The Pirate Empress

by Deborah Cannon

  “I don’t think she knew until she saw you in the vision.”

  Vision? Li’s mind was a maze of fragmented thoughts. Of course, Jasmine had visions. That was why she was always staring at tealeaves and into the depths of lily ponds. Jasmine was a fox faerie. So why hadn’t she known the truth earlier?

  Esen sympathised. “Surely, your wrists and ankles must be sore.”

  They were sore. And she couldn’t use her hands and feet with them trussed like this. “I’m also hungry. I wouldn’t mind something to eat.”

  His eyes gleamed with wicked humour. “First, you serve me. Then, I’ll serve you.”

  “I don’t think I will please you. I have no idea what I’m doing. The last man that had sex with me, the father of the supposed child you think I’m carrying ... Well, now he’s dead.”

  Esen threw back his head and roared with laughter, before he squatted beside her and cut her bonds with a knife he jerked out of his boot. His injured leg didn’t seem to hurt him at all, and he moved with the ease of a stallion. When she was free, he returned the knife to his boot, grabbed her by the arm and hauled her to her feet.

  He spun her to get a good look at his prize and she let him fling her around. He was not much taller than her, but he was sturdy like his horses.

  “You are even more beautiful than Jasmine,” he said.

  “Don’t let her hear you say that.”

  “Do you always speak before you’re asked to?”

  “Always,” Li said, softly.

  He would have dropped her to his bed furs had she not whirled out of his arms, tripping him in the process. Her foot landed on his injured calf, and he plunged face down on the furs and pillows, screaming with rage. Li steadied her breath, felt every muscle tense in her body and found her stance. Master Yun’s voice echoed in her mind: Practice your form like you were sparring and spar like it was a form. She stood firm, hands braced, ready to slash like knives, eyes peeled for his next move.

  He leaped to his feet, scowled. “Get down on your knees. I will take you like the animal you are.”

  The man was quick, but he could be outmaneuvered, and she waited for him to make his move. When he reached for her arm, she slammed the sides of her hands into his neck, and he went down. She kicked, aiming for his groin, but he divined her intent and rolled forward so that she struck him in the hip. No ram could be angrier than he was now; he had become a wolf. He snarled showing his teeth, lunged at her, and she spun, dodging him, but not fast enough. As he collapsed to the ground, his hand shot out to take her ankle, and she crashed onto her stomach. He dragged her, hand over hand, and when he reached her hair, he grabbed a handful of it and wrenched her head up nearly breaking her neck. He was on her now, seizing the delicate fabric of her skirt and threw it up over her back. He would have pierced her with his jade spear, but she stopped him by shouting, “Wait.”

  Hands twined in her hair, he hauled her face to meet his. “I wait for no one. And I take orders from no one. Especially not an imp of a girl like you.”

  Imp, am I? Li turned her head so that she could see him better and to relieve some of the pressure from her neck as she forced her body to slacken and her expression to cajole. The man was a beast, but he wasn’t stupid. When he saw that she was getting into position to receive his jade spear, he loosened his grip. Li forced her beating heart to still and her breathing to cease. Her plan would only work if she convinced him of her compliance. “I like it more like this,” she said, sticking her rump into the air.

  He grinned. “That’s better.”

  Li hunched herself into a ball, touching her head to the ground, and let her hands slither toward her ankles. He knelt behind her, but his boots were too distant for her to reach, and just as he unfastened his jerkin and positioned himself, she turned around on her knees and said, “I have a better idea.”

  His eyes furrowed into suspicious creases as she pretended to admire the grandness of his manhood. She resumed a kneeling position, smiled up at him, before looking down. Though the idea of pleasuring him with her tongue made her stomach turn, it was the only way she could reach into his boot and grab his knife. His quivering, as her fingers spidered their way up his calves, told her that his mind was sending him warning signals though his body spoke otherwise. Had she learned something from the concubines after all? Maybe. She stroked him like one of His Majesty’s Shih Tzus until he was in total rapture, waiting for her to bring him to ecstasy. Was he in for one hell of a surprise. Her hand shot into his boot and ripped the knife out. He jerked back, realizing he’d been fooled, but not before she took a slice out of his upper thigh.

