The Pirate Empress (44 page)

A proposition, eh?
Quan studied the formation of the Mongol warriors, the ease with which their leader had approached. He clearly had a pawn of some sort that he intended to play. For what could the warlord possibly propose? A truce? And why? What could he possibly hold over Quan’s head that would persuade him to a proposition between Mongol and Chinese?

Altan had wiped out the Manchu advance, setting them back for at least a fortnight until they were able to regroup and muster reserves. His army had survived the skirmish with numerous casualties, but not as many as the Manchu or the Ming had suffered, and at this point in the war he was winning. What could he possibly barter for?

The copper scent of gore stuck to both bird and master, and Quan could almost taste the blood. He allowed his sight to flit to the falcon before restoring his gaze on his enemy’s face. “I’m listening.”

Altan dropped his stare for a second, taking in the backdrop of walled and fortressed pass with its triple tiers and high crenellated ramparts. The wall was crumbling in places; it hardly deterred lizards and hares, no less human intruders. He only hoped the warlord failed to notice, and that the fool Zheng Min would keep out of sight. He also hoped Zheng Min’s treachery did not extend to sabotage, and that their flanks were covered just in case the Mongol double-crossed him.

The warlord raised his pigtailed head. His eyes were terse, his mouth grim. His voice was crisp. “Word has come to me from my camp that my daughter has been abducted.”

Daughter? Altan had a daughter? So what? Quan swallowed, sucked in his cheeks to control any facial expression.

“Peng is very special to me,” Altan continued.

Again, warlord. So what? What does any of this have to do with me?
“I did not kidnap your daughter, nor did I give orders for her to be taken.”

The bird on Altan’s leather glove ruffled its feathers. Around its throat was a band of white, and at this close range, Quan saw that the falcon’s chest was also white, flecked with chestnut. Its sharp, beadlike eye twitched. “Perhaps,” the warlord said, licking his lips. “But the intruder seen in my camp wore the Imperial stamp of one of your soldiers.”

“Why would any of my men abduct a little girl? The Ming would not stoop to such savagery.” Although they were known to kill women and children that got in their way, still the pretext of civility must be maintained. The Chinese were a cultured people; they lived in walled cities and farmed the land for a living, giving rise to glorious oasis-fed peach and pear orchards, cotton and silk plantations where the most sumptuous cloths came from, and gems of jade and pearl to which caravans from far and wide travelled to trade. Juxtapose that with the barbarians of desert and hill. They grew nothing, made nothing. They existed only to steal. Quan saw Altan flinch at the implied insult, but the warlord chose to ignore it.

Had this been Esen, the road would have long since become a river of blood and feasting crows. “I repeat,” Quan said. “Why would we kidnap a Mongol child?”

“That is exactly
my
question,” Altan replied. “I want her back.
And
I want her mother.”

This was too much. And too strange. He gave no orders to kidnap a mother and child. “The mother is missing, too? Who is her mother?”

The man lump in Altan’s throat bobbed up and down, but his eyes stayed pinned on Quan’s. “Don’t tell me you don’t know whom I’m talking about. I saw her vanquish you and your military governor. And now
you
are here and
she
is missing.” He huffed. “If you want me to speak her name, I will. The mother of my little Peng is Jasmine.”

The
fox faerie.
Of course, Jasmine had a child with Altan. Quan caught his breath as the name surged through his thoughts. “Jasmine does not jump to anyone’s will.” He was careful not to make any mention of where she had lately cast him. “You of all people know that.”

“That may be true. But I suspect there was sorcery at play. Just as I know it was sorcery that brought you back. I saw with my own eyes how she made you and your commander disappear.” Quan did not bother to correct the warlord on his misuse of words. Zheng Min was by no means his commander. Not any more. Not since he had shown his true intent with a treacherous crossbow.

