Five Odd Honors (62 page)

She had one Dragon’s Breath still hanging on her wrist. Her other attack amulets were in the pack she’d taken off because her tortured back couldn’t bear the pressure. Sure, she’d stuffed a few more amulets into her pockets, but it would take time to get them out.

She had to make this one pay.

Flying Claw was moving now, moving faster than Brenda thought was possible. She did her best to live up to that example, forcing herself to trot when she hadn’t thought she could even walk.

Li Szu, absorbed in his own preparations, confident in his protections, did not make any move to avoid the two battered figures who approached him. Not until Shen roared out a short phrase in Chinese, a phrase Brenda’s ears heard as “Release and combine!” did he seem to acknowledge he could be in danger.

Shen’s spells burst forth in a torrent that stripped the spells of protection away from Li Szu, layer by layer, rainbow hues dimming as they were swallowed by the golden light of Shen’s magic.

Brenda ran forward and cast her Dragon’s Breath, willing it to burn this horrible man, to melt that smug expression from his face once and for all.

All her fire did was burn against the remnants of the last fragments of protective magic, turning them to jeweled ash that heaped at Li Szu’s feet.

But Flying Claw was there, and his ravaged arms were strong and steady as he swung the heavy sword toward Li Szu’s chest. Brenda saw Flying Claw faintly haloed in green light and knew that for this moment he was as much the Tiger as he was the young man she had thought she loved.

Flying Claw’s ferocity was terrible. The blade passed through the layers of silk that wrapped Li Szu as if the protective charms embroidered on them were nothing more than twists of thread, although they spat sparks in an effort to defend their wearer.

“Be gone!” Flying Claw snarled, his voice so rough as to be hardly recognizable, but the words perfectly understandable. “We are what you rejected. How dare you set yourself up as our god! Be gone!”

Li Szu had said nothing to this point, his lips still shaping his spell even as Brenda’s fire burned away his shield, then, when the first sword blow hit him, paralyzed with shock.

Now, his voice no longer cold, but shrill with fear and anger, he began to yell. Brenda felt the power coming up from the Lands in answer to that yell. Without thought for her own safety, once again she dove at him.

This time she took him out at the ankles.

Flying Claw’s sword came down and sliced off Li Szu’s head.

Even when the head rolled free, still the lips tried to shape words, but the phrase was never finished. Li Szu was beyond drawing breath.

And Flying Claw, bringing down the sword once more, split Li Szu’s skull in two, just to make sure.

Resolution did
not come at once, although when Pearl carried the pieces of Li Szu’s shattered head into the corridor the emperor’s forces had surrendered. That surrender cascaded slowly throughout this stronghold, and was reported as flowing out through the Lands.

Conquest by violence was probably the most traditional way the Jade Petal Throne changed hands. The people of the Lands were, if not quite like the people of China in anything else, as sincerely attached to tradition.

It did not hurt that Li Szu had been an unpopular ruler, not content merely with reigning, but determined to restructure the Lands to suit his peculiar personal vision—a vision in many ways the antithesis of everything the Lands were.

Flying Claw’s words as he struck down Li Szu had been heard by many, and were repeated as the news of the coup spread.

Despite Li Szu’s death and the prudent flight or abject surrender of his major advisors, there was still some question as to who, precisely, would sit on the Jade Petal Throne. There was no doubt that Flying Claw was the official slayer of the emperor, but he had declined the throne, saying he lacked both the training and the temperament to be emperor.

What Flying Claw did not say was that he looked like a monster, and that even though his wounds had been treated, he was in very bad shape, both physically and mentally. So, to varying degrees, were the other scouts.

Des and Riprap had come through the least scathed of the eight. Des had explained the reason for their less violent treatment: “Li Szu was fascinated that the five ‘ghosts’ had been permitted to come back from the dead. I think he was curious to see whether their hold on life was stronger because of that. In contrast, Riprap and I were mere mortals, and had to be handled with a little more care lest we die and the affiliations he was after flee to our heirs.”

Loyal Wind felt Des’s claim that he and Riprap had received more mild treatment was admirable, because, despite this greater “care” not to do them damage, both men were severely injured. Moreover, their injuries were peculiar enough that Pearl had felt that not even her tolerant and underinquisitive Dr. Andersen could be expected to treat them without comment. Therefore, once the Lands were secured, all the injured had been brought back from the sidhe into the Lands for care.

Then Brenda had closed the gate into the sidhe, although her blond cavalier, Parnell, and the small, fierce spirit called Wasp had remained in the Lands in some vaguely defined diplomatic capacity.

The chief physician who came to tend to the wounded proved to be one of the bright spots in this dark time, for she was Flying Claw’s elder sister, the sage and healer, Joyful Promise.

