The Pirate Empress (16 page)

She cupped three fingers to her mouth, before letting her hand fall to her side. “Esen truly
is
alive.”

“And now he has even more reason to wish you dead. Revenge is a bitter medicine. But killing you will be harder than he thinks.” He paused to arrange his thoughts. “Esen is not the one to concern you. His brother Altan is much more dangerous.”

Li sniffed, tossed her hair royally. “Altan is a boy.”

“What makes you think Altan is a boy? Altan is as much a boy as you are a girl. You are no longer a girl, Lotus Lily.” He glanced up briefly to locate the captain. Li’s eyes followed his and settled on the handsome soldier’s profile. Chi Quan was kind and brave, and his steely gaze unnerved her, as well as made her knees go weak as royal jelly. He would make healthy children.

Master Yun cleared his throat, took Li’s chin in his hand. “You are a woman Lotus Lily. I see it in Quan’s eyes even as I see it in your own. Now, no more questions and listen to all I have to say. I’ll only say it once. Then you may ask me what you will.”

There was only one thing she wanted,
needed
to know, and he knew what it was before she asked. “What did Tao tell you about your mother?”

“Nothing. Nothing except that she was Ling She, His Majesty’s last wife, and that he had her killed when I was born because I wasn’t a boy.”

“Your mother was more than His Majesty’s wife.” He took a moment to inhale a deep breath. It was obvious he was keeping something from her. Master Yun was master of his body and his breath. She had never seen him struggle for control like this. He repeated what she already knew, but this time he spoke with puzzling emphasis. “Your mother was, indeed, Ling She, but she was much more than
just
His Majesty’s wife. Ling She was a direct descendent of First Emperor Qin. Her mother was also a princess, which makes you doubly a princess.” He stopped speaking again, and Li felt her heart threatening to implode. “But that’s not all. Ling She was also
my
daughter.”

Li’s eyes gawped. She glanced at Quan and Zhu, but their attention was drawn elsewhere. They had built a strong fire with a cooking pot over it. Neither soldier tended the pot. She rose to her feet, the urge to move jangling every nerve. Something had drawn the men to the opposite brow, and they peered downslope to the sea where the junks and sampans of the water people sat in the shiny bay. What on earth were they staring at?

Master Yun rose, too, and nodded when she failed to speak, then met her eyes solidly. “Yes, Lotus Lily, you are my granddaughter.”

“Then you must stay with me. I need you to protect me.”

Master Yun shook his head, pinned her with his look as though there was something she failed to grasp, then shut his eyelids. Her gaze shifted from his face to her perfectly functioning feet on which she was standing like they had never been broken. Her toes flexed at will, and if she wanted to, she could run. Li gulped, clapped a hand to her mouth, suddenly realizing what it was that he wasn’t saying.

“My mother was a sorceress! Then why couldn’t she save herself?”

His eyes flickered open. “Power is not without its limitations. Have you learned nothing? Even as I speak, my own strength wanes. Besides, you forget.
Huli Jing
, the fox faerie, was already at His Majesty’s side.”

“Was Jasmine really my aunt, my mother’s sister, as I was told?”

“No. But she took you in at the age of three and loved you as though you were her own. I had no idea the fox faerie had targeted her.”

“But Master Yun. If this is true, if you are my grandfather and if my mother was a sorceress, why don’t I have any powers?”

“What makes you think you don’t?”

“I can’t make fire through my fingertips. I can’t summon the clouds to rain or the river to rise.”

“Have you tried?” he asked, a twinkle in his eyes. “Power does not necessarily flow from the fingertips. Have you not wondered why you lived all these years in the palace with your feet unbound, did you not question why the boys in your martial arts class failed to see you were a girl?”

“I thought that was you. You told me you cast a spell over my feet. A protective spell to keep the boys from knowing.”

Master Yun laughed. “Have you ever seen me
cast
a spell? Spell-casting is not my best gift.” Li shifted slightly forward, and Master Yun’s voice turned gentle. “Think, Li. You always had it in you to protect yourself. You only lost that power when you felt yourself vulnerable.”

“But if you knew, why didn’t you tell me?”

“I wasn’t sure. And it was better for you to learn to protect yourself by your wits. If you knew you had certain powers, you would have become too confident. You must never let your guard down. You must never be arrogant. Besides, what powers you had were hidden from me, and it was obvious that you didn’t know how to use them. There is nothing more self-destructive than power in the hands of a novice.”

