“I don’t.”
Another silence. Lily imagined Cynna sitting out there in grim quiet, determined to outwait the other woman. Finally Alice sighed. “I can see you will not cooperate on this point. Very well. What do you need to begin your translation?”
“Right away, something to write on and with. And next, Ah Li. I’ll have questions for her and I’ll need her to try various versions as I work them up. I’ll need you to translate.”
“Ah Li’s time is very full. Can Ah Hai answer your questions? She is already here, and she is of the same culture.”
“Probably, for now. I’ll still need Ah Li eventually.”
“Very well. I will not be able to translate for you, however. I have other duties. Lily Yu seems to be fluent enough to handle the translating.”
“Wait a minute,” Lily called out. “If you want my help, I should receive a payment, too.”
Alice turned to look into the cell at Lily. “Your assistance would be a convenience for me, but is not a necessity. I do not object to a small payment, but it will be material rather than informational.”
“Okay. I’ll accept the payment that you, in all fairness, believe would most benefit me without exceeding the value of my assistance.” This way she got paid twice—once in whatever Alice deemed fair payment, and again when she learned what Alice thought would “most benefit” her.
Alice blinked slowly, then smiled her faint smile. “You have dealt with dragons, haven’t you? Very well. Agreed.” She stood. “The time variance now is approximately seventeen minutes, seventeen seconds. Cynna, I will send over writing materials.”
“Hold on,” Cynna said. “What’s the general range for that variance?”
“You will receive that portion of your payment upon completing your efforts, not before you have started. About the verbatim spell . . .”
When they started discussing the specifics of the spell, Lily stopped listening. Much more interesting that Alice had been able to cite the time variation right off the top of her head. Lily thought about that, frowning.
“Honorable lái?” a timid voice said.
Lily blinked and looked at Ah Hai, who still knelt nearby. “Doesn’t that hurt your knees?”
“My . . . oh.” She flushed slightly, as if Lily had commented on something extremely personal. “I am old now and sometimes stiff, but I can still adopt correct posture.”
“Hmm,” Lily said, borrowing one of Rule’s favorite responses. “Well, if you’re kneeling because you think it’s proper, that’s your business. Just don’t do it because you think I want you to, okay?”
Ah Hai looked confused.
“Never mind. What did you want?”
“Oh, a silly thing. I wondered if you would be going to the bathhouse today? And if I might go there ahead of you and bathe?” She blushed. “I am not very fresh, I think.”
“I don’t know if I’ll be allowed to go the bathhouse today, but you can go whether or not I do. I guess we can ask Alice if I get a bath today. Ah . . . there’s something I’ve wondered that you might help me with. How long has the, uh, the honorable Báitóu Alice Li lived here?”
Ah Hai’s eyes widened in surprise. “She was born here.”
Lily blinked. Born here? But . . . “She’s not Chinese.”
“Her mother was a lái from another land. I do not know what land,” she whispered apologetically, “but she had yellow hair like your friend.”
What about her father? Alice’s pale face showed no signs of an Asian heritage. “What is Alice’s position? Her rank? I don’t like to ask her directly. It seems impolite.”
“You did not know? She is xi qi, like you.”
Xi qi. Lily had heard that phrase before, but her mindsense hadn’t been working then. It was now. To Ah Hai, xi qi meant “like the Seven,” and also meant . . . “Another way to say it would be that she is dragon kin?”
Ah Hai nodded, smiling.
Dragon kin, but descended from dragons in a literal way, unlike Lily. Alice was the daughter of one of the Zhuren. Or granddaughter? But that would make her three-quarters Asian, and she looked wholly European. And was her parent or grandparent the reason her mind was shielded? No, that didn’t make sense. The Zhuren were simply not present to Lily’s mindsense. Alice had an actual shield, which meant she could use mind magic.
Lily shook her head, impatient with her own confusion. One thing was clear. If Alice was descended from one of the Zhuren, then her twin sister had been, too. Helen, whom Lily had killed. That was not likely to make Lily popular here. “I suppose the Zhuren have had a great many children.”
Ah Li ducked her head. “Not a great many. Few women can hold their seed properly. It is very powerful.”
Powerful in that it carried power, yes, and magic interfered with fertility. Still, hadn’t Sam said that the spawn back on Earth, the ones he’d created from a botched hatching, had had a lot of descendants? Maybe she wasn’t remembering clearly. An awful lot had happened since then. “Still, it has been five generations. Even if their children are few, those children have had children, too. There must be many who are dragon kin.”
“Oh, no. I have not been clear. Not all children born to those who lie with one of the Zhuren are xi qi. All have magic, you understand, but not all have magic in a way that is like the Seven.”
Ah. That made more sense. It was the magical lineage the Zhuren traced, and they only claimed those offspring or descendants who possessed dragon-style magic. But what would the spawn consider dragon-style magic? They were mind-blind, but according to Sam, that wouldn’t be true of their descendants. “The children are tested to determine what type of magic they possess?”
Ah Hai shook her head. “I do not know if there is a test, only that such children are announced as xi qi. Although sometimes one is not announced until he or she is almost grown.”
Telepaths often didn’t come into their Gift until puberty. Human telepaths, that is. Helen Whitehead had been a telepath. Would the spawn have recognized Helen’s Gift as dragon magic when they themselves were blind to it? They’d recognized Alice, called her xi qi. “Can you tell me what Alice Báitóu’s Gift is?”
Ah Hai looked puzzled.
“What type of magic does she possess?”
“I do not know. She is much favored, however, so she must be powerful.”
“How is she related to the Zhuren? Whose child or grandchild or—”
Ah Hai was so distressed she interrupted. “Honored lái, I am glad you asked me instead of the honorable Báitóu Alice Li. It is considered very rude to ask this of one of the xi qi. The Zhuren do not consider it proper to—to speak of which of them fathered a child.”
“That’s very dragon of them.” Dragons considered parentage a deeply private matter. Maybe that was instinct rather than a social dictum. It might seem odd to think of such solitary beings as having social rules, but they did—generally geared toward making them less likely to kill each other.
“Pardon?” Ah Hai asked hesitantly.