Nine Gates (20 page)

“Should we call the others?”

“I’m not wasting time to run upstairs,” Pearl said. “Might be perfectly normal thieves, and, if so, the wards will stop them, but if it’s someone else, I don’t think we should let them know we’ve detected them by shouting upstairs. There are windows open all through the house. The sound would carry.”

Shen nodded. “I’m coming with you.”

Pearl glanced back and saw he had a long-handled ink brush in his right hand. She smiled.

“Glad to have you.”

The brief exchange had carried them to the door that led out of the kitchen onto the patio. Pearl undid locks both mundane and otherwise, pocketed the key, and left her wards in
place. The door had a spring fastener and would lock behind them.

Together Pearl and Shen picked their way down the three stairs that took them onto the patio. Then Pearl led the way onto the path that led to the garage. Like all the paths in the overgrown but carefully tended jungle that was her garden, it twisted and curved, dispersing natural ch’i where it would do both the plants and the house they sheltered the most good.

Usually, Pearl liked her twisting paths, but tonight she could have wished for straighter lines, more direct access. A portion of her attention was anchored within the wards, and what she was receiving was very interesting.

Unlike a normal thief, who would find himself suddenly apprehensive and bored, who would wonder why these old wooden doors were so hard to force, who would decide there must be easier pickings elsewhere, and who would never know that these impulses were not generated by his own mind, whoever had touched Pearl’s ward had recognized it for what it was and had withdrawn.

However, in the time it had taken for Pearl and Shen to cross from her office to the back door, the would-be intruder had returned. This time he—and Pearl felt very certain her opponent was a male—had set out to render the ward quiescent, not so much deactivating it as muting it.

Pearl tasted his magic as it glided through her own, probing, tweaking, loosening. One of the indigenous traditions. Pearl didn’t know which, but there was nothing of the taste of the Lands here.

If I hadn’t been awake
, Pearl thought uneasily,
I might have been unaware. That first impulse might have dissolved into an uneasy moment in a dream.

They had reached the garage door. Before opening it, Pearl paused, extending her awareness to her other wards. She, Des, and Albert had set their protections in layers, since the garage itself would need to be used during the day—not only to park vehicles, but because if they sealed the garage,
inevitably they would discover that they needed something stored within.

Therefore, the lower level of the garage was warded so that the residents of Pearl’s household could go in and out without setting off alarms.

The upper level, where the apartment was, however, had been sealed so that no one but Pearl, Des, and Shen could gain access. The prisoners had been given a supply of food, and had running water and basic comforts. They were checked on twice a day—first thing in the morning, and last thing at night. Sometimes, over Pearl’s protests, Shen went out and talked to the prisoners, saying that isolation was horribly cruel. It was not an ideal situation, but it had worked for the six days—
Seven now
, thought Pearl—since the attack.

Whoever had triggered the ward had only touched the lower level. Pearl stood on her toes and looked through the glass window into the garage interior. Nothing. And that nothing was something. The street side of the garage had motion-sensitive lights. Whoever was out there—and she was certain someone was out there—had taken care not to activate them.

They’re good
, Pearl thought.
But I’m better.

Her nerves hummed happily, the way they had before stepping before a camera, before breaking into a song she knew would be listened to by hundreds of thousands of people. It was a very good feeling, but Pearl knew the danger of overconfidence, knew the abundant ch’i she had stored was humming in her veins, urging her to foolish action.

No “Take Two,” here
, she thought.
Make every step count.

Pearl looked over her shoulder and found Shen distant and abstracted, his ink brush dangling loosely from his fingers.

“I have them,” he said softly. “Three. One is infiltrating the wards. I traced back through him and found the others. One female. Another male. They are standing back across the street, waiting for the one who is working on the wards to finish.”

Pearl did not ask how Shen knew this. Dragons were far better at magic than were Tigers—and even if this had not been the case, Shen’s grandfather and teacher had been from the Lands, and had lavished knowledge on the grandson who had been the only good to come out of his daughter’s death in childbirth. Shen had always been better than her at magic.

