The Pirate Empress (68 page)

The two men screamed for their lives. They might not forgive her this indignity, but it was worth the risk as the only way to make them see. She tugged on
Fenghuang’s
feathers, and it circled back over land, over the mangrove swamps and jungles toward the level plain. Below them an army of gargoyles outfitted in chest plates and helmets marched. Li had only ever seen renderings of these creatures on vases and tapestries. In life they were more ugly than scorpions and snakes. Legend told of their greed and ruthlessness, how they fought their enemies with claw and tooth, and ate every part of their victim’s bodies including the head. They were called Tao Tie.

Li sent the phoenix low so that both Fong and Mo Kuan-fu would have no doubt as to what they had seen. Their shrieks came louder, and Li yanked on the neck feathers of her mount to indicate that it was time to flee. Higher they rose until the serpentine twists of the great Dragon Wall appeared below them. More enemy soldiers stormed the ramparts. These creatures that marched from the northwest—from the land of Scorched Mountain and the Coldhot River—made the gargoyles seem less revolting. Man-creatures with arms that grew front-to-back, some of them had only one leg, but that didn’t stop them from bounding across the steppe in stupendous leaps, and over the wall.

%%%

“What news, Quan?” Master Yun asked as the Brigade General and Esen returned from their reconnaissance.

“Bad news,” he answered. “The reports are beginning to filter in, and it looks like Dahlia has succeeded in amassing hundreds of thousands upon hundreds of thousands. I don’t think we can defeat them, Master Yun. Bull and serpent-headed men have been sighted amongst her armies.”

“Those are
Yaoquai
,” Master Yun said. “A bad sign. That means the Hell Master has lost control of his sentries.”

“There are armies of hopping corpses, too. And even one report of a single giant that can wipe out twenty men with one footstep.”

“Kua fu,” he said. “A simpleton easily bribed by promise of the sun.”

“Ah yes, that legend. I remember now. But still, Master Yun, what are we to do? How are we to fight these creatures? They are not men; they fight with primitive strength and magic, not weapons. How will we defeat them?”

“We don’t need to defeat her armies with force. We only need to buy time until Li brings us the White Tiger and Wu is found. Now Quan, what news of Zheng Min’s efforts? Has he managed to rally an army?”

“The people are frightened, but the sight of their emperor at the parapets of the Forbidden City have raised their spirits. Every able-bodied man and boy is being outfitted for battle as we speak. Even the rebel Zi Shicheng has returned to the fold. I just hope Zheng Min does not lose his courage at the last instant.” The Military Governor was known for his talent at spinning tales to change defeat into victory simply to make himself look good. “Altan is with us.”

“My brother wants his daughter back,” Esen interrupted. “He wants to see her now. He is waiting with his army outside the gates.”

Quan shot a look at Esen, now one of Quan’s captains. Neither warlord knew the foxling’s true sire, and that secret must stay hidden to keep their allegiance.

“Fine,” Master Yun said. “Bring him in. I will send for her. But for safety’s sake, Esen, the girl must remain within the confines of the palace. I don’t want the fox faeries to know we have her.”

Quan stared at Master Yun when the warlord left to fetch his brother. “Peng knows that Zhu, and
not
Altan, is her father.”

“Then we must swear her to secrecy.”

The warlock sent a eunuch to fetch Peng from the nursery, the room where Lotus Lily had played when she was a child.

%%%

Mo Kuan-fu’s screams could be heard from the Black Mountains to the Yellow Sea. Li ordered the phoenix to set the two men down on the decks of their ships, and then she perched the giant bird on the bridge of the warship and gazed down at the two leaders. “Choose your sides, Brave Rulers of the Seas, but choose wisely. You have seen the armies of the fox faeries. And that is only the beginning.”

A curse escaped from Mo Kuan-fu’s twisted lips and he called the White Bone Spirit to his side. From the portrait of her painted shrine at his junk’s bow, the ancient demon-goddess emerged in the guise of a pale-skinned, black-haired noblewoman. “Kill her!” he shrieked. “And bring me
Fenghuang
!” Instantly, the beautiful woman transformed into a seven-headed Jian, each head sporting a single eye. But instead of lunging at Li, the creature turned on its master and Li had to move fast to save him from becoming bird feed. She sent the phoenix swooping in a shower of gold and azure, shouted to the pirate captain to grab her hand, and hoisted him behind her and Lao, onto the back of her giant mount.
Bai Gu
Jing
, the White Bone Spirit made chase, but Li outmaneuvered it. At their tail, a spray of musketfire followed amid a shower of arrows let loose by Admiral Fong’s marines. Whether the attack was intended to kill the Jian or herself, Li had no time to ponder. She turned her steed toward the mountains and the serpentine wall that protected the Forbidden City, knowing full well that the White Tiger would follow.

