“Then why tell me at all?” I asked.
“Because I enjoy watching you and your father rip into each other like two feral cats thrown into the same bag. If one of you kills the other, the world will be better off.” Nick smiled. “Give him hell, Sharrim.”
Mahon pounded his fist on the table. The wood thudded like a drum. “You will keep a civil tongue in your mouth when you speak to my daughter-in-law!”
“Your daughter-in-law is an abomination,” Nick told him.
Mahon surged up. Raphael grabbed his right arm. Curran grabbed his left.
“That’s right, hold back the rabid bear,” Nick said. “This is why the world treats you like animals.”
I jumped onto the table, ran over to Mahon, and put myself between him and Nick. “It’s okay. He runs his mouth because he can’t do anything else.”
Nick turned around and walked out of the room.
Curran strained, flexing. “Sit down, old man. Sit down.”
Finally, Mahon dropped back into his seat. “That fucking prick.”
Raphael collapsed into his chair.
I sat on the table between the plates. Bernard’s manager would have a cow, but I didn’t care. Holding Mahon back took everything I had.
Ghastek and Rowena stared at me.
“Did you know?” I asked.
Ghastek shook his head. “They don’t notify us of what he does.”
“What are you going to do?” Desandra asked.
“We’ll have to go and get him,” I said. I’d rather eat broken glass.
“That degenerate?” Raphael asked. “Why not leave him there?”
“Because Roland can’t take people out of the city whenever he wants to,” Curran said. His face was dark. “And that asshole knew that when he brought the pictures.”
“You should’ve let me twist his head off,” Mahon said. “You can’t let people insult your wife, Curran. One day you’ll have to choose diplomacy or your spouse. I’m telling you now, it’s got to be your wife. Diplomacy doesn’t care if you live or die. Your wife does.”
CHAPTER
2
THE BATTERED CORPSE of I-85 stretched in front of me, winding into the distance, flanked by trees. Brilliant blue sky rose high above it, suffused with sunshine. It was barely six and already the temperatures threatened to slide into the nineties. It would be one hell of a hot day.
I glanced behind me at the ten mercenaries parked by Curran. They came in all shapes and sizes. Eduardo towered over everyone except Douglas King, who was enormous, six five, with shoulders that wouldn’t fit through the door and legs like tree trunks. Douglas shaved his head, because he felt he wasn’t communicating his badassness well enough, and he painted what he claimed to be magic runes on his scalp and the side of his face in black camo paint. The runes were bullshit. I had told him that before. He didn’t care.
Next to him, the five-foot-tall Ella seemed even smaller. Perfectly ordinary, with brown hair about an inch longer than her shoulders and a pretty, pleasant face, which was usually free of makeup, she would’ve been at home in a sandwich shop or a vet’s office. People tended to underestimate her. Petite and wicked fast, Ella liked the wakizashi and she cut things to ribbons with it.
The rest of the mercs fell between these two extremes: lean and bulky, tall and short, some carrying blades, others carrying bows. They were Curran’s elite team, the nucleus around which he was building the new Guild.
He’d formed this team when he took a job everyone in the city turned down. Even the Red Guard had bowed out. The Four Horsemen, the Guild’s best team, straightout called it suicide. Curran and I took the gig, Eduardo threw in his lot with us, and somehow the Guild coughed up nine people crazy enough to join us and good enough to live through it. We got the job done, the Guild’s gigs doubled overnight, and the ten of them got a certain reputation. They were the Guild’s best of the best and after that job, they would die for Curran.
Neither of us had a good feeling about the upcoming conversation with Roland. Curran would stay behind. First, it would make the negotiations easier. Things would get heated, and given that my father and my fiancé got into pissing matches over which way the wind was blowing, it would be better to handle this one by myself. And second, if something happened to me, Curran was the only one who could hold the city and possibly get me back out.
He would try. If things did go sour, he would sprout fangs and claws and march his team of hard cases brandishing savage weapons into Lawrenceville to try to pry me loose from my father’s grasp. I had to make sure it didn’t come to that, because it wouldn’t end well for everyone involved.
I leaned over to Curran and kissed him. His arms closed around me and he squeezed me to him for one bone-crunching second.
“I’m off.”
“I’ll be right here,” he said.
“Have fun with your A-team. Sharpen some knives. Clean some guns. Don’t kill anybody while I’m gone.”
“I can’t make any promises.”
I climbed into Cuddles’s saddle. The black and white mammoth donkey twitched her ears.
“I’ll tell dear old Dad you’re sorry you missed him.”
Behind Curran, Eduardo snorted.
Curran bared his teeth. “Not as sorry as he’ll be if I have to come and see him.”
“Hey, Daniels,” Ella called out. “Bring us back some cookies.”
“What makes you think there will be cookies?”
“When I go home to see my parents, there are always cookies.”
If Roland did have cookies, they’d probably make me spit fire. “I’ll see what I can do.”
