by Eileen Wilks
THIRTY-SIX
CHARLES sat beside Rule. Together they watched the video clip playing on Danny’s computer. Forty seconds into it, Charles growled. Rule didn’t, but he was every bit as angry. “That son of a bitch.”
To most people, that was a garden-variety curse. Not among lupi. If one lupus called another a son of a bitch, Lily knew, he’d be challenged—if his opponent didn’t just go for his throat. Lupi meant the phrase literally. Call someone a son of a bitch and you accused him of being the product of bestiality. To be specific—and lupi considered it a very specific insult—you claimed that the man’s father had impregnated a female dog while he was in wolf-form.
“I’m guessing you mean Smith,” she said, “not Eric Ellison.”
“He’s a son of a bitch, too.” Rule scowled at the computer as it played the rest of the news clip. He was shirtless. He and Gandalf had reached an agreement which included having the brownies seek out his men and bring them here. His shirt had been ripped to shreds to give to the searchers, along with the name of Alex’s adopted daughter. His scent on the shirt scraps plus a name only those in Leidolf Clan would know should reassure his men that the summons came from him.
He finished watching the son of a bitch give his press conference, then clicked to end the video. The moment he did, Danny spoke. “So did Mr. Smith make this up, like he did all the other stuff, and Ruben Brooks isn’t really a lupus? I asked Lily,” she added, aggrieved, “but she wouldn’t answer.”
Rule glanced at Lily. She shrugged. It seemed that the truth was out, but it wasn’t up to her to confirm or deny. At least the bastards didn’t seem to be aware that Ruben was Rho of Wythe. The public didn’t know that clan existed, and Ruben wanted to keep it that way for now.
“He is lupus,” Rule said in a dead-level voice.
Bert gave a low whistle. He and Little John had accompanied Rule, as had an undetermined number of brownies. Amazingly quiet brownies. Lily was pretty sure they thought they were hidden. They hadn’t come into the barn, and Lily had only caught a couple glimpses of small, brown heads peeping around the door. Mike hadn’t come with them. Rule said one of the brownies was a healer who was supposed to be good with broken bones.
“If it’s true,” Danny persisted, “why are you so mad? You are mad, aren’t you? Your face doesn’t look mad, but you cursed. You didn’t curse when people were shooting at us.”
Rule’s mouth twitched in what was probably unwilling amusement. “I was too busy to curse then. But this is why people shot at us. Why some of my men may be dead and two women are dead. Smith is guilty of murder and attempted murder and inciting the country to genocide—”
“Genocide?” Bert said. “That’s extreme.”
“You heard a sampling of what’s being said,” Rule replied. “Smith’s tools are fanning the flames with every stupid¸ hate-mongering lie ever leveled against my people. He’s out to get all of us.”
“Maybe,” Lily said.
Rule’s head swung. “Maybe?” He made the word sound like it, too, was a curse.
“I’d bet that he fears and despises lupi, but I don’t think destroying you is his main goal. He wants lupi discredited, but mostly he wants Ruben discredited. That’s essential to his real goal.”
Rule’s eyebrows lifted. “You know his goal?”
“I think this all started as an extreme form of interagency rivalry. No, listen,” she said when he started to speak. “Edward Smith considers himself a patriot. A true patriot, a man who puts the welfare of the country ahead of everything else. But he’s also a narcissist. Maybe not clinically, but he’s like Victor Frey.” She named the previous Leidolf Rho, who hadn’t seen any distinction between what was best for him and what was best for his clan. “He knows that he has to be in charge. Behind the scenes maybe—I suspect he prefers that—but he has to be the one pulling the strings. He’s the only one with the intelligence and integrity to do what’s necessary to protect the country. Everyone else in positions of power is venal, weak, incompetent, or stupid.”
“That’s him!” Danny exclaimed. “That sounds just like Mr. Smith. I never put it all together like that, but that’s how he thinks. It’s like you know him. Did you really get all that from what I said?”
“A lot of it.” Reminded that there were a lot of ears present, she said, “I’m sorry, Danny, but I need everyone except Rule to leave for a bit. Out of hearing range.”
