Mad, Bad & Dangerous

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 Federacion?”

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. “Federacion 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 Montana?” 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 Federacion.” 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, although 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.