Five Odd Honors

by Jane Lindskold

  And this explains why Thundering Heaven has allied himself with Li Szu. He must have been promised that the power of the Tiger would be returned to him.

  Li Szu, perhaps denied the hope that shock would make Loyal Wind blurt out something of value and interest, continued speaking, an edge to his voice. “Returning to the matter of theft, there is a way you could save yourself from losing your affiliation with the Horse, from having your soul untrellised from its support.”

  Loyal Wind tried to school his expression so that his face would only reveal polite interest. In reality, he had strong suspicions as to what Li Szu’s next words would be.

  “You could join me, Loyal Wind, as Thundering Heaven has joined me.”

  Loyal Wind took refuge in the fact that he had not yet been asked to speak to hold tight to his silence.

  After waiting expectantly for a moment, Li Szu stripped even that slight refuge from him. “What do you think of that possibility? Would you swear allegiance to me? Tigers are excellent creatures, but they lack the Horse’s abilities when it comes to commanding armies.”

  Loyal Wind considered his words carefully. “I have sworn oaths of loyalty to others. How could you trust me to serve if you knew me as faithless?”

  “Is an oath to those who are faithless themselves still binding?” Li Szu countered.

  Is he lying or has someone else already accepted his offer? Loyal Wind thought, more saddened than shocked. If so, who? Bent Bamboo? The Monkey has already shown himself easily swayed by the Tiger’s arguments. Perhaps it was Copper Gong. Her goal always has been to return home. Or perhaps Des or Riprap. They might not realize the implications of what they were doing. Their land does not have rulers such as Li Szu. They might not understand how ruthless he could be. Or perhaps Nine Ducks or Gentle Smoke felt that they would do everyone more good outside of a cell, and so chose to change alliances and regain some freedom.

  Loyal Wind even supposed that Li Szu could be lying to him. But whether Li Szu told the truth or lied, nothing excused Loyal Wind from oaths freely sworn, oaths that had enabled him to regain the self-respect he had stripped from himself in the long years before and after his death.

  “My oath is not contingent on anything but my own sense of my honor and duty,” Loyal Wind replied.

  “Then perhaps you should consider that your first duty would be to me, as the one who created the Lands, and without whom you would never have been born.”

  Loyal Wind held himself silent.

  “You could guide me, advise me,” Li Szu urged. “In a cell you are no good to anyone, least of all to yourself or your allies.”

  Loyal Wind remained stubbornly mute.

  “I will give you an opportunity to think,” Li Szu said. “An opportunity for meditation.”

  He clapped his hands together.

  “Guards! Take Loyal Wind from here and prepare him appropriately to think upon the wisdom of accepting my offer.”

  Something in the fashion the guards prodded Loyal Wind from the audience chamber warned the Horse not to expect any kindness.

  He was correct. He was taken to one of the outlying buildings, where his finery was stripped from him. Any gentleness in the disrobing was clearly out of consideration for the expensive fabric, not for the one who wore it.

  Then he was shoved through a waist-high door into what he at first thought was a tunnel. Groping blindly, Loyal Wind realized he was in a chamber so small as to hardly be dignified by the word. The ceiling was too low for him to stand, and the walls too close for him to sit with his legs outstretched. A few minutes’ experimentation showed that he could either crouch or sit with his knees bent at various awkward angles.

  There was no light, except for the glimmer that leaked in around a small hatch set in the middle of the door.

  After a time, this hatch was opened and Loyal Wind was hit squarely in the face with a bucket of stale water.

  “Beverages, my lord,” shouted someone, punctuating the words with a coarse laugh.

  Something else was shoved in after, falling to the bottom of the cell with a sodden thud.

  “And food. Enjoy your stay!”

  Loyal Wind felt around him. The water had settled into a puddle severalinches deep. The “food” proved to be a few root vegetables already gone into slime. Here and there, loose grains of uncooked rice were settling to the bottom of the puddle.

  Loyal Wind’s joints were already aching. He lowered his head into his hands with a feeling of growing despair.

