“Because I asked him to,” she said. Before he could say anything else she said, “No, we have had no word. But he is with her. I am certain of it.”
He closed his mouth on all he might have said. That Firas was new to their company. That they had no reason to entrust him with the well-being of one of their own, let alone when that one was Johanna. That he was Persian, like the Sheik, and could be counted on to sympathize more with a man of his own world than with a woman of Cambaluc, especially one who had abandoned the safety and security of home and family to hare off over the horizon on an adventure that a man of his culture would see as most ill-advised, not to mention scandalously unchaperoned. But Shasha was his sister in everything but blood and he would not willingly hurt her, no matter how great his fear for Johanna’s safety. He cast about for another topic. “What assets do we have left to us?”
She looked relieved. “The sheik’s men tried to take everything but Firas got away with my horse and Félicien and Hari on their donkeys, and one of the camels, the one carrying the spices. I’ve been trading them in the marketplace here for food and supplies.” She cast an involuntary glance over her shoulder and lowered her voice. “I gave Firas one of my hems.”
Johanna’s father had left her a quantity of loose gemstones, mostly rubies, which the three of them had sewn into the hems of their garments before they left Cambaluc. Until now, they had had no need of them. “What did he say?”
“That it might be enough, but that he would return with Johanna regardless.”
Possibly his judgement of Firas had been hasty. Possibly. “Have you spoken to Grigori?” Grigori the Tatar was Wu Li’s agent in Kabul.
“I have,” she said. “He recognizes Wu Li’s bao, and he stands our friend. He found us this house.” She gave a disparaging wave. “It’s not much, I know, but all the better houses are too near the market. I thought it best if we could remain as much as possible unnoticed.” She paused. “We are still too close to Cambaluc for my comfort.”
“We have the bao?” He thought of the leather purse that never left Johanna’s waist. “How?”
“We also have Wu Li’s book.” She smiled a little. “When they pulled her from North Wind’s back, North Wind took exception.”
Jaufre thought of the massive white stallion whose affections had fastened so oddly and inflexibly on the girl so much at the forefront of their thoughts. “I can imagine.”
Her smile faded. “In the ensuing, shall we say, fuss? Johanna managed to drop her purse. They didn’t notice.”
“Was she hurt?” He heard the panic in his own voice, and tried to steady his heartbeat.
She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
There was a momentary silence, fraught with memory. Twice in two days, he thought.
Shasha raised her head to look at him. “What?”
He realized he had said the words out loud, and his mouth twisted. “Twice in two days,” he said. “First I let myself be knocked unconscious by Gokudo. Twenty-four hours later I let myself get stabbed in the back by Farhad. I was so amazingly useful.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Self-pity is never useful, Jaufre,” she said sharply.
He felt himself flush and looked away.
“We were all attacked,” she said, with emphasis. “You, me, Johanna, Hari, Félicien. Even Firas. Johanna was kidnapped. Don’t you dare be such a child as to think for one moment that you were alone in this, or that you alone could have stopped it!”
She realized that her voice had risen, and she got to her feet to take a hasty turn around the room. When she passed the door she caught a glimpse of a shadow on the other side. Félicien or Hari or both, keeping out of range. Intelligent of them.
She took a deep breath, centering herself with the intonation that began any practice of soft boxing. Root from below, suspend from above. Root from below, suspend from above. Her anger still flickered beneath the surface, but now it was under control. She returned to her seat.
“We have to go after her, Shasha,” he said, and the agony in his voice was enough to cause her anger to evaporate.
“No,” she said, not without sympathy, because she had suffered through her own guilt over remaining with Jaufre, no matter what promises she had made.
“We have to go after her, Shasha!” He leaned forward, groping for her hand.
“No,” she repeated, in a voice much firmer than she felt. “We talked about this, Jaufre. We decided, even before we left Cambaluc, that if we were separated on the Road that we would make for Gaza. She will make her way there, too.” And Firas, she thought. Whether he helped her escape or not, he would meet them there as well. He had promised, and Firas the Assassin was not a man to give his word lightly.
“Besides,” she said, “we don’t even know where Talikan is. We only know that it is the sheik’s home. It could be as far as Baghdad, or as near as Balkh, but without direction we could spend the rest of our lives traveling every spur and trail of the Road and never find it.”
He was silent for a moment. “It’s not on Wu Li’s map?”
