A quick spate of Chinese from her father made her turn, scowling. She shot something back at him, but rose in reluctant obedience.
Mei Ling’s father had told her to attend to her charges, meaning the chún. She’d told him that he knew very well her brothers were doing that. Rule knew this because a voice had murmured the translations in his ear as they spoke—a voice that sounded disconcertingly like Madame Yu. After two unsuccessful attempts, Madame had presented him with a working translation charm that morning. It hung around his neck with the charms Cynna had made before they left Earth. It was not self-renewing like Gan’s charm, she’d informed him with a tartness meant to mask either chagrin or frustration. She had decided to omit that element, as every time she tried to weave it in, the harmony was disrupted. But it should last through the full moon. She could renew it for him after that, if necessary.
It might be. The moon would be full in four days. They would reach Lang Xin in two or three days—or four, if the magistrate at Liangzhou was especially difficult and kept them waiting two full days. The children would arrive in this realm between three and six days from now, or so Gan guessed. They didn’t know exactly how displaced in time they were compared to Dis, but they might reach the capital at the same time his son did. Or a few days before that. Or a day late.
That was one reason for Rule’s tension. There were others.
Madame clucked her tongue. “She courts you.”
Rule took his chopsticks out of the inside pocket on his tunic. He was fairly good with chopsticks, fortunately. Not as good as a native, but no one expected him to act like a native. “She flirts, that’s all. Isn’t proper courting supposed to go the other way in a patriarchal society?”
She snorted. “A proper courtship would take place between her father and yours, though I might act on your behalf since you are a lái and I am presumed to have authority over you. Her courtship is about mating, not marriage.”
Rule had just popped a bite of fish in his mouth. He did not choke on it. He was, however, startled to feel a dull flush creep up his neck. He hadn’t been embarrassed by sex since he was thirteen. “She can’t expect that.”
“Seventeen is old enough to expect exactly that.”
“I was thinking of the lack of privacy.” Counting on it, in fact. “She’s never more than a dozen yards away from her father and brothers, even when she’s riding one of the chún. They’re not about to let the two of us wander off alone even if she wanted to, and I’m not convinced she does. Flirting with me when we can’t be alone together is safe. Not that her family likes it. They’d rather she didn’t speak to me.”
“Her father has not made up his mind about you. If he decides he approves, the lack of privacy will not be a problem.”
“I assure you it would. Not that I . . . dammit.”
“Your face looks very funny. Perhaps you do not know that Mei Ling will not be allowed to marry. Daughters of the Siji do not marry,”
Rule’s new translation charm could not make up its mind how to translate “Siji.” It whispered three options in his ear: drivers, four seasons, and—rather disconcertingly—dead ones. “Drivers” was probably right, for that was what the Siji did. They drove their beasts.
Madame went on, “Marriage would take Mei Ling into her husband’s family, and her Gift is too valuable to lose that way. Her family does want her to have children, however.” A sly glance. “It will be awkward for you if her father decides you should sire his grandchildren.”
“If you’re right about her,” he said slowly, then stopped.
“Yes,” she said, understanding him even though he hadn’t said the rest of it. “You will need to handle her carefully, Rule.”
Grimly, he ate a few more bites before replying. “There aren’t any Siji in China. You didn’t know they existed until we met these people. How do you know so much about them?”
“People tell an old woman all manner of things.”
This time he snorted. “I’m certain people told you things long before your appearance fit their notion of ‘old woman.’”
“You are not wrong. However . . .”
When her voice drifted off, Rule glanced quickly at her. She was frowning at the lingering blaze of sunset. “What is it?”
“Dragon.”
TWENTY
RULE shoved to his feet.
Madame continued to frown absently into the west. “He may be only curious. So far he’s only . . . no.” All at once she was on her feet, too, shouting in Chinese, which his charm rendered as, “Dragon! Take cover! Dragon!”
Rule’s night vision was better than a human’s, but it didn’t do him much good now. The dragon was coming at them from the west, where the sky was bright with sunset, preventing his eyes from adapting. Then all at once it was visible, a dark blur hurtling down at them, neck outstretched and wings folded as he dove with shattering speed.
Rue’s mind clicked over into certa, the battle state. Even as he saw clearly how impossible it was for a single man, lupus or not, to stand against a dragon, his body was in motion. As the great beast’s wings shot out, breaking his fall and the air in a small explosion, Rule crouched. And leaped.
The boat father hadn’t been quick enough to react to Madame’s shouted warning. He’d risen, but still stood atop the cabin’s flat roof as the dragon’s talons reached for him. Talons a bright, improbable blue, as were the rest of the dragon’s scales that gleamed in the mage lights. Talons that part of Rule’s mind noted were much smaller than Sam’s.
In certa, observation, calculation, decision, and action flow in a single kinetic stream, so as Rule landed on the cabin’s roof and drew the long knife he’d acquired in Bolilu, he knew many things. He knew the heat of that great body overhead and the shock of impact on his damaged leg. He knew the overwhelming smell of dragon—meat and spice, metal and musk. He knew the boat father was about to hurl himself off the cabin’s roof, and that he wouldn’t make it. And as he twisted his torso so his swing would carry all the strength of legs, back, and shoulders, he knew he struck at a dragon perhaps half of Sam’s size. Which meant that if he were very fast and very clever, the dragon might not kill him right away.
The boat father leaped.
One talon closed around the man’s arm, stopping his flight with a jerk. The other reached for a leg.
Dragon scales are hard. According to Cullen, some of that hardness was magical. Those on the belly a few feet above Rule’s head were the size of dinner plates and would have bounced his blade back at him. Those on the feet were the size of quarters and correspondingly thin. But he could reach only one foot, the one wrapped around the boat father. So he aimed above it, where the scales were smaller and thinner than on the belly, but not as small as those on the foot.
Rule’s knife connected. The blade sank deep, jarring him as it lodged in bone.
Blood stinging with heat splattered his face and chest.
The dragon screamed, a sound like a pipe organ exploding, every chord played at once with impossible volume.