by Eileen Wilks
“Did we come here to talk about cool? I think not.” Gandalf straightened to her most dignified. Brownies were not all that good at dignified. “Do you understand, Lilyu?” The way she said it made one name out of two.
“No. I understand that dul-dul came from the dragons and that you serve dragons at, ah, tinaitha. I don’t see what that has to do with me—with why I was kidnapped and am being held captive. And what,” she added with rising annoyance, “is tinaitha?”
“Ah!” Green eyes twinkled. “Adult dragons are the most rational, the most controlled, of sentient beings—except during tinaitha, when they are driven by instinct so strong even they cannot master it. Brownies are the only ones who can be with a mother dragon without triggering her need to kill.”
“A . . . mother dragon.” For some reason the two words didn’t seem to go together. “A mother dragon?”
“Yes.” Mischief glinted in those bright eyes. “Lilyu, had you ever noticed that all the dragons were male?”
Her mouth opened. Nothing came out. All the dragons who’d come back with her from Dis were male. She knew that, but . . . surely at least one of them was . . . no. Not one, and she’d known that without exactly noticing it, but that made no—
The brownies burst into peals of laughter. They laughed for some time, eventually winding down into giggles and grins.
“You looked so funny!” Gandalf wiped tears of mirth from her eyes.
Lily scowled. “They’re all male. All of them. And I never thought about it, what that meant. How could I not have noticed?”
“Because the dragons didn’t want you to. Everyone knows the dragons are male. No one thinks about it. Except us, of course.”
No one? All over the world? Dragons had mind magic out the wazoo, but that was flat-out unbelievable. “They couldn’t do that. Not to everyone. The world’s too big.”
“You are sure?” Gandalf’s eyebrows lifted in lofty surprise. “Then find someone, somewhere, who has noticed that the dragons are all male. A U.S. scientist who worries about their species going extinct, maybe. A child in Argentina. An old Russian man. Maybe an aborigine in Australia. They know that all the dragons are male. They do not think about it. At all.”
That level of mental tampering . . . an entire world? “That can’t be possible.”
“Oh, possible, impossible . . .” The old brownie shrugged. “Never mind if it is possible. It is so. Dragons are born male. They remain male until they decide to be female. It is a difficult transformation, requiring a great deal of gold—”
“Gold?”
Gandalf giggled. “Did you think they liked it because it’s shiny? I won’t speak of their process. It’s very secret, and also I don’t know anything about it.”
“Except that gold is required.”
She nodded. “They eat it. So Mika—you know she is the youngest? When she was male, he longed for the third birth very much—”
“Third birth,” Lily repeated.
“Oh, yes,” piped up another one. “Dragons have three births.”
“One when the eggs are laid—”
“Two when the eggs hatch—”
“Three when they transform to female,” Gandalf finished firmly. “Which they may do only once or several times, but only the first time is their third birth—which, as I said, Mika longed for, but it wasn’t allowed. Or do I mean enabled?” She tapped her chin. “Yes, I do. He was born in Dis, you see. Dis is not a good place to raise children. Even dragon children.”
It wouldn’t be. All those demons . . . “A dragon can’t, uh, transform without the help of other dragons?”
Gandalf’s eyebrows shot up. “I didn’t say that. Did I say that?” She looked around at the others. They assured her that no, she hadn’t. “Not quite,” Shisti added cautiously. Gandalf frowned hard at Shisti. That round, wrinkled face couldn’t look fierce, but she tried. Shisti wilted. “Where was I? Oh, yes. So Mika transformed and mated with the others.”
“Mika’s a girl,” Lily said, dazed. “And she mated. With all of them?”
“Oh, yes, that is very important. Unless one or more of them are her parents, of course. Dragons do not mate with their offspring, but parentage is a private matter for them. I don’t know if any of these dragons begat or birthed Mika. Other than parents, they must all mate with her, or the others will kill them. Not right away, but later, after the fledging, which doesn’t take place until quite some time after the eggs hatch—”
“Eggs.” Lily couldn’t seem to stop repeating things the brownie said. “Dragon eggs. I didn’t see any eggs.”
