Heart and Soul (20 page)

Handing him a cup, she knelt by the bed. He looked at her quizzically. “Why must you drink it, too?” he asked. “You do not need to be healed.”

And she realized that the excuse she’d given him in fact provided her with what she needed. So she set the tea aside and said, “Very true.”

She would drink it later. She’d never thought that anyone would drink anything given to him by a fox shifter, even one married to him, and not think that she might be poisoning him. But the thought was very far from Wen’s eyes as he drank the tea in one gulp, then said, “Will it take very long to act? Oh.” The
Oh
came as a surprised exclamation.

He extended his hand to her. “Third—Precious—” But he couldn’t seem to hold the thought in his mind, nor the words upon his tongue. His hand found one of hers, and closed on it with a hard, convulsive grip. He collapsed on the bed and shuddered, once.

And then a great pallor settled upon him, making him look like a statue carved out of ivory. And he stopped breathing.

Her heart hammering, her hand hurting from his grip upon it, Precious Lotus madly ran through her mind the mix she’d put in the teapot. Had she used too much of one leaf, too little of the other? But the formula in her head held true. She’d used the exact amount.

And then a thought like a cold ice-shower formed in her mind. What if the opium that Wen had taken interacted with something in the tea and had, in fact, killed him?

“No,” she said, as much to herself as to Wen’s still, silent body. “No!” And then at a faster pace, “No, no, no, no!”

She tore his fingers away from her hand—his grip still so strong that she was afraid she would have to do violence to his hand to wrench herself free. On her knees, blindly, she crawled away from him, not caring what happened to her fine silk gown.

By the fire were many pots, copper and scrubbed. She took a small copper pan back over to the bed and held it in front of Wen’s lips, willing, wishing, praying that it would become dewed with breath.

THE RUBY’S OPINION

Nigel started toward the stairs, supporting himself on
his walking stick, but Joe stopped him, one hand on Nigel’s shoulder. “Stay, Enoch. You can barely walk.”

“But—”

“I know where it is, remember? I had custody of it while you were unconscious and defenseless.”

It was a reproach to Nigel for not trusting him, and, in fact, Nigel felt chastised. Joe could have taken the ruby while Nigel was unconscious. Joe could have let Nigel die, grasping full force on to the field of the carpetship and preventing it from crashing even long after it had landed. But instead, he’d served Nigel with un-wonted kindness.

Nigel lowered his head and said, “I’m sorry. I’m so used to it being my responsibility that I—”

“Indeed,” Joe said. “I understand.”

“But what if the other dragon is up there?” Nigel said. “Waiting? Ready to attack you?”

“No,” Lady Jade’s soft voice spoke from behind him. “I can sense him if he is that near. That’s how I found him, when he was first here. He will not come now. Not until he recovers from the magical blows I inflicted on him.”

Joe flashed a devil-may-care grin that made Nigel think that when Joe was much younger, he could not have been all that much different from Ger Southerton, after all. It was the grin of a gambler, of a consummate whip—the sort of grin that seemed to belong to an earlier generation, when society had been freer and men were more daring and less stultified by convention.

Nigel heard Joe’s steps up the stairs as he stood at the doorway into the dining room, leaning on his walking stick. Mrs. Perigord and Lady Jade sat at the polished dining room table, and Nigel wondered what Mrs. Perigord made of all this. He’d assumed, what with his having been delirious when brought in, and Joe and his wife spelling each other in looking after him, that she must know at least as much as Joe.

But between looking after a wounded man that her husband told her was an old friend and abetting a girl who was a Chinese dragon—a dragon, furthermore, that she had seen engaged in mortal combat with another dragon in the sky—lay a substantial divide. He could not imagine any woman who would take the challenge so complacently as Mrs. Perigord seemed to be taking it, and if she was truly that sanguine, then Nigel had to assume that Joe had been absolutely right to marry her. For not a hundred noblewomen could have equaled that serenity of mind.

“No, Hettie,” Joe’s voice sounded, from upstairs. “This is something about which you need not know.”

Something answered him—a girl’s voice, Nigel guessed, trying to sound both dutiful and curious enough to get an answer.

“It wouldn’t help you any,” Joe said. And then he was back downstairs.

He motioned Nigel to get into the dining room, and closed both doors. “Hettie,” he said, “is far too curious for her own good.” He sounded both worried and, Nigel thought, curiously proud of his offspring. “She’s always been too curious, even as a babe. Always crawling where she shouldn’t go, or making her way into perilous hiding places, from which I and her long-suffering mother had to rescue her—sometimes at considerable expense or trouble to ourselves.” He sighed and looked across the table at his wife, who was smiling fondly at him. Nigel wondered what shared memories were in their minds and felt a pang, because he knew it was likely he would never experience this—the joy of fatherhood, the joy of living with a woman he loved.

Carefully, Joe set the jewel on the table. He’d wrapped it in a bit of satin and he presumably had cleaned it of the blood that, if Nigel’s memories were true, must have covered it.

Sitting on the table, as the satin fell away from it, it looked like any other ruby. A good cut, medium sparkle. Nothing that would excite the covetousness of half of the world, nor cause Nigel to go, like a hounded man, from land to land and continent to continent, seeking a sanctuary that couldn’t be had. Not until the jewels were returned to their proper place.

