Five Odd Honors Read online

  “And Tigers,” said Brenda, who had learned a bit in the almost three months since her world had turned so inside out and upside down that she took having conversations in dreams with ghosts of men who had died more than a hundred years before somewhat for granted, “are the best solo fighters of all the twelve signs, although Horses are the finest battle commanders.”

  “Precisely,” Loyal Wind said, obviously mollified regarding her earlier impertinence by this recognition of his prowess. “I discussed what I had learned with Nine Ducks. We resolved that I would come and tell the living of this turn of events, while she would seek out and warn the others among the dead.”

  “And my job,” Brenda said, “will be to pass on your news to the others. I wonder what time it is?”

  As if in answer, an explosion of raucous rock-and-roll shattered the dream into fragments. Loyal Wind and the stable didn’t so much vanish as never had been. Brenda sat bolt upright in bed.

  “Good timing,” she muttered, untangling herself from the sheets and padding barefoot across the room to where the alarm clock was positioned on the farthest edge of the small desk beneath the window.

  No more stream bank. No more barn. No more handsome green-eyed squire. No more Chinese ghost. Just the comfortable bedroom in San Jose that was increasingly coming to feel like her own.

  Slamming her hand onto the alarm clock’s “off” button, Brenda thought again about that letter she’d wanted to write Shannon. So much had happened since they’d parted at USC that May, promising to stay in touch.

  It’s late July now, Brenda thought, going into the bathroom. She moved a pink plastic pony with a silky nylon mane and tail to the back of the toilet so she could reach her toothbrush. No. August.

  I accept sharing a bathroom with a two-and-a-half-year-old and her mom, whereas at home I’d have my own bathroom, and even in the dorm I only had to share with one other person.

  Brenda stripped out of the oversize tee shirt she wore instead of a nightie and adjusted the shower water. There was no noise from the door that led into the other bedroom, but then there wouldn’t be. Nissa Nita and her daughter, Lani, would have risen around six A.M. Most of the household consisted of early risers, but Brenda (and Deborah, who had a room upstairs) had negotiated to be permitted to sleep until at least eight.

  Brenda felt the slight shift in water pressure that told her that Deborah had just turned on a shower upstairs. She hurried to get her long, brown-black hair rinsed. Pearl had put in all new plumbing just the year before, but that didn’t mean the hot water didn’t run out—not in a household consisting of four adult women, three adult men, and one child.

  Pearl’s carrying us all, Brenda thought as she turned off the water. She considered her “famous boss” as she toweled off.

  Pearl Bright had been a child actress, a contemporary and sometime costar of Shirley Temple. Now silver-haired, her petite form in excellent condition, her face carrying age lines with dignity, Pearl bore little resemblance to the child who sang and danced her way through the old films that were rapidly becoming Lani’s favorites.

  However, Pearl Bright was far from a spent “has been.” Her mother had invested Pearl’s earnings well. These days, Pearl managed a modest financial empire and indulged in philanthropy, all the while maintaining very active connections to the entertainment world.

  Pearl has me, Riprap, and Nissa on her payroll as interns. I don’t know if she’s paying Des anything. I’m not sure about Deborah. How much longer can Pearl afford to keep employing us? How much longer can any of us continue to interrupt the lives we left behind? Classes will begin soon. I can register online, maybe make excuses for starting the semester late, but eventually I’m going to have to show up in the flesh.

  Brenda dressed that flesh in lightweight trousers of off-white natural cotton and a matching sleeveless top embroidered with dark purple irises. Bare feet would be fine for now, especially since Brenda didn’t think she’d be going much of anywhere for a while.

  Not with what I’ve got to tell them, but who should I tell?

  Brenda’s long hair, wet from the shower, couldn’t be taken care of as casually as the rest of her. Brenda toweled her hair mostly dry, combed out the tangles, then worked a quick, loose braid, tying off the end with a ribbon that matched the irises on her shirt.

  All the while, Brenda rehearsed the details of Loyal Wind’s message, making sure she hadn’t forgotten anything, dreading the reaction to what she must report.

  Dreading one reaction more than the rest.