“I don’t know who this warrior was,” he said, his eyes piercing. “But he was seen accompanied by the warlock.” Altan’s young face, so weathered by desert sun and wind, gave him the appearance of a man much older. His expression was cruel and single-minded. In the course of his dialogue, all pretence of civility had dropped. “I’ll make you a deal. You return my daughter to me and I won’t kill your son.”

Quan gulped, kept his face blank. It did not fool the warlord one mote.

“Yes, Brigade General. I have your son. That idiot of a brother of mine thought to make a bargain with the Emperor, but when your military governor disappeared leaving him helpless and desperate, he stole the boy and brought him to me. The Emperor was of the mind to have my poor besotted brother relieved of his head. Unfortunately for him, he is still obsessed with your princess, Lotus Lily. He thinks of nothing but revenge.” Altan raised his arm and let the falcon swoop into the wind. Its impressive wingspan caught the current of eastbound air and sent the avian soaring in the direction of the Magpie Bridge and Heaven. “The warlock, the young woman glimpsed in the camp, can only be your Master Yun. He is a sorcerer of the most artful kind. So I know if he doesn’t want me to find her, I won’t. But
you
, you are his protégé and his favourite. He, you can sway. Meanwhile, I will keep Esen from your tail.”

Altan’s hard expression cracked and he gave Quan a confident smile. Quan glared. Esen again. He was beginning to despise that name. That evil spawn of a treacherous goat constantly hounded him. It was exactly like Esen not to let matters be. And if he wouldn’t let matters be, then neither would Quan. “If you hurt my boy, I will kill you.”

“And if my little Peng is harmed, I will kill
you
.”

He and the warlord had hit an impasse. “I will look into the matter.”

Altan sneered. “I’ll be waiting.”

The warlord raised his arm in the air, fingers spread in a mock salutation of farewell. For these few minutes the truce remained, and Quan acknowledged the pact, raised his hand, palm flat in response, then he reeled his horse and re-joined his waiting troops.

“What the hell?” Zheng Min roared from the highest part of the rampart.

Quan looked up, smiled grimly and exhaled the dusty air that was befouled by the dung of horses, and prepared to retreat. The military governor thrust his head and shoulders between a crenel and waved a menacing fist. “Why are you letting them go?”

When Quan failed to answer and continued to order his troops to withdraw, Zheng Min signalled his own men to assume position and fire at his signal.

“Stand down,” Quan ordered.

“I will not. Bows! On your marks!”

In the distance Altan turned his head as he approached his army, and they raised their long, heavy C-bows to cover their lord’s approach.

“Fire!” Zheng Min shouted.

“Cease fire!” Quan ordered. He raced his horse through the gateway, careened onto the battlement, flew off his saddle and swung down onto Zheng Min, fist pummelling. The force of the impact flung the military governor to a broken section of wall where the footpath was exposed. Everyone could see the fracas, from the soldiers in the watchtower overhead, to those gathered in the shadow below the wall, to the horsed Mongols in the near distance.

“Get off me, you savage,” Zheng Min commanded.

Quan forced his raging blood to cool and his rattling heart to cease. He could imagine Altan laughing at the dissension between the Chinese commanders. That’s all they needed. The Mongols already had the upper hand.

All of the men along the wall kept their bows taut but none of them came to rescue their supreme leader. Below the rampart Huang and his troops cautiously lowered their weapons. Quan released his savage grip on the military governor’s throat and swallowed hard. He could not afford to lose control. Altan was a much more clever adversary than Quan gave him credit, and it was well known that more than one great power had been felled by internal strife. He inhaled.
Master your emotions. Your son’s life is at stake and the future of your precious Li.

Quan got to his feet, extended a conciliatory hand to help the military governor off his back. “I made a pact with the warlord,” he explained. “Today we do not fight.”

“I made no such pact,” Zheng Min snarled, punching Quan’s hand away. “I am the supreme ranking officer. What I say goes!”

Quan lunged at him in a fit of uncontrolled rage.

“Brigade General,” Huang cried from below the rampart, terror in his eyes.

