Silk and Song

by Dana Stabenow

Johanna found herself on her feet, Jaufre at her side. A distant part of her mind noticed that they had all three assumed the same stance, shoulders braced, body weight over spread feet, knees slightly bent. Jaufre’s hand settled on the hilt of the dagger at his waist. Her own hands hung loosely at her sides, ready for the knives strapped to her forearms to drop into her hands.

  Tension sang in the air, until a horse whinnied loudly and thumped his stall.

  Gokudo laughed suddenly, a deep, rolling belly laugh that filled the room. “Ha, my young friends,” he said in his heavily accented Mandarin. “You are alert. That speaks well for the security of the honorable House of Wu.”

  Jaufre gave a curt nod. “Did you wish for a horse, Gokudo?”

  “I did not, young Jaufre, not at present.” The guard gave an airy wave. “Just out for a stroll about the premises.” He smiled. He had very white, very even teeth. “All must be in order for the festivities.”

  Jaufre felt Johanna tense next to him and said smoothly, “Surely you meant the ceremonies, Gokudo.”

  Gokudo’s smile faded. “Surely, I did,” he said gently. “Anything else would have been an insult to the memory of the Honorable Wu Li, and an affront to his descendants.”

  His gaze lingered on Johanna’s artificially still face, before it slid slowly and deliberately down the length of her body. He held his gaze for just long enough to offend but not quite long enough to incite, before stepping past them to enter Jaufre’s room without invitation. It was small and spare, a cot, a table, an oil lamp, a small chest for clothes. The only decoration was a large sword hanging from the wall, its encrusted hilt older than the leather scabbard it was encased in.

  Again without invitation, Gokudo took down the sword and pulled it free. “Eh, Damascus steel.” He looked down the blade, first one side and then the other. He pulled back a sleeve, licked his arm and ran the edge of the sword down his skin. “A fine edge, too,” he said, inspecting the fine black hairs on the blade and the smooth, unblemished patch of skin it had left behind. “However did you come by such a thing, young Jaufre?”

  Ignoring the implied insult, Jaufre said evenly, “It was my father’s.”

  “Ah.” Gokudo contemplated the blade, and its scabbard. “You don’t use it.”

  “No.”

  “A pity.” He walked past them into the yard, there to toss the sword into the air and catch it by the hilt as it fell again. “What balance,” he said, admiring. “Obviously created by the hand of a master smith.” He tossed it into the air again.

  Jaufre stepped in front of it to catch it this time. The smack of hilt into hand shouted “Mine!” to anyone within earshot.

  When he turned Gokudo was watching him with an assessing eye. “I, too, own a sword, young Jaufre. Perhaps they should meet.” He smiled again. He smiled a lot. “In practice, of course.”

  “Of course,” Jaufre said.

  Gokudo saluted him, tucked his hands back into his sash, and walked to the house with his usual jaunty step.

  Jaufre watched him go, his eyes narrowed. “I wonder how much he heard.”

  “Nothing,” Johanna said. “We were almost whispering.”

  He looked at her. “He was marking territory, Johanna.”

  “I noticed,” Johanna said with mild sarcasm. “You can’t fight him, Jaufre.”

  He doesn’t want to fight me, Jaufre thought. He wants to kill me. “I know,” he said. And he thought he knew why.

  “Buy time,” she said. “It’s only three days.”

  “How?”

  “Ask him for lessons with the sword,” she said.

  “Not from him,” Jaufre said. “Never from him. He wears the black armor.”

  She shrugged. “All Cipangu mercenaries wear black armor.”

  He looked down at her, a faint smile lightening his expression. “And all Cipangu mercenaries are samurai. Which means they are very, very good at their craft.”

  “You’re afraid of him,” she said, not quite a question.

  He gave her an incredulous look. “You aren’t?” She raised an eyebrow. “Johanna, they say he can take two heads at once with that spear of his.”

  “They don’t say it, he does,” she said. “A tale told to frighten children.”

  “And I’m one of the children?”

