She twisted and saw one of the Fists on his knees beside Shēngwù’s body. He was keening, grief twisting his features. More of the Fists raced up and Lily started backing away. They didn’t seem to notice as they cried out, some of them calling for the master to heal himself. Until one of them screamed, “They have killed him! Kill them! Kill them all!”
Uh-oh.
That man charged straight at her, sword swinging. Lily brought her weapon up, squeezed the trigger—and ducked at the last second when her weapon failed to fire.
Out of ammo. Out of ammo because she was a bloody idiot and hadn’t exchanged the partly used clip for a full one. Lily cursed as she backed up rapidly, fumbling in her sash for another clip as the man charged again. She twisted, ducked, kept moving, and saw Rule start to charge at the man’s back—and stumble. And fall. Whatever Shēngwù had done to him, he hadn’t really recovered.
The Fist kept coming, wild with grief and rage, which made his strikes powerful but uncontrolled. She could evade him, but two more Fists were coming up behind him.
And she couldn’t find the clips. Either of them.
Dammit to bloody hell. They’d fallen out of her sash somewhere along the way.
Behind her, Grandmother started to sing. It was an odd song, wordless and high-pitched, built of quarter notes. Magic patted Lily’s skin with sticky fingers.
The Fist trying so hard to split her open faltered to a stop, blinking. The two Fists behind him slowed, swaying unsteadily. One by one, all three sank to the ground.
So did the Kanas near the tower, Lily saw with a quick glance around. The other Fists collapsed the same way, a gentle surrender to gravity as their knees folded and their eyes closed. The Kanas guarding the crossing spot lay down and slept, as did the eight-year-old boy who waited for his turn at safety, a baby still clutched in his arms. The wolves were the last to succumb, but soon they, too, slept.
Grandmother sat with her back to the stone tower, her face pale as chalk as she finished her wordless song. The only ones still awake on the trampled circle of grass around the tower were her, Lily, Cynna, and Alice. Mind magic, Lily realized. Grandmother had sung them all to sleep using a form of mind magic, and Alice and Cynna had shields against that, though Cynna’s didn’t work against mindspeech.
Alice walked up to Shēngwù’s blood-spattered body. His head was a gory mess. His beautiful face was almost untouched. “You are hard on my family, Lily Yu,” she said quietly.
Lily didn’t say, “Your family keeps trying to kill mine.” No point. Instead she looked around—and up—calling out as she did, “Grandmother? Are you okay?”
“Backlash,” Grandmother muttered, cradling her head in both hands. “I did not die, so it will pass. I will not be able to bring up the ward for some time.”
The remaining two spawn had flown over to the Justice Court. Lily couldn’t see them clearly. There was a grass fire between here and there and smoke hazed the air. She heard them, though—they were arguing again.
And she had to get to Rule. She didn’t question that, just stuck her useless weapon back in the sash, tightened it, and headed for him. She did pause briefly to take swords away from sleeping Fists. One she slung several feet away; the other two she brought with her.
Not that she intended to use them. Benedict had told her that unless she trained with a sword, she was better off without one. Use what you know, he’d said. You’re good at unarmed combat. You can defend yourself better without a sword than with one if you don’t know what to do with the damn thing. Since he’d gone on to demonstrate what he meant by handing her a practice blade and then “killing” her three times in under a minute, she’d believed him. But at least those three Fists would wake up without their weapons.
The two wolves lay close together. She set down the swords and knelt between the sleeping wolves, putting a hand on each furry rib cage . . . and felt the slow, gentle movement of their breathing. Her own breath hitched in something like a sob. Alive. Both of them alive. She’d known that, dammit, she’d been sure of it, and yet one corner of her mind hadn’t believed it until this second. As long as Rule was alive, he could heal whatever the spawn had done to him.
“Is that iron?” Cynna asked from several feet away. “It looks like iron.”
She looked up, saw Cynna standing near the crossing spot. She was holding Noah and staring at the Justice Court. Lily looked. The grass fire put out enough smoke to haze the air, but she could see the two enemy spawn. One of them dipped low and grabbed one of the oversized spears from the two men who’d brought it out. He lifted it with one hand. With one bloody hand.
“The spears? Yeah, I saw them when that other dragon showed up. They’re iron.”
“Iron’s bad. Maybe really bad.”
“Why?”
“Iron—especially old iron, rusty iron—disrupts shaped magic. Spells. Which probably includes whatever Reno’s doing. Not that I know what he’s doing, so I can’t be sure the spears could get through his protection. But they might. No, they should, based on what I do know.”
Tú’àn and Shuǐ were arguing again. Or maybe they were giving orders to the Fists or planning their strategy. Lily couldn’t hear them clearly, but she caught a few words. One of them was fùchóu. Vengeance.
Reno was a big, fat, sitting duck hanging there in the air, oblivious, tranced out or something while he tried to save this world. And probably their own, because if the Great Bitch could bring all of her power with her to Earth . . . Lily shivered in the heat. “Have you got anything you can use on the spawn?”
“The charms I made might work,” Cynna said bitterly. “If I had them. The spawn are too far away for any of my quickie offensive spells—if those would even work on them, which they probably wouldn’t. I don’t know if they’re as immune to magic as you are—”
“Not truly immune,” Alice said. She stood beside Shēngwù’s body still, about halfway between Lily and Cynna. She was watching her great-uncles intently. “They are naturally resistant to magic and can enhance this natural resistance. I do not understand how the Zhu Shēngwù was able to apparate Zhu Kongqi and—”
With a loud, percussive pop, Dick Boy appeared overhead. And roared. It was not a true dragon’s roar, but it was ungodly loud—and in the middle of it, Kongqi popped into place close by. Both spawn were dripping wet. Dick Boy’s shenyi was gone. Kongqi still wore his, sodden and dripping and stained with what looked like blood.
Dick Boy bellowed a name: “Shēngwù!”
“He is dead,” Alice called.
“Dead?” Startled, Dick Boy looked down and scowled. “Who robbed me of the chance to slit his treacherous throat?”
At the Justice Court, more pairs of Fists emerged carrying spears. One of those spears floated up through the air into the second spawn’s outstretched hand.