“But you could have trained me. I wanted to be a warrior and when I think of all the time I wasted training to be a concubine. Stupid tea ceremonies—”

“The tea ceremonies were necessary.” He took her hands, which flailed about in excitement, and held them firmly in his grip until she relaxed. “You have too much imagination, Li. And you’re too impulsive. Almost as bad as He Zhu.” He rolled his eyes toward the lieutenant, and then shook away whatever he was thinking. “You always imagined being a warrior, that is why you couldn’t be one. While imagination is important for creating magic, discipline is necessary to control it. Let your imagination fly, but also capture it to your will. Discipline Li. That’s why the martial arts training, that’s why the tea ceremony.”

Li bowed her head. “I can’t heal myself. When the fox faerie’s brutes broke my feet, I was powerless to stop the pain or to heal them. I couldn’t stop them from hurting me in the first place.” Her eyes welled with tears at the memory, and she implored, “Why couldn’t I cast some spell to protect myself?”

Master Yun took her gently by the shoulders. “Because you
think
too much and you lack discipline. In your youth and innocence, you blinded those around you to see only what you wanted them to see—because you wanted it that badly. When you took the life of Lok Yu and tried to kill Esen the Mongol, your eyes were opened to the harshness of life. You lost faith. You lost your power.”

Li sniffled, sucked back the tears. “How can I get it back?”

“You must train, but not with me. That’s why I am leaving you with the water people. They will teach you what you need to know.”

“But those people are pirates! Quan doesn’t understand why you want to leave me with them. He doesn’t even know if they’ll take me—since he’s already killed some of their folk at the request of His Majesty himself.”

“That is Quan’s problem. He’ll find a way. Your quest is to learn all you can about your abilities. I can’t tell you what they are because I don’t know what they are, and I suspect that I don’t have them.”

“Will you leave me the Scimitar of Yongfang?” she asked.

“No. I don’t think you’ll need it.”

Li wet her dry lips. “Then how am I supposed to protect myself? How will I hide from the fox faerie? If
you
don’t know what my abilities are, then how am
I
supposed to find out?”

“I believe you have the powers of
Gwei-huo
. You follow in the footsteps of your mother, the Will-o’-the-wisp. You have the ability to mislead, elude and deceive. With these gifts, I think you will be able to protect yourself from Jasmine, but only if you are trained. If you aren’t careful, these powers can be turned to evil.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The Juice of the Black Poppy

On the riverbank, at the outskirts of Xian village stood a tavern that served up the liquor of the black poppy. It was the finest and purest of juices, and in this form, an overdose was lethal. Jasmine had known many who had lived and died by the poppy, and to her, it was one more way to bend men’s wills—they became stupid under its influence.

The smoke in the opium den was clouding the warlord’s senses, and his men were rapidly getting high and drunk. In a short, porcelain teacup that some bandit had stolen from a Chinese cargo junk and traded downriver was half an ounce of the diluted, yellow-brown liquid. Esen grimaced at the faint, bitter taste as he swallowed, and Jasmine traced her long-nailed fingers over one of his biceps. The warlord flung her off, clamped a hand to his chest and groaned from the pain of the stab wound that had almost pierced his heart. The injuries to his legs were easily mended, and lucky for him she had returned before Lotus Lily had carved him up like a haunch of mutton.

“When I get my hands on that insolent girl, I will split her in half with my jade spear, then impale her to a tree with my bow.” Esen scowled, emptied his cup and pinned Jasmine with his eyes. He wiped his mouth with his knuckles and spat on the floor. “We took the wrong trail and it’s your fault.”

Jasmine pouted. “Something beyond the fire made them invisible to me. And the rain masked their scent after they fled the mound.”

The warlord clenched a fist before easing it open. “You followed the wrong horse.”

“I knew that horse, although it carried the wrong rider. But I’ve met that beast before. And clearly it knew me, too.”

“Who would be riding the warlock’s horse? And why didn’t you recognize him?”

The stranger’s uniform sparked a memory in her mind; she had not seen attire like that since First Emperor’s army.

How could she be so stupid? Emperor Qin’s army! No wonder the horse was familiar. That mount was Xingbar and the rider was Master Yun. Her thoughts spun backwards in another revelation. The Scimitar. That bronze blade had not glazed her eyes in over a thousand years. She kicked Esen. “Get up, Warlord. That rider
was
the warlock, and he has the Scimitar of Yongfang. That blade can mask a warrior’s identity.
That’s
how he duped us.”

Esen jumped to his feet. His men followed. He ran to the tavern entrance and saw rain lashing down. Mud spattered from the puddles while he splashed his way in thick leather boots to his horse. Jasmine raised her gown above the muck and joined him as thin rivulets of rain streamed down her face.

