Deep as the sky red as t.., p.12
Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea, page 12
Shek Yeung believed him. Not only because she’d spent the past half-month learning his tells but also because something about Lam Yuk-Yiu’s story, or rather, the story the English had told Lam Yuk-Yiu, didn’t make sense. The Dutch lost Taiwan more than a hundred years ago. Why would they try to retake it now after all this time?
If the Dutch had in fact given up on Taiwan, then the English were providing erroneous information to Lam Yuk-Yiu—intentionally, if Shek Yeung had to bet, but to what end? Feeling annoyed, she walked down to the shore. Once there, she took off her shoes and wandered around on the pebbly sand, feeling the points dig into her feet. The pain refreshed her attention.
The best-case scenario was that the English simply wanted to weaken their Dutch rivals without getting their own hands too dirty. The worst-case scenario was that they wanted to direct the attention of the pirate fleets onto someone else while they executed their own scheme, which, as Willem seemed to suggest, had something to do with opium and the current trade imbalance between China and Europe.
“Do you trust Lam Yuk-Yiu?” she asked Cheung Po later when they were alone.
“I trust Choy Hin with my life,” he said.
“That’s not what I asked. Do you trust Lam Yuk-Yiu? Or rather, do you trust her judgment? I’m starting to think she’s being fooled by the English. She’s so convinced that they share her hatred of the Dutch that she takes everything they say as truth. If I were them, I would use her to further my own plans.”
“Let’s say you’re right,” he said. “How does that affect our fleet?”
“I suppose it doesn’t, for now. But we need to be careful with any future alliances with them. Lam Yuk-Yiu’s sources are not as trustworthy as she believes.”
“Do you still want me to stay in the area and work with Choy Hin given this?”
“Well, there’s still time to decide,” she said.
In the end, Shek Yeung wasn’t worried enough about Lam Yuk-Yiu’s judgment to remove herself and her fleet from the current situation, at least not until she had gotten her share of the ransom. Choy Hin and Lam Yuk-Yiu had set up a decent stronghold here in Taiwan. Though several parts of the fort were crumbling, it was relatively safe from attackers. Nearby villagers actively supported their endeavors, supplying food, fishing nets, and occasionally, wives. It helped that Lam Yuk-Yiu was one of their own. But more important, the alliance ensured that, so long as a village cooperated with one of the fleets, it was safe from all fleets. That was another reason why Cheng Yat’s dying wish had been the continuation of the alliance. Before, villages that had been immensely valuable to one fleet often ended up being destroyed by another. In chaos, no one won.
The next day Shek Yeung awoke with an impulse to visit the village. She enlisted Buddhika, who knew the area well and spoke the local dialect. Dressed in plain clothes, weapons hidden, they skittered down the pebbly hill toward shore, lashed by the occasional cord of wind. The humid air clung to her like a large sweaty hand. The purple-tinged morning clouds were powdered-over bruises.
The village consisted of no more than fifty buildings, each with red roof ridges shaped like waves. The walls had a spotty, irregular appearance—coral stones, Buddhika explained, gathered at low tide and then stacked atop one another. The locals had moved here from the nearby archipelago generations ago, bringing with them their construction techniques.
The building materials were a little different, as was the style of the homes, but still Shek Yeung couldn’t help but be reminded of the village in which she’d spent her childhood. All around them, people bartered goods, washed their clothes, cooked with their windows and doors flung open to let out the oil and steam. Shek Yeung’s eyes and mouth watered at the hot bursts of basil and garlic.
Even after she gained her freedom from the flower boats, she never went back to her home village. It wasn’t that Cheng Yat had forbidden it. There just didn’t seem to be a point. What was left for her there except ghosts? Besides, when she admitted it to herself, she didn’t think she could face the aunties, those of them who were still alive. The way they would look at her when they realized how many people she’d killed and abducted. Maybe they would mutter about how she’d soiled her family name, how she should have died instead of her mother or brother or father. Or maybe they would fail to recognize her altogether, even after she introduced herself: You are not one of us. You can never be one of us again.
