The Pirate Empress (65 page)

It vanished. Clearly, the Yeren travelled swifter in this form. Blinded by the relentless sun, eyes mesmerized by miles of wasteland, Quan’s vision played tricks on him—turning sand dunes into lush green hills and red plains into valleys. Wind blew stinging particles into his face, and then two horses appeared out of the mirage. The two men pivoted to gape at each other, then knew the mirage to be real. Quan recognized the yellow band strangling one of the horse’s forelimbs, the Imperial badge. He called out, inching close enough to stroke its forelocks. “What are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere?” he whispered.

The horse neighed softly.

“Where is your master?”

The leather saddlebags carried a meagre supply of food and no water. Whoever lost these mounts were in desperate need. Two empty goatskins were all that remained. The horses were unharmed—but what caught his eye, wedged between horseflesh and saddle strap, sent a thrill to his brain: the gleam of bronze, the Scimitar of Yongfang. Only one man possessed that blade, and since it wasn’t Master Yun, it must be He Zhu. This was Zhu’s horse. But where was Zhu?             

“Ho Teng,” he shouted. “Help me with these horses; their riders need us. We must follow those demon birds.”

They gathered the reins to the horses and glimpsed behind the scrawny rumps of the beasts an oasis of pure spring water. This was what had drawn the horses and how they’d managed to stay alive. Quickly, Quan filled the goatskins, and allowed the horses to drink their fill. Four hours before sundown, and no idea where they were headed, only the wake of the winged harbingers of death to show the way.

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Zhu’s gelding, on which Quan rode, whinnied in protest at its return to the place of death. Quan held his breath to ward off the stench of decay and balked when he grabbed at a breath to find there was no odour to speak of. He dropped to the ground and handed his reins to Ho Teng. Beside him was an abandoned village, and in front of him, two people foundered in a lover’s embrace half buried in the sand. Above, the vultures wheeled, refusing to descend. That in itself was peculiar, but Quan wasted no time on theorizing over the behaviour of carrion feeders, even though it was as if they had been sent to guide him here.

It was the sand as much as the desiccating heat that prevented the iniquitous treatment of the bodies. The flesh had dried to tough leather so even carrion feeders found it unpalatable. The sand floated like a gentle blanket cloaking the two lovers.

“You know them?” Ho Teng asked.

The upper arm of the larger figure lay exposed. Quan leaned over the scar on the right bicep, atrophied now. Memory shot its painful sensations into his mind for he knew the enemy who had inflicted the wound. He shut his eyes to dispel the horror. It can’t be! But the raised, jagged ridge of a scar, shrunken to a worm’s form couldn’t have proved the man’s identity greater if it had sprouted lips and cried out his name. How had this happened? He moaned and shifted his glassy gaze to the other figure swallowed by the sand.

The woman was unrecognizable, not through disfigurement or by decay, but because she was a stranger. Who was this stalwart maiden his friend held so tenderly? Then tears erupted in a torrent of despair as Quan registered, irrevocably, that Zhu was dead. Never would he call him brother-in-law. Never would Li know him as brother. Never would Wu see his uncle again.

Wu! Where was he?

Master Yun had told him that Wu was safe with Zhu—but, if Zhu was dead?

Before all was over he himself might be dead. Quan rose from his knees and stemmed his sorrow. Most of the tents were removed when their owners fled. What remained were torn sheets of felt, broken beams and cracked poles, no longer useful. Cold fires indicated much cooking had taken place in safer times, and fallen fencing showed where goats and camels were formerly stabled, their droppings soiling the ground.

This was what the Yeren wanted him to see? That meant they
did
think, and had similar concerns to men.

It seemed clear the village was not attacked. No weapons, no spent arrows or spears—and no blood. So why had the people fled? This was a Mongol camp he had no doubt, though he had never seen such a small nor primitive one before. He returned to the corpses. If he had arrived weeks earlier, he might have saved He Zhu this indignity. What did this? Zhu was the strongest warrior he’d ever known. He outshone even Quan. Stabbed by the best, still he recovered to fight another day. What adversary could defeat Zhu? There were no signs of a skirmish, but then the elements would have destroyed them by now. No weapon had been raised. And if they had been, they were taken away. Quan dropped to his knees, and this time, he saw what he had failed to notice before.

