Burning Tigress (60 page)

"Because it is true." His tone was hard as hurled stone. "And he has paid for his crimes. He and all his so-called monks."

She Po already knew her brother was dead. The last of his students—a Manchurian—had brought the evil news some days ago. Along with a white girl.
The
white girl. The two had already managed to sow discord in her quiet little school. But Shi Po could not allow the General to know that, so she raised stricken eyes to him.

"Paid?" she gasped. "How...?" She swallowed, making sure her voice remained breathy. "Please, sir, what were his crimes? And how... how did he pay?"

The General leaned forward, using his superior height to intimidate. In this, however, he failed, because the angle gave Shi Po a good view of the thin space between his upper lip and his nose. Indeed, this man was doomed by fortune, and that thought alone heartened her.

"Your brother trained rebels of the White Lotus Society. He and all his misguided followers have been executed for their foolishness." The General slowed his words for maximum effect, and Shi Po found her gaze pulled from his thin lip to his piercing eyes. "All are dead save one student. One man spared to pass the warning." He pushed loudly to his feet. "You know where this man is, Tan Shi Po. And you will take me to him. Now."

Such was the power of the General's spirit that Shi Po found herself rising. But she was a mirror; as his strength increased, so did her own.

"I know nothing of this," she lied. "Are you sure? Abbot Tseng of the Shiyu monastery?"

The General would have none of it. His hand was huge, the pressure intense where he gripped her arm, lifting Shi Po to her feet. His leg knocked the table, spilling his tea onto the ancient wood floor. He ignored it, focused on her.

"One monk. Carrying sacred scrolls. He came to you." Though he spoke it as fact, Shi Po felt a quiver of doubt through the General's hand. The man was guessing, hoping he was correct.

Which, of course, he was.

She shook her head, pretending to be stunned by her brother's death. "Rui Po!" she wailed, tears flowing like a river as would be expected from a woman at any relative's death. Indeed, over the years she had perfected the skill of crying on demand. But this time Shi Po's grief was real, the pain of her brother's death still fresh.

The General dismissed her with a grunt. "I will search your home now."

"But why?" she gasped through her tears. "I know nothing of your monk."

He turned, his eyes on fire, the stench of his fear keeping her on her knees. "Because he
is my
monk, Tigress Shi Po."

Shi Po barely registered the words. Her gaze, her mind—indeed, her entire spirit—was caught by the vision of the General's body in profile. A light reflected up from the polished floor, or maybe a similarity in gesture, revealed the secret. Both men were Manchu, after all. Both were warriors, for all that one was a monk. Whatever the cause, the truth burst into her mind:

"You are his
father,"
she said.

And in that moment, all changed. Days before, Shi Po had accepted the truth-seeker into her home, the monk with political connections who needed time to recover from the massacre of his entire monastery. The monk, who had brought news of her brother. Now Shi Po knew she was keeping a father from his son—a sin punishable by death.

She rose to her feet, balancing precariously on her tiny heels as she wiped away her tears. The General was silent, his fury betrayed by clenched fists. "You know nothing about my son," he said with a growl. "Do not presume to understand your betters, Han sorceress."

Shi Po's gaze dropped to the floor, only now remembering he had called her by her title.
Tigress,
he had said. He knew who she was, what she was, and so cursed her as a sorceress. At least that was better than being called a whore.

"I merely guess, my lord." Her words grew softer, full of feminine modesty. "Only a father could claim a monk as his own."

"And only the unnatural leader of a twisted religion would dare deny me," he replied.

She had not denied him anything—yet. The insults to her calling she credited as noise from a monkey's mouth. And yet, her problem remained: She sheltered General Kang's son. Part of her longed to turn the boy over for bringing this trouble to her home.

"My house," she said, "is open to you. All except the women's quarters." She looked up, but kept herself blank, trying to stop reflecting his venom. "You are a powerful man in form and spirit. I cannot risk the chaos your presence would have on the delicate ladies of my household."

"You mean the misguided whores of your perverse religion."

She said nothing. Indeed, if he knew enough to call her a Tigress, then he knew enough to be enlightened if he chose. Obviously, he did not. She had no choice but to accept his condemnation, for such was the lot of all women in China, whether Manchurian or Han.

He continued to glare at her, his eyes narrowed in his pinched face. "I have no interest in your women. My son would not contaminate himself with the likes of you."

How she wished to tell the General the truth. Not only was his son contaminating himself with the Tigress "perversions," he did so with a white woman. But saying such a thing would be to hand the General a torch to burn her house to the ground—with herself and her followers all inside. So she remained silent, moving slowly forward and exaggerating the difficulty of walking on bound feet.

She led him through the main house, pausing only as the General motioned for six soldiers to accompany them. She remained gracious throughout, for that was a woman's duty. Even as the soldiers pushed aside large urns of rice or banged through the pots. They disturbed cats and servants, dragged aside tapestries and furniture. And they found nothing, of course, even though they dug their filthy hands deep into sacks of vegetables and piles of linens.

He was kind in that his men were careful. But Shi Po's sense of violation increased as the General's men pulled up floorboards looking for secret caches and poured water onto stone floors looking for hidden pits. Her entire home was disrupted, and she could do nothing but stand aside and watch.

Until she heard a scream. It came from the women's quarters: the building where her students practiced; the place of many bedrooms, including the one that sheltered the General's son and his white partner.

Shi Po spun on her heel, grabbing the wall as she teetered, then rushed toward the sound. The General followed. She moved faster, knowing her home and the handholds needed to travel quickly to the inside garden. She guessed what had happened. Knew, in fact, from the very beginning that such a thing was coming. Still, she had thought her husband would return by now and find a way to prevent it. But Kui Yu was not here.

