the case, on what the senator’s secretary had to say, fairly well. But as soon as the interview was over, her attention splintered as needs nudged and shoved and yelled inside her. As she asked Nan to send in the next staffer—a young man with the interesting name of Kemo Maddon—one of those needs reared up and spoke clearly.
She wanted her mother.
How could she not smile at that thought? It was funny, it really was. Lily’s mother drove her crazy, but she wanted her, wanted to be home, back in San Diego, maybe back in her narrow childhood bed, with the covers drawn up and her mother fussing at her.
Sometimes being a grown-up sucked.
THE wolf skidded to a stop atop the rock and earth dam that arced around this side of Mika’s lair, his sides heaving. The air reeked of dragon. Beneath that smell were a thousand others—oak, rabbit, dirt, a hundred variations on green—the complex mix unique to this place at this time of the year. Added to that was a hint of approaching rain. And cat.
He hadn’t known he was coming here. He’d just run flat out and this is where he ended up. Good. Sometimes instinct worked better than all that thinking the man was so fond of.
He turned to face the gray and black wolf scrambling up the slope behind him, lifting his lip in a silent snarl. Deliberately he pawed the ground three times—back off and wait.
José took Rule’s signal literally. He stopped and began backing up.
Rule turned and picked his way down the rough slope more carefully than he’d shot up the other side. He didn’t see Mika, and the wind was blowing the wrong way for his nose to tell him if the dragon was here. If not, he would be soon. Rule had crossed the dragon’s wards. That was not allowed, not without an invitation. Mika would come, and quickly.
Good. Rule snarled at the empty, dragon-scented air. He would have answers.
He reached the level ground at the base of the slope. Stopped. Mika!
Rule put all the roil of intent and emotion he felt into that call. It wasn’t mindspeech, but the dragon would hear. Mika, I will speak with you!
From the sunken place beneath the dome that used to shelter symphonies, a head lifted over the earthen rampart. That head was about the size of Rule’s desk and resembled a seahorse’s as much as it did a lizard’s, with a narrow snout and domed skull and large eyes set on each side, eyes as brightly yellow as flame. Against the crimson scales an orange frill rippled along the dragon’s jaws like fire teased by wind.
You annoy me, little wolf. You trespass and you yell. You are not usually such a fool. I do not have to kill to punish.
Words came harder in this form—even harder when emotion had him in its jaws, shaking him like a terrier shakes a rat. Instead of words, Rule remembered as hard as he could—remembered Lily falling from her chair, then announcing that she hadn’t passed out; remembered Cullen speaking of roots sent out by the mantle, the Rhej saying that the mantle was harming Lily.
Peculiar, Mika said then. I cannot see any reason your Lady would wish to damage Lily. Can you? Oh, do calm down. You can’t attack me, and why should you? I am not the cause. Why are you here?
Rule shook with the storm of rage-fear-attack surging through him. This was not good. He couldn’t allow himself to be mastered by the storm in his gut. He dropped his jaw and breathed slowly, reaching for the place of icy clarity where thought and action merged, untroubled by the roil of emotion.
Certa was a battle state. But there was more than one sort of battle, wasn’t there? I would speak with Sam.
I will pass your information to him when next I report.
I would speak to Sam directly. It was possible. Sam had told him so. Sam could mindspeak through Mika or any of the others if they gave permission to be used in this way.
That is absurd. Such sending takes far too much power. It is only for emergencies or—
I will speak with Sam through you, or I will withdraw Leidolf from the alliance.
You can’t . . . you would? Sheer astonishment tinged that thought as Mika absorbed the truth of Rule’s intentions. Slowly he oozed up out of the pit beneath the dome to end up standing on all four feet, his head