Shen went on. “I’ve woken Des, sent a surge up through one of the wards he helped make. He knows to be quiet, not to make a light.”

Pearl nodded. A suspicion was seeping into her ch’i-charged nerves, a warning that told her that nothing was as simple as it seemed. Yes. Whoever was out there would probably like having their prisoners, but what if their goal was more complex?

We must be very careful
, Pearl thought.
They are across the street. That means they are technically not invading my lands, even if I know one is meddling with my wards. That meddling is skillful, would be hard to prove.

Pearl had great respect for their opponents. Unlike her father, she did not scorn the indigenous traditions of this world. She had not formally studied them, not learned their arts, for to do so any teacher would have demanded that she trade away some of the Orphans’ knowledge, and that was taboo, but Pearl had learned what she could.

And there is power other than magical power
, she thought.
There is manipulation other than skillful defusing of a ward. What if I was meant to feel that first intrusion? What if we are meant to do something impulsive, something that will withdraw even more of the tenuous support we have from the members of the indigenous traditions?

Pearl looked at Shen and saw from his slight nod, from the character he traced in the air with one fingertip, the one for “trap,” followed by the very usual question mark, that he, too, had his doubts about how to handle the situation.

Pearl glanced down at her watch: 2:15 a.m., about the time she and Shen had planned to leave the house in any case. The
probing had loosened, although not broken, one of her wards and had come up against another. Their opponent’s laborious unweaving must begin again.

Pearl smiled a wicked tiger’s smile.
Traps may be sprung, snapping closed, catching nothing. True, we will not catch those who set it, but then I don’t believe we wish to do so. I will know this one’s signature if we meet again. I expect Shen will recognize all three. That is something. Let us spring their trap.

She looked at Shen and grinned mischievously, then she slipped back along the garden path and opened the kitchen door, this time not bothering to do so quietly.

Reaching around the doorjamb, she switched on the array of lights that lined the paths and edge of the patio. They glowed quietly enough by the standards of polite company, but glaring after the nighttime darkness.

“Time to get going, Shen,” Pearl said, as if her companion was still inside. “I know it’s early.”

He had followed her back, and now he replied, his tones natural enough to demonstrate that the amateur theatrics they’d done as teenagers hadn’t been forgotten.

“It’s earlier for me than you. I’m still on New York time, remember? There it’s five-fifteen, early, but not quite god-awful.”

Des had descended the stairs. He was wearing a bathrobe of dark red Chinese brocade, his hairy calves and bare feet poking out under the hem.

The Rooster nodded at Pearl, his lips shaping a smile of greeting, but his eyes preternaturally solemn. Then he moved into her office, where a window gave a good view of the side street. Otherwise he gave no indication that he was present.

“Hang on,” Pearl said. “I’ve forgotten something.”

She hurried back into the office, and gathered up the already prepared bag of tools she and Shen would need to craft the wards at the warehouse. Treaty still rested in her hand, and she grabbed the sword’s sheath, but left the case behind.

The feeling of pressure on her wards was easing. Since
they had not been broken, they tightened back into their usual effectiveness.

I suppose I could be grateful that I don’t need to reset them
, Pearl thought,
but I’m still pissed.

Shen took the bag of tools from her, freeing her hands so that she could get to her car keys. Once in the garage, she switched on the light.

Leave them wondering if we knew they were there. They certainly didn’t expect us to be awake
.

In a moment, Pearl was backing the town car out onto the narrow street. She was out of practice, but at this early hour the cars that would later crowd the edges—overflow from the museum—were not yet there and she managed not to clip anything.

Shen peered out the window, New Yorker nervous about cars in tight spaces, calling occasional warnings to her as she backed. When they were straightened out and on the road, he poked her in the ribs.

“Gone, Ming-Ming, but they were there. I wonder if they wanted the prisoners or for us to do something foolish?”

“I suspect they would have settled for both,” Pearl said. Her phone rang. “Get that for me, would you? I bet it’s Des.”

It was. Shen held the phone so Pearl could listen in.

