"Oh, for the same reason I had the soldiers around me," Fengzi said, tossing her head. The long black hair whipped around, nearly taking out Lum's uncovered eye. "I kept running away. Father was sending me to a monastery near Jīn-sè Mèn in the hope the Buddhists could, well, beat some filial respect into me."
"I would never have sent you to a monastery," Lum said. No doubt he had intended the words to sound reassuring, but to Wen they sounded lustful more than anything else. I certainly understand that, he thought.
"That explains a lot," Wen said. "I had wondered, when I saw you at—well, at work, I suppose, yesterday. You must be self-taught, then. I am impressed at your skill, Lady Fengzi."
"Of course I'm self-taught." She scowled. "What Daoist sage would take on a mere woman as a student?" She took a sip of her drink, then downed the lot. "Idiots, all of them. A whole wide world around us, begging to be manipulated, controlled, and all they see is the prospect of immortality. Immortality is bestowed on you, not gained like some prize at a country fair! Men!" she added, and such was the honey of her voice that for an instant Wen agreed with her.
"Might I ask how you got here?" Wen looked her over; she appeared to be wearing the same boyish clothes she had sported when he first saw her, and they showed no sign of any significant time spent in the water.
"The same way you did," she told him. "Once I'd got untangled from my bindings, I called the winds and had them lift me back up to where your ropes were dangling from the back of the boat."
"Stern of the ship," Lum muttered.
"That's what I said. Anyway, I was able to make myself a sling, using the bindings and the hanging ropes, and I spent the night there without anyone seeing me. It was easy enough, once we arrived at this island, to slip ashore without drawing attention to myself. I asked a blind scholar for help, and he brought me here."
"That would be Blind Pei," Lum said. "Like you, my lady Fengzi, entirely self-taught. A superb physician, and more than happy to help dress a sword-cut or remove an arrow-head if it's to aid our cause. Does it all by touch."
"He made me promise to visit him once I was settled," Fengzi said. "Which I will gladly do, so long as he doesn't want to talk about immortality potions."
"Will you continue studying here, then?" Wen asked. "I understand from Lum and from Pocapetl that this island has something of a tradition of hosting unusual scholars and scholarship." A better idea was beginning to occur to him. "Lum, do you think that a pirate—sorry, a rebel band—could make use of a Daoist adept who can rise up in the air and evidently control the winds?"
"Were such an adept a man," said Lum, "he could probably take my place as first mate. He could certainly supplant that doddering fool Liang Sheng as the general's advisor and tutor in the arts. Since the adept in question is a girl and possessed of a very bad attitude toward authority, I'm afraid Chin Gwai would never consider it."
"I would never serve under such a man anyway!" Fengzi sounded defiant, but Wen thought he saw something that might be regret in her eyes.
"You have made me think of an interesting question, though, Wen. What, I wonder, will her father do when her ship is reported missing?" Lum asked, looking Pocapetl and then at Fengzi with an expression that mixed worry and interest of a sort that was definitely prurient, leaving Wen in no doubt whatever of the man's motives.
"Possibly mourn me for a few days," Fengzi said, sourly, ignoring Lum's look. "Then he'll go back to trying to get a son with his concubines and forget I ever existed."
"Oh," Lum said. "That's all right, then. Just so long as he doesn't send anyone looking after you."
"I didn't say he wouldn't do that," she said. "Not as a father, but as a senior official in the government. Once it gets out that my ship was taken by the Green Turbans, he'll feel obligated to do something."
"Who wouldn't?" Wen murmured.
"That's not good," said Pocapetl, hovering nearby. "We don't much care for the authorities showing too much interest in us, or our happy little island."
"You wouldn't send me away, would you?" Fengzi asked.
"No, you'd be easy enough to hide," Pocapetl said. "As Wen said, there are plenty of retired scholars in the hills who might be willing to take you in, and ignore any studying you might be doing."
"It's we," Wen said, "who will be attracting the wrong sort of attention, not Lady Fengzi."
"You're right there, my new friend." Pocapetl turned to the first mate. "I'm sorry, Lum, but if you really have attracted the notice of the navy, then it would be in all our best interests for you to base your movement somewhere else for a few months. We have a happy enough arrangement with the representatives of order, and we keep it that way by knowing just how much outrage we can allow ourselves—or our friends—to generate. Don't you agree?"
"I do," Lum said. His face drooped. "I'll miss this place."
"Never fear. You can always come by for a visit. You just can't stay long enough for word to get to the nearest naval base, that's all."
"I know, I know." Lum got to his feet. "Come on, Wen. We might as well start getting ready to ship out."
Can we leave the general behind? Wen asked silently.
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