Five Odd Honors

by Jane Lindskold

  “Righteous Drum,” Pearl said as she mounted the short flight of steps that led to the front door. She spoke the Chinese of the Lands. “Thank you for accepting this invasion. We apologize for giving you such short notice.”

  Righteous Drum smiled graciously, and opened the door wider.

  “We expected some sort of visit today,” he replied in the same language, “especially when Riprap phoned to inform us that your household would not be joining ours for practice. Come in. Have you eaten?”

  Brenda knew this last was a traditional Chinese greeting, and knew the proper response was to state that she had. Therefore, even though some wonderful odors drifting from the back of the house made her stomach rumble, she joined the others in saying she was well fed.

  “Even so,” Righteous Drum said, and a twinkle in his eyes made Brenda wonder just how good his hearing might be, “my daughter, Honey Dream, is setting out a few refreshments and a variety of beverages. This household hopes you will avail yourselves of our hospitality.”

  He gestured in the direction of the large formal living room that was set to one side of the entry foyer. Extra chairs had been brought in from other parts of the house. Brenda counted seating for eleven, and Righteous Drum answered the unspoken question.

  “When your phone call came, I had the impression that we might be discussing sensitive matters. I thought that perhaps it would be best if the three who until very recently were our prisoners were not admitted into conferences that, after all, are related to matters of the Twelve.”

  Pearl nodded, and no one else objected.

  Brenda thought “The Twelve” was a rather loose way of describing their company, for the Orphans counted their full number as thirteen. She, technically, was not even one of those thirteen, since her father, Gaheris Morris, was still alive and still actively the Rat.

  But Gaheris, as soon as the battle of Tiger’s Road was concluded, had departed San Jose. He ran his own business, Unique Wonders, and seemed to feel everything would fall apart if he wasn’t on hand to meet with clients.

  Brenda joined Riprap and Nissa, who were heading out into the kitchen. Helping out had been the rule in the Morris household, and although Pearl still had her gardening service and maid service call at both residences, most of the time they all did for themselves. Matters were too sensitive—too flat-out weird—to permit outsiders easy, unsupervised access.

  In the kitchen they found Honey Dream. Honey Dream did not resemble her father, Righteous Drum, in the least. In age, she was probably somewhere between Brenda and Nissa. Slender as the Snake that was her affiliate, Honey Dream managed to be voluptuous as well.

  The red tee shirt she wore had a deeply scooped neckline, embellished with lacy beadwork flowers in contrasting crystal. Honey Dream wore shorts that were not as short as some Brenda had seen her wear, but that nonetheless admirably displayed the length of her legs. One bare ankle was looped with a tattoo of a small snake. Honey Dream’s long, ink-black hair was caught up in what looked like a casual style, but Brenda had tried something like it, and knew how difficult it was to pull off. To Brenda, that hairstyle gave away the effort Honey Dream had put into her appearance.

  As always, Honey Dream’s sensuous physicality made Brenda all too aware that she herself was nearly as flat-chested and narrow-hipped as a boy. She swallowed a sigh and reached for one of the trays of dainties that stood on a counter waiting to be carried into the next room.

  “Thanks, Brenda,” Honey Dream said, and those two words emphasized more than anything else that one thing had changed about Honey Dream. Unhappily, for Brenda’s recurring insecurities, if anything the change made the other woman more lovely.

  Gone was Honey Dream’s prickly arrogance, replaced by something almost approaching humility. Honey Dream, perhaps more than any of them, had been tested by recent events. The solicitude with which she brought Righteous Drum his tea and a little plate of delicacies showed that Honey Dream had not yet forgotten how recently she had thought her father dead.

  Riprap had stepped into a back pantry, and now he emerged carrying trays of glasses. He was accompanied by Flying Claw, the Tiger of this group, and the subject of a great deal of heady daydreaming on Brenda’s part.

  Flying Claw was a counterpart for Honey Dream’s physical beauty, but there was nothing in the least feminine about him. He was neither as tall nor as obviously muscular as Riprap, but Brenda had seen Flying Claw hold his own and then some against the much larger man—and not only because Flying Claw had trained in fighting arts since he was a small child. There was strength in the young Tiger, as well as beauty, and grace to balance the strength.

