by Cat Marsters
“…to your stepmother, I think. Kett? Can you hear me? Var will take you,” Bael said, and the smoke shifted as a green dragon hovered above her, wings beating away some of the heat and heavy, oppressive smog.
She shook her head. She wanted to stay, to help—this was her home and the villagers had been hurt because of her dragons and—
“You have to go,” Bael insisted. He kissed her lips very gently then said, “I’m staying here.”
With that, Var picked her up gently in one claw and Jarven in the other. His wings began to beat, and the dragon rose into the air, leaving Bael behind, surrounded by smoke and fire and death. Kett screamed and screamed, even after unconsciousness had claimed her again.
* * * * *
When she opened her eyes she was in a bed, drenched in sweat and with one of her sisters shaking her by the arm, calling her name urgently.
“Kett? Can you hear me?” It was Eithne, and she left Kett for a moment to rush to the door and shout, “Mama! She’s having some sort of fit!”
Kett lay there, breathing hard, staring up at the pale canopy of her bed. Her own bed in Nuala’s house. The room smelled the same as it always had, the damp linen was soft against her skin. The lamp burned low, casting a dull glow over familiar furniture.
The scent of smoke had vanished.
Nuala rushed in dressed in nightclothes, Tyrnan behind her. She felt at Kett’s forehead, shone a light into her eyes and repeated her name over and over until Kett snapped, “Of course I can bloody hear you. I’m not deaf.”
Eithne put her hand to her mouth.
“I was having a—a dream,” Kett said, her voice rusty. “That’s all.”
Nuala didn’t look convinced but after she’d checked Kett’s wounds, stuck a thermometer in her mouth and checked her eyes again, she was forced to conclude there was nothing terribly amiss.
“How long have I been here?” Kett asked. The clock over the fireplace showed it wasn’t far off morning.
“A few hours. Drink this,” Nuala said, holding out a glass into which she’d just tipped some powder. “Eithne, have you been giving her drinks every half hour?”
Eithne indicated a small hourglass by the bed. “Small sips of water, just as you said.”
“Maybe a little more from now on. You’ll be even more dehydrated now,” Nuala said to Kett, then turned to her husband. “Lift her up so I can change the sheets.”
“For gods’ sakes, Nuala, I’m fine,” Kett said, but her father picked her up anyway, as if she weighed absolutely nothing. Kett considered what she’d had to eat and drink in the last five days and figured that was probably about right.
“I can stand,” she said.
“No, you can’t,” said Tyrnan. “I haven’t seen you this bad since you came back to life.”
“Yeah, well, you didn’t look so hot then either,” Kett snapped. She attempted to fold her arms, which didn’t go very well. Her right shoulder was heavily bandaged. “Look, at the risk of asking a very trite question, how the hell did I get here?”
Her father smiled, although it was too tense to be convincing. “A dragon dropped you off in the garden,” he said. “Quite literally. You and Jarven. Who, incidentally, is in even worse shape than you are.”
Kett opened her mouth then closed it again. The smoke. The fire. Gods, had that actually been real? “Jarven? But—I was in Asiatica. With…Bael.”
Come to think of it, where the hell was Bael?
“Well, now you’re here. With Jarven. And both of you look like you’ve been set on fire.”
Fire.
Fear gripped her. “Is he—will he be okay?”
“Eventually,” Nuala said. “But I wouldn’t advise any dragon training for either of you for a while.”
Bed made—who knew her princess stepmother could do something so menial?—Kett was allowed to lie down again. “And Bael?” she asked.
Her parents and sister looked at each other. Cold dread spread through Kett’s body.
“We haven’t seen him, sweetheart,” Nuala said.
I’m staying here.
“Kett, what happened?” Tyrnan asked, and she closed her eyes, images of fire and smoke and strange pictograms dancing across her vision.
She’d been nearly dead from starvation, dehydration, infection, blood loss…
And yet she was still alive, and as healthy as if she’d had weeks of medical care.
“I have no idea,” she said honestly.