I started down the road. In its glory days I-85 was a giant of an interstate road, six regular lanes and two express lanes on each side. The magic had fed the tree growth. The pavement crumbled at the edges under the relentless onslaught of magic waves, making it easier for the roots to raise the asphalt, and the once mighty highway turned into a forest road. The huge hickories, maples, and white ashes flanked it, warring for space with colossal live oaks tinseled with Spanish moss. The heat was brutal, the sun pounding the road like a hammer. It would take me about twenty minutes to get to Lawrenceville, and by the time I made it, I’d arrive well-done with a crispy crust. I stuck to the tree shadows.
What the hell could Roland possibly want with Saiman?
Thinking about it made me clench my teeth. He came into my territory. He took one of my people out. No matter how I felt about him, Saiman was an inhabitant of Atlanta. If I had hackles, they would be standing up.
You’d think he would stop screwing with me fourteen days before my wedding. As a common courtesy.
I still hadn’t bought the dress. I’d gone shopping for it three times and come back empty-handed because I didn’t see anything I wanted.
Ahead Derek stepped out from behind a thick ash, moving with the easy gliding grace of a shapeshifter. In his early twenties, with broad shoulders, and a face hardened by life’s grinder, he looked at me with dark eyes. With some shapeshifters the nature of their beast was more obvious. Even in his human body, Derek looked like a wolf. A predatory, solitary, smart wolf.
“I was beginning to wonder where you were.”
The former boy wonder shrugged his shoulders. “I scouted ahead.” His voice matched his looks: low, threatening, and rough.
“Anything?”
“No patrols between us and Lawrenceville.”
I wasn’t sure if that was good—because I wouldn’t have to intimidate and possibly kill anyone—or bad, because my father apparently worried so little about me presenting a threat that he neglected to defend his base.
“You look like you want to murder somebody,” Derek said.
“Don’t I normally look that way?”
“Not like this.”
“It’s probably b
ecause I have one nerve left and my father keeps jumping up and down on it.”
I kept riding. Derek trotted next to me.
“Curran told me about the Conclave,” he said.
“Mm-hm.”
“Why does Nick hate you?” he asked.
“You know the story about Voron and me? How after Roland killed my mother, Voron raised me?”
Derek nodded.
“Whenever we came through the Atlanta area, Greg Feldman would visit us. When I was older, I thought it was odd, because Greg was a knight-diviner and Voron steered clear of the Order whenever he could. I asked him about it once, and he told me that he, my mother, Greg, and Greg’s ex-wife, Anna, used to be friends. Then after Voron died, Greg became my guardian. Occasionally he would take me to Anna’s house. She didn’t like me at first, but eventually she helped me. She is a precog. I used to wonder why I haven’t heard from her for a while, but it makes sense now.”
“Okay,” Derek said. “How does Nick fit into it?”
“You remember when Hugh killed the knights in the Atlanta chapter of the Order, and Nick dropped his cover? Maxine called him Nick Feldman. When we got back to the Keep, I asked Jim to look into it. He did. Nick Feldman is Greg Feldman’s son.”
Derek frowned. “You didn’t know he had a son?”
“No. Greg took care of me for about ten years. Neither he nor Anna ever mentioned a child. There were no pictures and nobody ever said his name. So after Jim told me, I called Anna.”
It had taken four phone calls and a promise to come find her in her country home in North Carolina before she finally called back.
“I had always thought that Greg and Voron had been friends. I have a picture of the four of them, Greg and Anna and Voron and my mother, standing together. Apparently, all of that is bullshit. They knew each other, but they weren’t friends. My mother had worked for the Order for a short time before marrying Roland. She met Greg, and Greg fell in love with her. He told Anna, but Nick was two years old and they decided to stay together for his sake. My mother and Greg reconnected again when she and Voron were running from Roland. At the time, I was a baby. Greg left Anna the day he found out my mother died. Nick was six.”
“I don’t get it,” Derek said. “Why leave when the other woman is dead?”
“I don’t know. I have no idea what went on in Greg’s head. Maybe he thought he was betraying my mother’s memory somehow by staying with Anna.”
Thinking about it put all those meetings between Voron and Greg in a new light. They weren’t two friends catching up. They were two men mourning the death of the same woman.
“He and Anna shared custody, but when Nick was twelve, he applied to Squire’s Rest. It’s the Order’s preparatory boarding school, the place you go before the Academy makes you into a knight. Nick got in and they never saw him again. According to Anna, Nick hated both her and Greg. When he became part of the Crusader program, Greg was told to remove all traces of Nick, photos, documents, everything, for Nick’s safety and the safety of his family. Eventually Nick went undercover with Hugh for over two years. So my mother broke up his parents’ marriage and my father was the reason he had to do despicable shit for two years. I’m not his favorite person.”
“I get being mad at his parents and at your mother, but you were a baby.”
I sighed. “Maybe if I were the daughter of the other woman his father loved, or the child his dad took in instead of him, or Roland’s daughter, he could deal with it. But I’m all of those things. He will get over it or he won’t, Derek. I don’t really care.”
I did a little bit. Nick was Greg’s older child, and Greg was my guardian and looked over me the way a father would, which meant that in my head Nick hovered perilously close to the “older brother” category. If he ever found out about it, he would probably choke on whatever he was drinking at the time.
