Five Odd Honors by Jane Lindskold Read Free Book Online Page A

doubted that this was completely true. Bent Bamboo had been the least interested of all the Twelve in returning to the Lands, just as Copper Gong, the Ram, had been the most driven by her yearning to return. Thundering Heaven had picked his target well. Perhaps Bent Bamboo truly didn’t care about rescinding their exile.
    No. Loyal Wind refused to believe that. From what the others had told him,
    Bent Bamboo had changed near the end of his life. He had been a good father to his young heir, but . . .
    Thundering Heaven was speaking. “Surely if honoring promises made to enemies—and I am struck by the peculiarity of making promises to a defeated foe—means so much to Pearl, then she will be happy to assist in any way possible. Bring her my message. If she is loyal to your goal of reopening a way into the Lands, soon you will have both the original Monkey and the original Tiger to speed your plans to fruition.”
    “Let me talk with Bent Bamboo,” Loyal Wind countered. “Let me hear his support of this plan from his own lips.”
    “Are you saying you don’t trust me?” Thundering Heaven taunted. “Yet you trust others not nearly so worthy. Leave your emotional assessments out of the matter. Who would serve your purpose better? Surely not an old woman who is well past her prime, who was tutored in an attenuated version of the lore of the Lands, and who, until recently, never used her skills either with sword or spell in combat.
    “Why would you prefer her to me? I have seen war. I have fought in personal combat. I know the Lands and belong to them as Pearl never could. Moreover, I have shed the restrictions of a living body. If I so choose, I can be anything I was in life.”
    Loyal Wind found himself almost persuaded. What Thundering Heaven said did make sense. Perhaps Bent Bamboo, the Monkey, who had not had Loyal Wind’s opportunity to know and appreciate the strengths and versatility of the living Orphans, might indeed have been persuaded to back Thundering Heaven.
    But then why does Bent Bamboo himself not come forth and tell me?
Loyal Wind thought.
Monkeys have never been known for holding their chatter. If Bent Bamboo truly is Thundering Heaven’s ally, then he should be at the Tiger’s side.
    Therefore, Bent Bamboo is a prisoner, not an ally. If I can but free the Monkey, defeat Thundering Heaven, then all will be as we desire.
    Without allowing time for further consideration, lest Thundering Heaven read his changed resolve in the lines of his body, Loyal Wind advanced.
    “I must see Bent Bamboo for myself,” he said, “and assure myself that he is free and cooperating with you voluntarily. If he is, I will accept my defeat, but if he is a prisoner, I owe him—”
    “As he is my guest,” Thundering Heaven retorted, drawing a blade he had not been wearing a moment before, “I owe him privacy within my home.”
    The sword was not Treaty, the blade Thundering Heaven had created, for that sword had not died with its owner, but had been inherited by Pearl. Loyal Wind felt a moment of gratitude for this, for Treaty had a strange way of awakening when binding agreements were threatened. If Thundering Heaven and Bent Bamboo had indeed made a pact . . .
    Loyal Wind had come to this meeting armed and in armor. Now he took advantage of his kinship with the Horse and willed himself mounted upon his chestnut steed, Proud Gamble. His horse man’s saber remained in its sheath at his belt. Instead he manifested a giau-chiz, the horse man’s long spear.
    Loyal Wind knew some might view this choice of weapon as unsportsmanlike, but he had lost any illusion that there was fairness in either love or war. Tigers were superlative hand-to-hand fighters, and to rob himself of any advantage would be mere foolishness.
    Giau-chiz blocked and parried sword. Loyal Wind managed his long weapon with such dexterity that he scored a long, narrow cut across the outer edge of Thundering Heaven’s upper arm when Thundering