Chapter 3

Chapter Three

A ihan surveyed the things the Mac Sceacháin had brought her, which suggested he intended to keep her locked up for a while. This was not good. She only had two days to find out what happened to her brother and return to the junk, or the captain and his crew would sail without her. She had no doubt he would do it, too.

Panic made her heart race and tightened her belly, which chose that moment to rumble, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten since yesterday. She would eat and consider her options; there must be some way out of this cell.

She sat down on the mattress cross-legged and dragged the tray closer, inspecting what was on it. A large pot of the dark liquor they seemed to favour here. She took a large mouthful, thirsty again. She needed to ask for water. A round loaf of bread and a ball of cheese, this one soft and more like the cheese she was accustomed to at home. She sniffed it and nibbled a bit: salty and mild. And a crumbly mix of some kind of minced meat. She picked up a bit and sniffed and nibbled. Something made from blood and offal, good! She smiled, breaking the loaf open, then piled in the cheese and the offal mixture and, squashing it down, bit into it. The bread was a bit stale, but she was hungry enough not to care.

Chewing thoughtfully, she let her eyes run all over the cell. It was rectangular in shape and took up three quarters of the stone-lined room it was in. Three walls of the cell were of stone, and the fourth was a series of iron bars, somewhat rusted. The lock was a bolt with a padlock to which the Mac Sceacháin had a key. The light was meagre coming through the door from the outside. If the doors were shut, it would be pitch black in here; she hoped her captor meant to bring her a lamp.

The walls were a little dank and the atmosphere cool and a bit musty. She shivered, reminded that she had left her cloak in the stable. Aihan pulled one of the blankets round her shoulders and continued eating.

She considered the rusty bars her best chance of escape. Perhaps a well-placed kick would dislodge one from its moorings? She would test it later. Having made an inventory of her surroundings, she turned her thoughts to her captor.

She had watched him last night through the window of the house as he drank himself into a stupor before the fire. She was ready for him when he emerged from the house, and it was easy to creep up on him once the dogs wandered off, intent on more interesting smells in the woods.

He was big. She hadn’t quite realised how big until he rolled her under him and squashed her flat. He was a mature man, too, not a boy. Not as old as her brother, but certainly more than ten years older than herself. That would mean his reflexes were not as good as hers, which had been obvious from the ease with which she brought him down initially. His hungover condition may have contributed to that. There were muscles under his shirt, and there had been no spare flesh on him.

His sheer size was the biggest problem; she could use that against him if she could get speed and leverage. It was obvious he’d had no exposure to the kind of fighting she was trained in. She should be able to best him, provided she didn’t let him get too close. His physical strength gave him too much of an advantage in close.

His looks were foreign, strange to her eyes. Not only was he the biggest man she had ever seen, his colouring was peculiar too: flame red hair with a scratchy beard, and the strange wide-open, deep blue eyes of these foreigners. And he exuded an air of masculinity that assaulted her chi like a head-on collision. Even in his debilitated state, she’d felt it like a blow to the solar plexus when he rolled her under him and kept her pinned to the ground.

She’d felt his manhood stir, too, as she wriggled under him. That might be something she could use against him? Men were notoriously weakened by their desire for women. She ignored the little tug she felt between her legs when she recalled his weight pressing her into the ground.

Does he intend to rape me? Is that why he brought me here, as a sex slave? Aihan frowned, considering it objectively. She didn’t think so, and even if that were his intent she was confident she could fight him off. She’d leave him dead in a pool of his own blood if that were the case. She’d met her fair share of bad men, and her brother had given her good instincts where men were concerned. She sensed some darkness in him, but not of that variety.

No, whatever he wanted with her, it wasn’t that, she was fairly certain. It must be something to do with her brother. A wave of melancholy washed over her. She missed him. It had been over a month since she had woken in a cold sweat, convinced something had happened to him. In daylight she tried to talk herself out of the conviction, but it persisted. She very much feared he was dead, but she didn’t want to admit it.

If this Mac Sceacháin was responsible, she would kill him.

Having finished her meal and used the bucket, she settled down to meditate. She would follow that with her daily training routine. The cell was big enough for her to run through the movements. It would keep her calm and ensure she was ready for anything.

She was halfway through her routine in mid-roundhouse when the Mac Sceacháin appeared again, this time with a jug of water, a bowl, and a lamp, as if he had divined her needs. She smiled at this largesse and watched as he juggled opening the lock with his burdens. She considered just overpowering him and making a run for it. But if she did that now, she would never find out what had happened to her brother or what this man wanted with her. She needed some way to communicate with him, force him to tell her what she wanted to know. She had some Eng’ish, courtesy of her brother, but her pronunciation seemed to be so bad he couldn’t understand her. And his accent was so thick, she couldn’t understand him either. There was only one way she knew of to bridge the gap.

