That building was her starting point. If those people did not have a cart, they would know someone who did. Li Lei headed toward the building at a much brisker pace than before, moving into a trot after a few minutes. Her knees did not tolerate running for long, but she could travel a long distance by alternating walking with trotting.
Li Lei understood her limitations. Some were physical, such as her inability to run for miles as a lupus could. Some were magical. She was not good at body magic, nor could she use mindspeech as her granddaughter did. But she did have a few tricks.
One in particular would help them now. It was not the most moral way to obtain what they needed, for it interfered with free will. But sometimes one must settle for what worked . . . and she was very good at ensorcellment.
ELEVEN
AN invisible net tightened on Lily and dragged her through muddy waters toward the glittering surface, that interface between dark and waking: here there be pain. She wriggled and flopped like any captive fish, unable to escape, until she broke through to air, eyes still closed but mind awake, aware . . . and amazed. The Pain was gone. Oh, she hurt, but it was a normal hurting, a mere distraction of pain. Enough to make her grouchy, but not crazy.
Had she been crazy?
Yes. Yes, she was sure she had been, for she’d seen impossible things. Terrible and impossible.
Was she still?
When the sharp spurt of fear flooded her, she reached instinctively for comfort in the way that required neither hands nor sanity. Reached for reassurance, for hope, for a reason to take the next step. And felt Rule, distant but alive. Still alive.
Okay, then. Time to open her eyes.
She saw sunlight on a wall, bright and buttery. A wall that didn’t writhe or grow teeth, didn’t convulse or collapse or drip ants. Just . . . a wall.
Relief nearly sank her back into sleep, but warmth near her feet distracted her with thoughts of Dirty Harry, though she knew it couldn’t be him curled up there. He was back on Earth, either wounded or dead . . . but that hadn’t happened yet, had it? How could she remember things that hadn’t happened yet? She didn’t know how to think about this shit. What did “now” even mean if it wasn’t the same now everywhere? Here a now, there a now, everywhere a different now.
The hell with thinking. She needed to pee, needed to in a way that defined urgency. That meant she was going to have to sit up. Stand up, too, but first things first.
As she gathered her resources for the effort, someone said something in Chinese. Her fuzzy brain did not want to think in Chinese. She frowned and moved an arm—the one that didn’t hurt—and used it to prop herself up.
Her head swam. She squinted through the dizziness and saw Ah Hai kneeling near her feet, surprisingly untidy; a couple strands of hair had worked their way out of the neat plait and her clothes were wrinkled. She spoke again.
Reluctantly Lily’s brain disgorged a translation this time. Li Hai wanted to know how she felt. She managed to answer in Chinese. “Weak. Better. Not all the way better, but you don’t have tentacles anymore.” That was a definite improvement. Lily had a dim memory of Ah Hai with slime-dripping tentacles and a long, black, forked tongue like a snake. Or had the snake tongue belonged to someone else? “I need to—”
“She’s awake?”
That was Cynna’s voice, coming from outside the cell. What was Cynna doing outside the cell?
“Lily!” Cynna burst through the open cell doorway and came to a halt, looking worried. “How do you feel? Is the pain gone?”
“Like crap. Mostly. I need to pee,” Lily said firmly.
Unfortunately, she had to have help. She was too dizzy to walk the three steps to the bucket then crouch over it. Cynna exited again, either to give her privacy or because there wasn’t room in the tiny cell for all of them. Ah Hai supplied the assistance, whispering at Lily as she kept her from toppling over. She would be better soon, oh yes, it was only the drug making her dizzy and that would pass soon. What drug? Oh, one for sleeping. Ah Li had given it to her last night.
Lily wondered if Ah Li had been the one with the snake tongue. Back on her sleeping mat, she experimented with sitting up and leaning against the wall. It worked okay if she stayed still. Now what? What was the next damn step?
“Lily?” Cynna sounded worried.
She realized her eyes had drifted closed again and opened them. “Why is the cell door open?”
“It’s temporary. Alice is out there”—she nodded vaguely behind her—“waiting for me. We’re dickering for an exchange of information.”
“What kind of information?”
“I want to learn more about the spawn. She wants a healing spell I know—really it’s more of a diagnostic spell, but it can only be used by a healer. We’ve sealed the deal on passing on the verbatim spell, but it probably won’t work for anyone from this realm. Wrong symbology. We’re negotiating about what I’ll get for translating it into something her healer can use. I get two payments for that—one for the effort, and a second if I succeed.”
“She has her own healer?”
“Not exactly, but that’s how she thinks of Ah Li. You met Ah Li last night.”
“I don’t remember last night very well.” Lily licked lips that were dry enough that a grin would have split them. Good thing she didn’t feel like grinning. “Does she wear shoes?”
“What?” Cynna looked worried again.
“Ah Li. Does she wear shoes? The slaves here don’t, and I think slaves use Ah in place of a family name.”
“Oh. Yeah, she’s owned by the Zhuren, but they gave her to the city.” Cynna’s lips thinned. “Alice insists it’s an honorable status.”
Maybe it was, to them. “Ah Li gave me a drug to make me sleep?”
“It seemed like a good idea. You were in so much pain, plus I was pretty sure you were hallucinating even when you seemed to be unconscious.”
She managed not to shudder as memory threatened to yank her down. “The pain’s a lot better now, more like a bad sunburn. The crazy seems to be gone.”
“Good. Excellent. That part confused everyone. Ah Li said the ants that stung you aren’t supposed to cause hallucinations. None of them could figure out why you reacted like that.”
Since Lily had no idea, either, she asked for some water.
Ah Hai brought that, but the cup had a willow twig in it. Ah Hai giggled, covering her mouth, and explained that the twig was soaked so it would expand into a vaguely brushy shape. It was for cleaning her teeth—but later, after Ah Hai fed her breakfast.
Lily refused that particular service firmly. Her hands were a little shaky, but not that bad. Breakfast turned out to be cold sticky rice with pickled vegetables, eaten without the benefit of utensils. Maybe they were afraid their prisoners would stab them with a chopstick.