  He knew what would happen if he did not beg for Li Szu’s mercy. The time was not far off when he would befoul this puddle in which he sat. Then would come the time that even tainted water and rotten food would be preferable to raging hunger and thirst.

  Loyal Wind understood now the diabolical kindness of the elegant refreshments he had been given during his audience with Li Szu. If he had agreed to cooperate, then they would have simply been a small indication of how generous Li Szu could be. However, if Loyal Wind refused, the salty food and copious amounts of tea would only speed along his humiliation.

  Loyal Wind felt hot tears trickling through his fingers.

  With the bitterness of despair, he made no effort to stop them.

  “We haven’t heard from the scouts in over a week now,” Honey Dream said, striding through the door of Pearl’s office and confronting Albert Yu. Her father came in behind her, his pace more measured. “Nine days. How much longer do you people plan to procrastinate!”

  Head thrown back, long-lashed, dark eyes wild with fear and anger, the young Snake would have been a commanding presence even if she were not physically beautiful—and she was undeniably beautiful. Pearl found herself glad that Albert was not a man to be swayed by a woman’s seductive charms.

  Albert Yu looked Honey Dream squarely in the eye, but did not bother to rise from the chair in which he sat.

  “Would today suit your ladyship? We have not been procrastinating. We have been preparing, reviewing a complex ritual the Exile Dragon designed, but which was probably never used.”

  Albert’s inflections held the cool reminder that no matter how powerful she might be, Honey Dream was the supplicant and Albert—and the Orphans of whom he was the titular leader—held the advantage.

  “Today would be fine,” Honey Dream said, moderating her tone not the slightest. “How shall we begin?”

  “We shall begin,” Albert said, rising and bowing politely to Righteous Drum, “with the courtesies shared between civilized people. Have you eaten?”

  Righteous Drum bowed in return. “We have eaten.”

  “Still,” Albert said, “I insist you have something to drink and perhaps a few savories on which to nibble. Will you accompany me to the kitchen?”

  “Certainly,” Righteous Drum answered for both himself and Honey Dream.

  Pearl and Nissa exchanged small smiles as they trailed the group into the kitchen. Now, if the rest of today’s venture would go so well.

  “Where is your little daughter this morning?” Righteous Drum asked Nissa as he settled into one of the chairs around the long table.

  “Lani has a play date,” Nissa said. “Joanne integrated her into a nice group of younger children whose older siblings are in school. Lani misses her cousins in Virginia, but this mob is shaping up into a good substitute. I’ll need to pick her up after lunch.”

  “By then,” Albert said from where, in a very non-imperial fashion, he had just put the kettle on to boil, “we should be done with what we can hope to achieve today.”

  “With whom shall we begin?” Honey Dream prompted. “With one of the ghosts?”

  Pearl admired the young woman’s regathering of her scattered poise. Surely Flying Claw, the young man Honey Dream had once openly boasted of as her “beloved,” must be foremost in her thoughts.

  But perhaps I am unfair to Honey Dream, Pearl thought. She and Righteous Drum had hoped to learn news of their family weeks ago. Instead what they have learned is that all huma
n populations are missing, and the Lands themselves have been drastically altered.

  Albert glanced at the clock set into the front of the stove.

  “It is rising the Double Hour of the Snake. That seems auspicious. Moreover, we have a Snake in our own company, and we have the Snake’s mah-jong set.”

  “Then we will start with Gentle Smoke,” Honey Dream said eagerly. “Very good. She is clearheaded and sagacious.”

  Tea was made and a full pot carried into Pearl’s office. By nine, the beginning of the Double Hour of the Snake, all was ready.

  The five of them—Pearl, Nissa, Albert, Honey Dream, and Righteous Drum—took up positions around the table. The extra leaves had been put in, so the table quite crowded the area in front of Pearl’s desk.

  We’ll need the space, though, Pearl thought. I hope we have enough.

  The tiles were spilled from the Snake’s mah-jong set—tiles made from Gentle Smoke’s own bone.

  “We’ll build the wall as usual,” Albert said, “with one exception. We need to pull the tile for Summer and reserve it. Oh, and let’s build the wall along the northern edge of the table. We’re going to need space.”

