No, just superglue. He’d used the gauze on Daniel.
Daniel, Mason, Max. Carlos, whom they’d left alone and wounded in the dark of a demon-infested tunnel. Jude. Gan. Benedict, Cullen, and Cynna. The names of those he was responsible for, those who’d come with him to retrieve the children, tolled through his head, adding to the ache of uncertainty about Lily . . . who was alive, but so far away. What had happened to everyone?
Troubled out of the privacy of his pain, he opened his eyes. Directly overhead was rock, but he was not underground, he saw with relief. Beyond the rock was sky tinted lavender by approaching dusk. He turned his head and saw a campfire and a naked woman.
She squatted by the fire, her back to him. A black-and-silver braid hung down the lovely curve of her spine, tied at the end with a scrap of cloth. She was not young, though he saw muscle in her slim shoulders; her skin held hints of the crepe of age.
Perhaps she felt him looking. She looked over her shoulder and spoke crisply. “You’re awake. Good.”
He blinked. The naked woman was Madame Yu. This should, of course, have been obvious. His brain wasn’t working well.
“You need water,” she said, and set something down—a stick with what might have been half a rabbit impaled on it. The source of the cooking-meat smell.
Rule lacked the human prejudice against nudity, but for Madame Yu to be unclothed . . . that was just wrong. But she’d been a tiger before, hadn’t she? She didn’t have her clothes with her, hadn’t been able to bring them along when they . . . came here? Were brought here? “Where?” he croaked, meaning where are we. “The others. What—”
“Water now, then explaining.” She unscrewed the cap on a collapsible canteen. It looked familiar. Probably it was. Probably it was the one he’d stuck in his belt after emptying it back in Dis. “I will lift your head. Do not try to help.”
He was thirsty. Horribly thirsty, a truth that had been obscured until this moment by his other hurts. He pictured the water sliding down his throat only to spill out onto the ground when it reached the hole where his guts should be. “I’ll leak.”
“I have glued you back together. Gan held you in sleep with one of the charms while I worked.” She slid one hand beneath his head and lifted.
She’d superglued his gut? Did she know what to attach to what?
“You will not leak. Drink.” She held the plastic bladder to his lips, giving him little choice.
The water was warm and tasted of dirt. He gulped it down eagerly.
She moved the canteen away before he was ready. “Not too fast, I think.”
“How bad . . . am I hurt?” Enough that a little talking was painful.
“Most of the damage was to the ropy part of your intestines. I removed the worst mess and glued together what remained. I trust your healing can regrow what was lost.” The last sounded like a parent’s no-nonsense instruction: brush your teeth, wash your face, regrow your intestines. “There was also damage to the . . . bah. What is the word? The knobby intestine. Jiécháng. It was not severed, however. I glued it closed. I did not see damage to your other organs, but I was in a hurry. We were in the open. Drink again.”
He did. The knobby intestine . . . the colon? Rule knew a little anatomy, enough for the kind of rough battlefield medicine he might have to use on one of his men. By “the ropy part,” she must mean his small intestine. It sounded like he would have to regrow a lot of that.
“You also have a deep wound in your thigh. I used the last of the glue there, after Gan and I moved you to this spot. I did not have enough glue to seal it fully, but it is not bleeding anymore.” She withdrew the canteen again. “I have been using a healing cantrip on you, also, but I am no healer. I cannot tell how much it is helping.”
He licked his lips, dizzy. “Gan?”
“She has gone to steal some things. She can go dashtu here, so this should not be difficult.”
“Steal from . . . who?”
“There is a village.”
“Humans?”
“Yes. This is not one of the sidhe realms.”
Was that good or bad? He couldn’t think. “How did we get here?”
“Gan brought me and also Cynna and Lily. You, I believe, were brought here by Lily.”
He started to shake his head and winced. Definitely a concussion. “Lily can’t do that. And she is . . . far away.” Much too far for his piece of mind or for her to have somehow brought him here, wherever “here” was. Madame still hadn’t answered that one. Maybe she didn’t know, either.
“You did not arrive in the same place as Lily because you did not leave from the same place in Dis.”
“Lily can’t cross realms.” Much less bring him along with her.
“Tch. If Gan did not bring you, then how did you get here? You must have been pulled here by the mate bond.”
That . . . made sense, actually. It had happened before, back when Gan was working for the other side and had dragged Lily into Dis. Rule had been pulled along with her, pulled by the mate bond. And he vividly remembered the Lady’s voice saying steady back in Dis. Even more vividly he remembered what had followed. The mate bond had vanished, then returned, supercharged. At least that’s what Cullen had said—that Rule was suddenly glowing with twice as much magic as usual. “The Lady,” he said slowly. “She arranged it.”
“Very likely. You are muddled from your wounds. This is not surprising. You were nearly dead. Is your memory bad?”
“I remember most of it. I don’t remember receiving this.” His hand lifted two inches to indicate his stomach. The tiny effort exhausted him.
“I think Xitil did that, but I was busy and did not see it happen. Do you remember Xitil?”
“Yes.” A mountain of pink flesh towering over him. A band of blue eyes circling a round head. A mad giggle.
“Do you also remember that the children were not in the audience hall, as we had thought?”
He remembered the doppelgänger that he’d thought was his son and how it had felt to watch it melt. “He . . . they . . . the children must be in the cells . . .” He ran out of breath and drew in air slowly. Carefully. There were cells off the audience hall where they’d fought demons, a demon prince, and a dragon spawn. He’d seen Xitil emerge from one. “Cells sealed by rock.”
“Not fully rock. When the false Toby melted, Gan thought to look for the children with her üther sense. It is hard to hide üther from one who can perceive it. Rock will block this perception, but Gan tells me the cells were sealed with something like the window we stepped through—ah, but you did not see the window. You may think of it as part-time rock. Part of the time it is rock, part of the time it is not. Gan discovered that, to her üther sense, this part-time rock flickers. When it does, she can perceive beyond it. She did not notice this earlier because the flicker does not happen regularly. Also, she was not looking in the right way.” Madame shook her head, disapproval blending with forgiveness. “She is very young.”