Tempted Tigress (4 page)

It was his sister, he realized. It was the Chinese girl who begged and pleaded in his memory.
She
was the one he wanted to kill. Or more exactly: the memory of her, of what had been done to her. Anything that reminded him of her—even this innocent white woman—would always be ruthlessly suppressed. Especially since this white woman was
not
innocent. That, too, he knew to his core.

He straightened from his chair, his footing unstable on the shifting ground as he stalked forward. The guard had managed to recover his sword. Zhi-Gang saw now that the blade had struck just to the side of the woman's neck. Jing-Li must have blocked the downward stroke. Grabbing the sword from the startled guard, Zhi-Gang kicked his friend aside.

"Please," Jing-Li gasped, even as he struggled to recapture his breath. "Your concubine—"

"My concubine?" Zhi-Gang bellowed. It was a lie, but an effective one. If others thought this woman his lawful wife, then he could do whatever he wanted—including killing her—without fear of reprisal. "My concubine!" he agreed.

His hands twisted on the heavy sword. The heat made his hands slick with sweat and the hilt would not settle securely in his scholarly hands. The damn thing was much too heavy compared to his deer-horn knives. So he tightened his grip and raised the blade high. The woman tried to scramble backwards, her voice still silenced by shock, but a guard—a new one—caught her with his boot. Two more appeared beside the newcomer, adding their boots to her body. All had come to see the show.

What am I doing? The thought slid through his mind, repeated over and over. But like ink mixed too thin, it had no substance. He would kill this woman. Had he not felt the truth in her qi? She would be the death of him. She would change his world irrevocably, and he could not afford another such life-shattering change.

Jing-Li found his breath and this time banged his head for real against the dirt. "Master Tau! Master Tau! Where is your reason?"

Gone, he thought. And he did not know why. The sword was slipping in his hands. All too soon it would descend whether he willed it or not. He tensed his stomach, intending to kill her with a single stroke. Nausea rolled in his belly, but he fought it down. Then he met her eyes. He was close enough to see them clearly: round, light brown, and rimmed red from her tears. He saw the streaks of wet on her cheeks that revealed the pale white color of her skin. And he saw her rough lips, chapped and swollen from the sun, now swelling where she had bit down, her blood welling thick and dark across her white teeth. Nothing appealing about her at all, and yet he knew she was beautiful. Something about her fired his blood, and that made him all the more angry.

"I curse you," she hissed in clear Chinese. "I curse you to taste forever the tears of all women, to feel the aches of their broken feet and taste the blood of their lost virginity. I curse
you
out of all men in China to know what you have done to me." Then she spit her blood at his feet and stretched her neck to wait for the sword.

As one, the guards leaped backwards. Curses were no small thing, and the curse of a dying woman carried the ugliest taint. None wished to share in this damnation.

"So be it," Zhi-Gang acknowledged, accepting the punishment. Then he pulled the sword down with all his might.

The blow never landed. Though smaller of stature, Jing-Li had always been faster. There had been no time to leap from the ground to stop the sword, and yet, there his friend was, his hands gripped around the sword, desperation lending strength to his arms. They grappled for a moment, sword twisting awkwardly between them—two scholars unused to such a weapon. But in the end, Jing-Li won. He knocked the sword to the ground such that it clattered loudly against the bamboo chair.

"You cannot take such a curse upon yourself!" Jing-Li cried. "You will kill us all!" Then he glared at the guards, mobilizing them into action. "Take her to our boat. Chain her. I will kill her there."

All was accomplished with amazing speed. The woman was dragged off, the sword sheathed and gone. Even his chair disappeared, taken by his true servants. All that remained was himself and Jing-Li, locked one against another.

"Where is your mind?" Jing-Li rasped, his breath sour with fear.

Zhi-Gang acted without thought. He threw his friend off him with a curse. In raw strength, he had always been mightier. Then he stood over Jing-Li, his breath hot on his lips and in his lungs. He had no answer for his friend, and that made his blood boil even hotter.