Today he might have killed Zheng Min without a moment’s thought. Good thing the young captain had stopped him. He released his grip on his superior’s collar and dropped him, and the military governor’s helmetless head hit the ground.

He howled in pain. “You’ll pay for this.”

Most certainly he would. But Quan’s first concern was not Zheng Min’s wounded dignity or his cracked skull. Or even the consequences of assaulting an Imperial officer. His first concern was the safety of his son. No way could he ambush Altan’s camp to rescue the boy. The warlord had too many warriors, too many watchmen. Zheng Min rose to his feet, rubbing his head, sending Quan a look that would paralyse a starved wolf.

“Altan has my son,” Quan said woodenly. He furrowed his brow, glanced sheepishly askance. Never had he lost his temper so violently. From now on he must keep on his guard. The man meant him harm and he cared nothing for Quan’s family. “Yes, you heard me correctly. I have a son.”

The military governor gouged with a thumbnail at some crusted dirt on his sleeve, and rubbed a smear of sweat from his armour. He glanced up innocently from his preoccupation. “Oh? And who might the mother be?”

Quan was about to answer, tricked into exposing his relationship with Li, when he mentally slapped himself. The bastard knew. Well, of course he knew. But he couldn’t prove it. He couldn’t prove that Quan was Lotus Lily’s rescuer and lover, and that he meant to make her his wife. “No one you know. Only a simple peasant’s daughter.”

Zheng Min glanced down at the fiery bauble he wore on his finger. Where had he gotten that? Quan wondered. And why did he keep looking at it and smiling? The military governor was crazy. As crazy as Esen. Those two should join forces. It dawned on him that they had. Zheng Min had let slip that Esen agreed to fight for the Emperor.
Well, my friend, if what you have told me is true, you are in for quite a surprise.
The turncoat could switch sides at the drop of a fox’s hair. And
had
.

“Your ally Esen has betrayed you,” Quan informed Zheng Min. “He has taken my son to his brother as hostage.”

Zheng Min scowled. “Altan told you this?”

“He has every intent of bringing down the Empire. But don’t worry we also have a weapon. We have his daughter.”

The military governor’s eyes widened like goose eggs. “How did you get his daughter?”

What he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him and Quan was not about to divulge his suspicions. If Master Yun accompanied the warrior who had abducted Altan’s daughter, there had to be a very good reason. The only soldier the warlock would trust was He Zhu.

Quan snorted as he lied. “You want to know what I was doing when I disappeared on the battlefield at Shanhaiguan? That was what I was doing. Abducting the child of the Mongol warlord and his mistress, Jasmine.”

%%%

The ride back to the Forbidden City was uneventful. Zheng Min refused to speak to him the entire trip home. Just as well. Quan was fed up to the gills with the military governor’s interference in his carefully planned campaigns. When they reached the gates of the capital the army split into two, most went to the garrison at the east side of the palace wall. The others returned to the training yard in the west. Quan joined his men in the training yard to tend to his horse, while Zheng Min went to the palace. Quan watered and brushed down his horse before leaving it in the stable, then walked through the gardens to the palace where he met the military governor in one of the courtyards.

Zheng Min accosted him before he could make his presence known to the palace guard. “If you knew that Altan’s plan is to take down the Empire, why didn’t you kill him when you had the chance?”

“I had no chance. His army may have lowered their weapons, but he wasn’t weaponless. Besides, we couldn’t have won today. We were too disorganized.”
Thanks to you
, he wanted to add, but refrained from doing so. “Altan and I declared a truce. What you witnessed was a parley. We will fight another day.”

“Damn right we will,” Zheng Min said. “Just wait until His Majesty hears of your treason. That you chose your son over the Empire.”

This time Zheng Min had gone too far. That was a lie, a damnable lie. Hadn’t he stayed to defend the frontier even after Zhu informed him that Wu was at the palace? Hell, he had not even met his son yet. Did not even know what he looked like. “The Emperor knows my loyalty to him and his comes first. It always has,” Quan said smoothly. He was not going to let this jackal rattle him.