Liv shook her head. Her armor was intact, her shield only showing scorch marks from the cannon blast, but her head rang like she'd put on a bell-shaped helmet and let her pack go to town on it with hammers.

Another cannon blast swept over her. For a split second she could see each steel ball outlined in exquisite detail before they disappeared. She was caught in her bloodlust, but try as she might, she couldn't figure out how to move or to where—until a crystal clear voice cut through the din of battle.

"Roll to your left, you will have cover from the wall. Get up and use your shield to brace against the next blast." Elanor had no idea why she spoke, since the noise was such that anything short of a scream should be lost, but she felt the urge to speak regardless—like Sandwalker was guiding her. Her words were lost to shouts from within the room and another cannon when Hreti peeked around the corner, then his head was taken clean off by the next blast.

The hunger and need for violence still coursed in Liv's veins, but she could think on top of it. Bracing her shield with her left arm, she dug the sharpened adamantine claws of her right gauntlet into the wall. Another cannon sang, but she kept hold of her shield and kept it in position.

"Hreti's down. Do you think you can get back to us?" Elanor asked Liv, only realizing now how much she was leaning on Inspire Courage. "Use your Soldier skills."

Coming as a quasi command, Liv nodded her head and salved her annoyance with herself by remembering that Elanor had been hunting dungeons solo. When another cannon blast hit her shield, she felt the wall give. Wrenching at it with her shoulder, a huge chunk of stone came free. Liv's mind ran over all the abilities her training had given her, and she grinned savagely within her helmet.

Elanor heard another cannon blast, but this time there was an answering bellow from Liv and a worked piece of masonry that was easily as big as Elanor's torso flew past her and into the room. When shouts of panic echoed from within, Elanor used her ace in the hole and called on the kingdom to grant her its shield.

A huge, shimmering gold seal materialized in the doorway. Liv knew what it was, having seen Elanor use it in the city fighting twice. She rushed up to the edge of the doorway, ignoring the cannon blast that was wasted on the impenetrable defense. Inside the room, when Liv risked a glance, she saw three cannon crews and a line of riflemen. Cursing at the sight of the gun crews rapidly reloading two of the cannons, she smiled at seeing several lifeless riflemen. "How long can you keep this up?"

"Not long. Half a minute more."

"Brothers! Start throwing rocks in there!" Liv's shout, she hoped, would pull Njal and Trygve out of their shock, and it did. The three of them began rapidly disassembling the masonry, hurling it into the room at the visible riflemen and cannon crews.

The answer, almost every time a block was thrown in, was another cannon blast. Elanor called for a stop to the throwing as she felt her shield fading. The moment it was down, steel shot filled the gap in the doorway again. "How are we going to get past them?"

Without a rider, Penelope was circling high above the city of West Reaches. She was waiting for her signal from the keep, but Elanor's group seemed to be taking their time. While she soared, she watched as kingdom soldiers rounded up isolated groups of West Reaches guards.

The latest group of guards to be captured was a smaller one. Some riflemen and pikemen, or so she saw. The soldiers had confiscated their weapons and were loading them into a cart while others kept a close eye on the new captives.

Penelope's draconic vision made one of the prisoners in particular catch her attention. The way he moved, the way he looked around—for targets. Even the way he wore the armor of West Reaches. Old anger and rage flooded her. Her mouth opened of its own accord and thick acidic poison dripped out. "William."

Like the huge predator she was, Penelope stooped forward to dive on her target, but only two big heartbeats into the motion, she saw a set of ground-floor windows blow out in the keep's estate. It wasn't exactly the signal she'd been expecting, but revenge warred with her promise and she spread her wings to arrest the dive and swoop toward the keep instead.

She came in over the walls of the keep, landing in the garden close to the main mansion. This was no wartime fortress, but a place of opulence and beauty. She landed against the side of the building, keeping herself from view of anyone inside, and poked her snout far enough toward the opening to see within. Inside, she saw a cannon fire and a golden shield that could only belong to Elanor.

The sight looked like a small slice of war. Two cannon crews were taking it in turns rapidly reloading their guns. One had what looked to Penelope like a piece of flagstone jammed into its barrel. There were a dozen dead riflemen, and behind them all was a man in far too fancy clothes, decked out in jewelry, reloading pistols.

Calculating her breath would ruin Stewart and Elanor's plan to drag David Fitzgerald out to be executed, she sighed to herself and dove head-first into the room, clamping her jaws around the nearest two guards reloading a cannon. Twisting her neck, she threw them back out behind her.

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The shouting from the room got Liv's attention. When another cannon shot rang out, and there was nothing but screams to replace it, she made her decision. "Charge!"

When she rounded the corner, Liv saw that the soldiers had turned their cannon away from the doorway. Rifles sounded, echoing off the walls of the big room she was entering, their small steel balls pinging off her armor.

Trygve managed to beat Liv into the fray, bringing his huge adamantine axe down on the cannon that was still functional—slicing clear through the breach and spilling its charge onto the ground. He released his grip on the axe and drew a pair of smaller hatchets and began setting about him with them, cutting the gun crew up like a mad butcher.