* * * * *
Two days later, close to fully healed but no closer to figuring out what her increasingly vivid dreams meant, so bored she contemplated going down to the gryphon paddocks and picking a fight just to see what would happen, Kett woke in an armchair in one of Nuala’s many drawing rooms. A fire flickered in the grate and someone had covered her with a blanket, but she was stiff from sleeping curled up and when she stretched, she hurt everywhere.
She’d been feeling better, much better than she ought to given only two days of rest. Nuala was so confused she’d even called Striker to see if he’d had a hand in Kett’s healing, but he denied all knowledge of it.
He was fairly interested in the fire at the dragon ranch, however. “Sounds like nice work,” he’d said, and laughed when Kett swore a blue streak at him.
She sat up straighter and ran her hand through her hair.
“Good morning,” her father said, and Kett looked at the clock in mild alarm.
Then she caught the sarcasm in his voice, realized it was past midnight and said, “Hah.”
It came out as a croak. Tyrnan grinned and went back to his newspaper.
Kett cleared her throat. “What are you still doing up?”
He shrugged. “I’m reading a very interesting editorial about the king’s views on immigration.”
Kett stared at him.
“Well, I could be,” he said defensively.
“Alternately, you could just ask him,” she said. “Him being your best friend and all.”
“That was the conclusion I came to,” Tyrnan said, and Kett peered closer to see he was reading the sports pages.
She smiled and rearranged her blanket, then looked up and realized her father was watching her.
“You looked cold,” he said, dropping his gaze. “And I remember when you got here, you were frozen solid. Nuala thought you were going to have frostbite. She thought you might lose your fingers.”
“I could always grow some more,” said Kett, wondering what, exactly, would happen to a shapeshifter who lost a limb or two.
“But someone had already patched you up.”
Just stay alive, sweetheart, just stay alive. “Yeah. Well.” She tugged at a fold of the blanket. “I don’t exactly remember.”
Tyrnan sighed. “You don’t remember, Jarven hasn’t regained consciousness long enough to be coherent—Kett, what the hell is going on? What happened in the mountains?”
Fire. Death. Pain.
And Bael is still there and if he hasn’t contacted anyone by now he’s probably dead.
And if he is dead, I don’t know whether I should cry or cheer because he ordered me to be locked up and starved and said he wanted to kill me.
Her father was watching her. She gave a shrug. “I really ain’t got a clue.”
Tyrnan gave her a shrewd look. “Did it happen in the mountains?”
“Is it any of your business?”
“Yes!”
“Why?”
“Because I’m your father, and I’ve seen you die once and I don’t want to do it again.”
“Fine, then I’ll die somewhere else next time.”
She glared at him, but he didn’t even have the grace to glare back. “Kett—” he began, then stopped. He rubbed his face, looking older than Kett remembered, and said, “I saw Lya earlier. She looked at those symbols you copied down from the cave. She says they’re kelfish pictograms but they don’t make sense. Like random words thrown together.”
Kett frowned. “I know I
copied ’em down right. And…” She hesitated, unsure how much to tell him when she wasn’t very sure how much she’d imagined in the first place. And I saw them crawling all over Bael’s naked body in my dreams didn’t sound like the musings of a sane person.
“Chance called me while you were asleep,” her father said. “She said Bael had contacted her a couple days ago, said he knew some mage or wizard who was conducting a ritual involving a Nasc and a shapeshifter, and he wanted to warn Dark and as many other Nasc as he could.”
“Kind of him,” Kett said. The scarred man. Bael’s eagerness to destroy the shapeshifter. Fire, dragons, blood, smoke. Her brain felt like soup. How much had she imagined?
A Nasc and a shapeshifter, strung up together in a cave. Symbols, fire, angry words and broken rituals.
How much had Bael been involved with his mentor’s plans?
“Kett,” Tyrnan began then stopped again, chewing his lip. “Was it the mage who did this to you?”
“Hah,” Kett said again, curling down farther under her blanket. “You could say that.”
“Could you?”
He was giving her that shrewd look again, and Kett wondered exactly when he’d started to give a crap about who did what to her.