Danny stiffened. “I don’t want to.”
Rule spoke. “Perhaps you could go see how Mike is doing.”
Lily didn’t think the girl was going to agree, but after a moment she bent and picked up her laptop, hugging it to her. “I don’t like being sent away, but I do want to see if that healer helped Mike.”
“Little John, I put Danny in your charge for now. Bert, if you wouldn’t mind . . .”
“Not at all,” the mob guy said politely.
“Charles—”
“He knows,” Lily said.
Rule’s eyebrows lifted. “Does he now.” And then he waited for the others to leave. “Where were we? Ah, yes. You were claiming that this whole business has been a power play designed to promote the NSA.”
“No, I’m saying that’s how it started. Unit Twelve used to be a small, relatively unimportant branch of the FBI’s Magical Crimes Division. Most people didn’t know it existed. That’s how Ruben wanted it because of the prejudice against using the Gifted in law enforcement. Smith wouldn’t have seen the Unit as a rival back then, but he probably kept an eye on it. Maybe it even inspired the Refuge by opening his mind to possibilities. He was going to have Gifted agents, too, only his would be better than Ruben’s. They’d be used by the important agencies—his own, the CIA, Homeland Security—not that piddling little Unit Twelve. His influence would grow, which would help him protect the country. But he didn’t want to recruit adults. Gifted adults had too much power. They couldn’t be trusted. He wanted youngsters who could be indoctrinated. He wanted—still wants—control. So he got his Refuge up and running—and then the Turning hit.”
Rule’s eyes lit with understanding. “And Congress gave Unit Twelve unprecedented power.”
She nodded.
“That’s why you believe his goal is to discredit Ruben and dismantle Unit Twelve. The Unit is the one segment of government with both the integrity and the authority to threaten him. I’ll bet he tried to get to Ruben somehow, to influence him or put one of his people in the Unit. And failed. If a Unit agent learned about the children he’s been experimenting on—”
“Exactly.” She was grimly pleased he’d caught on. “And it was after the Turning that Smith and Company escalated their criminality. The first report on the Cerberus potion was dated five months post-Turning.”
Rule’s eyebrows lifted. “I didn’t realize that. I didn’t make the connection.” His lips tilted wryly. “I’ve needed you for more than personal reasons. In a couple hours, you’ve figured out some of the key pieces that baffled me.”
“Which I could do because you’d pieced together the rest of it. And because . . . well, the next part builds on something you don’t know. You said it would take a sorcerer to change the financial records the way Smith and Company have done.”
“So I suspect. Using magic on electronic records requires such delicate work, according to Cullen, that only someone with the Sight—” He broke off, his eyes narrowing. “Cullen. He disappeared, like you. There aren’t any brownies in Mexico, or anywhere on the West Coast, but—”
“I’m pretty sure he was snatched by, ah, someone connected with the one who snatched me. He should be fine,” she added quickly. “Mad as hell, but fine. The point is—”
“The point is that you haven’t told me who kidnapped you.”
Rule had spoken quietly, not using his Rho voice, nor with the icy control that meant he was seriously pissed. But there was no mistaking the intensity behind those words. She sighed. “Yes, and I think I have to.”
An explosion
of brownies burst upon them. A couple dozen of them anyway, racing in the open doorways at both ends of the barn, every one shrieking that she mustn’t, not on any account, don’t tell him, oh no oh no, you promised, no she didn’t stupid, please don’t, oh no oh no, burn him to a crisp!—and those were just the ones who shrieked in English.
“Silence!” Rule roared.
Every one of them stopped—some so suddenly that a couple collisions took place. In the sudden hush Lily heard only one voice—Dirty Harry saying sadly, “But I like Rule Turner, even if he did tie me up. I don’t want him to die.”
“I’m going to try to see to it that he doesn’t,” Lily said. “Rule—”
The next roar didn’t come from Rule. It came from overhead—and it was much louder.
This time the brownies’ screeches weren’t directed at Lily. Their heads were all tilted up.
“Not the barn!”
“The horses—please don’t—”
“Not here! Don’t burn him here!”
