People being people, there had been incidents. None here, but then, Sam had ways of discouraging pests. Even the paparazzi had quit hanging out near the fence pretty fast. Their cameras kept suffering mysterious breakdowns—when they didn’t just explode.
Elsewhere, though, there had been problems. A photojour nalist had tried to sneak past the fence in Seattle, snap some pictures, then run really fast back to safe territory. He hadn’t been fast enough. Four gangbangers in Chicago had thought an area ungoverned by law would be a great place for drug deals, and saw no reason they couldn’t do the deal quickly just inside the fence, then vault back over. Curiosity seekers in London and Houston had made the attempt, as had an unaffiliated witch in Toronto who wanted a dragon’s scale.
All of them ended up injured, a couple of them badly. One of the gangbangers seemed to be permanently ensorcelled. He could speak only in nursery rhymes.
The Chicago incident had delighted some people. Jay Leno had told jokes about it for a week. That city’s dragon—he called himself Alec—had thoughtfully deposited the injured gang members on the roof of Cook County Hospital. While he’d declined to give a statement, he had offered one comment to the chief of police.
Turned out the one who now spoke in nursery rhymes had had his iPod turned up especially loud when he entered the lair. And Alec didn’t like rap music.
They were fortunate, Lily supposed, that no intruders had been killed. . . . as far as anyone knew. Since a dragon might decide to eat the evidence, that wasn’t certain. What part of “can’t sneak up on a telepath” did people not understand?
The narrow gravel road began climbing. Lily felt her heart rate climb, too.
Not because Sam would attack. He had informed them months ago that they would be allowed to visit occasionally, and Rule had done so. The first time had been an official welcome from Nokolai, in which Rule opened a discussion with the dragon about territory. He’d gone back officially twice and had made a purely personal visit recently, too.
Lily hadn’t.
“You okay?” Rule asked as he stopped the Mercedes in front of the gate.
“Sure.” Aside from cold, damp palms and an overly excited heartbeat. “I’m not scared of Sam.”
“Hmm.” He got out of the car, announced out loud that he and Lily were there to speak with Sam, and expressed the hope that their visit was not an intrusion. That was a courtesy, since Sam listened to minds, not voices—but he insisted that humans thought in such a cluttered way it was easier to “hear” what they meant if they spoke it aloud.
Lily took a slow breath, trying to settle herself. Rule hadn’t argued when she said she wasn’t afraid of Sam. He might have, though she’d spoken truly: she didn’t fear the dragon. It was the stuff in her own mind that made her palms sweaty.
Memory could be a bitch sometimes. Even the memories she couldn’t quite recall. Especially them.
It was a manual gate. Once Rule opened it, Lily scooted over to the driver’s seat so she could drive the car through, then wiggled back to the passenger seat to wait while Rule closed the gate again.
“I believe,” Rule said as he shut the door, “you might leave the bargaining to me.”
“You do, huh?” Her heartbeat was calming down. See there, she told her inner fearmonger, that wasn’t so bad.
“Cullen is clan as well as friend, so he’s mine to protect. If anything must be offered to gain that protection, that’s mine to give. And I can offer what you can’t—limited hunting rights in Clanhome.”
“Sam gets all the steers and pigs he wants.”
“He doesn’t get to hunt. Grabbing the animals released in this enclosure isn’t the same. I’m already negotiating with him on this.”
She looked at him, surprised. “You are?” She’d known he was negotiating something. He hadn’t talked about the terms . . . and she hadn’t asked, had she?
She’d been letting her fear control her. And hadn’t even noticed.
The road was climbing sharply now. Gravel crunched pleasantly beneath the tires. “We’d already have reached an agreement,” Rule said, “if he didn’t enjoy the bargaining itself so much.” He glanced at her, smiled. “Madame Yu advised me to bargain vigorously. Sam wouldn’t trust a deal too easily struck.”
Unconsciously Lily rubbed her breastbone again. Grandmother had survived wars, famine, and who-knew-what-all in China. In this country, she’d dealt with a minor god, negotiated with the president, and battled a really large demon. And those were just the things Lily knew about. Grandmother would survive whatever this adventure was, too. “What will Nokolai get in return?”
“A favor.”
She lifted her eyebrows. “Just one?”
“That was our initial request. I’m allowing him to bargain me down.”
“Down? Asking for more than one favor is being bargained down?”
“A debt that accumulates over many years could end up as a very large favor. He doesn’t want that, so we’re discussing how often Nokolai has to clear its tab. He wants it done frequently, so he can pay the debt with small favors. Naturally, I want the opposite.”
“Hmm.” The road curved up and around, a pale scar on a sere brown slope surrounded by ruffled land. It looked a lot like parts of Clanhome, and if you went by air—the way Sam would—the distance between the two wasn’t great. By road it was much longer. “I wonder what Sam considers a very large favor.”
Rule snorted. “Anything that seriously inconveniences him, I suspect.”
“You like him.”
“I do. The wolf understands him better than the man does, but I . . .” Rule’s voice trailed off. He braked to a gentle halt.
They’d rounded a tall, knobby earth-shoulder. Ahead the gravel road petered out into a broad, flat expanse of bare dirt.
Lily had expected that. Rule had told her about Sam’s architectural efforts. He’d used the rock and dirt excavated from his lair to build a large landing pad or front porch—first the rocks to make it stable, then enormous amounts of dirt, tamped down and leveled off.
She hadn’t expected the brightly colored canopy over the bit of carpet set on this end of that long landing pad. Or the middle-aged woman in loose white pants and a blue, short sleeved shirt standing in that small pavilion, smiling at them.
“Well,” Lily said after a moment, “it looks like we’ve found Li Qin.”
SEVENTEEN
RULE and Lily left the car where it was. Li Qin stepped out from under the striped canopy and offered a small bow as they drew near. She was a solidly built woman of uncertain age, her face square and plain, her voice inexpressibly pure and lovely.
“I am pleased to see you both,” she said in her precise, softly accented English. “I was about to have tea when Sam told me you would be arriving shortly. Will you do me the honor of joining me?”
“Of course,” Lily said, because it was impossible to be other than polite to Li Qin. She could see the tea things set out on the low table and cursed inwardly. Li Qin meant to prepare the tea properly, in the Gongfu style.
In other words, slowly. “Thank you. You honor us. Li Qin, is Grandmother here, too?”
“Ah.” Regret touched the placid features. “I did not think. Of course you might hope to find her here. I am sorry, but she is not. Rule, I believe you like your tea in the English style, but I’m afraid I do not have sugar or milk.”
“Your voice will sweeten it for me.”
She smiled. “You are kind.”
Li Qin’s smiles didn’t transform her face—it was still plain—and yet one smile always made Lily want to see another one. Which made it hard to speak bluntly. “Li Qin—”