Penelope had the dragon's share of the attention. Bullets hit her from the remaining riflemen, though few enough did more than score her scales. Raking with one arm, she relieved the room of several more defenders and those defenders of their lives. The former marquess had retreated to the far corner, lifting two pistols to aim at her.

Liv was on the last defenders before they could do more than acknowledge her presence. She skewered one with her spear and punched the other hard enough for an audible crack of their neck to signal an end to their part in the fight.

David, with no one else to stand between himself and the monsters sent to capture him, aimed both pistols at Liv's head and fired. One ricocheted off, flying out the window after being robbed of most of its velocity. The second entered Liv's helmet.

Skimming down her muzzle, the steel ball scored and damaged scales as it went. When it wasn't able to immediately penetrate the tough scales, it began bouncing off the inside of her helmet and thoroughly pissing off the draconic wolf woman. Reaching out, she locked her hand around David's neck and lifted.

It was over. David slumped in Liv's grip, dropping his guns and waiting for the crushing pressure of her huge hand to finish him.

"Liv, stop!" Elanor felt her Inspire Courage reach again and calm Liv down. When Liv didn't go on to rip David's head off, Elanor strode across the carnage to look up at her uncle as he struggled to get out of Liv's grip. "By the authority of the King and the kingdom, David Fitzgerald, formerly marquess of West Reaches, you are our prisoner and will accompany us to your judgment."

Ceasing his futile efforts to remove the hand from his throat, David held to Liv's wrist and bought himself enough leverage to breathe. "I do—on't re—"

"Liv, please put him down," Elanor said, drawing her pistol loaded with gold rounds. When David was standing on his own feet, and coughing, she realized how small a man he was. Always before, he'd seemed huge. Now David was tiny compared to Liv. "When you can speak, continue."

Rubbing his throat, David eyed the huge monster of a soldier beside him, then looked at his niece. She looked hard and unforgiving. Not that he could blame her. "This was all my doing."

West Reaches whined at the staunch exclamation. To have David take all the blame felt like the lowest she'd sunk in over a century. "It's—"

"No!" David glared at Elanor. "Kill me now. I have no talismans. Leave West Reaches out of this!"

"I will not kill you now or later. West Reaches, you stay out of this. David, if you fight this, the city will fall. Do you understand?" The relief Elanor saw in David's eyes spoke of a misplaced devotion, or so she saw it. When he nodded, almost absently, she felt relieved too. "Then come on."

Leading the way out the window and leaving the escorting of David to the wolves, Elanor was surprised to see Penelope looking agitated—prancing from foot to foot, wings spread, and dripping acid from her jaws. "Something wrong?"

"William is here, in the city. I saw him!" Penelope dug her claws into the carefully cultivated garden under her and ripped it asunder. "I want to—"

"Who is William?" Elanor asked, and turned her head back to Liv to shake her head and point to the front gate they'd come in.

Pacing alongside Elanor, Penelope spat into a nearby bush, the poor thing wilting immediately as a result. "He shot me and left me for dead in a dungeon!" Creating a path of destruction that no plant survived was only a small fraction of the fury Penelope wanted to unleash.

"And what would you do to him now? Kill him?" Elanor asked. "If you wished it, I am sure Stewart would serve the man's head on a platter for you."

That stopped Penelope for a moment. She tried to absorb that—that she could just ask for a man to be killed. When she began walking a moment later, it was far less destructive. "I almost died. They subverted my talismans, shot me in a new dungeon, and left me for dead."

"Sir Travis?"

His name cooled Penelope's rage further. She slumped her shoulders and tucked her wings to her back. "Yeah. Ugh, nothing can be straightforward, can it? He and Peter are assholes and deserve to die without talismans of their own, but if they hadn't pulled that on me, I wouldn't have met Travis." The name—his name—evoked so many emotions for Penelope that warred with her seething anger.

"All said and done, even if you find the outcome favorable, they committed attempted murder." Elanor didn't push the issue of getting a ride, what with them almost being at the destroyed gate already.

"But…" Musing on the statement, Penelope found what she thought was the obvious loophole. "… I have no proof they did it."

Elanor laughed at that and shook her head. "You really think Stewart wouldn't take the word of a Lady of the Court and a knight over that of a pair of commoners?" When Penelope didn't laugh back, she let out a sigh. "Life is very different as a noble. Your word counts as law for those under you, unless there is absolute proof against you."

Penelope already knew this, of course, but she had only ever seen it done from the commoner side of the interaction. "I hate that I can do this."

"Don't. Just make sure you only do it when you are certain of your word." Elanor reached her hand up and patted Penelope's shoulder. She glanced back at David. The man looked relieved and resigned. Keeping her voice pitched low enough that only Penelope could hear, she said, "I don't doubt that West Reaches was involved in this more than either is saying, but we have a job to do and as much as I want to get to the bottom of it, his head has a date for the cutting block and we need West Reaches intact."

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