  “Bitch,” he cursed. He had a dagger in the other boot and now he withdrew that one and slung it at her.

  She dodged, and the blade struck the felt cloth of the tent, puncturing it to the hilt. Now only she had a knife and the warlord was half naked, his jade spear a spear no more.

  “You can’t get out of here without being seen,” Esen taunted.

  Li begged to differ. She was getting out of here.

  Bleeding, badly wounded, if he didn’t see to that wound soon, he would die.

  “The knife, you dragon’s spawn. Give it to me.”

  When dragons spew lakewater.

  The knife left her hand and struck the charging Mongol in the chest, stopping him cold. He staggered backward, eyes blinking in dumbfounded horror.

  A deathblow? She hoped so. The warlord, Esen, was a beast. And he was stupid.

  She turned, plucked the blade from the tent wall, and slipped under the wolf pelt and outside. Fast as a filly she split—and slammed straight into the shocked faced of Captain Chi Quan. His hand was on her wrist, forcing her to drop the weapon before she could stab him. Li was so overcharged that a slip of the knife, killing an innocent bystander, wasn’t out of the question. She got control of herself and shook free of his grip. “Captain,” she managed to say hoarsely. “If you came to rescue me, you’re a bit late.”

  The astonished look on Quan’s face dropped from her eyes to her Turkish dancing girl costume, and He Zhu who was staring, equally stunned by her sudden appearance, ripped his sight from the seductive fabric dripping from her hips to meet the Mongol blade that had landed point end into the ground. He touched a finger to his lips to silence her, and gestured to where the mournful notes of a flute sounded, his eyebrows arched.

  “That’s the brother’s, Altan’s tent,” Li whispered. “And this is Esen’s.” She shoved a thumb in the direction where an agonized moan, like the sound of a dying goat, escaped.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Ghost Catcher

  Master Yun’s invocation to the forces of the earth had been answered. He had caused the wind to rise in the seat of Emperor Qin’s Military Command, carrying him to the chariot of First Emperor himself. Surely, he could handle this pot-of-a-clay-giant.

  The terracotta warrior was over ten feet tall and his head was set in a firm posture, his expression grim. He was in full battle array, armed with a scimitar and a lance. Master Yun aimed his Moonstone at the imposing statue and said, “Let me pass.”

  The brittle shell of the warrior shattered and rust-grey pieces of terracotta clattered onto the floor of the empty corridor. From inside what was once a huge statue, a ghost emerged pale grey, tinged with red and yellow, nebulous and filmy. Only the weapons remained solid.

  Master Yun’s eyes grew round like water chestnuts. “Who are you?”

  “Do you not recognize me? I am First Emperor’s mound keeper.”

  In all of Master Yun’s eventfully long life he had forgotten most of the faces of those he had trained and those he had slain. “What is your name?”

  “Yongfang.”

  That name did not register any specific memory. “Well, Yongfang, I am on a mission for His Imperial Highness. I must pass.”

  “You must first pass my test, and defeat me in battle.”

  “How? You have no substance. You are ethereal, a phantom, a wraith. I touch yo
u and my hand passes through.” To prove his words, he wriggled his fingers inside the translucent torso of the giant ghost warrior. “And you are already dead.”

  “And they call you Ghost Catcher.” The armed spectre jeered.

  Master Yun had not trapped a ghost in over a thousand years.

  “Defeat me,” Yongfang said. “Or spend eternity entombed with me, trying.”

  Spending eternity entombed did not agree with Master Yun, and he was needed now that his power was back and the strength of the Ming soldiers diminishing.

  “Return me to my clay prison and I will tell you what you want to know. I will not only show you the way out, but I will divulge the secret to releasing First Emperor’s army.”

  “He has already promised me the aid of his forces—if I lure the fox faerie here to replace him.”

  Yongfang’s nebulous face sneered. “And you believe him? Emperor Qin did not get his reputation for treachery and cruelty for nothing.”