At the center of town, a temple cocked its extravagant red comb of a roof. They entered, wandering past painted clay figurines enacting the expulsion of the Dutch from the island. A stele just past the entrance of the temple recounted the town’s beginnings. In this story about Ma-Zou, she’d appeared on this island to lead the early settlers to where they should build their new homes, and on the exact spot where she’d disappeared, they’d erected this temple. Shek Yeung hadn’t heard this story before. She wondered if Ma-Zou had foreseen that the Europeans would seize this area only a few years later.
The statue of Ma-Zou had been carved from a single piece of wood and looked like it weighed at least fifty gan. The locals had thrown a fishing net across her shoulders as though it were a shawl. The offerings in front of her were almost exclusively seafood instead of the usual smattering of fruits and desserts.
She and Buddhika burned some incense to Ma-Zou. “How do you feel about Lam Yuk-Yiu?” she asked him.
“The Matron?”
“You’ve been with her for many years now, right? Don’t worry, I won’t tell her what you tell me.”
He chewed his lip, clearly unsure whether he should trust her. She didn’t blame him. “She keeps us safe, me and the other boys,” he said. “Even when the fleet ran into hard times, we always had food to eat.”
“Do you miss your family? Ceylon?”
“It was a long time ago,” he said.
After the temple, they went to the marketplace. Shek Yeung bit into a guava so ripe it dissolved in her mouth like seafoam. Buddhika, who’d received some spending money, bought a rattan hat for himself and haggled over a couple of abalone necklaces for Lam Yuk-Yiu. Shek Yeung bought a small beadwork pouch for Yan-Yan. The village seemed to be doing well in spite of all the food it regularly supplied to the Blue Banner Fleet. This made Shek Yeung feel a little better. Cheng Yat had explained to her that such arrangements were mutually beneficial: the villagers were buying safety with food and money, and whatever the pirates did couldn’t be worse than what the Europeans would do if the village ever fell back under their control. A part of her always doubted him. Still, every month, she charged Yan-Yan with adding up the tributes from these villages and Ahmad with dispatching men to threaten those villages that came up short.
Another reason she never went back home after winning her freedom was this: What if she’d returned to find only ruins? She’d on more than a few occasions heard Cheng Yat ordering the crew to burn down villages resisting their control. She’d wanted to ask him if such an action was really necessary—couldn’t they seize the villagers’ supplies and be done with it?—but she’d been too afraid. What if someone had burned her village the same way?
She and Buddhika introduced themselves as traders when asked. No point in endangering themselves if they happened to meet some villagers displeased with the arrangement, not when all she had on her person was a short dagger and a finicky pistol. It was not a bad place to live, she concluded as the two of them walked around. If she settled here, the emperor would never find her. She would be able to start over. Build a spotted house, sell fish at the market, eat guavas every day.
Something small and soft collided with the side of her leg. Shek Yeung looked down—a girl, no more than four or five years old, was sitting in the dirt. Water trailed from her eyes, snot from her nose. Her shriek was like midday sun directly in the face after a night of heavy drinking.
“Ah, I’m sorry,” Shek Yeung said to the girl.
The girl, impossibly, shrieked louder.
People were starting to look. “She ran into me,” Shek Yeung explained to everyone.
“I wonder where the mother is,” Buddhika said.
“You saw,” Shek Yeung said, wanting his corroboration. “She ran into me.”
He nodded absently, eyes still scanning the marketplace for the child’s mother.
“Let me help you up,” Shek Yeung said, holding a hand out to the girl, who didn’t even look at it. She could feel her patience fraying. “Are you done crying?” she said. “Get up.”
“Let’s just leave,” Buddhika whispered.
“No, she’s being unreasonable.” Shek Yeung squatted so she could look the child in the face. “Are you planning to cry forever? Or are you just crying because you hope someone will comfort you? What will you do if no one comes?”
A shadow fell over Shek Yeung. A tall woman, probably the mother, bent over and picked up the child. She and Shek Yeung locked eyes, and Shek Yeung saw there a combination of disbelief, anger, and fear. Suddenly Shek Yeung understood.
