Mayling in the Outback

Once, she had once been known as Zhu Mayling, the Princess of Guitang (歸唐公主朱媺凌), before she escaped the Provisional Forbidden City and her arranged marriage. When she found refuge in the Free City of New Moiyen (新梅縣自由市), the people called her Danni (丹妮), the red girl, and champion of the city. That was until they expelled her for not being "of the people" enough. Now, with both identities stripped from her, she was just a woman with a port-wine birthmark covering half her face and body, wearing a wide-brimmed, veiled hat riding atop her horse. Her horse had a name—Red Wind—while she no longer did and was now only referred to by others as "The Lady."

She was now two days out from New Moiyen, the tropical savannas of northern Yanzhou (炎洲) having given way to arid grasslands. She was at least another day out from where the trains were running again, on the other side of where Duan Jiangshan (段江山)'s forces had cut the line. But where would she go? Where did she belong? She didn't have an answer to those questions.

The sun beat down relentlessly on the edge of the Outback. Parched, The Lady took a sip from her drinking gourd, deciding between whether to drink as much as her body craved and hope to come across a town, or conserve and hope not to succumb to heat stroke until then. She only had two gourds for the day and would need to refill, come night, and she had to ration her spending. Every once in a while, she saw other travelers pass by. On this system of roads that her imperial father had commissioned marched a dreary parade of the broken and weary, families and individuals whose lives had been upended by the tyranny of her younger brother the Jüguang Emperor (莒光帝) and the systems that enriched the elite while depriving the common people of free expression and basic necessities.

A shady grove appeared not too far ahead on the westward road, and The Lady pulled Red Wind over into the shadows. They would rest here a bit to get out Yanzhou's brutal, beating, midday sun. She reached into her pack to pull out her bread and crackers, dried meat and dried fruit, simple foods that stored well for long journeys. She missed fresh meat, but denial was now a familiar companion. The Lady felt for the revolver at her waist and the bag of gunpowder and bullets she carried, but with the killing she had already done in the labor camp uprising, she felt squeamish about using her firelance again, even for hunting. She knew the hypocrisy of it all and flushed, ashamed of her own thoughts.

The braised ducks, swallow's nest soups, and endless parade of sumptuous dishes from the palace when she had been Mayling was from another lifetime. After the simple hardtack and thin soups of her time in the labor camp of the Grand Aqueduct and as a captive of the Bandit King, the excesses of her previous life now seemed disgusting. Now having been forced to escape from her brother and unwelcome among those she had hoped to be her new tribe, where was left for her to call home?

As she pulled out the hardtack and dried meat from her bag, she felt the blade of a dagger press against her back.

"Scream all you want, but no one will hear you," a man said. "Turn around slowly."

The Lady turned around to see a thin man, taller than she was, with a patchy mustache and beard, evidently grown not for style but because the man had not shaved in weeks, if not months. His hair was untied and grew down to his waist, and the clothing he wore was not much better than rags, his shirt and pants having been torn and patched repeatedly and now covered in dirt and sweat. He stank. He smelled as if he hadn't washed himself since he last shaved.

"What do you want?" The Lady asked, keeping the fear from her voice.

He seemed taken aback by the birthmark that covered her face and stretched down her neck, disgusted, even. "Your money. Your food. And your horse," he said.

In the blink of an eye, The Lady slipped her left arm around her attacker's right, recalling the combat skills she had learned to prepare for the prison uprising, forcing him to throw the dagger to the ground. Her feet, now long freed from their oppressive bindings and bones straightened out to their full length, were more than able to kick the blade away. With her right arm, she pulled out the revolver she had hidden at her waist and pressed it firmly against the man's breastbone. The man gasped.

"Didn't your parents ever teach you that it's wrong to attack someone and steal their belongings?" she asked, incensed.

The man started to cry and fell to his knees. "Forgive me, nüxia," he wept, addressing her as a female hero. "I promise I'm not a bad man. I'm just desperate. My father and mother died in the labor camps. My wife died in childbirth and my son is ill, and my sister has to take care of him while I try to make enough money to send home."

The Lady's expression softened. "I'm sorry that happened to you, but there must be other work for you instead of becoming a bandit."

The man laughed mirthlessly. "Finding a job is easier said than done. I don't have the education to be an engineer or a doctor. I tried getting a job as a store clerk but no one was hiring. I applied to so many places. I couldn't even find a job as a night soil man."

It was true that now cities were having plumbing networks installed, night soil men were being laid off. Such was the price of her imperial father's push for modernization. With industrialization, commoners all across Yanzhou were losing their jobs and struggling to adapt to the new world that her father had ushered in. The Lady sympathized and gestured to the large, thick-trunked boab tree that towered over the rest of the grove.

"Why don't you have lunch with me? I'm sure there's a town not far away where I can restock."

The man wiped away his tears and sat down gratefully at the base of the boab tree as The Lady tied Red Wind's reins to a nearby acacia tree and brought out bread, hardtack, dried fruit, and dried meat out of her bag to share.

***

"You really think I could be a good cook?" asked the man who revealed his name to be Helian Digu (赫連第谷). He and The Lady had finished eating and were still sitting in the shade of the boab, now sharing a gourd of water.

"After what you were able to do with food that simple? Undoubtedly," she said with a smile. "Cook for some restaurant owners and let them taste what you can make. If you save enough, you might even be able to start your own restaurant in a few years."

"Thank you for believing in me," Digu said, rising, "but I'm afraid I still need your horse and your money."

Digu pulled out another blade from behind his back and charged straight at her. The Lady, still seated, pushed his arm to the side and swept his legs out from under him, causing him to land face forward and splayed on the ground. She rose quickly and pinned Digu's hands behind his back. She rifled through his pockets and belt for more hidden blades. She found three more and confiscated them, adding all of them to her collection. Digu squirmed in pain with tears of shame running down his cheeks. She started to weep, too.

"I gave you another chance," she said through her tears, "I wanted to believe that there was good in you, and still you betrayed me."

Carefully, she rose, pointing her revolver at him as she backed away to Red Wind, who was whinnying in the shade, and untied his reins.

"I'm sorry. I'm just trying to survive," Digu begged.

"So are a lot of good people," The Lady said, her pocket firelance still pointing at Digu as she swung herself atop Red Wind, "and still they don't resort to thievery and murder."

"Please, I was wrong," Digu pleaded again, "Think about my family! My son! Please give me another chance."

He crawled toward her on his hands and knees but The Lady cocked her revolver, and Digu stopped in his tracks and cowered.

"No," she said, firm. "I already gave you a second chance. I've been fooled too many times, taken advantage of too many times. No more."

"Then please, leave me one of my blades to protect myself."

The Lady snorted with contempt. "And leave you to terrorize other unwary travelers? You must think I'm stupid."

"There could be other bandits on the road!"

"Then that's a problem you'll just have to deal with. We'll see how tough you are when you don't have steel to hide behind."

Now safely mounted, she tossed Digu a full gourd of water and a pouch of her dried fruit.

"That will last you for a while," she said, still pointing her firelance at him, "while you think about your life and your choices. That's more than you deserve."

The Lady pulled on the reins, dug her heels into Red Wind's side, and galloped away from the grove. Her destination still uncertain, she left Digu weeping and gnashing his teeth under the boab tree.

THE END