The Pirate Empress Read online

  Jasmine stood atop the burial mound of First Emperor, embracing the blackness around her. It was wonderful to be free of that oppressive palace; she could finally stand here in her woman form and feel the wildness of the open countryside on her skin.

  “Where are you, Warlock?” The mound of packed earth gave no answer. “I know you are here. I can smell you.”

  Her snowy gown swirled around her, as she stooped to see what had caught her eye. Moonlight pooled over a marking on the ground—the azure dragon on a white background. The ghost of First Emperor must have recognized his own banner and opened the gate to the warlock.

  First Emperor would not be pleased to see her. Fox faeries were feared in his day, and she had managed to consume his soul; he had gone down in history as one of the cruellest rulers China had ever spawned—thanks to her.

  She stepped onto the Imperial emblem and stamped her foot three times. The wind blew and the river gurgled, but the door to First Emperor’s death vault remained closed.

  “Still holding a grudge, are we?” First Emperor Qin could not kill her. When he fell she did not go with him; she had lived a hundred years before him and still lived more than a thousand years after.

  Frustrated, Jasmine paced over the mound. Could she dig her way through? Not likely. Her toes scattered the white sand and dispersed the azure jade leaves as she ground her foot into the dragon emblem, obliterating the marking of the gate. Master Yun would have to find another way out—or not at all.

  She turned back into a fox and howled at the moon, and then sniffed, listened for signs of the old man returning. All was silent, but suddenly, she sensed something. Lotus Lily was no longer a virgin. And Jasmine knew where to find her.

  Another night of running and then it was day. Along the river tributary she caught the scent of Chi Quan’s camp. When she arrived at the quarry, young men still worked, but the captain and half the others were long gone. She followed the scent for three days, until it led her to the ramparts west of Datong toward Shanxi.

  As the sun set and the workers returned to their camp, the fox hovered in the bushes. The camp was in an uproar. A body had been found downriver, on shore, beneath a badly eroded portion of the wall. Whoever the young man had been, he was dead, and a crowd of labourers had transported the corpse back to camp. A tall, slim boy with some empty baskets and a carrying pole paused to take a look. The expression on his face was totally blank, and the sour odour of hundreds of men mingled with the scent of a single woman. Chi Quan, the captain, watched the pretty boy out of the corner of his eye. Neither spoke while the men made room at the worksite to accommodate the dead worker. There was bickering as to where to bury the corpse, but few were concerned with the accident except for Lieutenant He Zhu who had returned from Yulin to report on the progress in the east.

  “Who found the body?” he asked.

  “I did,” a young worker answered.

  “And no one witnessed this accident?”

  Everyone present shook their heads.

  “How did no one miss the boy for three days?”

  Again, the men shrugged. Lok Yu was not a favourite. Whenever he decided to disappear people were grateful.

  Jasmine was not interested in an accident. Accidents happened frequently when heavy work was involved. She scoured the campsite, and waited until everyone was settled to supper. Then she saw him. The same pretty boy she had noticed earlier. She sniffed, nodded. So, this was where Lotus Lily had been all along: a girl pretending to be a boy. The warlock had done his job well, and even Jasmine had not seen through the clever veil, but the jig was up.

  The fox turned, and with a flash of gold crossed the camp, leaped the wall of the crumbling rampart, fled down the foothills of the Black Mountains not slowing in pace until her claws raked the arid sands of the steppe.

  %%%

  “An accident. Everyone believes it was an accident. There’ll be no investigation.”

  Quan nudged Li into a hidden patch where the embankment steepened and a bend in the river hid them from the camp’s view. A pair of cormorants fished on the river’s edge, their black feathers glinting greenish purple in the sunlight.

  Li turned her attention from the yellow rushes clustered in the shallows. “We shouldn’t have left Lok Yu so long. The body was fodder for foxes and such; he looked horrible.”

  “You saw a fox?” Quan asked.

  “Just as we left the camp. I saw it climb the wall.” She studied his frighteningly serious demeanour, and then said, “Well, have you decided? Have you decided what to do with me? Lieutenant He Zhu is asking a lot of questions.”

