Mr. Digweed’s eyebrows rose. “Three guineas. That is a good guess.”
My alarm condensed to certainty. “We should not have brought the royal family here.”
“Wellington chose it,” Darcy objected. “No other path was safe.”
“Lord Wellington commands armies, but he is not a spymaster. Deception is key. When a single path is safe, you chooseanyother.” Dusty lessons skittered through my mind. “It is my fault, too. Mary and I took their reserve of captive wyves, but they had moved one wyfe. Their captives do not live long, so they must use her. It no longer matters that Lord Wellington’s precautions hid the royal family. Our enemy is forced to attack, so they will gamble.”
“Elizabeth,” Darcy said intently. “You are not speaking like yourself.”
I looked up at him, and the final realization whispered into place. “These are lessons learned by others. But if I can feel these memories…” I closed my eyes and threw my mind wide.
Yuánchi filled me first, a blaze of awareness a mile distant. He sensed mereaching, but I blocked his query, hiding his mind to search elsewhere like a night sentry shielding a torch to see beyond.
There. The oily black of a dosed wyfe, and from that, a tendril reaching south over the hills of Pemberley. And at the end of that tendril, a powerful, broken mind was reaching for me, but restrained by an iron grip.
“They are using the dagger,” I said. “Fènnù is coming. They will destroy Pemberley.”
I opened my eyes to three disbelieving stares, and the confidence that had carried me—the discipline to forgo emotion—drained like spilled water. My body was wretchedly ill, my head aching. Fear filled my heart. I had no idea what to do.
“We must move the royal family,” Darcy said. He watched me, waiting, then said, “Do you agree?” That seemed sensible, so I nodded. He rushed off with Mr. Digweed and Mrs. Reynolds, and they gave orders. Servants ran down hallways with instructions.
From the frenzy, Mary appeared, half dragging Georgiana, whose undressed hair hung loose to her waist.
Mary said, “Lizzy, we are to leave!”
“No!” Georgiana cried. “Pemberley is safe. It is always safe.” She had tears in her eyes.
“Not today,” Mary said. She took my hand and rushed both of us past the breakfast table and out a side entrance onto a garden path. A handful of the iridescent blue song draca were perched outside the door and window. They burst into the air, swirling over our heads.
The morning light burned. I narrowed my eyes and said, “Please go slow.” I had to feel for the path’s spaced flagstones through my slippers.
Yuánchi’s awareness was pressing at me, so while Mary led me, I reached for him.Yuánchi.
People flee your house.
I had forgotten he did not have the senses of a great wyfe.Fènnù is coming. She is commanded by our enemies. You must flee as well.
I will fight her.
No. You will lose.
I felt him rise into the air.I will not let her harm you. I will not let her take you.
You sound as foolish as a human. I will be dead within a day.Thattruth had been driven home while I fought through the night. The next surge of this illness would be the last.
There was no response, but that did not matter. I could not command him, but he would accept reality. Draca were not captive to emotion like people.
I thought,Can you see her?
In answer, his vision replaced mine. That was an unexpected relief as the aches in my eyes vanished. The sky, variegated in a hundred shades of blue and violet, spun as he searched, ferociously acrobatic. This made the twists when we rode him seem as tame as a child’s ride on a pony.
His voice filled me, quieter than usual.I do not see her. But she will be close before I do.There were hills and ravines and lumpy, low-hanging clouds. Ample cover for a hunter.
I could guide him to her. I knew her rough direction. But she would kill him. What if I lied, and sent him the wrong way? Morals aside, our mental communication was so intimate that I doubted I could deceive him.
But Fènnù, for all her danger, was not the true enemy. “Mary, stop!” I cried. “I must concentrate.” Holding Yuánchi’s vision, I spread my other senses as well.
There. That stir of oily black.
