Lily frowned at the jar. It seemed to be full of small, black, squirming . . . “Ants? You’re threatening me with ants?”
“Perhaps you are not familiar with téngtòng mǎy. I do not know if they exist in your realm.” He unfastened the lid of the jar. “Their venom contains a potent neurotoxic peptide that affects sodium ion channels in a way that produces a remarkably pure pain, yet causes no lasting damage. I will demonstrate.”
He returned in a few unhurried strides, stuck a stick in the jar, and removed it. A single black ant clung to the end of the stick. He lowered the stick to Lily’s bare forearm and shook the ant off.
It looked like any other ant—bigger than some, sure, about the size of a fire ant. Maybe it was a fire ant, or this world’s version of them. Lily had been stung by fire ants before, and it wasn’t fun, but “sting” was the right word. One hot prick of pain, unpleasant but nothing to—
Acid poured over and into her arm. The shock of pain was pure and brilliant, a pocket nova going off in her flesh. And going off. And going off. It didn’t stop. Lily’s arm burned with a bright incandescence that subsumed everything she’d thought she knew about pain. The rising crescendo of it burst through thought and reason and wound itself around her tighter and tighter and . . . and then a hint of coolness, washing the pain back a bit. Not gone, no. Her forearm throbbed and burned, reminding her of when she’d been shot, only mixed with the aftereffects of the time she’d been brushed by mage fire.
The spawn was rubbing a sticky paste on her arm. “Nothing but magic can truly banish the pain from a téngtòng mǎyǐ sting, and I cannot use magic on you. But this helps, does it not? A folk remedy.”
Her eyes were wet. Her cheeks were wet. She didn’t remember crying.
“The pain from multiple stings is truly agonizing, I’m told. I didn’t test that personally, as the pain from a single sting was enough to make it difficult for me to focus sufficiently to rid myself of the venom. There is also some degree of temporary paralysis around the envenomed area, which is why I will be using your left arm. You are right-handed, I believe, so the paralysis should not cause undue difficulty. It will pass in roughly one day, as will the pain. The tremors may be annoying, as they linger longer, but there will be no lasting damage.”
Paralysis? Tremors?
He straightened and glanced at the door. It opened. Fist Second Fang came in . . . with Ah Hai.
Fang held the albino woman’s arm. Lily couldn’t see Ah Hai’s face; she kept her head down. Fang’s face was easy to read, with that fierce frown . . . or was it? Maybe that was more of a professional scowl than a real one. Hiding something behind that scowl, are you, Fist Second?
Kongqi spoke to the Fist Second in rapid Chinese. The words slid through Lily’s distracted mind without registering. The Fist Second brought Ah Hai across the room and stopped about five feet from Kongqi with the little slave in front of him, his hands gripping her arms to hold her in place.
“What is your name, claimed one?” Kongqi asked in Chinese. This time, Lily understood him.
Ah Hai darted a single glance up at the spawn, her eyes wide with fear and confusion, then looked down again. Her whisper was so soft Lily barely heard her. “Ah Hai, Zhu.”
Lily’s forearm burned and throbbed, burned and throbbed . . .
Kongqi looked at Lily, his expression unchanged . . . and yet suddenly a switch clicked in her head and she could read it. He wasn’t hiding his feelings. His face showed nothing because he felt nothing, not a jot of satisfaction or regret, pity or sick excitement—nothing but a keen and monstrous clinical interest. If giving her candy had worked better for his test than giving her pain, he would have given her candy. Her pleasure would have had no more effect on him than her pain. Her feelings were not part of his world.
He spoke then. Clinically. “My first round of experiments suggested that offering to torment a stranger instead of the test subject does not elicit a dependable altruistic response. With the second round I explored the other extreme, offering close family members as the alternative. Those results were so variable as to be useless. My third round also produced inconclusive results. It was suggested that I erred in offering children to those test subjects. After reflection, I concurred. The instinct to protect your own young does generalize in humans to protectiveness for all human children, but the intensity of that generalized instinct varies from one individual to the next. This variability could account for the ambiguous nature of those results. With the current round of experiments, I offer test subjects an alternative who is known to them as a source of comfort or pleasure, but who is not related to them. Hence, Ah Hai.”
He stuck the stick back in the jar. “You now know what to expect in terms of pain from the téngtòng mǎy. The experience is extremely unpleasant. If you wish to avoid this unpleasantness, tell me to use the ants on Ah Hai instead of you. That is all you must do. Choose her pain instead of yours.”
Revulsion swept over her, along with a sticky sort of fear, sour and unholy. She didn’t speak.
“No?” He withdrew the stick. This time a whole swarm of ants clung to it. “I control the ants. They will sting you one at a time, as I dictate. I will stop between stings to ask if you wish me to hurt her instead of you. Once you agree, I will move the ants to her, then I will put salve on your bites. She will be stung but not damaged, and your pain will be eased. Who should I put the ants on?”
She went on saying nothing.
“Ah Hai is not a child or a relative. She is older than you, timid, and a slave. She is unable to offer you any benefit as an ally or threat as an enemy. You should feel free to choose her pain over your own.”
Lily licked her lips and tasted salt. “No.”
SEVEN
CYNNA looked up from The Norton Anthology of Poetry for the fourteenth time. Lily still wasn’t back. She bit her lip.
She didn’t think about how good Cullen’s arms would feel right now. She’d done that at first, but it had ceased to be a comfort when she could no longer believe she’d feel his arms again. She might. She clung doggedly to that. But “might” didn’t hold back the fear.
Idiot, said a dear memory. Put down the goopy poetry—
Hey, she thought, you like poetry! You quote it sometimes!
Sure, but you don’t, and you’re just using it to avoid thinking. Which is what you really need to do.