“Look,” she said. Not that she cared about this, but she needed to change the subject. “Bael told me his mother was killed by a kelf. He said he’d been told this all his life. But then I heard his—his—” Her mouth twisted at the memory of Albhar, and she swallowed. “Then he was told it was a shapeshifter who’d killed her. Now, I reckon that was just a ploy to get him to bring me in, but—”
“He didn’t know you were a shapeshifter,” Tyrnan finished. “Did you kill his mother?”
“No! I’d never even met any Nasc before Chance brought Dark home.”
“But I don’t reckon it was a kelf, either,” Tyrnan said. “Only kelf who ever killed a human was Lya, and that was her old master.”
“Bael’s mother wasn’t human and— Wait a second.” Something was tapping on her brain, trying to get her attention. “Lya killed her old master?”
“Yeah. Come on, you’ve heard this a million times. He was beating on his kelfs, she snapped and beat him back and killed him. The rest of the kelfs threw her out, she couldn’t get a job with anyone else, so she ended up working for a wizard of some kind, and that’s how she got sent through the Wall.”
“A wizard,” Kett breathed, because that was the thought her tired brain was trying to hold on to. “A wizard…or a Mage?”
“Same thing, ain’t it?”
“The Nasc,” Kett said slowly, still working it out. “The Nasc…”
Tyrnan watched her, for once silent.
“A Nasc Mage is a…he’s a sort of…well, I don’t know what he’s supposed to be able to do, because as far as I can tell he can’t do anything useful, but Bael said his dad could, and his mum too, he said they were brilliant. He said…”
“Bael’s parents were magi?”
“Capital M. Like a title or something.” A title they’d done nothing to deserve. “And his mother died when he was a kid, his father not long after, and he said…he said he was told it was a kelf who killed his mother. And what if it was Lya?”
“She’d have said,” Tyrnan said firmly. Lya had been one of his closest friends for years. “She’d have said if she’d killed another human.”
“But Nasc aren’t human. Kelfs hate Nasc. They just don’t like ’em. Bael said it’s something to do with them upsetting the natural order of things, being half animal and half human.”
“But you get on all right with them,” her father pointed out.
“I ain’t part animal,” Kett said. “I can just look like one if I want.” She closed her eyes, trying to concentrate. “Prowler, listen. What if Lya was the kelf who killed Bael’s mother?”
“Or what if it really was a shapeshifter?” Tyrnan countered. “This happened—when? Twenty, thirty years ago?”
“Something like that. He didn’t say. Look, why would his dad lie to him about it?”
“Maybe he was mistaken. Or maybe a kelf was an easy target. You just said they don’t get on well with Nasc.” He hesitated. “Or maybe it was a shapeshifter pretending to be a kelf. Kett, it could have been your mother.”
She frowned. Galena Almet had, by all accounts, been a total lunatic. Even Tyrnan, a teenager so problematic he’d been kicked out of his own Realm’s army for blowing up too many things, had been a little apprehensive about her.
Not that he’d let it stop him.
“Well, if it was,” Kett said, “we’ll never know.”
“Lya might,” Tyrnan said, and she met his eyes. “She’ll still be awake, I’ll call—”
The house shook as if some giant hand had just punched it.
“The fuck?” Tyrnan shouted, leaping to his feet and reaching for a sword that wasn’t there. “Fucking bloody valet! ‘No sir, a sword belt would ruin the line of that suit, sir’. I’ll fucking murder him—”
The thump came again, something incredibly heavy smashing into the roof.
“Shut up and go see,” Kett said, trying to untangle herself from her blanket and summon the strength to stand up. Her father ran to the glass doors leading to the terrace and had just opened one when the door from the hallway opened and Beyla rushed in. She had a robe thrown on over her nightdress and a crossbow in her hand.
“Something hit the roof,” she said. “I couldn’t see what.”
The thump came again and this time was followed by a scraping sound. Something let out a terrible cry that tore through Kett’s hearing.