Gandalf looked shocked. “You wouldn’t. Mika may be in a primitive mind, but not that primitive! But you’ll see the wee little dragons when they hatch.” She nodded encouragingly. “You’re the efondi.”
“You used that word before. What is an efondi?”
Gandalf cocked her head. “Midwife? Godmother? No . . . you don’t have a word for it. The efondi should be a dragon, of course. A female dragon. If a male dragon entered Mika’s territory, she’d kill him. If she couldn’t kill him, the others would. Dragon instincts are very strong about such things. But . . .” She sighed. “There are no other female dragons at this time, and Mika didn’t want to wait and let one of the others transform first. It was her turn.”
“But if he—she—can’t transform without help from the others—”
Gandalf did her best to look fierce again. “I did not say that.”
“But . . .” Lily sighed and gave up. “Never mind. What does an efondi do?”
“I don’t know.” The old brownie smiled sunnily. “That’s not in the ithnali.”
“None of our business,” piped up another one.
“But I’m sure you’ll do it well,” Shisti said, “whatever it is. If you don’t go crazy.”
“But what am I supposed to—you can’t just tell me—oh, hell!” Lily pushed to her feet. “I’m leaving.”
Gandalf rolled her eyes. “Oh, that will work.”
It didn’t. Fire sprang up in front of Lily as soon as she left the chamber. “Shit.”
“We told you and told you,” Shisti said. “We don’t hold you here. Mika does.”
“She may be in a primitive mind,” another one added, “but she knows fire in all her minds.”
“Look.” Lily turned back to face the brownies crowded up in the doorway looking at her with expressions ranging from disapproval to sympathy. “This is no good. You have to give me some idea what I’m supposed to do to help Mika.”
They insisted that they couldn’t, since they didn’t know. But it was a great honor, being asked to be efondi.
“No one asked! I was kidnapped. Kidnapped is not asked!” Lily ran a hand through her hair—her dirty, unbrushed hair—and growled. It wasn’t much of a growl compared to Rule’s, but it was probably better than throwing things at their cute little distressed faces. One of them—the littlest one, whom she absolutely could not hit—started patting her on the leg, up-tilted face filled with concern, saying, “There, there. There, there.”
Couldn’t hit them. Couldn’t even shove the one patting her away. Lily gritted her teeth and went on in a tightly controlled voice, “And why wasn’t I asked? What reason could there be to force me here instead of asking?”
Something about the patterns, they thought, though they didn’t understand about patterns. That was a dragon thing, and maybe she’d feel better if she had something to do? They all had suggestions. After breathing in and out for a few moments, getting her temper under control, Lily had a suggestion, too. A bath.
They loved the idea. They got so excited that it worried Lily—with reason, as it turned out. But how could she have known that brownies considered a bath a major social occasion? Washing-up was a personal chore, but baths were big, splash-happy parties. Plus they considered her “invitation” to bathe a sure sign that she wasn’t mad anymore about the whole kidnapped-and-held-captive thing.
They bathed Japanese-style
, though without the decorum of a Japanese sento¯. Everyone was supposed to wash and rinse before getting in the rocky pool fed by a hot spring that Mika had somehow created or otherwise arranged for them.
Lily could handle the naked part. She didn’t have many hangups about nudity, probably because she had sisters. Stripping with a bunch of tiny, giggling strangers wasn’t exactly comfortable, but she had reasons to go along . . . right up until she found out that bathers did not wash themselves. They washed each other—and expected Lily to take her turn lathering and being lathered—and they had no concept of hands-off zones. Lily had to tell them that humans simply did not touch each other in some places unless they planned to have sex.
That led to a lot of giggling and a fascinating discussion about brownie sexuality. TMI in some ways, but fascinating. Then they all got in the pool and tried to drown one another.
Back in her prison chamber—without the fire curtain this time—Lily tried to untangle her hair with a teeny little comb the brownies had provided. They’d left her a mage light, too, which was good. It would have been way too dark in here otherwise.
