“Many things. You are feverish. Fevers often bring bad dreams.”
He shook his head. That wasn’t it, wasn’t what had woken him . . . he’d been dreaming about Toby. He remembered that much. A scent dream, which meant it was his wolf dreaming, for wolves dreamed in scents the way humans dreamed in images . . . but something had broken in, broken through. Something terrible.
“Since you are awake, you should drink some more.”
Once he’d drunk as much as he could, he said simply but with feeling, “Hungry.”
“The healing cantrip I have been using speeds healing, but draws from your flesh to do this. It seems to be working. You will be hungrier than this before you have healed enough to eat.”
“Bad for . . . wolf to get . . . too hungry.”
“I will not allow you to harm anyone.”
He accepted that as readily as if she had been a Rho and truly able to prevent him. In his current state, this didn’t strike him as odd. “Where’s Gan?”
“Asleep. She is very tired. She did well in the village. We now have a pan, a knife—dull, but it can be sharpened. Clothes. Two blankets.”
Oh. Yes, he was covered by a blanket now, and she wore clothes—a loose tunic top and trousers. He hadn’t noticed. “I’m not thinking straight.”
“You have a fever.”
“I’m not going to die.” Not now, not from these wounds. He was suddenly sure of that. It was a directionless certainty, having arrived from nowhere and without any reason to back it. He felt worse now than he had the last time he’d woken. But he was not going to die.
“Good.”
Her acerbic tone made him smile. It faded quickly. “We have to go to Lily.”
“Perhaps she is on her way here to us.”
“No. We have to go.” He was as sure of that as he was that he was not going to die of his wounds.
“You will not be fit to travel for at least three days.”
“Can’t wait for me to be fit. We have to go to her.”
“We will do so when you have healed a bit more. The village where Gan stole your blanket is on a well-traveled river. The people there appear to be Chinese, from Gan’s description. She is not sure what language they speak. Her translation disk does not give her that information, but it is probably one of the Chinese dialects. I hope to be able to make myself understood.”
He absorbed that. “Rivers flow to the sea. Which way is the sea?”
In answer she pointed.
“We have to go the other way.”
“There are boats that travel upriver. I do not know how. Perhaps sails. Perhaps they row. Gan did not observe these boats, but she heard of them. Once you are able, we will go to the village and barter for passage on a riverboat.”
“Barter . . . what?”
“Gan brought an assortment of gems with her, an act of foresight that makes her very pleased with herself.”
He’d forgotten that. “Yes. Good. We will leave—”
“In three days. You cannot walk so far yet.”
“I’ll Change. The wolf can do what the man cannot.” And the wolf . . . yes. That’s where both his certainty and his urgency came from. The wolf knew. He had to go to Lily.
“You will not waste what little energy you have Changing.”
“That is not your decision.”
A moment’s silence. “Do not Change tonight, at least. Go back to sleep. Heal some more. We will talk again in the morning.”
They would leave for the river in the morning. Rule didn’t tell her that, however. No point in wasting energy arguing. He let his eyes close and drifted off into a hazy, feverish doze, and for some measureless time he slid between fretful sleep and fogged waking.
Every time he rose to something like wakefulness, he heard Madame’s voice, chanting.
NINE
Earth
A hotel suite in Boston, Massachusetts
Eight days and seven hours before Lily, Rule, and the rest went riding off to hell
“I’M bored.” The girl slumped on the couch thumped her iPad down on the cushion. She was clearly preteen, though it was hard to say how much “pre” was involved. She still had the rounded cheeks of childhood, but her red T-shirt revealed other rounded shapes beginning to take form. Her hair was brown and straight and might or might not have been brushed that morning. She wore glasses and a dissatisfied scowl.
The man seated at the table in front of a laptop paid no attention. He was a fit man whose black hair had a dramatic white streak. He might have been anywhere from forty-five to fifty-five—though if it were the latter, his taut, tanned skin suggested he’d had work done.
“I want to get out of here. Do something. I never get to do anything.”
Robert Friar sighed and looked away from his laptop. “Amanda. You know why we need to stay in the hotel.”
“I don’t care. And anyway, this is stupid Boston. Everyone here’s a tourist, so they won’t notice you.”
“People in Boston do have the Internet,” he observed mildly. “Even law enforcement people. While it’s unlikely I’d be recognized, it’s a chance we don’t have to take. So we won’t.”
She crossed her arms. “You could wear a hat. Or dye your hair. I don’t see why you won’t dye it. And you have to go out sometime, don’t you? To give Mr. Weng’s pills to whoever is going to dose the FBI guy. I could go with you and—”
She stopped speaking and straightened, the movement graceful in a way foreign to preteens everywhere. Her expression flowed into something other, something vastly larger than the bored girl who’d been there a second ago. “I have bad news, Robert.”
The man’s expression changed, too. From amused tolerance to reverence tinged with worry. “Mistress?”
“Most of the team I sent to retrieve the beacon have been killed.”
“But the beacon? Did they—”
“They retrieved it, yes. But only three survive.” A pause, then a sigh. “No, two now. Their attackers are only partly corporal, which I had expected. This makes it difficult for my team to strike back effectively. They are penned up now in what you might call a culvert. The Xuandon is blocking the entrance to that culvert for now. They can’t get past without killing him.”
“I . . . have seen the Xuandon. I can’t imagine what could kill him, short of a nuclear explosion.”
“It is a very strange realm. Fortunately, the Xuandon has followed orders. The beacon is in the hands of the little crosser.”
Relief relaxed the man’s shoulders. “It has the beacon, then. That’s what counts.”
A chill note entered the voice that, despite its pitch, did not sound like that of a young girl. “What counts, as you put it, is getting the beacon into my hands.”
He bowed. “Of course. But if the crosser has the beacon, surely—”
“It should have left already. It hasn’t. My inability to communicate with it is . . . frustrating.” Yellow flashed in the depths of the plain brown eyes—a flash timed in such a fraction of a second, the man might have missed it.
He didn’t. He dropped to his knees, lowered his head. “Mistress.”
A delicate sigh. “Rise, Robert. I am not upset with you.”