The Snake laughed. “Now who’s talking too much? Fine. We’ll get down to business. Where’s the sphere that holds Flying Claw’s memory?”
Brenda slid her hand into her pocket and took it out, cupping the solid heaviness of the crystal in the palm of her right hand so the Snake could see it. The green tiger frozen within was beautifully lifelike, right down to the shading of his stripes, darker green against the pale.
“My dad’s?” Brenda countered. “And the spell you promised?”
The Snake opened the brocade bag and took out a crystal sphere, identical to the one Brenda held, except for the black rat within. The Rat sphere glowed in Brenda’s enhanced vision, its authenticity assured.
“As for the spell,” the Snake said, “come over to that table.”
She motioned toward a concrete picnic table.
“Why?”
“Because I promised to give you the means to restore your father’s memory, but I’m not going to reveal my father’s secrets. I’ve already written the key elements, but after you see the paper isn’t blank, I’m going to complete the spell, then seal it before you can read it. You’ll still be able to use the spell to restore your father’s memory, but not copy it.”
Brenda thought this care to keep her from even glimpsing the written spell expressed a lot more faith in Brenda’s ability to read Chinese than she deserved, but she wasn’t about to tell her that.
Honey Dream had been walking over to the concrete table as she spoke. Now Brenda saw there was a daypack on the bench. Honey Dream removed a calligraphy set, the elements not dissimilar to the ones Brenda had neatly put away in the classroom at Pearl’s house after her last study session.
Foster had trailed after Honey Dream, but now he looked over at Brenda. “Are you sure about doing this?”
“I am, Foster,” she said, wrapping her fingers around the Tiger sphere as if she could touch the memories within.
“But Pearl …” he said. “She’s not going to like this.”
“Auntie Pearl,” Brenda countered, “doesn’t like a lot of things, but what I’m doing right now is something she’s going to need to learn to live with. I’m not giving her a choice.”
The Snake had taken a piece of red paper from a folder in her pack. It was partially covered with a long line of Chinese characters. Brenda recognized the one for the Rat at the top, but that was it, except for a vague recognition that the style of the characters was archaic. She wondered if using archaic characters was necessary, or an affectation on the part of the Snake—like a Goth using some archaic font on her e-mail.
“Listen carefully, Brenda,” Honey Dream said. “I’m going to brush the final characters onto this, then roll it into a bamboo tube. The first time the paper is taken from the tube, the spell will manifest as ink dripping from the interior of the rolled piece of paper. Hold the sphere under the ink, and when the ink flow ceases, your father’s memory will be restored.”
“Does Dad need to be near when I do this?” Brenda asked.
“That would probably speed the process,” the Snake said. “It will also keep Gaheris’s memory from returning in disorderly fragments. Remember, though. You get one shot, so don’t try and be cute and see if you can copy this off before the spell dissolves.”
Brenda extended her hand in mute acceptance of both the terms and the spell. The Snake took her brush, wrote a few final characters, blew lightly on them, then rolled the paper into a tight spill that she dropped into a slim piece of hollow bamboo. The entire process took less time than Brenda would have needed to load her own brush with ink. She felt a familiar touch of envy.
“Here,” the Snake said, putting the bamboo tube into Brenda’s outstretched hand. Brenda pushed it into her pocket. “Now shall we trade the spheres?”
As neatly as if they’d practiced the exchange repeatedly, Brenda held out the Tiger crystal to Honey Dream and accepted the Rat crystal in return. Foster watched in silence, but the tension on his face was painful.
Brenda started to turn away, then felt the forgotten weight of the duffel in her hand. She held it out to Foster.
“Your things,” she said. “The robes you were wearing, and your sword. I figured there might be more trouble if you remembered you should have them and then didn’t, so I brought them along.”
Foster accepted the duffel, but didn’t look inside. “Thank you.”
Brenda began to walk briskly in the direction of her car. The Snake called after her.
“Don’t you want to see how the transformation works?” Her tone held bragging invitation and challenge. “Don’t you want to see what the real Flying Claw is like?”