  The captain was torn; that was obvious. She was a girl, and no girls worked on the wall. She had also committed murder, and if he kept silent to protect her, he was as good as a murderer himself. She couldn’t do that to him. In the Middle Kingdom, rape was not a crime punishable by death. Besides, she was a concubine. That’s what they did; they serviced men. Just because she hadn’t accepted Lok Yu’s jade spear willingly didn’t make it a crime, not in the eyes of Imperial law. “I will make it easy for you,” she said.

  She rose from the embankment where they were sitting and moved to where Quan had left Lok Yu’s body after Li had brained him. She found a crumbling hole in the wall and hooked a foot up. From her vantage on the top of the wall, the mountains snaked toward the steppe, while the plateaus rolled to the desert and the sea. Mulberry trees dotted the plain amidst a swirl of yellow dust; crows foraged the branches, which dripped with ripe berries; and cicadas thrummed. She started south along the walled path before she found another breach in the rampart where she could easily leap to the ground, and behind her Quan followed.

  “You take a step down there and you’re on Mongol turf,” he warned.

  “I know,” she replied. “But His Majesty will have my head. Not only am I no longer a virgin, but I am also a murderer. I’m also a girl masquerading as a boy. How do you think the Emperor will feel about one of his concubines orchestrating such a deception just to escape him?”

  “I won’t turn you in.”

  “You have to. If you don’t, Lieutenant He Zhu will do it for you. I’ll take my chances with the barbarians.”

  Quan shook his head. “You have no food, no water and no weapon. What are you thinking, Li? Sometimes you have as much sense as a clay brick.”

  She glared at him before fixing her gaze below the brambled rampart to the grasslands beyond. “Watch what you say, Captain. I have already killed a man for saying that.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Warlord’s Captive

  Captain Chi Quan was taking no chances and escorted Li back to camp, warning her to be extra vigilant; no one else must discover that she was a girl. He packed his saddlebags and bridled his horse.

  “Where are you going?” she demanded.

  “Back to the Forbidden City to talk to Master Yun,” Quan replied.

  “You weren’t supposed to know about me. He’ll be angry.”

  “He should have told me who you were before he sent you to me. He wants me to protect you? But what does he want me to protect you from? Even you don’t seem to know.”

  Li grabbed the reins from Quan’s hand. “He wants you to protect me from Jasmine.”

  “Jasmine? Your aunt?” His brow arched before lowering into a frown. “Your aunt has changed.”

  “Yes, and she wants me dead. But Master Yun won’t tell me why.”

  “Then I’ll find out. Stay here. You’ll be safe as long as you keep to yourself. Work hard. Don’t speak unless spoken to and don’t cause any trouble. Try really hard not to draw attention to yourself, and keep your eyes down and your mouth shut. And for heaven’s sake, do not, whatever you do, go down to the river to bathe. Do you understand?”

  Quan took the reins from her, but she was afraid to release them. She glanced at the men on the worksite, busying themselves with bricks and mortar, before deepening her voice. “Lieutenant He Zhu is not himself either.”

&
nbsp; With Zhu’s suspicions rising, it was difficult to abandon Li. She was vulnerable but she was tough, and he had to trust that she would be safe until he returned. He mounted his horse, reared it until it circled, waved to her, then dug in his heels and the loyal steed galloped east toward Beijing as it started to rain. Over the countryside, he flew as fast as his horse could run, but by the time they reached the city, horse and rider were thoroughly drenched. The rain stopped and chickens and pigs scattered to give way, and he aimed his horse straight for the Koi Gardens. But when he arrived, Master Yun was nowhere to be found. Within the palace gates he left his horse at the stables. In the public square all was chaos, and despite the inclement weather horses were saddled and ready to travel, and a covered palanquin rigged to two steeds glistened with raindrops.

  Inside the great hall, Military Governor Zheng Min’s heels resounded over the stone floor as he paced the room, waiting for His Majesty’s summons. Quan grabbed his arm and swung him to face him oblivious to the rainwater he was dripping all over the floor. “What’s going on?” he demanded. “The place is in an uproar.”

