The weeds around the dilapidated fountain in their tiny courtyard sprouted in a welcome show of green, and one day Félicien came home from the market with a basket of fresh strawberries. They devoured them on the instant.
With the sweet juice of the berries lingering on his tongue, Jaufre had the curious sensation of waking up. The room he was in seemed familiar and at the same time unfamiliar to him, small and square, and while obvious effort had been made to keep it clean the dirt bricks that formed the walls were crumbling beneath several layers of whitewash to form tiny piles of debris in odd corners. What had once been a small window had been inexpertly hacked into a larger one, and a roughly planed wooden sill recently plastered into place to form a seat. Light poured through it, illuminating the neatly rolled bedrolls in one corner and the packs heaped in another. There was a pot and a pan and four bowls stacked on a small table. A large brown urn stood next to one a size smaller, the mouths of both covered with plates. An unlit brazier sat nearby, next to a bucket of charcoal.
His own bedroll was arranged against the east wall of the room, out of the direct sunlight streaming. Félicien, Hari, and Shasha were seated around it in a solemn half-circle, watching him. He stared at them in silence, and in silence, they stared back, all with the same expectant expression on their faces.
Félicien. A slim presence in a worn dark robe, a thin, beardless face with high cheekbones and a wide, thin-lipped mouth. A student, no, a goliard he called himself, from a country far to the west, who had been traveling the Road for years. There was a lute, well played, and a light, pleasant voice given to ballads about love and war. He collected coin in his bowl around the fire each night. He was a self-styled seeker after truth, who had joined their caravan…where was it? Chang’an? Yarkent?
He couldn’t remember, and the inability to do so bothered him, so he let his gaze move to the next person. This name was slower in coming. Hari. Skin and bones barely clad in a length of saffron fabric that wrapped around his waist and over one shoulder. Dark, steady eyes that implied knowledge and experience, and an unquenchable need to gain more. The priest from the lands south of the Hindu Kush, whom they had first seen being beaten before the gates of Kashgar. He couldn’t remember why.
And Shasha. Proper name Shu Shao. His foster sister, adopted by Wu Li. Trim and neat in her Cambaluc robes, and supremely capable at whatever she decided to set her hand. A cook. A healer. A…trader.
A trader. Like himself.
It was Shasha who at last broke the silence. “Jaufre?”
“Shasha?” he said. He tried to sit up, and was incredulous to realize that he was too weak to do so unaided. Hari and Félicien each took an arm and Shasha tucked a bedroll between him and the wall.
Birdsong sounded from beyond the window. He took a deep breath and put a hand involuntarily to his back, where there was a dull ache in one spot. He prodded it with a cautious finger, but the ache was all there was. Why that was important he could not immediately remember.
“Drink this,” Shasha said, putting a cup beneath his nose.
Perforce, he drank. The herbal decoction wasn’t noxious but it wasn’t delicious, either. Hari dipped a new cup from the large urn, which he was relieved to find was water, cool and fresh. Exhausted from the effort of draining it, he leaned back against the wall, his eyes closed. “Where are we?”
“Kabul,” Shasha said.
“Kabul? But—” He frowned. Surely they had only just been in that great pass, high and flat, between the mountains of the Hindu Kush and the Tian Shan? No, coming down from it. He remembered the steep, crooked trail choked with pine and juniper, slippery with rockfalls, riddled with blind curves. A route perfect for ambush and attack.
He opened his eyes and looked out the window. A drape of gauze had been tacked over it, now drawn back to allow the sun to brighten the corners of this otherwise very dark room. A small, dusty courtyard lay beyond it, where he could hear a trickle of water. “Kabul,” he said again, and despised how weak his voice sounded.
“Not Kabul, precisely,” Shasha said. “More on the outskirts of it.”
“Don’t you remember, Jaufre?” Félicien said.
“Gokudo?” Hari said. “Ogodei? The sheik?”
“Johanna,” Jaufre said, and shook his head, frustrated. “Where is she?”
A heavy silence fell. Shasha got up to refill his cup from the urn. “Have some more water,” she said, offering it to him.
