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There was another person with him, a man, judging by the height, but I couldn’t see him well. They were standing directly under a recessed light, which gilded Curly’s brim of golden curls and danced in his blue eyes, yet the shadows gathered around the other man so thickly that the light couldn’t penetrate. A mage, then, cloaking himself for some reason I didn’t understand. Surely everyone knew him here?
Curly, if that was who the other man was, certainly seemed to, and was vibrating with irritation. “You can’t just come in here and do things like this!” he snapped. “I know how they are, and how to handle them; you don’t!”
“It’s working so far.” The other man’s voice matched his appearance: low, with a deliberate rasp that hid its true inflection.
“Does that look like it’s working?” Curly demanded, pointing at Fairfax. The powerful tail was churning up the water, the humanoid torso was beating at the barrier with both hands, and the strange, alien eyes were staring, staring, staring—but not at any of us. But at . . .
The girl.
Because that was what was on the table, I realized: not a clump of browned, shriveled-up seaweed, as I’d first thought, but a child. A tiny thing, shorter than the table she lay on. And almost completely unlike the beautiful creature upstairs, who was suddenly animated, too.
I could see her dimly, through my twin’s eyes. As well as the scenes she was feeding us through the link. It was her child, and she was deathly afraid, her child, and they planned to—
I flinched, and almost lost my hold on the guard, pain searing through me as it did the female and Fairfax, the child’s father. They were punishing him for leading a revolt. For encouraging the others to refuse to play out the pantomimes set for them until their children were freed.
Instead, he was watching his own child wither in air breathable for his people, but in dryness that was toxic over time. The delicate membranes that made up their bodies could not afford to dry out. It would kill her; it was killing her.
“You’re too soft with them,” the ot
her man said, and looked at the older guard. “Show him what defiance costs.”
The man hurried to the wall and slammed his fist down on a button. A high-pitched sound resonated through the room, barely audible to the guard I was riding, but Fairfax screamed, an almost human sound. And writhed in apparent agony on the other side of the ward.
“I said cut it out!” Curly snapped, and knocked the guard’s hand away. “You don’t take orders from him!”
The guard just stood there, looking nonplussed.
“What are you two doing in here, anyway?” Curly demanded.
“Uh, there’s a problem with the show.”
The older guard clicked his fingers at the younger one, who walked over and handed a tablet to Curly. It showed the security feed of my twin, along with the entire cast. Every one of whom was now clustered on her side of the stage, the murmuring audience forgotten. I watched the scene through the guard’s eyes, and then through my twin’s, who was staring into the desperate, pleading face of the mother.
She couldn’t understand her, I realized. There was a connection, but she didn’t know what to do with it. She knew the creatures wanted something, could feel it like a palpable thing, but she didn’t speak their language.
She didn’t realize; she didn’t need to.
I sent the mother images: the room with the watery window, Fairfax thrashing frantically against the glass, the girl on the table, shrunken and brown. And then emotions, which are the same in any language: despair, need, hope, question?
The mother didn’t nod; that gesture didn’t exist in her culture. But her hands were suddenly scrambling against the barrier, clawing at it as if she were trying to break through.
Images flashed across my mind. Girl, she showed me. Water, she showed me. Swim.
I tamped down my frustration. Yes, we needed to get her to water, but how?
“What the hell? What’s she doing?” Curly asked, staring at the tablet.
The older guard shrugged. “You know vampires. They’re all crazy—”
“Give it to me,” the taller man said, coming closer. I still couldn’t see him well, but there was something familiar about the voice. Something not from my mind, but from my twin’s. Something I couldn’t place, because he was yelling. “The Basarab girl! You fool!”
I quickly sent the creature an image of the ward over the tank, strong and thick. It hadn’t so much as wavered under Fairfax’s relentless attack, and the avatar I was riding was human. Even assuming he was a mage, and that I could force an assault, he didn’t have the power to break through. Wards like that were made to withstand a prolonged siege by numerous mages, and I could ride but one at a time.
How? I showed her an image of the wall breaking, over and over. How, how, how?
I felt the question fly through the link, saw the female’s excitement when she finally understood, heard the answer forming in her mind—
The tablet hit Curly on his bald head, sending him staggering back. The older guard just stood there, looking back and forth between the two men, obviously not sure what to do. And then not having to worry about it when the taller man grabbed him. “Kill her!”
