Light My Fire. G.A. Aiken

is this not your fault?”

      “It simply slipped my mind. I have a lot of things to worry about and some female who attempted to kill my queen was not exactly top of my list. And I don’t need to hear this from you, sister.”

      “If she’s dead or damaged—”

      Celyn halted in the middle of the courtyard they were now in and faced his sister. “Please stop.”

      Brannie blinked and gazed up at him, her smile fading. “Gods, Celyn . . . you feel terrible about this.”

      “Wouldn’t you? I mean”—Celyn rubbed his once-again-throbbing forehead—“she tried to kill my queen. But I did mean to go back for her. I just . . . I forgot.”

      Brannie placed her hand on Celyn’s shoulder. “Brother, you can’t blame yourself for this. She was an assassin.”

      “Not a very good one.”

      “That doesn’t change anything,” Brannie said on a laugh.

      “Still, if anything has happened to her at the hands of those humans . . .”

      Brannie took his arm. “Come on.”

      “Where to?”

      “Where do you think? To get your sad little assassin.” She tugged his arm. “Don’t walk, brother! Run!”

      And they did. All the way to the jail.

      Chapter Seven

      Branwen the Awful—a name she was immensely proud of because her own mother had given it to her after a particularly brutal battle—pulled open the jail door and walked inside, her brother behind her. The building wasn’t very large, but Annwyl kept control of crime with the fear of her wrath. Those who went beyond some mild stealing, ended up executed faster than they could imagine.

      Well-lit and relatively clean, this jail didn’t stink of death and pain like many others Brannie had been to over the years. There were no guards at the front. And no one was manning the wood desk.

      With her hand on the hilt of her sword, Brannie slowly and carefully made her way down the hall toward the cells. She didn’t bother to turn to see if her brother followed suit. Battle readiness was trained into each Cadwaladr offspring from hatching. Being close in age, Brannie and Celyn had been trained together by their older siblings, cousins, and mother, while their father, however, had patiently taught them how to read and write.

      Brannie held up her hand to halt her brother and tilted her head to the side to hear a little better. But she needn’t have bothered. A burst of raucous male laughter had Brannie charging down a hall filled with cells. She turned a corner and quickly stopped, holding out her arm to again halt her brother.

      At least ten well-armed guards stood outside the doorway of the last cell at the end of the hall. They had their backs to Brannie and Celyn, busy being entertained by whatever nightmare was going on inside that room.

      She silently indicated to her brother how many men she saw and that they were all armed. They both eased their weapons from their scabbards and moved down the hallway toward the laughter.

      Brannie locked on to the one who would be her first victim. He wasn’t the biggest, but she could tell from the way he stood, he was the best trained among them.

      Holding her blade in both hands, she raised it high near her shoulder and centered her body so that when she was ready, she could charge with ease. But before she could take that next step, her brother caught her shoulder, his fingers briefly gripping and releasing. Together, the pair walked up behind all those guards. Brannie went up on her toes to look over the tallest of the human males; her brother didn’t have to bother.

      Is that her? she mouthed to her brother. And Celyn nodded.

      Brannie blinked and looked again.

      Pale-skinned with bright blue eyes and long, pale-blond hair that reached down her back, she wore a shirt and leggings made from deerskin, and fur boots. The woman had one leg pulled up onto the chair she sat upon and one arm wrapped around her calf. The other hand held a mug of ale as she regaled the men who were supposed to be guarding her.

      “Another,” one of the men begged.

      “All right,” she said. “One more from before the time of the first Anne Atli. The story of Olezka Tyushnyakov.”

      “How do you pronounce these names?” one of the men laughingly asked.

      “He was very big man,” she said in what Brannie knew to be a very thick Outerplains accent. “Arms like chest of oxen. Legs like stumps of trees. And strong. He could take sword made of hardest steel and break it between his giant hands. Many said he had no heart, he had no soul. But he did. All men do. But Olezka did have weakness.”

      “Women?” one called out.

      “Ale?” called out another.

      “Too obvious.” She leaned in, glancing around as if she was about to tell them a deep, dark secret—and the men leaned in with her. She had their absolute attention and it wasn’t simply because she was a woman. “Kittens.”

      The men reared back. “Kittens?”

      “Kittens. Little, fluffy kittens. He adored them. Had hundreds, all around his hut. He had many wives, but they all hated him because of the damn kittens. So much fluffy fur. Impossible to clean.”

      “Well . . . what happened?” one of the men pushed.

      “He went out hunting one day and when Olezka Tyushnyakov returned, he found his children crying, some of his wives dead . . . but what made him truly angry? His kittens were dead.”

      The men, these guards, gasped in horror. Brannie looked at her brother, but all he could do was shrug.

      “So what did he do?” a guard asked.

      “He knew who had done this to him.”

      “Who?”

      “His brother.” More gasps. “And because it was someone who had once been close to him, his rage . . . it could not . . . would not be contained. He exploded and laid waste to an entire region. He left no one alive. Not man. Not woman. Not even child. They all burned.” She raised one finger. “All except his brother . . . he wanted the man to see just what he had wrought. And the kittens.” Her head tilted a bit as she let this last part sink in. “He protected all the remaining kittens.”

      Brannie bit her lip to stop from laughing out loud, and Celyn’s eyes rolled so far back into his head, she feared they would stay that way forever.

      Slipping his weapon into his scabbard, Celyn waved his sister back and stepped forward, clearing his throat. Glaring, all the guards faced him, separating a bit when they saw the size of her brother.

      He gave his most charming smile as he stood outside that cell.

      “Hello,” he said, his voice lower than she’d heard it in a long while. “Remember me, little human?”

      And, apparently, the storyteller did remember Brannie’s brother, based on the way that pewter mug the human had been drinking from spun out of the cell and slammed right into Celyn the Charming’s forehead.

      Celyn gripped his forehead, which now throbbed ten thousand times more than it had less than a minute before. The hysterical giggling of his sister not helping matters one bit.

      “What the hell—?” he roared.

      “You!” the evil wench accused. “Dragon! Left me here to die!”

      “Vicious harpy of hell—”

      “Left me to rot. In this cell!” She got to her feet, kicking her chair behind her. “And now you return. For what this return? To see my suffering? To relish in it?”

      “What suffering?” Celyn demanded.