The Pirate Empress Read online

  The work was brutal and sweaty. Never had she worked this hard in her life, and her skin where it was exposed to the sun was a deep golden brown. Now, more than ever, she needed the girdle strapped around her chest to flatten her breasts. As the days grew warmer, she replaced her furs with cloth, and wore a loose shirt that made her look shapeless. Some days the sun was relentless, although it wasn’t yet summer, and although Chi Quan gave her odd looks, not once did he question her. She was well aware of his watching. Did he suspect? She wanted him to know, but Master Yun’s warning stopped her.

  Li left the wall to find a spot down by the nearby river to pee. This was a trick—to avoid being seen by the men. Fortunately, the earthworks snaked along the watercourse with hidden alcoves. The best place to find privacy was below the embankment by the river. There, the new rushes grew slim and tall among the cicadas and dragonflies, and it occurred to her that the calm water and the lofty yellow-green reeds formed a perfect bathing spot. No one could see her because the men washed out in the open, upstream, where the water moved fast. Too many days and nights had passed without washing, and her hair in particular needed a good scrub. At first she was cautious and removed only the shirt to wash her arms, shoulders and neck, but after several bathing sprees, she got careless.

  It was a warm sunny day. The crew had stopped work for a supper break. Li roamed along the riverbank until it dipped out of sight of the camp. Ten minutes, she thought. She’d steal ten minutes to bathe before joining the men for food. She raced down the shallow embankment and tested the ground. It was dry here. She dropped the clay brick she’d been carrying as a decoy in case anyone noticed when she left the camp, stripped out of her sweaty clothes, pulled the pins out of her hair, and let her topknot fall around her shoulders.

  The wind rippled the river as she wet her feet and negotiated the reed forest near the shore. She wound her way past the thick rushes and fell onto her stomach to swim downriver. It was good to release her hair and dunk her head into the cool water. She rubbed her hair with her fingertips and felt the river wash the soil and sweat from her body.

  Li dived into the cool depths, kicking up the sediment in the shallows as she returned to the reed forest. She glanced at the bigness of the sun and realized with dismay that she had stayed too long. Someone might miss her.

  Pushing the last column of reeds out of her way, she froze in her tracks. Stupid girl. She grabbed a handful of reeds to cover herself, but it was pointless. Lok Yu stood on the riverbank holding her clothes, smirking, seeing her naked. He casually dangled the girdle she used to flatten her breasts. “So this is how you do it.”

  “Lok Yu, for once in your life. Do the right thing.”

  “Damned right I’m going to do the right thing.” He threw her clothes as far away from her as he could, and she backed into the rushes. Her heart was already racing and her feet followed. Where on earth was she going to go without clothes? She had no weapon either. If she’d had a knife on her, she would have killed him and asked questions later.

  His footsteps pounded on the dried mud of the ground as he followed the sounds of her splashing. What was she doing? She must confront him. Running away wouldn’t fix this.

  His footfalls ceased and she stopped to listen. Maybe he wasn’t such a jerk, maybe there was something good in him if she appealed to his humanity. She draped her hair over her chest to cover as much of her body as it would, thrust the reeds aside and stepped out.

  A filthy leer came over his face, but she was undaunted. Like you’ve never seen a naked woman. Could she use this? She tried to remember what the concubines had taught her about men: not much, since she hadn’t paid close attention, but her aunt Jasmine had possessed enormous power over them. The face of Lieutenant He Zhu flashed into her memory.

  “I’m going to get my clothes,” Li said.

  She turned to walk past him, but he grabbed her wrist and flung her against his chest. He was only an inch or so taller than her but stockier by a long shot, and she could only defeat him if she caught him off-guard and used his weight against him.

  “You are not exactly what I expected when I followed your footprints.” He flattened his palm against her back, which hindered her range of movement, restricting her view of his face.

  “What did you expect?” Li growled more or less into his ear.

  “I expected to find a skinny, arrogant boy. Instead I find a pale, soft girl.” He thrust her forward to get a good look at her while still keeping a grip on her wrist.