  Unlike Righteous Drum, who had cut his hair better to blend into modern America, Flying Claw still wore his hair long, nearly as long as that of any of the young women. Today he had it caught back with a series of silver pony tail holders that were ornamental even as they kept his hair from getting in his face. Brenda suspected Des’s hand in the choice of jewelry. The Rooster had a distinct sense of style, and had taken it upon himself to act as buyer and fashion consultant for the strangers.

  Brenda knew that Flying Claw was related to Pearl—a not-so-distant cousin—and that physically he resembled Pearl’s father, Thundering Heaven, the source of their current problem.

  I wonder if Pearl’s going to get all prickly with Flying Claw again, Brenda thought, glancing over at the older woman anxiously. She’s only just barely started treating him like he’s human. Now that I think about it, I wonder how Flying Claw’s going to take the news about Thundering Heaven. I mean, Pearl’s dad was his idol, the whole reason he studied to become a Tiger. This could be really bad.

  A knock at the front door announced Albert Yu. Like Des Lee, Albert’s heritage was ethnically Chinese, and like Des, Albert was something of a flamboyant figure, although in a completely different fashion.

  Des wore his hair and beard like those of a Chinese immigrant of a hundred or so years ago. If Albert resembled anything out of Chinese history, it was the idea of the exotic Orient as embodied by the stage magician. His dark hair was worn long enough to cover the top of his collar. His chin beard and full mustache were neatly trimmed yet saturnine, just a little wicked . To d ay, as most times Brenda had seen him, Albert wore a neat business suit. His only concession to the early August heat was the absense of a jacket and a slight loosening of his tie.

  Brenda thought that, despite his neat attire, Albert looked rather haggard.

  And no wonder. Albert is trying to run his fancy chocolate business, but unlike Dad he doesn’t keep cutting out on us. He’s really serious about being the leader of the Thirteen Orphans, but in a way, he’s like me. He has a place, but he doesn’t. I mean, there were twelve exiles, each tied to the zodiac. He’s the Cat, descendant of a kid who himself was a son of an emperor who got overthrown. What good is an emperor without an empire—who hasn’t had an empire for three generations?

  Brenda knew some of her thoughts were colored by her father’s rivalry with Albert—a rivalry that dated back to when they were both boys. She also knew she was reacting to the fact that—unlike Gaheris Morris—Albert was here. He had a job. He had his own business, but he was here. By comparison, her own dad fell short.

  Although with Albert’s arrival their company was technically complete, every chair filled, still they all felt the absence of Waking Lizard.

  But that rascally old Monkey won’t be joining us, Brenda thought sadly. He won’t be here to puncture Righteous Drum’s pomposity with a casual “Drummy” or pull the best of the egg rolls right out from Riprap’s fingers with a dart of those long fingers. Damn. I hope I don’t start crying. . . . Somebody had better start talking or I think I’m going to lose it.

  Perhaps sensitive to the prevailing tension, Albert assumed the role of informal chairman with a natural assumption of leadership that wasn’t in the least offensive.

  “Shen, will you tell us what Loyal Wind reported?”

  “Nine Duc
ks, actually,” Shen said. “Loyal Wind began the report, but he was weaker than he had wanted to believe, and Nine Ducks took over. You see, it seems that Loyal Wind’s meeting with Thundering Heaven went a bit out of control. Loyal Wind, well, he overstepped himself.”

  Shen then proceeded to recount with just the right mixture of dry fact and sensational detail the encounter between the three ghosts.

  Brenda listened with a mingling of anger and dismay. Yes, they had all had expected Thundering Heaven’s ultimatum, but this . . . Despite everything Pearl had said about her father, despite everything Thundering Heaven’s callous dismissal of his daughter and heir had implied about him, she had not expected him to be so vicious.

  Shen finished by relating Nine Ducks’s assertion that she believed that given time Loyal Wind would recover from his injuries. Silence fell, broken only by the sound of melting ice cubes shifting in the pitcher of lemonade.

  Then Albert asked the question they were all thinking.

  “Well, Aunt Pearl. How do you think we should respond to Thundering Heaven’s ultimatum?”

