by Cat Marsters
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.”
Chapter Eighteen
“They were my men,” said Bael. “All of them.”
Tyrnan snarled at him but it was Chance who spoke. “You told me they belonged to this ‘Albhar’,” she said, letting the quotes drop neatly around the name.
“No—well, they were my men, but they were acting on his orders,” he said emphatically. “I swear, not mine.”
“Swear on what?” asked Kett idly. She turned her head and looked down the table at him for the first time since they’d entered, and put steel in her voice. “Swear on what?”
She’d called the meeting at Nuala’s house, rendezvousing with Chance and Dark at the gate and summoning Lya from the guardhouse. Kett wasn’t entirely sure why she wanted the kelf there, but she couldn’t shake the idea that the symbols she’d seen scrawled in that cave were still important.
A shapeshifter, a Nasc and a ritual. It had to be related.
Her head throbbed with conflicting details. Bael had been strung up in the cave, but to what end? Was the ritual to benefit him—or to kill him? Were those men acting on his orders or Albhar’s?
He saved your life. But he also put it in danger.
A lifetime of distrust swirled around inside her head.
They’d ended up in what the butler had called the Second Breakfast Room, a
lthough Kett wasn’t sure if this was because Nuala habitually ate two breakfasts, or just liked to have a choice of rooms in which to eat one meal.
Her father, protesting that she was his bloody daughter and this was his bloody house, had invited himself. Kett, who knew full well it was really Nuala’s house, had let him. She’d have preferred to have Jarven present, if only to up the quota of People Who Weren’t Bael, but while her friend was conscious he was still very weak, and even if Nuala had let him out of bed, Kett didn’t want to risk it. Angie had come instead, wrapped in thick socks and a sweater, looking pale and tired. She’d gone white with shock on seeing her first kelf when Lya entered, but adjusted to her presence much more quickly than Kett had expected.
Striker had put in a not wholly unexpected appearance, being his usual unhelpful self. She could tell his presence made Bael uncomfortable, and was perversely glad.
“I’d swear it on my own life,” Bael said. His eyes met hers but she quickly looked away.
“Your life don’t mean much right here, right now,” Kett said. “Are any of those men still alive?”
He shook his head. “Var took care of them,” he said, and Angie’s knuckles went white. “But there are more of them. I had about twenty knights and probably a hundred more men who could be called to arms, and that’s just at the Vyiskagrad house.”
“How many houses do you have?” asked Chance.
“About a dozen. One less than this time last year,” he said with a tight smile. “Not all of them are so well staffed, but if Albhar wanted, he could probably pull together…maybe a hundred knights, and five times as many indentured men.”
“Why do you need so many armed men?” Tyrnan asked. His expression was hostile, and had been ever since Kett had announced to them that Bael’s men had been the ones to attack Jarven’s ranch.
A stab of guilt plagued her. She probably shouldn’t have said it with such certainty, but she was so hurt, so angry and so upset she couldn’t think straight.
“Man’s got to defend what’s his,” Bael said, his eyes on Kett. She could feel his gaze, even if she wasn’t looking at him. “My parents were rich. My mother especially. I have no brothers or sisters, everything came to me.” He was silent a moment, then said, “I was raised by a man named Albhar Danziran. He’s a human Mage of relatively small talent, but he was a friend of my father’s, and brought in to try to tutor me in magic.”
“You got any skill in magic?” asked Tyrnan critically.
“No,” said Striker, before Bael could answer. He was staring right at Bael, and Kett was annoyed to see Bael wasn’t even squirming. “He’s got potential but no skill. No practice. A blunt instrument.”
“Surprised you didn’t suck power from him,” Chance said.
Striker shrugged. “I would have, if he’d had any.”
“I didn’t come into any power until I was a teenager,” Bael said.
Dark was frowning. “You have magical power? What is your animal?”
Bael took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “It’s everything,” he said. “Var changes with my mood. He can be whatever I need.”
Bael closed his eyes, tensed, and his shape blurred. From it flowed another creature, a small domestic cat who sat on the table.
It was perhaps a measure of the weirdness of the people in Kett’s life that not one of them seemed to think this was odd.
The cat blurred and became a rabbit. Then a small dog. Nothing big, Kett realized. Nothing threatening. Maybe Var was too weak and tired to be anything bigger. Or maybe he was doing it on purpose.
“You really are a Mage,” Chance breathed. Bael gave a bare nod. He reached out to stroke Var, who climbed into his lap and pressed close like a frightened puppy.
Tyrnan didn’t look impressed. “I thought being able to change your animal was something only Nasc children could do,” he said.
“Children and Magi,” Dark rumbled.
“It’s really the only Mage power I have,” Bael said.
“I didn’t think there were any,” Dark said. “After the death of…they were your parents, weren’t they?”
Bael nodded again. He glanced in Kett’s direction. “Albhar told me a shapeshifter killed my mother,” he said.
“Can’t make his mind up, can he?” Kett replied tonelessly, determined not to lose her cool like she had in the bar. “I’d never even met your mother.”
“Yes, I know that now, but then, I didn’t—”
“It doesn’t matter,” she cut in. “It ain’t important. What’s important is that your men killed half my villagers.”
