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.”
“You were very right to hide. We will take you to safety.”
“Wait,” she said. She went to stand by Zhu’s burial mound and examined it. She sniffed the air and the sand. “Why did you bury him like that?”
“So that the animals would not defile his body.”
“What is ‘defile’?” she asked.
Quan paused. “So they would not eat him.”
She nodded. “My mother says that bodies are meant to be eaten. I could not eat Zhu’s or Alai’s. Why is this? I ate my nurse. I ate several of my nurses. My mother said it was good meat.”
Quan stemmed his revulsion—meat was meat to a fox—and shook his head. “From now on, I will get you your meat.” He took her hand and noticed that she clenched something in her small fist. “What is this?”
Peng drew it back but not before Quan recognized it as the Tiger’s Eye—Zhu’s gemstone of seeing. “I wished to give it to Wu, but my mother took Wu away before I could return it to him. May I wear it? Wu used to wear it around his neck on a cord before Zhu took it back.”
“You did good to keep it safe. How does it work?”
“It does not work. It is broken.”
So they had no means of seeing what was happening in the Forbidden City or on Fong’s warship at this very moment. It mattered little that the gemstone was broken, for they had no one among them who could draw on its powers.
After they breakfasted, Quan decided to start back to the forest of rust-coloured columns. He sat Peng before him on Zhu’s gelding and watched the desertscape sweep by as they retraced their path. He had the Vermilion bird—something to barter with—for surely Jasmine had not intended to abandon her child, and so Master Yun would be pleased. If he could convince the Yeren to join them, they could return to the capital in triumph.
The Emperor waited. The Azure Dragon was in place.
The Vermilion Bird was captured.
That left only the aid of the White Tiger to win.
And the rescue of the Black Tortoise. Wu.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
The Pirate King’s Duplicity
All is an illusion, Li thought, as she hoisted sail and changed tack to meet the White Tiger on a southeasterly course. What was real anymore? And how could one tell? Were Master Yun and Quan really here and now gone? Was her quest real? Must she face the wrath of her Manchurian husband once more? She gazed at the wheel in her hand. Was it even she who stood at this junk’s helm? Were Madam Choi and Po truly dead? Had there ever been a Madam Choi and Po? She shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts.
The sea was a vast plain of rippling green jelly. Where the sun splashed off the waves, it left bright spots in her eyes that added to her sense of unreality. She should be filled with power, with purpose, but a mood of doom assailed her. Her tough talk with Quan and Master Yun: was that all part of a nebulous dream? What was this cloud that was muddying her thoughts? This was not like her! Never had she questioned her purpose! She was having thoughts of surrendering. No. No, no, no. Wu’s life was at stake. All of the Middle Kingdom was at stake! She gripped the wheel, clenched her jaw and stood tall, proud, and defiant. The sea was dead, the air immobile. The bamboo sails overhead flapped, sagged. A strange weakness descended over her will. Her knees felt loose, her arms unresponsive, thoughts drifting back to where they should not be. Was Lin genuinely in love with Admiral Fong?
Wake up, Immortal One! She raised her head to the blue and yellow figurehead of Xiang Gong. Tell me I am not steeped in nightmare! The voice she heard when she heard it was not that of the sea god but of the man in the rigging. “We have company!” he hollered.
Company? She was expecting no company. But then it dawned on her that her expectations had nothing to do with what was, and if she failed to shake off these thoughts, she would sail her pirate junk off the very edge of the world. She raised her spyglass to the horizon and caught a glimpse of the vessel’s colours. Black. So, it wasn’t Fong’s warship. It was the Lady White Snake. It was rapidly approaching.
Li waited, her men flabbergasted at her lack of response. If the Pirate King assumed business with her, she would hear what he had to say. The sails were already slack; she gave no orders to stretch them. If Mo Kuan-fu could see into her mind, he would have smiled, would have seen that his libations to Bai Gu Jing had paid off.
