Nine Gates (15 page)

That sounded like a lesson Flying Claw himself had been forced to learn, Brenda thought. She wondered if Lani, now on all fours, prowling among the legs of a chair, had heard.

“Did you give Lani the tiger outfit?” Brenda asked. “It’s really cute.”

Flying Claw shook his head. “I didn’t. There are similar outfits in my homeland. Parents evoke the tiger to protect their children from the five poisonous creatures: the scorpion, snake, centipede, lizard, and toad.”

Brenda had a fleeting thought that being a tiger hadn’t protected Flying Claw from a certain very poisonous Snake, but she didn’t say anything. For the moment, Flying Claw was relaxed and smiling as he watched Lani prowl among the chair legs. Brenda didn’t want to ruin the mood. She turned to Lani.

“Lani, did Des give you your tiger clothes?”

Lani emerged from under the chair and bounced a few times to show off her stripes, although the quick glance she gave Brenda’s leg showed she hadn’t forgotten her transgression.

“Nope. Grr-Harris did. A present.”

“Harris?” Brenda guessed this might be one of Pearl’s
friends, and she wondered that she hadn’t heard the doorbell.

“No! No! No!” Lani said indignantly. “Grr-harris. You know. Your dad.”

“My dad!” Brenda looked side to side, as if Gaheris Morris might appear from thin air. “Is he here? I didn’t know he was coming. I mean, I thought he was coming next week. He’s here now?”

Flying Claw took mercy on her. “Gaheris arrived a short while ago. We let him in via the garden gate because Nissa said you had fallen asleep in here. I came in hoping to catch Lani before she could disturb you. She wanted to see herself in a mirror.”

Lani jumped up. “Mirror! I forgot!”

She dashed out of the room and Brenda heard her making her laborious way upstairs to where a floor-length mirror adorned the bathroom door.

Flying Claw took a step back so he could keep an eye on the child, but he didn’t follow her. Instead he gave Brenda a smile that mingled friendliness and concern.

“Did she hurt you? Human mouths are very dirty. If she broke the skin…”

Brenda extended her leg so he could see. “No harm. Let’s not tell Nissa. I think Lani got overexcited, and she’s not likely to do anything like that again.”

Flying Claw looked doubtful. “Should we undermine the authority of a parent?”

“This once,” Brenda said. “Nissa’s got enough on her mind without worrying that Lani’s biting people.”

“If you say so,” Flying Claw said.

Then, before Brenda could react, he knelt and ran his hand over the place where Lani’s tooth marks were already fading. The touch was perfectly clinical, but Brenda felt her skin tingle.

“No broken skin,” Flying Claw said, rising to his feet. “So I will not tell Nissa, but I will speak to Lani about the responsibilities of being a Tiger.”

The back door from the patio into the kitchen opened and Nissa called, “Lani?”

“She’s upstairs,” Brenda called. “Growling at herself in the mirror. Flying Claw just told me my dad’s here.”

Nissa came in and stood at the bottom of the stairs. The sounds of Lani being a tiger drifted down.

“Gaheris arrived about a half hour ago. I knew you were worn out from this morning’s lesson, so we decided to let you nap. Sorry about Tiger-paws up there.”

Nissa started mounting the stairs to retrieve her daughter. “Did your dad give you and your brothers presents like that?”

“And worse, sometimes,” Brenda admitted with a laugh, “at least from the point of view of order and peace. There was the Fourth of July he gave us water balloons and slingshots for throwing them. Then there was the Thanksgiving we got things like kazoos that were supposed to be turkey calls and…”

Nissa laughed. “I don’t envy your mother.”

“Oh, Mom had the last word on everything,” Brenda assured her. “We soaked each other with the water balloons outside, and she confiscated the slingshots before we could get any bright ideas about throwing more than water balloons. The turkey calls were restricted to outside, too.”

Flying Claw had been listening avidly. For a moment, Brenda saw a wistful look cross his features, a look that had been practically omnipresent when Flying Claw had been Foster and had lacked a memory. It made him curiously familiar again.

