Five Odd Honors

by Jane Lindskold

  A concubine, perhaps, grown past interest, childless? A spare daughter?

  Loyal Wind recognized the return of curiosity as a danger. He had managed to stop caring, to stop thinking. Now with his body no longer in as much pain, his mind was coming alive.

  The severe woman wheeled Loyal Wind to a small chamber where she spooned rice mush into him and gave him more water to drink. The quantities were small, but Loyal Wind’s shriveled stomach could hardly accept them.

  As with the others who had handled him since his removal from the cell, the severe woman spoke only when absolutely necessary.

  Loyal Wind didn’t care. If he didn’t speak, he couldn’t betray his fear that they were only doing this to him so that they could put him in the box again.

  Next the severe woman took Loyal Wind to a place where he was clad in a light sleeveless cotton tunic that came to beneath his knees. Clothing him even in this simple garment took three orderlies, because his limbs still would not answer to his command.

  Their final destination was a small room, hardly twice the width of the cot set to one side. It had a small window, set high, and the now-familiar barred door.

  An orderly laid Loyal Wind faceup on the cot. The severe woman gave him more to drink, then indicated a wide-mouthed pot set on the floor next to the cot.

  “If you must vomit, try to hit that. If you must evacuate your bowels, call for an orderly. Try not to make a mess.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Loyal Wind managed. His voice creaked like that of an elderly cricket.

  “Hmmm . . .”

  The severe woman left, and when she returned she had a bell attached to a length of light rope. The bell was hung from the ceiling over the cot.

  “Can you pull that?”

  Loyal Wind moved his hand. The fingers were not in as bad shape as his feet because he had been able to keep them mostly out of the filthy water. He was clumsy, but the bell rang authoritatively.

  “Good. Rest now. You may also request food or water, but will only be given small amounts. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The orderly came a few hours later, offered water, silently anointed Loyal Wind’s feet with one ointment and his joints with another. This was the routine, day and night, for what Loyal Wind thought was about two days. He couldn’t be certain, because he spent much time asleep, and the light from the high window was indirect and faint.

  The swelling in Loyal Wind’s feet gradually diminished, and on the day he could walk, the orderly took him for a stroll—more like a stagger—down the corridors. There, glimpsed through a window, Loyal Wind saw something that made returning to his former dull, animal complacency impossible.

  There was a garden, flower-filled, and in that garden walked Copper Gong. She was alone, apparently deep in thought. Her clothing was simple but of good quality. The brief look Loyal Wind saw of her face showed it to be drawn, but not unduly harassed.

  Returned to what he now thought of as his hospital cell, Loyal Wind tossed and turned on the cot, his mind afire with speculation.

  Had Copper Gong joined the enemy or was she being exercised much as he had been? Her clothing had not been as fine as he would have expected that of a royal advisor to be, but she had been alone, with no guards apparent.

  Had he been meant to see her, or had it truly been the chance glimpse it seemed? Loyal Wind tried to reach out to Copper Gong, tried to touch her through the closeness of their shared House, but as always since they entered this part of the Lands, there was no ch’i for him to tap, and his own body was far too weak to supply surplus.

  Loyal Wind’s thoughts ran round and round, fearing, dreading, until the orderly came and gave him a soporific.

  When he slept, Loyal Wind’s dreams swirled with tormented speculation.

  Slowly Loyal Wind became stronger. He graduated from rice gruel to solid, simple food, from sips of water to strong tea. His hospital cell, once a welcome refuge, began to seem like a cage, but he never asked to be taken out, only welcomed the increasing frequency and duration of his walks.

  He was given a shorter tunic and a pair of simple cotton pants: peasant’s clothing, but welcome for the modicum of dignity that came with it. Every day he was permitted to bathe; every two days, an orderly shaved him and trimmed his facial hair.

  But although Loyal Wind grew stronger, his mind was increasingly troubled. His sense of the fortification was that it was quite large, but even so, he caught glimpses of his former companions—now fellow prisoners.