He shoved it away, spilling the contents of cup on the floor. “Johanna,” he said again.
“I’ll get more water,” Félicien said. He took the urn and left the room.
“Do you remember?” Shasha said.
He did remember it all now. It all came back in a rush of brief, too vivid scenes. Shu Ming’s death. Wu Li’s remarriage. The secret departure from Cambaluc. Joining Wu Cheng’s caravan at Chang’an. The months on the Road. Leaving the caravan in Kashgar to traverse the mountains through Terak Pass. The nearly successful attack by Wu Li’s widow’s paid thug, Gokudo. Their rescue by Ogodei, Mongol general and family friend. Gokudo’s execution, Ogodei’s parting gift. The trail down from the pass.
And then the sheik and his men. The sheik’s son, Farhad. The sharp metal piercing his back. The shock and the subsequent searing pain. Falling. North Wind’s angry neigh. Johanna shouting. And then the images faded to darkness.
“He stabbed me,” Jaufre said.
“The sheik’s son,” Shasha said. “Farhad. Yes. In the back.” She indicated. “Where it hurts. Does it still hurt?”
“It aches, but…” He felt his back again. The area was tender and his muscles protested. In sudden fear he raised his arms and lowered them, flexed them at the elbows, made fists and opened them. He threw back the covers. His feet and toes and knees, everything functioned, but his skin hung on his bones.
Félicien returned and he lay back, pulling his covers up. Félicien poured out another cup of water and this time he accepted it and drank it down, suddenly aware of how thirsty he was. He handed the empty cup to Shasha and said in a voice he hardly recognized as his own, “Tell me.”
“Johanna, so far as we know, is with North Wind,” Shasha said, answering the question she knew he wanted an answer to first.
“And North Wind is with Sheik Mohammed.”
“Yes.”
“And Sheik Mohammed is where?”
Shasha exchanged glances with Félicien and Hari. “All we know is that it is a place called Talikan.”
“Do we know where Talikan is?”
Shasha hesitated. “As yet, no. Not precisely. But—”
Jaufre summoned up enough energy for a glare. “Why aren’t you with her?”
Shasha glared right back. “Because I had my hands full keeping you alive.”
“You should have gone with her,” he said.
“And you should have known better than to turn your back on that poisonous little spawn of the sheik,” she said smartly.
Hari raised his hands, palms out, smoothing the air between them, and spoke for the first time. “Gently, my friends, gently. Harsh words will not change our dilemma.”
“How long?” Jaufre said.
Shasha met his eyes squarely and said, “Six months.”
“What!” He sat up again and swung his legs to the side of the cot. Shasha didn’t try to stop him, merely watched as struggled to his feet. His legs would not hold him up, and worse, a wave of dizziness forced him back down, sweating and swearing in a breathless voice. He subsided as they rearranged his limbs and pulled the covers up over them again. “Six months, Shasha,” he said. “In the name of all the Mongol gods, what is wrong with me?”
“You mean other than being stabbed in the back with one of those curved pig-stickers the Persians call swords?” She huffed out a breath. “It was everything we could do to keep you from bleeding to death on the spot. When I was marginally sure you wouldn’t, we fixed up a litter and carried you down the trail. Firas scouted out a village a
nd we took you there. It was filthy and in spite of everything I could do your wound became infected. You got through that, believe it or not, and then the village came down with typhus, which you also got.”
“I don’t remember any of this,” Jaufre said faintly.
“You were delirious,” Shasha said. Also coughing hard enough to bring up an organ, covered in red rash and complaining constantly of severe headaches, but she didn’t say so. For a few horrible days she had been certain he was going to die, but she didn’t say that, either. “You were delirious for a long time. Even after we left the village you were delirious off and on again.” For months. “We brought you to Kabul because I thought we might find a doctor here who could help you.”
“You left her behind,” he said, his eyelids drooping, his voice even fainter now.
