Mid-17th century, the Qing dynasty crowns from the Ming dynasty's wounds.
Entering during the golden age of piracy where pirate fleets grew increasingly large, royalty, merchants, nobles and seafarers quickly learn to keep an eye open on the turbulent waters.
Though that still won't stop their ruthlessness. Won't stop guns from blazing and ships from going fucking down.
"The effects that large-scale piracy had on the Chinese economy were immense. They preyed voraciously on China's junk trade, which flourished in Fujian and Guangdong and was a vital artery of Chinese commerce. Pirate fleets exercised hegemony over villages on the coast, collecting revenue by exacting tribute and running extortion rackets."
– Piracy, East Asia. Wikipedia
Sharp-tongued, young captain Zhang Fenglin's measly crew had been anxious to grow in quantity.
Combating a combination of famine, Qing naval opposition and other pirates, they have to step up their game or let marine Darwinism on the South China Sea takes its toll.
When he brings back a girl from a slave market, the (entirely male) pirate crew is confused; properly baffled, as if they've come across a three-syllable word.
To them, Fenglin's move appears completely unstrategic; it was unimaginable for the usually clever man to spending six-months worth of money on a portable prostitute.
"The fuck are we going to do with a whore onboard?"
"No, no, hear me out," Zhang reasons, his voice going more smooth, as it did every time he reasoned. "She's exceptionally tall. Look, she's a thumb shorter than me, and I'm basically a palm tree. And she's got impressive flexibility. In a while, she'd be a great fighter. The most important reason, among her many other uses, of course."
"She could be a game-changer. Fuck up a few more ships, then my name could mean something in this sea that's thick with thieves. That's really all I want in this life."
"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all." - Oscar Wilde
“Remember to be on your best behaviour tonight, Ladies.” Saburo barked, his fingers curling through brunette hair belonging to the woman who sat on her knees beside him. Almost as if she were a pet.
A chorus of mundane yes sir’s rang out throughout the spacious dining area, none of which belonged to Akemi Cruz. She didn’t belong here. She wasn’t as lifeless as the other women. She still had that spark. Something she was easily able to burn out long enough to display a fake facade.
One year.
It had been one year since her parents were killed on their way home. It had been one year since she was picked up off of the streets and thrown into the world of slaves and mistreatment. She kept a piece of chalk hidden under her pillow so she was able to mark off the days on the wall next to her bed. It was an act of self-harm if anything. A constant torturous reminder of the life she once lived.
She was by no means a high ranker before - hell her family were pretty much at the bottom of the food chain. But it was familiar. It was normal. Nothing was normal now. Nobody faced execution for killing her parents - nobody cared. That was the harsh reality, a reality she had always cowered away from. Her father was an honourable man, he did all that he could for both herself and her mother.
He didn’t deserve to have his blood spilt onto the cold cemented floor, he didn’t deserve to be walked all over by those deeming themselves better than him. Just like her mother didn’t deserve to watch the love of her life wither away, and then have the same cruel fate latch itself onto her.
It had only taken a few days of living on the streets for her to be picked up. Despite the promise of a better future, she put up a fight. She didn’t want a better future, she wanted the future she had come to terms with. A future with her parents. To be honest, she wasn’t too sure why the man had been so keen on forcing her to go back with him - why he had spent so much of his time training her. Or why he had wasted so much time. She wasn’t like the other girls. They all had the same personality types. Whereas, she was stubborn. She was a bitch when she wanted to be, and goddamn did she have a smart mouth.
Akemi was smart though. She knew when to play dead. Fast-forward a year, and she was as timid as a mouse. At least, that’s what Saburo was led to believe. As far as he knew, the countless beatings had been all it took for her mind to snap, for her brain to catch up with her body and finally give in.
It wasn’t until they were banished to their shared room that Kalini spoke, her fingers delicately laced together. “Who do you think he’ll end up choosing?” Her voice was a soft murmur, a sound so quiet you could’ve easily mistaken it for nothing but a whistle swept away with the wind.
Jiao lifted a single shoulder, casting a glance towards the blonde with a wry smile. “You’ll get your turn, Kal.” She offered the young woman a sympathetic look, before her gaze flickered back up at the ceiling. Kalini had been there longer than anybody, and if they didn’t know better, they would’ve thought she was his favourite.