%%%

“What was that?” Altan asked.

Jasmine studied the sky. A Chinese Phoenix carrying three passengers circled, then dropped beyond the walls of the palace. “That is Lotus Lily. That girl has pluck if nothing else. It seems she refuses to quit. But she no longer concerns us. We have her son. And that brings me to you, my champion. What is this I hear about you joining the Imperial forces? You can’t be serious. After all we’ve meant to each other? After all I have promised you, you intend to fight against me?”

“You put my dotard of a brother on the throne,” he boomed.

She shrugged. “That was just a gesture to appease the fool, and clearly a mistake. Somehow that devil of a warlock, has rescued the Emperor from the hellfires of Feng Du, and knocked your foolish brother off of his phoney pedestal. I should have known better than to think he could hold the palace. And to be honest with you, I never thought he could. Our capture of the Forbidden City was premature. We had not counted on the devilry of Master Yun or the success of Lotus Lily to find her way back to the capital. It is for you that the throne awaits. But first I need your armies to crush the Imperial forces once and for all. They are so like a child’s toy ball. You throw them down only to have them bounce up again. But this time they
will
not win and I think, Altan, you want to be on the side of the winning. I need your leadership. Only you can lead my human armies—such as they are. You know as well as I do that Esen cannot lead an army. He is a weakling compared to you, my mighty Khan.”

“That is so, but tell me, my little vixen, for I have seen the strange soldiers you are training on the plains. What’s in it for me? When you crush the world of men, what will be left for me in a world of beasts? Am I not a man?”

“I will send the armies back to where they came from.”

“And where is that?”

“Peng Lai and the Land of Legend, the Past and the Realm of the Dead. Now, enough questioning; are you with us?”

“I cannot believe that you can disappear for so long and not expect me to ask questions.”

Altan turned from pacing the wall in short stints. His falcon dropped to his gloved hand, feathers gleaming with a brown-black sheen, blood dripping from its sharp beak. Jasmine smiled, the sight of the blood compelling her to lick her lips. “You have not changed. I like that—intractable as always. Fine. Question away. I have no secrets from you.”

He gave her a narrow glance, pulled at his whiskers that needed cutting. “Where have you been? What have you been doing all these months and years, leaving our daughter to be abducted?”

“She was not abducted. My intent
was
to have her taken to the palace. She is a spy!”

He snorted. Then laughed uproariously. “She is a child. How can she spy?”

“You know so little about my kind, Altan. How do you think I knew how to find you? Not through tealeaves. That skill only foretells the future and is unreliable. Little Peng is my eyes and ears.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You will. But I need you to return with me. I want you to meet someone.”

“I am here to see Peng.”

Jasmine hesitated. “All right. Fine. Let’s suppose I did tell you one tiny lie. Suppose I tell you that Peng is not your daughter.”

Altan’s hand went to his boot and he withdrew a shining dagger. “Whose daughter is she?”

He slashed at her throat and she slipped beyond his reach. “Don’t anger me, Warlord. I can kill you the way I killed Peng’s father. Without a second thought.”

He withdrew the dagger, sheathed it and laughed. “Of course. So, tell me. Who was he?”

“A Chinese warrior monk, a man of no consequence, at least, not anymore. I needed him to spawn my kit. His line possesses a power that I wished mine to possess, and now it does. I repeat, how do you think I knew where to find you? Peng saw your army camped here, outside the walls as she was led in by Brigade General Chi Quan.”

“He and I had a pact, a pact of honour between warriors. I was to give him his son Wu in trade for my girl.”

“Yes, well, I have Wu and he is
not
for you to trade. And since Peng is not your daughter, why would you trade for her?”

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Esen laughed as he entered the doorway of the war room. “So, who has the last laugh again? My brother’s encampment is gone.”

Master Yun glanced at Quan who was holding little Peng’s hand before turning back. “Do you know where they have gone?” the warlock demanded.

The Mongol’s eyes rolled to the ceiling, and then lowered to the foxling, who squeezed her own together in a concentrated frown.

“Altan has returned with my mother to the plains of Xian,” Peng said.

Why there? Then Master Yun remembered Quan’s tale of He Zhu’s demise. Had Zhu succeeded in his quest before his murder? What had happened to the fifth rib of Dilong? And how on earth did Peng know of the whereabouts of her mother and Altan?

“He knows I am not his daughter,” she said.

“Have we lost him then?” Quan asked Master Yun.

“Have we, Peng?” Master Yun asked. “Have we lost your stepfather?”

Her eyes suddenly went blank. “How should I know?”

