I believed him—hell, I’m a Nasc, kelfs have never been exactly kind to me—but no one else did.”
Kett sat down on the bed beside him and Bael reached for her hand. How could he explain this to her? She thought he had the emotional maturity of a child. Well, maybe he did, because he’d only been a child when his father had confided this bombshell news to him. And Bael had accepted, had believed, and a bond had been forged between them. The only bond they’d ever really had.
“My father and I were never close. I told you my parents were brilliant, always haring off all over the Realm, all over all the Realms, to investigate some phenomenon or other. They were both Magi, but since I didn’t demonstrate much talent they weren’t all that interested in me. When I told my father I believed him, it was the first thing we’d ever had in common. The first time he’d taken an interest in me. He used to sit there and go on about this treacherous kelf, and how stupid humans were to believe their innocent, friendly act. And I was just a kid, I didn’t even know any kelfs, so I agreed with him because…”
“Because you were a kid who wanted his father’s approval,” Kett said dully, and Bael shrugged.
“The thing was, I didn’t even like my father all that much. I barely knew him. Or my mother. But then…I don’t know, then I started to show some magical power and then he got really interested in me and…well, it was nice to have someone pay some attention to me, you know?”
“Bael, everyone pays attention to you. You’re like an inferno.”
“Thank you,” he said, choosing to believe this meant she thought he was extremely hot, not extremely unpredictable and destructive. “I think. But listen. I know everyone else thinks kelfs are great and friendly and helpful and everything, but you go and ask my king. They just don’t like us. And if you’ve spent your life being told that kelfs don’t like you, to the extent that one of them murdered your mother, then it’s hard to see them as nice, sweet little helpmates. Especially when they don’t do anything to persuade you otherwise.”