Thirteen Orphans (6 page)
“No. It means just what I have said: a tremendous danger that has not resulted in death touches the people on whom a character tile rests.”
Gaheris interrupted. “Breni, death readings are rather more difficult to do with this system, for reasons I will explain later. What these tiles are saying is that of the Twelve, seven are in overwhelming danger.”
Pearl nodded. “The dots resting on the dog and rooster show that they are threatened, a state milder than indicated by the character suit. Bamboo shows that Hare is fine for now, as are Tiger and Rat.”
“That’s a relief,” Brenda said. “I mean, since you’re the Tiger and Dad’s the Rat.”
“You haven’t mentioned Cat,” Gaheris interjected. “Cat is severely threatened, too, but you and Brenda saw Albert just a little while ago.”
“It is possible,” Pearl said, “that whatever is threatening him has not yet materialized.”
“But you don’t believe that,” Gaheris said.
“No,” Pearl agreed. She could see Brenda studying her and knew she was going to need to offer more detailed explanations. “Another thing that is very strange is that I believe Albert had been doing a similar reading to this one when he was disturbed. Two tiles lay next to Cat when I was picking them up. One probably fell from the wall when the table was knocked into, but both were dots tiles.”
“Showing that when Albert Yu did this reading,” Brenda said, “he was like the Dog and the Rooster—facing a threat, but not in real danger.”
“Yes,” Pearl agreed. “He was threatened then, but now Albert is no longer threatened—according to this reading, the threat has materialized. He is in danger of his life—or worse.”
Brenda didn’t need to be told that whatever this threat was had nothing to do with the fact that someone who seemed to be a perfectly healthy, even happy Albert Yu had spoken to her not more than a few hours ago, and had given her a half-pound box of expensive chocolates.
She took another wedge of truffle from the plate. Dark chocolate with toasted almond. Pure bliss.
“Something worse,” Brenda speculated aloud. “Like how Albert Yu didn’t know why we were there, or why the mah-jong set should be important to him. Something has touched his mind, his memory, even though his body’s still around.”
Pearl nodded. “That’s what I think. The advantages of such a tactic for someone who wanted to render the Twelve ineffective would be astonishingly high.”
Brenda decided to test her own guesses. “You’ve been talking about my being the next Rat. That means there’s some sort of mechanism in place to allow for inheritance of the abilities. Right?”
“Right,” said Gaheris with a crisp, approving nod. “That’s why readings for ‘death’ are hard to do with this system. The individual may die, but the Rat or Tiger or whoever remains.”
Brenda nodded to show she understood, but she didn’t want to lose her train of thought, tenuous as it was. She feared that if she thought too hard about all of this, the inherent craziness would destroy her ability to believe in any of it.
“Kidnapping someone could cause lots of problems,” Brenda went on. “I mean, remember how I wanted you to call the police when we found Albert Yu’s office all messed up? Try and pull off twelve kidnappings without the FBI finding connections between the people involved. It might take a while for them to do so, but I bet they’d find them.”
“Definitely,” Dad replied. “In many cases, the connections would be obvious. Auntie Pearl is a friend of our family. She has been something of a professional mentor to the current Rooster. I do business with both the Dragon and the Pig.”
Brenda started moving restlessly in the limited space offered by the suite. “Okay. The same restrictions would apply for murder, but the consequences would be even worse. I mean, murder gets the law interested, especially when famous people like Auntie Pearl are involved.”
“Or Albert Yu,” Dad said almost grudgingly. “And several of the rest of us at least qualify as pillars of our communities.”
“Fatal accidents might work,” Brenda said, “but twelve accidents that don’t get taken for something else … that would be tough. Tougher given that even if the law was fooled, that doesn’t mean the other members of the Twelve would be. And you keep track of each other, or at least some of you do of some of you.”
Auntie Pearl raised a hand in almost regal interjection.
“Murder or fatal accidents would offer another problem,” she said, “one you touched on before. Inheritance. Murder would not eliminate the member of the Twelve. It would simply pass their abilities to their heir apparent. In a few cases, that could provide a great inconvenience. The Hare’s heir …”
Pearl noted the inadvertent pun, but went on, “Her heir apparent is a small child, no more than two or three years old, ineffective as a tool, and if something happened to her mother, she would be very carefully watched.”
Brenda felt a sinking sensation blended with apprehension that turned the chocolate truffle’s lingering sweetness sour on her tongue.
