Thirteen Orphans

by Jane Lindskold

  Brenda looked up from writing and saw that Pearl was staring at the Tiger’s mah-jong set, which sat in its box on the corner of her desk. A fleeting expression that Brenda couldn’t quite follow went across those elegant features.

  “We can only speculate. There is one person in this house who knows for certain why we are being attacked, and he is not able to tell us.”

  “Foster,” Nissa said softly.

  “So,” Brenda said, “we have a reason to want Foster to get his memory back. He can end speculation for us, give us the information we need to plan our own attack.”

  “Yes,” Pearl said, “but Des and I have been unable to break the dragon’s crystal, and until we figure out how to do so, we must manage as we can.”

  “Or,” Riprap said, his voice hard, but the expression in his dark eyes full of worry, “risk breaking the crystal, and hope that the damage to Foster is not so great that he will be unable to tell us what we need.”

  20

  The man’s gestures said it all. I’ve got the door open. Come in, but be quick and, for god’s sake, be quiet!

  The entry foyer was mostly dark, lit indirectly by two lights. The first was a small one in the kitchen that sent just enough of a glow down the passage to make it possible for someone to navigate. The second was the diffuse and scattered offering from a streetlight near the curb outside. When the exterior door was shut, this second light source was almost eliminated, darkening some shadows, melding others into the general gloom.

  With such poor lighting, it was very hard to make out the two who had just entered the locked and warded house. The first, the man who had opened the door, moved with the confidence of familiarity. The second was slender. Something in the grace of its movements hinted at exquisite femininity.

  The watcher, sleepy, nearly unconscious, felt a trace of embarrassment. Perhaps one of the men had brought someone home to warm his bed. The matter hadn’t been expressly forbidden, but the watcher doubted Pearl would approve.

  The watcher stirred and felt uneasy, tossed and kicked off the cotton sheet that covered her, all without quite waking.

  There was something very familiar about the man who was now leading the way up the flight of stairs that connected the ground floor to the second. Something in his very familiarity made the watcher uncomfortable: made her simultaneously angry, desirous of hiding her head under her pillow, and refusing to look any more.

  At the same time, she realized this was all a dream, probably something a Freudian psychologist would have a great time with. The thought made her realize there was something very strange about this dream. It was just a little too much like being awake.

  The pair who had entered so stealthily were now halfway up the staircase. They were moving with care, but with confidence as well. The watcher—Brenda shook herself, but the dream seemed to have a very tight hold on her—wondered at that confidence. In this strange household, night did not guarantee that no one would be up and about.

  Lani slept with the restless unpredictability of the very young, and Pearl had the sleepless nights that plagued the increasingly aged. Riprap’s tendency to decide he needed a snack at the strangest hours was becoming a running joke, and Des often came downstairs to conduct business via phone at peculiar times. He had friends and clients throughout the Orient. Sometimes the best time for a call was when saner folks were sleeping.

  Why then were those two moving with such certainty? Yes, they were keeping fairly quiet, but neither had so much as cast a glance down the hallway or back over a shoulder. It was as if they knew the household’s occupants were asleep, and that if they took care, the sleepers would continue to sleep.

  Brenda watched. The somehow familiar man and the strange woman—girl—had reached the landing on the second floor. Again, they did not waste time looking around. Hardly a flicker of a glance was spared for the closed doors of the three bedrooms. The door to the room the household used as a classroom stood ajar, but the dark line at its opening gave testimony that none of the three apprentice scholars of the arcane were indulging in a little late night work.

  Light from the large fan window at the far end of the landing fell clearly on the man’s face as he continued forward. Brenda felt her earlier impression confirmed. The features were more familiar to her than her own: Gaheris Morris, her dad, supersalesman, husband of Keely, father of Dylan and Thomas, formerly the Rat, and now …

  What was he doing leading that strange woman, still little more than a figure in the darkness, toward the closed door that led to the stairway to the third floor where the three male tenants had their rooms? Brenda strove for a clearer look at her father’s features, saw them intent, but curiously vague. Was that merely an effect of attempting to navigate in near darkness or something else?

