“Mind control disturbs me. The charms Cynna made should shield me and Gan, but—”
“No and no. The beastmaster Gift does not work on human minds, and it is not mind control. It is . . . bah. I could say this properly in Dragon. In English, it is hard. This Gift is not constructed in a way that allows it to control minds. It suggests. It does not compel. Such suggestions may be weak or strong. A strong suggestion reaches almost the same result as true control, but it arrives there through a different means. Even weak suggestions work well if the animal is stupid.”
“Is it a type of ensorcellment?”
She snorted. “It is nothing like ensorcellment. It is closer to mindspeech.”
That startled him. “It’s animal mindspeech?”
“It is not mindspeech, and we are all animals.”
“But it’s similar to mindspeech. You just said so.”
Trying to explain minds to the mind-blind was frustrating. “Yellow is more like blue than it is like a caterpillar, but yellow is not blue. The beastmaster Gift is more like mindspeech than it is like ensorcellment, but it is not mindspeech. It cannot carry words. It touches minds on a primitive level, so only works on very simple minds. Nonsentient minds.” She was not reaching whatever worried him. She tried again. “Think of sentient minds as onions. A beastmaster cannot affect sentient minds because his magic cannot reach through the layers of the onion to its core. This is a bad image,” she added. “It misleads as much as it helps. Do not lean hard on it.”
One corner of his mind twitched up. “You sound like Sam. So the beastmaster can’t affect human minds. What about a wolf’s mind?”
“That is what troubles you?” She clucked her tongue and shook her head. “Foolishness. Your wolf is as sentient as your man. You know this. You aim your worry in the wrong direction.”
His eyebrows climbed. “Where should I aim my worry?”
“Given a strong Gift and some training, a beastmaster can sense sentient minds, even if he cannot influence them. It is not the type of sensing Lily does.” Nor what Li Lei did, for that matter. “It would be . . . muddy. Unclear. But it may be enough. These beastmasters may be able to tell that you are not human.”
He frowned, then said slowly, “Nonhumans are very rare here, from what you’ve said. But we’ve already told them I’m a fall-through. A lái. No reason I couldn’t be a lái from one of the sidhe realms.”
She shook her head. “How, then, would you and I know the same language? No, you must be from Earth. These people do not know about our realm, however. A little about China, but nothing of the West. We may be able to—”
Several feet away from shore, Gan shot to the surface of the river, water streaming from her newly black hair, and began splashing quickly toward shore, grinning. Her swim had cheered her.
“We will discuss what to say about you—and what to imply—later,” Grandmother said in a low voice to Rule. “Gan deals better with clear instructions than with the muddle of deciding.”
Gan plopped down beside them and whispered rather too loudly, “Hi, Rule! Hi, Grandmother! I met someone. She’s a good swimmer, faster than me, but I hold my breath longer. Ask her what her name is, okay?”
A moment later a second head broke the surface of the water. Her hair was black, too, but the effect was totally different as she stood on the river’s sandy bottom, water streaming down her sleek female body. She was not naked. She wore the same sort of linen tunic and trousers that most women here wore. But wet linen did not conceal.
She was in her late teens and as naturally beautiful as most young creatures. She was obviously related to the boat father and his sons, and like them, she was a beastmaster. A powerful one, stronger than her father and brothers. Her eyes were as yellow as citrines and fixed on Rule. Her lips parted as she stared at him, transfixed. Her hard nipples might have been due to cold, but Li Lei did not think so.
She sighed. The beastmaster’s beautiful daughter was going to be trouble.
EIGHTEEN
San Francisco, California
Five days and twelve hours before Lily, Rule, and company set off for hell
THE office at the back of the antique store was small, windowless, and tidy. The desk was either Louis XVI or a very good imitation. The file cabinets were standard office bland, but the tall shelves opposite them held an interesting miscellany. In addition to a large number of impressively bound books, there was a pair of carved ducks; a wireless printer; a small ceramic urn painted in Picasso’s distinctive style; an enthusiastic spider plant growing in an old chamber pot; and a velvet Elvis.
The man sitting at the Louis XVI desk was long and lean with a wide, flexible mouth. He ran a hand through his hair—dark and curly, flecked with gray—and spoke into his phone. “Look, Ed, I don’t know how you got this number—”
“Friend of a friend,” Minsky said vaguely.
“But I’m not in the business anymore.”
“Right, right. Everyone knows that. I’m just hoping for a little advice from an old friend. A few minutes of your time. I’ve always been straight with you, haven’t I? I helped you with those coins you needed to move a few years ago.”
“You helped,” Jasper said dryly. “For a commission.”
“Sure, and if you’re wanting a commission, we could discuss that. I wouldn’t object if you wanted to handle the sale. You’ve—”
“I’m not in the business anymore,” Jasper repeated patiently. He liked Ed, but he really needed to get back to the quarterly taxes. Didn’t much want to, but need and want often sped off in different directions.
“So don’t handle the sale. That’s fine,” the other man said promptly. “Just let me buy you dinner tonight so you can take a look at it. If you could give me a couple numbers to call, that’d be great, but mostly I just want you to have a look, give me some idea what to ask for it. I don’t know the magic trade, and even if I did, I’ve got no bloody idea what—”
The office door swung open. “Hey, did you forget that we’re supposed to go to—whoops. Sorry. Business?” The man in the doorway smiled crookedly.
That was Adam—crooked smile, crooked nose, all part of the charm of a face with the warm, lived-in comfort of a favorite chair. Adam, who loved puzzles, World of Warcraft, and the theater; hated television, Brussels sprouts, and intolerance; and had only to walk into a room to magically multiply the mess. He was neither short nor tall, fat nor thin, a nice-enough-looking guy who didn’t stand out in a crowd until you looked at his eyes. Big, soulful brown eyes with absurdly long lashes for a man who’d turn fifty in another year.
Angel Eyes, Jasper liked to call him. Pissed him off every time. “We don’t need to leave until seven.”
Adam made a point of glancing at his watch. “Which usually comes pretty soon after six fifty-two.”
Damn, was it that late already?