Her hair was clean. That comforted more than maybe it ought to. And somewhere along the line her headache had gone away, which really helped when she had so much to think over. She’d learned a lot. Most of it was stuff the brownies intended to tell her. During the bath she’d asked what brownies did to serve a mother dragon during tinaitha. Many things, they assured her, but their main purpose was to sing to her. They sang songs from the ithnali in the true tongue, which was what they called their own language. They sang to remind her of who she was. Without the singing she would forget too much for too long.
Lily had also learned a couple things that they hadn’t intended for her to know—like where they were. She was pretty sure she’d figured that out. She scratched behind Charles’s ear and leaned down, speaking softly. “So were you able to sniff out which tunnel leads outside?”
He nodded once, looking about as smug as a wolf can.
“Good. Excellent.” She had a plan. It was shaky, maybe foolhardy, depending as it did on one small guess, one big guess, and her new ability.
Which meant she’d better practice. Better get started. She didn’t know how much time she’d have. She stretched out next to Charles, but instead of practicing, she thought about her shaky plan. She hadn’t exactly lied to the brownies, but she had deceived them. She was pretty sure Rule wasn’t in jail. Nokolai could afford good lawyers. He’d be out on bail by now, and she knew what he’d done the moment he was free.
How long would it take him to find her? Or to find her general location anyway. Not long, she thought. Not once Harry caught up with him, which was why she needed to practice now, dammit. But one other question kept rearing up, distracting her.
What, exactly, was she going to do when he did?
THIRTY-TWO
THE sun was headed offstage, but it took a damnably long curtain call this time of year. Golden light slanted across the front of the concavity where they’d collapsed; at its rear all was shadowed. Rule slid his phone back in his pocket and leaned against the rocky rear of the hollow, his chest heaving. The muscles in his thighs, back, and shoulders burned and twitched. He’d carried Danny the last nine or ten miles, after a bullet tore up Mike’s thigh.
Danny, whom Rule had just set down, pulled off her backpack and crawled over to sit next to Mike, looking worried. He was panting, too, his head on his forepaws. Wolves can run on three legs pretty well, so when Mike was hit, Rule had told him to Change.
They’d stopped because they had to, but at least they were out of the wildlife area now. Out of Ohio entirely, if Rule’s reckoning was correct. And they’d been lucky—the hollow he’d spotted in the side of a rocky hill wasn’t quite a cave, but it was deep enough to keep their heat signatures from showing if that gods-cursed helicopter should pass overhead.
Little John was the last of them to enter. The moment he did, he dumped Bert. The human man staggered, but didn’t fall. Little John did, collapsing as if he’d been clubbed.
“Hey!” Bert said, dropping down beside the man who’d carried him so long. “Is he—”
“He’ll be . . . all right . . . in a bit.” Little John had run roughly twenty miles, often at damn near top speed, while carrying a hundred and sixty pounds on his back. He’d done that after racing to Fallback Two carrying Bert. Even his strength had limits. He wouldn’t be getting up right away.
All of Rule’s small party was here now. Claude wouldn’t be joining them.
Rule gave himself another moment to get his breath under control, then moved closer to Mike. He sank to his knees. The bullet had torn out a chunk of meat on what had been Mike’s left thigh and was currently his left haunch. Now that Rule got a good look at the wound, he was pretty sure it had hit the bone. Not good.
That bullet had come from a rifle, not a machine gun, the result of pure bad luck. Claude had been about fifty yards ahead of the rest of them, acting as point. He’d practically run into a large armed group—maybe a dozen people, some in sheriff’s department uniforms, some not. Not his fault. The group had been downwind and in a shallow ravine, so he hadn’t seen or smelled them until he was almost on top of them. He’d turned and run.
The instant Rule had seen Claude flip direction and start racing back, he’d done the same. They’d run away as rifles fired. Bullets pursued them, but they’d been farther from the shooters than Claude, with lots of trees in the way. Pure bad luck that Mike had been hit.
Claude’s luck had been worse.
Rule’s hands fisted. Not now, he told himself. Not yet. Think about that later.
