Outside, someone yelled a command, and a hail of arrows came in through the high windows. Annoyed, Kett manifested a pair of wings, grabbed the Maharaja and flew up there.
The big courtyard was full of soldiers. Rank upon rank of them filled the space, crammed into every corner, jammed up against the walls. Weaponry glinted in the sunlight.
The silence was intense.
Kett held the Maharaja in front of her, leaning away from his wriggling body and kicking legs. “Shoot again and you might hit him,” she shouted.
“Kill them!” he squealed to his soldiers. “Kill them all!”
“If we die, you die,” she told him, and dropped him the ten or so feet to the tiled floor of the throne room. He landed with a crack and howl, at which the concubine let out a cry.
Kett landed by the fallen ruler and aimed her stolen sword at him.
She let her disguise slide away.
“You were the one who handed me over to Albhar, weren’t you?” she asked. “You told him where I lived.”
“I’m sorry!” he cried, sobbing like a child.
“Yeah, me too. I should do to you what Var did to him.”
The Maharaja looked up, fear and tears staining his face. Kett gestured to Var, who padded over and rested one bloody paw on the Maharaja’s chest.
The Maharaja fainted. The concubine whimpered.
“I’m not going to kill him,” Kett said in disgust.
“You’re not?” asked Bael, looking disappointed.
“No. I just want to do this.” She kicked the man over onto his stomach and slashed the back of his thigh, hamstringing him.
“Poetic,” said Bael.
“I thought so.”
Something heavy hit the main doors, its thud reverberating throughout the throne room. Dust shimmered from the rafters.
“How long, do you think?” Dark asked.
The ram hit again. Thud.
“Long enough for the army to get here?” Bael ventured.
Thud. The furniture piled up in front of the doors started to wobble.
“Better be,” Kett said. She picked up the fallen ruler and placed him on the floor by his own throne, where the concubine cowered. “Make yourself useful.”
Thud.
“Are we going to die?” the girl whimpered.
“Yes,” Kett said, and the girl burst into tears.
“I didn’t say today,” Kett sighed. “Stop his bleeding, will you? Use that sari, girl, there’re acres of it. Stop being so stupid.”
“But-”
Thud.
“I don’t want him to die,” Kett said. She looked at the face of the man who’d once been so kind to her. “He saved my leg but tried to sacrifice my life. Well, I’m sparing his life but sacrificing his leg. I think you’ll find that’s a better deal.”
Five minutes passed with little sound except the steady thud of the battering ram. The concubine, sobbing uselessly, tried ineffectually to bandage the Maharaja’s leg. Kett, irritated beyond belief, shoved her aside and did it herself, trying not to think about the irony.
Ten minutes went by and the door remained unbreached. The ram continued to batter it.
Fifteen minutes. The door began to splinter. A footstool, then a small chest, then a table toppled from the barricade. Bael readied his sword and with his free hand reached for Kett, twining his fingers wordlessly with hers.
They faced the doors in silence.
A shout came from outside, then another, and then the noise swelled to a deafening pitch. Men yelled orders to fire. To advance. To defend.
“They’re here,” Lya said.
The door burst open.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Flying splinters of wood shot toward the group in the throne room, and they all ducked. To her credit, the concubine covered the Maharaja’s body with her own.
Kett spun quickly, pressed the briefest of kisses on Bael’s lips, then her hand left his and grabbed the nearest piece of wood. She hurled it at the breached door. It was a token gesture, but it stopped one man in his tracks.
Behind the rushing onslaught of soldiers, a battle raged. Darson’s battalion had gotten here in time.
The trick now would be escaping.
Soldiers surged forward like the tide into a suddenly wide channel. Spilling through the door they charged, swords raised, toward the short line of two big cats, three humans and a kelf.
The first men reached the six defenders and the tide broke with a clash. Var and Véan leapt forward, roaring in a spray of blood. Dark swung his sword in a high arc, bringing it down and then sideways to take out two men at once. Lya ducked, getting in close and using her shorter blades with the confidence of someone whose skin couldn’t be cut.
Kett leapt forward, relishing the fierce rush of battle, but even as she moved, her body taking over automatically, she became aware of the man beside her.
Bael fought like a dervish.
A blade in each hand, he whirled and spun, slicing out low to cut down a soldier with one hand then swinging the other over to take out another. The momentum of the first cut took his sword around and up, into a third man. As a fourth swung his blade at chest height, Bael dipped backward, graceful as a dancer, and plunged his sword into the man’s chest.
He took down four men in as many seconds.
He moved in a never-ending ballet of death, the swords in his hands like extensions of his own body, fluid as water, and Kett’s heart picked that moment to tell her she was in love.
She heartily concurred.
Swinging away, fresh determination singing in her veins, she cut and swung and slashed, taking few hits and delivering many. All the time, the six of them moved backward, toward the throne where the Maharaja lay cradled in the arms of his concubine. She cowered away from the fighting, tears staining her beautiful face.
Kett ignored her and shoved her sword into the belly of an oncoming soldier. He twisted as he fell, taking her sword with him. Another man rushed at Kett and she ducked, deflecting him but losing her chance to regain her blade. Left with only her knife, she cut and slashed three more men to create a space before crouching and leaping into the air, spinning over and over as she changed her shape.
Lion’s paws, eagle’s beak and claws, one of her favorite shapes for fighting.
The sight of a gryphon where a woman had previously been startled several soldiers, gaining Kett the seconds she’d lost in changing her shape. She went into a dive, slashing with her front claws and swinging her head around, her beak cutting through the carotid artery of one man while her back foot kicked out, ripping the face off another.
Leaping, flying, twirling, Kett danced in the air the way Bael danced on the ground. Var, still tiger-shaped, rolled and leapt, his huge paws tipped with claws that could kill with a single blow.
They passed the throne. The small door was in sight. Kett knew timing was critical. If she opened it too early, someone could come through from the other side or get around behind them. Too late, and they’d be backed into a corner.
Fifteen feet away. Twelve. Nine.
At six feet, Kett soared through the air, grabbed the wooden barricade and yanked it free with her back paws. Dark, man and beast, was closest, and both his forms rushed through it. Lya darted after him. In the corridor ahead, someone screamed. On the far side of the room, Darson’s red-coated men flooded in, the tide rapidly turning in their favor.
They were winning. They’d won.
“Bael!” Kett yelled to her mate, who was about ten feet away, but it came out as an eagle’s screech.
Bael spun, one sword high and one low, taking out three men at the same time, then swung both swords in front of him in flashing circles, clearing his path to her. His eyes gleamed.
“Fun, huh?” he said-and then froze, doubled over in sudden pain.
No one had touched him. His head snapped around to where a soldier was yanking his sword free of Var’s flank. The tiger roared, trapped against the throne, and another sword slashed into him.