Brenda realized she’d been so busy being shy, fearful, and disoriented around Flying Claw that she’d never asked about his family and childhood—something she’d always wanted to do when he was Foster. She was about to ask when the back door opened again.

Des’s voice called, “We’re getting ready to have a conference. Grab Lani and bring her out. Everyone else is already here.”

Brenda glanced over at Flying Claw, but the moment of
gentle rapport they had shared had vanished. Once again he was the young warrior, his lean body alert for the call to duty. He gave her a polite nod, and headed for the patio without a backward glance.

Brenda realized
that staring forlornly after Flying Claw was going to get her less than nowhere, so she reached down and scooped up the book she’d been reading from where it had fallen to the floor. Dull as it was, it was a book, and the already strong love she had for the written word before she’d come here had only been enhanced by her studies.

“Nissa?” Brenda called up the stairs. “Did you hear what Des said?”

“We’re coming,” Nissa said, “as soon as Lani and I take care of a rather embarrassing accident.”

Brenda understood. Lani had been toilet-trained before her arrival at Pearl’s house, but she was still not even three years old, and accidents did happen.

Brenda thought about offering to help, but Nissa would have the matter under control. Instead, Brenda dove into the ground-floor powder room, rinsed the staleness of sleep from her mouth, and ran a comb through her hair. Before finishing her business, she glanced down at her leg. The little tiger’s bite had almost vanished, but the skin still tingled when she thought of Flying Claw’s touch.

Outside, Brenda made a beeline for where her father sat in one of the deck chairs, a beer in one hand, listening to something Waking Lizard was explaining. Gaheris Morris was a good listener, so he didn’t leap up and greet his daughter when he saw her. He did give her a slight grin to let her know he’d seen her.

Gaheris Morris looked no more Chinese than did Shen Kung, who had arrived yesterday from New York with Pearl—and for similar reasons, although the divergence from the ethnic Chinese had come later in the Rat’s family. Exile Rat had gotten his heir on a mainland Chinese woman. Second Rat, therefore, had been ethnically Chinese. However, like many of the Orphans, who were eager to hide within the general populace once they emigrated to the United States, Second Rat had used magical arts to alter his appearance.

Pictures Brenda had seen showed Second Rat looking more like an Eastern European. He had married an American woman of mostly German heritage. Their son—Brenda’s grandfather—had been reared American, and had been very resistant to learning any of the Orphan’s arts. If asked, he identified himself as German-American, never mentioning his father’s contribution at all.

Second Rat—Brenda actually found it easier to think of her great-grandfather like that—had told his son—Third Rat, Grandpa—that if Gaheris was not taught the Exiles’ traditions Grandpa would be disinherited.

The Rat’s love for gain had overcome rebellion—as Second Rat had certainly known it would. Even so, Gaheris had not had an easy time with his dad where Gaheris’s training was concerned.

Gaheris’s mother, Brenda’s much-loved Grandma Elaine, was Scotch-Irish and as romantic-minded a soul as ever walked through a cornfield and imagined it the rolling hills of Eire. Grandma Elaine was the one who had insisted on naming her son after an Arthurian hero. When she heard of Second Rat’s demand, she had strongly supported the idea of Gaheris learning arcane lore—even if she would have preferred that lore to have been one that involved Sidhe folk under the hill and harps of gold to one that centered around making and breaking mah-jong tiles.

So mothered by a Celtic Romantic, fathered by a German-Chinese American, the current Rat of the Thirteen Orphans looked in no way the scion of the heritage from which he
drew his power. Curling reddish-brown hair framed a face ruddy with the sun and lightly freckled. Gaheris’s bright, active eyes were hazel green, and his body lean and wiry. When he rose to hug Brenda, she realized once again that they were nearly the same height—she might even be a little taller—and the realization made her curiously protective of her dad.

Brenda pulled a pillow over next to her dad’s chair, snagged a beer from the ice chest, and was pleased that Gaheris didn’t question her right to a drink—even if she was still, technically, underaged.