They all knew exactly who she was. They’d simply been playing along with the story she and Buddhika had been spouting. Although the villagers supported Lam Yuk-Yiu and Choy Hin and received protection in turn, that didn’t mean they weren’t deathly afraid of them. When someone wielded that much power over someone else, fear would always be a barrier between them, no matter how well the one in power treated the other. However much spending money Lam Yuk-Yiu gave Buddhika, Buddhika would always, first and foremost, fear her. Shek Yeung had felt the same toward Cheng Yat. Even after he’d given her command of half of the fleet, even after she’d helped him secure the cooperation of the other fleets, those dregs of fear still got stirred up whenever she made a mistake or contradicted his opinion. When he died, she’d felt sadness, yes, but also relief.
Maybe that explained some of Cheung Po’s recent behavior as well. Since the attack on the Qing war junk, she’d been mulling over his words about how Cheng Yat had chosen him. So what if he made you do things? He made all of us do things, she’d wanted to say. But she’d already been in her mid-twenties when she met Cheng Yat. Cheung Po had been, at most, fifteen. She’d been taken from a joyless life on the flower boats, whereas Cheung Po had been taken from his family and community. What it must have been like to be so young and so far from home, watching all the other boys his age die one by one, and then, after doing enough terrible things and having enough terrible things done to him, to be told that he would become heir to a fleet whose power paralleled that of the navy. Oh, how Cheng Yat had both favored and tortured the people he’d deemed special enough to “mentor,” her included. Sometimes she didn’t know if she was supposed to feel grateful or resentful.
And then Cheng Yat had gone and died. Maybe Cheung Po was trying to prove to her and the rest of the fleet that he was indeed as special as Cheng Yat had believed, special enough to deserve outliving the other boys, or maybe he was just trying to prove to himself that all his suffering had been necessary in preparing him to lead. If he could subdue fleet commanders that had posed a problem for Cheng Yat, if he could capture war junks that Cheng Yat would have struggled to capture, then maybe Cheng Yat had indeed been a genius of foresight and not just another tyrant who destroyed lives for no other reason than that he could.
She would feel pity for Cheung Po, except she sometimes suspected she was doing the same herself.
The junks Shek Yeung had sent up north for reconnaissance finally returned—with bad news. They hadn’t found Ba and the White Banner Fleet. Nor had they found any bodies or wrecks. Was the fleet truly gone, or was it simply in hiding from Pak Ling? If everyone had died, why would Pak Ling have gone through the trouble of destroying all the evidence? According to the captain of one of the reconnaissance ships, the area had experienced a lot of storms recently. That might explain the fleet’s disappearance.
Shek Yeung shared this information with the other three commanders. “We may have to accept that Pak Ling is a bigger threat than we believed,” she said.
“But he hasn’t proven to be a threat to any of us yet,” Cheung Po said. “All right, maybe, maybe, he defeated Ba. We don’t have proof of that either. But being a threat to a tiny fleet with a commander who’s drunk all the time is different from being a threat to us.”
“Has he made any incursions into your territory?” Shek Yeung asked Choy Hin.
Choy Hin looked conflicted. “No, but we’ve been seeing more imperial junks right outside our territory. We thought they were doing training exercises. That war junk you two captured was probably one of them.” He turned to Lam Yuk-Yiu. “What do you think?”
“I don’t like this Pak Ling,” Lam Yuk-Yiu said, “but I also don’t think he’s an immediate threat. Peking has never taken much of an interest in this island. Sure, they came here to kill the Ming loyalists, but that was because the loyalists were a threat to the Qing. Why would the emperor all of a sudden care about us? We shouldn’t get distracted. The ransom is happening soon. We need to focus on getting as much money from those Dutch savages as we can.”
As they drew closer to the ransom date, Lam Yuk-Yiu had become even more obsessed with the Dutch. She talked about them during meals, during meetings, during friendly games of pai gow, as if she were daring Shek Yeung to question her judgment. But Shek Yeung didn’t voice any disagreement. It was true Pak Ling wasn’t yet worth their concern—unless, of course, he’d had something to do with the failed raid that had cost Cheng Yat his life.