  The kitchen clock was showing eight-thirty when Brenda came downstairs. “Kitchen” was almost a misnomer, for the long room at the back of the house combined kitchen, informal dining area, and family room. This interconnected area was one of the most frequented in the house. Brenda was not disappointed in her expectation that she would find most of her house mates there.

  Strawberry blond Nissa Nita, pretty and round-figured—maybe even a bit plump—sat at one end of the table, counting round loops of oat cereal into her daughter’s mouth.

  Lani—fair as her mother and sharing the same startling shade of turquoise in her eyes, but too full of energy to be any rounder than a healthy two-and-a-half-year-old should be—was going along with the game, but Brenda knew Lani well enough to know that the little girl’s cooperation wouldn’t last much longer. Sometimes it seemed to Brenda that Lani survived on air and sunlight rather than normal caloric intake.

  Down the table a few seats, the newspaper’s baseball statistics folded neatly in front of him, sat a member of the household whom no one would ever imagine subsisted on sunlight.

  Charles Adolphus—never called anything but Riprap—was a big black man who, before the affairs of the Thirteen Orphans had drawn him from his life in Denver, Colorado, had worked as a bouncer nights and a coach by day. Somewhere in there he must have slept, but Brenda wasn’t sure when. He certainly didn’t seem to sleep much now.

  Riprap was working his way through a large bowl of granola topped with milk and fresh peaches, but Brenda would have bet large sums of money that this was at least the man’s second meal of the day. He’d probably been up for hours, gone for a run, then lifted weights in the makeshift weight room he’d put together in the basement.

  Brenda moved into the kitchen proper and found Desperate Lee stirring something in a pot set over a very low gas flame. Des was somewhere in his late thirties, making him older than Nissa, who was only a few years older than Brenda herself, or Riprap, who was in his late twenties.

  Even in a household of rather unusual people, Des stood out. Taller than average and so lean that he seemed even taller, Des was ethnically Chinese, although a native Californian—as had been his parents before him. Des wore his black hair in a style popular at the time of the California gold rush: forehead shaven, dark hair trailing in a tightly braided queue that fell to the middle of his back. His long mustache and wispy chin-beard were a match for the hairstyle.

  Des looked up as Brenda came into the kitchen and smiled warmly, showing off cheekbones a supermodel would envy. He was dressed in a bathrobe of dark red brocade so ornate it could have easily passed as street wear.

  “Morning, Brenda. I’ve just about finished a batch of congee. Would you like a bowl?”

  Brenda had been thinking about breakfasting on bacon, eggs, and toast, chasing it all with strong coffee. One of the few good things about her own lean build was that she could eat anything and never show it—but she’d rather come to like congee for breakfast, especially when it was fresh. The thick rice porridge wasn’t too unlike grits. For Brenda, who had been raised in South Carolina, something warm and mushy for breakfast qualified as comfort food.

  “Sure, Des. Thanks. Is that green tea in the pot?”

  “Just finished brewing,” Des assured her with a purist’s fervor.

  “I’ll pour,” Brenda said, and did so. Black coffee’s bitterness didn’t go well with the pickled vegetables she knew Des would serve wi
th the congee.

  “Where’s Pearl?”

  “In her office with Shen,” Des said. “She was up early this morning. They both were.”

  Brenda heard a faint note of reproof in Des’s voice, and swallowed a sigh. Pearl and Shen were both in their seventies, and Brenda guessed that if anyone should have needed to sleep in it was the old folks. Still, she’d noticed both Pearl and Shen seemed to need less sleep than she did—or at least not as much all at once.

  Brenda suspected that Des’s reproof had nothing to do with Brenda’s sleeping in. Although the events of five days ago had bought them some time, they all were aware that the fate of the Thirteen Orphans was far from resolved.

  “I’m going to need to talk to Pearl,” Brenda said. “Or maybe she’s the last person I should talk to. I’m not sure.”

  Nissa spoke from the other room. “Breni, what do you mean? I know you haven’t had your coffee, but must you speak in riddles?”