  “I am not just any girl.” It occurred to her that if she told him she was one of His Majesty’s concubines, he wouldn’t dare hurt her.

  “I don’t care who you are. I’m going to give you a taste of your own medicine.”

  What did that mean? He was going to kick her in the stomach and flip her onto her back? Li gasped. He was going to flip her onto her back!

  Not if she could help it.

  She relaxed. She must let the fool think he had the upper hand. If he believed she was no threat, he’d relax his guard. Then she would strike. “I am Lotus Lily, one of the palace women,” she said.

  Lok Yu released the tension in his grip and stared at her face, and then laughed. “You’re a runaway? Well, that’s even better. No one cares about a runaway.”

  “The Emperor will have you executed if you don’t let me go.”

  His ugly smiled deepened. “You think so? Then you are stupider than a clay brick. His Majesty will chop off your head for pretending to be a boy and escaping the palace.”

  Li twisted out of his hold, kicked, aiming for his groin, overshot and hit him in the thigh instead. She swung about, blocking his strike, making a grab for his arm, missed, and fell onto her stomach. He dropped low as she rose to hit him again, seized her forearm and flipped her onto her back.

  “Okay,” she said. “Now, we’re even.”

  “Not yet.” Lok Yu pulled up his tunic and exposed his jade spear. It was stiff and red and angry looking. He dropped down on her as she tried to roll out of his path, landed on her hip, one hand clawing her breast, squashing her into the dried mud below the embankment. She beat at his face with her fists, but he only grabbed her hands and locked them together over her head, then pinned her wrists to the ground with one hand and dragged her leg into position with the other.

  When he pierced her, Li bit her lip to keep from screaming. It wouldn’t do for the rest of the men to know she was a girl. He released her arms to grab hold of her thighs and keep them in place. Her chest heaved as she braced herself for more violent thrusts, then she reached over her head, tried to relax so that she wouldn’t distract him, and fumbled in the leaves tangled in her hair. She touched something hard, and stretched further until she got a good grip. It was the newly fired clay brick, and she slammed it onto his skull. He jerked once, and stopped moving. Beneath her, a thick trickle of fluid dampened the earth.

  Li shoved his bleeding head to one side, and stared into the shocked eyes of Chi Quan.

  %%%

  The sun was low, with just enough light for Quan to realize what had happened. When he first saw the two boys, he assumed they were brawling. But he quickly saw that the long, black hair sprawled on the ground belonged to a woman, and once he recognized that fact, he knew the woman was Li. Now he understood the strange signals she’d been giving off. He thought it peculiar that he found the boy so attractive. No wonder. The boy was a girl.

  Her girdle hung from his hand and he stared at it. Then he looked down at the girl and the bleeding boy beside her. He dropped her clothes to the ground and pushed Lok Yu with his foot until he rolled onto his side. The weight of the young man caused him to flop onto his back. Quan’s eyes turned from the bully to the girl, who sat upright, curtaining her hair over her chest before drawing her legs together as she tried to stand up. Quan extended a hand to help, but she rejected his offer and rose by herself. She avoided his eye and went to her clothes, and then dressed, tying the girdle tight across her breasts before
yanking the loose boy’s shirt over her head.

  She started to twist her hair into a topknot when Quan stopped her by twining her fingers in his. He frowned, recognizing her. “You’re Lotus Lily.”

  She nibbled her lower lip, nodded.

  He squinted at her conquered opponent. “Is he dead?”

  “I think so.”

  Quan went to Lok Yu and felt his throat. No life beat. He returned to the girl. This was His Majesty’s youngest concubine. Did Master Yun know? Was that why he had insisted Quan take her as one of his wall builders? For the moment, there was nothing to do but perpetuate the masquerade, and he must continue to think of her as Li the boy.

  “What will you do with me?” she asked.

  “Go down to the river and wash the blood from your hands and face,” he instructed, for he had no answer, and while she did as she was told he scrutinized the shallow embankment. Part of the wall, awaiting repair was a few paces from here, a ragged, dangerous section, constructed of earth and stone.

