The Pirate Empress (25 page)

“He will sleep. “But upon awakening, he will be a raving lunatic when he learns he is our prisoner.”

Tao looked to the sky—already it was lightening—and inspected the gold and azure peacock feather in his hand. “I’ll take this with me. When I am sure of Esen’s devilry I shall return. Meanwhile keep him under guard.”

Li grabbed Tao’s sleeve and he gently loosened her grasp. “I must go or I will wither. The hunger will overpower me and I cannot be responsible for what I might do. I’ll see you again.”

He raised his long sleeves until they spread out like bat wings, the wind caught, flapping the fabric of his robes, and then he was gone.

%%%

Number One Daughter’s burial was a simple one at sea. She was dressed in Madam Choi’s finest clothing, which happened to be a paddy-field dress that she owned before her marriage to the pirate Choi. Paddy-field dresses were for peasant women of the Ming Dynasty, and to Madam Choi who had rejected fine gowns and robes as incompatible with pirating, this was the only finery she owned. Everyday women of the Waterworld wore practical tunics and trousers with sashes to hold their weapons. Madam Choi’s paddy-field dress was comprised of a patchwork of brocades in various colours, and resembled a shaman’s cassock; the swatches of cloth were earthy and bright, stitched in interlacing patterns to mimic paddy fields.

Leng had never looked more beautiful, hence her name: Pretty One. Too bad she had not known she did not need the cosmetics of the rich to enhance that beauty.

When her body was laid to rest at the bottom of the sea, Madam Choi sent messages to all the pirate junks nearby. They had been inactive too long. The smash and grab technique the pirates had reverted to after the death of their supreme leader was barely enough to keep the water people alive; it was time to reunite, to reorganize under one leader. Madam Choi decided that she must be that leader. What her husband had once accomplished, she would improve tenfold. The last raid she had attempted had been a fiasco. Not only had she lost a child and a working member of her company, but she had also failed to take the provisions they needed. Food was scarce, and over a meal of boiled caterpillars and coarse red rice, Madam Choi revealed her thoughts to her crew.

The only problem was that there was one man, a man who had always opposed her husband’s leadership. He had only deferred to Choi because the other pirates agreed to him as supreme chief of all the pirates. This man was Ching. Ching might prove to be an obstacle.

Madam Choi and her crew returned to the South Coast where the pirate lairs were numerous. She called a meeting of all the independent captains to gather at a well-known opium den on the waterfront, and there, proposed her plan.

Inside the dark hut, Ching sat opposite Madam Choi over a pipe of opium. Unlike the taverns of the riverbank near Xian, here consuming the juice of the poppy was unheard of. Instead, the poppy was dried and stuffed into pipes. Smoke clouded the atmosphere and burned the eyes. But the men who haunted these places where addicted to the intoxicating effects of the opium and immune to its side effects.

Ching was dressed in a colourful tunic with a skirt that reached just below his knees. Most of the pirate men dressed this way, and only Li and Madam Choi wore trousers. In addition, Ching’s head was crowned with a purple turban. His flat, naked eyes were nearly lashless, and lizard-like. Madam Choi did not trust him, and neither did Li. It was imperative that they set out some ground rules. They must revive Choi’s original code.

Madam Choi requested that Li, who was educated and skilled in script, do the writing. She unrolled a blank scroll of vertical bamboo strips linked together with thick thread and handed Li a quill and inkstone.

“We are agreed,” said Madam Choi, “that the first rule of the code be: If any man goes privately on shore, if he should transgress the bars, he shall be taken and his ears be sliced off in the presence of the whole fleet. Should he repeat the act, he shall suffer death.”

All of the captains agreed. “Number two,” Ching cut in. “Nothing shall be taken by a person for his own private use from the plundered goods. All shall be recorded. Each pirate will receive for himself, two parts out of ten. Eight parts belong to the storehouse, to be called the General Fund. Taking anything out of this general fund, without permission, is cause for death.”