  Pearl was parting her lips to give what was doubtlessly a carefully considered reply when she was interrupted from a very unlikely corner.

  Springing to his feet, his silver-ringed hair snapping behind him like a tiger’s tail, Flying Claw almost snarled the words, “There is only one answer that is acceptable. Pearl is your Tiger. Nothing must change that. Nothing!”

  Brenda was astonished at the ferocity of the young man’s words. Until very recently, Pearl had been far from kind to Flying Claw. True, Pearl had never been precisely cruel, but Brenda felt Pearl had done little enough to earn this loyalty. Judging from the expressions on the faces of several of those present—Pearl herself included—Brenda was not the only one to think so.

  “I,” Pearl said into the startled silence, “feel rather the same way. However, before we accede to my wishes, I do think Thundering Heaven made at least one very valid point. You must consider that he might very well be a far stronger Tiger than I. I am not a young woman. Sometimes, especially early on a rainy morning when my arthritis is acting up, I would even admit to being a rather elderly Tiger. Freed as he is from the limitations of the flesh, Thundering Heaven would be far stronger than I am, far more versatile.”

  “Stronger,” Riprap replied, flexing his own strong hands so that the muscles corded and rippled in his arms, “but more versatile? I’m not so sure about that. And judging from how Thundering Heaven treated Loyal Wind, I’m not certain he’d be as wise. What Thundering Heaven did was ugly, really ugly, especially when you consider he attacked someone he claimed to wish to ally himself alongside. There’s something really wrong there.”

  “ ‘Wrong,’ ” said Shen Kung as if tasting the word. “That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking since Loyal Wind and Nine Ducks contacted me. There’s something very wrong here. Righteous Drum, what is the lore of the Lands regarding the spiritual nature of ghosts? I seem to recall that it is connected to the nature of the soul.”

  “That is correct,” Righteous Drum said. “The soul has two primary parts: the hun and po souls.”

  Shen inclined his head, inviting the other to continue. Brenda was impressed by Shen’s diplomacy. Shen and Righteous Drum were both Dragons—considered to be both the most scholarly and the most magical of the Twelve. This was not a contradiction, for in Chinese lore, scholarship and magic went hand in hand. Knowledge literally was power.

  But Brenda had already figured out that knowledge was not the same as wisdom, and that therefore the likelihood of competition between the two Dragons was quite high.

  Shen was the elder, with many more years of study behind him, but Righteous Drum—himself a man of mature years—had shown himself very aware that his studies, if of lesser duration, had taken place within the very libraries from which Shen’s teachers had brought away only memories.

  Righteous Drum accepted Shen’s invitation to continue. “The hun soul is the soul that is associated with intellectual achievements and the higher emotions. The po soul is associated with the more bestial urges and the baser emotions. Upon death, so we are taught, the hun soul departs the body through an opening at the top of the skull. On rare occasions, the po soul may cling to the body until decomposition sets in, and, in rarer cases, even thereafter. That is why fresh graves are places to approach with caution.”

  Brenda leaned forward, intent on a contradiction. “But like Riprap said, something is wrong here. Really wrong. I mean, Thundering Heaven is acting like you said a po soul would act: angry, raging, out of control.”

  “Not completely out of control,” Shen corrected gently. “From what I was told, Thundering Heaven did a very good job of presenting an intellectual argument as to why he should take over as Tiger. A po soul—as I understand the lore—would never have stopped to talk.”

  “Not only that,” Righteous Drum agreed, “it wouldn’t be able to talk. Speech is one of the higher functions.”

  After making his declaration, Flying Claw had remained standing. Now he looked over at Pearl, something like desperation twisting his handsome features. Brenda’s heart ached at his pain. For a moment, Flying Claw had looked more like Foster—the amnesiac he had been when she had first gotten to know him, all lost and confused—than like the warrior he was.

  “Honored Aunt,” Flying Claw said, somewhat awkwardly giving Pearl a title of relationship that, while not strictly accurate, reflected the new accord between them, “I know Thundering Heaven was not the most gentle of fathers to you, but is this how he truly was?”

