Free Five Odd Honors by Jane Lindskold

several of those present—Pearl herself included—Brenda was not the only one to think so.
    “I,” Pearl said into the startled silence, “feel rather the same way. However, before we accede to my wishes, I do think Thundering Heaven made at least one very valid point. You must consider that he might very well be a far stronger Tiger than I. I am not a young woman. Sometimes, especially early on a rainy morning when my arthritis is acting up, I would even admit to being a rather elderly Tiger. Freed as he is from the limitations of the flesh, Thundering Heaven would be far stronger than I am, far more versatile.”
    “Stronger,” Riprap replied, flexing his own strong hands so that the muscles corded and rippled in his arms, “but more versatile? I’m not so sure about that. And judging from how Thundering Heaven treated Loyal Wind, I’m not certain he’d be as wise. What Thundering Heaven did was ugly, really ugly, especially when you consider he attacked someone he claimed to wish to ally himself alongside. There’s something really wrong there.”
    “ ‘Wrong,’ ” said Shen Kung as if tasting the word. “That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking since Loyal Wind and Nine Ducks contacted me. There’s something very wrong here. Righteous Drum, what is the lore of the Lands regarding the spiritual nature of ghosts? I seem to recall that it is connected to the nature of the soul.”
    “That is correct,” Righteous Drum said. “The soul has two primary parts: the hun and po souls.”
    Shen inclined his head, inviting the other to continue. Brenda was impressed by Shen’s diplomacy. Shen and Righteous Drum were both Dragons—considered to be both the most scholarly and the most magical of the Twelve. This was not a contradiction, for in Chinese lore, scholarship and magic went hand in hand. Knowledge literally was power.
    But Brenda had already figured out that knowledge was not the same as wisdom, and that therefore the likelihood of competition between the two Dragons was quite high.
    Shen was the elder, with many more years of study behind him, but Righteous Drum—himself a man of mature years—had shown himself very aware that his studies, if of lesser duration, had taken place within the very libraries from which Shen’s teachers had brought away only memories.
    Righteous Drum accepted Shen’s invitation to continue. “The hun soul is the soul that is associated with intellectual achievements and the higher emotions. The po soul is associated with the more bestial urges and the baser emotions. Upon death, so we are taught, the hun soul departs the body through an opening at the top of the skull. On rare occasions, the po soul may cling to the body until decomposition sets in, and, in rarer cases, even thereafter. That is why fresh graves are places to approach with caution.”
    Brenda leaned forward, intent on a contradiction. “But like Riprap said, something is wrong here. Really wrong. I mean, Thundering Heaven is acting like you said a po soul would act: angry, raging, out of control.”
    “Not completely out of control,” Shen corrected gently. “From what I was told, Thundering Heaven did a very good job of presenting an intellectual argument as to why he should take over as Tiger. A po soul—as I understand the lore—would never have stopped to talk.”
    “Not only that,” Righteous Drum agreed, “it wouldn’t be able to talk. Speech is one of the higher functions.”
    After making his declaration, Flying Claw had remained standing. Now he looked over at Pearl, something like desperation twisting his handsome features. Brenda’s heart ached at his pain. For a moment, Flying Claw had looked more like Foster—the amnesiac he had been when she had first gotten to know him, all lost and confused—than like the warrior he was.
    “Honored Aunt,” Flying Claw said, somewhat awkwardly giving Pearl a title of relationship that, while not strictly accurate, reflected the new accord