  Or were they? He saw Copper Gong more than once, usually apparently alone, but once in conversation with a woman who might have been his severefaced “hostess.”

  He saw Des Lee, clad in scholar’s robes, engaged in what seemed to be heated debate with two men in similar attire.

  Once he thought he saw Gentle Smoke, but the Snake was walking away from him, down a flower-lined avenue, so he couldn’t be certain.

  Another time, through a lattice screen, he saw Riprap, bare to the waist, his dark skin glistening with sweat, stick-fencing with a stocky man similarly attired. Riprap’s expression was intent, and although a welt rose from one upper arm, his opponent bore similar marks, so this did not seem evidence of his having been beaten.

  Twice, once coming from the bath, another time when being escorted to the garden where Loyal Wind most frequently was taken to exercise, he saw Nine Ducks—perhaps a bit slimmer than when they had last seen each other, but otherwise serene—walking down a corridor. Once she had a scroll in her hand, as if she had been reading.

  Since Loyal Wind had been offered no entertainment other than his periodic exercise and grooming, he took this as a sign that Nine Ducks was in good odor with Li Szu. His heart burned with anger, for somehow he hadnever thought the stolid, determined Ox would be among those to betray their cause.

  Flying Claw was the one member of their company Loyal Wind never glimpsed, even fleetingly or uncertainly. This disheartened Loyal Wind more than the apparent evidence that the others might have turned traitor, for he knew there was no reason for Li Szu to preserve the young Tiger, and every reason to destroy him. Dead, Flying Claw’s hold on the Third Earthly Branch would be released, and Thundering Heaven could possibly claim it and grow in strength.

  With nothing to do but eat, rest, and wait like a pampered dog to be taken for walks, Loyal Wind was left alone with his thoughts and fears. He cursed those who must have betrayed their cause. Forgave them. Hated them all over again.

  His nightmares were full of the box, of feeling himself slowly rotting away, of being found stuffed in a box, a skeleton, clad in nothing but shreds of flesh.

  Again and again in nightmares, Loyal Wind was carried to the box and screamed protest. Clubbed nearly senseless. Shoved inside. Sometimes his friends came to the window and pleaded with him to join them. Other times, they merely laughed at him for being a fool.

  At last, what Loyal Wind had dreaded from the moment he had first been pulled semiconscious from the box cell occurred.

  He was taken as usual to the baths. This time, after he had finished anointing himself with healing ointments, he was handed first undergarments, then inner robes, and finally a brilliant red courtier’s robe. This last was not embroidered with the Horse, but otherwise much resembled what Loyal Wind had worn in his first audience before Li Szu.

  Loyal Wind forced himself not to panic, but his gorge rose. Swallowing bile, he donned the robe, put soft slippers on his nearly healed feet, and carefully combed his hair and beard.

  The severe-faced woman met him outside the bath house and escorted him to the door of the palace, where he was met by the same official who had brought him before Li Szu that first time. This time there were no guards, and Loyal Wind did not know whether to be offended or not. He hated to think himself tamed, gelded by fear, but clearly Li Szu thought this was the case.

  The corridors were the same, the audience hall as grand, but this time Loyal Wind had eyes only for the man in t
he deceptively simple robes who sat upon the carved chair on the raised dais.

  “You have had time to meditate,” Li Szu said. “What is your answer?”

  Loyal Wind met the cold eyes, and answered simply.

  “I will not betray my associates. I cannot join you.”

  “Then you will go back to the box,” Li Szu said. “And this time, I do not think you will come out.”

  Loyal Wind did not answer, but he found the strength for the slightest of smiles.

  He had betrayed a trust once, and tormented himself during the long century and more after his death. Did Li Szu really think he could do worse to Loyal Wind than Loyal Wind had already done to himself?

  A nasty note of glee had sound-tracked Pearl’s dreams these last several nights, glee combined with a sense of being on a roller coaster. She ricocheted around turns, up and down hills, pulled by a force as inevitable as gravity toward something that felt ominously like her own destruction.

