Tempted Tigress (14 page)

Moving wearily through the boat, he made his way to the back and the deepest part of the river. He stood at the railing, staring into the black night, but in his mind's eye, he saw Sister Marie. He remembered every moment of their time together, reliving her defiance, her bold sensuality, and even that time when he watched her curled tightly in sleep. She was a beauty, he realized, and the kind of woman he had searched through all of China to find.

Then he threw the bag of opium overboard. It hit the water and began to sink to the bottom of the Grand Canal. As Zhi-Gang slowly pulled off his glasses, he visualized the fascinating Sister Marie. And he watched her drown beside her illegal bag of opium.

* * *

"You lived here?" Jing-Li sneered. "What a pig's bottom!"

The two servants trailing behind them on this ox-track road nodded in agreement, but Zhi-Gang said nothing. Jing-Li was finally coming out of his post-opium stupor, which meant he would be critical and irritating for at least a day. As they were supposedly on an official government visit to the village of Huai'an in the province of Jiangsu, the man's disdain only backed up their story. It did nothing to alleviate Zhi-Gang's particularly black mood.

Huai'an was a pig's bottom of a village. Even without his glasses, Zhi-Gang could see the truth. It was muddy, shaped like a flea, and smelled of manure. The dirty-faced villagers gaped, expressions showing broken and foul teeth. Their minds were dull and their children naked. That he had been born in such a place revolted him. That he might still be here if his father hadn't committed a heinous sin twisted his thoughts into darker and darker veins.

"So, where did you live?"

He gestured vaguely to the north. There had been wealth in this village once, long ago. In his grandfather's time, or perhaps before. Before the rivers shifted and the favor of Heaven turned from the people here. Now it was nothing more than a pig-bottom village to Jing-Li and a place of nightmares to Zhi-Gang.

"The teahouse is that way." He gestured vaguely around a cluster of huts. In his mind, he remembered a palace of beauty and mystery: two stories tall, built of gleaming wood with painted designs, filled with the scents of fine cooking. It was a palace before he had seen what real majesty looked like. A place of glory before he had seen the Forbidden City.

And it was also where he had imagined his glorious return home. He was now a wealthy mandarin, the Emperor's Enforcer, a man feared and revered throughout China. And he intended to gloat about it in front of all who had ever tormented him as a boy.

"Pig-bottom," Jing-Li muttered as they rounded a corner and saw the inn. Zhi-Gang had to agree. How had he ever imagined this a palace? The wood was cracked, the painted dragon laughably childish. He thought it would look better as they came closer, but he was sorely disappointed. The stench reached him long before he could see clearly. He smelled cheap oil, rancid tea, and piss—animal or human, he couldn't tell. What was that thing on the floor? He squinted as he entered the tiny building. A hen, escaped from its pen and wandering about the main floor. He kicked it aside and forced himself to tromp through, careful of his footing on the slick floor.

"You can't be serious," Jing-Li muttered from beside him.

Zhi-Gang didn't answer. He moved by memory to the stairs, climbing quickly as he headed for the most elegant seat in the house. His childhood mind had magnified the chair on the second story to something that equaled the Dragon Throne. He had now seen the Dragon Throne with his own eyes, even touched it in a moment of true boyish daring. This overly large, badly carved wooden contraption in the exalted eastern corner was a joke.

He curled his lip as he kicked the wormy footstool aside and dropped into the chair. He knew he shouldn't be so disdainful of his surroundings. This was the best these poor people could afford, and they all thought it magnificent. And if a Tao Master were to point out the biggest fraud in this ugly place, it would not be the teahouse owner, but Zhi-Gang himself, who had built his entire life upon a crime. And if someone were to count riches, Zhi-Gang didn't even have an ox or a horse on which to travel, so that made the farmers far more wealthy.

