A type of magic she’d touched before, she realized. “Telekinesis. That’s how Weng was able to float or fly or whatever you want to call it. Not true levitation—at least, not the way dragons do it, which may not be levitation, either.” Cullen thought dragons went out-of-phase with reality much the way demons did when they went dashtu, thereby reducing the effect of gravity on their huge bodies.
The thought of Cullen made her chest tight, as if she didn’t have enough air. He’d fallen in the battle in the audience hall. She didn’t know if he was still alive. She fought to keep the fear from her face, her voice. “Weng used a peculiar form of TK to move his body where he wanted it.”
“I was told she wasn’t as stupid as most humans,” he observed. “Her initial response to you made me doubt this, but perhaps that was due to the blow to her head, as you suggested, Alice.”
Alice? Was Helen using a different name here? Wherever “here” was. Lily’s head ached. “Where are we?”
It was as if she hadn’t spoken. “I will study her before we hand her over to our ally.”
The woman—Helen or Alice?—spoke. “I have expressed my desire to make my own study of her.”
“Be satisfied with the other one.”
“Other one,” Lily repeated. “You have another human here?”
For the first time, the man met her eyes. He even smiled. It was not a friendly expression. “We have a large number of them. Your people are limited in many ways, but you do breed well.”
She had his attention. Good. Keep asking questions. “What’s your name?”
“Surely even you know better than to expect an answer to such a question.”
“Surely even you realize I meant a call-name.”
“You will call me Zhu.”
She snorted. “Master? Not likely.”
“And yet you will do so. If not now, soon.” Abruptly he switched to Chinese, but it was a dialect she’d never heard before. Not Cantonese or Taiwanese—neither of which she could speak, but she knew them when she heard them. Wu, maybe? Wasn’t that the dialect spoken in Shanghai Province? He seemed to want someone to hurry up and . . .
What was that? Feet moving quickly and in unison. She turned.
Half a dozen ancient Chinese warriors came trotting out of the trees on one of the paths. At least they looked Chinese and their gear might have clothed the extras in a Genghis Khan movie, if Genghis Khan had been Chinese rather than Mongolian. Hollywood didn’t pay attention to details like that. These men wore baggy pants, skimpy beards or long mustaches or both, and pointy leather helmets. Also what she thought were called cuirasses—two pieces of shaped leather strapped together to protect the chest and back. The sixth man’s armor was made of something blue and shiny. Two of them carried swords, two carried bows, and two held . . . were those pikes or spears? Long wooden poles that ended in a pointy part.
She twitched with the urge to bolt. She wouldn’t get far.
It wasn’t until the six men formed up in a circle around her that she realized how short they were. Blue-armor was the only one taller than her, and he only had a couple inches on her. That armor was peculiar. Not metal, she thought, but she couldn’t get a good look. Helen blocked her view.
The dragon spawn told them in that odd Chinese to “take her to the [gentle womb? fine bag?] with the other one” and started to walk away.
“What other one?” Lily called after him. He ignored her.
One of the warriors barked an order at her—not the guy with the blue breastplate. This one’s face was weathered, wrinkled around the eyes. His armor was leather, but he had more of it than the others—winged pads on his shoulders, stuff that strapped onto his thighs. His order was simple enough that she understood it quite well: come with us.
“You are to go with them,” Alice/Helen said tranquilly.
“Or else what?” Lily asked. “Are they going to poke holes in me with those big sticks?”
“No. As you perhaps have guessed, our ally wants you alive and reasonably intact. If you resist going with them, they will try not to damage you. If they fail in that attempt, you will be given medical care. You may find their version of medical care rather primitive.”
Alrighty, then. Might as well go with the short warriors. Lily inclined her head regally at Shoulder Pads Guy and tried to channel Grandmother as she said in Chinese—Mandarin Chinese, that is, that being the only form of the language she could speak—“You will introduce yourself. Then I will go with you.”
He scowled in what might be confusion. After a moment he repeated his order, but this time added that he was Li Po, shǒu quán guī yuánsù de tiān Zhǔrén. First something-something of the Heavenly Masters.
Lily lifted her eyebrows as if she doubted he’d gotten that right, but was too polite to call him on it. “I greet you, Li Po. I am Special Agent Lily Yu of Unit Twelve of the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the United States of America.” Nyah, nyah, nyah. My title’s longer than yours. “I will go with you.”
They insisted on tying Lily’s hands in front of her. Clearly someone thought she was a helluva lot more dangerous than she felt. They didn’t search her—an odd omission, but maybe they assumed her bound hands would keep them safe from her. They were probably right.
Two guards walked ahead of Lily; one of them held the end of the rope that bound her wrists as if she were an animal on a leash. Two more guards went behind, and the last two flanked her. Dangerous prisoner here, folks. She walked through another sorcéri, the loose bits of magic often found near nodes or the ocean.
The woman who wasn’t dead and therefore couldn’t be Helen didn’t treat her as dangerous. Not-Helen strolled along beside her as if they were acquaintances out to enjoy the gardens on a hot summer afternoon. Maybe she was enjoying herself in her loose cotton clothing. Lily bet the guards in their leather cuirasses were almost as uncomfortable as she was in her leather jacket. Her ankle bitched at her with every step. She tried to ignore that, the heat, and the lingering throb of a headache and gather information.
All of the guards’ minds were present to her mindsense. So was the woman’s. Not dragon spawn, then. They were human minds, as far as she could tell—which, admittedly, was based on limited experience, but human minds generally reminded her of some yellow fruit. The guards’ minds were yellow and fuzzy. The woman’s was . . . odd. The color was mostly yellow, though with a blush of rose, but her mind was slick and the overall glow was tamped down in a way that reminded Lily of something. She couldn’t think what, but the slickness meant she couldn’t mindspeak the woman.
The guards, though—if she mindspoke one of the guards, would she need to think at him in Chinese? The black dragon didn’t need to share a mutual language with someone to mindspeak him or her, but he could do all kinds of things that were beyond her. Like read minds. And how would it work if they replied? Most people had to vocalize for Lily to pick up their mental response. If they spoke in Chinese, would she “hear” them in English or in Chinese?