“Our visitors left as soon as the garage light went on,” Des said. “Two men and a woman. I didn’t get a clear enough look to be sure, but I think I recognized one of the men from his walk as a member of the Finch Society. Hot-tempered fellow, Polish nationalist, terrorist connections.”

Pearl nodded. The Finch Society was the local version of the Rock Dove Society. The trend for using bird-watching groups for cover was nationwide, enabling various local branches to invite visitors from out of the area without arousing suspicion.

Shen answered, “Sounds good. The wards seem to have reset, but you should check them.”

“Them and the prisoners both,” Des said, “but I think we’re safe for tonight.”

“I agree,” Shen said. “I think they were pushing, testing, seeing what they could manage. Maybe they got wind of the prisoners. Maybe they figured we would have taken less care with the garage than with other parts of the house, but Pearl and I think they may have been trying to prompt something rash.”

“At two in the morning?” Des said doubtfully.

“Never underestimate your opponent,” Pearl said.

“Pearl, Shen,” for a moment Des’s voice, even distorted as it was by a cell phone, sounded more like that of the little boy she had once taught, “do you think this is a coincidence? I mean, we plan a trip to the guardian domains, and then next thing we know, we’re being attacked—or at least Pearl’s house is.”

Shen replied after a thoughtful pause. “It is possible that this is no coincidence.”

“Does that mean,” Pearl asked sharply, “there is still an informant among us?”

Shen shook his head. “Not necessarily, Pearl. For one, whoever informed the Landers about the Thirteen Orphans was almost certainly coerced to do so.”

“That’s what Righteous Drum implied,” Des agreed. “He also said flat-out that the informant would have no reason to continue doing so.”

“And so requested that he not need to reveal who it was,” Pearl concluded. “And we agreed. Shen, if it isn’t that same informant, do you suspect another?”

Shen shook his head again. “No. We are not the only magical tradition to practice divination, Pearl. What I suspect is that in addition to setting purely human watchers on us, our adversaries—that consortium of which Tracy Frye boasted—has been regularly doing divinations or auguries. Such could not tell them precisely what we are doing, but it could indicate that we are intending on taking a major step, even, if they are clever enough to ask the right questions, that we are planning on setting up a gate.”

Pearl was so interested in what Shen was saying that she
nearly drove through a red light, an easy thing to do at this hour when the streets were nearly deserted.

“And if,” she said, “they could have prompted us to do something impulsive, something the paranoid would interpret as an attack, then they might be able to stop us, to insist on an observer, any number of things. Gates and bridges make people very nervous.”

The light changed to green, and Pearl resumed driving.

“Des,” she said, “we’re nearly to the warehouse. The Double Hour of the Tiger is nearly upon us, and more than ever Shen and I have work to do.”

The next
morning, directly after rush hour, they picked up Flying Claw and Honey Dream at Colm Lodge. The van was crowded, especially after Honey Dream and Flying Claw had added large duffel bags to the pile of gear already stacked in the back.

From his place at the wheel, Des said, “Trivia time. There are four guardian domains, each oriented to one of the four cardinal points. Our group would have an advantage in one of the four. Anyone want to guess which one?”

He’d directed the question to Brenda, Nissa, and Riprap, which was only fair. Honey Dream and Flying Claw probably already knew the answer. In fact, based on the smug expression on Honey Dream’s face, Brenda was willing to bet that the Snake, for one, certainly did.

Brenda thought quickly over what she’d learned about the Chinese perception of the universe. Four areas. Directionally oriented… In Chinese cosmology, there was a fifth direction—center—but that direction belonged to the Lands.

Wait! Brenda remembered something about the Tiger.
Both Tiger and Dragon were not only associated with signs of the zodiac, but with directions as well. Tiger was Guardian of the West. Dragon was Guardian of the East.

She blurted out her answer, eager to wipe that smirk off Honey Dream’s face. “West. Tiger. Tiger is the Guardian of the West. That’s our advantage. Foster… I’m sorry, Flying Claw is the Tiger. Somehow that will give us an edge.”