Mind Magic (44 page)

“Genocide?” Bert said. “That’s extreme.”

“You heard a sampling of what’s being said,” Rule replied. “Smith’s tools are fanning the flames with every stupid¸ hate-mongering lie ever leveled against my people. He’s out to get all of us.”

“Maybe,” Lily said.

Rule’s head swung. “Maybe?” He made the word sound like it, too, was a curse.

“I’d bet that he fears and despises lupi, but I don’t think destroying you is his main goal. He wants lupi discredited, but mostly he wants Ruben discredited. That’s essential to his real goal.”

Rule’s eyebrows lifted. “You know his goal?”

“I think this all started as an extreme form of interagency rivalry. No, listen,” she said when he started to speak. “Edward Smith considers himself a patriot. A true patriot, a man who puts the welfare of the country ahead of everything else. But he’s also a narcissist. Maybe not clinically, but he’s like Victor Frey.” She named the previous Leidolf Rho, who hadn’t seen any distinction between what was best for him and what was best for his clan. “He
knows
that he has to be in charge. Behind the scenes maybe—I suspect he prefers that—but he has to be the one pulling the strings. He’s the only one with the intelligence and integrity to do what’s necessary to protect the country. Everyone else in positions of power is venal, weak, incompetent, or stupid.”

“That’s him!” Danny exclaimed. “That sounds just like Mr. Smith. I never put it all together like that, but that’s how he thinks. It’s like you know him. Did you really get all that from what I said?”

“A lot of it.” Reminded that there were a lot of ears present, she said, “I’m sorry, Danny, but I need everyone except Rule to leave for a bit. Out of hearing range.”

Danny stiffened. “I don’t want to.”

Rule spoke. “Perhaps you could go see how Mike is doing.”

Lily didn’t think the girl was going to agree, but after a moment she bent and picked up her laptop, hugging it to her. “I don’t like being sent away, but I do want to see if that healer helped Mike.”

“Little John, I put Danny in your charge for now. Bert, if you wouldn’t mind . . .”

“Not at all,” the mob guy said politely.

“Charles—”

“He knows,” Lily said.

Rule’s eyebrows lifted. “Does he now.” And then he waited for the others to leave. “Where were we? Ah, yes. You were claiming that this whole business has been a power play designed to promote the NSA.”

“No, I’m saying that’s how it started. Unit Twelve used to be a small, relatively unimportant branch of the FBI’s Magical Crimes Division. Most people didn’t know it existed. That’s how Ruben wanted it because of the prejudice against using the Gifted in law enforcement. Smith wouldn’t have seen the Unit as a rival back then, but he probably kept an eye on it. Maybe it even inspired the Refuge by opening his mind to possibilities. He was going to have Gifted agents, too, only his would be better than Ruben’s. They’d be used by the important agencies—his own, the CIA, Homeland Security—not that piddling little Unit Twelve. His influence would grow, which would help him protect the country. But he didn’t want to recruit adults. Gifted adults had too much power. They couldn’t be trusted. He wanted youngsters who could be indoctrinated. He wanted—still wants—control. So he got his Refuge up and running—and then the Turning hit.”

Rule’s eyes lit with understanding. “And Congress gave Unit Twelve unprecedented power.”

She nodded.

“That’s why you believe his goal is to discredit Ruben and dismantle Unit Twelve. The Unit is the one segment of government with both the integrity and the authority to threaten him. I’ll bet he tried to get to Ruben somehow, to influence him or put one of his people in the Unit. And failed. If a Unit agent learned about the children he’s been experimenting on—”

“Exactly.” She was grimly pleased he’d caught on. “And it was after the Turning that Smith and Company escalated their criminality. The first report on the Cerberus potion was dated five months post-Turning.”

Rule’s eyebrows lifted. “I didn’t realize that. I didn’t make the connection.” His lips tilted wryly. “I’ve needed you for more than personal reasons. In a couple hours, you’ve figured out some of the key pieces that baffled me.”

“Which I could do because you’d pieced together the rest of it. And because . . . well, the next part builds on something you don’t know. You said it would take a sorcerer to change the financial records the way Smith and Company have done.”