Brenda swallowed hard. She didn’t want to see Foster as anyone but Foster, not really, but then again, she did. And she hadn’t forgotten that the longer she had the Snake under her gaze, the longer the Snake wasn’t charging off somewhere and maybe messing up what the others were doing. The trick was balancing the two obligations. She wouldn’t do the other four any good if they had to rescue her.
“Sure. I’m game.” Brenda didn’t move back to the table, but leaned against a convenient tree a few paces from where her car was parked. She hoped she looked casual and relaxed. She’d hate for the Snake to know how wobbly her knees were.
The Snake’s expression settled on Foster, proprietary and satisfied. Her next words were addressed to him.
“Black and red were easy enough to do,” she said, somewhat confusingly, until Brenda recalled that red was Snake’s color, as black was the Rat’s. “But if I’d dug out green paper and green ink and started working with them, my father surely would have noticed. But those were the colors I needed. You, Flying Claw, wrote your own spell—the one that was turned against you—I wanted to balance the resonance.”
She is nervous, Brenda thought. Mom is right about people talking when they’re nervous.
“But one of the few good things about this horrible land into which the Exiles were sent,” Honey Dream went on, “is how easy it is to get just about any material goods, so I bought appropriate ink and paper.”
Foster studied her. “Why wouldn’t your father approve?”
“He would approve of my getting you back,” the Snake said, “but not about my trading the Rat sphere to Brenda. You’ll understand in a minute. Just wait.”
“I am getting very tired of waiting,” Foster said. “Especially now that you and Brenda both have promised me that great revelations will come when that waiting is ended.”
Honey Dream smiled at him, “I understand, my impatient beloved. Just a few moments more.”
Foster seemed to flinch slightly at the caress in her tone, but Brenda wasn’t sure.
Probably wishful thinking on my part, she thought.
Honey Dream poured green ink onto a new inkstone, and loaded a fresh brush. Now she dipped the neatly shaped tip into a pool of green ink and drew it across the paper with flowing, graceful motions. The first character was the one for tiger, but after that, Brenda’s knowledge failed. Moreover, Brenda stood several feet away and the ink was darker only by virtue of its wetness than the paper upon which the Snake wrote, making discerning the fine lines impossible.
Ink-brush calligraphy takes years to master, but completing a piece can take only moments—something that frequently deceives the uninitiated into believing that such art would be easy to master. Brenda had learned enough to appreciate what the Snake’s skill told her. They seemed to be within a few years of each other in age, but clearly the Snake had been to a much more demanding school than Brenda’s. Yet the Dragon claimed there were “many Snakes,” “many Tigers”? What a terrifying world they must come from.
Brenda found herself hoping that whatever had brought these strangers from their home would be easily resolved and that they would go away—and stay gone.
“There!” said Honey Dream in satisfaction, lifting her brush and holding it to one side lest a stray drop ruin her work. “Done. Now, ‘Foster,’ would you have your mem
ory back? Would you know yourself again as Flying Claw, the Tiger?”
Foster stepped forward eagerly, not bothering with words, and without the slightest glance for Brenda.
“What must I do?”
Riprap tried the door at the top-floor landing.
“Locked, but that’s no surprise. Is it warded?”
Des answered before Pearl could focus on the appropriate charm. “Yes, but the alarm will function on about the same level as a door buzzer. We can silence it easily.”
He moved forward and began sketching characters on the doorframe with a ballpoint pen. Nissa moved close to Pearl, and spoke softly.
“I’m sorry about losing my head. I’m not usually such a—well—such a rabbit.”
Pearl reached over and patted her. “That’s quite all right, dear. I know you’re not. One of the beauties of that spell is that it uses one’s strengths—what one cares about the most—against one. It is the sort of spell a Snake or Dragon loves: twisted and clever. There is one problem with cleverness, though.”
“Oh?” Nissa didn’t sound convinced.
“Yes. The clever forget that there are more direct ways to achieve one’s goals. Look!”