  Brenda took her bowl and teacup to the table, and plunked unceremoniously into a chair across from Riprap. He’d pushed the baseball stats to one side, but continued eating without pause, his velvet brown eyes inquisitive and alert.

  Lowering her voice, Brenda said, “What I’ve got to talk about has to do with Pearl’s father, Thundering Heaven. Ever since I woke up, I’ve been trying to decide whether Pearl needs to know—at least right off. You know how she is about her dad.”

  Nods from everyone but Lani. The little girl had eaten her fill of cereal and was now sprawled on the family room carpet playing with some mismatched toys. Lani alone was oblivious to the tension Brenda’s words had raised.

  “Thundering Heaven?” Des repeated. He’d carried his own bowl to the table, and now sat stirring pickled eggplant into the thick rice gruel. “How could you learn anything to do with Thundering Heaven?”

  Concisely, Brenda told them about her dream—leaving out the bit about the squire with the green eyes. Her fantasies, she felt, were a private matter. Just as she had not bothered to disbelieve Loyal Wind showing up in her dream, so no one here wasted energy telling Brenda, “Don’t worry. It was only a dream.”

  They’d profited from her dreams before this.

  Moreover, those seated around this table had walked through the jaws of the White Tiger of the West, had trod the grass of worlds that could not exist. Each had long ago surrendered the right to dissuade themselves that there was only one way of judging reality.

  “Thundering Heaven,” Nissa said when Brenda finished. “I can see why you wondered if you should say anything to Pearl. That fine lady does have some serious problems about her daddy.”

  Riprap nodded. “And for good reason. Thundering Heaven treated Pearl pretty badly when her only crime was being born a woman.”

  “A female Tiger,” Des corrected with pedantic firmness. “In the system within which Thundering Heaven had been educated, he hadn’t just fathered a daughter, he’d fathered an abomination. Pearl was born late in her father’s life. From what my grandmother told me, Thundering Heaven wondered if having a daughter thrust upon him as his heir was his punishment for not attending more promptly to his duties to assure the line of the Tiger.”

  “Why Thundering Heaven felt as he did doesn’t change anything,” Nissa said. “What matters is what Brenda just told us. Loyal Wind says that Thundering Heaven is working against us. If Thundering Heaven keeps the Monkey from us, we have little hope of opening the final gate into the Lands.”

  Brenda nodded. Her teacup was empty, and when she rose to refill it, she added another glop of congee to her bowl.

  “So what do we do?” she asked. “Do we tell Pearl, or do we see what we can learn on our own?”

  “Tell Pearl,” Riprap replied instantly. “Then stand back and watch the fur fly.”

  Des nodded. “I agree. I’ve known Pearl since I was a boy. She has never liked being treated as anything less than the Tiger she is. Who are we to protect her from something she is going to need to learn eventually?”

  “But does she?” Nissa said. Although a strict and fair parent to Lani, Nissa was far less inclined to confrontation than the rest of them. “Perhaps we can deal with this situation without Pearl having to learn what Thundering Heaven has done.”

  “Nice idea,” Riprap said, “but you know as well as the rest of us what price Thundering Heaven is going to insist on if we want access to his prisoner.”

  Brenda dropped her spoon into her bowl, the congee suddenly heavy in her gut. She knew she’d suspected this from the moment Loyal Wind had told her his message, knew she’d suspected, but hadn’t wanted to admit it to herself.

  “He’s going to insist that Pearl renounce the Tiger.”

  The remaining tea in the pot had grown cold, so Pearl and Shen headed toward the hum of conversation in the kitchen. Brenda Morris was speaking, but Pearl, thinking over what she and Shen had been discussing, did not really register anything until the word “tiger” caught her attention.

  “Was someone talking about me,” she said merrily as she entered the kitchen, “or was some other Tiger under discussion?”

  It was an open secret in the household that Brenda had a bad crush on Flying Claw, the Tiger who had come from the Lands Born from Smoke and Sacrifice. What was less certain was whether the young man returned Brenda’s feelings or was as indifferent as he sometimes seemed.