“Sounds like a dragon,” she said, and her heart clutched. A dragon, come to burn them just as it had burned Jarven’s ranch.
Var could be a dragon. Oh Gods, what if it was him? What if the whole mate thing had been an elaborate charade to get her to the castle? What if Bael’s involvement in the ritual wouldn’t kill him as it would her? What if—
“A wild dragon? This far north, in winter?” Beyla asked, forcing Kett to concentrate.
“Well, maybe someone from Koskwim’s riding one and they got into trouble,” said Kett, finally getting to her feet as her brother came in, also carrying a crossbow. Behind him came Eithne with two swords, and Nuala, slightly more sensibly accessorized with her medical bag.
Behind them trailed Tane’s girlfriend Giselle, looking terrified but hefting a candlestick, and Eithne’s boyfriend Verrick, who bore a sheepish expression and a garda-issue sword.
“Dad,” Eithne said, and tossed Tyrnan his sword. He caught it singlehandedly, twirling it with ease, and went out onto the terrace, followed by Beyla with her bow.
Kett stared at them all with astonishment. Tane she wasn’t surprised at—although she was impressed—but Beyla and Eithne were carrying weapons like they knew how to use them, and Tyrnan hadn’t batted an eyelid.
Something else hit the house, something heavier, and the scraping went on longer. Another thud, a smash, and then Tyrnan and Beyla darted back inside as something large dropped onto the lawn. It landed with a crash and someone screamed.
Someone outside.
“The servants,” Nuala gasped, because many of them had quarters at the end of the garden.
Tyrnan glanced back at them, a light in his eyes, and Kett caught a glimpse of the mad highwayman her father had been before he’d married a princess and started wearing suits.
“Bels, Tane, you’re with me. Eithne, stay here and guard the house. You,” he barked at Verrick, gesturing to his sword. “You know how to use that?”
“Yes sir.”
“Good. You’re with me too.” He ran his eyes over Giselle, clutching her candlestick and trembling, and dismissed her. To Verrick he added, “Bring that lamp.”
“I’ll come,” Kett said, but Nuala and Eithne held her back without much effort.
“Kett, you can hardly bloody stand, stay where you damn well are,” Tyrnan said as he strode out into the garden, follo
wed by the other three. The darkness swallowed them almost immediately.
“Shouldn’t we send for the gardaí?” asked a trembling Giselle.
“Verrick is a garda,” Eithne snapped.
The dragon bellowed again. Its claws scraped on the roof.
“It’s in pain,” Kett said. She started toward the door, caught Nuala’s disapproving look and said, “I’m only going to look.”
But she didn’t get far before Beyla shouted, “Mama, come quick, people are hurt.”
Nuala dashed outside, and without her restraining influence, Kett followed. Out in the garden she could just make out a big shape, a box perhaps, in the glow of the lantern. Nuala and the others were kneeling over a couple of fallen figures. A dragon cabin, Kett surmised. Someone from Koskwim with a sick dragon.
The problem with sick dragons was that sometimes they exploded.
She shuffled to the edge of the terrace, her leg aching like mad, the blanket still clutched around her shoulders, and peered up at the roof. The dark shape of the dragon crouched there, moonlight glinting off ragged scales seeming to shimmer in the darkness.
It let out a mournful cry.
“Wait,” said someone, and Kett looked down to see Eithne by her elbow. “See those gashes in its side? That’s the dragon that was here before.”
“Gashes?” Kett asked, distracted. “You can’t gash a dragon, it’s coated in scales that are— Before? What before?”
“It brought you,” Eithne said, and Kett stared up at the dragon. “See? Its wing is all ragged, no wonder it crashed into the house.”
The dragon shimmered again. Its shape wavered.
“What’s wrong with it?” Eithne asked.
“Get back,” Kett said, her voice hoarse. “Get back—”
The dragon let out a moan, shuddering, and lost its grip on the roof. Pantiles slid, smashing down onto the ground, and Kett began to tug her sister out of the way, giving up and letting the much faster Eithne drag her back as tiles and bricks cascaded onto the terrace.