Sand covered the wound in Zhu’s throat and Quan saw that his voice organs had been ripped out, the main artery severed. The tips of Zhu’s fingers were stained a dark brown, almost black. Blood? He brushed away the sand from Zhu’s chest to expose his tunic. He wore his chest plate over an Imperial tunic. But in the shrivelled fist that circled his lover was a tuft of golden fox hair.

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“What will you do?” Ho Teng asked him cautiously.

“First we will give these two a decent burial. Then I must find my son.”

“Your son?”

He explained about Wu and the foxling Peng, how Master Yun had sent He Zhu to escort them to safety. “The fox faerie Jasmine has returned for her foxling, and she has taken Wu for some ill purpose, if she has not already killed him. But I must know for certain.”

“I don’t think she killed him. If she had, she would have left him with the others.”

Was that good news or bad? But if his body wasn’t here, there was a chance he was still alive.

They spent the rest of the day digging into the sand to make a proper grave. Quan wished he had known about the woman. If Zhu loved her—and it looked like they both died trying to save the children—she must have been a courageous maiden.

“Tell me, Ho Teng,” he said that night as they made fire under the desert stars. “How well do you know the Yeren?”

“They leave me alone and I leave them alone.”

“But what if one of them witnessed this savagery. Perhaps one of them saw the abduction of Wu and the girl Peng. I can’t go in search of him if I don’t know the way.”

“Are you sure that that is your destiny?”

For some reason the question angered Quan. “Who are you to speak to me of destiny poet, when you have forsaken your own?”

“Tell me, Brigade General, what do you think my destiny is?”

“Oh, how should I know!” Quan was desperate and his response came out like the whine of a complaining child. Never in his life had helplessness consumed him thus. He had abandoned his love to the pirates to build a wall for the Emperor, left the rescue of his son to a man who could not save him, returned to fight for the wall only to have the wall crumble to the invasion of barbarians, and he had failed to prevent the suicide of His Majesty. Always his purpose had seemed so clear: build the wall, repair the wall, defend the wall. All the while, Li and Wu were attacked, abused, waylaid and separated by abduction. What was his duty now? The wall had failed.

“Forgive me for that outburst,” Quan said. “I no longer believe destiny is in any of our hands.”

“You’re in pain,” Ho Teng said. “You have just buried a beloved friend.”

“Not just a friend,” Quan said. “He was more like a brother.” And that was no excuse. After all he had been through: the gruelling years of wall-building, the mystical journey to the Magpie Bridge, the meeting with the Transcendent Pig, Zheng Min’s tortures and excruciating days and nights in the desert, not to mention bloody battles defending the frontiers, and the White Tiger’s cruelty—and now he felt compelled to whine because he was uncertain of his destiny?

“You broke through to the Yeren, Quan. Doesn’t that tell you something? I don’t think our discovery of the horses, or the demon birds leading us to this place, were simply coincidences. It is true; you have a choice to make. From the stories you have told me of your boy Wu, it seems they all revolve around the choices those who loved him were compelled to make. Something special surrounds this boy. Everyone charged with his protection has lost him to a greater cause. Ask yourself this. What is
his
destiny?”

Quan frowned. “He’s only a child, Ho Teng. What destiny can a boy have? It isn’t fair to ask so much of a boy, a boy I have not even seen.”

“You’ve never seen your son? Then how will you know his face? How can you find what you have never seen?”

“What do you suggest, that I abandon him?”

“As I have tried to imply. Perhaps that is not for
us
to decide.”

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Quan awoke to the baking morning sun. He blinked and rubbed sleep from his eyes. “Did you see something among the tents there?” he questioned Ho Teng. “Something creeps.” A flash of gold caught Quan’s corner vision, and he rose to glimpse the snap of a white-tipped tail—no, several white-tipped tails. He approached, shrank to his knees and called softly, “Come out little one, are you hungry? I won’t harm you.”