“I’d be almost as useless,” she said, “but a lot more vulnerable. I mean, I know nothing about any of this or almost nothing. If someone had come after Dad, say, a week ago …”
Brenda shivered. She’d been going after this as an intellectual problem, like something the professor might present in an ethics class. When she thought about something happening to Dad, suddenly, she found it hard to think at all.
She moved over to where Gaheris stood staring down at the mah-jong tiles and pressed up against him as if she were about six, not a grown woman in college. He put his arm around her and squeezed, and Brenda had a sudden insight as to why her dad might have taken so long to bring up this whole Rat thing. It would be admitting there would be a time that he, like his own dad, wouldn’t be there, when he’d need to pass a responsibility along to her.
Brenda swallowed hard, and looked at Auntie Pearl. The older woman was studying them with a look that mingled compassion and something like envy. Brenda wondered how that original Tiger had felt about his beautiful and talented daughter. Brenda had figured Pearl’s father would have been proud of his daughter, but maybe he hadn’t been. Men could be weird about strong daughters.
Auntie Pearl glanced at the face of the slim diamond and emerald wristwatch that adorned one wrist. “It’s getting on to dinnertime here, which means that I can still make a call to the Rooster. Des lives in Santa Fe. I’ll warn him to be careful of strangers.”
“How would Des know the difference there in Santa Fe?” Dad said. “They’re all strange there.”
He grinned as he made the joke, but the expression was forced. “More seriously, doesn’t Des work in retail? It’s going to be hard for him to avoid strangers completely.”
“He can be careful,” Auntie Pearl said. “I’m more worried about what we’ll do about the Dog. However, let me make a call where it may do some good.”
“Why don’t you use the phone in the bedroom?” Dad said. “I’ll get on my cell out here and call Deborah Van Bergenstein and Shen Kung. Those are the Pig and the Dragon,” he added to Brenda. “I’ll ask a few questions, see how they respond.”
Auntie Pearl nodded. “Good. We should also look to getting someone out to Denver. That’s where, according to my last report, the Dog lives. I’ll call my travel agent after I talk to Des.”
Brenda bit her lip to keep from asking any of the thousand questions this strange exchange evoked.
“Dad, I’ll step out in the hall, call Mom and let her know we got here safely.”
“Good,” Gaheris said, his own phone already in hand. “I’ll call her later when we know better what we’re doing.”
When Brenda came back from making her call, she found Auntie Pearl and her dad in deep discussion. They stopped the minute she came in, but not, she felt, because they were trying to close her out.
Dad turned to her. “Breni, we’re going to Denver tomorrow, you and me. Auntie Pearl is going to make some further inquiries into the well-being of the other members of the Twelve. However, since there’s nothing more productive we three can do for the rest of this evening, I think now is the time for you to ask Auntie Pearl every question you can think of.”
“And listen to the answers, as well,” the older woman said with a thin-lipped smile. “Pleasant as this hotel room is, I could use a change of venue. Brenda, with your father’s agreement, I have made reservations at Hour’s Deserve. The food is excellent, and the menu varied enough that we should all be able to find something we’d enjoy. Hour’s Deserve has the added advantage of being accustomed to hosting guests who wish to be given their privacy. We can talk freely about the most outré matters.”
Brenda mentally reviewed the clothes she’d packed. She thought she put together an outfit respectable enough to pass in a good restaurant. They agreed to meet in the lobby in half an hour.
“I am not as young as I once was,” Auntie Pearl confessed. “Fifteen minutes to rest my eyes would be useful.”
Pearl Bright’s eyes were shut, but her mind was racing. The results of the phone calls she and Gaheris had made between them had been disturbing. Des had taken her warning seriously, but several of the others had shown evidence of that same peculiar amnesia that she had witnessed in Albert Yu.
They had remembered whatever ostensible reason they had for knowing her, but of the deeper mysteries that bound them they had remembered nothing at all.
All of these were people Pearl had known all their lives, and, in some cases, for much of her own. She was among the oldest of the Twelve, the only surviving first-generation descendant of one of the original Orphans, but several of the others had held their positions for decades. The Exile Tiger had been the youngest of the Orphans. Some of his older colleagues had passed their heritage on to their children within a few decades of their being exiled. This had, of course, created problems of its own. Orphaned orphans had not always cared for their inheritance. Some had rejected it outright, but it would not reject them.
“I didn’t ask for this either,” Pearl said aloud to the empty hotel room. “I didn’t ask, yet here I am. Now with Albert gone … Is it worth going on?”
