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, followed by the other three. The darkness swallowed them almost immediately.
“Shouldn’t we send for the gardai?” asked a trembling Giselle.
“Verrick
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
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
The dragon fell too, and Eithne threw Kett to the ground as it crashed onto the terrace. The stones beneath Kett’s bruised body shook with the impact but her head came up immediately and she shoved her sister away, staggering over to the fallen body sprawled on the rubble.
It wasn’t a dragon anymore. It was a man, bruised and bleeding, his clothes ragged and his skin burnt.
It was Bael, and without thinking about what she was doing, Kett threw herself on him and wrapped her arms around him, sobbing in relief. He was alive. He was alive, not burnt to death or stabbed or shot, he was alive, still breathing-
“Kett?” Eithne asked doubtfully. “Who’s that?”
Ket looked down at the unconscious man in her arms, his clothes tattered and his skin smeared with blood, ash and dirt.
She pressed a gentle kiss to his temple. “The man who nearly killed me,” she said.
Chapter Seventeen
“It was an ambush,” Angie said, her pale hands wrapped around a cup of hot tea as she sat at the breakfast table. Small and white, wearing Beyla’s clothes and a blanket around her shoulders, she looked utterly lost in Nuala’s grand salon.
It was far too late for breakfast but none of them had risen much before noon. Angie had been the only one of their midnight visitors strong enough to get out of bed. Her father, Bill the landlord, had suffered severe burns but he was still alive, which was more than she could say for several of the other villagers Bael had brought south in the dragon cabin.
“A man came into the pub. An off-Realmer. Had an accent but I couldn’t tell you what. Long scar down his face, like this.” She traced a finger down her face. Kett forced herself to stay still.
“He said he was looking for the ranch, so Durgan and Olaf said they’d walk him up there. And then we…we heard this screaming…”
Her knuckles were white. Angie had witnessed her fair share of pub brawls, had even helped break up a few, but right now she looked as if she’d seen hell.
“We went up there…some of the regulars and me, we thought maybe Olaf and Durgan’d had one too many, or maybe he was trying to rob them or something, we didn’t know. But then these men appeared…we didn’t even see where from…”
She dragged in a harsh breath. Kett couldn’t manage to look at anyone. Neither Olaf nor Durgan had been among the survivors.
“It was so instant. One minute they were running and the next they weren’t. Fast shots, right to the head. Must have been professionals. They seemed really determined to get up the road to the ranch. We all tried to hold them off, everyone in the pub came out to help, but there were too many of them and there were only five of us by then, and Jarven.” She looked up at Kett. “Bael said he’d brought Jarven here, is he…?”
“He’ll be okay,” Kett said. “Eventually.”
“He was amazing,” Angie said. “He can really fight. Was he a soldier once?”
Kett purposefully didn’t look at her parents or siblings, who all knew about the Order’s elite company of Knights. “A Knight,” she said truthfully.
“He fought them, but they really laid into him. And then-” She screwed her face up, her eyes closed. “Then I think one of them released the dragons. They kept saying…”
Angie opened her eyes and looked at Kett. “They kept saying they wanted you. That if we told them where the shapeshifter was they’d go. And by then everything was on fire, the dragons had blasted one of the cottages and it was spreading…and people were screaming…”
Nuala touched Angie’s arm and the younger woman sucked in a breath that was more of a sob. Kett nodded automatically but her brain was racing.
Bael’s men. She couldn’t deny it; the man with the scarred face haunted her. How had they moved so fast? How had they known where to go?
Bael’s men were Federacion.
“…must have hit me because I don’t remember anything else after that, until I woke up in their wagon, all tied up with the others. They kept demanding to know which one of us was the shapeshifter, but when we said you weren’t there they didn’t believe us.”