Sipping from the beer, Brenda scanned the group. Happily, even with the refreshment table that dominated the center of their loose circle, the brick patio provided ample space beneath the grapevine-overgrown ramada for the large group that had gathered there. In addition to the seven now residing at Pearl’s house, there were the four from the Lands, Albert Yu, and the newly arrived Gaheris Morris.

And that totals thirteen—or twelve adults, one Lani
, Brenda thought.
It’s funny. When I learned about the Thirteen Orphans, they sounded like such a small group, so tightly knit that I never considered all the disagreements they would have. When we’re all grouped up like this, thirteen seems like a pretty large number, so large I find myself hoping that we’ll reach some sort of agreement—especially since the Landers refusal to admit that Honey Dream was snooping has caused some pretty hard feelings.

Albert Yu began the meeting by the simple expedient of clearing his throat and saying, “Now that we’re all here, and relatively settled, Gaheris says he has something rather disturbing to tell us.”

That’s why I didn’t know Dad was coming
, Brenda thought.
This visit wasn’t planned. This isn’t going to be good.

Pearl saw worry on the faces of the three apprentices, and tried to make her own features look confident and serene, as
if nothing—not even something that would make Gaheris Morris spend the money for an emergency airfare—could disturb her. Nonetheless, a sense of dread spread through her gut.

“Yesterday morning,” Gaheris began, “I was working in my office back in South Carolina when my secretary rang through to say someone wanted to speak with me about a possible deal.

“Now, with what I do, this sort of approach isn’t really common—at least not these days. Unique Wonders produces personalized promotional items: anything from a gross of keychains to a thirty-foot-high plastic replica of a team mascot. Our business comes in mostly through two different streams—big deals I drum up in face-to-face pitches to clients, smaller but steady deals that come in through our Web site. These days, clients don’t just drop in cold and offer to do any business that’s worth my time, so I told Etta to tell the caller I was engaged.

“Etta got this strange look on her face, and said, ‘The lady said she thought you’d say something like that, and I was to tell you that she was here about the Thirteen Orphans.’

“Well, I guess Etta probably thought I was as crazy as my caller, because when the Thirteen Orphans were mentioned I told Etta to show the lady in. My caller proved to be a woman I’ve met in passing, a member of the Rock Dove Society by the name of Tracy Frye.”

Pearl raised her eyebrows. “I met Ms. Frye during my recent trip to New York. A difficult person. An ambitious one as well.”

Gaheris nodded. “I agree. Tracy came in, and once Etta had left, Tracy turned around and made certain the door was shut all the way. Then, without so much as a ‘by your leave,’ she cast a ward for privacy. Did it so easily, I was glad she didn’t have anything nastier prepared—though since my ‘return’ after my first encounter with our new friends here in that LoDo parking garage…”

Gaheris shot a grin at the four from the Lands, but his
gaze rested particularly on Flying Claw. “I’ll admit I go about a bit more prepared.”

“There is wisdom,” Flying Claw said, his voice so level that Brenda couldn’t be sure if he was serious or teasing, “in learning from past experience.”

“Is there any other kind?” Gaheris asked. “When you figure out how to get future experience, let me know. We’ll cut a deal.

“But, to return to my visitor… After casting her ward, Tracy plopped herself down in my client chair and gave me a smile that wasn’t in the least friendly. She’s a tough woman, reminds me of a railing in a split-log fence. She has a reputation for figuring that anything that isn’t nailed down is fair game for those grasping fingers of hers.

“Tracy Frye swallowed that nasty smile and tried to look nice. Then she said, ‘Mr. Morris, I’m not here to buy any of that plastic garbage you sell—although I might stretch the point if you were selling mah-jong sets and the rules to a certain form of the game.’

“Well, I don’t know if you’ll believe me, but she was so rude and so full of herself, that I wasn’t even offended. When I got done laughing, I said to her, ‘Sorry, Ms. Frye. I don’t sell mah-jong sets with any but the standard set of rules. Now, I can get you a nice line on some good-looking molded plastic sets straight out of China, but adapted for the Occidental market with the winds, dragons, and numbers marked. They even come in vinyl cases that look like nothing so much as tacky vinyl. Retail price runs between sixty and seventy dollars apiece, with wholesale price set by the size of the lot.’