She didn’t hear the rest, simply eased out of the shadows and started to walk. Somehow, she knew they were discussing Val.
Grendel had lied. Stinking bastard. Of course he had. He would have loved anything that caused her pain.
Her brother was still alive.
But only for three more days.
Chapter Four
“What the fuck happened here?”
Tristan raised his eyebrow as Mathos added a belated, “Captain, sir.”
“Sergeant,” Tristan corrected half-heartedly, in total agreement with his friend. What the fuck had happened? In no way had he been prepared to find this kind of carnage.
The elegant manor home that he had played in as a child had been destroyed. Two walls had collapsed, and the roof was a blackened ruin of charred rafters. The kitchen garden was a trampled mess of uprooted plants still reeking of smoke.
He turned to Tor and Reece. “Go down to the local village, find someone who can tell us what happened.”
Keeping his face carefully blank, Tristan stepped through the splintered door into the main hall. It had been violently looted. Nothing whole was left, just torn tapestries and fire-ruined furniture tumbled in amongst fallen roof tiles.
He stepped through into the kitchen where there had once been a bustle of busy cooks and delicious smells. Now just broken glass crunching underfoot, and a single dented pot on the floor, lying in front of a massive, blackened, burned-out V that spread up most of the wall. The fire had started there.
A glance into the stillroom showed everything smashed, the strange smell of astringent herbs mixing rankly with the acrid stench of recent fire.
He had thought his heart completely immune to further pain. But the broken ruin of his childhood playground sent an unexpectedly vicious stab through him. He didn’t need to see the rest of the rooms to know that the house was destroyed. Didn’t want to see what had become of the bedrooms that he’d slept in as a boy. Or the sunny reception rooms where he and Val had mocked up epic battles.
He didn’t want to, but he did it. Forced himself to make a slow and thorough tour of the devastation. The final decimation of his childhood memories.
Voices outside broke through his thoughts, and he shook off the sentimental idiocy as he strode back out the house, into the cold, fresh air.
“I’ve found the cook.” Tor gently pushed a thickset, middle-aged woman forward as the rest of the squad stood listening nearby. He didn’t recognize her. Not surprising, given how many years it was since he’d been back.
The woman was visibly trembling, and Tristan gave her a moment to collect herself before asking, “What’s your name?”
“Tilda, sir.” She bobbed an uneven curtsey, hands fluttering against her belly as she rose.
He kept his own hands folded behind his back, nonthreatening, his face calm. “We’re not here to hurt you, Tilda. We just want to speak to you.”
“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”
“Where is everyone, Tilda?”
“Gone, sir.” She looked at him for a second and then away.
“Because of the fire?”
“No, sir. I mean, me and the stable boy, yes,” her voice wobbled, “but everyone else was gone already.”
Tristan’s scales slithered up his arms, under his vambraces and over his shoulders, but he kept his voice steady. “You can tell me, Tilda. Nothing will happen to you. The entire household was already gone?”
The woman seemed to relax slightly as she realized that he wasn’t planning any immediate harm and answered more thoroughly. “After the master was bedridden, the young mistress had to let them go to yon Tarasque baron. He took over as magistrat for the district, so the steward and the marshal and all the pages went to him. Actually,” Tilda looked at him more closely, “you have the look—”
“Thank you,” he interrupted in a stern voice, and she flinched away again. He didn’t need a reminder of the father he had spent his childhood hiding from. And didn’t need to be judged by the old man’s callous actions either. “Then what happened?”
Her wrinkled face collapsed into deeper lines of grief. “When we got the news—the news about young Lanval’s arrest. Well, it was too much for the master. His heart… He couldn’t….” She drifted into wet snivels.
“He died?” Tristan prompted.
