Five Odd Honors (54 page)

From the expressions she glimpses over the footlights, she’s doing it, too. They love her. All but one face, dour, set, arms crossed over a broad chest.

Ba-Ba. Daddy. Thundering Heaven.

He’s the only one without a smile for Ming-Ming, star of screen and stage.

Ming-Ming is used to it, and glances to his right where her mama always sits. Mama will have a smile, a smile as bright as Ming-Ming’s own, a warm, loving smile that never fails to ease the pain.

But Mama isn’t there. Where Mama always sits is another woman, a Chinese woman. This stranger woman’s hair is skinned back tightly from her forehead, lacking even the ornament of a part. Her lips are pursed in a disapproving frown, her eyes downcast. She wears a plain, high-necked tunic, sewn from matte black cotton, over equally ugly loose pants.

What shocks Ming-Ming most of all is that for all her meek posture, the woman’s hand rests with quiet possessiveness on Thundering Heaven’s thigh.

Ming-Ming’s feet falter in their flawless rhythm. She misses one dance step, then another. Now the stranger looks up. There is a smile on her face, a cruel smile, and the words she mouths are crueler still.

“Failure. Disappointment. Useless waste of your life and mine.”

The woman rises, and tugs at Thundering Heaven’s sleeve. They leave their seats. He follows the stranger woman from the theater. Ming-Ming hurries after, dancing fast, the beat set by her wildly pounding heart.

The band playing in Ming-Ming’s heart screams protest, plays cacophony, but Ming-Ming doesn’t hear. She follows her father and the stranger. They walk briskly, but without hurrying, down narrow streets bordered by the walls of tall buildings. The walls are almost entirely covered by ragged flyers printed in English and in several dialects of Chinese. Random fragments of those written words tug for Ming-Ming’s attention, but she will not let herself be diverted.

She dances after, feet tired now, but unable to stop.

They have come to a river. Thundering Heaven stands, water gushing from a hole in his chest.

The woman kneels by the water. She is weeping, weeping. Ming-Ming senses that the woman’s tears feed the river, and that the river’s wellspring is achored in the deepest soul of Thundering Heaven.

The river waters run fast, salt congealing on the banks, forming crystal sands.

The woman is lying in the river, facedown. Wisps of hair have come loose from that ugly braid. Her body is drifting aimlessly. Swelling, bloating.

Ming-Ming dances and her tap shoes crunch flat notes on the tear-salt sands. The stranger woman is drowned, surely drowned, buoyed up into a semblance of swimming by those racing, tear-saturated waters. The current moves her, making her corpse swim an ungainly water ballet.

Is she waving? Ming-Ming moves closer, closer, her feet dancing in the salt sands, the rushing water a susurrus of sound. Ming-Ming looks.

The drowned woman rolls over in the waters. Her round face is bloated. Something has been chewing on the flesh of one cheek. But her lips are entire, and she smiles a sad, wistful, angry smile.

“Come to me, little thief, useless child. Come to me, ruination of hope and love and laughter. Come to me. Come to me. We will be a family. A family of three.”

And Thundering Heaven is there in the waters, one arm around the woman, the other open to welcome Ming-Ming as she was never welcomed by him in life.

“Come to me,” repeats the woman. “Come to me, and be drowned.”

Pearl sat
up in bed, her head heavy with the thick feeling that told her the sleeping drug had not yet released its hold. Staggering to her aching feet, grabbing at the bedpost to steady herself, Pearl dragged herself toward the bathroom.

She’d splash some water on her face. That would wake her up. She could wash the salt off, too. Her mouth was so dry, so very dry.

Although the effort was tremendous, Pearl managed to raise a hand and touch her face. She expected to feel salt encrusted against the skin, but her fingertips met nothing but the usual soft texture of her carefully maintained skin, nurtured with the latest developments in sunscreens and moisturizers.

“Dream,” Pearl said, and heard her voice thick and muddled. Her tongue and lips felt fat and swollen, but she forced them to work. “It was only a dream.”

Only a dream,
Pearl thought.
Why do people always say that? Dreams are the most real thing there is. Dreams are what drive us to take action, to plan, to persist. Dreams might make a man . . .

There was an insight there, but her heavy mind could not hold it.

Pearl passed through the bathroom door and knelt to run water into the tub. She leaned heavily against the smooth, hard porcelain, then dipped her face into the water. The cool wetness felt so good. It was washing the salt away, the salt of that horrible river. The salt of the tears of dreams lost, dreams aspired to, dreams never fulfilled.

Pearl wondered what breathing the water would feel like. Cool, probably. Soothing. Washing away all this thickness and heaviness. So much nicer than air. Air wasn’t really there. Air wasn’t even an element. It couldn’t do anything for you. Water was an element. Water would wash away her cares. Water was there, right there, just below. . . .

“Pearl!”

The scream was high and shrill. Rough hands jerked Pearl back with such force that she slipped and would have fallen. Those same hands managed to adjust, to catch her.

Pearl shook her head. Through the muzziness that slowed her thoughts, she saw Nissa, half soaked, water plastering her nightshirt to her full, round breasts, gaping at her in horror.

“Pearl! What were you going to do? If Lani hadn’t . . .” Nissa motioned wildly, as if she couldn’t manage the words. “You would have drowned!”

Brenda was standing framed in the doorway.

“Oh, God! What can I do?”

“Help me get her to her bed. She’s heavier than she looks.”

Two sets of hands moved Pearl to the bed. A little voice, grubby with sleep, spoke.

“Mama? Wha’s wrong?”

“Auntie Pearl slipped in the bath, Lani. Please go to bed. Everything is going to be all right now.”