She waited until he had set down the water jug and bowl in the corner and the lamp beside it. It threw a mellow glow around it. As he was straightening, she struck, chopping and kicking, her blows raining down so fast he had no time to recover before the next one hit. Thrown off balance, he tried to ward off her blows, shouting at her. Presumably to stop, although the words were just a garbled sound to her.

She pressed the advantage, grabbing his arm and flipped him so that he landed on the mattress on his stomach. Before he could roll over, she used her sash to tie his wrists together and rolled him onto his back, straddling his chest and thus keeping his hands trapped behind his body. She applied a choke hold to his neck and leaned in.

With her face inches from his she said, “Ming Liang! Where is he?”

His expression of bewildered fury would have made her laugh if the situation weren’t so serious.

“Ming Liang!” she repeated. “Wǒ de xiōngdì. My brother!” She gestured from her heart. “Ming Liang!”

He shook his head and muttered something she couldn’t understand. She got off his chest and went to rummage in her pack, and he sat up, watching her. She came back with a tiny scroll, removing it from its bone case cylinder and carefully unrolling it she revealed the portrait of her brother painted onto the silk. Holding this up, she repeated, “Ming Liang!”

His eyes widened in comprehension, and he nodded. “Ming Liang.”

She leapt at him demanding “Where?”

He frowned, clearly still not understanding her. She slumped down, straddling his lap, then rolled up the scroll carefully, put it back in its case and slipped it into her pocket. Her throat tightened and she swallowed hard, refusing to give into despair.

She spread her hands. “Where?”

Col, leaning on his elbows, propped uncomfortably behind his back with his lap full of Chinese woman, was having trouble concentrating. She was straddling him, her silk clad trousers spread over his groin, heat seeping through the thin cloth and into his breeches, where a lot of heat of his own was being generated. He’d not been this intimate with a female since his marriage, and contrary to what he had hitherto believed, he was not, after all, dead below the waist.

Trying to ignore what was going on in his groin, he concentrated on what she was trying to say. Between her words—which he thought might be some mangled form of English, though her pronunciation was so atrocious he couldn’t follow it—the portrait, and her gestures he gathered she was looking for someone: a man, someone important to her.

A man called Ming Liang. Is he her husband? Her father? He looked older than a husband ought to, but who knew what marriage practices were common in China? It wasn’t that uncommon here for a much older man to have a young bride. The notion that she was married and looking for her husband made him feel slightly sick, particularly with the trend of his mind at present. But then if she is married, she has no business being this familiar with me. And if she isn’t married, she has no business doing so either. Is she a courtesan?

She was clearly frustrated by their inability to communicate, and he was feeling that frustration too. He wished she would get off his lap, but with his hands tied there wasn’t a lot he could do about it. He wriggled his wrists; he could probably get out of this if he tried hard enough. He wondered at his reluctance to try. There was something disturbingly seductive about this situation . . . .

The thought was so alarming, he sat up abruptly, yanking at his bonds with real force. It tightened the knot but loosened the fabric, and he worked his hands free as she sprang up, backing away from him and dropping into a semi-crouch, her hands up as if ready to launch another barrage of attacks at him.

Free of the sash round his wrists, he shook out his arms, getting the feeling back into his hands. He then held them up in a placating manner and spoke slowly and with gestures to try to communicate his meaning. “Ming Liang. I will look for him. I will ask if anyone has seen him.” He repeated this twice with gestures, and she straightened up slowly and nodded.

At least nodding seemed to be universal. A smile broke out on her face, and he had the notion the sun had come out from behind a cloud. He hadn’t initially thought her attractive, but when she smiled it transformed her face. He smiled back, and something heavy in his chest lifted.

“Xièxiè!” She said, bowing with her hands clasped before her chest. Col guessed that might be a way of thanking him?

“Col,” he said, tapping his chest.

She cocked her head to the side and repeated, “Coa?”

He shook his head and repeated, “Col,” emphasising the L.

She tried again, but it was clear she was struggling with the L. “Coau” was the best she could manage.

He pointed to her and asked, “Ye?”

“Aihan,” she said. “Ming Aihan.”

“Ming Aihan,” he repeated, puzzled that she would have the same first name as the man she was looking for. Then he remembered that Merlow had told him that the Chinese gave the family name first. Was this man her husband, or her father? Or another relative? An Uncle perhaps? “Aihan,” he said again.

She nodded and said, “Aihan,” patting her chest. Her figure was slender and her breasts were small; she was like an elegant bird. The tunic did not reveal much of her shape, which prompted him to wonder . . . He blocked the wayward thoughts. He needed to leave now, before he got any deeper into this mire of unwanted attraction.

He nodded to her and repeated his promise to look for Ming Liang with the gestures. He held a hand up and asked, “How tall?”

She frowned at him, then comprehending, she held a hand above her head indicating that Ming Liang was a head taller than her and half a head shorter than him.

He nodded and gestured that he would leave her now. “I go.”

She bowed to him, and he felt compelled to bow back.