“So I suspect. Using magic on electronic records requires such delicate work, according to Cullen, that only someone with the Sight—” He broke off, his eyes narrowing. “Cullen. He disappeared, like you. There aren’t any brownies in Mexico, or anywhere on the West Coast, but—”

“I’m pretty sure he was snatched by, ah, someone connected with the one who snatched me. He should be fine,” she added quickly. “Mad as hell, but fine. The point is—”

“The point is that you haven’t told me who kidnapped you.”

Rule had spoken quietly, not using his Rho voice, nor with the icy control that meant he was seriously pissed. But there was no mistaking the intensity behind those words. She sighed. “Yes, and I think I have to.”

An explosion of brownies burst upon them. A couple dozen of them anyway, racing in the open doorways at both ends of the barn, every one shrieking that she mustn’t, not on any account,
don’t tell him, oh no oh no, you promised, no she didn’t stupid, please don’t, oh no oh no, burn him to a crisp!
—and those were just the ones who shrieked in English.

“
Silence!
” Rule roared.

Every one of them stopped—some so suddenly that a couple collisions took place. In the sudden hush Lily heard only one voice—Dirty Harry saying sadly, “But I like Rule Turner, even if he did tie me up. I don’t want him to die.”

“I’m going to try to see to it that he doesn’t,” Lily said. “Rule—”

The next roar didn’t come from Rule. It came from overhead—and it was much louder.

This time the brownies’ screeches weren’t directed at Lily. Their heads were all tilted up.

“Not the barn!”

“The horses—please don’t—”

“Not here! Don’t burn him here!”

Mixed with brownie cries were the screams of a couple of the horses, who knew a threat when they heard one. So did Lily. She grabbed Rule and pressed herself close so Mika couldn’t burn him without getting her, too. Then she unfurled the power inside her and gingerly touched the lava-mind circling overhead, sending a ripple as she spoke aloud. “Way to go on keeping a secret, Mika. Show up and roar.”

As if she’d been making a suggestion, another roar shuddered through the air. As it did, the ripple traveled back to her, only stronger. Much stronger.
DO NOT TELL.

Ow. She winced. Headache again.

“It was Mika, then,” Rule said very low, almost a growl. “I thought so, when you said . . . Mika kidnapped you.”

“Um. Yes, but that isn’t the part—”

A small hand tugged on her pant leg. “Lilyu, would you please take him outside so zhe doesn’t burn the horses by accident?”

Lily scowled down at Gandalf. “I thought she wasn’t listening anymore!”

“She?” Rule said.

“Zhe can still listen,” Gandalf assured Lily. “It’s hard, but zhe can, but it’s nearly
regarre
, so zhe just hears you now, but not all the time, only sometimes. We don’t understand that part, but it’s in the
ithnali
. This close to
regarre
, zhe can only talk and listen to an
efondi
.”

Lily frowned, trying to untangle that. “You mean that sh—”

“Zhe!”

“—that
zhe
doesn’t have telepathy now? Only mindspeech, and only with me?”

Gandalf shrugged. “I know what’s in the
ithnali.
Zhe can only listen and speak to an
efondi
now.”

“Who is ‘she’?” Rule demanded again.

“Rule.” Lily turned so she was looking up at him. This was not going to be easy. She wanted Mika to “hear” what she said and what Rule said. She didn’t know if she could do that, but she needed to try. “You know that old joke, ‘I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you’? It isn’t a joke to everyone.”

“I got that impression, yes.”

“You often distinguish between your roles—Lu Nuncio and Rho. As Nokolai Lu Nuncio, you can’t promise to keep a secret no matter what because if your Rho needed to know about it, you’d have to be free to tell him. As Rho of Leidolf you could make such a vow, only what the Leidolf Rho hears, the Nokolai Lu Nuncio will hear, too. So there ought to be a way for you to promise to keep something secret, but I don’t quite see how. How can we do that?”

Rule frowned. “It’s a matter of duty. Conflicting duties, in this case, but the duty of a Rho to his clan supersedes all others. I would need to promise first that I would hear you only in my role as Rho—then, speaking in that role, promise never to reveal what you tell me.”