Des had finished his writing. Through spells Pearl had prepared in advance, she saw his spell had countered the other—not neutralized it, simply balanced it. The universe held many paired forces. The “buzzer” would sound, but the opposite of sound is silence, so Des had arranged for that sound to be silenced.
Riprap was dealing with the door’s lock in a much more direct fashion. During his tour in the army, he had learned how to open locked doors for reasons he never quite got around to explaining. Pearl suspected that Riprap had done some work for what was romantically referred to as “covert ops.”
Certainly, there was nothing of the thief about Riprap as he picked the lock. Anyone watching would have seen a man unlocking a door, his big, dark hand concealing the somewhat unorthodox form of his key.
“Directness can often undo the most clever,” Pearl said. “Dogs are marvelous at being direct. So are Tigers. Shall we join the gentlemen?”
Nissa grinned at her, and Pearl could almost see the Rabbit’s ears perk up with renewed confidence.
“I’m set.”
The outside door led into a hallway that separated the two apartments that occupied this floor, as well as connecting to a stairwell going down. No sound drifted up the stairs, making Pearl feel certain that, except for the shop below, the building was likely empty. Even so, they kept their voices low.
“This one,” Riprap said, indicating a door marked 5B. “Des?”
Des studied the door. “Give me a moment. There are more complicated wards here.”
While Des scribbled on the wood of the doorframe, Riprap examined the array of locks set in a metal plate above the knob.
“The locks are a bit more complicated, too. At least one’s a deadbolt, but even the best of those will open to the right master key, and this one isn’t the best.”
“So you have a master?” Nissa asked.
Riprap nodded. “There are things you don’t leave for your roommate to find. Given I knew we were hunting trouble when I left Denver, I packed appropriately.”
Pearl recalled that lock-picking tools were among the less dangerous items Riprap had brought with him. Riprap wasn’t “packing” today. None of them were, although Pearl was a competent shot with a handgun, and Des was actually quite good—although his choice of weapons was often as eccentric as his lifestyle. However, today firearms would serve only to complicate a matter that was already far too complex.
Fleetingly, Pearl wondered how Brenda was doing. The young woman had been very brave, going off on her own like that. The protections they had given her would work only if Brenda remembered to activate them. Still, the risk had to be taken. They needed to draw the Snake off, and the Snake had insisted that Brenda come alone.
What if they had been wrong and the Dragon was working with his daughter on this, rather than the pair being at odds?
Too many guesses, Pearl thought, but our other choice was to wait for our enemies to act—and I think we would have liked that less.
The door snicked open, sound punctuation to Pearl’s thoughts. Des checked, then nodded.
“We can go in.”
“The place sounds empty,” Nissa said. “Isn’t it strange how an empty apartment sounds different than one where people are home?”
“Maybe to Rabbit ears,” Riprap said. “Let me go first. For some reason, people tend to freeze when they catch sight of me without warning.”
Nissa didn’t protest, now seeming as confident as earlier she had been afraid. Perhaps her Rabbit nature was assisting her. More likely, she was simply attuned to her surroundings, and trusted what her senses told her.
For Nissa was correct. The apartment was empty, not only of residents, but almost entirely of furnishings as well. The area was fairly small, all but the kitchen visible from the front door. To the left side of what might be politely called an entry foyer were three doors, all standing open. To the right was a wall, and where it ended was an open, multipurpose area. Mismatched curtains hung in all the windows, filtering the copious light that seemed to be one of the apartment’s few positive qualities.
The wall to the right of the entry proved to be one side of a galley-style kitchen, its walkway so narrow that two people would have had difficulty passing each other within. A battered Formica table and two chairs with corroded chrome-steel tube frames and vinyl seats—these liberally patched with duct tape—were the sole furnishings in a dining area that began in the multipurpose space off the kitchen.
A battered sofa covered by a clean but utilitarian sheet, and a coffee table made from an old hollow core door set on short stacks of cinder blocks, turned the rest of the room into something of a living room. There was no television, not even a transistor radio.
