The Pirate Empress (60 page)

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

Madam Choi’s Legacy

All of the pirate captains loyal to Madam Choi, from the Gulf of Tonkin to the lairs of the Yellow Sea convened at the riverside. Li arrived first, bedecked in the costume of Empress of all Pirates. The fine needlework of gold dragons over red, azure and purple, decorated with jade and ivory, and silver-gold thread shivered on her sunlit tunic. The costume was Madam Choi’s late husband’s official uniform before it was hers, and now it belonged to Li—a uniform that bespoke supreme leadership. Atop her shining tresses, twisted into three oiled, black braids, was Choi’s sparkling war helmet and in her sash a quartet of his finest blades. On her right hand was Po, her number one commander, and on her left were her stepsisters Fa, Lei, and Seng. Each member of each squadron sliced his finger and vowed to keep to the code. As blood spilled from the wounds, every drop was collected and stoppered in a ceramic jar. The half-filled jar of blood was brought to Li.

When the ceremony ended, Li turned to Po. “Are you sure you don’t want your own fleet?” she asked. “You are a fine leader and a master of weapons.”

Po shook his head. “I made a promise to Ma-ma on her deathbed that I would protect you.”

“You’re a good man, Po. Your mother would be very proud. I should have married
you
.”

Twisted emotion showed on his face but he said nothing. He gestured to the girls to stash the jar of pirate’s blood aboard Li’s flagship. The red flag at the tallest spar flew at half-mast.

Li wished there was news of the mainland, of the capital. The last she heard, the Mongols squabbled at the northwestern front, the Manchus at the east, and Mo Kuan-fu’s Tay-son pirates ravaged the South Coast. It was only the death of Madam Choi that had brought a truce. Now the formalities were over, Mo Kuan-fu was no more civil than he had been the last time she had seen him. And at that point, he had chased her off his pirate junk with a White Bone Spirit snapping at her heels.

“Have you spoken to the Pirate King?” Li asked.

“Briefly. His squads are headed home to Chiang-ping, through the White Dragon Tail passage. News leaks that the White Tiger has regrouped and is bearing down upon us, as we speak, with fresh recruits.”

“Then we must band together. United we will defeat that murderer of women and abductor of children. We will rescue Number Two Daughter, Lin.”

Lin was Po’s sister, the oldest of the four remaining daughters of Madam Choi. Kidnapper though he was, Li was confident that Fong would not harm the girl, but instead, use her services as nanny to his young son.

But it would be a cold day inside the hell mountain of Feng Du when the Pirate King came willingly to join with the renegade pirates. He blamed Li for the personal vendetta the White Tiger placed upon what the Emperor called the Menace of the Seas. She knew that Admiral Fong would not quit until he achieved restitution.

Chiang-ping was Mo Kuan-fu’s headquarters in Vietnam. He worked for the Tay-son brothers who paid him well. To reach the lair, a junk had to travel up the White Dragon Tail, which opened from the sea. This narrow passage ended at the pirate’s den, a lair so well hidden that it was easily defensible. Its location on the river limited the size of craft that could enter, and Admiral Fong’s warship was too broad. Access to the den was also difficult by land, cut off by hostile terrain. Pirate booty was bought and sold there, and that meant weapons and gunpowder aplenty in the pawnshops along the waterfront. Mo Kuan-fu would not thank Li for luring the Imperial warships into his refuge.

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“The admiral wishes to see you immediately,” the sailor said.

Quan looked up from where he was on his knees scouring the aft deck with a scrubber made of dried rushes. The man who spoke to him was Fat Mong, a petty officer who hated Quan.

“Think you’re too good for this kind of work?” he snarled. “I’ll have you mucking out the bilge next.” The officer with his round yellow face, and flat folds of skin for cheeks that flopped whenever he barked orders, glared through eyes that looked the size and colour of dried black beans. “You with your square shoulders and mug like a statue. Stop staring at me. Get to work.”

“I thought you said the admiral wished to see me.”

