"And then he let them all go!" The Jade Maiden crewman—Wen didn't know his name, but figured he would soon enough if it mattered—turned to the people on the opposite side of the table before he continued. "He didn't execute a single one, not even the governor's assistant under-secretary who happened to be accompanying the cargo, or some of it."
"Not a single execution?" This from an old man who looked as if he'd have trouble executing a bowl of rice gruel. "That's not the way it was done in my day!"
"No, you're right there, old man. Instead we sailed the ship to the nearest village and put everyone ashore. The only thing Captain Wen did that I understood was he told everyone to tell everybody they met about what they'd seen. Not that he had to remind them. I could hear them as we were leaving, and all I kept hearing was 'sheet of blood.' We're right in it now, and no doubt of it."
"Well, that explains the comment I heard this morning about 'Bloody Sheet' Wen being in port," another customer said, having been casually eavesdropping the entire conversation. "There was a sea falcon crew down at Mama Chen's for lunch, and to a man they were telling anyone who'd listen about how eager they were to come to grips with the notorious 'Bloody Sheet' Wen."
"If they were bragging that much," the old man said, "they must have been terrified."
"That was my guess."
Wen smiled, and walked out of the wine-shop. So far, every place he'd visited he'd encountered at least one member of the Jade Maiden's crew, and each time the crewman had more or less stuck to the official story. There'd been no self-congratulation about the ruse that had led to the cargo ship's unconditional surrender; so far as anyone knew, Wen and Fengzi really had executed a dozen captives in full view of perhaps a hundred witnesses. What was equally important, though, was the second half of the tale: that those who surrendered really were set ashore with persons and dignity more or less intact.
The only unfortunate aspect of the whole adventure had been the prize obtained at the end of it: the coaster's hold had contained a bit of leather armor and some cheap swords, but mostly dried fish and cheap cloth, the whole evidently intended for one of the garrisons further up the coast. Wen had managed to pry a few copper cash from the kit-box of the leader of the mercenary guards—the leader having been the man whose armor had so effectively pulled him down into the sea and thus no longer needing it—and the guards themselves had provided some decent cross-bows to replace the worn-out weapons the Jade Maiden's crew had been using. But on the whole it hadn't been the sort of lucrative prize Wen had assumed pirating was all about. Certainly his share of the loot wouldn't fund a day's worth of medication for a virgin with the sniffles, much less a desperately ill would-be scholar.
Oh, well, he told himself as he walked up the slope from Panjiakou harbor to Pocapetl's wine-shop, I only ever wanted it to be a test, and I do think we passed the test. The only casualty suffered by the Jade Maiden throughout the affair was that of a sailor who'd been laughing so uproariously as he flew through the air, as part of the ruse, that he'd inhaled sea-water and had to be hung upside down until he could breathe properly again. Wen hadn't made the obvious comparison, but he hoped the crew would realize—or that One-Eyed Lum would remind them—that in the last three attacks led by Chin Gwai the Jade Maiden had lost a half-dozen men killed and another four wounded. If I have my way, Wen thought, I'm never going to lose another man in a fight over a prize. And I won't have to recruit new crew; I'll have to turn down the ones who want to join me.
I think I'm going to like being a pirate captain.
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