In the silence, Lily heard the guards on the other side of their door. It was heavy wood with a tiny window not much bigger than a peephole. The hinges were iron, but there was no latch, the door being held in place by a wooden bar on the other side. Crude but effective. On the other side of that door, dice rattled on the wooden floor. One man exclaimed. Another complained about his ill luck.
She understood Cynna’s caution. If they could hear the guards, the guards could hear them. Good thing they had another option.
Lily gave the glowy stuff in her middle a nudge and let it unfurl.
Cynna had some kind of mental shield, but not the kind that blocked mindspeech. To her mindsense, Cynna’s mind was like a fuzzy, glowing kiwi. The green was unusual for a human, that being the color she associated with lupi minds. Lily thought it had something to do with Cynna being Lady-touched, Rhej to the Nokolai Clan. But it might have meant something else.
The fuzziness meant that Lily could mindspeak her. To do that, she had to touch a mind with a probe, then send pulses along the probe that corresponded with what she wanted to say. Those pulses sank into minds she perceived as having texture, but slid off the slick ones. She didn’t know if the pulses carried her actual words or their meanings; people “heard” her as if she was speaking English, but maybe someone like Li Po would “hear” her in Chinese. There was a lot she hadn’t had a chance to learn about her new ability before the world started blowing up around them.
Regardless of the content, though, she had to mouth words to create the pulses. At first she’d had to speak out loud, but she’d improved enough that mouthing them silently worked now. Do you think the guards know more English than they’re admitting?
Cynna’s eyes widened in what looked like relief. All Lily got back from her, though, was gibberish that reminded her of a baby’s babble, word-like sounds without meaning. That didn’t work, she sent. Try mouthing the words the way I am.
Possibly, Cynna mouthed. Or they might [babble] translation device like they use in Edge.
Lily’s eyebrows went up. Are these people trading with Edge?
[babble] possible.
They could come back to that later, Lily decided. What about the children?
They haven’t left Dis yet. They [babble-babble] time not congruous.
Lily’s eyes widened. What?
The time here is earlier than when we left Dis. I don’t know [babble] Sam said the [babble] not more than two weeks. Might be less.
You think it might be as much as two weeks earlier here? Lily repeated to make sure she understood—though that was not the right word. She didn’t understand this at all.
It’s not more than two weeks anyway. Technical reasons for that limit. Lily, we need to talk out loud some so [babble] suspicious.
Lily rubbed her head, hoping to rub some sense into it. But yeah, it made sense that they shouldn’t just sit in silence. They didn’t want anyone guessing they could communicate this way. “So how did you get captured?”
Cynna grimaced and answered out loud. “Easily. I arrived about fifteen feet in the air and fell. Fifteen feet might not seem like much, but I fell on . . . did you see any of Lang Xin? The town outside the compound?”
“Part of it.”
“You maybe noticed that they like to build with stone. I smashed into a stone wall. I don’t know if I broke my arm then or when I hit the ground because I’d passed out by then. Made it really easy for them to capture me.”
“You hit your head?”
She shook her head. “I might have blacked out from pain, but I suspect it was from the crossing.”
“Why would crossing make you black out?”
“When you cross to a realm with a major time incongruence, that can make you disoriented enough to pass out.”
Lily frowned and spoke slowly. “I was unconscious when I first arrived. But I’d hit my head and thought that was why . . .” Her voice drifted off as the obvious rose up and smacked her. “You didn’t break your arm today. You didn’t arrive when I did, not even close. How long have you been here?”
“Six days.”
Six days. Six days as a prisoner, with a broken arm, captors who didn’t speak her language, and no way of knowing if anyone else had lived through the battle in the audience chamber. Six more days without her daughter, her baby. Six days alone in this small cell after watching the dragon spawn break a four-year-old boy’s neck. “Shit.”
“Pretty much, yeah. Do you . . . can you tell me anything about what happened after I left our little hell party?”
“They were all alive when I left.” At least she thought so. Things had been pretty confusing . . . but why add to Cynna’s burden with doubts? “But I think that wasn’t very long after you left. Maybe five or ten minutes . . . shit. You’ve been here six days. Does that mean time passes here differently? Like a day here for every minute there?”
“I don’t think it’s that straightforward. I don’t know for sure—this shit is way above my pay grade—but I think the time difference is because of something Gan did when she brought us. But it might be just that you and I crossed from different spots. Not that I understand how that works, mind—how spots ten feet away from each other in one realm can be linked to spots that are separated by days as well as miles in another—but then, I don’t understand time. I know it’s possible, though. At least, it is when the realms aren’t time-congruent.”
Was it her aching head that made it hard to follow what Cynna said, or was it the subject matter? Lily abandoned time incongruence for now. “They know about Gan?”
“Yeah. She fell with me—not onto the wall, lucky her, but I know she came through with me. People saw her before she vanished. Crossed back to Dis, I guess. I had to tell Kongqi about her.” But Cynna shook her head as she said that.
Their captors knew about Gan—but not everything about her? Clearly they needed to get their stories straight. Lily’s mindsense had coiled up in her gut again when she stopped paying attention to it. She gave it a nudge. What do our captors not know about Gan?
Cynna’s mouth moved silently. They know what Gan looks like and [babble] from Edge, that she’s a crosser, and that dragons arranged for her to come with us.
Mostly clear. Cynna was getting better at this. They don’t know that she used to be a demon? That she’s a friend? That she’s the Edge Chancellor?
A head shake from Cynna.
Good. That’s good. What about Reno? Do they know about him?
No.
That was really good news. Have you heard from him?
No, but he’s probably not here yet. Then, out loud: “There’s a lot I need to tell you. I’ve learned stuff about this place, mostly from Alice, so . . . shit. Do you know about Alice?”