Silk and Song

by Dana Stabenow

“But Gokudo would,” Jaufre said.

  A thoughtful silence fell.

  “If she ordered him to, Johanna,” Jaufre said, “he would carve all three of us into bite-size pieces with that pig-sticker of his.” And he would enjoy it, he thought. He raised his hand to the wound on his cheek. Gokudo had displayed the sharpness of the blade on his naginata many times. If indeed one of last night’s visitors was Gokudo, then they were all very lucky that the samurai had not chosen to attack them in the open.

  All three of them looked at the Robe of a Thousand Larks, mutilated with a single, sharp slash, and all of three imagined what would have happened if Johanna had been wearing it when the blade struck.

  Johanna was the first to recover. “Nonsense,” she said robustly, as if volume and confidence alone could rout what were now, surely, only the ghosts of their past. “If the Dishonorable Dai Fang sent Gokudo after us, she would have sent him at once, the instant she noticed what was missing.”

  “So?”

  “So why did he wait until Kuche to try to get them back?” Johanna said.

  “Kuche is the first place we have spent outside caravansary walls,” Shasha said.

  “Nonsense,” Johanna said again, albeit with less certainty. “We made camp in the desert dozens of times.”

  “Johanna,” Jaufre said, with awful patience, “it would be much easier and much safer for Gokudo to hide his presence among the many strangers housed each night in a city, especially a city along the Silk Road. It would be much more difficult to approach an armed, isolated camp the size of ours.”

  “He’s been following us,” Shasha said.

  “Since Cambaluc,” Jaufre said, “waiting his chance.”

  “And,” Johanna said slowly, “Uncle Cheng travels only as far as Kashgar on this trip.” She looked at Jaufre, and at Shasha. “After that, we’re on our own.”

  There followed an awkward silence. “I’m not sorry I did it,” Johanna said at last. “They were Father’s. By right they are now mine.” She tucked the bao and book back into her purse and tied it shut. She looked defiant, and righteous, and unrepentant, and a hundred other things that would get them all killed well before Kashgar. “Besides,” she said, “we won. They didn’t get what they came for, and we ran them off.”

  Jaufre exchanged a long, expressionless look with Shasha. “As you say,” he said at last, echoing the havildar. It was a useful phrase.

  “Let’s get this mess cleaned up,” Shasha said.

  Firas, listening on the other side of the canvas wall of the yurt, now slipped silently away.

  Later, with Johanna safely out of earshot, Shasha said, “The bao. And the book.”

  “One or the other I might be able to defend,” Jaufre said, trying to work back up to the righteous wrath he had experienced that morning and not quite managing it. “The book, certainly. But both?”

  “Not to mention the horse,” Shasha said.

  He stopped and looked at her. “I completely forgot about the horse.” His voice shook. “Do you think Edyk went to the house looking for North Wind?”

  Shasha’s lips trembled. “Can you imagine what the widow’s reaction would have been when she found the bao and the book missing? And then Edyk arriving, demanding the return of North Wind?”

  Jaufre started to grin. “I wonder if the Honorable Wu Li’s house is still standing.”

  “Perhaps,” she said unsteadily. “Pieces of it.” She strove for control. “Still, this is serious, Jaufre.”

  “Of course you’re right,” he said. “At the very least we should begin standing watches.”

  They looked at each other and broke down completely, laughing so immoderately that they had to cling to each other for support. Outside, passersby wondered what was going on in the big yurt that was so funny.

  Uncle Cheng delayed their departure for another day while Firas investigated. Meantime, Shasha was summoned to the caravan master’s presence and requested to provide something to ease his wine-induced aches and pains. She snorted and brewed him a strong dish of steeped betony, which he gagged over but didn’t dare dump out, not under that stern eye. And it did help, he had to admit, later and most reluctantly. At least he stopped feeling as if he were bleeding from his ears.

