The Eleventh Tiger (8 page)

‘Jiang.’

Once the last bolt was thrown, and the shutters closed against the darkness outside, Cheng relaxed a bit, letting out a long breath. Then he set about looking for his eye.

He found it under the table nearest the door, and picked off the bits of grit and sawdust that had adhered to it. He looked at it, reluctant to put it back in after its journey around the floor. For the first time in his life, he felt a little guilty about not keeping the place any cleaner than a drunken dock worker was likely to notice.

The broom in the corner looked welcoming for a change.

‘Maybe tomorrow,’ he told it. He went back behind the bar and used his teeth to pull the stopper out of a bottle of Kao-liang. He poured some of the liquor into a mug and dropped his glass eye into it, rolling it around to clean it. Then he dried the eye off carefully, put it back in its socket - it stung, despite his efforts to remove the alcohol - and drank the liquor, as he didn’t see any point in wasting it.

He lifted the bottle and took it through to the kitchen, where the giant Pang was trying to chisel off the crust on one of the overused woks. ‘Drink?’ he offered. Pang took a couple of swallows from the bottle.

‘What a day,’ Cheng sighed.

‘Almost like the old days.’

‘Yes, almost. Except that there was no profit in it. It’ll cost us to replace those chairs.’

There was a rapping on the shutters next to the door, a simple long-short long-short code. Cheng opened the door and let in a wiry, white man with a squashed nose and weathered face. He wore simple local clothes, but couldn’t disguise his military bearing or walk.

‘You’re late,’ Cheng told him in heavily accented English.

‘Captain Logan had me putting a couple of men through punishment drills as soon as we got back from Qiang-Ling.

He’s a wee shite, that one. The kinna man whose mouth bleeds every twenty-eight days, if ye take my meaning.’

‘Hardly the way for a soldier to talk about his superior officer?’

Sergeant Major Anderson shrugged the comment off. ‘I’ve been in the army since he was naught but a babe in arms, and I’ll be there when he’s retired to some soft desk job in London.’ He looked towards the door to the cellar. ‘Now, d’ye have something for me?’

Cheng nodded, happy that the small talk was over. He lit a small lamp and led Anderson down into the spiced depths of the cellar. The space under the inn was filled with boxes and barrels, and the occasional rat that Cheng hoped would have the sense to keep out of the way. Apart from food and drink, there were small piles of lanterns in the corners and even a dancer’s lion costume.

Cheng led the Scotsman to a small pile of crates and patted the topmost one. ‘A Russian ship came into the docks yesterday. This was on board.’

He put the lamp down, pulled a knife from his belt and levered the top off the crate. There were bottles inside it nestling in straw. Cheng lifted one out and tossed it to Anderson, who caught it easily.

The sergeant major pulled the stopper out and sniffed.

‘Smooth stuff,’ he said admiringly. He put the stopper back in. ‘How many?’ .

‘Just what you see here. Six crates, twelve bottles each.’

Anderson nodded thoughtfully and Cheng could see the wheels turning behind his eyes, the beads sliding along the mental abacus to work out what to offer in exchange.

‘Three boxes of rifle ammunition.’

‘Five,’ Cheng countered immediately - through force of habit. Three would have been fine.

‘Four.’

‘Done.’

‘Deliver them to the scullery at Xamian in the morning.

Your boxes of bullets will be in the linens as usual.’

‘That’s fine.’ Cheng led Anderson back up to the kitchen, where Pang was counting up stock. ‘How is Megan?’

‘Och, she’s fine. I had a letter from her this week. She’s settling in to her new school nicely, she says.’

‘That is good to hear,’ Cheng said, and meant it. He’d never met this Megan, but she seemed like a good person, from what Anderson had told him. They shook hands on the deal.

‘Tomorrow morning it is.’

Then Anderson was gone, and Pang paused in his work.

‘Jiang’s waiting for you upstairs.’

Cheng groaned, but ascended to the cleaner, private dining level. The furnishings here were much the same as on the ground floor, but a few watercolours hung on the walls and every table was partitioned into its own little booth. Here the slightly better-off clientele could eat and discuss business without having to look over their shoulders at a crowd.