A little hand, gripping Pearl’s own very hard, so hard the healing bones ached a little. Being lifted. The soft firmness of her mattress underneath her. Lani’s voice, determined, perfectly awake now.

“I’m staying. Auntie Pearl had a bad dream, yes?”

“Yes. Probably.” Nissa’s voice, coming from the bathroom now. Softer. “Geez, Breni. It looks like Pearl tried to drown herself in the tub. I hear someone moving around upstairs, probably Shen or Albert. Don’t let them in, okay? Pearl would just die if they saw her half soaked and her hair all over. Let me get her decent.”

“She looks like she nearly died already,” Brenda said in soft, shocked tones. “I knew she didn’t look right when I got here. I didn’t want to say anything, but she looked nearly transparent. I thought it was just those bad nights.”

“Go watch the hall,” Nissa persisted. “We’ll talk later.”

Nissa’s hands on her, competent, steady. Hands that had dressed and undressed many less cooperative than Pearl. In the background, the gurgle of water running from the tub, Brenda’s voice, tight, but in control, explaining. Someone’s feet moving down the stairs.

There would be tea, soon. Tea to wash the taste of salt tears from her mouth.

Pearl’s head was losing its muzziness. Perhaps the dream was wearing off. Perhaps the drug was wearing off.

“Nissa,” Pearl said, and her voice was closer to her own. “Thank you.”

“I nearly didn’t make it in time,” Nissa said, and her voice held shocked practicality. “I was so tired I didn’t hear the water running. Lani did. Lani woke me up and asked who was taking a bath so late.”

“Lani.” Pearl squeezed the little hand that had never let go of her own except when the logistics of getting her dry and into a clean nightgown demanded. “Lani, thank you.”

“It was the dead lady,” Lani said. “Wasn’t it?”

Nissa gasped, but Pearl was beyond being shocked.

“I think so. Have you seen her?”

“When I’m sleeping, yeah. She’s not nice. I thought she was just a bad dream. Scary.”

“So did I,” Pearl said. “But I think I know who she is now. And now that I know, I don’t think she can scare me anymore.”

Pearl hoped with all her heart that she was right.

Brenda knew Pearl must be in worse shape than she looked—and she didn’t look very strong—because the next morning’s conference was held in Pearl’s bedroom.

Nissa and Lani sat up on Pearl’s bed while the rest of them—Albert, Shen, Parnell, Honey Dream, and Righteous Drum—crowded on chairs squeezed into the available space. Brenda herself sat on the windowsill.

“I believe I know,” Pearl said, “who has been attacking me—and why those attacks have been able to get through my wards.”

“Ghost lady,” Lani said, lowering her sippy cup and looking very serious.

“That’s right, Lani,” Pearl said. “Ghost lady. I wonder how you knew?”

“Seed her,” Lani said seriously, “when I was sleeping.”

Pearl looked as if she wanted to ask more, but Brenda saw her shake her head slightly, as if reminding herself that there would be plenty of time to talk to Lani—or rather, there would be plenty of time if they won against Li Szu.

And no time at all if we lose.

Pearl continued, “I believe my attacker was the ghost of my father’s first wife. I can’t remember how old I was when I learned my father had been married before. I may well have been as young as Lani. Later, I learned that Thundering Heaven’s first wife had been Chinese, that he had married her after the Orphans came to the United States, and that he divorced her because she could not bear children. I never even knew her name.”

“Tea Rose,” Shen said unexpectedly. “My grandfather mentioned her a time or two. The name stayed with me, because it was the same as a woman made famous by Genthe’s photographs.”

“Tea Rose,” Pearl said softly. “Well, if my vision of her last night is any thing to go on—and we know it may not be—this Tea Rose was never as lovely as Genthe’s model. She was, however, a good, solid Chinese woman. I think Thundering Heaven might have even loved her.”

“You base this upon?” Righteous Drum said stiffly.

“The fact that I believe he visited her grave after she committed suicide by drowning,” Pearl said, “and that then her kuei seized hold of him.”

Honey Dream said, “Kuei. Yes. That is quite possible. The ghosts of suicides are especially potent, and those with magical power are particularly vulnerable to manipulation. I see. Thundering Heaven was not a fool, so he would not have visited her grave unless he cared for her.”

“Or was asked to identify the body, perhaps,” Albert said. “Let’s not get too carried away.”

“I am not,” Pearl said. “I saw how he looked at her.”

“How do you know she died by drowning?” Parnell asked into the uncomfortable silence that followed.

“Because,” Pearl said, “she tried to drown me last night. Kuei are potent ghosts, but they are not known for great imagination.”

Pearl sighed and looked down at her folded hands. “I am not trying to justify Thundering Heaven’s actions—not now, not when I was a child—but I believe that the ghost of Tea Rose must have infiltrated his spirit. I also believe that she used the guilt Thundering Heaven felt over divorcing her, over choosing the Orphans’ cause over his own desires, to manipulate him.”

Shen said quietly, “You do realize, Pearl, that understanding Thundering Heaven makes him no whit less dangerous.”

“Oh, I know,” Pearl said. “It may make him more so. It’s always harder to fight someone who is not merely a faceless villain. And I do plan to fight—and to use the advantage they have given me.”

“Advantage?” Albert said. “I don’t understand.”

“Tea Rose was able to attack me through my connection to Thundering Heaven. I believe I can attack her—and him—through that same link. I may even be able to use it to physically make a bridge into the Lands—a bridge that would carry only me, true, but, as Parnell explained so eloquently last night, we need to slip in under Li Szu’s radar.”