Still, this was his moment of glorious return. He would live it to its fullest no matter the reality of the situation. So he dropped down on the chair, sitting with his legs braced wide apart like a warrior. His infamous deer-horn knives were clipped to his waist, reinforcing his image as Enforcer. Jing-Li also carried a weapon—his father's sword—which banged against the wall when he slipped into position behind Zhi-Gang. The two servants he'd brought through the mud with him took places nearby, as if they were real bodyguards rather than thick-armed boat people. And then Zhi-Gang waited and wondered where all the peasants could possibly be. He had seen almost no one on the tedious trek here.

A form bustled upstairs. Zhi-Gang waited until the fuzzy image resolved itself into a large-busted woman with missing teeth. She had made an attempt to scrub her face and smooth her hair, but had done too hurried a job. A long streak of mud smeared her left cheek, and a thin glob of pork fat glistened in her hair where she had not combed it away.

"Great sir, great sir! What an honor to have you here!" she wheezed.

Jing-Li nodded in response, then turned to whisper into his supposed master's ear. "I thought you said all the women were beautiful here."

Zhi-Gang shrugged. "To an eight-year-old boy, all breasts are beautiful."

Jing-Li shuddered in horror. "Not true. Not true at all." But then he turned to address the woman. "Tea for the mandarin!"

"Tea for the mandarin!" she echoed in a loud, shrill voice.

"Tea for the mandarin!" someone repeated below, and then kept doing so. "Tea for the mandarin! Tea for..."

"And dumplings? Excellent dumplings, your honor, better than in the Forbidden City."

Zhi-Gang doubted that. And truthfully, his mouth was watering for something else—something plainer and remembered from his impoverished youth. He glanced at Jing-Li and murmured his request. His friend's eyes widened in horror, but he knew better than to object. Jing-Li put on an air of much suffering and turned to the woman.

"The mandarin requests
congee
..." He had to take a breath before finally voicing it. "Fermented bean curd in..." He sighed. "Watered rice."

The woman gasped in horror. "No! No! Such a thing is not fit for your honor! We have good dumplings! Steamed if you prefer—"

Zhi-Gang smiled, knowing it was time to reveal himself. "But Madame Sui, I remember your porridge. I have told Jing-Li of your excellent cooking. He is most anxious to taste it." Then he paused. "Do you not remember little Tau Zhi-Gang who used to steal your dumplings?"

Madame Sui frowned, her ample face scrunching tight as she stared at him. She even dared a step closer as she inspected him. Zhi-Gang waited, his breath held, as an oft-dreamed-of moment hovered tantalizingly close: his glorious return.

She frowned and laughed at the same time, the sound completely uncertain. "Of course, of course," she murmured in confusion. "Little Zhou."

"Zhi-Gang. I had two brothers and... a sister. We lived just north of here."

"There is nothing north of here but ruins and—"

"Yes, yes. Ruins. My home. We sold it when I was ten."

"A storm destroyed it. It is all ruins now." She abruptly grinned, clapping her hands. "But I will bring you dumplings fit for the Son of Heaven himself! Steamed dumplings for the mandarin!" she cried as she hustled away.

"Steamed dumplings for the mandarin!" the voice downstairs echoed.

Zhi-Gang glared at her retreating back, his stomach souring in fury while Jing-Li's laughter grated in his ears.

"She doesn't even remember you!" he chortled. "How long have you dreamed of this? How long have you talked of returning home to your little village and being—"

"Silence!" Zhi-Gang bellowed. And when his friend did not react except to arch a disdainful eyebrow, he grabbed the man by his collar and shook him. "Find the slaver," he hissed. "And speak no more of homecomings."

Jing-Li sobered, but his eyes still sparkled with merriment. "You said everyone comes to this teahouse."

Zhi-Gang released him with a restrained shove. "Yes." He settled back into the ridiculous throne. "This is his chair."

"Then he will come to you."

"I wish you to find him," Zhi-Gang growled. Then he cut his gaze across the room. "All three of you, go!"

Jing-Li hesitated. "But you will be alone. Unprotected..."

And half blind.
But Zhi-Gang threw away the warning. "Do you think me incompetent against a bunch of half-starved peasants? Go!"