Jiang was indeed waiting. He was tall and thin, with a slightly shaggy moustache, and wore a white tunic over black trousers. His clothes may have been plain, but they were well tailored. ‘Jiang-sifu,’ Cheng said. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘Lei-Fang has called a meeting. On the junk.’

‘Let me get my coat.’

The junk was a large, two-masted ship that could slide over the Pearl River quietly and steadily, as placid as a swan. Only a couple of sailors were visible on deck, doing whatever sailors did with ropes and suchlike. Cheng had never been to sea and, on a river, preferred a boat he could row himself.

He and Jiang had ridden in a wagon to the northwest of the city, to a small dock where a ferryman was waiting with a low, wide boat. It had taken a further half-hour to reach the place where the junk was moored, and Cheng had passed the time by telling Jiang about the day’s hassles. Jiang seemed amused, which made Cheng wonder whether telling him had been such a good idea.

Then, as the setting sun enriched the sky ahead, they had reached the junk. It sat high on the water, its sails glowing in the late afternoon light, its planking the colour of pale tea.

The ferryman guided the boat in under the shadow of the junk, and one of the sailors let down a rope ladder. Cheng and Jiang quickly scrambled up it. At the top, Cheng looked down and saw the ferryman push the boat away and glide across to the near shore to wait.

Cheng stepped down on to the main deck and ducked through a low door. To his surprise, Lei-Fang was waiting in the companionway outside an ornate gilded door. He was a little older than Cheng and Jiang, but he seemed to have aged twenty years since Cheng last saw him barely a month ago. He still wore his militia uniform, which surprised Cheng as these meetings were supposed to be covert.

‘Some sort of emergency?’ Cheng asked.

‘I’m not sure. Something strange is happening.’

‘Strange?’

‘You’ll see.’ Lei-Fang sounded as worn and worried as he looked.

Cheng didn’t like this at all.

Lei-Fang knocked on the door. ‘Enter,’ a voice called out.

And they did.

The room inside was fit for a palace - a far cry from the simple captain’s cabin, strewn with charts and scrolls, of Cheng’s last visit. Now the chamber was filled with ornate lamps and statuary, and the most expensive furniture and carpets he had ever seen. At the far end was a low dais.

Cheng stopped short as he saw the three men on the raised area. They were all strangers to him; the familiar faces he had served with for the last couple of years weren’t there.

All three men had short hair, and none of them had shaved their foreheads. One man was sitting, firm yet relaxed. His hair was grey, as was his wispy beard. The other two men stood flanking him. One was lean, with an angular, handsome face. The other was squat, almost as wide at the shoulders as he was tall, his face almost square.

They were complete strangers, yet somehow Cheng recognised them. He couldn’t believe his eye. Those three faces were burnt into his consciousness in a way that even his father’s face was not. They weren’t dressed in the robes of monks any more, but he recognised them as if he had last seen them yesterday, not two years ago.

The abbot leant closer to him. His eyes didn’t glow today, but Cheng suddenly felt as if he knew what it was like to be a haunch of beef in the hands of a butcher assessing the grain before slicing the meat.

‘I know you, don’t I?’ the abbot asked.

Terrified, Cheng nearly blurted out ‘yes’. He bit his tongue in time and shook his head. He thanked all the gods and ancestors he knew that he didn’t seem to be as important to the abbot as the abbot had been to him. Then he remembered that he had grown his moustache since their last meeting, and that he had no glass eye back then, just a patch over the socket.

The abbot didn’t blink, even though he held Cheng’s gaze for a full minute. ‘Perhaps you have delivered reports to me before.’

‘I...I don’t think so,’ Cheng replied. Then he blurted out,

‘Who are you?’

‘I am your superior. You may call me Lord, or Master.’ The abbot Cheng remembered from nearly two years ago spread his hands to either side. ‘These are my generals. You will call them General, or Sir.’ He smiled, not unkindly but with steel.

‘Now kneel before your lord.’

The abbot watched as Zhao and Gao moved off the dais to flank Lei-Fang, Jiang and Cheng. He had never seen the latter pair before, as far as he could remember, but Lei-Fang had told him who would be attending. A servant came in with an urn of tea.

The abbot relaxed in his favourite seat. It was lacquered wood, padded with velvet. Everyone knelt until he spoke. ‘Be seated, please.’

The visitors took plush seats of their own.

‘It has come to my attention that there is a certain amount of dissent among the ranks.’ The abbot smiled, and enjoyed the way the three men looked even more nervous when he did so. ‘Perhaps “confusion” would be a better word than

“dissent”? I gather that there are some in the Black Flag who are uncertain whether merely to campaign against the Manchu, to join the Manchu and campaign against the

gwailos,
or to campaign against everyone who isn’t Black Flag.’

‘There are factions, my Lord, it is true,’ Jiang agreed.

‘Quite so,’ said the abbot. ‘The answer, of course, is simple.

The Black Flag should campaign against whomever its sovereign lord tells it to. Loyalty and obedience are mortal enemies of confusion - and powerful, invulnerable enemies they are.’ He looked towards the tea servant and snapped his fingers. ‘Refreshments.’

The servant bowed hurriedly and scooted forward with a trolley. Instead of cups and snacks a young buck deer, the size of a large dog, was slumped across it. In the place of its left ear, and the bone under it, there was a fist-sized hole caked with dried blood.

The abbot watched the reactions of his audience carefully.

Cheng was almost soiling himself with fright. That was good.

Jiang looked baffled and his eyes darted around as if seeking an exit. Lei-Fang simply looked stunned.

‘Now,’ the abbot said, ‘what do you think of this fine suckling pig?’ Nobody dared to say anything, so he turned to the servant. ‘It is cooked thoroughly, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, my Lord,’ the servant said stiffly. He didn’t take his eyes off the floor of the cabin.

‘There, you hear? Cooked to perfection.’ The abbot slipped a knife from his belt. ‘There’s more than enough pork here for all of us.’

‘My Lord,’ Lei-Fang began hesitantly, ‘I see no pork. Only a deer -’

Zhao’s fist slammed into the side of Lei-Fang’s head, once, then again and again. When Lei-Fang had been reduced to twitching insensibility the abbot held up a hand, staying Zhao’s next blow. ‘You see? Confusion. But it is easily dealt with. Zhao, it would appear that Lei-Fang’s eyes lie to him and lead him into confusion. It would also seem that his nose is useless as to smelling the aroma of cooking, and his tongue is loose enough to spread this confusion, through, I’m sure, no fault of his own. So, to protect him from any further embarrassment, relieve him of those unnecessary and unreasonable things.’

Zhao nodded curtly and drew his dagger. Cheng studiously looked out of the window, visibly trying not to be sick, while Jiang watched, his mouth open, as Zhao plucked out Lei-Fang’s left eye with the tip of the blade.

The abbot cut into the side of the deer with his knife, parting the ribs with a cracking and scraping that was music to his ears. He also enjoyed the screams that came from Lei-Fang when the pain woke him.

By the time Zhao had dealt with the right eye and the nose, the abbot had reached his prize. He pushed his hand into the tight chest of the animal and pulled its heart free. As Zhao sliced through Lei-Fang’s tongue and tossed it aside the abbot bit into the heart, savouring the gelid, dead blood that was trapped within, and the life and strength it carried with it.

He swallowed, and held the heart out towards Cheng and Jiang. ‘Pork?’

Cheng found his voice first, though it seemed to be swim-ming up through vomit that desperately needed to be freed.

‘Thank you, my Lord, no. Your chef has done too fine a job for it to be wasted on a humble innkeeper like myself.’

Jiang smiled weakly. ‘I already had
yum cha
before boarding. But it is a roast worthy of an emperor, my Lord.’

The abbot relaxed, taking another bite of the heart. The pair had learnt their lesson, and were clearly worthy of the love he had for them and the people. ‘Good. Cheng, your supply of ammunition must continue.’