Ahh.
Funny how a single syllable—one she couldn’t even hear, strictly speaking—could hold such understanding. “Tell Grandmother I love her.”
TWENTY-FIVE
LILY was sound asleep when the hinges on the door creaked. She shot bolt upright, her system zinging with adrenaline alarms.
It was Ah Hai. Lily sighed, her body flooded with fight-or-flight chemicals. Reason number 122 to hate being a prisoner: no one knocks on a cell door. “You’re early,” she observed, trying not to sound pissed about it. There was enough light coming in the window slit to see by, but only just. The tiny cell was painted in the pearly grays of predawn.
Ah Hai nodded and knelt beside Lily’s sleep mat. In silence she held out a familiar object: Lily’s Glock.
Lily’s eyes flew to Li Hai’s face. The albino woman tapped her closed lips with a finger. Not the “shush” gesture Lily was used to, but the idea was clear. “You are to come with me,” Ah Hai whispered in her dialect.
“What is it?” Cynna said, her voice bleary with sleep.
“Ah Hai wants me to go with her,” Lily said softly. She took the weapon, and Ah Hai promptly dug into a pocket and pulled out two full clips. Lily took those, too, and held them out to Cynna, sending, Hide these for me.
Cynna—sitting up now—accepted them and tucked them under her blanket. “Where? Where are you going?”
Lily had no idea, so she asked Ah Hai.
“To the workroom of the Zhu Kongqi.”
? ? ?
LILY had been to Kongqi’s workroom many times now, often enough to wear down her fear of the place. Wear down, but not eliminate, and the weirdness of this summons brought it back full-force as she stepped out into early morning air almost cool enough to call crisp.
Ah Hai walked beside her. As usual, two guards kept pace in front and behind—but not Fang. Fang always accompanied her, but not this time. Not on the day when Rule, Grandmother, and Gan would arrive. When the children would arrive. Her mind spun out a dizzying number of possibilities for Fang’s absence, all of them calamitous. She told her mind to shut up. It didn’t listen.
“Where’s Fist Second Fang?” she asked Ah Hai casually.
“He is not yet on duty, I think.”
There, see? she told her mind. A change in the routine does not automatically signal a return of pain ants. Kongqi had a busy day planned, what with stealing the Change from babes and opening gates to Earth. He was squeezing her in at the only time available to him.
The question, of course, was why.
He had no reason to question her again. Not about anything that mattered anyway. There was no way he could have guessed at their plans. He had no mind magic, so he couldn’t know she’d been in contact with Rule. He certainly didn’t know about Grandmother. He wanted to talk about solipsism or the Dragon Accords some more before she was handed over to the Great Bitch to get her mind scrubbed clean. Last chance and all that. She had to quit worrying about the secrets she was keeping so he didn’t sense her nerves.
And that was like trying not to think of an elephant. That damn elephant clomped along beside her all the way to the Qī Jiā and down its halls to Kongqi’s lab.
There were no guards stationed outside it. Why not? her mind shrieked. Kongqi always had guards outside his sanctum. Ah Hai laid her palm on the door and whispered something so softly Lily wasn’t sure she heard it. Then she set her hand on the latch and opened the door.
The door was supposed to swing open, powered by TK. Kongqi always did it that way. Lily didn’t move. That might have been tactical. It might have been sheer funk.
Ah Hai paused a few steps in, apparently realizing Lily hadn’t followed her. “Come,” she said, using the English word Lily had grown to hate and beckoning with one hand.
She could take the guards. Lily was sure of that. But this was not the day to stage an escape. Reluctantly she entered the workroom. Everything looked pretty much the same as ever, with one exception. Kongqi wasn’t there.
“What’s going on?” Lily asked. “Where’s—”
Ah Hai made that “hush” sign again and moved behind the door . . . standing where the guards wouldn’t see her, Lily realized. The little woman closed the heavy door using hands instead of TK, then set her palm on it again and whispered at it. She turned to face Lily and whispered, “The Zhu Kongqi will be here soon. We wait for him here, where no one can hear us. First I must caution you as I was bid. The weapon I returned to you will not harm the Zhuren when they fly. They have shields that protect against projectiles.”
Lily thought about that, about how fast they zipped around in the air, and nodded. They’d probably need to develop those shields just to keep bug-spatter from messing up their pretty shenyi. But would such shields really work against a bullet traveling at 2500 feet per second?
“Honorable Lily Yu, do you remember that I told you once about the Kanas?”
That was so far from anything she’d been expected that it took her a moment to place the name. “That’s the village. Or the villagers maybe. The people where the sp—where the Zhuren were raised.”
Ah Hai nodded solemnly. “I am afraid I led you to think an untrue thing. The Kanas did not all die when their village burned.” She looked at Lily expectantly.
How had Ah Hai put it when she told that story? It is said, or something like that. Not “this happened,” but “it is said this happened.” “What happened to them?”
Ah Hai looked vaguely disappointed. “Perhaps you do not know that the village of Kanas lay in a region where there is much magic.”
Why didn’t the woman just tell her? “High magic means . . . more people born with Gifts? More born with . . . shit!” she exclaimed in English as the light dawned. More mutations. She went back to Mandarin. “Are you saying that you’re a Kanas? That some or all of those who are claimed—the yāoqiú—are Kanas?”
Ah Hai beamed. “I cannot tell you that.”
“You mean you’re not allowed to.”
“If you were ever to meet one of the Kanas—one who was not an elder—she would not tell you who she was. However, she might choose to tell you a story.”
Lily’s heart pounded. She leaned in close. “Will you tell me a story, Ah Hai?”
? ? ?
RULE stood at the rail and inhaled deeply. Gan sat on the deck beside him, her eyes bright with curiosity, her mouth—for once—silent. She was already dashtu.
They were in Lang Xin at last.