His friend had no choice but to obey. Jing-Li nodded, his expression pinched now with worry as he and the other two trudged off. Zhi-Gang ignored their nervousness. Even without his glasses, he was more than capable of handling himself in the village of his birth. The place where no one remembered him. The dirty ox-track between the Grand Canal and the city of Jiangsu.

Madame Sui brought up his dumplings and a tea that smelled like pig shit. He passed over them both to gaze out at the muddy landscape. "Where are all the villagers? Surely someone will remember me."

"I remember you, honored sir!" she lied. "You were most respectful and had a bright intelligence—"

"The people, Madame Sui. Where are they?"

She frowned and looked around. "I am not sure," she responded. "A ghost, they say. Someone found a ghost near Huang's lotus fields."

He almost brushed it off. His thoughts were on the slaver and his purpose here. But always Sister Marie was in the back of his mind. Where had she gone? How would she survive without money or opium? And... His thoughts slid into focus. And what else would these peasants call a white woman on the run but a ghost found in a lotus field?

He was on his feet in an instant, shoving aside the table as he grabbed Madame Sui. "Show me! Show me this ghost!"

"But... But..." she babbled. "I cannot! I don't know..."

"I will protect you from the white demon. We know of these things in Peking." He tightened his grip. "It is most urgent, and you will be rewarded handsomely."

She bobbed her head. "Of course, of course." Then she bustled away, bellowing as she went. "Make way! Make way for the mandarin!"

He hurried to keep her ample form before him, his eyes squinting as he tried to scan the horizon for Sister Marie.

"Make way!" Madame Sui continued to bellow. "Make way for the manda—"

"Stop it!" he abruptly snapped. "I do not need such pomp. It is annoying."

She turned, her pinched eyes blinking at him stupidly. "But noise frightens away the ghost," she said. "I am keeping it away."

He stared at her, his thoughts spinning even darker as he realized here was the true reason behind her earlier bellows. She wasn't trying to honor him. She was scaring away a ghost.

"We are going to the demon," he finally growled. "I do not wish to frighten it away!"

"Oh." She blinked at him then eventually shrugged.

"Very well. This way." She obviously thought him insane, but intended to humor him in hopes of a rich reward. He did not care so long as she showed him the way. She did. She led him down the stairs, through the main floor (he had to kick the chicken aside again), and then around the building before meandering through a field.

"Madame Sui! Can you not move faster?"

"Aie, no, honored sir. I am an old woman and my joints are stiff!" A lie if there ever was one. The woman was obviously afraid of the ghost and did not trust Zhi-Gang to protect her. Worse, there was nothing he could say or do to get her to move any faster. So he had to stick with her tedious pace while frustration had him growling in the back of his throat.

So far, nothing of his trip had gone as planned. His wondrous reunion with the place of his birth, his glorious return to avenge his sister's death, even the simple trip down the Grand Canal had been marked by mishaps and delays. But all would be counted as unimportant if...

He saw her—or what he guessed was her: a screaming, dirty lump of yellow silk and brown hair pinned beneath a heaving, sweating hulk of a man. Nearby, two other large men stood guard. People moved on the edge of Zhi-Gang's vision: women hustling children away or men not wanting to watch. He couldn't really tell nor did he care. He reacted without thought, his actions—even half blind—still precise movements from years of training.

With a roar of fury, he pulled out both his deer-horn knives and attacked. The men tensed as they fumbled to draw their swords. They had obviously not expected any resistance. Zhi-Gang barely noticed them except as obstacles to his real quarry: the man on top of Sister Marie. With a flick of his wrist, Zhi-Gang slashed sideways at the first guard. He felt his blade cut through heavy leather, then tasted the ugly scent of blood in the air.

Madame Sui began jumping up and down, screaming the most helpful words he'd ever heard. "No, no!" she bellowed at the guards. "He comes to kill the demon! Don't hurt him!"

The second guard paused, sword half raised as he looked between his bloody companion and Madame Sui. That hesitation saved his life. Zhi-Gang dropped his shoulder and shoved the man aside, then descended upon his target.