“Do not fret,” I told him cheerfully. “I did not expect two, but I have them controlled.” Voices in the other room were calling for calm. “Where is Lord Wellington?” Had he caught anyone at the doors? The wyves dosed with venom were unimportant. We needed to catch their abductor.
Yuánchi’s voice filled my mind.Are you safe?
Stay away!In the delight of battle, I threw the thought as a command. It bounced off his distant strength like scrunched-up notepaper bouncing off a stone rampart, but I felt his astonished surprise.
“We restrained a crazed wyfe in the Egypt room,” Darcy said. “A draca burned some drapes. Is there another affected wyfe?” He squinted at me. “Are youenjoyingthis?”
“Two wyves were dosed with venom,” I said gleefully. “This one is strongest…” I turned, but the wyfe who hurt my hand was gone. “Miss Rees escaped! Oh, there.” I pointed to her, behind the downed ropes around the pedestal for Gramr.
“She has the dagger,” Darcy said.
Miss Rees had lifted the ten-inch curved blade vertically between her eyes. She turned it slowly as if admiring the dark gleam. She would have made aconvincingly mad Lady Macbeth. People backed swiftly, leaving Darcy and me nearest.
She saw us and moved her left wrist near the blade. A threat.
“I thought you had her controlled,” Darcy hissed.
“I meant I isolated her from draca.”
But I could do more. I called the wyverns. My excitement had cooled enough that I made it a request, not a command, but of course they came. As the crowd pressed to the walls, the wyverns emerged, flanking Miss Rees and settling in taut crouches, each seven or eight yards away. Close enough.
The exhibit room stilled to frightened whispers. Traces of smoke drifted, laced with the stink of burned wool.
Lord Wellington stepped smartly to my other side.
“This is Miss Rees,” I said to him, loud enough to include her. “She was abducted. She has been mistreated.”
Lord Wellington bowed, his gaze never leaving her. “Miss Rees. No one has been seriously injured. We are here to help. Would you assist us by placing that dagger on the floor?”
She tilted the dagger. Reflections rippled along the serrations. Precisely, she touched the blade to the fleshy base of her left thumb. Her motion was so measured that the well of blood seemed unconnected—a gory coincidence.
Mutters and gasps rose from the onlookers. Darcy and Lord Wellington shifted their stances, trading glances as they prepared to rush forward.
“It does not hurt,” Miss Rees said with the simple relief of a child. “See?” She held out her cut hand. Drops ran into her palm, trickles of dark red that pooled in her bone-white skin. She closed her fingers, wetting the tips, then rubbed them along the flat of the blade, smearing a crimson streak.
From a dozen points, the flat of the blade began to smoke. Miss Rees waved it as if frustrated, trailing thin, parallel streaks in the air, then held the flat horizontally in front of her face, eyes narrowed to see through the smoke.
In a well-trained, musical voice, she sang words of strange syllables in a peculiar melody.
My gut smashed into a knot like an icy hand had grasped my insides. The room vanished. My vision turned black, but I was not unseeing—I was in another perspective, dark and ferociously cold.
“Darcy…” I said uncertainly. Blindly.
Swirling chill sucked the heat from my arms. My legs. Then Yuánchi’s presence erupted around me like a yellow sun. His voice bellowedNo!like thunder.
Again, my vision changed, but this was a relief. I had fallen into Yuánchi’s cradling presence. I shared his inhumanly exact vision. He had launched from the ground and was climbing past the treetops, branches tossing with each beat of his wings. An expanse of the Thames came into view. The frozen surface shone like mercury in the moonlight but was spotted with hot torches and celebrating people.
The cold and dark perspective returned, dragging at me, but was forced away by Yuánchi’s commanding thought—Stay with me.
London rooftops began to pass. Uneven wood shingles. Rough slate. Heated plumes from chimneys. The view swerved to follow a street. Stunned faces turned up as we passed.
They see you, I thought.
It does not matter.
“Elizabeth!” Darcy’s voice shouted. My human ears had been hearing crashing stone, yelling, and thumps.
“I cannot see,” I answered, trying to hold my voice steady.