Li lifted her eyes from writing to inspect Ching’s face as he finished speaking. Would he obey his own rule?

“And finally,” Madam Choi said. “No man shall debauch at his pleasure captive women gained from shore raids and brought aboard ship. These women are for ransom only unless they choose to partner with one of their captors. To use violence against any woman or to wed her without her permission is punishable by death.”

To Li’s surprise, the pirate captains agreed. Madam Choi ordered a round of hard rice liquor, and they drank to the code before planning their first attack.

%%%

The pirates were out of practice. It was time to whip them back into shape. Every able-bodied man and woman must become part of a smooth-operating pirate-machine that made no mistakes. Number One daughter’s honour depended upon it.

First up would be a plot to seize a ferryboat. The target was available nearby. It was a public transport that linked the two shores at the mouth of the Red River and crossed the channel twice a day. Madam Choi boarded the crowded ferryboat, and she, Li, Po and Ching mingled among the passengers, dressed as common labourers and peasants. No one was expecting a quad of pirates to be aboard, or a bevy of serpent boats to surround them. All went as planned, and only one passenger objected, while the cowering skipper hid at the helm.

The defiant passenger was, of course, He Zhu. “Release these people,” he said, brown-muscled arms crossed over his chest. “They are poor and have nothing worth stealing.”

That was true for the most part. What Madame Choi wanted was the ferryboat, but Ching insisted on taking captives. Most of the male passengers escaped overboard; the women were unable to escape because of the barbaric custom of binding their feet, and some couldn’t even move without help, tottering rather than walking. It took all of Li’s self-control to stop her fist from smacking these cowardly men for deforming their wives’ feet.

Ching grabbed two women by the hair and herded three others and two children to one side. “Everyone else who doesn’t want to be killed, leap off this boat,” he ordered.

“They will drown.” Zhu objected. He swung his sabre, which met Ching’s in a loud clang, and Madam Choi warned him with a scowl that he still had a debt to pay. Zhu backed off, and shuffled the remaining passengers to the rail where most of them leaped off willingly. As the spineless skipper joined his passengers in the river, Madam Choi seized the helm.

One of the captive children started to cry, and Li reassured him that soon he would be home. His mother spat at Li, hissing, “Savage, cutthroat pirate. I would rather he were dead than go with you.”

“We have no intention of harming you or your boy. Obey us and all will go smoothly.”

“Over my dead body,” the boy’s mother said.

Ching planted his rippling torso in front of the troublemaker. Madam Choi had gotten the ferryboat underway and was steering the captured prize from the floundering swimmers in the sea.

“They will DROWN!” Zhu repeated, louder this time.

Li glanced away, every emotion in her body conflicted. “We need the ransom,” she answered quietly.

“The agreement was not to harm anyone.”

“No one was harmed. We aren’t that far from shore. They will make it.” Li looked overboard for confirmation and saw that the swarming serpent boats were picking up the floundering passengers. But the pirates aboard were laughing and bludgeoning the male captives with wooden clubs. “They’re killing them!” Li hollered to her captain. Madam Choi shrugged, and Li decided to take matters into her own hands.

But the pirates ignored her command to cease the violence. The boy’s mother who took the distraction as a chance to escape grabbed her son and lunged for the rail, but her crippled feet sent her flying to the deck instead. Ching went for her and she kicked, and screamed profanities. He dragged her up and when she cursed him again, he broke the top row of her teeth with his fist. As her mouth filled with blood, she kicked him in the groin. He got up seething with rage. As soon as he got near, she bit him with her bleeding mouth and with the force of her weight, threw both him and herself into the river.

They did not resurface, and He Zhu gawped as more of the hapless passengers drowned. He stripped to the waist and dived overboard, commandeered one of the serpent boats by throwing its navigator into the river, and saved as many of the swimmers as he could without sinking the boat.