"You will not touch her," Zhi-Gang rasped. "I will kill her with my own hands. I will drain the blood from her body and have her heart for my dinner." Then he twisted, leaning forward until his forehead nearly touched the smear of compressed dirt on Jing-Li's. "Interfere again, and
you
will be the one in chains sent as a special gift to the Empress Dowager."

He waited while his words spread into Jing-Li's spirit. Then, with a last curse, he spun and stalked away. His heels ground into the rocks with every step and his hands itched where he'd clenched them into fists. As he walked, he narrowed his eyes and prayed he didn't trip.

It wasn't just that his poor vision washed the world in fuzzy gray. It was that his spirit seemed covered in an oily blackness. It coated his thoughts, polluted his moods, and ate at his reason. How could a man chart a clear course when his every action, his every thought was haunted by fury? By moods so black that they caused him to threaten a woman just because she was white. Just because she was on the Grand Canal where no white was allowed. Just because she reminded him of another woman who begged and pleaded and received no mercy. Why should a white woman receive pity when his sister had not?

He stopped his angry progress across the shifting dirt, closing his eyes as he tried to steady his qi. He was the Emperor's Enforcer. He'd been charged by the Son of Heaven to eradicate the poison that threatened China. And yet, how could he purify China when he could not even steady his own spirit? And what was he going to do with a lone white woman who traveled in a place no white was allowed?

Questions spun in his thoughts, distracting his focus and muddying his spirit. But even as they cluttered his mind, he knew they were completely unimportant. The real problem had come as a whisper. These questions were merely his attempt to drown out the tiny ripple that continued to roll through everything he did.

He had touched her qi and knew she would change his life. She would change everything about him, starting at the deepest foundation of his spirit. A white woman would change his life.

No. No! A thousand times no! He would kill her before he allowed such a thing. Of that he was absolutely certain.

January 4, 1876

Dear Mr. Thompson,

It is with great sadness that I write to inform you that your wife and infant daughter did not survive childbirth. Without other direction, we have interred them in the mission graveyard, giving them all the necessary Christian services.

I am also given to understand that there is another girl,
Anna by name, who stayed with a neighbor during your wife's labor. Though I am sure that the home is all that a God-fearing woman would expect, your wife did express some fear for
Anna
in that the neighbor already has four children of her
own. If you wish for additional supervision of a Christian nature, please know that we at the mission stand ready to assist you.

With sincerest regret,

And in Christ's name,

Mother Francis

St. Agatha Mission

Shanghai, China

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round:

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,

Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;

And here were forests ancient as the hills,

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

—Samuel
Taylor Coleridge

from "Kubla Khan: or, A Vision in a Dream. A Fragment"

Chapter 2

Anna closed her eyes, her soul too drained for even tears. At least she was off her swollen feet. And with her eyes shut, she could feel the sway of the boat and pretend she was on the ocean speeding away from this horrible country.

She sighed and opened her eyes. Her gaze landed immediately on the iron shackles about her wrists. There was also a rope wrapped around her left ankle that tied her to the bamboo skeleton of the Chinese junk. Wupan or sanpan or whatever-pan, she didn't know except that the boat was double-tiered and designed for beauty. Anna was on the topmost level beneath bamboo mats that served as a ceiling. On the floor opposite her lay a nest of silk cushions beside a small stack of Chinese books. She guessed she'd been imprisoned in the mandarin's bedroom for a very unsavory reason. He either wanted to slit her throat in private or he had other activities in mind. Or both.

And yet, she found it hard to care. Her earlier fury had drifted away. Even her prayers were gone. Now she knew nothing but the hot still air and the heavy weight of the opium sack still tied around her waist. That more than anything depressed her spirit and silenced her prayers. That sack doomed her, and she was hard-pressed to quarrel with the punishment.