Mixed with brownie cries were the screams of a couple of the horses, who knew a threat when they heard one. So did Lily. She grabbed Rule and pressed herself close so Mika couldn’t burn him without getting her, too. Then she unfurled the power inside her and gingerly touched the lava-mind circling overhead, sending a ripple as she spoke aloud. “Way to go on keeping a secret, Mika. Show up and roar.”
As if she’d been making a suggestion, another roar shuddered through the air. As it did, the ripple traveled back to her, only stronger. Much stronger. DO NOT TELL.
Ow. She winced. Headache again.
“It was Mika, then,” Rule said very low, almost a growl. “I thought so, when you said . . . Mika kidnapped you.”
“Um. Yes, but that isn’t the part—”
A small hand tugged on her pant leg. “Lilyu, would you please take him outside so zhe doesn’t burn the horses by accident?”
Lily scowled down at Gandalf. “I thought she wasn’t listening anymore!”
“She?” Rule said.
“Zhe can still listen,” Gandalf assured Lily. “It’s hard, but zhe can, but it’s nearly regarre, so zhe just hears you now, but not all the time, only sometimes. We don’t understand that part, but it’s in the ithnali. This close to regarre, zhe can only talk and listen to an efondi.”
Lily frowned, trying to untangle that. “You mean that sh—”
“Zhe!”
“—that zhe doesn’t have telepathy now? Only mindspeech, and only with me?”
Gandalf shrugged. “I know what’s in the ithnali. Zhe can only listen and speak to an efondi now.”
“Who is ‘she’?” Rule demanded again.
“Rule.” Lily turned so she was looking up at him. This was not going to be easy. She wanted Mika to “hear” what she said and what Rule said. She didn’t know if she could do that, but she needed to try. “You know that old joke, ‘I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you’? It isn’t a joke to everyone.”
“I got that impression, yes.”
“You often distinguish between your roles—Lu Nuncio and Rho. As Nokolai Lu Nuncio, you can’t promise to keep a secret no matter what because if your Rho needed to know about it, you’d have to be free to tell him. As Rho of Leidolf you could make such a vow, only what the Leidolf Rho hears, the Nokolai Lu Nuncio will hear, too. So there ought to be a way for you to promise to keep something secret, but I don’t quite see how. How can we do that?”
Rule frowned. “It’s a matter of duty. Conflicting duties, in this case, but the duty of a Rho to his clan supersedes all others. I would need to promise first that I would hear you only in my role as Rho—then, speaking in that role, promise never to reveal what you tell me.”
Relief made her knees soft. “Good. Then—”
“I didn’t say I’d do that. I said that’s how we could do it, if I agreed.”
“This is kind of life and death.”
“Give me a moment. I have to be sure.”
Did you hear? she sent. He knows his life is at stake, but he won’t promise unless he knows he can keep it.
. . . MUDDY, came the answering ripple. For the first time, the mindspeech sounded like the Mika she knew. Still hot instead of cold and way too loud, but that was a familiar complaint. YOU’RE . . . [rasping static] VERY MUDDY.
“Yeah, well,” she muttered, “you aren’t so clear yourself right now. Plenty loud, not so clear.”
“What?”
“Sorry. It’s really hard to mindspeak without vocalizing.”
“You’re talking to Mika.”
“I’m trying to talk to both of you. It isn’t easy.”
Rule looked at her a long moment. “You want me to give this promise.”
“Yes. I don’t think there’s any conflict with your duty to either clan. I can’t say there will never, ever be such a conflict, but I can’t see it happening. And your duty to Leidolf”—in spite of her efforts, her voice rose—“will be a whole lot easier to fulfill if you’re not dead.”
That amused him, which made her want to hit him. “Very well. I promise to hear what you say next only as Leidolf Rho. You have my word as Rho that I will not reveal it.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
FIFTEEN minutes later, Charles was napping again and the brownies were gone. Rule had strongly requested their departure when they interrupted Lily’s account one time too many. Now he sat in stunned silence.
Dragons were few. He’d always known that, without giving thought to what it meant—no more than he’d given thought to the screamingly obvious fact that every dragon he knew about was male. Such remarkable incuriosity . . .