The trees pulled away from the road like two hands opening, giving way to a clear grassy plain, with the old highway rolling across it all the way to a short blocky tower. It looked like it was designed to be a good deal taller. A fortress was beginning to take shape around it, its walls three-quarters finished. Damn it.
“I thought you said he agreed to stop building on our border,” Derek said.
“He agreed to stop building the tower. We agreed that he’s allowed a residence.”
“That’s not a residence. That’s a castle.”
“I can see that,” I growled.
And it had gone up fast, too. Three months ago, there was nothing except a foundation. Now there was a mostly finished wall, and the main building and smaller structures inside that wall, and long blood-red pennants streaming in the breeze from the parapets. Made himself comfortable, did he?
A rider shot out of the copse of trees on our left, pushing hard at a full gallop and carrying a long sky-blue standard on a tall flagpole. I would’ve recognized that horse anywhere. Built like a small draft horse, black dappled with light gray, she pounded the road with her white-feathered hoofs. Her mane, long, white, and wavy, flared in the wind. Her rider, slender, blond hair tied back in a ponytail, sat like she was born on that horse. Julie and Peanut, heading straight for Roland’s castle.
I’d told her where I was going this morning and told her to stay at Cutting Edge. Instead she came here and waited until she saw me so she could dramatically ride for the castle ahead of me. Why me? Why?
“I’m going to kill her.”
“She’s your Herald,” Derek said. “That’s your color. Blue for humanity.”
My what?
He made a big show of moving a few feet to the side.
I looked at him.
“In case your head explodes,” he said helpfully.
“Not another word.”
He chuckled under his breath, the rough lupine laugh of an amused wolf. Laugh it up, why don’t you?
My father had had two warlords in the modern age. The first, Voron, left his service to save me, because my mother’s magic convinced him he hopelessly loved her. Hugh d’Ambray was the second, and during his training under Voron, Hugh served as Roland’s Herald. According to Voron, that was the way my father had done things thousands of years ago, before the magic disappeared from the world and his wizard empire collapsed. First, you became Herald, then you became Warlord. Now Julie had decided that she was my Herald. I never told her any of this. She must still be talking to Roland. I didn’t know how, and when I had asked her about it a few weeks ago, she denied it.
Apparently, she’d lied.
I gritted my teeth.
Nothing good would come from Julie talking to Roland. He was poison. I had busted up one of their conversations before, and I did my best to keep more from happening. Logic, explanations, sincere requests, threats, groundings—none of it made any difference. Nothing short of a direct order would do, and I wasn’t ready to burn that bridge yet. Not only that, but that direct order would have to be worded in such a way as to prevent any loopholes. I would have to hire Barabas just to write it out.
Julie was talking to my father and I was powerless to stop it. My father kept coming into my territory, taunting me, and I couldn’t stop that either. And now Julie was riding into his castle to announce me.
I raised my head and sat up straighter. Cuddles picked up on my mood and broke into a canter. Derek shifted into a run, keeping up. Julie and I would have a long talk when we got home. I didn’t want a Herald, but I wouldn’t leave her without backup either. I would ride into that damn castle like I had a Herald announce every moment of my day, complete with fanfare and banner waving.
Four guards in leather armor stood by the entrance of the castle, two men and two women, all trim, grim, and looking like someone had found some attack dogs, turned them into human shape, and groomed them into paragons of military perfection. They bowed their heads in unison. Four voices chorused,
“Sharrim.”
Great. This would be a wonderful visit; I just knew it.
I rode into the courtyard and dismounted next to Julie, who stood at parade rest holding the stupid banner. A small stand waited next to her. They brought her a stand for her flag.
A man approached and knelt on one knee. I had seen him before. He was in his fifties, with a head of graying hair, and he looked like he had spent all of his years fighting for one thing or another. Having people kneel in front of me ranked somewhere between getting a root canal and cleaning out a sewer on the list of things I hated.
“You honor us, Sharrim. I have informed Sharrum of your arrival. He is overjoyed.”
I bet he is. “Thank you for the warm welcome.”
“Do you require anything of me?”
“Not at this time.”
He rose, his head still bowed, and backed away to stand a few dozen feet to the left.
Around us, the soldiers manning the walls tried not to gawk. A woman exited one of the side buildings, saw us, turned around, and went back inside.
“You’re grounded,” I said under my breath.
“I don’t have a social life anyway,” Julie murmured. “Barabas called the house before I left. He says not to burn any bridges.”
That was Barabas’s standing legal advice when it came to my father. If I burned this bridge, it would mean war.
“Where is he?”
“He’s at home,” Julie said. “Christopher had a nervous breakdown and burned a book.”
That made no sense. Christopher loved books. They were his escape and treasure.
“Which book was it?”
“Bullfinch’s Mythology.”
What could possibly have set him off about poor Bullfinch?
To the right a man and a woman walked out on the wall from a small side tower. The man wore a trench coat despite the heat. Sewn and patched with everything from leather cording to bits of fur, it looked like every time it had been cut or torn, he’d slapped whatever fabric or leather he had handy over the rip. There was a particular patch on the left side that I didn’t like.
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