The Pirate Empress (42 page)

“Oh, thank the gods. Jasmine is seeking a new nurse for Peng. All of the women in the camp tremble before her. I would rather be captured and enslaved by a Ming warrior than suffer that fate. That’s why I’ve come to you, though my knees shake and my hands sweat like melting ice. But since you’ve come for the girl and not for any of our womenfolk, then tell me what I can do and I will help you. She’ll not allow you to take the foxling without a fight.” The half-light of the moon shone down on the woman’s long dark braids and broad ribbons. Her eyes were set wide apart and black, but the whites gleamed with joy. Her figure was very pleasing. She wore a long skirt of Chinese silk. For some reason, the fact that this dress must have been purloined or bartered for from Chinese merchants did not offend Zhu at all.

“What is your name, lady?” Zhu asked with respect.

“Alai. I am from the nomadic horse people of the northern Xiongnu. I married into Altan’s tribe only to have my husband killed by your people.”

For the first time, Zhu sensed what it must be to have been born on this side of the frontier. To the Mongols, the Chinese were the enemy.

“But the Ming are nowhere near as terrifying as the lady Jasmine. I offer my help if you can get rid of her.” She placed her hands together and lowered her head.

Zhu returned the gesture. “I would not put you in that kind of danger.”

“No,” Master Yun said. “We have seen what Jasmine is capable of, what she did to your predecessor. You say you’re from the Xiongnu?” When Alai cautiously nodded, Master Yun’s brow puckered. Zhu almost questioned him—he did not know that tribe—but whatever issue the warlock had with her answer, he did not pursue it. Master Yun sucked in his cheeks, looked sharply at her. “When we take the child we will require a nurse to care for her. Are you willing?”

“If it will take me away from this place? Yes,” she said.

“All right then. Stay here until we come for you and be prepared to travel.”

In the dark, all He Zhu could see of the warlock’s face was his long shadowy locks and the topknot at the crown of his head. The whites of his eyes gleamed ever so slightly. “How will you wrest the foxling from her mother?” Zhu asked.

“I think this time I will leave that up to you.”

“I don’t have your powers,” Zhu said. “And the gemstone will not open its eye to me this night. In fact, I do not understand why it has chosen me at all. I can’t seem to do anything right.”

Master Yun tossed a sideways glance at Alai. “You have already done one thing right—”

“Wait a minute. If I’m not being impertinent.” Alai bowed before continuing, not quite sure of their intentions toward her. “I have an idea. Jasmine will return to Altan at the battlefront tonight. She never stays here for long. I will offer to be the foxling’s new nurse. Meanwhile, you must pretend to leave. When she’s gone, we can take Peng and flee this place without violence.”

The warlock knit his brow. A voice shouted from Altan’s tent.

“You, Alai. Come here. I appoint you Peng’s new nurse. Don’t leave her alone. Do you understand? Or your fate will be a mockery of this!” Jasmine kicked the bloodied corpse that lay at her feet. “Your first task will be to arrange for the burial of your friend’s bones.”

Jasmine stepped across the encampment to where He Zhu and Master Yun stood, while Alai hurried to arrange for the dead nurse’s burial.

“What are you plotting, Master Yun?” Jasmine asked. He refused to dignify her with a reply, and a sly smile seeped over her face. “Whatever it is, stop it. I’m already one step ahead of you.”

In the moonlight, she transformed into her fox shape, and began to race around him and He Zhu in ever decreasing circles. Faster and faster she flew in a dizzying figure eight, surrounding them both. Dirt flew from her feet, her body transfigured into a silver-black projectile of soaring fur until a groundswell churned the earth into a gyro of shimmering, spinning loess.

Master Yun held out his hands, called out a spell of reversal, and flung a windblast into her face. Everything froze for a second. Zhu sucked back his terror. A burst of white light, then a flash of darkness and a tightness in his body that could only be explained as compression, before the grey, silver-black world of the Mongol night returned.

Zhu drew his bow too late. Jasmine was gone. “What was that?” he demanded.