%%%

“Madness,” Madam Choi said, when they returned to the pirate’s lair, east of the Red River. “A fiasco.” She turned on Zhu who had returned to meet up with the pirates after saving the ferryboat passengers. “You have deepened your debt with this debacle. Your role was to pretend to be one of the passengers, not to save them.”

“I will not kill innocent peasants.”

“And yet you had no problem killing my husband.”

“He wasn’t a peasant. He was a pirate. And he was not innocent.”

“He was a peasant before the Emperor’s taxes turned him to piracy.”

“Enough of this,” Li said. “Ching is dead. Esen still sleeps on the deck of this junk and we are no closer to avenging the death of Number One Daughter.”

Zhu swung on Li. “How can you go along with these ruthless plots to kill the innocent?”

“How can I not? Number One Daughter was my friend and my sworn sister. We did not harm the
Say Leng
’s seamen until they drew first blood. They had no reason to kill Leng. Besides, since when did killing offend you? You are a warrior. You have murdered more men than you can count.”

Madam Choi stared at the ferryboat that was moored alongside her junk. “This discussion will lead nowhere,” she said, turning back. “There is only one thing I can think to do. We must revise the code and get all of the pirates to swear to it in blood. No more fighting without permission. No more acting on one’s own. And we still have four women and two children to ransom back to their families.”

Madam Choi beckoned Li inside to write the new code.

Li sat with quill and inkstone opposite her captain, Zhu glaring at her. “Since when did you become such a cutthroat? Has life among the water people sapped all the goodness out of your heart? What has happened to make you so ruthless? You are a lady, Li, of the Imperial Court. A princess.”

Li looked up from the fresh bamboo scroll she was unravelling. “Have you forgotten, Lieutenant? My father, the supreme ruler and emperor of the Middle Kingdom, the Ming Son of Heaven, ordered my beheading, and stood watching while his henchmen tried to do it. If that is the reward for a princess, then you can have it.”

She jerked her head at the tattered interior of the leaky cabin. “Look around you, Zhu. This is our only shelter. Even a warrior like you never slept in such filth.” She sent an apologetic eye to Madam Choi then swung back on Zhu. It had rained last night, and the mantle Zhu had used for a blanket was still wet, flapping just outside the opened hatchway, hanging from a makeshift clothesline. “How did you like your quarters under the open sky? Did you enjoy your supper of boiled caterpillars last night?”

“You kill for the wrong reasons.”

Li slammed her quill hand onto the writing table. “Revenge is the wrong reason? Since when have you not killed for revenge? That massacre of Esen’s camp at Red Salt Lake on the edge of the Ordos Desert; was that not revenge? Those were unarmed women and children, old men who couldn’t defend themselves. Your soldiers raped and pillaged and raped again. And then they killed who was left. Pirates, at least, do
not
rape. It’s against the code.”

“I was under orders.”

“
Orders
.” The hardness in her voice gave just an inch. “No matter right or wrong?”

“War is war. Esen’s barbarians threatened to take our country.”

Li directed Zhu’s gaze toward the hatchway where three of Madam Choi’s children sat in rags on the floor, their faces gaunt from hunger. “And this is not war? It depends upon whose side you fight, doesn’t it?”

Zhu rose, his large muscles flexing with the movement. “Quan wouldn’t recognize you. What has happened to you, Lotus Lily?”

“I have seen the world as it really is outside the walls of the Forbidden City.”

Madam Choi gave Zhu a sour look. “You have much to learn, warrior monk, before you leave my service.” Zhu turned to exit the cabin. Madam Choi took Li’s quill hand and guided it to the bamboo scroll, and Li dragged her eyes away to dip the quill into the inkstone.

“You would do well to stay,” Madam Choi said to Zhu’s retreating back. “You might yet learn something.”

He Zhu’s rigid shoulders became powerfully still. He pointed to the hatchway where a junk approached by the eastern sea. “It looks like Captain Ching did not drown after all.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The Ferryboat Ruse

He Zhu stared at Madam Choi’s unflinching expression. His original impression of her was correct. She was a slinking snake of a woman with a half-lidded gaze and a smile full of rotting teeth, her black oiled hair gleaming as brilliantly as her eyes.

