“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, followed 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.
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.