“Oh yeah, that’s right. You’d better clean yourself up and get onto the bridge.” He kicked over Quan’s pail of scum-filled soapy water, laughing. “Before you go, help that man with his sail.”

Quan cursed. He righted the bucket and stood up, dropping the rush scrubber into the remaining slop.

After fastening the halyard, he wiped the biting sweat from his eyelids and hesitated before turning away. He wanted to interrogate his fellow sailors on the matter of Li, but dared not. From what rumours he had gleaned by loose tongues after a jug or two of their despicable plum wine, it seemed that Li was solidly on Admiral Fong’s blacklist. Much to his horror, he’d learned that she had married the Manchurian and born him a son before abandoning them both and returning to piracy. The boy, in fact, lived on the warship with a nurse.

It was imperative that he never let Fong know of his past relations with Li. But first he had to find her. And for that he depended upon Fong himself. The White Tiger’s vendetta to hunt down every last pirate and eradicate them from all rivers, ports and seas was sung from warship to warship and from naval fleet to naval fleet. He would not be satisfied unless each pirate junk and sampan was fettered, their decks and holds combed, and Li was captured to hang from the tallest yardarm until her face turned black, and her fingers and toes dropped off.

Quan climbed to the bridge where the admiral waited. He was hard pressed to keep his expression blank and his voice mellow. Every fibre of his being wanted to punch him in the face.

“Ho, Admiral,” he said with feigned deference.

“At ease, sailor.” Fong turned his back and began pacing the deck, his white and black streaked hair luffing in the steady wind. He raised a hand to shield his vision from the sea’s glare, catching sunlight on an insignia tattooed below his knuckles. The mark of the White Tiger, its head half-turned, shoulders low and slouched, warned Quan of this man’s power. The tattoo’s thin black bands interspersed with broad patches of white matched the admiral’s strangely striped hair. Quan found the tattoo mesmerizing; it seemed to breathe, even as it lay inanimate on his skin.

Piercing black eyes stabbed him. “You are a fine sailor, seaman Quan. My officers tell me good things of you. They say you are no slacker.”

“What I do, I do for His Majesty,” Quan said. He barely controlled the twitch in his jaw. He had promised Master Yun to keep the death of the Emperor secret until the warlock could return their liege to Beijing.

“That may be so, but you are a liar. Have you anything to say to this accusation? Are you also a coward?”

Quan’s muscles tautened, his jaw grew grim, but his voice when he spoke came low. “You say I am a liar? How so?”

“You are Brigade General Chi Quan.”

The heat in Quan’s face instantly vanished. “I am.” He bowed. “I apologize for omitting to inform you, but I felt it had no bearing. I am no longer an Army man. I have joined the Navy.”

“Why? The life of a common sailor is a hard one: bad food, ill-tasting drink, hard planks to sleep upon, and the bilge for a toilet. Not to mention gruelling labour, hauling ropes and scaling rigging. I can see your hands are torn and the wounds barely healed before they are shredded again. Your answer does not satisfy me. You were a favourite at court. No doubt you feasted on summer duckling and sweet melons, peaches and pears from the southern orchards. You were a leader among leaders. Your battle accolades are not unknown to me.”

Quan’s fists clenched and he made a conscious attempt to loosen them while his mind scurried to find a satisfactory explanation for his change in service. “I seek the one they call Madam Choi. She has plundered the seas of silver for the last time. The Imperial Army has not been paid in many moons. They are deserting. The only way I can regain their service is to stop the one who is stealing their pay.”

“You presume to do
my
job?”

It was obvious he had made a blunder, and swiftly fixed it. “This chief of the pirates, Madam Choi, has a personal vendetta against me. I am the one that killed her husband.”

Technically, of course, that was untrue. It was lieutenant He Zhu’s dagger that had made the deathblow, but Quan had allowed it.

“Ah.” Fong nodded. “I vaguely recall some such tale, years ago, while I was commander of the Treasure Fleet. My journeys took me far and these scoundrels of the seas harassed me even into my voyage home. I taught
them
a lesson.”

“Which is why all sea robbers fear you and why the name of the White Tiger sends them scurrying for their lairs.”