“These women’s families have no money to pay a ransom,” he said.

“They had money to purchase a ferryboat ride.”

“You are heartless, Madam Choi.”

“What would you have me do, warrior monk?” she asked. “If I don’t ransom these women, the pirates will insist that I sell them. I wouldn’t wish that kind of degradation on anyone.”

“You were better off pirating on your own.”

“Was I? I lost a daughter, and Li almost lost her son. We need the security of a large fleet. And to keep that fleet together I must appease the men that work for me. That means writing a code they can all agree on.” She turned her back on Zhu and walked out onto the deck to greet Ching who was hailing her from the quarterdeck. His junk was fastened to the ferryboat, which was tied to Madam Choi’s flagship. The trio of boats formed a floating consortium. He was dressed in purple silk with a matching turban on his head, a uniform won from the lucrative days of looting the seas under the command of Madam Choi’s husband. He was a stout and commanding man, despite the fact that his very presence grated on He Zhu’s nerves.

Madam Choi bowed to her associate. “I’m glad to see that you survived the ferryboat debacle, Captain Ching. Welcome back. You are just in time to help revise the new code.”

He had some raw scratches on his face and a bruised eye that matched the colour of his turban. Apparently, the peasant who had tried to drown him had drowned herself, and he had managed to swim to shore and return to his ship. For his troubles, he demanded a share of the ransom and wanted the prettiest of the captured women for his wife. Madam Choi agreed. “Now for the code,” she said.

“Shouldn’t all of the captains be present?” Zhu cut in.

“What business is this of yours?” Ching scowled, and turned to Madam Choi. “Who is this troublemaker anyway? What’s he doing here?”

“He works for me, I want him present. Please sit.”

Li prepared to write the articles of the code, but before Madam Choi could speak, Ching hijacked the proceedings as though he were boss. “Anyone caught giving commands on his own or disobeying a superior is to be decapitated,” he said.

Madam Choi looked severely at him, but was ignored. He exchanged glares with He Zhu, and spat. “It is your fault the capture of the ferryboat went badly. Next time you will play or pay according to the articles of the code. Your death will not be mourned by me.”

Madam Choi silenced Zhu’s rebuke before it came out. Zhu scowled, but had the sense to refrain from further provocation.

“Number two,” Ching said, again superseding his host. “Failure to surrender booty to the General Fund can bring death.” That went without saying. Share and share alike was crucial to maintaining harmony within the pirate ranks; that article remained the same as in the original. “Three: First time offenders are to be whipped, then released. Repeated offenses will result in death. Four: For deserting or going AWOL, a man’s ears will be sliced off and he will be paraded through his squadron for everyone to see.” Ching glared at Zhu like he had cited rules that were designed specifically for him. A man of Zhu’s integrity could not bear to lose face in front of his peers.

“And number five,” Madam Choi said. “If a pirate rapes a woman, he will be put to death. If sex is consensual, the man will be beheaded and the woman cast overboard with a weight attached to her legs.” Madam Choi turned her stern glare to Ching. “Finally, women captives are to be released. The most beautiful may be kept for wives and concubines, and the ugliest returned to shore. The rest are to be ransomed. Pirate men must be faithful to their wives. Are we agreed?”

Ching nodded, and rose. “Now, I go to choose my wife.”

%%%

Madam Choi called the pirate captains to meet at the opium den on shore. She arrived dressed in the garb of a supreme pirate chief. On her silk tunic was a tapestry of dragons in azure, purple and red, accented with bits of jade and ivory stitched with braided silver-gold thread. Li had seen this uniform once before, when she accidentally found it among Madam Choi’s things, and she had wondered then why the impoverished sea gypsy had not sold the splendid garment to feed her family. Now she understood: Madam Choi’s entrance was an unmistakable message to the pirates present.