  Anger and sorrow touched Pearl’s features, and Brenda thought that Pearl looked as if she wanted to say, “Yes. Underneath. Beneath the proper front he showed to most people, my father really was that vicious,” but honesty won out over old wounds. Pearl shook her head.

  “No. He wasn’t. My father could be cold and harsh. He could be unkind, but he was not a raging killer, nor was he a monster. As far as I know, Thundering Heaven never used his blade except in defense of himself or of those he had sworn to protect. He was a hard father, but he did not beat me beyond what anyone of that time would have considered acceptable—and even when he was angry, he usually did not need my mother to convince him that added training would be a more useful punishment than violence.”

  Flying Claw looked relieved.

  And no wonder, Brenda thought. By his own account, Flying Claw idolized Thundering Heaven—not the man, but the reputation he left behind him in the Lands. Because of Thundering Heaven, Flying Claw trained from childhood in the hope of someday becoming the Tiger in his turn.

  Nissa’s soft Virginia drawl broke in. “I’m sorry if I’m getting away from the point, but there’s something else that’s been puzzling me. Where did Thundering Heaven get that sword—Soul Slicer, I think he called it? Is it a traditional weapon or something like that?”

  “I’ve never heard of a sword called Soul Slicer,” Des said, and his comment had weight because with the possible exception of Shen, he was the most fanatical of their number about obscure elements of Chinese myth and legend. “Have any one of you? Does Soul Slicer belong to the lore of the Lands?”

  Heads shook all around.

  “So where,” Nissa persisted, “did Thundering Heaven get that sword? Can ghosts just conjure things like that, the way they can change their bodies?”

  “I do not believe so,” Righteous Drum said. “Ghosts—even hun ghosts—are limited to what they brought with them from the world of the living. That is why offerings to the dead are so important. The gifts of the living—food and money and even clothing and other luxuries—sustain the dead. Without these offerings, the dead are doomed to become hungry ghosts who in their desperate need are yet another threat to the living.”

  Riprap looked over at Pearl. “I don’t suppose you gave Thundering Heaven anything like that sword, did you? As a substitute for Treaty, maybe?”

  “No.” Pearl went on, answering a question Ripra
p clearly wanted to ask, but knew would be impolite. “Nor did I repay him in death for his lack of kindness to me in life by neglecting the proper offerings. Twice a year, on New Year and Ching Ming, my brothers and I have made the proper offerings—both of money and of paper representations of items our father might need to make him comfortable in the afterlife. My brothers started the custom of making offerings in October—on or near to the date of our father’s actual birthday—a very American touch, since the Chinese don’t usually celebrate birthdays. Still, it’s a nice gesture.”

  “And would your brothers have given Thundering Heaven anything like Soul Slicer?” Riprap persisted.

  “No,” Pearl said. “To my father’s undying resentment, my brothers did not have a trace of magical ability in their veins. They couldn’t even work a simple charm. They grew up interesting hybrids: Chinese Jews. Both went into finance, and both did very well.”

  “So your brothers go through the motions,” Riprap said, satisfied but obviously disappointed. “That’s it.”

  “I’m afraid so,” Pearl said. “I don’t think we’ll find the origin of Soul Slicer in their actions.”

  Albert frowned. “Thundering Heaven’s actions are very peculiar for a ghost—at least for a ghost in the Chinese tradition. I wonder if Thundering Heaven lived long enough in the United States to adopt some European ideas about the undead. Wrathful yet calculating creatures like vampires are common enough in European traditions.”

  “That doesn’t seem likely,” Pearl said. “My father may have married a woman of Hungarian Jewish descent, but he remained adamantly, proudly, a Chinese of the Lands until his death. I’m not sure he would have known what a vampire was—a chiang shih, yes, but not a vampire in the European tradition.”

  Deborah rose and refilled her glass of lemonade. “So we have a ghost who is not acting at all as a ghost should behave, bearing a sword that is a puzzle all in itself—a sword that seems particularly suited for battling other ghosts. Shen, did Loyal Wind happen to mention if that magical horse of his had ever been injured before—and if, when it was, had he felt the injury himself? Something about how you recounted the battle made me think this connection between him and his horse had been unusual.”