  Even as his fingers busily sorted through the 144 tiles on the table, seeking the Summer tile, Albert clarified for the benefit of the two from the Lands.

  “Each of the Thirteen Orphans has a single tile associated with him or her. Most of these come from the eight bonus tiles—the Flowers and Seasons. The rest are made up from the honors suits.”

  Nissa nodded. “Pearl was telling me about this just the other day. The Rabbit has a special association with the east wind tile, the Tiger with the flower tile for bamboo.”

  “The Snake,” Albert said, “is associated with summer because the element of the Snake is fire, and reptiles are most lively when the weather is warm.”

  “I’ve found Summer,” Pearl said, holding up a tile on which a leaping fish was depicted in elegant detail. “When we build the wall, leave a gap in the middle of the southeastern section.”

  “Because the Snake’s direction is south-southeast?” Honey Dream asked.

  “Precisely,” Albert confirmed.

  The wall was quickly built and Albert set the Summer tile in the gap that had been left, exposing the face rather than the blank bamboo back.

  “Pearl, you take charge for the next step,” Albert said.

  Pearl lifted the Tiger mah-jong set from where she had placed it on the floor near her feet, then spilled the tiles out onto an empty section of the table.

  “We’re going to build another wall so that it abuts on the south side of this one,” she said. “We’ll reserve the bamboo tile from the flowers and seasons set to place opposite the summer tile.”

  “I’ve got it here,” Nissa said, holding it up. The carved stand of bamboo was more representational than simple cylinders that represented the suit with the same name.

  Doubtless, Pearl thought morosely, if Des was here he would take this opportunity to remind us that the bamboo suit actually does not represent bamboo at all, but rather a string of coins—of Chinese cash—strung through the hole in the middle.

  A lump formed in her throat, but she reached for the cooling tea in her cup and washed it away. The time for tears would be later.

  If we fail.

  “One last wall,” Albert said when the wall from the Tiger’s set was completed. His eyes narrowed as he estimated the room left on the table. “We have room to place it to the east of the Tiger set. Nissa?”

  Nissa reached down and lifted up the box containing the Rabbit mah-jong set. She spilled out the tiles onto the southern end of the table, away from the completed walls.

  “Does it matter which,” Honey Dream asked a trace smugly, “east wind tile we hold out?”

  “It doesn’t,” Albert said, smiling serenely at her. “We’ll leave the gap this time in the center of the west wall.”

  Righteous Drum opened his mouth as if to ask a question, then shut it without speaking and helped shuffle the tiles. He was becoming increasingly dextrous with his one remaining hand. Pearl had spoken to him privately about a prosthetic—Dr. Andersen could be very discreet if the need arose and he was offered sufficient remuneration—but Righteous Drum had refused. “I will need to learn to function first without an arm. Later, when doing so has become second nature, and I can write and cast spells quickly, then perhaps I will consider an artificial arm. Now, though, I think I would come to rely upon it too much, and that would slow my retraining.”

  Pearl understood; a man of surprising depth and courage, this Righteous Drum. She hoped his wife and other children were still alive and unharmed. She knew that he doubted they were, and admired him even more for going after the truth so fiercely when he could have continued in delusion.

  When the Rabbit wall was finished, Albert poured himself tea, then addressed them.

  “I did not ask you to concentrate while we built the walls, because setting up the structures is not what is important. What will be is how we bridge them. There are several steps—and I must remind you, this spell is wholly theoretical, designed by the Exile Dragon, preserved in our archives, but, as far as I know, never used successfully. We’ve spent days going over it and working out the steps, because I suspect we won’t get many chances to try it. It uses a lot of ch’i.”

  Everyone nodded. Albert sipped his tea and continued.

  “When mah-jong is played as a game, many people refer to this first step as building the ‘Great Wall,’ as in the Great Wall of China.”

  He looked inquiringly at Righteous Drum and Honey Dream. Righteous Drum nodded.

  “We have—or at least had—such a wall in the Lands. It was a project dreamt of by Shih Huang Ti, the same emperor who Li Szu convinced to burn the books. The imprint of his works and dreams is very strong in the Lands.”