Akemi ignored the two’s banter, her gaze solely focused on the door, anticipating the arrival of the man who sought out one of them. She wasn’t excited to be bought, no, she couldn’t be bought. She was merely excited to have the opportunity of getting away. Getting away from the man who participated in ruining her life.
More or less, at least.
She could’ve started fresh, she could’ve made herself out to be somebody. She could’ve tracked her parents killer down, even if she were weak. She was a bird - who finally stumbled upon the time to spread her wings and fly. Until her wings were clipped, and she was thrown into a cage. She loved the girls she had come to know as her second family - albeit a little fucked up - but they were mindless. They were so broken beyond repair. Nothing excited them anymore, all they desired was a man to please. She didn’t want that.
In an oral adage that has not been written down, old mothers would tell misbehaving children to "live in the sea if you don't want to follow rules. Even the jungle has people in it." That was, in reality, what most misbehaving children actually end up doing. Even as Fenglin stepped onto land, dressed with decency and having taken one of his biannual showers, he was walking into a market for flesh trade, the practice not illegal, but the peddlers very much so. This particular one was thinly disguised as a yūjo performance in an opera house even though it geographically did not make sense at all. Slave ships on the southern Chinese coast came from southeast Asia and not sardine-looking Japan in the north. On top of that, the performances were terrible and anyone with a functional nose would be able to hear that these girls weren't musicians at all.
"You sure they're not just selling sows?"
Fenglin asked, his high eyebrows crooking upwards; doubting the haggard, scruffed broker who had tipped him off on the arrival of these particular slavers. He had been dressed in his one set of clean robes, dark and heavy, could've cost something (that was if he had actually acquired it through buying. Naturally he didn't). It straddled a fine line between plain and fancy; dress too well and they drive up prices for you, dress like what you are, sea-scum, and they won't take you seriously.
"No. There will be men for sale. Reduced prices." the broker said gruffly.
The broker assured that the foreign crew would be desperate to be rid of their stock, as they were about to sail through Navy guarded territory, and didn't want to be found ferrying slaves. Fenglin knew that they would be fined, then drowned, because drowning pirates was the most ironic thing ever and even the law-abiding killers had a sense of humour sometimes.
"Slavers aren't one to cut prices. I think they just like to cut skin."
"They'd be fined horribly with flesh in possession. I don't get money out of lying to you, Zhang."
He did, though. And what other reason would he have to lie, other than because he was a port broker and basically a parasite leeching off actual businesses? Not many reasons to be a complete flake at all. But if they had rules here Fenglin would be in a uniform instead of stolen cloth that smelled married to sea salt. He taps the copper knocker on the heavy red door. He'd just watch out for himself.
A woman opened it, thin music curling out from the dimly lit, red and gaudy, faux gold ornamented inside.
"Saburo, this is Zhang Fenglin, captain of The Bat," the broker introduced them. Zhang nodded, a half-bow, and the woman bowed fully back. Some more conversation was exchanged before Fenglin was brought into the dining area, the shitty musician playing from a cramped platform.
"I'm looking for white feather," Fenglin was asking to buy men.
"We peddle red fans," Saburo says, blinking her heavily made-up black eyes and tilting her head in a polite bit of confusion. Fenglin shot the broker a glare but the man was gone and he only stared into the quivering flame in a lantern.
"I believe my broker had been mistaken about the contents
Saburo narrowed her eyes, and her eyes flitted sideways to a few burly men sitting around the tables. Fenglin saw one of them drop his hand to the hilt of his sword.
"You made a reservation, and we saved up a small selection for you. It would cost half a kilo of gold to cancel."
"Giving you half a kilogram for nothing? That's fucking bullshit, woman."
"May I interest you in looking at what we have?"
However she said it, she meant the same thing. He wouldn't be allowed to walk out of here without buying one of their whores. Everyone here and their lies, all this fucking shadow business made him want to either jump off a bridge or report himself to the empire. Hello fair prosecutor, I'm Zhang Fenglin, I've stolen from merchants and I've stolen from thieves on the sea and the only reason why I've never killed someone was because I prefer mutilating them instead. No, you don't get it. I didn't murder officer Yang. I put a nail in his eye and he was alive when I left. I didn't kill him, the wound did.