“A sinkhole.” Master Yun lowered his hands and waited for the earth to settle. “Jasmine was trying to trap us in a sinkhole, a contortion of space and time that would send us into oblivion. Instead, I sent
her
there.”

Zhu frowned, still blinking his eyes in disbelief. He wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes. She had almost succeeded. “You are powerful indeed, Master Yun.”

“I wonder,” he said aloud, although Zhu knew his thoughts were churning. The warlock pulled at his lips beneath his tangled beard, and raised his eyes. “No, it doesn’t add up at all. Jasmine’s power has grown immensely. It should not have been that easy.”

“She’s no match for you. If only I had half the power that you do.”

The warlock turned his eyes to his newly claimed grandson. “We are of the same blood, Zhu. You
do
have the power. And more. What we don’t know is how those powers will manifest themselves. You will not be the same as me, just as Li is not like me. How I long to see her again, grown, and powerful. I know she will surprise me, as will you. The only advice I have for you, right now, as you explore your new destiny is to allow it to happen in its own time. I suspect your powers will not be so blatant as mine, for I am a warlock. You on the other hand are a warrior-monk. You have fought with brute force and mastered weaponry and physical strength. And now you seek a pathway of yielding. Your mind and your
Chi
seek a gentler road. You are like water, Zhu, yielding as I have seen you with this Mongol maid, gentle and yet with great force. Water is soft and weak, but it can move earth and cut stone. This is a softer, more invisible power that will serve you well on the next stages of your growth. Remember that the Universe works harmoniously in its own ways. If you disrupt that harmony by imposing your own will, you will bring trouble not only to yourself but to those around you.”

Zhu stayed silent for a long time. Then Alai stepped out of Altan’s tent with Peng sleeping in her arms. “Where is Jasmine?” she asked, looking around warily.

“She’ll not trouble us for a while,” Master Yun said. “Do you have a horse? We must go swiftly before anyone notices we were ever here. Quick now, before the child awakens.”

Black smoke curled up against the silvery night. A plumpish woman met Zhu’s gaze from where she tended her fire, her distinctive Mongolian braids outlined against the sky. Zhu climbed the wall, took the sleeping Peng with him, and dropped to the ground. He adjusted her in front of him on the gelding and was about to call out to his accomplices that he would meet them at the next fissure in the wall, when Alai leaped the barrier mounted on a stolen horse, clearly born to riding. Master Yun followed on the stout back of Xingbar.

They rode into the night, east, along the wall, undecided as to where to take Peng. She slept like an infant, only waking occasionally to murmur, then falling back to sleep, her belly full. There was nothing much to see of the land. The white cup of the moon chased them. Past the black skeletons of mulberry trees they rode, their horses kicking up loess, and still they rode, directionless. Finally, Master Yun signalled for them to stop. He dismounted and motioned for them to do the same. Zhu drifted off his horse, taking Peng with him, and towed the gelding to the place where Master Yun and Xingbar waited. Alai followed, her step light and energetic, the unexpected escape into the night, not showing on her at all, except perhaps for a dark flush of excitement.

“I have never felt so wildly alive,” she exclaimed as she plopped down beside them. Her flight from the Mongol camp was like an elixir. “There was nothing there for me, but drudgery. My husband died without giving me children. I was born to ride and to fight.” She rose and stretched. She stood tall. And now, Zhu realized just how tall she was—a finger’s length shorter than himself. And
he
was very tall.

“You say you are Xiongnu,” Master Yun said. “Then, of course, you are a bowmaid. I could tell by the way you leaped that rampart to reach the south side.”

“Women of Altan’s tribe do not fight or ride,” she said, and grinned. “But Xiongnu girls are born with a bow in one hand, and we are raised on the backs of horses.”

“It is just as well,” Zhu said, a smile on his lips. “Or we’d be in big trouble. To fight your Mongol men with their crack bowmen and their expert horsemanship is enough of a challenge. It’s a wonder the wall still stands.”

Alai looked around her. “I’ve never been on this side of the wall before.”

“Nor should you ever have been. But now …” Zhu’s voice faded away. He wasn’t sure what he was trying to say—that barriers between peoples couldn’t keep anyone in or out? He looked at her intriguing face, and at the thick black braids wrapped in wide ribbon—and decided he liked what he saw. “Master Yun,” he said, turning from Alai to the warlock. “Is it safe for Alai to be here?”