Master Yun squatted down in front of her, his voice laced with suspicion. “You seem to know an awful lot.”

She shrugged, then her gaze turned to something happening behind him. A woman in tattered rags with burnt hair entered, holding the hand of a small boy with one white streak in his, followed by a brown, weathered man that he recognized as the pirate Ching, but whom all now called Mo Kuan-fu, the Pirate King.

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

The Return of the Emperor’s Daughter

A few days passed before His Majesty sent for her. She slept in her old room with Lao, the windows barred with bamboo to resemble a cage. For her safety or to keep her prisoner? When finally Li was brought before her father, he gazed at her with such earnestness that she found it hard to believe he was the man who had ordered her execution ten years before.

Master Yun stood by the Emperor’s side, a strange sight indeed. Although she knew the old warlock had come to the palace as his advisor, in all her sojourn as a young concubine-in-training, she had never seen him as such. It was difficult to mask her suspicion, and her resentment for the injuries he had caused her. But these were bad times and such things must be forgiven. Over her head, emerald green tiles rippled across the throne room’s ceiling. This familiar sight was a memory from her childhood. When His Majesty used to call for her, she would gaze up conscientiously, but all the while, she was really looking past him to the mosaics of his ceiling. Li turned and locked glances with the warlock before returning her attention to the Emperor.

What must he think of this prodigal daughter costumed as chief of all pirates? She wore Madam Choi’s war helmet and her silk tunic with the gold dragons. Several blades were sashed to her hip. Holding her hand was Lao, her young son by Admiral Fong. She had sent for the garments from her pirate junk, which had followed her from the Yellow Sea, entered a tributary from the Gulf of Bahai, and sailed up the Grand Canal to the outskirts of Beijing where it lay anchored awaiting her orders.

Her last memory of this place was of horror when he pronounced judgement on her, a sixteen-year-old girl, dressed in a dancing girl’s costume, her feet cruelly broken by his henchmen. Her wounds had healed with Master Yun’s skill, and she stood proudly on feet that were not curled into the Ming Dynasty’s ideal of the perfect Golden Lotus. The agony with each step her broken feet had taken as she was forced to the chopping block haunted her even now.

“Majesty,” she said, and palmed her hands together in a bow. “I am Li, your daughter, and this is your number two grandson whose father, the White Tiger, will be sailing up the Grand Canal any hour now to join us.” She nudged Lao forward and he planted his small hands together and mimed his mother’s gesture.

The Emperor turned to Master Yun. “I have
two
grandsons?”

“You do,” the warlock replied. “But the boy we need is in the hands of the Fox Queen. Wu is the Black Tortoise and must hold the northernmost extreme of the Magic Crosshairs.”

His Majesty returned his attention to Li. “Why are you dressed like that? Why do you bear weapons like a common cutthroat?”

“Because, Your Highness,” she said. “I
am
a cutthroat. I am the leader of the pirates who menace the Yellow Sea. Your taxes have reduced the water people to poverty. We steal to survive.”

The Emperor’s eyes moved to Master Yun. “You expect to win back the Middle Kingdom with a ragtag bunch of sea robbers? Do you even know how to use a sword?” he asked Li. Clearly his only experience with women was with the pampered ladies of court who cringed at the sight of their own menses. “You are a woman, even if you are a pirate. Won’t you swoon at the first sign of blood? Have you ever even
seen
a dead man?”

“I have not only
seen
a dead man,” Li said, “I have killed. And on more than one occasion when required.”

The Emperor’s eyes crossed and he closed them to clear his mind, but he seemed to be at a loss, for he raised his eyelids to seek counsel from the warlock. This time Master Yun abstained. He looked to Li, knowing that father and daughter must resolve their differences themselves, and that His Majesty must accept Li for who she was and what she had become.

“Ling She resides in the Netherworld. I sent Lotus Lily to join her, declaring that she was no daughter of mine. There are no words or actions that I have regretted more.” He rose from his throne and extended a hand to her. “Daughter, welcome home. Forgive me if you can; and if you can’t, I understand. So much has happened in the last little while and I can scarcely grasp the situation. I have been under the spell of the fox faeries for many years, lost to the world, to Master Yun, and to you. I was deceived by all of you, and to think that all these years you lived under my roof, inside the Forbidden City, as one of my concubines-to-be. Thank the gods, I never asked for you. But I see now that your grandfather”—he glanced up at Master Yun— “ensured that that would never happen, and that, all the time, he intended to whisk you away to safety. My only regret is that it was I who was the evil from which you needed protection. It breaks my heart to know how I have been used. I cast aside my name of Tongtian, Heaven’s Pass, and never again will I be Son of Heaven. I have been punished, and perhaps the reign of the Fox Queen is further retribution.