Here Angie flinched, and Chance touched her hand reassuringly.
Kett went on relentlessly. “And they hurt plenty more. And Jarven.” Her fingers curled into her palm. Jarven might be a taciturn old bugger, but he was family. She’d known him longer than she’d known anyone else at this table.
“Did you know they were going to attack?” Chance asked Bael.
“No. I swear I had no idea. I thought we’d lose them once we got off-Realm. I didn’t honestly think they’d be able to trace me much farther than they could see me. I only stopped to heal Kett. Apart from that, I was moving pretty fast and leaving no tracks.”
“Then maybe this Albhar’s got more talent than you give him credit for,” said Striker.
“Or maybe you were lying,” Chance said, looking very much like her father. “You told us to warn as many Nasc as we could find. You knew we’d be a long way away from the mountain ranch, that the only person there capable of defending himself was Jarven who, let’s face it, is not in the first flush of youth anymore.”
“I didn’t attack anyone!”
His queen’s eyes were glacial. “No, you sent someone else to do it, like a coward.”
“I didn’t send anyone,” Bael cried. “Your majesty—you believed me before!”
“Before,” Chance said, her beautiful face hard and cold as a statue. “Before you violated the bond between you and your mate.”
Bael’s eyes closed and his lashes looked damp. “She’s not my mate,” he said quietly.
“Too right,” growled Tyrnan.
“What was it even for?” Chance demanded ruthlessly. “Gain Kett’s sympathy? Play the hero? Or were you just out for revenge?”
“Was it Jarven?” Kett asked, before Bael could answer.
His eyes flew open. “No! Why would I attack Jarven?”
“Jealousy,” Tyrnan said.
“What? No! For fuck’s sake, I didn’t know they were going to attack the village. I had no idea. Thingy, you,” he pointed wildly to Angie as Var growled anxiously on his lap, “you said they were looking for Kett.”
“They said they were looking for a shapeshifter,” Angie whispered.
“Why did they want Kett?” Tyrnan asked.
“For this ritual of my father’s,” Bael said wearily. Var licked his fingers comfortingly. “Albhar’s obsessed with it. That’s why he told me a shapeshifter had killed my mother,” he added, “so that I’d bring one in.”
“The ritual demands a shapeshifter?” asked Chance.
“A shapeshifter and a Nasc.” Bael looked at Kett again. Again she looked away. “That’s what he was trying to do when…when we first met.”
Kett’s head snapped round. “The ritual that killed everyone but you and me?” she scoffed. “Bit of a shitty ritual.”
“Well, maybe it went wrong. He’s not that great a Mage.”
“No wonder he never taught you anything,” Kett sniped.
“Agreed,” said Bael, with a faint smile. “But—”
“A shapeshifter and a Nasc?” piped up Lya, her kelfish voice high and melodious. Everyone looked at her. “Is it a ritual for absolute power?”
There was silence.
“How do you,” Bael asked, his voice low, “know about the ritual?”
“Your mother was obsessed with it. Well, I assume she was your mother, unless there were other female Nasc Magi around about
twenty years ago.” She glanced at Dark, who shook his head. “And she was mated to a male Nasc Mage too. He had a lot more power than her. She wanted more. So she found this ritual, an ancient ritual. Part of the prophecies about our god. It was written in kelfish runes. That’s why they hired me, to translate it.”
A terrible suspicion formed in Kett’s mind. A kelf killed my mother. “Can you remember it?”
Lya nodded. “You’re going to ask me to write it down, aren’t you?” She made a face, sighed and took a notepad from her pocket. With a sideways glance at Striker, she added, “But please destroy it afterward. Words have power to kelfs, especially words like this. If they’re left written, even if no one reads them, they have power. They…they warp and control.”
“Did you destroy the copy my parents had?” Bael asked, his voice hoarse.
“No. They’d already sent me through the Wall by then.”
“His parents sent you through the wall?” Tyrnan asked, amazed. “You said it was a wizard.”
“Wizard, Mage…what’s the difference?”
Bael rolled his eyes.
“You never told me you worked for a Nasc!” Tyrnan said.
“Well, who else would have me? I killed a human.”
“Did you kill my mother?” Bael asked sharply.
“No. I killed a man named Grevlick, who owned a forge in Skavsta, and who beat and starved his kelfs.” She fixed Bael with a steely look. “You can’t break the skin of a kelf, but beatings hurt all the same.”
Bael glanced at Kett, then down at the table.
Lya frowned at the piece of paper she’d been drawing on then looked up. “Here. This describes the ritual. There’s a chant to be said, but I haven’t written it.” She paused, glancing at Striker.
“Oh please,” he said. “I got more power in my eyelashes than I could get from any bollocky kelf ritual.”
Kett held out her hand for the pad and when she got it, stared in shock.
“These symbols,” she began, and looked up at Lya.
“Tyrnan asked me about some of them. But not in the right order, not with the right…context.”
“They were on the walls of the cave. In Nihon. And…” Kett paused, and Var climbed off Bael’s lap and trotted down the table toward her, his claws clicking on the polished wood.
