If briefed was the right word. That communication hadn’t involved anything Rule recognized as words, thoughts, or images. Rule had damn near passed out. Mika had forgotten to separate that channel from the link the three of them were sharing, and wolf brains weren’t physically able to handle that form of communication.
Rule was glad he could heal quickly. He’d still had a headache for a while. “Sam says the mantle’s actions are affecting Lily’s Gift.”
“The roots?” Cullen said, sitting up straighter.
Rule wobbled his hand in a yes-and-no way. “We don’t know what the roots are doing. Maybe they’re healing her. Maybe they’re doing something else.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Sam declined to guess. Specifically, he said he does not ‘presume to guess what purpose an Old One holds, nor to meddle with that purpose.’ I gather that means he doesn’t know what the Lady is doing, but he agrees that she’s up to something.”
“Nothing that involves Lily’s death,” the Rhej said firmly. “The Lady does not want to lose that mantle.”
“I never heard that the mantle-holder’s brain had to be firing on all cylinders,” Lily said, “and Leidolf’s last Rho pretty much proved otherwise. So the fact that the Lady wants to keep me alive isn’t as reassuring as it might be.”
“Yes.” Rule’s voice was desert-dry, as bleached of emotion as a cow skull. The mantle would be fine as long as it was in a living host. It didn’t matter if the host’s brain was damaged. “So I concluded also.”
“Rule—”
“I’m all right. Let me finish this the way Sam told it. We knew the Lady had done something to allow the Wythe mantle to rest within Lily without Lily’s Gift absorbing it. Sam says the Lady persuaded Lily’s magic that the mantle is part of Lily. This should have kept the two magics from interacting. The problem arises from the healing, but also because of the nature of Lily’s Gift. Very young dragons can’t control their healing, so—”
Cullen’s eyebrows shot up. “Adult dragons control their healing?”
“Apparently. If a dragon who hasn’t yet learned this control is seriously injured, he’s subject to a condition called netha in which his natural immunity to magic is set askew by the large amount of power needed for healing. What Lily is experiencing is similar to netha.”
Lily shook her head. “My Gift seems to be working fine.”
“It wouldn’t affect the way your Gift works. Sam likened netha to an allergic reaction in which the body’s immune system becomes hypersensitive or confused and overreacts to some substance. Your Gift is overreacting to the healing.”
“You’re telling me it’s my own Gift that’s causing the TIAs.”
“Boiled down, yes.”
Lily scowled and drummed her fingers once on the table. “If Sam can figure all this out from over two thousand miles away, seems like your Lady should’ve been able to guess it could happen when she first stuck this mantle in me. Old One, vast amounts of knowledge—they go together, don’t they?”
Oh, yes. Yes, the Lady must have known. The wild rage surged up like a sandstorm, tattering thought, fraying his control—
“Rule.” Lily closed her hand firmly over his.
He took a slow breath. Looked down at the table, at her hand on his. I am not whole. “I would speak with my nadia privately.”
“Sure.” Cullen shoved his chair back.
“That,” Lily said, “was a very Rho way to handle it.”
He looked at her, puzzled.
She squeezed his hand. “You didn’t excuse us so we could go to another room. You just let everyone know what you wanted.”
He didn’t understand her point. “I was courteous.”
Her mouth tipped wryly. “Yes, you were. Never mind.” She looked at Cullen. “About those pizzas . . . is ten large enough, if we’re including the guards?”
Six guards plus the four of them in the room.... “Better make it a dozen.” Rule lifted up so he could retrieve his wallet.
“I’ve got it,” Cullen said.
It was for him to feed his people. “No.”
“Yes. I’ve got your card number.”
Of course he did. Rule nodded.
The Rhej had stood, too, and moved behind Lily, placing her hands on Lily’s shoulders. “I won’t tell you to have faith. Faith is for God, not the Lady. But she’s good people. She’ll do right by you.”
Lily looked uncomfortable. That was probably more because the Rhej had brought God into the conversation than because she didn’t agree with the Rhej. She took a swallow of coffee to hide her discomfort. “I’ll bear that in mind. So how do you feel about anchovies?”
“Nasty little . . .” The Rhej stopped. Stilled. “Do that again.”
“What?” Lily craned her head around to look up at the woman. “Talk about anchovies?”
“Take another swig of coffee. A nice big one.”
“Uh . . . okay.” Lily did just that.
For a long moment no one spoke or moved. Then the Rhej nodded slowly. “Honey, I think you’re going to like this prescription. I want you to drink lots of coffee.”
“I always thought coffee affected you.” Lily refilled her mug.
Rule was leaning against the counter, frowning into his own mug. “I’m still not sure about it.”
Lily smiled and shook her head. Stubborn man. “The Rhej can sense what happens when a lupus drinks coffee. If she says it affects you, that’s good enough for me.”
“It’s what she said about it affecting the mantle I have trouble with. Nothing affects the mantles.”
Rule had always maintained that he enjoyed coffee purely for the scent and flavor. Caffeine couldn’t affect him any more than any other drug. His healing eliminated the effects too quickly. Lily had suspected he was fooling himself.
Turned out she was right . . . if, that is, you believed the expert.
That shouldn’t be much of a stretch. There weren’t many things that affected lupi, but a few herbs did, like wolfbane. According to the Leidolf Rhej, coffee acted like both stimulant and sedative on lupi, heightening concentration while calming them. The mechanism was different than for humans. It was the scent—the vaporized brew—that did it. Drinking coffee increased the effect, but not because of what was swallowed. Vapors travel from the mouth up the sinuses to scent receptors in the nasal passages, so drinking it increased exposure to the vapors.
For lupi, it was all about the smell.
The Rhej believed coffee acted on the mantle itself because the effects were strongest in mantle-holders. She couldn’t be sure. She sensed the physical, and the mantle was all power, no substance, so she couldn’t monitor what happened directly. But she was sure of the effect.
She was also sure of what coffee did for Lily. She’d sensed that clearly when she was touching Lily while she sipped from her mug. Whether because it affected the Wythe mantle or for some other reason, coffee did good things for the blood supply to Lily’s brain. Things that made a TIA less likely.
“The Rhej treated Victor with coffee,” Lily said. “It made him calmer, she said.”
“I am not Victor Frey.”
“Thank God.” The man who’d been Rho of Leidolf before Rule had been vicious and unprincipled . . . and that was before he went batwing nuts. Lily took a thoughtful swallow of coffee.
Had she been craving the stuff more than usual? Maybe. Probably, she admitted as she counted up the cups she’d drunk today. The Rhej had asked her that. She thought Lily had been unconsciously reaching for something that helped.