Shek Yeung brought up the possibility of a spy with Cheung Po again. “I haven’t noticed anything suspicious,” he said. “Have you?”
She hadn’t. “I’ve been thinking about it,” he continued. “I’m not saying the Portuguese didn’t get a warning, but it was probably accidental. You remember what happened five, six days before the attack? A few of our men got really drunk and caused a scene at the tavern?”
She had no memory of this, but she wasn’t too surprised. She didn’t spend nearly as much time socializing with the men as Cheung Po did. But she understood what he meant. Drunk men were talkative men. Years on the flower boats had taught her that.
If Pak Ling had intensified his efforts, the best thing would be for her and Cheung Po to stay in Taiwan for the time being. It didn’t matter that she wanted some distance from Cheung Po—the combined power of the Blue and Red Banner Fleets meant relative safety. After they received the ransom amounts, the fleet would be in a better position to deal with Pak Ling’s schemes, whether or not they included a spy.
“I need to speak with you,” Shek Yeung said to Buddhika a few days after the meeting about Pak Ling. In the meantime she’d come to the conclusion that she needed more information. Cheng Yat wouldn’t have circumvented the commanders of an ally fleet for information, but he hadn’t known Lam Yuk-Yiu well. Shek Yeung found Buddhika in a different wing of the fort and dragged him all the way back to her room so they could talk in peace.
“How often do you accompany your Matron when she is conducting business with the English?” she asked.
“Sometimes,” Buddhika said cautiously. “Why?”
Shek Yeung had been hoping for an answer along those lines. After all, he was Lam Yuk-Yiu’s favorite. It also didn’t hurt that he spoke a little English. And whatever meetings he didn’t attend, he likely heard about from Lam Yuk-Yiu herself.
“I’m concerned about your safety,” Shek Yeung said.
She had grown quite fond of him over their time together, she explained. Begun to think of him as a younger brother, maybe even a son. “But in truth I’m also concerned about your Matron,” she said. “I fear the English are deceiving her.”
“How so?”
“You’ve been in the room with me every time I’ve talked to Willem,” she said. “Do you think he’s lying?”
He broke her gaze. “Right,” she said. “If Willem’s not lying, and the English do have a hidden agenda, then you, your Matron, and possibly the whole fleet are in danger. However you feel about your Matron, I know you don’t want harm to come to yourself and to all the other boys.
“There is a problem, Buddhika,” she continued, tilting his chin gently until he met her gaze again. “And you’re the only one who can solve it.”
“I can’t—”
“I would never ask you to do anything to betray your fleet. Remember, I want to help. But for me to help, I need more information.”
“Let’s say there is a problem—” he began.
She put up a hand to stop him. “Not much would need to happen at all. It would just be a matter of passing information along. Your fleet docks at Maynila quite often, isn’t that right? When do you think you’ll find yourself there next?”
“Three months?”
She swore inwardly. She would have preferred to receive this information sooner—who knew how much damage Lam Yuk-Yiu might inflict, how many alliance secrets she might cede to the English in the meantime—but there was simply no better way to communicate with Buddhika. Carrier birds worked only if the message’s intended recipient was at a set location, and Shek Yeung’s fleet couldn’t risk staying in one place for too long. The remaining methods, like drop spots and middlemen, all required her physical presence.
Still, late information was better than no information. “I happen to know a great inn in Maynila that serves the best pancit,” she said. “The proprietor is a lovely older gentleman who speaks almost as many languages as you do and is a very good listener. Once our fleets are done here and start traveling again, you should try the noodles there.”
Buddhika nodded. She patted the back of his hand. For now, there was nothing to do but wait.
By the time the messengers returned with news from the Europeans and the emperor, winter was coming to an end. The emperor had made a counteroffer. The Europeans had outright agreed to the named price. Rumors of pirates’ brutal treatment of captives had spread far and wide, some of them started by the pirates themselves to incite fear. No doubt the Europeans were imagining their brethren being flayed, disemboweled, and cannibalized.