  Pearl’s entering line did not meet with the response she had expected. Instead of smirks and perhaps a blush tinting the warm ivory of Brenda’s cheek with rose, on the faces of the four seated around the long table she read guilty embarrassment.

  “So you were talking about me,” Pearl said. “Would you mind . . .”

  The steady rhythm of solid footsteps on the stair interrupted Pearl. Deborah Van Bergenstein called out, “Don’t start without me!”

  So Pearl held her question, eager as she was to learn what had made the others look so uncomfortable. She turned to Shen.

  “We came in here for tea. Shall I put water on?”

  Shen Kung was the closest in age of those present to Pearl herself. Like her, he was well past seventy. They had been occasional playmates in childhood, friends thereafter. In the weeks since his arrival from New York City, Shen had been more physically active than he had been for years. Pearl liked to think that, overall, the effect of his more active life had been beneficial.

  Although Shen’s hair was more white than brown, and nothing would ever remove the seams and lines that years of close work as a calligrapher and gem cutter had put on his face, his eyes were more lively, his laughter came more easily. He was even moving with more vigor, doubtless because he was getting more exercise.

  “Let me put on the tea water,” Shen said. “The doctor said you shouldn’t be using that hand.”

  He gestured to where Pearl’s right hand hung encased in a cast slung against her chest.

  “I can fill a teapot with one hand,” Pearl protested.

  Shen gently pushed her to one side. “You use the right hand as a brace. I’ve been watching.”

  Pearl let Shen take over. Her broken hand was healing—well, at least it no longer throbbed—and she didn’t want her frustration with the restrictions that came with it to set back the process.

  Deborah entered at that moment.

  Solidly built, of average height, Deborah was somewhere in her late sixties. Her hair was cut short, and showed about equal parts brown and grey. Once she knew you, her smile could be warm and grandmotherly, but beneath that affable exterior was a very strong personality. As Deborah herself liked to say, no matter how domestic Pigs might be, boar spears had been invented because pigs had another side.

  Deborah brought with her a bustle of good mornings and queries after how everyone had slept. As Deborah took her own seat at the long table, Pearl could feel the atmosphere in the room calm.

  The kettle was beginning to rumble its way to a boil when Pearl turned to Brenda.

  “Is there something you need to
tell me?”

  Brenda met Pearl’s gaze. In the younger woman, Pearl saw a little of herself at that age. Brenda was taller, but both of them were small-figured rather than voluptuous. Pearl’s mother had been Hungarian, while Brenda’s was mostly Irish, but in both the ivory skin and a certain almond shape to the eyes made the contribution from the Far East undeniable.

  Brenda drew in a deep breath. “I had a dream right before I woke up. Loyal Wind asked me to relay a message. Thundering Heaven—the ghost of your father—has decided to take a part in matters, and I don’t think he means us well.”

  Without her years of training as an actress, Pearl wasn’t certain she could have managed the controlled and encouraging nod she gave the younger woman. Certainly, from the reactions of everyone else in the room, they had expected a much more unpleasant response.

  “Go on,” Pearl said. “What has that old Tiger done?”

  Brenda gave her report, ending with, “I’m sorry I don’t know more, but my alarm clock went off right then. Still, I don’t think Loyal Wind had much more to add.”

  Des leaned forward. “Did Loyal Wind indicate what he planned to do after you spoke?”

  Brenda shook her head. “No, but I did get the impression that he’d decided that going after Thundering Heaven by himself would be a bad idea.”

  Riprap had risen to pour himself a tumbler of milk. He called from the kitchen.

  “Can ghosts kill ghosts? I mean, they’re both dead already.”

  Shen, who in his education as the Dragon had studied many esoteric matters, replied, “That’s a good point. I think the answer is both yes and no. Yes, they could fight to the equivalent of death, but that death would not be permanent. However, it might take a great deal of time for the defeated ghost to re-form. Loyal Wind is wise to take care.”

  Pearl nodded. “We need Loyal Wind far more than we need Thundering Heaven. We have our Tiger.”

  Her words were a challenge, and she knew it. No one had brought up why Thundering Heaven would have involved himself in their plans, because everyone knew—or suspected they knew.