  Quan left Li by the riverside and approached the body, seized the dead bully by the ankles and dragged him up over the embankment and across the trampled grass until he reached the deteriorating rampart. He abandoned the body on the ground near a pile of rubble and fallen stone, and then chose a large rock and buried it into the wound in the side of the skull before allowing the rock to roll away. Rocks constantly fell from the crumbling ramparts and sometimes killed. One of his foremen would discover the corpse tomorrow, and meanwhile, he must get Li back to camp unseen. He turned and saw that she was already behind him.

  He studied her fiery eyes and the firm tilt of her jaw. She looked like she was ready to fight not to cry. Was this what rape did to women like Lotus Lily?

  “Answer my question,” Li said. “Will you send me back to the Forbidden City to be executed?”

  “Why would I do that? What crime have you committed that you should be executed?”

  Li darted her eyes at the body. “You asked me once, Captain, if I could kill a man. There is your answer.”

  “I saw no killing,” Quan said, and kicked at the trampled grass to force the blades upright like no one, except the boy, had come this way.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Tomb of First Emperor

  There was a time when he could summon the forces of the geomancer and devour the distance between the Forbidden City and the Yellow River loop in a matter of days, but things were different now, and Master Yun dismounted and urged his horse to the riverside. In this part of the country the river split into tributaries, winding in a near circular path past Xian, on its way to the frontiers of the Ordos desert. In the dead of night, on the village outskirts, he stooped to drink, then spat out the water before he swallowed. He could taste the bones of the dead. He tethered his horse to a shrub and gazed up at the moonlight to where the mysterious mound rose like a natural mountain, sloping gently toward Heaven. “Rest here, Xingbar,” he whispered to the horse. “Hopefully, I won’t be long.”

  He fingered the contents in the pouch at his side. Satisfied that everything was there, he chose a stick from the ground and scaled the mound until he reached the summit. The vegetation here was scrubby and low with patches of bare earth. He breathed deeply, calling on the Chi of all that thrived in the vicinity. Here was a spectacular view of all of the Middle Kingdom: the forests and jungles, deserts and waterways, valleys and mountains.

  The wind blew, swirled, causing his robes to billow like the sails of a great ocean-going junk. He crouched at the crest of the hill and emptied his pouch’s contents to the ground: two handfuls of white sand alongside three of plump azure jade leaves, obtained from the plants flanking the pillars of his Koi Temple. With the stick he scraped away the vegetation growing by his feet, and scored the outline of a triangle into the dried earth. Inside the triangle he drew the image of a dragon; within the dragon, he fitted the azure leaves of the jade plant. Outside the dragon he spread the white sand, and then gazed upon the Imperial emblem and rose. Hands outspread, he summoned the forces of the stars and the planets, the weather and the earth. But the mound failed to open.

  Master Yun steepled his fingers, stamped his foot three times. At first, nothing, then the earth below his feet broke open. He braced himself for the fall, clamped his hands to his sides and fell straight into blackness. Dirt rained down hard on him, the soil above peppered the sky, and then he caught a glimpse of the moon as the shower ceased. A blue luminescence glowed from the dark as he struck bottom, and the vaulted ceiling above his head clamped shut.

  He could see dark shapes, the quickening of shadows. Although an escape route had not occurred to him when first he conceived of this mission, it occurred to him now. The dragon emblem above marked his doorway, and even if he accomplished his task, it would do him no good if its use were forbidden.

  The shadowy figures were the Night Guards Army, statues made of fired clay. Although they looked lifelike, they stood quite still. As his eyes grew familiar with the dim light, he saw the battle formation of warriors dressed in full combat array, their steeds frozen in time. There were well over six hundred infantrymen and forty war chariots. He walked among them, and passed through a corridor. Along the northern and southern walls, soldiers armed with chest plates, sabres and crossbows stood at the ready. Half faced north, the others south, watching with their pottery eyes. He continued until he reached the rearguard, where the statues looked west, backing against the main force.