He scoured the ground, screeched into the squall, batting his hair out of his face, “The hoofprints have washed away! Which way should we go?”

No sign of the illusive warlock remained. Jasmine transmuted into the fox and raced through the puddles to the town gates, sniffed the soggy ground and sent her sharp gaze across the river flats. As long as he had the Scimitar, he was invisible to her, so there was only one strategy to follow: Chi Quan would not desert the wall half-finished; and wherever he had taken Lotus Lily, there he would abandon her before heading home to fulfill his duty to the Emperor. She must make for the Forbidden City, and Esen would just have to sit on his ass and wait.

She returned and reverted to her human form to inform the warlord of her plot. “I must re-join His Highness at the palace. That is where the captain will go and when he does, I’ll be waiting for him. He will tell me where Lotus Lily is.”

“No. That captain won’t break. You have never bewitched him before. What makes you think you can now?”

Wind whipped her hair about, leaving it plastered to her chest. Esen shook his head, and she blasted him. “All men are susceptible to my power, and I will prove it to you.”

A lull came in the wind and he returned her glare. “The old soldier came here for a reason other than to lure us off his trail. There was no body on the mound—and I
know
I shot someone. Even now, a Mongol arrow has marked the victim. Master Yun must have brought him here, and if he did, I will find out who buried him, and from him, I will wring out the truth and learn where that has-been soldier disappeared to and where he stashed the girl.”

She was about to transform into the fox again when it dawned on her that, perhaps, the Mongol was right. Even if Master Yun could hide his identity with the Scimitar, he couldn’t hide the dead body he was carrying. She turned back to Esen. “Fine. We’ll try it your way. Start asking questions. Someone must have seen the horseman and his human baggage.”

They began by returning to the opium den. No one had seen an old man with a body draped over his horse. A young boy came inside searching for his father, and stood listening while the barbarians interrogated his father’s company.

“Ba-ba,” the boy interrupted, “I saw someone like that after the storm while I was feeding the chickens.”

Esen grabbed the boy by the collar, threatening to twist his neck like a holiday goose if he didn’t speak. The terrified child cowed, while the father clutched the warlord’s arm. “Let go. He knows nothing.”

“You saw a rider meeting my description. Speak or I will silence you forever.”

Esen whipped forth a dagger and the boy squeaked, “He went to the Taoist temple.”

“Where is it?”

The father gave directions.

%%%

After her talk with Master Yun, Li and her three companions shared a light meal of some kind of lean meat with root vegetables. Li had long since stopped asking the soldiers what it was they hunted and skinned for her suppers. They never told her—probably because if she knew it was a parrot or a lizard or a monkey, her stomach would heave while still empty. She suspected this stew was made from snake’s flesh, but refrained from asking; it looked and tasted like chicken and that was good enough for her. It was eat and live or starve and die, and she refused to die, now that she and Chi Quan were together.

Amidst the chatter of protesting monkeys, and with Master Yun’s help, He Zhu constructed a shelter of vines and sticks, and broad palm fronds. Down the hill and through the forest was a lagoon sheltered from voyeurs. Li wanted to take Quan there, to the dark silk-green water, but dared not, for Master Yun was watching. His eyes never left them no matter what task he pursued.

Seated on the cliff edge beside her, Quan draped his mantle over her shoulders and pointed to the pirate ships anchored in the outer bay. He was disturbed, and she sensed his eyes on her, and when she glanced over, she saw she was right. He smiled slightly, dropped his troubled eyes and turned to the lagoon and again to the sea.

Li touched Quan’s hand. “You risked your life to save me.”

“It was really Zhu who saved you,” he corrected.

“Yes, but if you hadn’t been there to fight off the guards, I might have become a hopping corpse instead of sitting on this beautiful bluff looking at freedom.”

He fastened his steely gaze to what she had so casually referred to as freedom.

“Quan?”

His eyes flickered, but stayed fixed on the pirate boats, his profile as enigmatic as a statue’s. When he remained mute, she said, “I am possibly carrying the child of Lok Yu.”

The pronouncement brought no response at all, not even a flinch. She frowned, tilting her head to better see and decipher his expression, but he avoided her attempts.

He glanced over, and now it was she who sent him a steely gaze. “So, because of Lok Yu, you no longer want me for your wife?”

Quan lowered his eyelids, touched his tongue to his lips and looked up to see her glowering at him. She looked away, and he gripped her chin in his hand, making her face him, his steely gaze returning like he read her mind. “I am not like other men,” he said.