“You care about her safety?” Master Yun asked, smiling.

It seemed he did. Wouldn’t they be safer on the other side? No one would think to look for little Peng in her birth land.

Alai’s wide set eyes grew wider yet. “I have an idea.” She was beginning to feel quite comfortable with the warrior-monk and the warlock, and not impertinent at all. “Let me take Peng to my tribe among the Xiongnu. I will care for her there.”

“Is that a good idea?” Zhu asked Master Yun.

Master Yun’s eyes lit up. “An excellent one. As yet we do not know Peng’s destiny. At least there she will thrive and grow.”

“But they are
Mongols
,” Zhu whispered under his breath.

Master Yun shot a glance at Alai. “And is she not a Mongol? Peng is your daughter, Zhu. Think on it. Meanwhile, let these two rest. You sleep, also. I will take the first watch.”

%%%

The blackness of the sky looked heavy. The white cup of the half moon sent small light to where Master Yun sat several paces from his sleeping companions, who rested near the shallow fire that he had built to ward off animals. He was not worried about a Mongol attack, retaliation for abducting the fox faerie’s offspring. What he worried over was the ease by which he had defeated Jasmine and taken her child. Where was she? The more he thought about it, the more he realized that their escape with the foxling was intentional.

Why? Why would Jasmine allow He Zhu to take her child? What was she up to?

She had threatened to invoke the Powers of Nine. Nine was a magic number that could sway the course of the war. Nine meant everlasting. And those with the Number Nine on their side would endure. How would she do this? Master Yun gasped, choking on the thought. Of course, a primitive artifice, not seen since the era of the warring states. A device that had brought First Emperor victory and a device that may have also wrought his downfall.

She would create a Magic Circle. One inner and one outer circle composed of numbers from 1 to 8 that added up to 36. The numbers of each half radius added up to 9. There were eight half radiuses. The Powers of Nine would be drawn from the nine hostile armies of the invaders. But who were they? Altan and Esen each led a legion of Mongols. Zi Shicheng, the Chinese rebel led a contingent of defectors. The Manchu general, Liao Dong had his own army. Then there was Mo Kuan-Fu, the Pirate King, whose ties to the Vietnamese Tay-son rulers were treasonous. Was Fong, the Manchurian Lord Admiral of the Imperial Navy, loyal? What were the other three armies? Where would they come from? For the Magic Circle to work, Jasmine needed the power of the Number Nine. She needed a nine-tailed fox faerie to hold its center. She needed Peng. But if that was so, why had she allowed him and He Zhu to escape with Peng? His last words with Jasmine reeled in his mind. Her last actions replayed before his eye like a staged performance.

Fire and stones!
Where was his brain? Jasmine had known that he would arrest the revolutions of her sinkhole in mid spin, reversing the spell before she could send him into the space contortion that would hurtle him to exactly where he had cast Dahlia! The Fox Queen was her goal all along.

But even he didn’t know where Dahlia was. Her power was such that she could cast a dart into his will and misdirect it. His intent had been to send her back to Feng Du. Whether he had accomplished this act or not was still a mystery. The Moonstone could only show him the future, and only if it was willing. His consolation was that the shield he had laced with the spell would hold her wherever she was. Only someone with one of the Gemstones of Seeing could reverse it. He wasn’t about to undo the enchantment and neither was He Zhu.

He rose. Only the Tiger’s Eye could show him where the malevolent fox demons lurked. “Wake up, Zhu,” he whispered hoarsely. “We are in dire need of your skills. We must locate Jasmine before she brings doom onto us all.”

%%%

Zhu’s shadow stirred before he was even awake. He opened his eyes to see the towering top-knotted figure of Master Yun. His silhouette loomed huge just as the log in the fire collapsed, smothering the shallow flame to orange-blue coals.

“Has the fox faerie returned for Peng?” Zhu asked, startling himself to full waking by his own voice. Jasmine’s retaliation was Zhu’s vilest fear and his first thought.