  Master Yun continued on to a black opening, followed it for twenty meters and found himself inside another vault. This space was shaped like a T, and again he was confronted with statues in combat formation. In here, more infantrymen, cavalrymen, wooden chariots, hundreds of horses and thousands of armed soldiers confronted him. At the front of the T-formation two hundred crossbow archers stood shoulder to shoulder. Almost the same number of kneeling archers posed in the center, and a further two hundred formed a strategic circle. The remainder were tall, proud cavalrymen, wearing armoured chest plates, fur hats and leather boots with bows in one hand and the reins of their horses in the other. The battle steeds were robust and sturdy, and each had a saddle with a saddlecloth underneath. If these cavalrymen came to life, they would be lightning sharp, whirlwind quick and so powerful they would break the enemy ranks like a tsunami. He must find their leader.

  Another hundred meters and he found the third vault. The space was a concave polygon, smaller than the other two. Far fewer terracotta statues waited inside. They stood along the walls of two wing rooms, face to face in double rows, holding sharpened bronze poles, and no doubt were sentinels. As he entered the seat of the Military Command, somewhere nearby he heard a clank.

  %%%

  The tea was murky, the leaves floating and twisting, refusing to settle. The hot steam made Jasmine irritable. Why couldn’t she see the whereabouts of Lotus Lily? What was blocking her power? It must be something the old warlock was doing. When the girl had sex, all would be visible. Something still protected Lotus Lily—her virginity.

  The amber fluid in the porcelain bowl cleared and a vision appeared. So, the old soldier could hide the girl but not himself. He was in a dark place with a domed ceiling and blue light illuminated his movements as he walked between rows of clay warriors.

  Jasmine smiled to herself. You can run from me, but you cannot hide.

  Confident of Master Yun’s location, she left her chamber for the palace dungeon where she heard a gasp, a moan, then a thud on the floor. Zheng Min had cut the bonds on a man strung against the wall.

  “Whipping won’t work,” Jasmine said, approaching. She helped him drag the body to its feet. “Wear the truth out of him. Chain him to the bench. I’ll show you what to do.” She filled an ewer with water and rigged it over the eunuch’s head. Every few seconds a drop of water fell onto his forehead. She grabbed his hands, which were manacled to his sides and shoved young bamboo shoots into the quick of his fingernails. These she watered also. “They will grow a
nd as they grow, he will scream. Several days of this and he will tell all concerning Lotus Lily.”

  “Are you sure we’ve got the right man?” the military governor asked. “This tutor, Tao, is soft. A single lash was all it took to land him on his face. He’ll die before he cracks.”

  “Other than the old warlock, he’s the only one who could possibly know where she is.” Jasmine gave the military governor a teasing caress to his neck, promising more. He reached out to embrace her, but she shrugged him off. “Later. I go now to find the old man.”

  The Chinese warlock had borrowed a horse and headed south, and Jasmine crossed the public square and left via the palace gates. Out of sight of the citadel her sleek black mane turned golden, and now a fox, she leaped into the night. She knew her way through the city by smell. And when she had passed the last cluttered settlement outside of Beijing into the quiet of the countryside, she followed the Grand Canal until it converged with the southwest branch of the Yellow River leading to Xian.

  The old man’s scent was everywhere along this path; he was out of practice, and had neglected to conceal his trail. Her fox’s legs scampered across the farmlands racing, flying over fences and rock walls. She ran for a night and a day and into another night. She stopped to drink from a stream, looked up and listened, sniffed. His scent was strong, and there was another odour now, the smell of horse.

  Her feral eyes sought the landscape. In front of her a huge mound rose out of the earth, blocking the moon, and below the man-made hill, a lone horse grazed on a dwarfish shrub that was almost bare. She cantered over to the horse, snapped at it. It neighed, whinnied and shook its mane. She lowered her head, arched her back, baring her teeth, and then she lunged. The horse rose to its hindquarters, ripping the reins from the shrub.

  Go! she snarled. Xingbar was loyal, but even he could only take so much. The fox nipped at the horse’s ankles until it could stand no more of her pestering, and galloped off into the dark while she laughed.