Madame said nothing for several moments. Then she spoke crisply. “The problem is that I am reading correspondence going the wrong way, from the magistrates to the spawn. I need to see what the spawn are telling their magistrates.”
He shrugged, impatient. Restless. “This boat is going to the capital. It can only pick up official documents traveling to the spawn, not those coming from them.”
“Perhaps we should steal some of the magistrate’s incoming mail at our next stop.”
“You’re joking.”
“You are very nearly rude. If we must wait a day or more upon the magistrate, there will be time to arrange a theft. Gan can go dashtu.”
“And I suppose she will have no trouble finding the documents we wish to see? And if she does find them, no one will notice that they’re gone?”
“You are very grouchy tonight. Perhaps you should go for a run.”
His eyebrows flew up. “And risk being seen as wolf?”
She snorted. “More risk of being eaten, I think. Some predators here are very large. You would need to give a reason to spend the night on the shore instead of the boat.”
“If there were a village here . . . but there isn’t.” The chún-chún usually tied up for the night at a village, but in keeping with their passengers’ desire for speed, they’d pushed on until they absolutely had to stop and rest the chún. “I’ll think on it.” Gods knew he wanted to run—to hunt—but should he?
She patted his arm. “If a run clears your mind, it is worth some risk. Do not use your injured leg.”
He had to smile. Madame tried to remember not to give him orders. She forgot. Frequently. Ordering others around wasn’t just a habit for her. It was the way she showed love. He understood. He, too, was a dominant.
He was deeply glad she was here. First, of course, because he feared they’d have no chance of rescuing the children without her, much less those they’d left behind in Dis. Then there was the way she’d been able to speed his healing. He hadn’t known a nonhealer could do that. His gut should have taken a month to grow back, yet his healing was now repairing both his gut and leg. That meant the gut must be nearly or fully regrown.
All of that mattered greatly, but he’d known Madame Yu was fiercely capable. He hadn’t known she would also make such a comfortable companion.
Not soothing, no. Intermittently maddening . . . and yet comfortable. She was wise and canny and powerful, and that was surely part of it. But mostly, he thought, it was the trust. Even with clan he didn’t feel this sort of trust, for with clan he was always aware of the need to be strong, capable, in charge. No one but Madame Yu was in charge of Madame Yu. Then there was her gift for silence. That could be aggravating when he learned she’d withheld some bit of information—she loved secrets as much as dragons did—but some of her silence came from a deep quiet within her, a quiet that seemed to render her immune to worry. One he could rest in along with her now and then.
They sat together in easy silence now, their backs to the piled crates in the middle of the ship.
In the deepest channel of the river, a large body splashed. The chún were feeding. It took a lot of fish to fuel those powerful bodies, but the chún’s masters could send schools of fish their way, allowing them to eat their fill in a relatively short time. The boat father’s sons were out there now, making their fishy suggestions. The boat father himself sat atop the cabin’s roof in the stern, relaxing with his pipe. His daughter was preparing the evening meal.
Cooking was done in a cast iron box on legs with a louvered grate on top—louvered to allow control of the airflow, and so the heat of the fire. The rice was already cooked and waiting in a large tin pot shaped to fit the grate. Mei Ling’s knife flashed with brisk efficiency as she cleaned the last of the three large fish Gan had brought her. They would be chopped fine and stir-fried with some vegetables.
Gan herself was still in the river, like the boat father’s sons. Frequent renewal of Grandmother’s magically powered suggestions kept the beastmaster family from finding her behavior strange, but the river was not safe at this time of day. She lacked the young men’s ability to turn aside predators with mental suggestions. She claimed that her ability to see üther—a type of energy produced by living creatures—would let her avoid them.
He hoped she was right. “Why do you allow Gan to swim so late in the day? Many predators feed at dusk.”
For some reason that amused Madame Yu. She actually chuckled. “You think it is for me to allow or not allow?”
“She won’t listen to me. She’d obey you.”
“Perhaps.”
“No ‘perhaps’ about it. She’s afraid of . . . no, that’s not it.” He frowned, mostly at the realization that he couldn’t put words to what he’d seen, but didn’t understand. “She was afraid of you at first, but not anymore. Fear wouldn’t be why she obeyed, but she would obey.”
“It is simple enough. I am her first parent.”
“She—” He cut that off to stare at the old woman sitting placidly beside him. “You think she sees you as a parent? A mother figure?”
“Mother, grandmother . . .” She shrugged. “The little one has no model for either. I create them in her. This is a serious responsibility. I am careful with my ordering.”
If anyone else had said that, he would have laughed. Gan might not be a demon anymore, but she was long past the age when she could be parented. “What about the gnomes? They’re guiding her, surely.”
“The ones she respects are guides, yes. A guide is not a parent.”
Their supper arrived, carried by the girl who’d cooked it. She knelt gracefully and held out both bowls, smiling shyly. Her name was Mei Ling. She was a daughter of the Siji, which was the name the beastmasters gave themselves. They were a tribe or family group descended from a nonhuman lái from the sidhe realms—or so Madame said. The beastmasters said their lái ancestor had been human, but there was strong prejudice here against racial mixing. They would wish to claim a purely human ancestry whether or not it was so.
Mei Ling was seventeen and very lovely, and Rule was only too aware that she’d decided to be in love with him.
Madame—Grandmother, he corrected himself—accepted her bowl with a regal nod. “Xiè xie,” Rule said as he accepted the other. Xiè xie meant “thanks” and was one-fourth of his readily available Chinese. He could also say “please,” “ox,” and “madame.” Along with the thanks, he gave Mei Ling a particular kind of smile. The kind he had no right to offer her.
She giggled, possibly at his pronunciation, possibly because she was seventeen. And glowed with pleasure at his smile.