  She almost apologized before she saw the raised eyebrow, and laughed. “Stop trying to pick a fight.”

  His own smile faded. “Don’t ever turn your back on Gokudo. He could kill us both without a thought and go in to enjoy his breakfast afterward. And he is the widow’s creature, through and through.”

  “Her lover, too,” she said, her voice flat.

  He turned, surprised. “I didn’t know you knew.”

  “The only person in this house who didn’t know was my father,” she said.

  “If you kill her, we won’t live to leave Everything Under the Heavens.”

  “It is the only reason she is still living,” Johanna said, her expression bleak.

  He was relieved to hear it, but there was no harm in driving the lesson home. “Well, that, and the fact that her personal guard is an ex-samurai.”

  She shrugged. “A thug, merely.”

  “For someone who has spent so much time in Cipangu, you are remarkably ignorant of its culture,” Jaufre said with a deadly calm that finally pierced her insouciance. “Samurai are highly trained warriors, educated not just in personal arms but in strategy and tactics as well. This is a man who could not only take off our heads with one swipe of that pig-sticker of his, he could also organize the invasion of Kinsai.”

  “If he’s so great, what is he doing a thousand leagues from home?”

  “I don’t know,” Jaufre said. “He could have offended one of the shogun. He could have been on the losing side of a war.” He shrugged. “He could be a spy, sent to Cambaluc to send home information on the stability of the Khan’s court. Although I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  “Spies, good spies, fade into the background. Gokudo? Likes to put on a show.”

  She watched Gokudo as he moved across the courtyard. Gokudo, who strutted rather than walked everywhere he went. He held his naginata, sharp, polished, as a badge of office. As a deadly threat.

  She looked at the sword Jaufre held. “Maybe you should get in a few lessons with that thing. We should be ready to fight.”

  “Only if we can’t run,” he said. “And you know I prefer the bow.”

  Gokudo reached the front door of the house and went inside, the shadowed interior seeming to swallow his black figure whole.

  “Jaufre?”

  “What?” he said, going back inside to resheathe and rehang his father’s sword on the wall of his room.

  “Edyk has offered for me, something my father’s widow undoubtedly refers to as a miracle sent from the Son of Heaven himself, as she is now busily planning my marriage.”

  His hands stilled on the sword but he didn’t look around. “He loves you.”

  “He thinks he does.”

  “He loves you,” Jaufre repeated.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “It wouldn’t work. He wouldn’t be happy.” She paused. “I wouldn’t be happy, to stay here in Cambaluc.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure,” she said firmly, and the hard, painful knot in his gut that had been twisting steadily tighter relaxed a little, not much, but enough to let him turn and face her, mask in place. “Besides,” she added, with her sudden smile, “we have places to go, you and I and Shasha.”

  “Money?”

  “We have enough. More than enough. Father made sure of that. Shasha will show you. And we can always earn our way. You’re a soldier and a caravan master. Shasha’s a cook and a healer. And you said yourself I’m as good a horseman and falconer as any you’ve ever seen, and if worst comes to worst, we can always sing for our suppers.” She grinned. “And I know I’m a better diver, even if you won’t admit it.”

 
“Cipangu again,” he said, a reminiscent smile pulling up one corner of his mouth.

  “I brought back more of the rose pearls than you did,” she said, with an impish, sidelong glance.

  “Only because the fish charmer failed to keep a shark from the diving ground and the rest of us had brains enough to get out of the water,” he replied promptly.

  “Until you dived in to pull me out. I think you were more afraid of my bringing back more pearls than you had, than you were afraid that I might be eaten by the shark.”

  He remembered that Gokudo was from Cipangu, and good memories were swamped by a return flood of recent events. He stooped to pick up the bridle he had been working on before Gokudo had come in on them. “And Edyk?”

  Her smile vanished as quickly as it had come. “I’m going to see him now. To say goodbye.”

  He heard the thud of his blood in his ears. The knot in his gut was back, tied more tightly than it had ever been before. His eyes cleared and he saw that the bridle had snapped in two in his hands.