  “His Majesty is in a rage,” Zheng Min answered. “One of his concubines is missing.”

  Quan controlled the muscles in his face to make them expressionless while Zheng Min continued his diatribe, “It was the young girl, Lotus Lily. She’s run away. His Royal Highness requested her a fortnight ago, and when the eunuch went to fetch her, she was gone.”

  A fortnight? Li had been with him for months and the Emperor had only recently noticed her missing? What was Jasmine’s plan? Why hadn’t she alerted His Majesty sooner? No doubt she would have noticed Lotus Lily’s absence from court; so if she wanted the girl, wouldn’t she have instantly deployed an Imperial search party?

  “And that’s not the worst of it,” Zheng Min continued. “At first the Emperor was willing to let the runaway go, but it’s been revealed that the girl is not a concubine at all. Yesterday, I squeezed the truth out of the eunuch Tao. The girl is actually His Majesty’s daughter by Ling She.”

  Although only a young boy when the scandal broke, Quan, like all peasant children, knew the tale of the condemned baby princess. As his chest heaved, Quan realized he had stopped breathing. He forced the air out of his lungs and managed to gasp. “Li—I mean Lotus Lily is His Majesty’s daughter? But he had mother and child executed after the birth!”

  “The infant was rescued by her traitorous tutor and a reward is offered for anyone who returns Lotus Lily to her father.”

  Zheng Min turned to go as a nervous eunuch beckoned to him from the massive arched doorway. Quan removed his wet mantle, followed, but the military governor shook him off. “Where do you think you’re going? We don’t need you. His Majesty wants you at the wall.”

  “The walls are fine. We’ve not seen a peep out of the Mongols since we devastated their camp.” Quan was careful to use the pronoun ‘we,’ even though Zheng Min was nowhere near the Mongol camp when the Ming cavalry attacked the barbarians on the edge of the Ordos desert. Rather touchy when it came to the military governor’s lack of combat experience, it was best not to point this out.

  Past the Lion Dog statues, the Emperor was seated on his throne, flanked by twin yellow pillars. Face obscured by cupped hands, he was enraged by the eunuch’s treason and the princess’s escape. He dropped his hands at the sound of footsteps, and glanced briefly at the emerald-glazed tiles patterned like fish scales across the vaulted ceiling before favouring them with his attention. Quan scanned the room; saw no sign of Jasmine, which was good, because without her hovering over the Emperor’s shoulder, he was free to speak.

  “Majesty.” He bowed, painfully aware that he reeked of sweat mixed with horse, dust, and rain. “You seek the girl Lotus Lily.”

  “She’s been living here under my nose all this time, and now she’s run away. The affront is unforgivable. All involved in the treachery have been punished.”

  Quan’s throat was dry for he wished to ask after Li’s personal tutor, Tao, whom he knew Li loved very much. “All, Majesty?”

  “All but Jasmine, who has been forever faithful.”

  “What would you have us do, sire?” the military governor cut in. “Speak and it will be done.”

  “Find her,” the Emperor said, slamming a fist onto his thigh, the sleeve of his Imperial yellow robe flapping like a crane’s wing as his curled fingernails raked the silk of his lap. “I want to see this daughter of mine. The officer who returns her to me will have her as his bride.”

  %%%

  Lotus Lily was no longer a virgin. That meant she could be pregnant.

  “Could be,” Jasmine said.

  “Don’t you know?” Esen demanded. “I thought you faerie spirits knew everything.”

  “The tealeaves don’t tell all.”

  “But they told you she was bedded by a man?”

  “No. For that I needed no tealeaves. Fox faeries thrive on all things sexual. You know that, Esen. I could feel it, sense it. I knew the moment she ceased to be pure.”

  “Then why don’t you know who the father is?”

  “We don’t know yet that there is a father.”

  “Why can’t you tell if there’s a child?”

  Jasmine sighed. He sounded like a whiny child himself. “It’s too soon. My powers can only do what they do.”