"Of course," the young captain's tone was icy. She bowed in what ha to be the most aggressive bow in history, before leading him to a more closed-off section of the opera house, another dining area but a more private one. Saburo sure as hell was going to make sure the flaky little shit bought something from here. The rent for an extravagant place (compared to selling slaves right off the docks, of course) was staggeringly high. Something that they had to throw in in order to stay under the nose of the police.
There were as many as three scrawny girls inside the dining room. Truly a selection. Fenglin flashed Saburo a charmingly irritated look, which Saburo smiles softly to completely devoid of emotion.
"Both from Nippon. No musical training (I can tell, Fenglin thought) but they learn fast if you choose to. Great resale value then."
He looked at them, deciding to just go with the physically largest one. Get the most out of the least money. Shouldn't be too bad then, he'd just ask Lin to teach her the guitar then sell her to the next brothel to get his money back.
"Akemi Cruz."
It was impressive how little the woman knew about what she was doing. She was smart enough to give the girl something Japanese sounding but couldn't be bothered with the last name; maybe because that would involve more paperwork and she wanted to cut on her accounting fees. Whatever the reason, it just showed that the dumb fuck was trying to lie to him for the 57th time that night. That last name, Cruz, meant she was from the Philippines; which would cut resale value drastically. Fenglin knew the name because had a Filipino friend with the same name working on a Bornean crew. They met in quite unconventionally, Cruz just bursting out laughing when Fenglin had his curved blade pressed on his neck that one time fighting. Cruz, trying to draw his own parang, drove the hilt into Fenglin's crotch by accident.
Fenglin looked her over. She wore quiet anger in an attractive manner, and for a while, he was nearly convinced that he was buying another mercenary for his crew after all. Nearly. She'd be completely untrained. He knew it wouldn't be possible. Saburo was making him angry, not mad, so he kept his head screwed on.
"I'll take her."
He pulled out a large string of coins from his sleeve, the amount the broker said was enough and paid; managing to haggle with Saburo to lower the price with a bitter but swift argument bringing up his point on her actual resale value. They settle unhappily in the middle, the point famously known across history as the point that made two people unhappy instead of one.
"Would you like her restrained? She's particularly... rebellious. Might run away, just to warn you."
"I don't need it. If you're going to tell me she can also run faster than a bullet I'd really have to call you out on your first lie tonight."
Saburo looked about done with the man. Fenglin felt the same. He bent his fingers at her to get up, pulling his gun into his other hand with a click, then leaving the building without a word to anyone else.
On the way back to the ship, crossing dark stone roads, Fenglin asked her if she spoke Mandarin. He tried to prepare himself for a no and convince himself not to bring his crew to the building and rough them up for ripping him off. Even if she was, at least, incredibly little and pretty.
The night made the sail on the Bat, Fenglin's small, nimble ship, look indigo instead of red.
"What the-- the fuck are we going to do with a whore onboard?" Lin was loudly playing on his guitar before he loudly asks, while he flings a plank onto the port to let the captain board with the girl.
"No, no, hear me out," Zhang reasons, his voice going more smooth, as it did every time he reasoned. "I'd been quite heavily ripped off, and my physical safety was threatened at a point, a black market staple, really, but because I'm incredibly clever I was able to manage."
There was a rising murmur of mixed feelings among the six men on board. Here, the pirate ship stank; it was a rotten crew of assholes though, to be fair, some of the older ones might actually have anuses rotting with dysentery. The quickest way Fenglin would describe it would be familiar. The name of the ship, Bat, was said the same was as 'prosperity'. Damn right they were prospering right now.
"She's exceptionally tall. Look, she's a thumb shorter than me, and I'm basically a palm tree. And she's from the way she walks I can tell she could have impressive flexibility." Qilin muses from above, a good head taller than most of the men, and almost half a head taller than Fenglin.
"Yes," Fenglin chipped in. Settle the crew first. "In a while, she'd be a great fighter. The most important reason, among her many other uses, of course."
:We can definitely just stick her in a brothel to get our money back if she's useless," he finishes. They snicker at that comment, leering at Akemi.
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