Crimson Qi, Exiled Beautiful Lady Falls in Love with a Shy Demon

Insult to Injury

That's the Thirty Claw's widow and she came for me. No, not us... me. She wants to avenge herself on the Gracious Lady Tien Lyn of the songs. That cursed song, ancestors, that cursed song!

Ho limped into the yard and kneeled before Jung Hwa. "Please. Anything...."

Tien Lyn twisted trying to see him. She wanted to will him to take Xi and flee, but his eyes stayed focused on something beyond her line of sight.

He kept coming, and he kept pleading.

"Kneeling men..." Jung Hwa leaned over and spat to one side to finalize her evaluation.

Tien Lyn did not feel any other movement, but the pirate must have thrown a knife that embedded itself in Ho's shoulder.

Ho went on all fours, then lifted his head. He was always a private man, but Tien Lyn had never seen his expression turn so inwardly. His right palm slid forward along the paving stones. He closed his eyes, and shivered, almost imperceptibly. She saw it, and her heart went out to him. Then he shook, more and more violently. That they did see, and laughed.

In front of Ho, in a semicircle, the ground trembled and cracked outwards. The airwave that came with the tremors lifted the leaves high off the ground. But it did not stop with the leaves. The cracked pavement stones, the uprooted tree and at least some of the horses went flying as well. Wild-eyed, the horses landed back so hard, that they lost their footing, and collapsed screaming, their limbs or necks broken. The inexperienced riders went down with them.

Jung Hwa's horse stayed on the ground, and she rode Ho's attack out as she would a storm wave. Tien Lyn could not see her face, but she was sure the terrible woman did not flinch.

"Fire arrows," Jung Hwa barked as the raiders reassembled at the gates, a good distance away from Ho.

The steppe dwellers shot bows on the horseback, riding front or back. The pirates dismounted to do it, but they were as deadly. The house went up in flames, tentatively at first, then stronger and hotter, until the pirates had to retreat to stay comfortable. But they were still within an arrow's range. All who tried to run from the inferno got picked up by the archers.

"Did you find the wretched healer?" Jung Hwa asked conversationally watching the carnage.

"No, Mother," Gao said, "just the Gracious Lady here."

"We'll wait then. I promised her that he'll die in return for the information on Tien Lyn's whereabouts."

"Why don't the faery come and dig through the ashes herself?" Gao spat. "She can deal with the ghost of the mage too."

Weynala... this is Weynala's doing! She recognized us, and gave these dogs our scent. The witch is still after Yu!

Jung Hwa proved to be a diligent hound, much more diligent than her Master, the Son of Heavens. She kept her men in position until no more screams and no more crazed human torches came from the burning wreck of Tien Lyn's house.

Tien Lyn was too dead inside to cry. She did not feel bruises and scrapes from being tossed around as the horse galloped to the Crane's Mooring, or blood rushing down her swinging head.

She felt no repulsion being dragged off the horse and into the cargo hold by the pirates' rough hands.

She did not blink when Jung Hwa chopped off a hand that groped her, and left the newly crippled assailant behind, screaming on the dock, cradling the bleeding stump.

She heaved for a while when the movement of the ship compelled her to, but the sight and the smell of vomit did not make her move.

She sat where they put her in the cargo hold of their ship.

She existed only to think, I want you all to die.

Jung Hwa approved of her trophy's dry eyes. "My husband was right when he promised you to Huo. You might survive."

"I hate you, your vile husband and your putrid son," she replied in a monotone, because hate sapped her rage as well as her strength.

"Those are the fighting words, girl. Say it like you feel it, or shut up," Jung Hwa mocked.

Tien Lyn started at the pirate Chieftain bleakly: "I loved my husband, and you've killed him. How I say it does not matter. I hate you."

Something kept her from mentioning Xi. It's better nobody vile knew about her son, not even after his death. Then Tien Lyn closed her eyes, but she still felt Jung Hwa loom over her, wanting something. A fight maybe?

Keep wanting.

"Husband? Is that the would-be mage? I thought you'd be clamouring to get back to your lover."

Tien Lyn did not answer.

"Your lover, Zha Yao?" Jung Hwa insisted with the determination of a burrowing rodent.

"I loved my husband Chong Ho," was her only reply. She did not betray her husband, and she did not care that the pirate did not believe her, or the singer Shan Jiang, or the rest of the Evershining Empire.

"Tell me, this Kneeling Woman: did you rub shoulders with dozens of men, day after day, worked to exhaustion, laughed and cried with them? Buried some of them? Danced at the others' weddings? Held their children?" Jung Hwa queried.

"No," she was getting tired of the pirate's curiosity, but she felt that Jung Hwa wouldn't let her be until she answered all the inane questions.

"Maybe you've picked that Chong Ho out of them all, one out of a thousand?" the woman kept prying.

"No. I came to love my husband," she was just as stubborn, even if she did not wave a sword into people's faces or burned their children alive.

"Aha!" Jung Hwa snapped her fingers in triumph. "Then you can come to love another. That's what the Kneeling Women do."

"I hate you," Tien Lyn repeated. "I want you to die. And your Huo, your Gao and your every other of cursed offspring."

"You won't go to Huo," Jung Hwa's expression turned inexplicably sour, "You'll go to the Laughing Man who kills Zha Yao. They can do with you as they wish."

With that, the pirate chieftain left Tien Lyn to her sitting and hating, alone in the dark cargo hold.

AN: Thank you for reading and commenting! This one was by far my least favourite chapter in the novel for obvious reasons. I wish I had a better handle on writing to follow a more plot & emotionally complicated storyline that allowed for Ho's survival (initial version) but this is my first time around the block, so... hugs!