FIVE
"Of course she's living at the top of a
mountain," Wen said to himself, pausing for breath after each word. "She doesn't have to climb the
thrice-damned thing. She just flies home
after a day at the market."
Penglai, outside the port town of Panjiakou, was very much a
wild place. Wild, and inconveniently
dry. Most of the plants on this mountain
were tough and wiry, and alarmingly similar in many respects to the Jade Maiden's crew; this wasn't exactly
nature as the ancient sages described it.
Also, there appeared to be no streams on this mountain from which a
thirsty man could refresh himself. You could
have just sent one of the wharf-rats up this hill to fetch Yin Fengzi, Wen told
himself. But no, you had to do the
honorable thing and come up here in person.
Some pirate captain you're turning out to be. Some leader of men.
Of course, the real reason he was climbing this mountain was
that he wanted to be a leader of women, or at least of one woman. The fat treasure-ship, the one he'd been so
happy to have spotted using his Dragon Emerald Eye, had turned out to be
defended by an aged adept, a venerable gentleman whose age was much greater,
and whose threadbare gown was much more threadbare, than those of the
now-departed Liang Sheng. This
decrepit-looking sage had nearly capsized the Jade Maiden before Wen and One-Eyed Lum—who no longer wore an
eye-patch, now that Wen had evidently fulfilled some sort of quota by needing his
own—could steer her out of the range of the bolts of Daoist magic the old man
had tossed their way. Evidently small
ships and fishing villages were considered expendable by Prince Zhu Yizan and
his advisors, but anything of true value was defended by forces beyond anything
Wen could currently marshal. Or that
Chin could. After the aborted attack on
the treasure ship, Wen doubted that Chin's rebellion was even going to come close
to succeeding in the man's lifetime. The
last evidence the Dragon Emerald Eye had produced of Chin Gwai had shown the
Green Turbans leader up to his armpits in swarming government soldiers, as the
government warship Wen had spotted had boarded the ship Chin was trying to sail
to sanctuary. His purse was still empty,
then, and the grandfathers had not reappeared either. Wen wasn't sure what that meant but he was
pretty certain it didn't bode well.
The scholar hosting the Lady Fengzi lived near the top of
this scrub-covered hill that the locals had honored with the label "mountain." Pocapetl had told Wen that the man's name was
Wu Ming, but Wen was pretty sure that this was a pseudonym: pronounced
properly, "Wu Ming" meant "nameless." Some might find this disturbing, but to a
pirate it was perfectly natural; Wen guessed that he was dealing with a man who
had lost, or resigned from, a civil-service job in the Fusang
administration. Or possibly he just
wanted to avoid being traced by an overbearing mother, or wife. The man's past was of no interest to Wen.
Wu's house, when Wen finally reached it after several times
being convinced he was lost and his parched bones would be discovered centuries
hence, was surprisingly appealing. In
its overall layout it resembled the sort of house Wen had once considered a
prime target for burglary, but its appearance was anything but Chinese. There was something soft and supple about the
way the house sat nestled into the side of the hill, a softness resulting both
from its color—a gray so mild it was almost mauve—and the rounded shape both of
the house and of the mud bricks of which it was made. On a day as hot as this, the house promised
cool comfort.
"What an interesting gem!" The man who got up from his chair as the
servant escorted Wen into the study was surprisingly young for a retired scholar,
and for a moment Wen found himself unaccountably angry at the thought of Yin
Fengzi spending her time with this fellow.
A second look was more reassuring: Wu was slight, and though he was
definitely too young to be really safe as a host for a young woman, there was
still something stretched and worn about him that suggested great age. Perhaps it was something common to scholars,
in the way that sun-darkened skin and blasphemy were common to pirates. "Do you mind if I take a closer
look?"
"Not at all," Wen said. It wasn't as if examination would make a whole lot of difference. One of the first things he'd learned on coming ashore at Panjiakou was that the Dragon Emerald Eye was pretty much useless away from the open sea. He could more or less see with it as he could his human eye. But as for distances... Well, it stood to reason. Dragons were the kings of oceans and the sky above. On land they were less in control. No self-respecting dragon touched the earth.
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