  There were almost two thousand people in their caravan, over five thousand in Kuche and hundreds more in caravans large and small in constant arrival and departure. Everyone within and without the city walls was intent upon the engrossing subjects of their own commerce and trade and profit. There was little interest to be spared for suspicious strangers bent on burglary and mayhem, unless it was burglary and mayhem directed at themselves. Firas’ inquiries thus bore little fruit, as he duly reported to Uncle Cheng, to which meeting Uncle Cheng had summoned Jaufre.

  “As was to be expected, Uncle Cheng,” Jaufre said. “We will keep a stricter guard in future.”

  He and Firas left together, and Jaufre was about to go his own way when Firas said, “A moment of your time, young sir.”

  “Havildar?”

  “I wonder if I might see your weapon?”

  Jaufre hesitated, and then with some reluctance drew his father’s sword from its sheath.

  Firas examined it with the eye of an expert, holding it up to judge the straightness of the blade, testing the edge, flipping it into the air and catching it again to assess its balance. All of the things, in fact, that Gokudo had done, although Gokudo had done it without permission. The havildar was a weapons master determining the effectiveness of a tool, expert, impartial, interested in an academic way but with no acquisitiveness. Jaufre, watching him, felt himself relax.

  “A noble blade, young sir,” Firas said, returning it hilt first. “I would see it in practice.”

  Jaufre felt the blood run up into his face. “It was my father’s sword, havildar. He died before he could instruct me.”

  “Ah.” Firas nodded, his eyes resting on something over Jaufre’s shoulder. “I myself practice with such of my men who are so inclined at dawn each day before we march. Your blade and ours are of different models, but I would guess that much of the basic moves would be the same.”

  Jaufre weighed his father’s sword. It had always felt somehow right and proper in his hand, a deadly extension of his own muscle and bone. At any time these past five years Jaufre could have asked one of the imperial guards for instruction. He wasn’t sure why he had not.

  Today, he thought of the items in Johanna’s purse, of the fight in the yurt, of Shasha’s black eyes and the cut on his cheek. He was good with knife and bow and almost as good as Johanna with the staff. Sword skill he had none. He thought again of the long slash up the back of Shu Ming’s Robe of a Thousand Larks, and thought of how Johanna’s face looked lit from within whenever she donned it to sing around an evening campfire.

  “I am grateful for the invitation, havildar,” Jaufre said, sliding sword back into its sheath. “And pleased to accept.”

  Firas noted how easily the movement was completed. Jaufre’s sword was not light in weight. There might be more to this slim young man than met the eye. “Just before dawn then, young sir, beyond the cook tents.”

  Jaufre was there well before dawn, Johanna at his side, as they worked through the thirty-two movements of soft boxing. They went through them three times, seamless, synchronized, one movement flowing naturally into the next. As the horizon brightened they sank down into horse stance, palms loosely cupped and parallel in front of them, held position for a slow count of ten, and rose smoothly again to a standing position.

  “I see, young sir,” said a voice behind them, “that while you may not have had lessons in the wielding of your father’s sword, you are not entirely deficient in lessons of self defense.”

  “We were taught the art from a very young age,” Johanna said, “by my father’s man, Deshi the Scout.”

  He bowed slightly. “Honor is due such a fine teacher. Is it that I am to instruct the young lady in swordsmanship as well?”

&
nbsp; Johanna inclined her head, matching dignity with dignity. “No, havildar, I have no such weapon. Though I would like to observe, if you please.” Her voice was mild. Her eyes were not.

  Almost, Firas smiled, or so it seemed to Jaufre.

  He remembered that first practice for the rest of his life, although there was little of the thrust and parry he would learn later. Light increased in the east, flowing over the horizon onto the broad plain beneath. The hundreds of donkey carts tethered to scrub brush growing from the sandy sides of the river, the churned sand of the river bed the only evidence of yesterday’s races. The call of the muezzin. The low curses of men waking, the crackle of cook fires, the smell of bread baking.

  “I’m not a warrior, Firas,” Jaufre said by way of explanation for the ignorance and ineptitude he was about to display. “I’m a trader.”

  “You carry a sword,” the havildar said, unsurprised at this unsolicited confidence. “Sooner or later, someone will force you to use it.” He hesitated, and then said, very gently, “You could lay it aside, young sir.”