The pirate junk hove to, and hailed her. She stumbled to the rail, and saw beside the Pirate King her stepsister. What was Lin doing here? How had she escaped Fong? Had she left him willingly? And what about Lao? Who was looking after Lao? Suddenly Li realized why she had been feeling so strange. There was sorcery at work here and she was its target.
She drew her sabre as the pirate captain and Lin boarded her craft. They were alone. Li signalled for her men to stand alert. “What is this, a hostage trade? I have nothing to trade, Mo Kuan-fu.” She turned to Lin. “Are you among his crew of your own volition?”
The Pirate King stopped the girl from speaking with a swift hand gesture. “Word on the high seas is that you’ve been seeking me.”
“And what if I have? You still have not answered my questions. What is it that you want?”
“Why, I’m merely returning your sister to you. Are you not happy to see her?”
Li was about to order Lin to approach her, but something felt wrong. “Last I saw you, Lin, you expressed no desire to join me.”
“She was under duress,” Mo Kuan-fu said. “She was afraid for her life. She didn’t dare leave the White Tiger for fear he would track you down and her other sisters as well, and kill you all.”
“He was going to do that anyway.” Li’s frown deepened. “How did you even know Lin was with Fong? And why would you risk your life to rescue her? I don’t believe a word of your story. Now tell me the truth!”
“Do you think I’m so stupid as to be ignorant of the comings and goings in my own domain? All the pirates knew of Lin’s abduction when the White Tiger attacked Madam Choi and delivered the fatal wound. And now, all hell has broken loose in the Middle Kingdom. Every coastal village is abuzz with the news of the Forbidden City’s capture. All talk leads me to believe that we’ll soon have a new emperor, one who won’t be as lazy as the last. Our easy ways will be the target of his first attack because we’ve looted silver that was meant to fill the royal coffers. I’m here to barter with you and to present your sister as a peace offering. Do you still want your Wu on the throne?”
“Stand back and keep your she-devil with you,” she ordered. The situation was wors
e than that. You lie. You are not here for any sort of fair trade. Nor did she believe this was her stepsister.
Instantly, Lin’s innocent features morphed into those of a not so innocent, but still lovely woman. The sight of her exquisite form gave Li the chills. Like the fox faerie Jasmine, she was perfect from the top of her black-haired skull to the full white breasts, incurved waist, and slender feet, pale as a lamb’s belly.
“If there is one ounce of humanity left to your soul, you will hear me out, Pirate King,” Li said. “It is she you must fight. She only obeys you because you feed her. But in the end it will be your bones she gnaws on. The Middle Kingdom is indeed in peril, but the enemy is neither human nor mortal. Her kind was released by the fox faeries and they seek the demise of all men. Pirates are not exempted.”
“You think I don’t know that, Lotus Lily? I have made this spirit my consort. She’s not the only one either. There are creatures out there whose powers I wish to harness—”
“Ching! Are you crazy? We have no power over them! They are not of this time!”
“I don’t care. And don’t call me that. This one obeys me. With her by my side, no one can defeat me. Not even you.”
“The fox faeries won’t allow this. They’ll call Bai Gu Jing back to them. They are only using her to weaken you, to obtain your trust. They’ll destroy the pirate fleets so that we can’t help the Emperor.”
Mo Kuan-fu snorted. “Word is out that the Emperor is dead. He hasn’t been seen or heard from in many moons. So if he hasn’t taken his own miserable life, then the invaders have murdered him. Rumours say another has taken the throne—”
“All right. It’s true,” Li said. “A Mongol has taken the throne, a barbarian fool by the name of Esen. Do you want a barbarian for an emperor? Well, I don’t, and yes, you were right in surmising that His Majesty is dead, or at least he was dead. But he’s back. The warlock, Master Yun, has convinced the Hell Master to release him. We still have a chance to save the Middle Kingdom if you will join us, and help me to convince Fong to do so as well.” Something stayed her tongue from further explanation, and she did not mention the Crosshairs of the Four Winds. “We have the sea power; we can give them a beating they won’t soon forget.”
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