“Rule?” she said. “You’re really quiet.”
“I’m absorbing.” He’d thought Lily was exaggerating the danger when she insisted on his vow of silence. If anything, she’d underplayed it. He wondered if she realized how deadly her knowledge was. It was, he thought, the most confoundedly complicated system of reproduction he’d ever heard of. It was the dragons’ one big weakness. They’d dulled the minds of an entire world on the subject because they could not afford for their weakness to be known.
That is not the only reason.
The mental voice was as cold and precise as an ice crystal. It was also about that size—a tiny voice he wouldn’t have noticed if not for its impossible precision. “Sam,” he whispered.
“Yes!” Lily leaned forward. They sat facing each other on their makeshift bed in one of the stalls. “You see it, too?”
Do not tell her I speak to you. Mika might pluck that knowledge from her mind. The outcome would be widespread disaster, death, and destruction.
Rule took only a second to decide to follow the black dragon’s suggestion. If Sam spoke that definitely of widespread death and disaster, there would be widespread death and disaster. “Sam sent you here for this. To be an, ah, efondi to Mika. Whatever that is.”
“That’s just it. He didn’t send me here. He sent me to Whistle, Ohio, where I found that body—and we still don’t know why he was killed, do we? But Sam could have sent me to the brownie reservation, making it easy for Mika to grab me. He didn’t. He had a reason for that, something beyond whatever stupid-ass reason Mika had for abducting me instead of just asking for help—which probably has to do with dragons being the epitome of arrogance, unable to humble themselves enough to—”
“No, that isn’t it,” Rule said absently. Half of him was listening for more from Sam, who was perversely silent. The black dragon shouldn’t have been able to mindspeak him at all from the other side of the continent. Aside from the sheer distance involved, the curve of the earth ought to put too much earth and rock between them.
Perhaps he hadn’t. Perhaps he was close by.
No.
“If that isn’t it,” Lily said, exasperated, “maybe you’d like to tell me what is.”
“Ah. Yes. Mika couldn’t ask because in order to do so, he—she—would have had to tell you the secret of dragon reproduction. The taboo
against speaking about it must be extraordinarily strong, especially since she’d have to broach the subject when you weren’t an efondi. What if you didn’t agree? Then you’d never be efondi, so you’d have to either be killed or have your memory altered. And I gather Mika’s not up to altering memories now.”
“So Mika abducted me because he—she—had my best interests in mind.”
The sarcasm in her voice made him want to smile. He restrained the impulse. “Yes, from the dragons’ point of view—which isn’t ours, but that is how they’d see it.”
She tilted her head. “You sympathize with her. With them.”
“Mmm. I suppose I do. That doesn’t mean I’m not angry about what they’ve done, but . . . Lily, you—or humans, rather, as a species—have always had the luxury of certainty about your race’s survival. Some individuals might be unable to have children, but the race as a whole reproduces like crazy. You know humanity will continue. You know this in such a fundamental way that it’s hard for you to imagine what it’s like to lack that certainty. Humans are fertile. Amazingly so, from the perspective of those of the Blood. None of the innately magical races can take fertility for granted the way humans do.” He paused. “In general, as innate levels of magic rise, fertility decreases.”
Rule didn’t add the obvious—that dragons were among the most magically powerful beings in existence. He didn’t have to. She was clearly adding it herself, frowning over what he’d said. Finally she sighed. “In other words, I shouldn’t hold my breath waiting for Mika’s apology.”
“That would probably be wise.” Should he point out the difference between apology and debt? A true apology required both regret and amends. Debt was amends without regret, the acknowledgment of inequity or imbalance. Mika would feel no regret for having appropriated Lily, not if Lily was vital to her offspring in some way. She would feel a debt. Perhaps all the dragons would, which was why Lily was safe from them despite her dangerous knowledge.
Rule, not so much. “I am very glad you convinced me to promise silence. There’s no way I would endanger either of my clans, or anyone else, by passing on such knowledge, but obtaining my vow makes that impossible. I hope the dragons find that reassuring.” He hoped Sam was still listening and could testify to the bone-deep honesty of that statement.