  Jaufre had unbuckled the scabbard from about his chest and now he frowned down at it and the sword it sheathed. He looked up to meet Johanna’s eyes. She said nothing, only waited for him to choose.

  He drew his father’s sword, handed her belt and scabbard, and turned. He thought he saw a trace of approval in the havildar’s eyes, but later he would be equally certain he had imagined it. The havildar’s approval was not so easily won.

  “Yours is a weapon of the West,” Firas pacing around him, hands clasped behind his back. “The Western warrior prefers a straight blade for hacking through heavy armor, wielded from horseback.” He stopped to draw his own weapon. “My scimitar is of the East, also meant to be used from horseback, but shorter and used against a lightly-armored opponent, usually after the opponent’s line has been weakened by archers.”

  He tossed Jaufre his scimitar. Jaufre caught it, just, in his left hand. “You will notice the difference in weight.”

  Jaufre tested both swords, and his eyebrows went up.

  Firas nodded. “One on one, your sword will have the advantage.”

  “Until I meet someone with a longer sword,” Jaufre said.

  “Until then.” Firas held up an admonitory finger. “You will have the advantage, that is, once you learn to use it properly. An untrained soldier is more of a hazard to himself than he is to anyone else.”

  After Jaufre had nearly cut off his own hand and had gashed his own cheek, he took the havildar’s warning more seriously.

  But that would be in the future. This morning Firas had caused a thick post to be buried deep in the sand, and had Jaufre hack at it with a wooden practice sword, forehand and backhand, over and over, again and again, until Jaufre’s arms felt as if they would fall off. “This post is buried behind the cook tents at each of our camps,” the havildar said. “Half of each practice session will be spent at it.”

  Jaufre, sweat rolling down his face, the muscles in his arms burning, gasped out something that passed for, “Yes, havildar.”

  Firas then had Jaufre switch to his own sword and walk through a series of different movements, cut, thrust, parry, and right, left and overhead variations. There wasn’t much finesse to it, as Jaufre soon came to realize. A sword was essentially a club with an edge.

  Firas walked through each movement slowly, standing next to Jaufre and commanding him to mirror his own movements. Then he stepped opposite Jaufre and repeated those movements, meeting them with his own in mirror image.

  After the work with the post, it was all Jaufre could do to get his sword to shoulder height, and Firas took advantage of every gap in his defenses, usually with a hard rap with the side of his blade on whatever portion of Jaufre’s anatomy was convenient. There were many such gaps.

  At some point during the following year, Firas stepped back and dropped his sword. “Enough for your first lesson, I think.”

  Jaufre blinked the sweat from his eyes and looked around to find that many of Uncle Cheng’s guard had assembled in a circle. There were smiles hidden and smiles not and much nudging of elbows. Johanna, standing a little apart with her hands clasped over the sword’s sheath as if she were praying, watched them with a face wiped unusually clean of expression.

  “Tomorrow at the same time, young sir?” Firas said, producing a length of cloth and wiping his blade.

  Jaufre took a deep breath and with trembling arms brought up his father’s sword and wiped it on the edge of his tunic. He made a silent vow to acquire a clean cloth for cleansing his blade before their next practice. “Tomorrow,” he said. It was all he could manage.

  Firas inclined his head, a ghost of a smile on his face. “Until then.”

  Johanna, mercifully, waited until they were well away from the practice yard. “Where does it hurt?”

  “Everywhere,” he said. He’d meant it to be a shout but it came out as more of a groan.

  She nodded, her suspicion confirmed. “Perhaps another visit to the baths.”

  It was good advice, despite its source, and he took it. He was marginally mobile when he awoke that evening, only to be nearly incapable of helping strike their yurt afterward. Johanna and Shasha broke their camp without comment, although there were meaningful looks. The night that followed, spent on camelback, was sheer agony.

  Uncle Cheng at first skirted the Taklamakan Desert to the north, stopping at oasis towns and trading as they went. Shasha purchased cakes of indigo dye which she said would profit them well in Antioch and Acre, where they could buy kermes or carmine dye for trading farther west. Johanna found a merchant who specialized in antiquities and acquired a dozen flying horses made of bronze, all small, exquisitely made and of a portable size.