“My sins have brought me to the hellfires of Feng Du where I was forced to climb a tree of knives. And if that didn’t bring me to my senses, then a flight from the Hell mouth on the back of a shapeshifting dragon soldier has. Those days of madness are over. This day, I accept you as the Pirate Empress, this day I embrace my daughter, and hope that we will all live to make amends.” He paused to catch his breath. “Let me greet my grandson.” He knelt to Lao’s level and smiled at the boy.

She left him to become acquainted with his grandson. Master Yun accompanied her to her courtyard where she wished to practice Tai Chi and calm the nerves caused by the unexpected reconciliation with her father. They were about to part ways when he touched her shoulder. “Li, something by those cherry trees moves.”

“Perhaps it’s Peng changed into a foxling and playing childish games.”

“No, it is not she. Wait here. Do not move.”

He faded into shadow and she was alone. A black form, the flutter of wings fell over her. Then an unlikely apparition descended from the sky, batlike, and faced her. Li sputtered in disbelief.

“Before you grow too confident, heed my words. Do you really know who the Black Tortoise is?” the apparition asked.

Li shrank back from the hideous spectre that addressed her. “Who are you?” She spun around to locate her grandfather but he was nowhere to be seen.

“I am pleased to learn that you did not kill your number two son. And I am here to remind you that you have yet to learn the identity of the Black Tortoise. It could be your firstborn, or it could be the son of Fong.”

She scowled, and the rotting figure smiled sadly. “Do you truly not remember me, Lotus Lily? I was once your tutor Tao. But my will is not my own. Even now the fox faeries have convinced others like me to join them.” He raised his wide, black sleeves, and revealed withered hands that looked like skin over fleshless bones. “My time is short. I came here to complete one more task.” His piercing eyes captured hers. They were milky pale. “Believe it, child, I am neither alive nor dead, but my body rots. My hair has turned to frost to match my eyes and my skin gleams virescent. But you must believe me.”

Li felt her insides recoil, but outwardly she remained standing where she was. “I don’t know who you are. And I don’t like what you are insinuating. How do you know me? How do you know of my sons?”

“I told you Lotus Lily, I was your tutor. I have been watching over you all of your life.”

Master Yun’s voice spoke from out of the shadows. “Go from here. You are tainted. You are no longer Tao, but a hopping corpse, conscripted by the enemy. You have said what you came to say. You are corrupted, through no fault of your own. If you truly own your will, you must go to Feng Du Mountain to be judged.”

“Alas,” he said. “I cannot. The Hell Master is no longer in control.” He glanced at Li. “And from your strange responses, it seems that you have been bargaining with the gods.”

Master Yun warned Li not to answer. “I don’t know what has compelled you to come here, Hopping Corpse, but your counsel was not requested. If you do not leave—” An arrow cut off Master Yun’s speech as it suddenly flew past his shoulder and struck the rotting figure in the chest. Tao drew it from between his ribs as easily as a spoon from a bowl of congee, and Quan advanced toward the small group, his jaw dropping in horror.

“My quarrel is not with you,” the hopping corpse told Quan, before returning to Master Yun. “And my counsel was not for
you
.” He gave Li one last look before he raised his arms and floated over the courtyard wall.

Li knitted her brow. “He says he was my former tutor, Tao. But I never had a tutor named Tao.”

Master Yun frowned, asked, “How many times have you called upon the water god for help?”

“Twice.” Her eyes suddenly widened.

Master Yun nodded. “Xiang Gong has taken his payment. Tao is the first victim of your stolen memory. I wonder: Who is the second? From this day forward, Li, have a care. There is always a price to be paid when mortals call upon the gods.” He turned away. “Now, you have news for me, Quan? How fare things on the northern frontier?”

“Not good, Master Yun. Our armies are small and weak compared to those of the Fox Queen. It has been confirmed that Altan has rejoined Jasmine. And Zheng Min is missing.”

“I was afraid of that. Is Esen still with us?”

“He is, but I don’t trust him.”

“And for good reason,” Master Yun said. “You must keep him away from His Majesty. Do not allow him inside the palace unescorted. His actions are unpredictable, and he lives only for reward and glory. Should he perceive either as inadequate or that he has been short-changed, he will turn on us like a wolf on a rabbit. As for our former military governor, he makes no secret that he is irked by his recent demotion. However, we have bigger fish to steam. Li, my informants tell me that the White Tiger approaches the Forbidden City. When he arrives, take him to his son so that he can see the boy is safe, and then prepare an audience with your father. When he has spoken with His Majesty he will be as tame as a kitten. Quan, come with me. I have one more errand to run.”