  The woman who followed Gaheris was adept at keeping to shadows. She seemed to do it by instinct, rather than with conscious purpose. Brenda sought to see more of this strange invader, her father’s shadow, caught only glints of green and silver, of a shining darkness that was long hair caught up in a series of bands, of a long-fingered hand holding what seemed to be a long knife, or perhaps a short sword.

  That last caught the light for a moment, the edge so brilliantly honed that it seemed to slice the light and once again hide the weapon in shadow.

  Terror, pure and absolute, as clean and horrid as an icicle touched Brenda when she saw that blade clearly. It was not crafted of metal, but of something organic, a fang, long and curving. Brenda had been born heir to the Rat, and she knew a Rat’s instinctual horror when confronted with the hunting reptile. There was venom in that curving blade, venom and death.

  Brenda sat bolt upright in bed, sheets tangled around her feet, her pillow still in motion where she had thrown it from her, a useless missile against an imaginary enemy.

  God, she thought, swinging her feet to the floor and feeling reality seep back at the touch of the rag rug set as a barrier against the coolness of the boards. That was one hell of a nightmare. Dad and some woman, a woman with a knife, sneaking into the house. I’ve spent too much time these last couple of days concentrating on enemies we can’t put name or face to. No wonder I’m getting nightmares.

  She rose and stretched, reaching deliberately for the ceiling with her outspread fingers, taking deep breaths and trying to calm herself. Tonight’s meeting had gotten sort of heated at the end, with Riprap offering himself as sacrificial Dog if that would just end the waiting.

  They’d talked him down after a bit, and he’d apologized, but it had been tense. Who’d have thought the argument would give her such nightmares? Even now the sensation of dread was so intense that Brenda could imagine the pair in the hallway. Dad’s hand would be turning the knob to the third-floor stairway, pulling the door back, making certain the hinges didn’t squeak.

  Brenda’s imaginings were so acute that she thought she heard the characteristic squeak that door always made. Riprap had already oiled the hinges twice, but the squeak kept coming back.

  Brenda let her arms drop, wrapped them around herself, shivering despite the relative warmth of the summer night. No one was out there. If she’d heard the door squeak, then it was just Riprap coming down for one of his interminable snacks. He was going to get fat if he wasn’t careful.

  She’d open the door, banish the nightmare. If Riprap was going down to the kitchen, maybe she’d join him. She didn’t want anything to eat, but there was chamomile tea in the cabinet. She could make a cup. Maybe she’d even tell Riprap the dream. He was a really good listener.

  Brenda glanced down at her nightwear, an old T-shirt worn to perfect softness and a pair of old shorts. Not sexy, but perfectly respectable. The weather was too warm to need slippers, and if her hair was a mess—as she was certain it was—Riprap had probably seen worse when he was doing nursemaid duty with her and Nissa.

  Anticipating the comfort of a bit of friendly conversation, Brenda opened the door of her room and stepped out into the corridor, directly i
nto her nightmare.

  Gaheris Morris stood at the foot of the stairs leading up to the third floor, obviously about to begin the ascent. A dark shadow next to him resolved into a young woman Brenda’s own age or maybe a little older. She was obviously Chinese, exquisitely beautiful, clad in one of those long, close-fitting, cap-sleeved gowns that Chinese beauties always wore in old movies. This gown was the color of pale green jade and worked with sinuous figures in gold and silver embroidery. Even in the faint light Brenda could tell the embroideries were of snakes.

  “You should not have wakened,” the young woman hissed.

  The language she spoke was not English, but the variant of Chinese they had learned in order to communicate with Foster.

  Brenda felt both annoyed and a strange sense that she’d heard something very like this another time. However, this was not the time to search after memories. The young woman was moving toward her with amazing swiftness, especially considering how tight her dress was. That remarkable dagger was raised, and Brenda did not doubt that this slim, exquisite woman was quite prepared to use it.

