I don’t know, and Grandmother says she does not care to make predictions. We’ll talk about this, but Lily, we have to assume this timetable means that the children will arrive tomorrow. If this—the opening of gates, or whatever it is—is scheduled for moonrise, then we have to assume the children will arrive before that.
“Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. If opening gates to Earth is payment from the spawn to the G.B., they won’t do it until they get what she promised them.” The children. That’s what they wanted—babies and children who could be plundered for their ability to Change. Lily closed her eyes. She was so angry. So tight with anger and fear and some unholy fusion of the two. Vividly she remembered how Toby had looked in the blue pj’s he’d worn to bed the night the monsters came . . .
Eyes open, she told herself. Got to keep her eyes open and focused on the present. “We need to talk about the timing. About how long we’ll have to hold the area around the gate.” She and Rule had been separated for much of their assault on Xitil’s former palace, so he didn’t have all the facts. “We can’t reopen that gate until we reach a moment when we—the other ‘we,’ that is, the ones in the past—aren’t in Dis anymore.” She huffed out a breath. “Did that make sense? Talking about events that are both in the past and in the future makes me dizzy.”
I follow you. You’re worried about the delay, the time between when the children were taken through the gate and the time when all of us left Dis. I am, too, but don’t see how we can estimate it accurately.
“Cynna and I have tried. We think we’ve come up with an estimate for the maximum delay. She’s sure Ryder was in Dis up until someone broke her Find, so that’s the earliest moment the children could have been taken through a gate. As close as we’ve been able to figure, that was about two-and-a-half hours before Gan grabbed Cynna and yanked her into Dragonhome.”
Two-and-a-half hours. He was silent a few moments. That’s longer than I was hoping. Grandmother says she cannot hold the ward that long.
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
You’re assuming that time is now passing at roughly the same rate in Dis and here?
“The last figure I got from Alice for the time rate difference was down to three minutes, ten seconds.”
Then we will have to hope that the delay is not the maximum possible. The minimum would be about thirty minutes, based on when we arrived at the audience hall. Either way, we will need the distraction.
She couldn’t argue. Much as she hated it, she hadn’t been able to come up with a better idea. “Reno will be able to help. He left through the construct right before Cynna lost her Find, so he should get here before the kids do.”
We don’t know if he’ll travel in a straight line, time-wise, or more crookedly, the way Gan did. He might arrive five minutes from now or after the children are brought here. And once he’s here, he may not act directly against the spawn.
“Because he’s their mother.”
Yes. But we can count on him to act against the Great Enemy, even if that endangers the spawn. Grandmother explained why. I need to tell you about that, but it’s a long story.
She hoped he was right. Learning that the green dragon had given birth to the spawn had shaken her. “Maybe you should save the long story for later. I need to tell you about my idea for Gan. I started to before, but I lost the connection. Ask Gan something for me. How easy is it for her to cross to Earth from Dragonhome? Are there a lot of spots where she could do that?”
A pause, long enough to have her drumming her fingers on her thigh impatiently. Then: She says Dragonhome doesn’t have as many crossing spots as most realms. She means all crossing spots, not just those that touch Earth. She thinks this is because Dragonhome is set crooked to all the realms—a statement that got Grandmother’s attention. She’s questioning Gan about what that means. She . . . oh. His mental voice thrummed with sudden emotion. Lily, she just told Grandmother that there are always crossing spots near a node.
“You’re thinking what I’m thinking, right? There will be a node at or near the gate, so there will be crossing spots. Maybe, while the rest of us hold the area around the gate, Gan can cross with the children, one at a time. Take them to Earth.”
Son of a bitch. I didn’t think of—I can’t believe I never thought—just a minute. Hold on a minute while I ask.
Another endless pause. When Rule spoke again, his words were crisp yet weighted, as if each word was part of a dam holding back all sorts of emotion. She says yes, if there’s a good crossing spot. There may not be, and even if there is, she may not be able to take all the children. She has plenty of power, but it makes her dizzy to cross realms that aren’t matched in time. If she’s too dizzy, she won’t be able to cross safely.
“The time rate difference is pretty small now.”
Yes. Another pause. She could almost feel him mastering his emotions enough to continue. So dizziness may not be a major problem. But she also says that slipping through the strata—she liked Grandmother’s word for that—around Dragonhome is difficult. She isn’t sure how many times she can do it without resting. She described the process as being like “trying to shit a brick, only you’re both the asshole and the shit that’s trying to come out the asshole.”
Lily couldn’t help grinning. “Colorful, that’s our Gan.”
Yes.
For a moment neither of them spoke. Was he struggling with the same messy mix of hope and fear as she was? Acid drops of “maybe” dripped and burned, dripped and burned. But if they could get the kids to safety . . . well, what happened to the rest of them mattered, it mattered a lot, but once the kids were safe, they’d won. “So we try for that, if we can. It’s not a sure thing, but—”
He laughed. Mindspeech was only supposed to carry words and this wasn’t verbal, yet she knew it for laughter—a sensation entirely mental, too broad to call amusement, a bubbling exuberance that could only be laughter. What about all this isn’t insanely risky?
“True,” she said wryly. “And we’ve made it this far, so . . .” Sounds outside her cell caught her attention. “I think Cynna’s back. I’d probably better go. I’ll need to brief her on everything, and I don’t want to get depleted again.”
Of course. I love you.
She closed her eyes and sent the words back to him. Those three words were so clear in her mind . . . she didn’t need to whisper, didn’t need any help with them at all. And then, instead of telling him good-bye, she asked something that had been bothering her, though she’d made herself use their time to discuss more important things: “Rule? You aren’t calling Grandmother ‘Madame’ anymore.”
She told me to call her Grandmother.
A smile surprised her, sliding over her face smooth and easy. As if she were happy. “You’ve been adopted.”
I was already part of her family. He sounded baffled. When you and I married, I became part of her family, as she is part of mine.
“You’ve been adopted,” she repeated softly. She knew what this meant, even if she couldn’t put it into words . . . or maybe she could. “Let me put it this way. You’ve been claimed.”