Gan was with that group of Kanas. Or she had been—Lily couldn’t see her from here. The tower blocked her. She moved aside several steps so she could see better. “Gan! It’s time to go!”
A small orange head popped up in the center of the Kanas. Standing, Gan was nearly a head taller than people sitting around her. “Is it safe?”
“No,” Cynna said, hurrying that way with Alice’s Fists and their burdens. “But it’s not safe anywhere right now.”
The crimson pulse of the alarm suddenly shut off.
The ground shuddered. Lily’s scowl deepened. “What the—”
“They are poking at the ward,” Grandmother said grimly.
? ? ?
LI Lei did not look up. She did not need to. The spawn were ablaze with magic, so easy to sense that she would have had to work at it to cease being aware of them. Three of them hovered directly overhead—the three who wanted the children. The three who had tried to kill Reno, who had no attention to spare for them.
Two of the spawn had been defending him. She did not know where those two were. It was rare that any task required a dragon’s entire attention. Dismantling the construct was, it seemed, one of those rare tasks.
Li Lei knew how to tap into a node. For her, doing so was almost safe. It could not be called completely safe, for nodes were born in chaos and were inherently unpredictable. But crossing the street was not completely safe, either.
She had underestimated the difficulty in tapping into twin nodes.
The phrase referred to nodes that were physically close enough to interact. Such twins were very rare, and she had never dealt with them before. These nodes pulsed together like two chambers of a giant heart. That synchronization allowed them to remain stable, neither interfering with the other. It also made it necessary for her to draw from both nodes at once, to draw exactly the same amount of power from each so she didn’t upset their balance. So much she had known ahead of time, and if the doing had proven more difficult than expected, it was still within her ability.
She had not known the spawn were idiots.
Only an idiot would poke at her ward the way they were—shaped blows of pure force. No doubt they knew the children had arrived. No doubt this made them crazed with fury and frustration. They wanted to find out how she reacted to their pokes.
This was very stupid of them. There were only three possible reactions she could have, and only one of those possibilities might have benefited them: if their pokes made her fear losing control, she might drop the ward. Since she, the ward, and the nodes had already weathered a much harder blow, she did not think much of this reasoning. The other two possibilities offered them no benefit whatsoever. Either she would lose control and everyone within several square miles would die, or she would retain control. As she was doing.
Which meant that the power from their pokes was deflected. Mostly it was deflected into the ground. And Lang Xin was situated above a fault.
One of the spawn had quieted the earth before, when that first idiot had struck her ward. He had struck much harder than they were doing now, thinking he could crack it open with a single blow. He had been wrong on more than one count. But there were three of them now, and if they were poking and prodding rather than trying to smash the ward like an egg, none of them seemed to have the sense or perhaps the ability to quiet the earth.
Li Lei did not have that skill, either. Not that she could have spared the attention to employ it if she had.
Poke, poke, poke.
The earth rumbled. A moment later it shimmied.
“Get the spears!” one of the spawn called down. “Run, fools! Get the spears!” Another one started calling out orders to Alice Báitóu, who was Reno’s great-granddaughter. Alice Báitóu responded by asking where the Zhu Kongqi was. The spawn laughed and said he’d run off. Alice Báitóu did not appear to believe him. The third spawn told the Fists to forget the spears and get the children. The other two spawn started arguing with him.
Why did they want spears? Li Lei frowned at that. Did they mean to toss them at her? Arrows would be easier, surely. Her ward would not stop arrows. She wondered very much why they would send for spears instead of bows.
Distantly she was aware of Rule-wolf standing over his son, who was so suddenly and unexpectedly also wolf. Rule was growling, teeth bared. She assumed this was some kind of dominance rite and dismissed it from her thoughts. Dimly, too, she was aware of Lily standing with her weapon out and ready, and in one corner of her heart she ached for her granddaughter. Rule killed the way the tiger did, without hesitation or guilt. Lily could not kill that way, but she would do what she must.
Most of what attention she could spare from the power draw was with Cynna, however. Cynna and the children. The Fists had reached the Kanas and Gan, and the children were now in Cynna’s care.
The children were why she was here. Oh, she would have come anyway if Sam had asked it of her. Or if Lily had, and possibly if Rule had. They had not needed to ask, however, because the spawn had taken children.
Li Lei could not protect all children everywhere. This grieved her, for all children should be protected, but she was a realist. Toby, however, had become hers. More, he had become the tiger’s. And the tiger spirit that was her heritage, the gift and charge that had been passed down for generations from mother to daughter—or from grandmother to granddaughter, and at least once from great-grandmother to great-granddaughter—existed for one reason. To protect the young.
Cynna knelt on the ground, holding her Ryder in one arm, her other arm around a boy of four or so who clung to her. She spoke to the oldest boy—Diego, that would be—who cradled the smallest of them to his shoulder protectively. Grandmother turned a bit of her attention that way so she could listen in . . .
“. . . let Gan take him now, Diego.” Cynna’s voice sounded raw. Tears will do that. “We want to get the babies out first.”
Diego shook his head firmly. “Toby gave him to me to take care of. I have to stay with him.”
Toby, Li Lei thought, was a fine boy. Very smart. He would grow into a fine man—though that would go easier if his father kept him from eating anyone. Toby would take it very hard later if he ate someone now. He’d rolled over onto his back, however, and was displaying his vulnerable belly to the huge wolf standing over him. A good sign. She hoped someone brought him those chickens quickly.
A particularly hard jab on one side of the ward followed by softer pokes drew every bit of her attention to her juggling act. The poking went on and on, with a harder jab now and then. Her ward held. Her control held. The earth shook again and again—small shimmies, but too many.
At last they paused in their poking. She blinked, noticing her surroundings for the first time after her long absorption. She was surrounded by Kanas. They stood three-deep around her.