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from within, and it was no wonder that—despite her obvious Oriental heritage—she began to win roles on stage and screen. The family prospered under Edna’s careful management of the extra income.”
    “And Thundering Heaven had yet another reason to resent the child.”
    “That is so. Thundering Heaven fathered two sons, but the Fourth Earthly Branch knew where its best interest lay, and the Tiger never shifted his earlier choice. Thundering Heaven tutored the girl, at first reluctantly, then with an almost ruthless intensity, as if seeking to prove she could not possibly perform as he demanded. He died when she was in her late teens, hoping, I firmly believe, to the very end that Pearl would not inherit.”
    “You were dead by then,” Loyal Wind said with the callousness of one to whom death is not anything but a change of address.
    “I was,” Nine Ducks agreed, “for many years, but my good Hua continued to make offerings to my spirit not only at the New Year and on Ching Ming, but weekly. I heard the family news in great detail until Hua’s death.”
    Loyal Wind nodded. He knew the difficulties that had followed Hua, and the part her treatment had played in the dissolution of purpose among the Thirteen Orphans, but his thoughts were on present problems.
    “So this bitter Tiger has decided to act against us,” he said. “I am glad I asked you what to expect. Despite my glimpse of Thundering Heaven when I was tracking the Monkey, I think I expected to meet with the young man I had known before my death.”
    “But now you will not?”
    “Now,” Loyal Wind said, thinking himself garbed in armor and with his favorite weapons near to hand, “I will go prepared to deal with an angry Tiger, one who would gladly eat even his own young.”
    “And I will go with you,” Nine Ducks said, rising from her chair and shaking out the skirts of her golden-yellow robes. “I may be an old Ox, but my horns are still sharp, and I have not forgotten how to gore.”

    When she came out of the office, Brenda heard the clash of sword against staff and knew Pearl and Riprap were still hard at practice.
    Brenda knew she wasn’t much of a fighter. Her inclination was to believe physical violence should be a last resort, but recent events had told her the only thing likely to come from that attitude was her own injury or death—or worse, the injury or death of someone she failed to help in time.
    I wonder if Des wants to practice?
    Des Lee, however, had gone out on one of his mysterious errands. Nissa was available, and when she learned what Brenda intended she put down the book of Chinese mythology she’d been studying and sprang to her feet.
    There were times Brenda tended to forget that Nissa Nita was only three or so years older than she was. Their lives had been so different, what with Nissa becoming pregnant when she was about Brenda’s age, that Brenda always thought of Nissa as a lot older.
    Today, however, as Nissa almost ran to join her, Brenda realized that they could have been in the same college classes, if Nissa had maybe had some requirement to take or Brenda had been taking a higher-level elective.
    “Where’s Lani?” Brenda asked automatically.
    “With Des. He’s going to drop her at Joanne’s for a singing lesson, then pick her up on his way back. What kind of practice did you have in mind?”
    “Well, I wasn’t completely happy with how I handled the bracelets there at the end of the Tiger’s Road,” Brenda said, referring to the conflict in which Pearl’s hand might not have been broken if Brenda had been better prepared.
    “You did better than I did,” Nissa said. “I never even got into the fight. I wasn’t even there to help the wounded, like I was supposed to.”
    “So we both could use some practice,” Brenda said. “I don’t think anyone would complain if we expended some bracelets. We could even practice with dummies, just to get the moves right.”
    “I’m for it.” Nissa moved