Five Odd Honors (61 page)

He sucked and winced, sucked and winced, eager need and acute pain warring so visibly that Pearl felt tears start in her eyes.

But Pearl wasted no time on pity either. Allowing herself a slug of the rice wine, she assessed her own condition. Her first Dragon’s Tail was down, so she cast another. Then, because she would not be able to defend Flying Claw when she went to find Shen and Brenda, she broke another amulet, setting the Tail it contained to protect him.

Crossing to the heavy door that seemed to be the only entrance or ex it from the room, Pearl listened. Not surprisingly, the heavy, metal-banded door was built so that sound would not penetrate. There was a jailer’s peephole, though, and she eased that open.

What she heard was less than reassuring. Footsteps, rapid and purposeful, were coming down the corridor. Many footsteps, whose matched cadence announced without words: “military.”

Pearl laid a hand on Treaty at her belt. Then she closed the peephole and stood to one side, where she would be out of direct sight when the door was open, but not blocked from action by its opening.

There was a thudding on the door; a deep, muffled voice shouted: “Thundering Heaven, open in the name of the lord!”

Pearl did nothing, hoping against hope there was only one key, that they would leave.

That hope was nearly instantly dashed. There was a sharp click, and the door began to open into the room.

Pearl raised Treaty, focusing hard on her promise to protect Flying Claw, knowing Treaty would fight better if in defense of a promise.

A voice, cold and perfectly measured, spoke from the corridor outside the door.

“I see Thundering Heaven. It seems I heard his call too late to bring him aid, but perhaps I am not too late to avenge him.”

At the cold precision of that voice, Pearl took an involuntary step back, then another, moving rapidly to stand near Flying Claw.

Two soldiers, armed and armored, entered, then two more. They fanned out, seeming unmoved by the carnage within the room.

A man in court robes followed them. Protection spells shimmered around him in a rainbow aura.

“I am Li Szu,” he said formally. “The punishment for patricide is death.”

Without discussion, Brenda, Shen, and Parnell turned toward the shouting. Wasp, always fierce, grown fiercer since the discovery of how the prisoners had been treated, flew ahead to scout the route, saving them innumerable turns down blind alleys.

Palm upraised, strange, multifaceted eyes bright, Wasp mimed just peeking around the corner, then cupped one pointed ear to indicate they should listen.

Brenda sneaked forward and crouched low, figuring that if anyone did glance in this direction, they were likely to focus at standing height. Down the corridor a few paces was a heavy door.

A man wearing light armor—a breastplate, greaves, and a light helmet—was inserting a key into the lock. Behind him stood three other men, armored much as he was, and behind them a man in understatedly elegant robes. This man shimmered with magic, protective, Brenda thought, but she wasn’t sure.

Behind him stood several more armored men. Most looked eager and intent, but one or two looked a little scared.

The guard with the key pushed the door open, then stood so that while he blocked it, the man in the robes would have a clear line of sight into the room.

“I see Thundering Heaven,” said the man in the robes, his impassive face becoming, if possible, more impassive. “It seems I heard his call too late to bring him aid, but perhaps I am not too late to avenge him.”

He made a motion with his hand and the guard with the key, followed closely by three others, entered the room, drawing swords as they went.

The man in the robes followed them, moving, Brenda noted, at an angle that meant he would stand behind those protecting ranks.

“I am Li Szu,” came the cool, precise voice. “The punishment for patricide is death.”

Pearl’s voice, astonishingly steady, answered, “Death, I am sure, is the punishment for many crimes. The Legalists made that mistake before. When the punishment is death, what reason is there to surrender?”

But Brenda wasn’t waiting to hear the reply. She’d felt warmth as Parnell and Shen moved up beside her, heard faint, dry ticking on the flagstone floor and suspected that some of the sidhe folk had also joined them.

A plan would be nice, but it was pretty clear that Pearl was alone in there, and against all those armed men even that Lady Tiger didn’t have a hope.

Brenda touched the offensive bracelets on her wrist and chose two that held Winding Snakes. It wasn’t as nasty a spell as Dragon’s Breath, but she wasn’t sure where the backwash of flame might go in this contained corridor.

These, though . . . She held them up so Shen and Parnell could see them. Shen nodded. Parnell looked puzzled, but nodded for her to go ahead.

Brenda cast the amulets against the floor and directed the force of the spell against the guards. Cued by her motion, Shen smashed a pair of amulets of his own. Brenda felt their force go past her as she started running in the direction of the guards.

Shen’s spell flashed red. Brenda blinked as a bright light put spots in front of her eyes. The four corridor guards were clutching at their eyes; two were tottering as her Winding Snakes began to bind their legs.

Behind her, Brenda could hear Parnell and Shen, but she had the lead. What she’d do with it would depend on if she could squeeze by the guards who remained in the corridor. They might be temporarily blinded and unsteady on their feet, but they were still pretty big.

Clanging of metal against metal was now coming from the room. The cool voice said, “Keep at her. Her protective spell is not very strong.”

That made Brenda mad somehow, like not only Pearl but all the Orphans’ carefully hoarded lore was being dismissed. When she got to the doorway and saw a narrow gap between a blinded guard and one who was not only blinded but uncertain on his legs, that anger gave her courage to act when otherwise she might have hesitated.

Aiming low, trusting her Dragon’s Tail to pad her from the worst impact with the stone floor, Brenda dove through the gap. She came up on the other side, sliding in a foul-smelling puddle of still-sticky blood. Thundering Heaven’s body lay almost directly in front of her, close enough that she saw the gaping wound in his chest and the blue-grey loops of his intestines spilling out from a cut in his abdomen.