“She ordered me to stay with you,” Shasha said. His eyes closed and his breathing deepened. “The last words she said were of you,” she said in a softer voice. She smoothed his hair back from his forehead, and whispered, “She commanded me to save your life, Jaufre. And I promised her I would.”
That afternoon Jaufre woke to the presence of a man in a crooked turban and a once handsome robe covered with unidentifiable stains, some of which had eaten right through the fine wool. “This is Ibn Tabib,” Shasha said. “He is the doctor who has been treating you.”
“Hah,” the doctor said, beaming. He was Persian, short, dark of skin and hair, and of a cheerful rotundity. “It is good to see you back in your own body, young sir. It was start and stop there for a while, I can tell you.” He had a brisk manner and deft but gentle hands. He peered into Jaufre’s eyes and mouth, sat him up and prodded his wound, manipulated his abdomen, and placed his ear first against Jaufre’s chest and then his belly. He pinched the flesh of Jaufre’s upper arms and thighs between thumb and forefinger and shook his head over the result.
At last he sat back. “Well,” he said. “How much do you know about your illness?”
“Nothing,” Jaufre said. “How much do I want to know?” He was feeling better, and in spite of nagging fears concerning Johanna he was able to concentrate on the here and now.
“Hah! You make the joke! A good sign.” The doctor settled onto a pillow, his legs crossed, sipping from a mug of sweetened mint tea provided by Shasha. Hari and Félicien had absented themselves from Jaufre’s examination. “Well, you know how you were injured initially.” Ibn Tabib cocked his head, his bright eyes inquiring.
“Someone stabbed me in the back with their sword,” Jaufre said. “It’s about the last thing I really remember.” Although nightmarish visions of dark, dirty rooms and endlessly painful rides swam at the edge of his memory, interspersed by occasional glimpses of Shasha’s face, pale and tired, her strained voice telling him to roll over, stay still, drink this.
“Hah,” Ibn Tabib said. It was an utterance he made frequently, used to punctuate many different meanings. “Yes, indeed, young sir, you were stabbed, but either your assailant was particularly inept or he meant to do you as little harm as possible.”
“What?” Jaufre looked at Shasha, who was regarding her tea with interest. “He meant to kill me.”
“Then we must assume ineptitude, and praise Allah for it,” the doctor said. “The blade entered your back, glanced off your ribs and slid someway between flesh and bone to come out more than a handspan later.” He paused to consider. “There was a great deal of blood, of course, which led Shasha here to fear the worst. She bound up the wound to stop the bleeding and moved you to shelter as soon as possible, where she could look at it more closely. All very proper.” He beamed at Shasha and raised his cup in salute.
Shasha thought of those nightmarish days before they found a village far enough off the beaten track to be reasonably confident that they might escape the notice of passing travelers, who might in their turn find what belongings Shasha and Jaufre and Hari and Félicien had left too enticing to ignore. She repressed a shudder.
“Unfortunately, by the time she was able to determine that your insides were, in fact, not at risk, infection had set in. She cleaned the wound as best she could and stitched you up—a very neat job, I must say. It’s a large scar—two, in fact—but they will fade in time.” He sipped tea. “There was nothing she could do for the infection but keep the wound clean and dose you with willow bark. You were in a very bad way for some time—”
Eleven of the longest days of Shasha’s life.
“—and then your fever broke. You were on the mend when, would you believe it, the village you were in came down with an outbreak of typhus, which you contracted. So did the young scholar traveling with you.”
“Félicien? He’s all right?”
“Yes,” the doctor said, looking at Shasha with an expression impossible for Jaufre to interpret. She stared back, impassive, until the doctor coughed and returned to his tale. “I understand that your priest got it, too, but his case was less severe. He tells me he has suffered this malady before, which may explain it.”
“Is that all?” Jaufre said.
“If you don’t count the food poisoning, the near starvation and dehydration because of your inability to keep down anything down,” the doctor said drily, “that was quite enough to be going on with, wouldn’t you agree?” He nodded at Shasha. “You would have died three or four times at least, were it not for her, and for the devotion displayed by your other friends. Hah. Indeed, you are very lucky, young sir.”