The helicopter had never come near them. José had seen to that. José and six others. They’d done what they set out to do. The moment Rule had stopped and let Danny slide down off his back, he’d sent José a text. Just one word: Reply.
He hadn’t heard back.
Rule stuffed the anger down, where it wouldn’t be heard or smelled, before he spoke to Mike. “Aren’t you a bloody mess. At least it’s an in-and-out, not lodged. The bone is probably broken. I need to examine it to be sure.”
Mike grunted.
“Hold still.” Mike’s control was excellent. Rule reinforced it anyway, pulling on the mantle slightly as he gave the order. That would make it easier on Mike. He ran his fingers over the wound, lightly at first, then more firmly. Mike whined, then yelped. He didn’t move.
Rule sat back on his heels. “There’s good news and bad news. The bad news is that your femur is broken a few inches above the patella. The ends are badly out of alignment, and—as I’m sure you noticed—there are bone fragments. The good news is that there’s no way I can set a femur properly, so I won’t maul you around trying.”
He got another grunt in reply.
Danny’s face screwed up. “If you can’t set it—”
“It will still heal, and the bone fragments will work their way out. Bones that are this badly aligned, however, tend to heal crooked.” Given how bad the break was, probably very crooked. “Our healing is more concerned with getting the bone knit than with its straightness. Eventually the leg would straighten, but that might take months. For some reason our healing doesn’t prioritize that. Mike may want to have it straightened surgically.” Rule dropped a hand to the ruff at Mike’s neck and gave him a rub. “For now . . . he’s hurting, but he’ll be okay.”
Unlike some. Carefully Rule shut that thought away for later.
What did his small band need next? Food and water. They were all dehydrated. That wouldn’t be hard to mend; he’d smelled water as he approached the hollow. Food would take longer, but they all needed fuel, especially Mike. The Change burned calories. Healing a broken bone burned through them like a wildfire in dry brush. “Bert, I need you to step outside so you can watch the sky. Keep a lookout. Little John will join you when he can.”
The man rose without a word and moved to just outside the hollow.
Rule
had stuck two pieces of jerky in his pocket at Fallback Two, not thinking he’d need them, but from habit. He pulled them out, bit into one, and fed the other to Mike. Keeping one for himself might be selfish, but was good sense. He’d be doing the hunting, so—
“Rule?” Danny’s voice shook. “Is Claude dead?”
He stiffened. She needed to be comforted. He could hear it in her voice. In that moment, he hated her need. He was so angry . . . “I don’t know. Do you have food in your backpack?”
“Yes. I can share—”
“Share with Bert, if you have enough. The rest of us will have rabbits soon.” He stood.
“If you don’t know if Claude’s dead or not, how could you leave him?”
He didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Anger filled him, ready to spill out—
Surprisingly, Bert answered for him. “He had to. Sure, he probably could’ve gone back for Claude if he dumped you and me. He would’ve had to kill every one of them, though.”
He’d wanted to. Still wanted to. Wanted to go back and rip open the throats of those who’d shot Claude, shot Mike, who could easily have killed the girl who’d just asked that damnable question. Then go on and find the ones who’d fired on José and the others.
“I don’t know if they could have done that,” Bert was saying. “Even for lupi, that’s a tall order, killing a dozen armed people. But say he pulled it off. Then what? He’s guilty of killing law officers. It doesn’t matter that they fired first and without provocation. His enemies get what they want—proof that he’s too dangerous to be allowed to live. He and everyone with him are as good as dead.”
“I’m going to hunt,” Rule said abruptly. He’d kill something, anyway. Hopefully several somethings. “Once Little John is able to keep watch, you can go in pairs to the creek to drink.” Without bothering to pull off his clothes, he Changed.
* * *
FIVE rabbits and a raccoon later, he was back on two legs, scowling at his phone.
Hunting had been easy. It was a wildlife area, after all, in the middle of summer. He’d eaten the first two rabbits before he started bringing his kills back, and the food had restored much of his control. His anger wasn’t gone, but it was a cold fury now. He could use it instead of being used by it.