Shi Po scurried around the goldfish fountain and flowering lotus to see her best student—Little Pearl—struggling in the grip of a soldier. More of the General's men were throwing open doors, roughly dragging her Tigress cubs outside. Fortunately, none had partners with them. The servants had already seen to the gentlemen's escape.

All except one: the monk. No, she silently corrected herself.
The General's son.

Shi Po slowed her pace, her mind working furiously. She could not afford a rash action here. The soldiers would soon work their way to the monk's room.

The General made his way over to her, and she rounded on him, allowing her fury to boil over. Tears and supplication had not worked with the man; she would try outrage.

"How can you be so cruel?" she screeched. "You swore to me you would not upset these ladies' delicate conditions!" Right on cue, her cubs descended into wails, not all of which were feigned. "Is the word of an Imperial general worth so little?"

"My gravest apologies, Lady Tan," Kang said as he took in every detail: her cubs' beauty, their fit figures, their easily removable clothing. "My men misunderstood my direction. Their actions were rash."

Shi Po sincerely doubted his men had misunderstood anything, but she held her tongue. Especially as the General ordered the soldiers to release the women. They did, but their lewd and hungry eyes continued to travel over the girls. At least none of her students seemed harmed.

Shi Po sent a speaking look to Little Pearl, who nodded her head and quickly shepherded the other cubs away. They would be given mundane clothing to wear, and each would disappear to their homes. Those who had nowhere to go would dress as deformed servants—scullery maids with dark red rashes or diseased beggars come inside for a crumb of bread. There would be no trace of the beauties that studied with her, and so they would be safe.

Not so with the monk and his white woman who were hiding on the upper floor, relying on Shi Po to keep them safe.

"General, call all your men back! I have sick women upstairs," she lied.

"Disease is a natural result of your unholy work," he replied in a bored tone. Then he spoke to his lieutenant: "Tell them to be wary of foulness."

"You said they would not disturb the women!" Shi Po cried again.

"Oh yes," General Kang drawled. "An error on my part. No harm done. My men will return in a moment."

What could she do? Nothing. Only scramble for an excuse for not having handed over the monk and his white woman earlier. And still there was no sign of Kui Yu. There was no rescue from her husband or the doom that awaited her.

She swallowed. "General Kang, surely this is not necessary. You can see—"

"Silence, sorceress. You have no voice here."

For emphasis, the nearest soldier drew his sword, the scrape of metal loud in the perfumed garden. All around Shi Po, the men tensed, ready to battle whatever mystical forces might appear between her ornamental bushes and sweet-smelling grasses. Their pose might have been funny if they weren't so earnest—if they didn't truly think she was some evil mystic they planned to kill if the wind so much as rustled in the trees.

"Very well," she murmured, her spirit struggling against the inevitable. There was nothing she could do to help the monk and his woman; she would do what she could to protect herself and her students. "I will see to my distraught women." She turned, intending to walk calmly and quickly out of the garden.

"You will wait upon my pleasure, Tigress." The General sneered her title, the sound so foul she would have preferred to be called a whore.

It was on the tip of her tongue to say that men waited upon
her
pleasure, not the other way around. Why else would she become a Tigress? But then there was a commotion from the building, and she managed—just barely—to keep her tongue.

"Anything?" the General called out to his men, his voice as tight as his face.

One soldier appeared. Two. Then two more exited the building. But no monk. And no white girl.

"We found empty bedrooms, General. Rumpled sheets. Water in the basins. But no people, diseased or otherwise."

The General stepped forward, the smell of his anger and fear multiplying. "No one?"

"No, sir."

"Were there signs of a man? Anything that would indicate—"

"Nothing, General. Just rumpled sheets and water."

Shi Po listened with a bowed head, her eyes carefully downcast. They had found nothing? No monk? No ghost woman? She lifted her gaze, narrowing her eyes as she tried to imagine where the two might be hiding. Where would the white woman go?

She cared nothing for the monk, except for the desire that he and his father quit her home immediately. That he had escaped meant nothing to her, as long as he left the girl behind. Shi Po had been most explicit. She had told the white woman to stay here, and the white woman had nodded in agreement.

Now, where was she?

Shi Po's anger got the best of her, and she pushed forward. "What of the sick girl? The one with no voice. She is not there?"

The soldier didn't look at her, answering her question as if the General had posed it. "No one, sir. No sick women. And no men at all. We searched most thoroughly."

General Kang spit out a curse that echoed through the garden. Shi Po would have blushed if she were not thinking the same thing. Where had the woman gone? She had to find her. Immortality depended upon it.

But first she had an angry general to deal with, and no husband to take the weight from her shoulders. "You see, do you not, that you were misinformed?" she said. "I do not know where your..." She would have said son, but the General's eyes narrowed to slits and she hastily changed her words. "Your monk is not in my home. Please, you have disrupted everything. Will you not leave me in peace?"

The General stepped up to her. His body, his smell, his very presence was poisonous. "If I find you lie..." He did not complete his threat. He did not need to. All knew what he meant.

She bowed her head. "He is not here. And I have no way to find him." She spoke the truth, and it was her doom. For the white girl was surely with the monk, the pair fled to a place where neither general nor Tigress could discover them.

General Kang wasted no more time on her. Issuing orders with a sharp tongue, he and his soldiers departed quickly, leaving noise and clutter and anxious servants in their wake.

It was only after he was gone, after the last sound of armor and horses faded from the street that Shi Po allowed herself to move. Then, with heavy steps, she moved through her building. It was empty; every room open, every piece of furniture disturbed. She did not need to walk to their room to know the truth; she felt it in the still and suddenly sour air: