The Pirate Empress (23 page)

Zhu sent a wary glance to the outer temple. “And the acolyte, the young monk, did he know of your existence?”

“I was careful not to let him know.”

“Then why me? Why are you letting
me
know?”

“Because I need your help.” Tao’s left hand went to his right. “I had a ring, a saffron gemstone. I need you to help me find it.”

Zhu narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Why?”

Tao stared Zhu in the face. “You and Quan took Lotus Lily to a safe place. Is she still there?”

“Perhaps.”

“It may be time that you moved her. As you have seen from the butchery in Lei Shen’s shrine, Jasmine has been here. She will stop at nothing until she brings down the Empire. So far, she is on the wrong track and I’m hoping she will seek Master Yun, which will take her far away from Li. But Esen is not so easily led, and he blames Lotus Lily for the collapse of his leadership. He has gone mad, and will hunt her down and kill her son.”

“He won’t find her,” Zhu said. “No one knows where she is. Not even Quan. She is in the safekeeping of the water people, and you know how slippery they are. They come and go as they please. They will not be found if they don’t want to be.”

“Good,” Tao said. “But I still need you to help me find the Tiger’s Eye.”

Zhu could barely contain his breath or his heart from beating so hard.

“What is it, Lieutenant? Is there something you want to tell me?”

His right hand was hidden under his mantle, and he hesitated, and then looked up to see Tao’s recriminating stare. “How did you come to be this way? I have seen death a thousandfold and never have I seen a soldier rise after an arrow pierced his heart.”

“I knew I should not have deserted your training,” Tao said under his breath.

What training? Why on earth should a palace eunuch have anything to do with training a Ming warrior?

“You have the gemstone, don’t you, Zhu?” Zhu’s eyebrows shot up and Tao nodded. “It’s all right. Eng Tong is dead. I can feel it. And somehow the gemstone fell into your possession. Which is exactly where it belongs.”

“How did you know?”

“Never mind how I know. I know many things. I was among the monkhood before I went to the palace.” Tao pinched his lips together, looked Zhu solidly in the eye. “You are right in what you think. I am a hopping corpse. I was made this way because my soul refused to leave my body when I was killed. The reason my soul is not free is because my death was wrong and so you see me as I am, a being who is and isn’t. I cannot even enter the Etherworld because my work is not done.”

“You want the gemstone back!”

“Only for a short time.”

“No,” Zhu said.

“You do not trust me?”

“Of course I don’t trust you. Listen to yourself. Listen to what you just told me. A hopping corpse!”

“If you do not give me the gemstone, Lotus Lily will be found.”

“You’re crazy. If I give you the gemstone, then she
might
be found. But as long as I have it, no one can see where she hides!”

“Zhu,” Tao sighed. “If only I could have taught you myself. Perhaps this impulsive, stubborn streak in you would have been annihilated.”

Tao’s cryptic insinuations made Zhu nervous. “I’m leaving now. Don’t try to follow me. I will kill you if I have to.”

He Zhu fled the crypt, and stormed past the corpse below the carving of the thunder god. The stench in here was unbearable. He looked back only once before he exited the temple, slamming the wooden doors shut, hoping that some other member of the sect would come and clean up the mess.

He was stunned and confused beyond help. He blinked his eyes several times.
Am I hallucinating?
When was the last time he had eaten or drank? Then he thought of his horse. The poor mare needed watering and feed. He searched for some grass or weeds or anything she could eat, but everything was dead and brown.

Zhu reached his horse and stroked her tangled mane. He looked farther afield and now it all seemed so strange. Everywhere within eyes’ reach was brown and withered. Had the dead eunuch told him the truth? He shut his eyes, disgusted with himself. He had just called the eunuch dead. If he was dead, how could he possibly have spent the last hour speaking with him?

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Will-o’-the-wisp

When spring became summer Li, Wu and Po returned to the bamboo forest. It did not take long to see that all was not well. Mao Mao and her baby were gone. The bamboo had turned to seed, making ‘bamboo rice’ to feed the infestation of rats. Li was sick of rats, sick of eating them and sick of feeding them to her growing son. What hadn’t become seed was brown and withered, and the remaining live bamboo was old with fluffy flowers. In a matter of days, the entire forest would be dead.

“Well?” Madam Choi asked. “What did the earth and the forest tell you concerning our mission tonight?”

“Bad signs,” Po said. “Death is near. But for whom, I do not know.”

His mother shrugged. “We must eat. Make ready for tonight’s raid. There is a small merchant junk heading south down Honshu. We will intercept it. Li, leave Wu with Number Three daughter. She is still too young to loot, but not too young to babysit.”

Li had about an hour until sundown, an hour to tutor her son on the finer art of being a pirate’s son. He had shown no inclination toward powers like Master Yun, but this seemed normal, as she had shown none herself until she was delivered to the water people.

“Ma-ma,” Wu said. “If you have the power of
Gwei-huo
and my great grandfather is a warlock, why don’t I have any powers? I can’t spew fire with my hands, or make the clouds rain or the sea swell.”

Years back Li had asked Master Yun this very question, and now it made her smile. “Have you tried?” she asked.

Wu stared at his chubby fingers, shook his head. “I can fight with a sword.” He pulled out the small wooden knife that Po had carved for him.

If Wu had any special powers, they would come as hers had—when he was ready. He barely knew how to dress himself, and like her, he must first learn to protect himself by his wits. There were enemies everywhere who wanted him dead.

“Ma-ma I wish to go with you tonight. You must train me. I want to be a warrior like my father—”

Li took Wu’s hands, which flailed in frustration, gripping the small bones until they relaxed. “You are too impulsive, Wu.” His impulsiveness reminded her of a certain lieutenant, but that was a lifetime ago. “One day you
will
become a warrior. But for now you must do as Madam Choi tells you, for she is your captain.”

“She won’t let me do anything. I don’t want to hide in the hold while you are out stealing treasure.”

“We do not steal treasure,” Li said, and steadied her voice. “You must hide from the fox faerie. She is looking for you. And the Mongol Esen seeks you as well.”

That night darkness descended over the junk like black ink. Li sent Wu below with Number Three Daughter before returning to deck to prepare for the raid. Po and Madam Choi, and Numbers One and Two Daughters had painted their faces with green dye, and applied bits of bamboo flowers to their cheeks and arms to simulate mould. The greenish-white effect mimicked fungus infested corpses, and to cap the disguise they streaked their hair with rice flour. The smell of rotting flesh was achieved with a generous smearing of rat guts.

Since the death of her husband, one of Madam Choi’s best ruses was to mime the hopping corpse. Villagers feared the undead pirates that haunted the coastline. Li was unsure if the life-force sucking
Jiang Shi
was real, for she had never met a hopping corpse and hoped never to meet one. But in the taverns and bars, tales told of the practice of travelling a corpse over a thousand miles. Families, unable to afford wagons to carry their dead to their homelands for burial, would tie the corpses to long bamboo rods, and when the bamboo flexed, the corpses would hop up and down. Madam Choi had decided that
Jiang Shi
was
real, and she disguised herself and her pirate family as such to frighten their human prey.

It was almost midnight before Madam Choi’s accomplices started up the coastline toward the unwary merchant junk with the Ghostfire in its wake. Li’s senses began to tingle.
Hurry,
the tiny spirits whispered. Li stroked her sheathed sabre and crawled to the edge of the boat. The scalp beneath her topknot prickled. Shivers coursed along her arms beneath her sashed tunic, and she hurled her grappling hook and began to climb.

Several lanterns aboard the merchant junk were lit, and Li peeked over the rail to scout out their quarry. She turned to squint down into the gloom where the others awaited her signal, and she almost signed that there were no watchmen, when a dagger thrust into her face.

“What’s this? Get a load of this,” a watchman called to his mate waving the blade about, making ripples in the luminescence. Li moved out of knife-range, while the flittering Ghostfire bedazzled the staring men.

“Fireflies,” the mate said.

“Can’t be,” the watchman answered. “We’re at sea. The wind would blow them away.”

Li stifled a laugh and flapped her arms to make the shimmering lights explode into new depths of brilliance. How many aboard this junk? Only two were visible. She beckoned to Madam Choi, who motioned for her family to move. Po started to climb, and his sisters followed. The man with the dagger gripped the side of the junk, peering down, and missed spotting the serpent boat masked by the black sea. Nor did he detect its occupants who were dark with green paint and rat’s blood. He never saw Li at all. He saw only the magic of
Gwei-huo,
whose dazzling dance distracted the sailors long enough for the pirates to board.

“
Jiang Shi
,” the seaman whispered, backing away when Po emerged over the gunwale.

The watchman dropped his dagger, and his mate froze in the middle of the deck, mouth half-open. Li distanced herself from the men, while Madam Choi and her daughters appeared on deck. The pirate chief demanded access to the hold. The terrified sailors indicated the center of the deck, and with iron bars lifted the iron grate, to allow the pirates to descend.

Madam Choi and her family took only what they needed. Food. Rice, oil, soybeans, dried fish. This ship happened to be carrying silver as well and Po stole several taels of silver with which they could purchase what they needed at the next port.

They might have returned to their ship without casualty if not for the vanity of Number One Daughter. The ship carried the latest in women’s cosmetics for the Ming nobility, and she pocketed vials of rouge and lip balm, kohl for sultry eyes, and hair gel made from the finest pine resins of the northland. One of the sailors, who at first froze in fear, suddenly regained his senses when it hit him that a corpse would hardly be interested in beauty products. In fact, why were they interested in edible commodities either? Did corpses eat? No! They sucked the life essence out of human victims. They had no use for rice or millet or soybeans. Except to count them. Or so the myths told. Hopping corpses were insatiable counters.

The sailor dropped into the hold and flashed his dagger, tossed a handful of rice at the girl but she only scowled and hissed.

“So!” he cried. “You are a hopping corpse?” He flipped his dagger at her and it struck, felling her on the instant. Number Two Daughter screamed, Po drew his sword, and Madam Choi’s eyes burned with demonic rage. The wine and gunpowder cocktail she had drunk was overrun by a battle cry fiercer than any male warrior’s. She hurled her halberd at the murderer. The man ducked. The pointed end struck a different sailor and collapsed him onto his back, splitting his skull open. The hue and cry was up. They had to get off the ship. Li leaped into the hold after Number Two Daughter who squatted by her sister. Li slapped her in the face to bring her to her senses.
Lesson learned
, she thought harshly.
Vanity can kill you.

Li placed a hand to the victim’s throat, yanked the dagger out, releasing the full flow of her blood, and threw it at an attacking sailor. Number Two Daughter sat paralysed watching the blood gurgle out of her sister’s chest, tears glistening on her cheeks. “Get up,” Li ordered. “Help me get her into the serpent boat.”

The girl was so stunned she could do nothing but weep as blood from Number One Daughter oozed all over her tunic. “I mean it!” Li shouted. “If you don’t want to join her in the Netherworld, get up. Now!”

The sailors were blind to her presence, and Li sidestepped as Number Two Daughter sucked up her tears and found her feet. Fire blazed in her eyes brought on by the need for revenge. A good swordswoman, she took over the fighting while Li dragged the injured girl out of the hold and onto the deck. No one tried to stop her because no one could see her. Stunned by the impossibility of what they
did
see, the sailors on deck stood immobilized. All they witnessed was a limp girl lying on her back, bouncing methodically across the deck, leaving a trail of black blood, a shimmer of living lights floating ahead of her.

Po and his mother and sister raced up the companionway on her tail. They abandoned almost everything they had stolen. Without their lives, food and silver were nothing.

They slipped over the side and into the serpent boat. Li willed the Ghostfire away to protect their location. In darkness, they fled by sea before the majority of the ship’s inhabitants were aware they had even come. Li stared at the merchant junk whose name was imprinted on her memory.

Say Leng
. Dead Beauty.