  “Those aren’t Han,” Jaufre said.

  “Who west of Kashgar will know that?” Johanna said. Her fingers caressed the mane of one of the horses. “And they are lovely little pieces in their own right. Who wouldn’t pay a handsome sum to display one of these in their public rooms, to the envy of their neighbors and friends?” Her eyes took on a faraway look. “Perhaps I should find a marble carver. We could double the price if each one included its own pedestal.”

  “And it would be no strain at all on our pack animals to ask them to carry marble pedestals in addition to the solid bronze statues,” Jaufre said cordially.

  Shasha watched Johanna flounce off. Jaufre flapped a hand at Shasha’s raised eyebrow and hobbled off in the opposite direction.

  The feelings generated by discovery of the contents of Johanna’s purse were prone to display themselves at odd moments. Shasha sighed and kept her inevitable thoughts to herself.

  Jaufre’s weapons training continued apace. The first morning he was able to block all of the havildar’s blows, Firas introduced him to the shield, and then the mace, and then the flail, and then the axe, and then the lance. New muscles he didn’t even know he had set up their individual protests. At which point Firas, obviously close kin to Father John’s Christian devil, set the better swordsmen among the guards to attack Jaufre without warning, so that Jaufre found himself on alert at every moment of the night or day. Before long he was able to come out of a sound sleep, on his feet with his father’s sword in his hand, and beat off an attack in the blazing sun of midday.

  Johanna and Shasha, woken during the same attack, knew enough not to waste their breath in complaints, and perfected a quick roll to the wall of the yurt, beneath it and out, while the battle raged within.

  None of the surprise attacks were half-hearted. One evening, as the caravan was being loaded and the camels were coming reluctantly to their feet, Jaufre blocked one of the havildar’s thrusts and pushed through to touch the point of his blade to the havildar’s tunic. He dropped his sword and stood back.

  Firas, to Jaufre’s infinite and inarticulate pride, saluted Jaufre with his scimitar. “You improve, young sir. You improve.”

  Félicien wrote a song about it and sang it at the campfi
re that night to loud acclaim. Jaufre’s aches and pains lessened. When they were near a city he sought out the hot baths. When they camped in caravansaries or on the trail Shasha rubbed him down with oil, strong fingers kneading at the hard knots of muscles bunched beneath his skin. After a while he had to find a seamstress to let out the shoulders and sleeves of his tunics.

  One morning he was already laying face down on his bed, shirtless, his head pillowed in his arms, half asleep. He heard the flap of the yurt rustle and said sleepily, “Shasha?”

  She didn’t answer, and there was a long silence. Then her knees dropped next to him and he heard her rub oil into her hands. She laid those hands on his back and he knew instantly that they did not belong to the wise woman. They were strong, vigorous hands that kneaded the tension from his muscles every bit as capably as Shasha’s would have, but instead of a massage this felt like a caress, like a prelude to love. He shifted when his body reacted, but he was anything but uncomfortable. He had wanted her for so long now, and for so long she had been unable to see anything but a brother when she looked at him.

  He rolled to his back and looked up at her. Her hands had dropped to her thighs and her eyes were wide, tracing the curve of muscle and bone from his shoulder to his chest. His eyes followed the trail of golden down over his abdomen, and widened. She looked up at his face, startled. He made no attempt to hide what he was feeling.

  Her lips parted and she leaned a little forward, and Shasha came into the yurt, oblivious to the tension, or making a good show of it. “Ah, good, Johanna, I see you’ve eased the pain of our wounded warrior.”

  Not quite, Jaufre thought.

  Shasha, meantime, had her own agenda. The following morning after they pitched the yurt she drew the younger woman to one side. “Do you remember the herbs I gave you before you went to Edyk?”

  Johanna colored. “Yes.”

  “You took them?”

  “I did. Steeped in hot water every morning, as you instructed. They tasted terrible.”

  “Most effective medicines do, unfortunately. Edyk didn’t object?”