Since the doors to both bedrooms stood open, their contents were equally visible. Each was furnished with a narrow bed and a trunk that seemed to be doing double duty as nightstand and clothes chest. The bathroom that separated the two rooms was small. The white porcelain fixtures were of the cheapest make, old and chipped besides.
However, despite the poverty of the apartment, the rooms were scrupulously clean. The air smelled of good cooking after the Chinese fashion, underscored with lotus incense and strong soap. Small touches showed that at least one of the residents had an instinct for beauty. Wild flowers displayed in vases made from glass bottles had been carefully placed on the windowsills in both bedrooms, and on the center of the dining-room table.
“Furnished two-bedroom walk-up,” Des said, disgust in his voice. “Private entrance. Rents by the week. Still, it’s clean and dry. I suppose they could have done worse.”
“I wonder,” Pearl said, “why they did not do better. We know they would have wanted privacy, and proving good credit would have been a problem, but still …”
Des grinned sardonically. “Proving good credit would have been more of a problem than you could imagine, Pearl, at least in an establishment with any pretensions to honesty. I don’t think the Dragon would have wished to bring his daughter—who is quite attractive from what you’ve said—to a crack house or a dive that doubled as a house of prostitution. Then, too, with San Francisco so close, San Jose can afford to pick and choose. There are fewer no-tell motels than you would imagine.”
“I suppose,” Pearl said.
She shook off an odd impulse to invite the Dragon and the Snake to come stay with her. After all, they were relatives of a sort, and both her Chinese and Jewish upbringing emphasized responsibility to family. Somehow, until she’d seen those sagging beds, that travesty of a coffee table, it had been easy to think of them as something other than people who would need to eat and drink—people who were exiles, far from home.
Nonsense! These are the people who exiled my father and his friends. They are the enemy. No feud is worse than a blood
feud.
Nissa was looking around the living room, sniffing the air, picking up things and setting them down again. “I thought we’d have to spend hours searching, but there isn’t much of anywhere to look. Des? I suppose going through the trunks makes the most sense. Do you see any wards on anything?”
“Not on the chests,” Des said. “Not at a casual inspection, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t search them.”
“The chest in the Snake’s room isn’t even locked,” Nissa said, drifting that way.
Pearl didn’t need to ask how Nissa knew that the rearmost bedroom was the Snake’s or how Nissa knew the trunk wasn’t locked. A bright pink sleeve of something, probably a T-shirt, hanging out the trunk’s side explained both.
“Check out the Snake’s room, Nissa,” Des said. “I’ll take a look at the Dragon’s. Riprap, you have any thoughts about other hiding places?”
“Lots,” Riprap said. “Unless you see some helpful aura that’s going to guide us right where we need to go, I’m going to start in the bathroom. Toilet tanks are classic hiding places, so are dummy pipes. That medicine cabinet looks loose enough that something could be stashed behind it.”
“I’ll take the kitchen,” Pearl said. She set Treaty, still in its carrying case, on the scratched and stained counter.
“Good,” Des said. “Even as thin as I am, I think I’m too tall to bend over in that travesty of a kitchen to inspect the cabinets properly. I’m not sure that Riprap could even fit in there.”
“Sure I could,” Riprap said. “If I held my breath.”
They moved to their various assignments. The apartment was small enough that conversation could continue without anyone needing to raise his or her voice.
“We’re looking for the crystals,” Nissa said, her voice slightly muffled. Probably she was kneeling over the trunk. “Anything else?”
“Any indication that the three we know of have other allies here,” Pearl said, quickly checking the canisters on the counter to make sure they held nothing but rice, flour, and tea, “and who those allies might be. I’m still wondering how they have managed to adapt this well to our world. Spells can help with language, but the Snake called Brenda’s cell phone. That means they understand phones. I’m wondering if they understand cars as well, or if all their travel has been magical. In their pursuit of the other members of the Thirteen, they must have been over a good part of the U.S.”
Thirteen Orphans Page 39