Squinting, Nigel could see the veil he’d put on the jewel’s potency, and the veil that Joe had set on it, too, when Nigel’s magic must have dwindled along with his life spark. He could rip both veils away from the jewel with a touch of his hand, but he hesitated.

“The moment the veil is gone,” he said, quietly, “everyone in the world who is looking for it will know where we are. The moment the veil is gone, every two-bit soothsayer, every sorcerer with farseeing capabilities, will focus on this place like a beacon. I cannot stay here once the veil has been removed, even if I put it back on.”

Lady Jade looked up at him. For a moment their eyes met, and she seemed to understand the responsibility he carried. Nothing was said, but in her strangely blue eyes there was the reflection of a great burden. “I will take you wherever you need to go,” she said softly. “Even if the ruby doesn’t judge me trustworthy and doesn’t advise you to help me wake the rivers of China.”

He didn’t doubt her. There was no room to doubt that earnest voice, but he wondered where he would go, weakened and still injured. And yet, it didn’t seem to matter. Jade was already here, and there were Gold Coats in Cape Town. Sooner or later they’d start investigating where the dragons might have gone, and why the dragons might have come here in the first place.

It could be no less than an open secret that Nigel—the carpetship magician who had so mysteriously saved everyone—was here. The neighbors would know it and, likely, the neighborhood merchants, and any friends of Charlotte Perigord, as well as any friends of Hettie. There could be no doubt of that.

And Her Majesty’s Secret Service knew or had a pretty good suspicion of who Nigel was, too, else they would not have come importuning Joe for the ruby. It was only a matter of time—and not a very long time—before various people put their heads together, the neighbors talked of the blue dragon perching on the windowsill and someone came to look into the house. And found Nigel. Someone would recognize him—someone who had attended school with him, someone who knew him through his very brief stint in the Secret Service.

Before that happened, Nigel would need to move on. And he would need to do it before these forces had reason to suspect that Joe knew more than he seemed to. Already his friend, for the sake of protecting him, was treading on very thin ice, indeed. After all, he had to know a dragon had perched on his window and flown away with his lace curtain. No one was going to believe he was completely ignorant of that. So Nigel would leave him with a good excuse but, more importantly, Nigel would leave him. Before he got Joe in worse difficulties.

“Very well,” he said, as much to himself as to Jade’s suggestion. Reaching over, he encompassed the ruby and grasped the magical veils. Then he pulled his hand and the veils away, with a sound like tearing.

Light shone, filling the whole room with unbearable brilliance and sparkling into every face. Even Nigel, who was used to the ruby, had to close his eyes. He could not quite hear the ruby’s voice in his mind, but he could sense it. He knew this ruby was Soul of Fire, and that it was both concerned and grieved over the disappearance of the other jewel.

Only, of course, it wasn’t as simple as that. The ruby was not human, nor was its personality that easy to read. It was…like an old, old creature, like the distilled wisdom of all mankind. It was the same personality Nigel had met when he’d faced the avatar of mankind’s magic, but not speaking in words.

He reached for the jewel, almost without meaning to, his hand trying to cup it and soothe its distress, reassure it that he would, indeed, look after it, keep it safe.

His hand met Lady Jade’s, which was there just ahead of his. She touched the jewel.

This set off another glow—a strange one that Nigel had never seen. It seemed to him, as he squinted to protect his eyes from the unbridled burst of light, that the red shine entered Jade and shone through her. And though he knew it wasn’t true, for a moment he had the sensation that he was watching her heart beat in the midst of the red glow.

“My Lady Jade,” he said, softly.

She looked at him through the glow, and their eyes met, and he felt as if the glow of the ruby enveloped and reassured them both. It could not be more clear had it, in fact, spoken in words. It could not be more explicit. It agreed with Jade’s plan. That much was clear. It approved of Red Jade. It would go with her wherever it needed to go.

Through the strange bliss, the feeling of being connected to both the ruby and Jade, Nigel heard Joe’s voice. “Enoch, my friend. It might not be the best thing to leave it uncloaked that long.”

No, it wouldn’t be. With an effort, Nigel dragged himself away. He touched the ruby; his hand was still half enclosing Red Jade’s. The ruby flared once, and then the veil fell over it, muffling its brilliance and magic.

“I can’t stay,” Nigel said, his voice tight. “I must dress, and then we must leave.”

Joe looked puzzled. “But you’re not nearly well enough to go anywhere.”

“And yet I must go,” Nigel said. “As far away from you as I can.” He enumerated the ways in which he was a danger to this man who had probably saved his life.

Joe frowned. “I don’t like it. I have to admit that you are right, and, of course, the last thing I wish is to endanger Charlotte or Hettie.” He was holding his wife’s hand, on the table, as he spoke. “But all the same, I don’t see where you can go that you might heal and be up to the sort of epic journey Lady Jade has described.”

Lady Jade looked at Nigel, with an appraising glance. “We must go somewhere in China, where it’s open to foreigners, and where, through my connection to the Fox Clan, we can obtain the herbs that will disguise you.”