  Brenda did the only sensible thing she could. She screamed. Not an inarticulate scream of terror, but a yell, a holler, a sound meant to raise the roof and bring the troops.

  “Pearl! Nissa! Riprap! Des! Anybody!”

  No one stirred, not even Nissa, who usually slept lightly because of Lani.

  “I took care of that,” the woman hissed. “I only wonder why you failed to remain asleep.”

  Brenda didn’t feel like telling this woman about her dreams, her nightmares. She stole a glance over at her dad, but Gaheris Morris stood much as before, turned toward the stairway as if about to mount the stairs. His expression was not so much vacant as abstracted, as if he was caught in the middle of a thought.

  “Do not look to him for help,” the woman said. “He thinks he is somewhere in a memory, a memory of a time when he stayed in this house as a guest, and was not above sneaking outside at night, when he thought his hostess would not notice. A few times he brought back a ‘guest.’ Do you like knowing such things about your father, knowing that he has been less than trustworthy?”

  Brenda didn’t, but she wasn’t about to give this woman the satisfaction of knowing. Besides, she hadn’t forgotten that strange dagger, and how close it was to the bare skin of her arm.

  Almost bare. She’d forgotten. She still wore one of the first tile bracelets she’d made, one that held the Dragon’s Tail. Des had insisted that his students get used to wearing at least one of the bracelets at all times. At first the bracelet had felt clunky and awkward, but after several weeks Brenda would have felt naked without it.

  Dragon’s Tail. Protection. Protection enough against that poised and poisoned viper’s fang?

  “Now,” the woman hissed—a mannerism that was really beginning to bother Brenda, not because it was affected, but because like everything else about the woman it was so polished, so sexy. “I want you to tell me where you have imprisoned the Tiger. Not the old woman. The young man. We lost him when he went hunting the old woman. We have seen him coming from this house and returning here. Tell me or else I shall bite you with this!”

  She feinted with the curved dagger. Brenda flinched back, swinging her arms behind her as she did so. She caught at the edge of the bracelet with two fingers, pulling it over her hand, talking all the while as she did so. The sound of her voice covered the slight clatter as the tiles hit against each other.

  “The young Tiger? You mean Foster?” Brenda dropped her hands in front of her, concealing the bracelet in the curve of one palm. “I mean, he looks like you, sort of. Pearl brought him back with her from Virginia.”

  “Don’t play the fool with me!” The melodramatic words seemed quite fitting coming in that sensuous hiss. “Your father is the Rat. You dwell beneath the Tiger’s roof and have been taught by the Rooster. The Dog and the Rabbit are your companions. You cannot be so ignorant.”

  “How did you get through Pearl’s wards?” Brenda asked.

  “Your father invited me. The house is not warded against him. Now, where is the young Tiger, this one you call Foster?”

  “Upstairs,” Brenda said. “His room is right next to Des’s—the Rooster’s. And he isn’t a prisoner. Not really.”

  For the first time, the woman in the jade-green gown looked unsettled. “He must be, else he would return to us—to me!”

  Her inflection on those last two words was possessive, intimate. Brenda’s heart gave a strange twist of pain.

  The young woman’s smile was cruel. “This one you call Foster is my beloved. I have come to him. Now I will set him free.”

  Brenda’s pain made her own words harsh. “He doesn’t even remember you exist. Pearl stole his memory with his own spell. Even if you were to take him away, he’d still be hers.”

  “That explains much. Did our Tiger have his memory, nothing could have kept him from my side. Still, his body in our possession is better than leaving him to you. I will have him!”

  She said the word “body” with such a caressing inflection that Brenda saw red. She smashed the Dragon’s Tail bracelet against the floor and felt the spell rising around her.

  “Not if I have anything to do with it,” she said, and lunged toward the other woman, grabbing for the wrist that held the knife, seeking to twist, to break the other’s hold.

