Magic Binds by Ilona Andrews

then he would have to decide what he would do about it.”
    â€œDid he say anything else?” Barabas asked.
    â€œNo.”
    The Iron Dog retched and vomited water on the ground.
    â€œSo no declaration of war has been made. We can work with this.” Barabas exhaled.
    Yeah, right. “I don’t want to work with it.”
    â€œI completely understand.” The weremongoose nodded his red head. “That’s why I would advise you to avoid speaking with your father while we untie this knot and hopefully prevent the city from being plunged into a horrible war with mass casualties.”
    â€œYes, of course, this is all my fault.”
    â€œYes, it is,” Barabas said. “All you had to do was walk in there and have a simple conversation with your father.”
    Simple? “You know what I don’t need, Barabas? I don’t need you to criticize how
I speak to my father
.”
    The mercs took a step back in unison.
    Curran put his hand on my shoulder.
    â€œBe careful, Kate,” Barabas said, his expression unreadable. “Your magic is showing.”
    â€œDo you know where I found him?” I pointed to the Iron Dog. “I took him off a cross. There were thirty more like it.”
    â€œThirty-two,” a hoarse voice said.
    I turned. The Iron Dog sat up, his light gray eyes open.
    â€œThirty-two people,” he repeated quietly. “It took them three days to die.”
    â€œBecause he had refused to kill them, my father made him watch. This is what you’re asking me to negotiate with, Barabas.”
    â€œThis is exactly why we need you to negotiate.”
    â€œI’m getting sick of you ordering me around on my own land.”
    â€œEnough,” Curran said.
    Barabas took a step back. “We’ll talk about this another time.”
    Curran crouched by the sitting man. “What happened?”
    â€œThere was a compound five miles to the south,” the man said, his words ragged. “Some kind of religious group. Roland wanted the land. He didn’t say why. He offered to buy it, but they wouldn’t sell it to him. Something they told him must’ve pissed him off, because he ordered me to take my people and clear it out. He said he wanted them buried off the land, somewhere else. I told him I was a soldier. I wouldn’t order my people to butcher unarmed civilians.”
    â€œAnd if Hugh told you to do it?” Curran asked.
    The Iron Dog faced him, his eyes clear. “He wouldn’t.”
    Yeah, right. “I find that hard to believe,” I said.
    â€œI’m a soldier,” the Iron Dog said. “Not a Ripper. Soldiers fight other soldiers.”
    â€œHe’s telling the truth,” Julie said behind me. “When Hugh needed a massacre, he’d use the Rippers. Most of them are dead now.”
    Don’t explode.
Nothing good ever came from exploding.
    I turned to her.
    â€œThe Iron Dogs have six cohorts,” Julie said. “The first five cohorts have four hundred and eighty soldiers per cohort, broken into six centuries of eighty soldiers each. The Sixth Cohort had two hundred and forty peopleand was known as the Rippers, the shock troops. Each cohort had a captain. Hibla was the captain of the Rippers. This man is Stoyan Iliev, captain of the First Cohort. He was the first captain Hugh recruited himself.”
    Great. I’d rescued Hugh’s bestie.
    Stoyan turned to me. “I was in the Swan Palace. I saw you kill Hibla. If you’re going to kill me, give me a sword first.”
    â€œSettle down,” Derek told him. “You can’t hold a sword. You can’t even keep water down. She didn’t pull you off a cross so she could kill you.”
    â€œIt doesn’t matter anymore,” the Iron Dog said. “If it weren’t that, it would’ve been something else. Of the six cohorts, the Rippers are completely gone and the rest are at less than fifty percent of