It was always pleasant when one could combine virtue with advantage. Li Lei left the shop, smugly pleased . . . and a tickle of something like song made her look up.
The dragon whose silent song had touched her flew too high, however, for her eyes, hidden by the wispy clouds. She stared up anyway, wistful now. Life was never fair. She knew this. It still made her sad. Sun had sacrificed much, remaining on Earth to do what needed doing there. If she lived to return—and she had every intention of doing so, despite the odds—she would share the memories she’d gathered of this place where his ancestors had been born. But she could not share a memory she did not have. She could not give him the memory of flying in the skies of Dragonhome.
He, of course, would deny any sacrifice. That was not a dragon concept. One considered costs and potential costs, risk and benefits, in light of one’s goals. Then one acted. Sacrifice was a foolishly emotional term for choosing to act in support of one goal over others.
She snorted softly to herself and walked on. Sun was very wise, but some things he did not understand.
As Li Lei made her way down the street, she set part of her mind to watch for trouble. She could not truly segment her mind as dragons did. Human brains did not accommodate such division. But she was not purely human, was she? And setting a sentinel was an old, familiar task.
It was a busy street. Most of the people she passed possessed some magic—often just a trace, but Gifts were common here. This was not surprising in a high-magic realm. She passed sellers of oranges, sellers of cloth, sellers of spices, tin, pottery, and several sellers of glass. Glass drinking vessels of all shapes and sizes. Glass vases, pitchers, and urns. Decorative glass. A tiny shop that sold only mirrors. No windowpanes, but likely those had to be special-ordered. The town of Bolilu was known for its glassworks, thanks to the high-quality sand nearby. Hence the glass in the mapmaker’s shop; even that robber could probably not have afforded glass to top his map if he’d had to import it.
Most of the people around her wore hats. She would need to obtain one. They also smelled bad. Li Lei had forgotten what it was like to walk amid so many people who lacked deodorant and were not able to bathe daily. She did not have to blend in with others in that respect, she decided.
“I could’ve stolen that map for you,” said a voice from roughly elbow height. “You didn’t have to pay for it.”
Li Lei’s glance flicked over and down. She didn’t precisely see Gan. She sensed her in the way she sensed all magic. She could, with an effort, construct a visual image from that sensing—it felt rather like crossing her eyes inside her head—but it was a blurry, flickering thing.
Unlike her granddaughter, Li Lei could not see into dashtu. Sun believed that Lily’s ability to see into dashtu meant that in time—by which he meant a few decades—she could learn to go dashtu herself. He ought to know. It was he who had first mastered the trick of it when he realized the dragons would have to emigrate to the demon realm until magic returned to Earth in sufficient levels. He had taught it to the other dragons, knowing they would need the ability in Dis. Dashtu was innate to demons, not dragons.
“Shh,” she said.
Silence for a few moments, then: “I’m bored.”
Li Lei considered enlivening Gan’s day by lighting one of her toes on fire. The former demon might be invisible to those around then, but she was not inaudible. As she knew very well. “Shh,” she said again.
As they neared the market, the smells from the food stalls made her hungry even as they flooded her with memories. Most of her life had been spent where the world smelled like this. She had already made some purchases before going to the mapmaker’s shop; at the market she added to them.
They had reached the town of Bolilu yesterday after changing boats three times. The only boats available so far had been sampans—shallow-draft boats suitable only for short distances. These were plentiful, as most travel took place on the river, but Rule said their journey would not be short. Nor did they have a great deal of time. They needed a faster vessel. Here, in this larger town, they hoped to find a chún-chún.
Translated literally, chún-chún meant ox-ox. The boats were named for the beasts that drew them. These beasts were not oxen. Li Lei had not seen them, but no team of oxen could pull a boat upriver as rapidly as these boats were said to travel. Chún-chún carried official mail to and from the capital, for they were the fastest means of transport here, and so the fastest means of communication. But they were not owned by the government and made much of their income by taking on cargo, private mail, and even passengers. For a large enough fee, they might be willing to forgo their usual stops for cargo. Should they be reluctant, Li Lei was willing to encourage them . . . once a chún-chún arrived. There were none at dock now.
She stopped at a booth that sold footwear and inspected a pair of men’s sandals. After they’d rented a room yesterday, Rule had Changed. At first she thought this was temporary so he could communicate, and indeed he had been very ready to speak. First had come a question: Could Li Lei create a gate when the time came?
Gan had pointed out that she could carry people with her when she crossed. Rule had pointed out that there would be five children and four adults to evacuate—too many for Gan to take with her. Li Lei had pointed out that they did not need to create a gate. The children had been (or would be, to use their present frame of reference) removed from Dis through a gate; they needed only to reopen one already constructed. Gan was sensitive to gates. She’d sensed the one they used to remove the children and thought it was a permanent gate.
What if Gan was wrong? Rule has asked. Didn’t temporary gates cease to exist after they had been used?
Yes and no, she’d said. Temporary gates lacked what might be called an anchor, that part of the structure that kept them from dissipating. Such anchors took months to build, so it was possible their enemies had not bothered. Yet even without such an anchor, the gate’s structure would linger for a time. He might think of it as the ghost of a gate, neither solid enough to use nor entirely gone. This structure could be awakened, reopening the gate, which was much simpler than building one from scratch. Still, they must hope Gan was right. Reopening a permanent gate would be much better. The nodes had been destabilized when Reno flew through the magical construct. They would not be as unstable here as they were in Dis, but a temporary gate tied to even slightly unstable nodes would collapse quickly.
No, she did not know how quickly. And no, she could not open either type of gate herself. She did not explain why. However, she should be able to instruct Cynna Weaver in what was needed. Or Reno could do so if he arrived in this realm at the right time. The green dragon was very knowledgeable about that sort of thing.
But Reno could not create a gate himself? Rule had asked.