Her father was watching her. She gave a shrug. “I really ain’t got a clue.”
Tyrnan gave her a shrewd look. “
“
“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.
“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
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.