The costume was her late husband’s official uniform, a uniform the pirate widow had dared not wear until she was certain of her leadership. On her head was Choi’s war helmet and in her sash were his swords. Each member of each squadron sliced his finger and vowed to keep to the code, and as the blood spilled from the voluntary wounds, every drop was collected and stoppered in a ceramic jar. The half-filled jar of blood was kept with the code in Madam Choi’s cabin.

Li was put in charge of piloting the ferryboat. She had spent half her life pretending to be a boy—so masquerading as the incompetent skipper of a ferryboat was easy.

The
Say Leng
was making her return journey tonight. Madam Choi organized a fleet of five hundred to assail her. The pirates knew that the merchant junk had two hundred men aboard her; they were taking no chances. Madam Choi left Number’s Four and Five Daughters to babysit Wu.

“Stay away from Esen,” Li ordered her son as she prepared for the mission. “Do not, under any circumstances, go near him.”

Li donned her garb of ferryboat skipper and took her boat between the shore and the outer islands, and this time there was no green paint and white fuzzy bamboo flowers. No rat’s blood. Zhu joined as her first mate, and the passengers of the ferryboat were made up of five pirates in peasant disguises.

The merchant junk was following the coastline. Li knew they would be on the lookout for pirates; she must move slow and carefully, so as not to risk her crew’s lives.

“What are you doing?” Zhu demanded, when he saw that they were going offcourse. “Where did you learn to handle a ferryboat or any boat at all?” He paused for a breath, realized the folly of her intentions. “From Madam Choi? It’s a wonder that woman hasn’t killed all of us already.”

“If you’re going to hinder me Zhu, go below,” Li said. “Better yet, make yourself useful.”

Zhu slapped a meaty hand on hers, threatening to take the helm. “What’s your plan? If it is what I think it is, it’s a bad plan.”

Li ripped her fingers out from under his and glared at him. “Why did you bother to stay? Why did you promise Madam Choi that you would serve her if you’re only going to get in the way? Now move. I have work to do.”

“I promised Quan that when I found you again, I would keep you safe. I fear I am failing.”

Li was silent.

“He loves you still.”

“Then where is he? Why send you in his place when he could come himself?” She followed his gaze to his right hand. “Where is your gemstone?”

“I left it on the junk for safekeeping.”

“That was probably a good idea. The pirates keep eyeing it. It has great value. And they don’t like you. In the heat of the raid, they would probably slice off your hand and not think twice about it.” She paused as something occurred to her. “But the gemstone’s value isn’t monetary, is it, Zhu? Why do you and Madam Choi keep staring at it? Even Tao mentioned it.”

“It has the power of seeing. But since I joined this pirate’s brigade, it has closed its eye to me. I cannot see what battles Chi Quan is fighting, and what keeps him on the frontier.”

Li glanced to the open sea. The scalp beneath her topknot prickled. She wanted to ask more about the gemstone, but now was not the time. “Stand down, Zhu. And brace yourself.”

Her years of training with Master Yun and the work on the border walls had sharpened her reflexes; she threw the helm to the right and aimed the ferryboat into the reef. She ordered her crew to light lanterns and send the SOS signal just as the ferryboat scuttled in the channel. They hit rock, and water bled into the hull.

“Are you crazy?” Zhu shouted as they started to sink.

Moonlight blinked from behind a cloud, and movement among the lanterns aboard the merchant ship told her the
Say Leng
’s watchmen had sighted the scuttled ferryboat. The junk rocked against the tide, pressing staunchly toward them. Li sought the dagger in her boot and the sabre at her hip, before squinting beyond the black sea to where the others waited in the island coves.