The Dragon’s Tail could cushion Brenda from impact with the floor, but it couldn’t do anything about the spears of pain from the stigmata on Brenda’s wrists and back. Nor did it stop the cold blood that now saturated her clothes.

Brenda didn’t care. As she had suspected, Pearl was being attacked by all four guards. The robed man was right; Pearl’s protective spell was giving way under the onslaught, and only the speed of her parries was keeping her from being wounded.

Still half laying on the floor, Brenda grasped for the strongest of the offensive spells she had brought: two sets of the Twins—the Twins of Sky and the Twins of Earth.

The Twins were yin and yang, male and female, clad in elaborate costumes more indebted to Chinese opera than to any real battlefield. Those of Sky wore white and pale blue, the dominant theme in their embroidered designs clouds and suns. Those of Earth wore brown and bronze. Their embroideries evoked growing things. Their long hair was bound with strands of rough gemstones.

They materialized armed with swords and spears. They had bows, too, but the room was too crowded for these to be effective.

“Help Pearl,” Brenda commanded, the words less necessary than her mental image of her desire. “I’ll distract Mr. Rainbow.”

She didn’t know how she was going to manage that. The robed man was standing within the most amazing aura of protective magics she could imagine. With the knowledge gained in her recent training, Brenda could see that these spells were powered directly from the ch’i of the Lands. Apparently, Li Szu had no trouble tapping what for everyone else was a diminished flow.

Shouting from the corridor—human voices mingled with the shrill inhuman chitters and squeaks of the sidhe folk—told Brenda that reinforcements had arrived. Behind her where the Twins and Pearl fought the guards, everything sounded very busy. The Twins were good, but they were only a spell, and lacked the innovation of a human warrior. At best, they might defeat a couple of the guards, but even at the worst, they should be providing Pearl with a breather.

Brenda wished she felt braver. She wished she wasn’t soaked in evil-smelling blood and gore. She wished her dad hadn’t sent her off to college, that she’d been studying fighting techniques instead of history and literature.

But wishes weren’t going to get her anywhere. Something in how the cold glower in Li Szu’s eyes had gotten positively glacial when Brenda had cast down the Twins and sent them to Pearl’s aid gave Brenda courage.

Brenda hauled herself to her feet and moved toward Li Szu. He had made certain to stand far away from the spreading pool of blood, so after a few tacky steps, her footing was steady.

What she saw appalled her. Li Szu was ignoring her. His lips were moving slightly, his eyes were hooded. Brenda guessed that he was working on a spell of some sort, trusting to his protective spells to keep him safe.

Brenda knew that if she broke Li Szu’s concentration, it was likely his spell would also break. She didn’t think any of her spells could get through his personal ward. She didn’t have any weapon, but she did have herself. Her Dragon’s Tail was still at nearly full force. So, taking a few running steps, Brenda threw her arms wide and flung herself directly at the lord creator of the Lands Born from Smoke and Sacrifice.

Her idea had been to grab him in a sort of bear hug and shake. The Dragon’s Tail acted as sort of a full body boxing glove, after all, and why hit with a fist when you can hit with a whole person?

What happened wasn’t exactly according to plan. Brenda leapt and felt her Dragon’s Tail hit solidly against what ever it was Li Szu had wrapped himself in. There was a flash of multicolored light, and Brenda felt herself thrown back. She sailed through the air until she hit the stone wall all the way across the room. The impact did for what remained of her Dragon’s Tail, and she felt the bruising impact along every inch of her already tormented back.

She screamed. She couldn’t help it. Pain ripped the sound from her lips, even though in that moment of flight, as she balled herself up as best she could so her head wouldn’t hit, she’d resolved not to make a sound that might distract Pearl or the others.

But she screamed.

She heard someone—Parnell, she thought—yell, “Brenda!” but when she tried to call, “I’m okay!” she didn’t have the breath.

Staggering to her feet, Brenda fumbled for another Dragon’s Tail, early lessons in the need to defend first all the more acute after recent events.

As she smashed the bracelet to the ground, Brenda tried to assess the situation. She saw segments that her mind struggled to arrange into a whole.

Pearl was still facing off against the guards, but there was one fewer guard and another one looked very ragged. The Twins of Heaven were gone, but the Twins of Earth were still fighting, although chopped at around the edges.

At the door, Shen stood, head bent, muttering fiercely, a cluster of amulets in one hand, preparatory to being cast down to release the spells they contained.

There were still sounds of fighting from the corridor, but Shen seemed confident, so Brenda guessed that someone was covering his back.

And between where Brenda had hit the wall and a rough wooden cabinet, a nearly naked creature was taking a sword from where it rested on top of the cabinet. It looked like a demon from hell, flesh reddish brown and bloodied, the face a horrible parody of something feline, its ears pointed, its hair carved into stripes.

It moved stiffly, but with some remnant of grace, and even as Brenda started to raise her voice in warning to Pearl, to shout, “Watch out, behind you! A monster!” by this grace she knew him.

Flying Claw.

He did not spare even a glance for her, but wrapped fingers that didn’t look as if they should be able to move around the hilt of the sword. His gaze was locked on where Li Szu—unmarked even by a smear of blood from Brenda’s failed attack—was once again muttering a spell.

Brenda knew Li Szu couldn’t be permitted to finish it, and with a flash of insight understood what Shen must be doing, and that someone had to be ready to take advantage of it.