Despite fears that they might have been executed, the families of Righteous Drum, Flying Claw, and the late Waking Lizard were all discovered to be alive. Their property had been confiscated and given to supporters of the new regime, and the “village” to which they had been relocated was little better than a concentration camp. However, no one had been slain or even too roughly handled, probably because of their value as potential hostages.

Joyful Promise was a healer of considerable merit, employing both mystic and purely medicinal remedies. Released from captivity, she had requested—insisted—that she be permitted to use her skills to relieve the injuries of those who had risked all to overthrow Li Szu.

Her skillful hands and interesting ointments had done a great deal to relieve the pain of Loyal Wind’s whip-torn body. However, one day as she worked energy manipulations to assure the mending of some of the worst of Loyal Wind’s lacerated muscles, she had confessed that healing her younger brother’s extensive mutilations was beyond her abilities.

Tears bright in her eyes, Joyful Promise had confided that perhaps—but not certainly, for nothing was certain in the Lands—healing Flying Claw was beyond anyone’s ability.

The three women—Nine Ducks, Gentle Smoke, and Copper Gong—also had injuries that nothing but time could heal, for rape had been among the torments to which they had been subjected. Joyful Promise said that none were pregnant, but that was small relief.

Loyal Wind felt guilty gratitude that he—and apparently the other men—had been spared rape, although from something that flashed in Flying Claw’s eyes when the topic was raised, Loyal Wind wondered if the young man, so beautiful before Thundering Heaven had taken knife and razor to him, had indeed been spared.

He wasn’t about to ask, and Flying Claw was not talking, not about that or anything else. He did brighten when his sister came to him, and again later as she told him details about various family members, but he did not become talkative, even when Brenda—fiercely refusing to leave the Lands, though everyone knew she could do so with honor—came and sat for long hours beside him as he pretended to sleep on his cot.

It was Brenda who burst into the suite of rooms that served as an infirmary with the good news that Righteous Drum and Albert Yu and all the others who had entered the Lands via the Ninth Gate had finally arrived.

Their journey had been substantially shortened, for after the death of Li Szu the ch’i of the Lands had resumed something of its normal intensity. With the easier use of magic, the layers of obstacles Li Szu had set around his “perfected” Center had become much more passable.

Shen had established communication with Albert and Righteous Drum, reassuring them that the change in the ch’i flow that they had already detected was not a sign of some new disaster, but the precise reverse.

Further speeding their arrival, various of the local denizens who had been pushed out of their places in Li Szu’s reordering were eager to return to the Center. Several dragons had offered their ser vices in gratitude for what had been done. Li of the Iron Crutch and two of his immortal companions had shown up, still looking for their island, and were happy to assist those who had gotten rid of what the ever irreverent Li persisted in referring to as “that inconvenience who has polluted my name.”

The entire expanded group had arrived with a flurry of questions and a great deal of enthusiasm. Righteous Drum and Honey Dream had been reunited with the family they feared lost. Then they had applied themselves withalmost indecent enthusiasm to negotiating just who would rule these reclaimed, but considerably more chaotic than usual, Lands.

Only one person did not seem precisely happy about the arrival of the last part of their small army, and that was the person who had announced it so joyfully.

But then Brenda Morris was the only one of them still with a fight on her hands, and Loyal Wind knew she wasn’t at all certain she could win.

“Breni.” Dad’s voice caught up with Brenda as she was leaving the infirmary. “Wait. I want to talk to you. Privately.”

Brenda went to the infirmary every day to keep the invalids company. Okay, especially to be near Flying Claw, but she spent time with the others, too, playing board games with them as they sat or more often lay awkwardly propped up with pillows and rolled blankets in what ever position gave them the most relief. All the ghosts were badly hurt. Although technically they had living families, they had been dead to those families for more than a hundred years, so there were none to visit them.

Of course,
Brenda thought, turning to acknowledge her father’s call.
There are times that being dead to your family would make life a lot simpler.

“Dad,” she said, and motioned down the hall to where a series of suites had been set aside for their use, “why don’t we go into my room?”

“Brenda,” Gaheris said as soon as they were in the room and settled onto the silk brocade cushions of two elaborately carved chairs. “It’s time we talked about getting you home. You know that Righteous Drum and Shen opened a gate that will link this Center to the Ninth Gate. Nissa went back right away because of Lani. I think you should go back, too. I’ll be coming in a day or two. I’ve let business drag without me for too long.”

“Dad,” Brenda said, drawing in a deep breath. “I’m not sure I’m ready to go home.”

“You’re missing school,” he reminded her.

“I am seriously considering,” Brenda said, taking in a deep breath, “dropping out of school, at least for now.”

Gaheris Morris started to say something, but Brenda held up her hand and, miracle of miracles, he shut up.

“There’s a lot I need to know,” Brenda said. “A lot that has nothing to do with American History and British Literature and all that. I thought I wanted to major in political science or maybe economics or accounting. Now, now I think I
need
—” She stressed the word. “—to major in magic and swordplay, and I can’t learn those at USC.”