But Pearl knew she would. For one, even if she were to resign her role, that did not mean whoever had gone after the others would leave her alone. Moreover, the Tiger had an interesting problem. The Tiger did not have any children. There was a serious question as to whether or not she had an heir. The auguries Pearl had cast had been more than a little ambivalent on the matter. Probably the Tiger’s power would pass to one of her brothers, or to one of their sons and daughters. Probably.
Did that ambivalence make Pearl’s life safer, or at greater risk? She wasn’t about to wait quietly and find out. Unfortunately, Albert was not available to coordinate the Twelve as he should. Pearl would need allies. Would the others assist her? Would they accept the leadership of an old toothless tiger as once the Orphans had accepted her father?
Are you laughing, Old Tiger?
she thought.
Your challenge was that your allies considered you too young. Here I am, wondering if I am too old.
she thought.
Your challenge was that your allies considered you too young. Here I am, wondering if I am too old.
Pearl looked down at her hands. The once-elegant fingers now showed swelling around the joints. She’d let the jetty hair whose blue-black highlights had been her private pride go silver. She’d resisted the urge to get “just a little bit” of plastic surgery: a tuck, a nip, an injection.
I’ve let myself grow old outside. Have I grown old inside as well? Can I still lead my people into battle?
Pearl moved restlessly, feeling all the aches of joint and muscle that were her daily companions. Then she smiled.
Of course I can, even if only to spite you, Old Tiger.
She fell asleep with that tiny, infinitely happy smile on her lips, knowing, as an actress never stops knowing her face, how that joy made her face young again.
Pearl’s travel alarm beeped a reminder and Pearl opened her eyes. Years of practice had made her skilled at touching up her hair and makeup with a few quick strokes. Tonight she went for the shadows and tints that would accent the features she had inherited from her Chinese father, rather than those from her Hungarian Jewish mother. Tonight was a night to remind her audience, ever so subtly, of her connection to the mystic Orient.
Once the reverse had been the law by which Pearl had ruled herself, seeking to blend into the general population, but the older she became, the closer that old Tiger stalked her, ruling her life in death as he had never wished to in life.
Pearl put her father from her mind and hurried down the corridor to the elevator. Gaheris and Brenda were waiting for her on the ground floor. Brenda’s eyes were alight with questions, but she asked not a one until the three were settled at their table at the Hour’s Deserve, and the waiters had finished their awed hovering over the faded celebrity and her guests.
However, once drinks were ordered and the gentle hum of conversation and music assured their privacy, Brenda leaned slightly forward.
“Dad told me about the calls, how the people you reached didn’t seem to know, well, you know, about Things.” She paused, obviously embarrassed, but nonetheless determined. “Then he told me about why we’re going to Denver. He said you’d explain how this Dog we’re going to find doesn’t even know he’s a Dog.”
Pearl decided not to glower at Gaheris. He couldn’t be blamed for briefing his daughter. Pearl would have liked to handle that briefing in her own fashion, but she could adapt the script.
“I said I would answer your questions,” she said. “The answer to this one is among the most simple, yet the most complex. I have already told you how the original Orphans were six men and six women. I have also told you how their families were not permitted to come with them into exile.”
Brenda nodded, and reached for the cut-crystal water goblet beside her plate. The young woman did not drink, her concentration so intense that she seemed to forget the glass as soon as her fingers wrapped around the stem.
“To understand why the Dog and many of the other lineages became separated from their heritage,” Pearl said, “you need to understand that despite the care the Twelve took to make certain their abilities were fixed in their family lines, the refusal of just one heir apparent to learn his or her duties would be enough to complicate matters.”
Pearl paused when a waiter arrived with their drinks. Over Gaheris’s protests that she need not go to such expense, Pearl insisted on ordering several appetizers for the table. They needed time to talk, and she felt more at ease here than she did in the sterility of a hotel suite.
When the waiter walked away, Gaheris took over.
“Brenda, our family came pretty close to being one of the ‘lost’ lines. My dad, your grandad, was one of those who resented the tutoring his father had forced him to accept. My grandfather, the Exile Rat, lived until I was eight, and when he died my dad found himself in a real bind. Basically, according to the terms of his father’s will, he couldn’t inherit his father’s estate—and it was a good one—unless he filled me in on what it meant to be the Rat. Moreover, Dad had to pass this information on in front of witnesses, one of whom was Auntie Pearl. Now, your grandad may have wanted to deny he was a Rat, but he shared the rattish love for gain. He gave in, just as his father had known he would.”
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