  “Jaufre?” she said. “Is something wrong?”

  He stood up abruptly and tossed the pieces of bridle into the scrap barrel. When he turned to where she could see his face again it had resumed its usual genial mask. “I’ll saddle the Shrimp.”

  And he did, and he tossed her into the saddle, and he waved her off with a smile, although it was more of a rictus. Shu Shao came out to stand beside him as Johanna kicked the sedate Shrimp into a jolting trot and passed through the wooden gates. “She’s off to see Edyk, then?”

  He nodded, not trusting his voice to speech.

  She nodded. “I’m to show you something.”

  He followed her into the house, where she produced the rubies of Mien from her sewing basket. “We are to sew these into the hems of our clothes.”

  “As Shu Ming said her father did,” he said.

  She nodded. They were both speaking in whispers, and Shasha had left the door wide open so that they might hear if anyone approached. He leaned in and said, “Shasha, do you know?”

  She looked wary. “Know what?”

  He took a deep breath. “How Wu Li truly died?”

  She cast a quick glance through the door. “Which time?” she said.

  He was startled into normal speech, quickly shushed by a gesture. “He didn’t fall from his horse, Shasha,” he said, his voice low again. “His cinch was cut nearly through.”

  She was silent for a long moment. “A pity the fall didn’t kill him,” she said at last.

  “Shasha!”

  She looked at him, her expression heavy with the burden of knowledge. “A pity the fall didn’t kill him,” she repeated.

  “Why?” But he was afraid he already knew.

  “Because,” she said, “then the widow would not have dispatched Gokudo to finish the job with Wu Li’s own pillow.”

  He went white. “Shasha. Are you sure?”

  “He fought,” she said distantly. “I saw blood beneath his fingernails. Before she had me removed from his room, of course.”

  Following his accident Wu Li had been left without the use of his legs, and there were other, internal injuries at which the learned doctors summoned from the city could only speculate. Now he wondered just how learned those doctors were, and how much the widow Wu had paid them to say what she wanted Wu’s household to hear. “Is there no one we can tell? No one to whom we can appeal for justice?”

  “Who?” Shasha said simply.

  Jaufre cast around for a name. “Ogodei?” he said. “He’s a baron of a hundred thousand now. He was a friend to Wu Li.”

  “And with his promotion he was posted to the west,” she said. “He was the first person I thought of. No, Jaufre. There is no one else that I can think of. Wu Li spent just enough time and money at court to keep his business free of their interference. He did not cultivate the kind of friendships we would need to make an accusation against the widow.”

  They stood in miserable silence before sounds came from the kitchen of the beginnings of dinner.

  Shasha gave him a little push toward the door.

  “Johanna can’t know, Shasha,” he heard himself say.

  “No,” Shasha said grimly. “She most certainly can’t.”

  8

  JOHANNA SLID DOWN FROM the Shrimp’s back, patting her heaving sides. Patiently she lifted the mare’s right front hoof and dug out an offending piece of rock that had become wedged in her hoof. The Shrimp rewarded her efforts by leaning her entire weight on her back.

  “You,” Johanna said, “are an ungrateful wretch and you should have been turned into fertilizer years ago.” She jabbed the horse’s belly with an elbow and the Shrimp huffed out an indignant breath and shifted her weight enough for Johanna to finish the task.

  Johanna let the Shrimp’s hoof fall, and straightened, stretching.

  Beneath her Cambaluc stretched on forever, its many rooftops glittering in the afternoon sun, the palace of the Great Khan bulking large to overshadow its neighbors. Johanna stood still, looking her fill. In her expression was appreciation for the beauty of the great city, and respect for the industry and achievement of its citizens, but there was no affection, no pride of place, and none of the sorrow one might expect from one anticipating a permanent exile.

  Chiang, Edyk’s manservant, answered her knock and bowed her into the house at once. Hearing her voice Edyk jumped up with a glad smile and held out both hands. “Johanna!”