  “Good,” Albert said. “Then I don’t need to explain to you that the mahjong wall and the Great Wall bear no resemblance to each other.”

  “No,” Honey Dream agreed. “The Great Wall zigzags, partially to accommodate terrain, but also because it was constructed from segments of other walls that were already there. Mah-jong walls are perfectly square.”

  Nissa interjected herself into the lecture. “Des said that this was because we’re not really building the Great Wall, but we’re building a universe, and the Chinese thought—or I guess, think, because it’s true in the Lands—that the universe was square, or a cube.”

  “What we have done,” Albert went on, “is build three universes. The first represents the Lands, where Gentle Smoke should be. The second, the one we built from Pearl’s set, represents the guardian domains.”

  “More precisely,” Pearl said, “the western guardian domains where Pai Hu, the White Tiger of the West, has been kind enough to interest himself in our problems.”

  “That’s why you used the Tiger set,” Honey Dream said, nodding approval. “I thought that might be the reason.”

  “The last square represents this world,” Albert said, “what you call the Land of the Burning. We wanted to use the set tied to one of us here. We chose Nissa’s because the Cat is a rather anomalous figure—not properly associated with any of the Earthly Branches.”

  And because, Pearl thought, we did not want to wait until Shen or Deborah or Gaheris could get here. Honey Dream doesn’t realize how hard it has been for us to wait this long, but it seemed wise to give the scouts a chance to contact us, and nine days isn’t that long. . . .

  Or might it be too long?

  “Righteous Drum, our part in this is going to be easy,” Albert said. “We will do what in our system we call a Triple Knitting spell, supplying ch’i for the group effort.”

  “Our name is not as colorful,” Righteous Drum said, “but we have a similar spell. Who is the focal caster?”

  “Not any one of us, but rather the tiles themselves. You’ll feel they are receptive.”

  Righteous Drum laid his fingertips light
ly on the tiles closest to him. His eyebrows shot up.

  “Yes. Almost as if they have a life of their own.”

  “Not so much of their own,” Albert said, “but of our own. Honey Dream, in addition to contributing to the Triple Knitting, you will roll two dice and count off the walls, then two more and count the tiles.”

  “Yes. I know how this is done.”

  “Good. When you do the second count, draw the two tiles indicated and place them like this.” Albert took the spare tiles from Gentle Smoke’s set and stacked them like a short flight of stairs. “Touch them against the Summer tile.”

  Honey Dream nodded crisply.

  “Pearl, you’ll do the same within the Tiger square, but you’ll need to do the routine twice—once to connect with the Snake, once to connect with the Rabbit.”

  Pearl knew this. She’d helped Albert review the old spell, but she didn’t protest. The explanation was meant for the rest.

  Nissa was less patient—or perhaps more nervous.

  “And I,” she said, “finish off connecting the Tiger and the Rabbit. Then what happens?”

  “Then we concentrate on finding Gentle Smoke. We should feel a line of ch’i coursing through the avenue we have created. If all goes right, if the White Tiger of the West aids us as I have implored him to do, then our search should reach the Lands. What will happen there, I cannot say.”

  ‘We will find Gentle Smoke,” Honey Dream said firmly. “We will. We must.”

  “Anyone need a potty break?” Nissa asked, sliding her chair back, “because all of a sudden, I do.”

  Honey Dream looked momentarily indignant at this intrusion of mere biological concerns, but when Nissa left the room, Honey Dream quietly excused herself as well.

  On her way to her own bathroom, Pearl stopped to make certain the house phone ringer was off and the machine would take any calls.

  When such mundane necessities had been tended to, Albert took advantage of the disruption to move them around the table.

  “Nissa and Righteous Drum, if you won’t be too crowded, take your seats on the east side of the table. Honey Dream, you start on the north side, so you can reach the wall, but then take a seat on the south, next to your father. Pearl, we’ll put you on the west to start, but when you’re done moving tiles, go to the north. I’ll cover west. That way we’ll be in something like the correct order for our signs, and have all four directions covered.”