  None of the auguries Pearl and her associates had worked had helped them pinpoint the source of these invasive nightmares. They had confirmed that the nightmares were in some way linked to Pearl’s association with Thundering Heaven, but since Pearl had suspected this all along, she felt no more secure.

  Nissa’s shamefaced yet defiant confession that she had phoned Brenda Morris, and that Brenda and an anonymous—“but almost certainly male”—friend were on their way from South Carolina, provided a welcome distraction.

  “The only thing I feel certain of,” Nissa said as she and Pearl sat discussing the matter over afternoon tea, “is that Brenda has confided at least some of our current problem to this friend, and that is why he is coming.”

  “You’re sure it’s not her father?”

  “Absolutely. I didn’t need to see Breni’s face to know that she was pretty unhappy when I admitted that we’d not communicated with her about recent developments at Gaheris’s request.”

  “I wonder,” Pearl said, “if we should tell Gaheris that Brenda is coming here?”

  “Let him,” Nissa said with a definite edge to her voice, “find out by showing up himself.”

  Shen, who had returned the evening before from New York, bringing with him Umeko’s blessing and the promise that his son Geoffrey was prepared to join them if he was needed, entered the family room at that point.

  “I agree with Nissa. I’d like to say that Gaheris isn’t behaving like himself, but that would be untrue. He is behaving perfectly like himself—at least where Albert is concerned.”

  Pearl sighed, the sound coming out as a sibilant hiss of which Honey D reamwould have been proud. “But this isn’t about Albert. This is about Des and Riprap, about our five ancestors, about people who need us.”

  Shen shook his head. “To Gaheris, this is about returning to the Lands. Returning to the Lands has always meant one thing to Gaheris Morris: Albert becoming emperor.”

  “But that’s crazy!” Nissa said. “Will Albert become emperor? I didn’t think that was possible, even likely. Oh, I know Righteous Drum promised his support, but that’s a pretty flimsy promise. Righteous Drum can’t even get home, much less make anyone emperor.”

  “I agree,” Shen said. “Righteous Drum agrees—we talked about this last night. But I bet if we were able to get Gaheris to honestly admit his motivations . . .”

  “Not likely,” Pearl admitted dryly. “He is a Rat.”

  “Then,” Shen continued, patiently ignoring the interruption, “he would have to admit that resentment of A lbert’s birthright as emperor would be central to everything Gaheris has done to this point.”

  “Maybe,” Nissa said. She reached in her purse and jingled a set of car keys from her index finger. “Pearl, I’ve got about an hour before I need to pick Lani up from Joanne’s. I thought I’d go and get a few extra treats, some of that strudel Brenda likes or something.”

  “A welcome back,” Pearl nodded. “Good thought.”

  “Then Lani and I will pick up Brenda and Mr. Mystery. We’ll be back in time for dinner.”

  And they were. They came in through the kitchen door, Brenda first, her expression of very real pleasure at being back not completely hiding her obvious apprehension as to how Pearl would react to her bringing someone into Pearl’s private domain.

  That someone came through the door next: a handsome young man with tousled curls the color of dark honey and sparkling green eyes that looked as if they laughed more readily than they maintained their currently serious and formally polite solemnity.

  Pearl had cast All Green when Shen announced that he’d seen the town car round the corner. Through the spell’s magical aura, she inspected her latest houseguest for anything unusual.

  Parnell maintained no obvious spells, but there was something about him that hinted that all was not as it seemed. As if he felt her critical regard—and he might well have done so, for Pearl had made no effort to mask her own spell—Parnell bobbed Pearl a short, courteous bow.

  “My hostess, please accept my promise that I know how a guest should behave. You have no reason to believe me, but I tell you most sincerely that I mean no harm to you or any member of your household—although I cannot say I feel quite the same about all your kin.”