  True. But Master Yun couldn’t fight this phantom with sword or bow—or by foot and hand. All of his martial arts skills were negated here. How did one defeat a ghost? His skills concerning the Netherworld were rusty. “Agreed,” he said. “Emperor Qin ruled with a burning iron fist.”

  Now if only he could remember Yongfang’s personage in life.

  “I will give you a riddle,” Yongfang said, “and you must solve it.”

  “Fine, but first tell me. Why do you want to betray your emperor?”

  “I gave my life for my emperor—and more. It is not I who betrayed him, but he who betrayed me. Now, no more questions. Answer my riddle or I will slay you with my scimitar.” The ghost soldier drew his blade and slashed at the air in front of Master Yun’s face.

  Master Yun leaped back before the blade could take a second swipe. The red and yellow colours of the phantom deepened into an angry hue, and swirled, dissolving his face, then reformed into a sharp opaque scowl. He spoke. “What is a flower but not a flower and runs on four legs?”

  That was easy. Master Yun opened his mouth to answer, but Yongfang cut him off. “You get one answer only, Ghost Catcher. If you are wrong, you stay for eternity or I take your head with this.” The armoured phantom raised his scimitar. “Your choice.”

  Master Yun was about to answer the riddle with the name of Jasmine—Huli Jing—when he realized that the name of the fox faerie differed during the rule of Emperor Qin.

  The seconds passed and the ghost fingered his scimitar. Huli Jing was as old as Master Yun, possibly older, and she had come and gone in many transformations, taking the form of concubines she murdered in order to possess their human bodies. There were centuries when she went underground only to emerge when a ruler worthy of her took the throne. Yongfang was not a name familiar to him, but the name Peony was.

  The Lady Peony was Emperor Qin’s number one concubine, and she had stood by his side while he defeated legions of the relentless Xiongnu. Before he claimed her, she was the wife of a quiet, faithful warrior that no one noticed. His name—Master Yun looked up. Could his name have been Yongfang? Was his wife Leng Fa, the shy, beautiful girl abducted by the Emperor? She was renamed Peony, and with that name change other things changed, too.

  Peony was notoriously cruel, and Master Yun left the palace by command of His Majesty when she came to power and demanded his exile for refusing to acknowledge her as Empress. After that, Master Yun turned his back on the Qin dynasty to seek magic in the Land of the Walking Bones. Although that magic eluded him he only saw his homeland again when Peony fled China following the Empire’s collapse in a revolt at the hands of a rebel army tripped by First Emperor’s insufferable acts. Yongfang was the leader of the rebels. He stirred up a barbarian incursion that took advantage of the chaos while Master Yun wandered deep in the Gobi desert, returning only in time to see the fall of a dynasty.

  What was a flower but not a flower and ran on four legs? It could only be one person.

  “The answer to your riddle is the Lady Peony,” Master Yun said.

  Yongfang whipped his scimitar from its sheath and hurled it into the ground, imbedding the bronze blade five inches deep, just missing Master Yun’s leather-clad toes. “So, you remember. May the Lady Peony rot in Hell.”

  “It was not her doing. Just as much of First Emperor’s actions were not of his doing.”

  “Then whose?” Yongfang demanded.

  “Huli Jing. She-who-takes-another’s-form. She will be punished.”

  Master Yun withdrew the impaled scimitar from the ground without struggle, although it was deeply wedged, before he bowed and extended the blade toward the ghost soldier, hilt first. But Yongfang shook his head. “Keep it. You have earned it.”

  The blade was finely wrought, and the ghostly face creased into a cynical smile. “I stole that scimitar from the crypt itself and armed my rebels with the weapons that First Emperor meant to enter eternity. Did you not notice how one quarter of the Night Guards Army is weaponless? I broke open the vault and looted it, even as His Holiness was building this shrine to himself.” Yongfang ended his speech with a sneer.

  First Emperor had trapped the rebel leader here as punishment, and now he was caged forever, sworn to allegiance to the man who had purloined his wife. Master Yun suddenly remembered who Yongfang was: the son of good honest labourers, and the only male of eight children. With one act, Emperor Qin had destroyed ten lives.