  Johanna waited for Chiang, loitering next to the door with a carefully disinterested look on his face, to leave the room. When at last he did, with a reluctant, backwards glance, she said without preamble, “My father’s widow tells me you have offered to marry me.”

  Edyk’s welcoming smile changed to a frown and his hands dropped. He looked at her searchingly. “The offer was made to your father last year. He told me it was for you to decide, but that in any case I must wait until you were older. He didn’t tell you?”

  The breath went out of her on a long sigh and she shook her head. “No. No, he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t want to pressure me, and he knew his second wife and I were not…close.”

  He touched her shoulder, a gentle, comforting touch. “I know.”

  She reached up to caress his hand lightly. His arms went out but before he could embrace her she stepped away. “I have come here to explain why I must refuse, Edyk.”

  He stood very still, his breath caught in his throat, even his heart seemed to cease beating. Jaufre could have told him that Johanna always had that effect on the men in her life, but it had been a long time since Edyk had been willing to listen to anything Jaufre might have to say about Johanna. “What?” someone said, and Edyk realized the stranger’s voice was his own. “Johanna, what did you say?” He started forward.

  She held up one hand, palm towards him. “Don’t! Don’t touch me, not yet. Listen. Listen to me, please, Edyk.” She stretched out a hand to slide a rice paper door to one side. The plum trees in the garden beyond were flowering and the aroma of their blossoms slipped into the room, curling into every corner, pervasive and bittersweet. Edyk would never be able to smell a plum blossom again without remembering this moment.

  Her back to him, Johanna said in a steady voice, “I can’t marry you, Edyk. It would be impossible. For both of us.”

  Now his voice was hard and angry, with an undercurrent of fear. “That’s nonsense and you know it. We’ve grown up side by side, we were friends before we ever, well, you know. Before.”

  She almost smiled at his stutter over how their relationship had changed. “I know.”

  “And,” he added, “we’re both foreigners, in a land that is determined to keep us that way.”

  “My father was as Chinese as the Son of Heaven himself,” she said, an edge to her voice.

  “But your mother was half Chinese and half Venetian,” he said flatly, “the same as mine is Chinese and Portuguese. Look in your mirror. The Venetian won out. It doesn’t matter that we were b
orn here. We are strangers in a strange land, as Bishop John taught us from the book of the Christian god. And we always will be.”

  “No,” she said carefully, back in control. “I won’t be. At least I won’t be a stranger in this land.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that I’m leaving, Edyk.”

  “What?”

  She closed her eyes and inhaled the scent of the blossoms. “I’m leaving Cambaluc, Edyk, and Everything Under the Heavens.”

  “What!” He was really frightened now. He jerked her around to face him. “You’re leaving? You’re leaving me?”

  “Yes.”

  “To go where? And why?”

  “Perhaps,” she said, considering, “perhaps I will look for my grandfather.”

  He snorted. “He’s been gone, how long now, thirty years? You never met him, you don’t know him. He may be dead, he most likely is, and then where will you be? And even if he is alive, what makes you think he’d want anything to do with you, when he never bothered to stay in contact with his own daughter, your mother?”

  “Edyk,” she said, her expression relaxing a little. “Have you never wanted to get up of a morning and start walking west?”

  He looked at her, a veteran of trading trips north, south, east and, yes, west, and raised an eyebrow.

  “All right,” she said. “But have you never wished to keep going, to follow the sun to where it sets? To see the fountains of fire in Georgiana? To visit the enchanters of Tebet? To fight the dragons at the edge of the ocean?” The sadness in her eyes faded, to be replaced by excitement and anticipation. It was a look Edyk had seen before, and did not rejoice in now.

  She waited, part of her hoping he would agree with her, part of her hoping he would offer to dower his wives and children, sell his business and come with them on the road. When he didn’t, she sighed, although it didn’t hurt as much as she had imagined it would. “It doesn’t matter if my grandfather is alive or dead, Edyk. He is merely an excuse to start me on my way. You know me.” She smiled. “You know me better than almost anyone else. Would you expect anything less?”

  He took a hasty step away from her, and then back. “And who will take care of you?”