  Des kept reminding them that the Dragon’s Tail was a relatively minor protection, that it worked best against someone hitting out at you, whether with a hand or a weapon. It worked less well against missiles, because those might have the momentum to push through the barrier. It worked least well against those things that were diffuse: fire, liquids, and the like.

  So Brenda was pleased but not entirely surprised when the other woman struck out at her with her free hand and something translucent and scaled stopped the blow about six inches out from Brenda’s head. She was less pleased to find that the same barrier made it hard for her to grasp at the other woman’s wrist. She did, however, succeed in knocking the woman’s hand back, and the blade with it.

  “Little magics,” the other woman sneered. “I learned such in the cradle.”

  She began muttering what Brenda thought might be a banishment. That wouldn’t do. Brenda punched forward, aiming for the other woman’s mouth. The Dragon’s Tail cushioned her hand, rather as a boxing glove would have done. It stopped some of the force of the blow as well, but enough went through that the muttering stopped.

  Brenda was beginning to like this. She’d never been a brawler, but there had been a time or two when one of her rivals in high-school politics had escalated their disagreements beyond intellectual debate. Brenda remembered a few of the tricks and reached for the other woman’s long, silver-banded braid. The Dragon’s Tail made her grip clumsy, but she managed a tug that sent her opponent off balance. The intruder stumbled backward, out of Brenda’s immediate reach, cursing at the sudden pain.

  But Brenda could feel that her luck wouldn’t last. There was something deadly and dangerous about this woman, and although the Dragon’s Tail had given Brenda a momentary edge, her true advantage had been that of surprise, and surprise was now gone.

  “Bitch!” the other hissed, and sheathed her momentarily useless dagger, drawing out in the same motion a slip of red paper on which characters had been drawn with brushstrokes that Brenda—a novice at the same art—recognized as the work of a true artist.

  Artistic appreciation or not, Brenda wasn’t waiting around to see what that slip of paper could do to her, or to her surroundings. Des had warned them that the Dragon’s Tail could not protect them from a fall or from a rain of fire or from a magical attack. Brenda could feel that the Dragon’s Tail wasn’t as firmly wrapped as it had been, and didn’t think it was going to hold much longer.

  There were other bracelets in her room, right on top of her dresser, so Brenda broke and ran, darting back into that darkened haven. As she did so, she was all too aware that Gaher
is Morris still stood where he had all this time, waiting to ascend a quiet stairway.

  The other woman—the Snake, as she must be—threw the red slip of paper. It struck the doorway and Brenda smelled the acrid scent of acid, even as she heard it sizzle against the paint. Brenda fumbled in the semidarkness for the shallow box in which she kept her bracelets, cursed herself for an idiot, and spared a moment to turn on the reading lamp.

  Light made finding the box easy, but more importantly, it made it possible for Brenda to read the English letters penciled lightly on the back of the tiles, identifying the spells. Des had suggested the crib, saying that since none of his students read Chinese, and so many of the same characters were combined and recombined for each spell, it was a good idea.

  “After all,” he’d said, “what use will they be if you need them in a hurry? You can’t go looking them up.”

  Brenda blessed her tutor’s forethought, and kicked herself for not seeing that this—just like the wards around the house, and a dozen other small precautions—had been a warning and a reminder that those they were up against were truly dangerous.

  First to hand was another Dragon’s Tail—not surprising, since Des had insisted that they get this protective spell down cold. Brenda cracked it against the floor, felt a second tail coil around the first, sustaining and enhancing. Then she dug after a Dragon’s Breath. The Snake had tried to throw acid on her. Maybe she’d like a touch of dragon’s fire in return!

  Brenda heard the Snake coming through the bedroom door and wheeled, smashing the Dragon’s Fire bracelet onto the floor and holding out her right hand, palm raised as Des had made them practice. In practice, the gesture had felt rather silly, like something out of one of those chop-socky flicks her folks loved, but now it felt entirely natural.