Relief made her knees soft. “Good. Then—”

“I didn’t say I’d do that. I said that’s how we could do it, if I agreed.”

“This is kind of life and death.”

“Give me a moment. I have to be sure.”

Did you hear?
she sent.
He knows his life is at stake, but he won’t promise unless he knows he can keep it.

 . . .
MUDDY
, came the answering ripple. For the first time, the mindspeech sounded like the Mika she knew. Still hot instead of cold and way too loud, but that was a familiar complaint.
YOU’RE . . . [rasping static] VERY MUDDY.

“Yeah, well,” she muttered, “you aren’t so clear yourself right now. Plenty loud, not so clear.”

“What?”

“Sorry. It’s really hard to mindspeak without vocalizing.”

“You’re talking to Mika.”

“I’m trying to talk to both of you. It isn’t easy.”

Rule looked at her a long moment. “You want me to give this promise.”

“Yes. I don’t think there’s any conflict with your duty to either clan. I can’t say there will never, ever be such a conflict, but I can’t see it happening. And your duty to Leidolf”—in spite of her efforts, her voice rose—“will be a whole lot easier to fulfill
if you’re not dead
.”

That amused him, which made her want to hit him. “Very well. I promise to hear what you say next only as Leidolf Rho. You have my word as Rho that I will not reveal it.”

THIRTY-SEVEN

FIFTEEN
minutes later, Charles was napping again and the brownies were gone. Rule had strongly requested their departure when they interrupted Lily’s account one time too many. Now he sat in stunned silence.

Dragons were few. He’d always known that, without giving thought to what it meant—no more than he’d given thought to the screamingly obvious fact that every dragon he knew about was male. Such remarkable incuriosity . . .

“Rule?” she said. “You’re really quiet.”

“I’m absorbing.” He’d thought Lily was exaggerating the danger when she insisted on his vow of silence. If anything, she’d underplayed it. He wondered if she realized how deadly her knowledge was. It was, he thought, the most confoundedly complicated system of reproduction he’d ever heard of. It was the dragons’ one big weakness. They’d dulled the minds of an entire world on the subject because they could not afford for their weakness to be known.

That is not the only reason.

The mental voice was as cold and precise as an ice crystal. It was also about that size—a tiny voice he wouldn’t have noticed if not for its impossible precision. “Sam,” he whispered.

“Yes!” Lily leaned forward. They sat facing each other on their makeshift bed in one of the stalls. “You see it, too?”

Do not tell her I speak to you. Mika might pluck that knowledge from her mind. The outcome would be widespread disaster, death, and destruction.

Rule took only a second to decide to follow the black dragon’s suggestion. If Sam spoke that definitely of widespread death and disaster, there would be widespread death and disaster. “Sam sent you here for this. To be an, ah,
efondi
to Mika. Whatever that is.”

“That’s just it. He didn’t send me here. He sent me to Whistle, Ohio, where I found that body—and we still don’t know why he was killed, do we? But Sam could have sent me to the brownie reservation, making it easy for Mika to grab me. He didn’t. He had a reason for that, something beyond whatever stupid-ass reason Mika had for abducting me instead of just asking for help—which probably has to do with dragons being the epitome of arrogance, unable to humble themselves enough to—”

“No, that isn’t it,” Rule said absently. Half of him was listening for more from Sam, who was perversely silent. The black dragon shouldn’t have been able to mindspeak him at all from the other side of the continent. Aside from the sheer distance involved, the curve of the earth ought to put too much earth and rock between them.

Perhaps he hadn’t. Perhaps he was close by.

No.

“If that isn’t it,” Lily said, exasperated, “maybe you’d like to tell me what is.”

“Ah. Yes. Mika couldn’t ask because in order to do so, he—she—would have had to tell you the secret of dragon reproduction. The taboo against speaking about it must be extraordinarily strong, especially since she’d have to broach the subject when you weren’t an
efondi.
What if you didn’t agree? Then you’d never be
efondi
, so you’d have to either be killed or have your memory altered. And I gather Mika’s not up to altering memories now.”