“True.” She pulled out her phone. “I’m going to call my mother.”
His eyebrows rose. “Voluntarily?”
“I just want to make sure . . . rats. It went to voice mail. Ah—Mother, this is Lily. I need to talk to you about something important. Give me a call, okay?”
“You want to make sure she’s okay,” Rule said as she disconnected.
“I want to make sure she actually wears that charm. Mother tends to discount what Grandmother says, which I guess I can understand, because Grandmother doesn’t ask—she commands. And she seldom explains. But telling Mother to wear a dragon scale charm doesn’t mean she’ll do it.”
True. “Madame Yu must be aware of that.”
“She ought to be, but there’s this dynamic in our family where Mother usually agrees with Grandmother, then does things the way she wants. So she might have nodded and agreed to wear the charm, but—” Her phone interrupted with the opening bars of “The Star Spangled Banner.”
That particular ring tone meant her boss, Ruben Brooks. She answered right away. “Hi, Ruben. You must be psychic or something. I was just going to call.”
Since Brooks was, indeed, psychic—his Gift was precognition, or awareness of events before they occurred—that was meant as a joke. But Brooks didn’t laugh. Rule had no trouble hearing his response. His hearing might not be as acute in this form as in his other one, but with Lily’s phone so close it would be hard to not overhear.
“Lily, I had a disturbing dream last night. Or a series of dreams, rather, centered on San Diego.”
“I didn’t think you did dreams.”
“Normally my Gift doesn’t manifest that way, no. On the rare occasions that it does, it generally means there’s the possibility of a massive loss of life. I have a feeling it would be unwise to bring in troops at this point, but I’m unsure what steps I should take.”
TWENTY-ONE
RULE saw Lily jolt. He felt the same shock in himself, a nasty, crawling certainty that things were about to go spinning out of control.
“Troops?” Lily repeated. “Like the Army? You’re thinking of calling in the Army?”
“No, I’ve decided I’d better not. I’ll explain. I dreamed of a series of possible scenarios. Many of them involved widespread arson, rioting, violent mobs—the complete breakdown of civil authority in San Diego. However, in some of the dream sequences, this breakdown wasn’t limited to San Diego. I don’t wish to alarm you, but there is a possibility the upcoming crisis could infect the entire nation. Maybe several nations.”
“We just got warned about something like that,” Lily said slowly. “Really bad shit that could happen all over the world.”
Ruben’s faint sigh suggested relief rather than increased tension. “Then I called the right person. Good. For some reason I doubted . . . Never mind.”
“Do you have any feel for how close the crisis is?”
“Hmm. I can’t answer that precisely. I’ll try to frame this better. That I dreamed of so many sequences suggests there are many decision points that could lead to what I saw. Some of those decision points may be fairly immediate. I believe my first impulse—which was to ask the president to put the National Guard on standby alert—was one such decision point. I decided that bringing in the military would increase rather than ameliorate the potential disaster. Do you know why that might be?”
“Shit. Shit. Maybe. Let me pull my thoughts together. We’ve just been to see Sam—Rule’s with me—and what we learned has to explain those dreams. He said . . .” Her voice trailed off. A strange look spread over her face, as if she’d bitten into a steak only to have her teeth grind against steel. “He told us about this being, this . . . He said that I . . . There’s . . . Oh, hell.”
Lily thrust her phone at Rule. “I can’t. I can’t say any of it.”
He took the phone, thinking fast. Lily had been able to discuss the Chimei with Li Qin, so why . . . but Li Qin already knew about the Chimei. Ruben didn’t. That must be the difference. “Ruben, this is Rule. I’ll have to brief you. Lily has just discovered she’s unable to speak to you about this. There’s a geas—an inherited binding—that’s tied to Lily’s Gift rather than being repelled by it. This geas prevents her from saying more.”
“Hello, Rule.” Ruben’s voice was polite with a hint of wary. “What in the world is going on out there?”
Lily watched him, intent and furious. He wished he could take her hand, but both of his were occupied. “I need to ask you something. It’s after noon, your time. Clearly you waited several hours to call Lily. Earlier, you said you had doubts, but didn’t explain. Were you uneasy about speaking with Lily?”
“Yes, I thought our conversation might be or might precipitate one of the decision points.”
“Do you have that feeling about speaking with me?”
Ruben was silent a moment. “Actually, it’s stronger than before.”
“All right. Let me think a moment.”
Lily spoke very low. “Rule, you have to tell Ruben.”
“Do I? It seems that the treaty considers Ruben pivotal, or it wouldn’t have stopped you. Ruben has an uneasy feeling about talking with me. This—my revealing information—could be one of those indirect actions Sam spoke of which can break the treaty.”
“Or it could be exactly why Sam brought you in—so you could pass on information I can’t!”
That was what had his mind spinning, trying to guess at ramifications that were essentially unguessable. Sam had included Rule in his briefing. That had been choice, not necessity, so it meant something, but what? “He made me part of this, though the treaty’s geas can’t act on me, and the treaty didn’t stop him. Therefore it must be possible, even probable, for me to act in ways that don’t break the treaty.”
“I’m finding my end of this conversation interesting, yet frustrating,” Ruben said.
“Sorry. I was speaking to Lily. I should have put you on mute. There are ramifications to your learning too much right now.”
“There are also ramifications from my knowing too little, which is where I am right now.”
“I’m sorry,” Rule repeated, “but I have to put you on mute for a moment.” He touched the screen.
Lily was ready to erupt. “Dammit, Rule, we can’t just sit on this!”
“Before we act, we have to figure out why Sam brought me into this—and why the treaty let him.”
“He did it so you could speak of all the things I am so damned not able to!”
“That’s one possibility.” Rule trusted Ruben as much as he did any non-clan human, but telling the man about the Chimei and the treaty would hugely increase the variables. “Here’s another one. What if Ruben decides he can’t rely on you, since you’re being affected by an outside agency?”
“He wouldn’t pull me. Someone else wouldn’t have the geas getting in the way, but the Chimei or her lover could affect them.” Her voice was crisp. She was thinking again, not just reacting.
“But Ruben might not accept my word for that. And it would be my word, not yours, since you can’t speak to him about this.”
“Shit.”
“Yes.” And that was only one of a half dozen ways this could go wrong. A half dozen he could glimpse—how many more was he missing?
He couldn’t afford to bring Ruben in. He couldn’t control the decisions Ruben or those he informed might make. Maybe Ruben wouldn’t bring in troops, but the president could overrule him. Adding Ruben to the mix meant adding a spiraling number of decision points.
No, that wasn’t quite accurate . . . Withholding information didn’t mean Ruben wouldn’t act. He’d simply do so in the dark. “Bloody blast it all. Does Sam expect me to figure out what he thinks I’d do, then do it? How do I know what a dragon thinks I would do?”