Magic Binds (Kate Daniels #9)(11)

“I’ve decided to build a water garden.”

Oh.

“I told you of the water gardens in my childhood palace. I want my grandchildren to make their own treasured memories.”

The recollection hit me like a sudden punch in the gut: my father on a grassy hill, taking away my son as I screamed. I had seen the vision in the mind of a djinn. Djinn weren’t the most trustworthy creatures, but the witches had confirmed it. If . . . no, when. When Curran and I had a son, my father would try to take him. I held on to that thought and forced it down before it had a chance to surface on my face.

“We are diverting the river. The weather is mild enough and with a bit of magical prompting, I will turn this place into a small paradise. What do you think?”

Open your mouth and say something. Say something. “Sounds like it will be beautiful.”

“It will.”

“Do you think Grandmother would like to see it?” Stab, stab, stab.

“Your grandmother is best left undisturbed.”

“She is suffering. Alone, imprisoned in a stone box.”

He sighed. “Some things cannot be helped.”

“Aren’t you afraid that someone will free her?” Someone like me.

“If someone were to try to enter Mishmar, I would know and I would come looking for them. They would never leave.”

Thanks for the warning, Dad.

“She isn’t alive, Blossom. She is a wild force, a tempest without ego. One can only speculate what damage she would cause if unleashed.”

Aha. Of course, you buried her away from everything she loves because she is too dangerous.

We resumed our strolling along the walls, slowly circling the tower.

“How go the preparations for the wedding?”

“Very well. How goes the world domination?”

“It has its moments.”

We strolled down the wall. That was probably enough small talk. If I let him run the conversation, I’d never get Saiman back.

“A resident of Atlanta was brought here. I’m here to take him home.”

“Ah.” Roland nodded.

We turned the corner and I caught a glimpse of Julie’s face as she walked behind us. She was looking at the empty field beyond the eastern wall. Her eyes widened, her face sharpened, and her skin went two shades whiter. I glanced at the field. Beautiful emerald-green grass. Julie stared at it with freaked-out eyes. She definitely saw something.

We kept moving.

Don’t burn bridges. Stay civil. “You kidnapped Saiman.”

“I invited him to be my guest.”

I pulled a photograph of Saiman’s brutalized body out of my pocket and passed it to him.

Roland glanced at it. “Perhaps ‘guest’ was a bit of an overstatement.”

“You can’t snatch Atlanta citizens any time you feel like it.”

“Technically I can. I choose not to, because you and I have made a certain agreement, but it is definitely within my power.”

I opened my mouth and snapped it shut. We’d stopped at a square widening in the wall that would probably become the basis for a flanking tower. In the field, on the right, a man hung on a cross. Bloody, his clothes torn, his face a mess, he sagged off the boards. I would’ve guessed he was dead, except he was staring straight at Roland, his eyes defiant.

“Father!”

“Yes?”

“A man is being crucified.”

He glanced in that direction and a shadow flickered through his face. “So he is.”

It was the same look Julie gave me when she thought she had gotten away with stealing beer out of the keg but forgot about the empty mug on her desk. He had forgotten about the man he was slowly killing.

Julie glanced behind her, at the empty field. Okay, that’s about enough of that. I had to get her as close to the exit as I could now.

“I require privacy,” I told her. “Go back and wait with Derek, please.”

She bowed, turned, and walked away.

“You give her too little credit,” Roland said.

“I give her all the credit. I also never forget that she’s sixteen years old.”

“A wonderful age. Full of possibilities.”

Possibilities that you have no business contemplating. “What did he do?”

Roland sighed.

“What was so bad that you decided to torture him?”

Roland looked after Julie. “The problem with warlords is that the position is fundamentally flawed by its very nature. A general who is unable to lead is useless, but to lead, he must inspire loyalty. When the troops rush the field, knowing they may lay down their lives, they look to their general, not to the king behind him. Sooner or later, their loyalties become divided. They abandon their king and look instead to the one who bled and suffered with them.”

He looked at the human wreck on the cross.

“Is that one of Hugh’s men?”

“Yes.”

“What did he do?”

“He refused my orders. I told him to do something and he told me that he was a soldier, not a butcher. The great hypocrisy of this pseudo-moral stance lies in the fact that if Hugh had given him the same order, he probably would’ve obeyed. I merely reminded him that he draws his breath at my discretion.”

And he’d ordered him tied to the cross. So the death would take longer. “That’s barbaric.”