Free The Eleventh Tiger by David A McIntee

abbot leant closer to him. His eyes didn’t glow today, but Cheng suddenly felt as if he knew what it was like to be a haunch of beef in the hands of a butcher assessing the grain before slicing the meat.
    ‘I know you, don’t I?’ the abbot asked.
    Terrified, Cheng nearly blurted out ‘yes’. He bit his tongue in time and shook his head. He thanked all the gods and ancestors he knew that he didn’t seem to be as important to the abbot as the abbot had been to him. Then he remembered that he had grown his moustache since their last meeting, and that he had no glass eye back then, just a patch over the socket.
    The abbot didn’t blink, even though he held Cheng’s gaze for a full minute. ‘Perhaps you have delivered reports to me before.’
    ‘I...I don’t think so,’ Cheng replied. Then he blurted out,
    ‘Who are you?’
     
    ‘I am your superior. You may call me Lord, or Master.’ The abbot Cheng remembered from nearly two years ago spread his hands to either side. ‘These are my generals. You will call them General, or Sir.’ He smiled, not unkindly but with steel.
    ‘Now kneel before your lord.’
     
    The abbot watched as Zhao and Gao moved off the dais to flank Lei-Fang, Jiang and Cheng. He had never seen the latter pair before, as far as he could remember, but Lei-Fang had told him who would be attending. A servant came in with an urn of tea.
    The abbot relaxed in his favourite seat. It was lacquered wood, padded with velvet. Everyone knelt until he spoke. ‘Be seated, please.’
    The visitors took plush seats of their own.
    ‘It has come to my attention that there is a certain amount of dissent among the ranks.’ The abbot smiled, and enjoyed the way the three men looked even more nervous when he did so. ‘Perhaps “confusion” would be a better word than
    “dissent”? I gather that there are some in the Black Flag who are uncertain whether merely to campaign against the Manchu, to join the Manchu and campaign against the
    gwailos, or to campaign against everyone who isn’t Black Flag.’
    ‘There are factions, my Lord, it is true,’ Jiang agreed.
    ‘Quite so,’ said the abbot. ‘The answer, of course, is simple.
    The Black Flag should campaign against whomever its sovereign lord tells it to. Loyalty and obedience are mortal enemies of confusion - and powerful, invulnerable enemies they are.’ He looked towards the tea servant and snapped his fingers. ‘Refreshments.’
    The servant bowed hurriedly and scooted forward with a trolley. Instead of cups and snacks a young buck deer, the size of a large dog, was slumped across it. In the place of its left ear, and the bone under it, there was a fist-sized hole caked with dried blood.
    The abbot watched the reactions of his audience carefully.
    Cheng was almost soiling himself with fright. That was good.
     
    Jiang looked baffled and his eyes darted around as if seeking an exit. Lei-Fang simply looked stunned.
    ‘Now,’ the abbot said, ‘what do you think of this fine suckling pig?’ Nobody dared to say anything, so he turned to the servant. ‘It is cooked thoroughly, isn’t it?’
    ‘Yes, my Lord,’ the servant said stiffly. He didn’t take his eyes off the floor of the cabin.
    ‘There, you hear? Cooked to perfection.’ The abbot slipped a knife from his belt. ‘There’s more than enough pork here for all of us.’
    ‘My Lord,’ Lei-Fang began hesitantly, ‘I see no pork. Only a deer -’
    Zhao’s fist slammed into the side of Lei-Fang’s head, once, then again and again. When Lei-Fang had been reduced to twitching insensibility the abbot held up a hand, staying Zhao’s next blow. ‘You see? Confusion. But it is easily dealt with. Zhao, it would appear that Lei-Fang’s eyes lie to him and lead him into confusion. It would also seem that his nose is useless as to smelling the aroma of cooking, and his tongue is loose enough to spread this confusion, through, I’m sure, no fault of his own. So, to protect him from any