Jaufre looked at Shasha. A little color had risen into her cheeks. “Thank you,” he said.
“I had to,” she said. “I promised her.”
He took a deep breath, and nodded once. What else was to be said could not be spoken of before strangers.
The doctor looked from one to the other. “Hah,” he said, smacking his hands on his thighs. “It is not often that such a chapter of incidents leads to so happy an ending. I am very pleased with you, young sir, very pleased indeed. Now, as to your recovery.” He bent a stern eye upon his patient. “You have lost perhaps a quarter of your body mass, much of it muscle. You may not rise immediately from your sick bed and pick up your sword.” Jaufre followed the accusatory finger to the leather scabbard that hung from a makeshift peg on the wall. “You have been ill for months. It will take weeks for you to recover your strength, and months to recover it completely.”
Jaufre remembered the humiliation of failing to stand on his own feet that morning and felt his face grow hot.
“Hah,” the doctor said, not without satisfaction. “So you have already tried. Good. I find empirical evidence always works best with stubborn patients, and soldiers are above all determined to prove their invincibility, young ones in particular.”
“I’m not a soldier,” Jaufre said. “I’m a trader.”
Ibn Tabib ignored this. “Learn to stand again first. Then walking short distances.” He raised an admonitory finger. “With aid, young sir. With aid. As you grow stronger, longer distances on your own.” He looked at Shasha. “You may start him on solid foods, but bland, and in small amounts. Soups and teas for fluids, as much as he can swallow. A little wine once a day. Is the water from the fountain good?”
“Yes, effendi. We have all been drinking it. It is clear and cold and seems pure.”
“Then water, too, as much as you can pour into him.”
“Yes, effendi.”
“Ha.” The doctor rose fluidly to his feet. “Will I see you at my clinic tomorrow? Our patient from last week is returning.”
Shasha looked up. “The young woman with the head injury?”
“Hah. Yes. It may be that we have saved her for many more years of abuse at the hands of her so detestable husband.” They went out together, conversing.
Jaufre pushed back the bedding and heaved his legs over the side of the cot and looked down at his body, His skin, once a smooth healthy pink stretched over bunched muscle, was pale and loose. He pushed himself to his feet, grunting with the effort, and shut his eyes and clenched h
is teeth against the resulting wave of dizziness. He didn’t fall. It was a minor triumph.
He opened his eyes again to see Shasha standing in the doorway, watching him. “With aid,” she said.
He swayed, but shook his head at her when she took a quick step forward. She halted in mid-stride, and he lowered himself to the cot, the last few inches more of a controlled fall. “Tell me,” he said. “All of it, this time.”
“You should rest.”
“Now,” he said. “I remember everything that happened up until the time that son of a bitch stuck me. I heard screaming, and then—” he gestured “—nothing. Or not much.”
“Let me make fresh tea.” She served them both and sat down on a cushion opposite him. “You had fallen to the ground and were bleeding so profusely—” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I got down to see to you. In the meantime, the Sheik and his men figured out soon enough that all they had to do was take Johanna and North Wind would follow.”
She took another breath and said, with more difficulty, “She shouted to me as they took her. She ordered me, she commanded me, Jaufre, not to let you die. And I was the only one among us who had any experience with caring for the sick. I could go with her and let you die. Or I could let her go and you would live.”
“And if I’d died?”
Her face darkened. “Don’t you dare question my decision, Jaufre. Or Johanna’s.” She stood up and shook out her trousers. “Now, we get you well.”
He stood up with her, slowly, shakily, but he was on his feet, without aid, no matter what the doctor had said. He knew a tiny spurt of triumph, and then he looked again at his sword, hanging from the wooden peg obviously placed there for it. He had been taking lessons from a master swordsman right up until the attack. He had been in peak physical condition. How long would it be before he was there again? How long before he could even raise his sword single-handedly? “Firas,” he said suddenly. “Where is Firas?”
Shasha looked suddenly older and more careworn. “With Johanna.”
All he could think of to say was, “Why?”
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