A small flaxen fox scampered into view, body low, teeth bared, ready to pounce.

“It’s only a fox. But what a fox!” the poet said. “Since when do foxes live in the desert? And since when do they sprout nine tails?”

“Since they are the offspring of the fox faerie.” Quan placed a finger to his lips. “Don’t frighten her, I need her. Empty the saddlebags, find food. Quick now!”

The poet rummaged through their belongings and fetched a thin scrap of hide. Inside were rolled a few stringy pieces of jerky. The foxling’s eyes twitched, mouth slavering, and Quan took the dried meat and squatted, one hand extended, enticing her with their breakfast. The foxling lunged and tore the food from Quan’s hand, but not before he snagged one of her tails. She shrieked as he held her upside down, the meat falling from her jaws, and snapped at him as he suspended her arms-length from his body.

“Peng, I don’t want to harm you. Stop biting at me. Revert to your human self and I will put you down and give you food.”

She hissed, snarled, limbs raking out to scratch him with her claws. Her taut body twisted into impossible contortions, struggling like a mad thing, before slackening from exhaustion. Quan bade Ho Teng show her the food, and when the poet retrieved the fallen jerky, she sniffed, drooled and began to whimper.

“All right. I’ll release you. I won’t hurt you; do you understand me? I only want to help.”

He set her down on all fours and watched, wide-eyed, as she transmuted into a girl. Black hair spilled from her head onto golden tanned flesh, and the white-tipped tails retracted. She grabbed at the meat and shredded it. When Ho Teng offered her the goatskin she gulped until water rained off her chin.

“That’s enough. We’ll need some for later. Now tell me. How is it that you are here in the desert all alone? What happened to everyone? What happened to He Zhu and his companion?” Peng narrowed her pretty eyes at him, scowled. “My name is Brigade General Chi Quan of the Imperial Army,” he said. “And this is His Majesty’s poet, Ho Teng. We are looking for the boy Wu. Wu is my son. I’ve reason to believe that you were travelling in his company before that foul incident occurred.” He shifted his sight to the mound of sand that served as a grave.

“I saw you bury him and Alai last night,” she said. “Did you know my father?” She shoved another piece of meat into her mouth and chewed loudly. “He was kind to me, and so was the lady. My mother killed them, killed them both.”

“Why?”

Peng shrugged. “She was angry. She didn’t like that he should take another to her bed, maybe. I don’t know. She didn’t seem to miss him because she’d taken up with that iron-face ox-man with four eyes and six arms.” She shuddered. “His teeth are made of stones. You can hear them grind when he talks. He is very scary. I think he wanted to eat me, but she wouldn’t let him.”

Quan glanced away for a few seconds. Why would Jasmine leave Peng alone? She was just a child, foxling or no, she wouldn’t have survived long on her own. What was Jasmine’s plot?

“I ran away,” Peng said. “I turned into the fox and ran and hid. They couldn’t find me.” “I didn’t want to go with them.
He
scared me.”

“So they just left you? Their quest must have been pressing indeed.” Quan looked around, his heart beginning to drum as he formed his next query. “Is Wu dead?”

“Wu is my cousin. I think I love him. He was very kind to me. He always found me food.”

Quan smiled. “Since Wu is my son, do you know what that makes me? I am your uncle, or soon will be for I intend to marry Wu’s mother who is your aunt and your father’s sister.”

“That is too confusing,” Peng said. “But I think I would like you to be my uncle.”

“Good. Now you must try to remember. What happened to Wu?”

“Mother struck him when he tried to run to help Alai, and she killed her. I hope she has not killed Wu, too. He was not moving, but she ordered the iron-faced ox-man to carry him and when they couldn’t find me, they left.” Peng turned glazed eyes at him. “Did I do wrong to hide? I buried myself in the sand so that she could not smell me. My mother can be very mean. I did not want the iron-faced ox-man to throw me over his shoulder like a sack of rice as he did Wu.”