Free Nine Gates by Jane Lindskold

discuss theory, my father, I shall pursue fact. I shall do my best to learn what it is that Brenda Morris is hiding from us—and if I can, transform it into our own best advantage.

    Having been severely injured only a week before, and still suffering from ch’i depletion, didn’t permit Waking Lizard to lecture for nearly as long as Brenda had expected.
    Nissa caught the signs that the old man was fading well before he did himself harm, and insisted that he go lie down.
    “There are plenty of bedrooms,” she said firmly. “The ones on this floor are all occupied, but Flying Claw’s former room is empty—the one he used when he was Foster.”
    Riprap nodded. “I’ll take you up,” he said. “Don’t worry. We won’t waste our time. Des gave us homework.”
    Waking Lizard’s unwillingness to argue told Brenda how tired the man must be, for even on a week’s acquaintance she had seen that when rested the Monkey was as energetic as his namesake.
    While Riprap settled Waking Lizard, and Nissa hurried out to the garden to check on Lani, Brenda went across the hallway to her room.
    The second floor of Pearl’s house was divided by the stairwell into two suites, each consisting of two bedrooms connected by a common bath. The open space at the front of the house had been converted into a comfortable sitting area. At the back was a door that led to the stairwell to the third floor of the house. This was where Des and Riprap had their rooms—and where Foster had stayed when he had lived with them.
    Brenda, Nissa, and Lani occupied the suite to the right ofthe stairwell (if one faced the front of the house), while Pearl had the front room of the other suite. Soon after their arrival, the other room in Pearl’s suite had been converted into a cross between a classroom and an artist’s studio. Like any classroom, it had a blackboard, but it also had a whiteboard. The other furnishings belonged as much to the realm of art as to that of pedagogy.
    A long, wide table of scuffed mahogany was the dominant piece of furniture. Stacked in its center were four oblong boxes covered in the type of black vinyl that is supposed to resemble leather but never really does.
    Grouped around the table were a half-dozen comfortable chairs. A bookshelf on the back wall held a variety of books, mostly dealing with various aspects of Chinese art, calligraphy, and culture. Other shelves held a half-dozen or so large boxes of white polymer clay, a selection of rectangular molds, bottles of ink in black, red, and green, a jar of fine-tipped brushes, and assorted modeling tools. A smaller table, set near a window, held a large toaster oven.
    The room’s ample natural light was augmented by an electrical fixture overhead. Small lamps were arrayed on the top of the bookshelf, mutely testifying that the work done here demanded fine attention to detail.
    But on this sunny summer afternoon, Brenda felt no need for an extra light. Riprap was already settled in his accustomed chair. He had an open box of polymer clay in front of him and was vigorously kneading the clay to make it pliable. Nissa had her notebook open and was checking a list.
    Today’s lesson, Des had told them, would be choosing one of the more elaborate spells and encoding it into an amulet bracelet. Making such bracelets had been one of the first lessons they had learned, but the more complex patterns remained time-consuming and demanding—and they were none of them ready to cast more complex spells without physical tools.
    “I’m kneading enough clay for all of us to get started,”Riprap said. “Want to grab some molds and dust them with cornstarch?”
    Brenda did so, preparing enough that each of them could make a complete set of fourteen tiles. She also took down the jar of modeling tools. The incising tools were the most important, but there were tools that made smoothing the clay easier. Then, too, the same tool that fit her hand comfortably vanished into Riprap’s big