  The ghostly smile faded and Yongfang nodded, reading Master Yun’s face accurately. “My parents depended on me until I was conscripted into First Emperor’s army, and when he stole their livelihood he took my service and my wife.”

  “You want revenge?” Master Yun asked.

  “No, I want justice.”

  Master Yun hoisted the scimitar. The bronze from which it was hewn was old but it still shone with the brightness of new metal. “Huli Jing will pay. Return to your vessel for now. I will be back.”

  “Wait!”

  The spectre’s colours blended into a less angry hue of grey and yellow. “When you return, you will need to know how to open the gate to release First Emperor’s army for they will not rise on his voice alone. Not all of the soldiers are faithful. Some of the terracotta faces are the faces of my rebels. The statues were erected before they turned against him.” The ghost hesitated for a second before continuing, “You must go to the land where bones walk, to what the desert tribes call Hot Lake. The waters of that lake foam and boil. You may survive it; you may not. At the lake bottom are the remains of Dilong, the Emperor Dragon. Take its fifth rib. Return with it, and then score the Emperor’s emblem on the top of the mound. The dragon’s magic will infuse the gate and open the lock when you need it. You will not have to trust the word of First Emperor.”

  Master Yun thanked Yongfang for the information and slid the bronze scimitar into the sash at his waist beneath his robes. He looked back at the ghost for further instructions. “Retrace your steps to the vault where the Night Guards Army waits. The door will open.”

  “Then it was you who opened it? In that case...” Master Yun arched a brow, and it suddenly struck him that the ghost he had captured for Emperor Qin so long ago—

  Yongfang cut into his thoughts. “Yes, that was I. On my death, you were ordered to capture my spirit, but I was so badly hacked to pieces, you did not recognize me. As a part of my punishment, First Emperor made me his mound keeper. I have the ability to open the gate at his command, but I cannot leave. I will not be able to hear you after you leave, so I will not be able to let you back in. Nor can I release the great army. They remain dead. Only the dragon’s bone can do that.”

  Yongfang bowed and he glanced to where the rust-grey terracotta fragments lay scattered over the floor. He inhaled and the pieces of pottery flew toward him, reassembling and melding until the nebulous apparition was fully absorbed and a massive statue stood in its place. His last words came in a deep breathless voice, echoing. “Beware of false promises.”

  The statue was gone
leaving nothing but blackness for as far as he could see. Master Yun had no idea how many days and nights he had spent in Emperor Qin’s tomb, and he had only one thought now: to get out.

  Unfortunately, First Emperor Qin had been listening to the interchange between the warlock and the rebel warrior, and decided that Master Yun had failed the test.

  %%%

  The Ming warriors rode in silence along a southerly route, looping north toward the Datong garrison by way of Shanxi. What was this tension, like a strung bow between the two comrades-in-arms? All of the stories Li knew of the heroic Chi Quan and the fearless He Zhu spoke of their valour and their loyalty, not only to His Majesty, but to each other as well. She tugged on Quan’s tunic to urge him to stop.

  “What is it?” he asked over his shoulder. “We’re not out of danger yet. We have only just left the first pass.”

  “I need to speak to you before we return to camp.”

  Quan motioned to He Zhu that they intended to rest, and reined in his horse waiting for Li to dismount before swinging his leg over the saddle and dropping to the soft ground beside her. He Zhu remained mounted, on guard for avenging Mongols while Li shivered as the early summer wind blew cool over the grassland and the dewy green blades swished and swayed. If not for the fact that she was running for her life, the dawn would have been beautiful. A pale light showed on the edge of the world and above her head, the stars were passing. She thought she heard a howl like a wolf. Was that Altan discovering the murder of his brother?

  “What is it, Li?” Quan asked impatiently as he removed the lightweight mantle he wore over his battle tunic and draped it over her shoulders. “What can’t wait until we reach the safety of the garrison?”

  “What will you do with me when we return?” Li asked, hugging the mantle close.

  He studied her face, keeping his own blank. So he knew. He knew whose daughter she was, and he intended to return her to her father. “I will not go back to the Forbidden City,” she said. “The Emperor had my mother executed and I was supposed to go to the Netherworld with her. I wasn’t taken then and I won’t go now.”