It was raining steadily now. That didn’t seem to bother Dick Boy, probably because it didn’t touch him. She couldn’t see the rain bending around him or anything like that, but he looked dry as a bone. “I was split in two when a realm-crossing demon, assisted by the power of the Old One who bargained with you and your brothers, tried to bring me into Dis. A demon prince of that realm had made a deal with her, you see. Do you know about Xitil? Should I tell you about her? Demon princes have extraordinary powers within their realms, and she was also called Earth Mover, so—”
“Fah! I cannot [something] your speech. It is very ugly.” He looked at Fang. “What did she say?”
Fang rattled off what seemed to be a recount of Lily’s words in his dialect, although she couldn’t be sure when she didn’t dare use her mindsense. She did not cry “Aha!” or grin in triumph or allow her eyebrows to shoot up, but it was satisfying to have at least one question answered. Fist Second Fang must have some kind of translation charm. It was way too unlikely that he’d know both English and Mandarin.
Fang finished. Dick Boy looked back at Lily. “You claim to have been split in two.”
“That is right. Half of me remained on Earth. Half was taken to Dis, which those in my realm call hell because it’s the home of demons. Both halves of me were embodied—that is, each of me had a body. An identical body, as far as I could tell, though the me that went to Dis didn’t get any memories and the me that remained on Earth didn’t have my Gift.”
“Fist Second,” he said. “Translate.”
Fang did. Dick Boy frowned. “That makes no sense. You believe it to be true, but you are mistaken.”
“I report on my experience. There were two Lily Yu’s for a time. I think my soul was split in two.”
“Your soul.” His mouth twisted in derision. “How human of you. Your mind may have somehow been split in two. I do not see how that [unintelligible], but it is more [something] than [something] your soul. I have never seen any evidence that souls exist.”
Lily was delighted. She could talk about souls and such for hours if it would keep him away from the subjects she did not want to discuss. “I would have said something similar before half of me died and I—”
“Stop. Did you discuss souls with the Zhu—”
A gong sounded, so loud it might have been struck right next to Lily.
Crimson light flooded the wet air.
Dick Boy shot straight up.
Fang issued rapid-fire orders, the words piling up too quickly for Lily to understand. He took off at a run. So did the rickshaw’s human motor and the guards, but not in the same direction as Fang. The wheeled-reed-packet bounced and jounced over the cobbles. Lily cursed her bound hands, which kept her from grabbing on to the sides, and tried to see what in the hell was going on.
The crimson light came from the red Frisbee atop the mystery tower. It pulsed slowly like the heartbeat of some great beast. Lily tipped her head back and spotted Dick Boy hovering at least a hundred feet up, barely visible in the rain-curtained air. A tease of motion in the corner of her eye had her head swiveling in time for her to see a second figure shooting up. A moment later, a third figure rose into the sky. Then the rickshaw jolted to a halt and nearly flung her out face-first.
They’d stopped short of the entrance to the Court of Heavenly Justice, and for good reason. Guards were pouring out of those doors at a run. Then a pair of men trotted out, each with one end of a huge iron spear on his shoulder, followed by more spear-bearing pairs. She could tell they were iron because they were rusty. The officer she’d met when she first arrived—Li Po—stood with his hands on his hips, glaring at his men as they assembled.
“Come!” barked one of her own two guards. “Come, come!”
Getting out of the rickshaw was awkward with her hands tied in front of her. She made the most of that to slow things down, wanting to see, to watch what happened. The moment she had both feet on the ground, though, her guards grabbed her arms and hustled her to the open door.
It was noisy inside. Frightened cries and pleas came from the cells on the upper floor. Usually there were a few people on the benches in the entry hall. Not now. The stairs to the upper floor lay on the right side. Her guards did not take her there. Instead they dragged her toward another set of stairs at the back of the entry area, one she’d seen but hadn’t taken. One going down. More voices came from below.
“Lily!”
That was Cynna. Lily twisted as much as the hands on her arms would allow. Cynna was being propelled down the stairs from the upper floor by a guard who held her good arm in an armlock. Alice was with her.
“What’s going on?” Lily called. The guard holding her left arm jerked her forward. She stumbled and would have fallen if the guard on her right hadn’t steadied her. Pain shot through her bad ankle.
“Cretin,” said her right-hand guard. “She cannot go so fast.”
“Dragon,” said Alice calmly as she reached the bottom of the stairs. “A large one, judging by the timing of the pulses. The red again, probably.”
Dragon? Hope jolted through Lily. She sent her mindsense out and up . . . up . . . but there was no dragon mind nearby, compelling her attention.
Meanwhile her guards forced her onto the stairs, where her inattention to her feet caused her to stumble again. Lily drew her mindsense back, touched it to the mind of the right-hand guard, and switched to Mandarin. “Honorable Fist, I thought the wards kept the dragons out.”
The one on her left muttered what sounded like a curse. The one on her right said, “No wards can keep dragons out. Beasts, yes. But dragons . . .” He shrugged. “The Zhuren will deal with it.”
The other guard said something Lily didn’t understand, then added something she did: “The red knows too much.”
At the bottom of the stairs were people. Lots of people. They filled the wide hallway that ran off to the left and right, and they all seemed to be talking at once. Several called questions to Lily’s guards. “Move back,” said the left-hand guard. “Make way. Do not block the stairs. Move back.”
“A dragon, yes,” said the other. “Move back. You know the rules. Move to the walls and sit. The path to the stairs must be clear.”
“You two guards—halt,” Alice called.
The guard on Lily’s right stopped right away. The one on her left didn’t. By the time he did, she was stretched between them like a tug-of-war rope. A really wet tug-of-war rope, for the rain had left her clothes sticking to her, wet and clammy. She looked up the stairs. Alice was coming down, calm as ever, with Cynna and her guard right behind. Quickly Lily switched her mindsense to Alice—shit, she’d forgotten that the woman’s mind was slick to her.
Shielded. She was pretty sure that Alice’s mind was shielded rather than naturally off-limits. It felt more like the shields Cullen used than like the natural slickness of brownie minds.
Fortunately, Alice’s words were intelligible even without an assist from mindspeech. “Where do you take Lily Yu?”
“To the small cell off the interrogation room.”
“Good. Cynna Weaver can be placed there also.”
Lily’s guards exchanged glances. “The Fist Second did not say—”