%%%

Esen woke up to blackness. He heard the sound of female voices: captives, not the girl children of the junk. His throat hurt and his eyes were sticky. What had that little brat done to him? A four-year-old had stabbed him in the throat, incapacitating him instantly, and only because he had been unprepared. He scrutinized his dark prison. Where was he? From the sound of the water sloshing against the hull, he figured he was in the hold of the junk. Had the pirates gone on another raid? The thump of footfalls sounded overhead, and a small shadow appeared at the overhead grate. Someone squatted with a lantern and a child’s face peered down at him. So, the little warrior had come to gloat.

Esen tried to speak, and choked from pain, swallowed, relaxed his throat muscles and crooked a finger, beckoning the boy closer.

“So, you are awake, barbarian,” Wu said.

“I need water,” Esen answered.

“Ma-ma says I am not to go near you.”

“You don’t have to come near me. Just get one of the girls to fetch me a drink.” Wu’s bright black eyes stared at him; then he rose.

When the water arrived, Wu dropped the water-filled bladder between the grate’s iron bars. So much for trying to grab the little guy’s hand and break his arm. For a teacup-sized imp, he was smart. And though he may be smart, he was little more than a baby.

A glint caused by the lantern light caught Esen’s eye, and he saw that the boy was wearing a large gemstone, mounted on a gold band, looped to a thick string around his neck.

“What have you got there little one,” he whispered, and reached out, tried to rise and Wu leaped back. “Give that gemstone to me. It is dangerous in the hands of a small boy.”

Wu refused, covered the gemstone with his fingers and rubbed it back and forth. “It belongs to the warrior monk, He Zhu. You cannot have it!” As he spoke these words, he dropped the Tiger’s Eye as though it burned. Unfortunately for Esen, it didn’t fall far. It still dangled on the piece of string tied around the boy’s neck. But the gemstone stirred. It’s saffron brown colours moved and swirled, and suddenly an image grew out of the stone.

A young warrior in Mongol dress stood outside a felt tent, his falconer-gloved hand raised high. Esen could barely keep his eyes from forcing their way out of their sockets. Hundreds of thousands of horsemen hailed the great falconer before he turned to take the hand of a beautiful, black-haired woman in a snowy gown. Her feral eyes flashed above scarlet lips, and he recognized Jasmine. The warrior who had taken her hand as though he possessed her was none other than Altan.

The size of Wu’s eyes rivalled Esen’s own, so round were they with astonishment. He reached out to touch the vision, and Esen snatched at the gemstone through the grate of the hold, but the boy jerked out of reach. As he did so, the vision vanished.

“Bring it back! Bring back the vision. I must see what my baby brother is up to!”

Wu stared at Esen, dumbfounded, still dazed by what had happened.

“He Zhu will be angry with me,” Wu said, clutching the gemstone in his babyish fist. “I must put it back.” He ran as though a ghost was after him, no more than a terrified little boy.

Esen reached up. He must get that stone. Altan planned to usurp him did he? Jasmine had betrayed him, abandoned him. The prophecy was wrong: it was not the son of Lotus Lily that was a danger to him; it was his own brother.

Esen coughed, sputtered, pretended to be dying, and called to the girls above in a rasping, helpless voice. There was a reason he had been allowed to live, a reason why the pirate woman had healed his wound. They wanted him alive and so the girls who were left as his keepers were obligated to come to his aid.

“What do you want?” Number Four Daughter demanded. “We gave you water. Why haven’t you drunk it? I can see the water bladder on the floor by your feet.”

“Help me,” Esen said. “The air in here is unbreathable. I’m bleeding again. I will die.”

Number Four Daughter tipped her lit lantern toward him, causing the yellow flame within to flicker. It was dark in the hold and he covered the wound with his hand to mask the bandage.

“Your mother, the captain of this junk, will be angry if you let me die.”

“I can’t come down there,” she said. “None of us can lift the iron grate.”

Esen rose unsteadily to his feet. He had to make this look good to convince the girl of his feebleness, and shoved a hand against the grate. It was too heavy for one man to lift from this angle and impossible for a child or even three.

“Call one of the captive women,” he said. “I can hear their voices.”