  Parnell’s voice held a pleasant Irish lilt. Gaheris’s mother, Elaine, would have been enchanted by the sound of that voice alone. Pearl wondered if Brenda had shifted Flying Claw out of her feelings, replacing him with this attractive Irish lad.

  If Parnell’s even Irish, Pearl thought. There’s something very odd about him.

  Over dinner, a relatively simple meal of baked chicken, rice, and salad—a concession to the fact that they hadn’t known anything of Parnell’s tastes when planning the menu—talk stayed general and conversational.

  Lani chattered happily, and Pearl was amused to see that although everyone else had long ago become accustomed to Lani’s particular patois, Parnell was understanding only part of what the little girl said. However, he was game. The smile Pearl had known must be his habitual expression arrived and set about charming everyone it touched.

  After dinner, while Brenda and Nissa were upstairs moving some furniture around, preparatory to Lani’s bedtime—Lani had insisted that Brenda have “her” room back for this visit and Brenda had not protested, making Pearl question again the young woman’s probable relationship with Parnell—Parnell turned serious.

  “I’ll need to explain again when Nissa comes down, and surely when the rest of your company arrives later this evening, but I’m not going to be guilty of misleading my hostess one moment longer than need be.”

  In a few brief words he explained his heritage, and pricking himself with a pocketknife, demonstrated the reality of his strange, white blood.

  “So,” Parnell concluded, “if you’re not wanting me beneath your roof, I understand, and will go without hard feelings or delay. I’ve gotten Brenda here safely, and although I’m eager to help you in the trials to come, I’m not going to force myself in where I’m not wanted.”

  Pearl swallowed an appreciative grin, wondering just how long it had taken this fey youth—although he might not be a youth at all—to decide that frankness would get him further than deception.

  Pearl glanced at Shen and found her old friend looking bemused.

  “Sidhe folk,” Shen said. “Well, I can’t say I never suspected your people of tampering here and there in human affairs. One doesn’t live in New York as long as I have without having good reason to wonder. Do you plan to explain why you’ve involved yourself in our business?”

  “I do and I will,” Parnell said. “The short form is that your enemies are a threat to the sidhe, as well as to you. We’d rather have the battle fought in lands other than our own.”

  “And Brenda? Why did you fasten yourself to her?” Shen persisted.

  “Beyond the fact that she’s as sweet a colleen as one might wish?” Parnell grew serious again. “Brenda drew our attention because, although you think of her
wholly in terms of your concerns and your heritage, she has links to us as well. Her grandmother, Elaine, made sure of that when Brenda could hardly walk.”

  “Did Elaine know what she was doing?” Pearl asked. The more magically sophisticated of the Orphans had long suspected that Keely McAnally, Brenda’s mother, brought more with her into her marriage with Gaheris than met the eye.

  “Elaine did and she did not,” Parnell said. “That is, she believes in the sidhe folk with all her heart, as faithfully as she believes in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, in the Virgin Mary and the choir of saints. Elaine would be a bit surprised, though, if one of us came knocking at her door.”

  “As doubtless she would if Saint Patrick showed up to drink the beer she pours him on his feast day,” Pearl agreed. “I understand. Fervent belief, perhaps a touch of the Sight, but nothing more.”

  “There might have been more,” Parnell said, “if there had been training of it, such as the training you’ve given to our Brenda, but the time for such teaching is before the brain knows so much that it forgets what is real.”

  Pearl nodded. “We have found that as well. We were lucky with our three most recent apprentices that events they each witnessed gave them reason to believe the unbelievable, even though each was past the age of easy acceptance.”

  “So,” Parnell said. “May I remain, or shall I make my farewells to Brenda and depart? Brenda only let me accompany her on the terms that I be frank with you and obey your decision.”

  Pearl saw the smile that twitched the corner of Shen’s mouth. He, at least, approved of this strange addition to their numbers.

  “Stay,” Pearl said. “You’ll abide by our rules and not abuse my hospitality?”

  “I promise,” Parnell said. “You can trust me.”