It took the firebugs another ten minutes to thoroughly torch all the powder. By the end, I sat in a semicircle of blackened grass.
The shapeshifters drenched the burned area with water just to be on the safe side. I broke the ward and stepped out.
“It’s good to see you safe, Consort,” Keelan told me.
“It’s good to be safe. I need that plastic cup.”
Troy handed it over.
Jynx, who’d been rummaging through the shredded robes of the priest-mage, trotted over, and offered me a small cloth bag covered with red glyphs. I hefted it. The outline told me another one of those spheres was inside. Opening the bag was out of the question. Pulling out a rock and then being crushed under it as it expanded wasn’t on the agenda today.
“Thank you.”
I took the bag, and Curran and I walked back to the house.
“Where were you?” I asked.
“We did a perimeter run. I wanted to see if there were any other places they could hit us from.”
“I don’t think complex tactics are their strong suit.”
“Agreed. The wall is the boundary. One side defends it, the other attacks. Nice and simple.”
I reached for his arm and wrapped my own around it. A little reassurance.
“I left two people to watch you,” he said.
“What about Rimush and Jushur?”
“Jushur is in a trance, meditating. Rimush ran with us.”
Hmmm. “How did he do?”
“He kept up.” He flexed a little, squeezing my hand in the crook of his arm. “I came back, my guards were asleep, and you were gone. I followed your scent trail. How’d you end up out there?”
“Pretty simple really. I felt something. Maybe the magic coming back, maybe a sort of call to the wall. The guards were out and one of the high-level magic users waited at the edge.”
“So you went alone?”
“Everybody was asleep or gone.”
“Fair enough.” He squeezed my hand again.
“It’s not Andre and Hakeem’s fault. It was very strong magic.”
“We’ll stagger the sentries. One on the wall, another some distance away.”
I told him about the priest-mage conversation, the exploding head, and the dust.
Curran smiled. “It’s worried. It offered a half-assed peace treaty. It probably wouldn’t have honored it. It wanted to buy time to study us and prepare.”
“We’re not giving them half of Penderton. Not one person more.”
He stopped and looked at me.
“They’re dead. All the tributes are dead. It sent one of its higher-ranking humans to negotiate. The priest-mages are not wearing collars. They are skilled and valuable, and it killed that person, just like that. Like it was nothing. It already tried with rocks and didn’t get anywhere, but it threw a person away anyway on the off chance that the dust would penetrate the ward.”
“Human sacrifice,” Curran said. His expression was hard, his gray eyes dark.
I nodded. “I need to speak with my father.”
“Go. We’ll hold down the fort.”
“I’ll try to be quick.”
Curran chuckled. “You haven’t spoken to your father for three months. The only thing he loves more than talking is lecturing. He’s going to keep you there as long as he can.”
“It will attack as soon as it regroups. He can lecture all he wants, but I decide when I come and when I go. Thirty minutes.”
He nodded. “Have a safe trip.”
8
I opened my eyes. I stood on a square platform high above the ground, holding a plastic cooler and a small bag. A beautiful palace spread before me, a vision painted against a glowing predawn sky in cream marble and Lemurian blue granite. Terraces stretched from stately towers; balconies traced graceful rooms, held up by elegant colonnades; waterfalls spilled from the floors above into stone pools. Below, a river wound its way to sea, its waters diverted to run through breathtaking gardens, where flowers bloomed along hundreds of ponds and streams, and stone gazebos with padded loungers and carved benches offered a chance for respite.
The wind was warm and pleasant. The air smelled like flowers.
In this realm, my father was a god, and this palace, so beautiful it almost floated among the greenery, was the purest expression of his will, his vision come to life without the constraints of reality.
A soft breeze stirred my hair. I walked across the platform to a narrow bridge connecting to a terrace, which bordered my father’s study, a vast chamber with tall arched windows. The doors to the study stood ajar.
“Father?”
Another swirl of the breeze.
“There you are, Blossom.”
Roland appeared in the doorway. He wore formal garments today, a tailored blue tunic that fell to his ankles, fringed with white at the hem, and a long outer garment he called an irrok, a length of snow-white fabric, thin like gossamer. It was secured at his left shoulder and fell in structured, perfect folds across one side of his body. Sometimes, he wrapped it around his hips in spiral folds but today, the irrok hung loose.
Usually, he didn’t bother with formal clothes just for my sake. I got a tunic, sometimes pants and a shirt, and one time, he had shown up in a tracksuit, which made me laugh for five minutes.
The clothes were different, but he was always the same. A man with the face of a prophet or a sage, his dark hair streaked with gray, his handsome features touched by the sun, and his eyes full of wisdom and warmth. My father, who adored me more than he loved any of my long-dead siblings, tried to kill me in the womb, murdered my mother, fought a war against me, and now pouted if I missed a scheduled visit. Complicated, our family did it right.
“It’s been so long since you came to visit me.”
True to form. “Disparaging my husband in front of our son might have something to do with that.”
He waved his hand, dismissing the idea. “I didn’t disparage him. I simply pointed out that a man who would sacrifice his position of power under pressure wasn’t fit to rule.”
I waved my hand in front of my nose. “It stinks.”
“What?”
“Your bullshit, Father.”
He chuckled.
“You keep using Conlan to deliver these little jabs at Curran. I realize you find it entertaining, but every time you jab, we unpack what you did. Like all of us, you are only human, Father, and your actions don’t stand up to scrutiny. Soon Conlan will be old enough to see you for who you really are. Let’s not hasten that realization. Let him have his wonderful grandfather for a little longer.”
“And who am I really?”
“Someone who murdered his grandmother, tried to kill his parents, and would have killed him if given the chance.”
A shadow crossed Roland’s face. “Is that how you see me?”
Oy. “We are more than one thing. I still love you, Father. And Conlan will always love you. But he’s his own person, and he’s growing up. Teenagers see the world in black and white. Right now, you are wise, kind, and glorious. Why not stay that way? So few of us can live up to our own legend, but you are, once again, an exception to the rule.”
His expression eased. “I’ll consider it.”
Flattery. It always worked. If I flattered Erra, my aunt would snap and tell me to stop my nonsense. But my father took it as his due. Flattery would be in short supply in a few years. Sooner or later, Conlan would ask uncomfortable questions, and Roland would have to own up. But for now, he was still a beloved grandfather, all-knowing and larger than life.
We crossed the terrace, strolling toward a grouping of couches.