Gan didn’t really understand the dragon spawns’ plan—or was it the Great Bitch’s plan?—but she’d decided it wasn’t her job to understand it. She just had to find the gate so she could tell Lily Yu where it was when Lily Yu contacted her.
Gan wished Lily Yu would go ahead and do that, even though she didn’t much like it when someone talked inside her head. That was what dragons did. But maybe once Lily Yu mindspoke her, she’d stop worrying so much. And maybe Lily Yu would say she was proud of Gan. That Gan had done well.
Gan felt a little glow, thinking about that. Then she thought about her own plan.
She’d been insulted when Rule Turner wanted to make a plan for her. Did he think she needed him to tell her what to do? It was a really simple plan, too, which was insulting. But he’d said he wouldn’t worry about her as much if he knew she had a plan, which had made her feel funny. Good-funny, not bad-funny. She hated worrying, but it made her feel good to think Rule Turner worried about her, even though she liked him now so you’d think she wouldn’t want him to have worry-feelings. But she did. It was like a secret joke, though she wasn’t sure if it was a joke on him or on her. Either way, it was funny.
The first part of the plan was for her to stay hidden in bunches of people. It was much harder, Old Woman said, to sense Gan being dashtu when she had people around her, especially if those people were Gifted. Their magics hid hers. Gan couldn’t tell who was Gifted and who wasn’t, but lots of people here had some magic, so she’d just stay in the middle of crowds as much as possible.
But no one was walking through the middle of the big, open space where the nodes were. She had to use the second part of the plan, which she didn’t like because it was waiting. Waiting was boring. She’d hoped she would get another idea once she saw the government place, but so far she didn’t have any ideas.
Maybe Lily Yu would contact her soon and she’d have a better idea. With another sigh, she moved into a group of people who were headed for the market.
The market wasn’t a bad spot for waiting. There were people to watch, people who would hide her magic. Maybe she’d steal another snack to pass the time. She wandered around the stalls, dodging out of the way automatically before people who didn’t see her walked into her.
And then someone did. A baby. It was sitting on a blanket beside a tiny stall that sold spices and herbs, and it was staring right at her.
Gan stared back, shocked. Maybe it didn’t really see her? She waved at it. It made a gurgling sound and smiled and held up its hand as if it might wave back, but then forgot about that and started chewing on its fingers instead.
That made Gan want to laugh, so she made a face at it. It laughed again, or she thought that gurgling sound was a laugh. It sure looked happy. And it was too small to talk, surely, so it couldn’t tell anyone it saw her. She sat down and played with the baby, making faces, doing silly things to make it laugh. That went on until it suddenly plopped forward, catching itself on its hands, and started to crawl toward Gan. And the woman who worked at the stall, who hadn’t seemed to be paying any attention at all, swooped down and picked it up.
The woman was young. She clucked at the baby and said chiding things as if she was mad, but her face was happy and her voice was soft. She checked the baby’s diaper and told it that it was wet.
That was the mother, Gan realized. The mother was supposed to do those things. Watch the baby so it didn’t wander off. Feed it when it was hungry. Change its diaper when it peed itself. Gan felt something twist in her feelings, a strange, sad feeling.
Demons didn’t have mothers. They had princes.
All life on Dis started out as bugs who either ate other bugs or got eaten. If you didn’t get eaten, you eventually ate enough other lives to become a larva. That was pretty much the same as being a bug—eat or get eaten—only you were a being. Not that you could really think yet, but you knew you existed, which bugs don’t, and eventually you transformed into a demon of one sort or another. Being a demon was still mostly eat or be eaten, only with sex, too, and a lot more thinking.
There was no room along the path of bug-larva-demon for mothers. No room for family at all.
She frowned at herself. Did she want a family? Why would she? Families seemed to spend a lot of time expecting things from each other and getting mad or sad when they didn’t get what they expected. People got upset about their families all the time—human people, gnome people, sidhe people . . . every kind of people except demons. Because demons didn’t have families.
Maybe families were a soul thing? If you had a soul, it made you want a family?
Unsettled, Gan picked a spot at the edge of the market where she could watch the area near the nodes and sat, prepared to be bored. And wished really hard for chocolate.
TWENTY-SEVEN
LILY sat at the battered table across from Cynna and Ah Li and thought, Stone. Stone. Stone. Got to be stone—solid, patient. Waiting. She did not feel like stone. Some other kind of mineral maybe. Or a combination of minerals. Dynamite, for example.
“The honorable Alice will be pleased.” Ah Li’s voice was rich with satisfaction. Her round face glowed with it.
Automatically, Lily translated the healer’s words for Cynna, then passed on Cynna’s reply.
It was the middle of the afternoon and she hadn’t had one private moment to contact Rule. Sunset was still hours away, Lily told herself. They had time.
The day had started with Ah Hai waking her, then Kongqi had indeed joined them at his workshop, not at all surprised to find them there. He’d wanted to talk about sewers. Sewers, for God’s sake. When she persuaded him she knew next to nothing about sewers, they’d chatted about pets. What was the difference between a pet and a slave? Sentience? Then how did she know her cat (she’d mentioned Dirty Harry) wasn’t sentient? How did humans in general determine or define sentience?
She hadn’t had good answers. When Kongqi finally released her, Fist Second Fang had been waiting with her usual pair of guards. She’d tried mindspeaking Rule on the walk back to her cell, but kept messing up. And when they arrived, Ah Li had been there, ready for another translating session. A long session, broken briefly by lunch. Apparently she wasn’t getting a workout period today.
But finally they’d finished. Finished as in done, fini, completed. The translated spell worked. Now they were waiting for Alice to join them so she could observe their success—and make her last two payments. She owed Cynna for her “sincere efforts” plus the bonus for succeeding.