AH Hai had grown distressed when Lily wanted to sit. She would wrinkle the silk. So for an endless period, Lily mostly stood still and sent out her mindsense. She checked in with Gan first.
Gan had a lot to tell her. First, she’d found the gate. It was set into the tower exactly halfway between the nodes. She’d found a lot of crossing spots, too, and tried to tell Lily about each one, but the short version was that the only crossing spot to Earth opened into solid rock. But Gan had found what she called a perfect spot to cross into Edge: “It opens up real close to the City! So I can take the children there and order people to take care of them and take them back to Earth through the gate!”
And that, Lily thought, was probably better than sending the kids to some random location on Earth, like Siberia or the middle of the Mojave. Gan really could order people in Edge to take care of the children; she really could command the use of the gate between Edge and Earth. There were two problems with it, though. Gan would have to make multiple trips to take all the children to safety, and Edge’s time was not in sync with Dragonhome’s. She couldn’t be sure of “getting the time right. It’s pretty tricky.” Also, Gan wasn’t sure the crossing spot was close enough to the nodes for Grandmother to include it in the ward.
That was a question only Grandmother could answer, so Lily contacted her next. She was just across the compound so was well within Lily’s limits, and her mind was easy to find. It didn’t compel hers the way a dragon’s did, but it did sort of beckon. Grandmother said she would have to see the area around the gate and the nodes before she would know how large her ward would be. Next Lily reached for Rule, and then Cynna, telling them about the gate and crossing spot.
Every one of them asked the same question: any sign of Reno?
No, she had to say each time. No big green dragons had shown up.
She kept checking outside, too, counting the minds just outside the bathhouse. Six guards. No Li Po, dammit. She checked in with Gan again. The little one was eager to chat, so maybe she found waiting hard, too. Lily let her run on a bit before cutting her off. This time, when she checked on the guards, another mind had joined theirs. A hard, almost shiny mind. One she recognized.
She hurried to the door and listened. Li Po was angry and loud about it. She heard him clearly berating his men for letting the yāoqiú to assemble by the tower. Why hadn’t they all been sent back to their duties?
A stammering voice assured Li Po they had tried. The yāoqiú would not go. They claimed their duty required them to be there.
Li Po was sure they had not been firm enough. He sent one of them to tell the yāoqiú to leave.
Lily stepped back from the door a second before a fist, hard and imperative, pounded on it. “Come!” Li Po demanded.
For once, that word made Lily smile. She took a deep, calming breath, sent out a quick word to Grandmother—ten minutes!—and opened the door.
The sunlight was blinding after the dim interior of the bathhouse. There was a bit of a breeze when Lily stepped out of the bathhouse, welcome on the few bits of skin not covered by all the silk, but the sunlight was blinding. Lily blinked, took note of the position of the sun—low—and the positions of the guards.
Only four guards, all standing in a loose bunch behind Li Po. The fifth was trotting toward the circle of the claimed.
She ducked her head. “First Fist,” she whispered very softly, channeling Ah Hai’s docile manner. “I would ask a favor.”
“What? What? I cannot hear you.”
“A favor, honored Fist,” she whispered, not one bit louder, her head still lowered.
He stepped closer. “Speak up, woman.”
She bobbed in a not-quite bow and managed to make herself audible. Barely. “Do we go to the House of the Seven?”
“Yes. And quickly.”
“Thank you,” she said, bobbing again, bending her knees more deeply this time—and she uncoiled, springing at him.
It was ludicrously easy. She’d separated him just enough from the guards behind him, and he expected nothing from her but trembling submission. Instead she spun him around, seized one arm and bent it high behind his back, and held Gan’s knife to his throat. “Tell them to stay back!”
“I will not—”
She pressed the sharp blade into his flesh. Not deeply, but enough to hurt. To make him bleed. Blood focused the attention wonderfully, and for all his warrior’s bearing, Li Po was unused to combat.
He yelped. Then he barked, “Stand back! She has gone crazy! Where did you get that—”
“Hush,” Lily told him, raising his arm a bit higher. Not high enough to dislocate the shoulder, but it had to hurt. “Tell them to lie down flat on the ground. On their stomachs.”
Reluctantly he did.
“Where is Second Fist Fang?”
“He will arrive any minute with a full fifty. They will fill you full of arrows.”
She moved the knife a bit higher, right under his chin, and pressed with great care. She did not want to accidentally slit his throat. “That was a lie.” She knew because his mind-voice had turned to babble, which is what happened when someone tried to lie in mindspeech. “Where is Fang?”
“I do not know.”
“That was half true. Not good enough.” She pressed lightly with the knife.
Li Po swallowed. “It is true. I ordered him to take—to take some men into the city to help with the emergency there. The shānjiǎo have gone crazy. I do not know precisely where he is.”
“Excellent. We’re going to join the yāoqiú now.”
? ? ?
IN a cell at the Justice Court, an old woman sang.
The guards dicing on the other side of the cell door were complaining about being stuck there while the others drew the exciting duty of fighting the shānjiǎo, which none of them had ever seen. Not that this kept them from passing on tales of the huge herd beasts. If a couple of them were privately blessing their luck at missing this treat, they knew better than to say so.
Chu Wen Shan, who had been a Fist for only nine months, was the first to yawn.
“We are boring you, Wen?” one of the others asked.
“I don’t . . .” He frowned vaguely, lay his head down on his folded arms, and fell asleep.
Thirty seconds later, all five were asleep. So were the prisoners in their cells. All but one.
The bar that should have fastened that cell door was missing. No one had noticed this; no one had been able to notice that cell door at all. Li Lei Yu opened the unnoticeable door and walked out. She crossed the room briskly, ignoring the slumbering guards, and removed the bar from another cell door. She went inside and woke up Cynna Weaver.
This was not easy. First she shook Cynna, but got no response. So she emptied the water pail over her. It was half-full.
Cynna shot bolt upright. “Wha . . . what?”
“It’s time to leave,” Li Lei said briskly. “You are very groggy. I will help you stand.”