  “Then the information you give me is useless. I’ll have to kill her.”

  The smell of sun-cured hides was strong as Esen tied his leather jerkin tight to his waist, fastened his armour, stolen from one of his raids on the Chinese garrisons, and thrust a knife into the sheath at his hip and two more into his boots. “Good thing you know where she is,” he informed Jasmine, and went to the tent door and lifted the fur flap. “Altan!” He shouted to his brother who was wrestling with a girl by the fire. “We ride tonight.”

  The warriors honed their blades, tightened their bows and loaded their tempered arrows into barrel-shaped baskets strapped to their steeds. Every available horse was saddled and bridled. The Chinese had been lax over the past few months, and so, hidden by ruthless snows and camouflaged by wolf hides, the steppe men had watched behind scrubby hills and dead vegetation. While the wall builders worked the sentinels slept, and as the ice-hard ground gave way to tender shoots a plan unfolded.

  At the beginning, when the bricklayers first started to link the existing barricades of the previous rulers, guards were stationed every mile to protect the workers from a surprise attack. But when no attack occurred, they grew careless. Now less than one sentinel watched per every five miles. What the Ming military failed to appreciate was that the Mongols had survived the winter and were growing fat on their enemy’s negligence.

  With the arrival of warm weather food was easier to get, but the stomachs of Esen’s people were not yet full. Included in his spring menu was the sweet blood of revenge, and he would not have long to wait. If there was one thing his warriors were noted for, it was their vicious ambushes. The key to success was a surprise attack; to catch the enemy off-guard one had to calculate the perfect moment to strike, and at that instant turn wolf-like and swarm.

  Several spies were deployed to survey the current situation, and one of these was his baby brother Altan who already was covered with battle scars. When he returned from infiltrating the enemy camp, the golden fox slithered by his side. “I saw the one you’re looking for,” he told his brother.

  “Good,” Esen said. “I want her captured alive so that I can kill her myself. That girl is deadly; she can bring down our people. Never forget that, Altan. Lotus Lily is not a fox faerie, she’s something worse. Now muster your men and ride.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  First Emperor’s Bargain

  The clank, clank, clank continued. After awhile, all was quiet again and Master Yun spun to see what grisly apparition followed him. He lifted a fist, aiming in the direction of the sound until the Moonstone on his forefinger glowed, pearly white. At first he saw nothing, and then a
clay warrior materialized, a white shadow in the blue luminescence. Its pottery form was trimmed into the shape of a sentinel replete with clay helmet and scalloped chest armour. It had a steely demeanour reminiscent of his protégé Chi Quan and held a staff of polished bronze, pointed end up.

  “What do you want here?” a voice boomed from the statue.

  “I have come to ask First Emperor for his help.”

  “He will not help you, Warlock.”

  “I don’t ask on behalf of myself. I ask on behalf of the people of the Middle Kingdom.”

  “What are these people to him? His people died more than a millennium back, and he killed most of them himself.”

  “They are his descendants.”

  “He cares nothing for the lives of the living.”

  “How dare you speak for him, Sentinel; I command you to take me to your ruler,” Master Yun ordered.

  The blue luminescence surrounding the sentinel glowed deeper, while the light of the Moonstone made the pottery soldier gleam whiter. Had he made a disastrous error? “Why did he accept the dragon banner I drew for him?” Master Yun demanded. “Why did he open the gate if I am unwelcome?”

  “Warlocks are not welcome in the seat of First Emperor’s Military Command. Who knows what secrets you came to steal and where you intend to use them.”

  “First Emperor will see me,” Master Yun said.

  For a long while there was silence, then three sharp clanks came from somewhere above. The ground beneath his feet shifted, he aimed his Moonstone to the floor of the vault, and clamped his arms to his side just as the earthen floor gave out. The sensation of falling overwhelmed him, but soon he realized he wasn’t falling, he was rising. A floorless vacuum, a vertical wind tunnel, hoisted his body above the vault of First Emperor’s Military Command. The lift slowed, stopped before his head crashed into an invisible ceiling, and beneath him, the air solidified to stable ground.