“And you wish, personally, to see this Madam Choi brought to justice? Then why not just come to me as Brigade General? You could have shared my table and been relieved of all of this—” He waved a hand at the hardened sailors toiling on the deck below.

“I need to be tough,” Quan said. “And there is no better way to toughen the body and the spirit than through hard work and deprivation.”

“You fear this Madam Choi that much?”

“She is head of a consortium of hundreds of thousands of pirates.”

“I know that. Madam Choi and I have met. Her power is not of a sort that men of arms are used to fighting.” Fong swallowed a rigid breath. He seemed unconvinced, but Quan remained submissive. “So, you don’t know. Madam Choi is no more. I have relieved the world of that ungodly predator. Last I heard, the wound I inflicted upon her unholy body festered and damned her to Hell. Rest well on that knowledge, Brigade General. However, there is another. And she is equal if not worse than her adopted mother. They call her The Pirate Empress. She’s only a slip of a girl, but with more fire in her than ten hardened convicts. She leads the consortium and her deeds are black and sinister. Stories say she can make a man weep blood. I should know, for I was duped into marrying her and trusted both her and that pirate-witch-of-a- medicine-woman she called Mother. I want her alive, so I can execute her myself.”

Quan used every ounce of will to maintain composure before he spoke. “Then keep me on your crew. I will do everything in my power to bring her to justice.”

“All right,” Fong said. “These are strange times when one woman can garner so much force over the sea—and such a slip of a girl at that. We must put our heads together and come up with a plan, for these pirates are as sneaky and as clever as they come. My informants tell me of a fresh technique that they employ.”

The admiral proceeded to explain how the pirates had infiltrated the merchant ports. Rather than attacking a laden junk from their own craft, the pirates acted from within. From a safe base on shore, they established an elaborate intelligence system, which combined furtiveness with force. The pirates travelled as passengers or stevedores hawking fruit, cakes and teas to travellers. Before departure, they already knew the habits of the ship, and situated themselves strategically until the moment was ripe to hijack it—usually when the vessel was well out to sea and out of reach of any possible succour.

“The signal is a hellish pounding of the gongs,” Fong said. “The Pirate Empress and her associate Mo Kuan-fu have raped the seas for the last time.”

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The wind blew strong and brisk. Sun baked the bamboo matting of her sails. Li raked in the empty waterscape with weary eyes, her fleets now scattered across the sea. She had done her best to keep the pirates happy, to keep them from preying on helpless fishermen when they grew bored. Only cargo ships bearing the Imperial badge were to be looted. But the rival pirates were unhappy with this situation, and now Mo Kuan-fu’s followers plagued the innocent. Under her leadership she had arranged with coastal authorities to be the official protectors of the commercial fishing fleets, thereby obtaining legitimate remuneration for her people. They were honoured with the stamp of Protector, but alas, her enemies wanted a piece of the action for themselves. Mo Kuan-fu was attacking her junks as well as raiding the fishing boats, and in retaliation, she had to shoot and loot back.

Li had inherited the formidable pirate junk of Madam Choi. It was a tremendous improvement over the vessel Li first came to as a girl. With three masts bearing four-sided sails of new bamboo matting, there was not a rip or hole in its magnificent rigging. Po raised the red flag to the topmost peak of the mainmast, for the time for mourning was past. The only thing Li had taken from the old junk was the figurehead, the yellow-and-blue-painted carving of Xiang Gong.

Her hope was to provide gainful employment for her pirates so that she could take a ship and, with their backing, return to Beijing to seek out her number one son. Becoming head of this vast consortium of water folk had not figured in her plans. But the time had come. She couldn’t be everyone’s protector. The pirates could do as they liked. She was sailing north.

“Li,” Po said. “If we turn away now, our people will die at the hands of that turn-coat.”

“Mo Kuan-fu works for the Tay-son brothers. He has turned my efforts into a racket. When I made this agreement with the fishermen, I fully intended to protect them. No one can win. I’m tired, Po. I want out. I want my son. And I want to find Quan. Too much time has passed. They won’t even recognize me.”