He raised his right hand, the palm flat against the air, and Li raised hers, pressing her hand, palm to palm against his. His fingers slid between hers and curled into a clasp, and his eyes lost their steel for an instant.

“I do not carry the next Son of Heaven yet,” she said, softly. “I have no Moonstone to show me the future, nor tealeaves to bring me visions. In fact, I am a pathetically poor tea brewer and if Tao were still alive he would tell you so. But—I have no need for these things because I know whenever I am destined to become a mother, the child I carry will be
yours
.”

Quan’s eyes trapped hers, for now was the time for a kiss, but He Zhu called for help with the shelter just at that moment, and before rising, Quan touched his lips to her hand.
So, the great warrior was speechless.
She smiled, drew her knees up to her chin and clasped her shins with both arms, and if not for the fact that she was running for her life, she’d be ecstatic.

She sighed, stared longingly at the lovely lagoon below the cliff.
Oh, hang it.
She would go and bathe. Her feet were whole and well now. She could run. The sun was still low in the sky; she had time before it set. She would follow the river to the sea. She tugged on the skin boots that Quan had made for her from whatever beast they’d had for supper a few nights ago. Feet protected from sticks and stones, she skipped downhill, through the forest, until she found the thin river trickling into a cove.

The air was warm and moist on her face, and the soil beneath her feet soft and carpeted with dead leaves. At the edge of the lagoon, she unlaced the boots and dipped a bare toe into the water. Cool, but not unbearably so. The lagoon formed a large, blue-green pool and around the edges, stones showed sharp and deep like a subaquatic wall. In the center, the water darkened, shadows danced as trees above shifted in the breeze, and mist slept on the surface. The sun penetrated the mist, reflecting every shade of the spectrum and even showed some unfamiliar hues.

The mantle fluttered to the bank and she stripped out of her dancing girl costume. On second thought, she should probably keep it on since it needed a scrubbing, too, but oh well, the garment was off and hanging from a tree limb, and she was as naked as the crane on the opposite shore. How long she had spent in that flimsy garment didn’t bear thinking about and she bent her knees and dived into the deepest part of the cove.

She swept her fingers through her hair and rose up toward the surface as graceful as a fish. The sun blinded her for an instant and she blinked her eyes to rainbow mist. The second time she dived under, she aimed for the rock shelf at the opposite shore. The shadows there scattered, as she burst through the jade-coloured world, and scattered droplets from her fingers.
If power does not flow through the fingertips, where does it come from?
She stretched her arms and aimed her fingers at the crane that was watching her, perched on a tall rock.
Fly, bird!
The crane stood on one leg and cocked its head at her.
Well, then, fall flat on your face!
She slapped her hands down and water splashed, startling the bird, but in a moment it began preening its feathers again, still balancing on one leg.

Master Yun was wrong. She had no powers.
I can’t make the sea rise or the earth move, can’t even make a stupid bird obey me.
She looked down at her naked form. And she certainly wasn’t invisible. She dived once more, heard a second splash just as her head went under, and thought nothing of it. But when she opened her eyes to shoot upward, something circled her waist. She gasped, losing her graceful rise, and felt fingers lock at her abdomen. She broke the surface, and felt Quan’s cool cheek against her ear and his naked body press against her back.

“Where did you come from?” she asked startled.

“When are you going to learn, Li? It’s not safe for you to bathe alone.”

“I didn’t realize I had any enemies here.”

Pearls of water dribbled down her face as he turned her around. “You have enemies everywhere,” he said.

“Are you angry, Captain?”

He glanced down at her white breasts floating just in front of him. “Do I look angry?”

She smiled.

“Come, it’s time to go.” He forced his voice to sound normal.

Li put her arms around his neck, kicking her feet to stay afloat. “It’s so beautiful here.” The sun was beginning to set, blue shadows sprang up around the periphery of the lagoon, and the rainbow mist sparkled like coloured lanterns in the dusk. “Ghostfire,” Quan said, noticing the mysterious nightlights, too.

“What did you say?”

“
Gwei-huo
. Will-o’-the-wisp. Have you never heard the legends of the Ghostfire?”

“They are tiny spirits with the power to deceive, mislead and elude. Yes, I’ve heard of them.” Quan was still holding her by the waist, and she paused to brush water from her face and to sweep her hands up over her head to smooth back her sleek black hair.
Gwei-huo
had the power of invisibility. “I wasn’t invisible to you,” she remarked, resettling her arms around his neck.

“What are you talking about? Of course you weren’t invisible. Look at you.” He gazed down at her ivory flesh and smiled. “We could see you from up there.” He pointed to the campsite on the hill above the jungle where two men at the cliff edge looked down.