She bit back a quick retort. Her temper seemed to be deteriorating in direct proportion to Jaufre’s recovering health. “No,” she said. “I looked, of course. We all examined every page before Firas left. There is no location of that name anywhere in Wu Li’s book, and we asked in the marketplace before Firas left. The name is familiar to many, but it is no better known than any of the thousand and one sheikdoms scattered from Terak Pass to the Middle Sea. The more the Mongols retreat to the east and the north, the more local warlords appear. You know this, Jaufre.” She made herself take a calming breath, and said more patiently, “Which means that all we know is what we picked up in passing from the Sheik’s men during our time together on the Road. The northeast of Persia. South and west of Samarkand. We believe.”
“You believe,” he said bitterly.
“Yes,” she said. “It gives Firas a place to start, at least.” Before he could speak, before he could think up something even nastier to say to her, she added, “The instant you are well enough to sit on a camel, we start for Gaza with the first caravan of a decent size heading west. We know where Gaza is. So does Johanna. Wu Li had a factor there.”
“Abraham of Acre,” Jaufre said.
“If he’s still there, we have the bao. Like Grigori, he will help us. When she can, Johanna will meet us there. She might even get there before us.” Unlikely, but not impossible, she thought. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, preparing herself to give him the worst news of all. “There is another reason we need to start moving west, as fast as we can.”
The tone of her voice made him look up. “What?”
“Ogodei.” To her shame, her voice trembled. With an act of will she steadied it.
He stared at her. “Ogodei?”
Her eyes dropped to her hands, which were curled into fists. She straightened them, and smoothed one over the other, a nervous, wasted motion totally out of character. “Ogodei has brought his one hundred thousand down this side of Terak.”
“Why?” he said, when she did not go on.
“He is…laying claim, I think is the only way to describe it. He’s marching up to the front doors of every walled city, of every town and city of a size to make it worthwhile, and demanding that they surrender. If they do, he lets them live. If they don’t, he destroys them.”
“Destroys them?” Later he would think his prolonged illness had slowed his ability to think rationally.
“Destroys them,” she said. She put a hand to her mouth and then with what looked like a determined effort dropped it and sat up straight again. “Refugees arrived in Kabul over the past month. Pitifully few of them, and the stories are horrific.” She made a poor attempt at a smile. “He seems to imagine himself the reincarnation of Genghis Khan himself.”
“Is he acting on orders from Cambaluc?”
“I doubt it.”
“Why?”
“Shidibala Gegeen Kha
n is dead, murdered. The news came earlier this month, when the trails over the mountains opened. I think Ogodei is taking advantage of what always follows a change of power in Cambaluc to set up his own empire.”
Jaufre was silent, digesting this. “He was always ambitious, Wu Li said.”
She nodded.
“Which cities?”
“Jaufre?”
“Which cities, Shasha?”
“While we were on our way here, he went first for Samarkand and then Tashkent, and from what they say didn’t miss any of the oasis towns between. So far he’s staying out of the mountains.”
“So far?”
She met his eyes, and only then did he really see how worried she was, and how tired. “Rumor in the market has it that he is turning his attentions south.”
“India?” he said.
She shrugged.
Realizing, he said, “And everything in between. Including Kabul?” Talikan? he thought.
“There’s worse,” she said.
He gave her an incredulous look.
“They say he has a new captain,” she said. “A warrior, from a land far to the east.”
He stared at her. “No,” he said.
“He wields a tall staff, they say,” she said. “One with a curved blade.”
“Gokudo,” Jaufre said, his voice barely above a whisper, and a chill chased down his spine.
4
Kabul, spring, 1323
IT TOOK A MONTH for Jaufre to force himself back into health, or enough so that he could walk some distance mostly without aid. He never sat where he could stand, never stood where he could walk, and if he could only run ten steps before he had to stop, breathing hard, then he ran those ten steps. He had begun to practice form with Shasha every morning and again every evening, Félicien joining in, Hari off to one side chanting his interminable oms. Yesterday he had taken down his father’s sword and practiced some of the parries and thrusts that Firas had taught him, no matter that after five minutes the yard had begun to revolve slowly around him and he’d had to let Shasha replace the sword because he could no longer raise his arms that high.
This morning Félicien had announced his intention of walking into the city to see if the first caravan of spring had arrived. “They say in the market that there should be one any day now,” he said.
“I’ll go with you,” Jaufre said.
Félicien glanced at Shasha. “There isn’t much to see,” he said.
“Go ahead,” Shasha said, waving a hand in airy dismissal. “Kill yourself.”
When they had left, Hari said gently, “He is sick at heart.”
“He is sulking,” Shasha said, and stalked from the room.
The city of Kabul was a claustrophobic wedge crowded into a narrow valley, an unlovely jumble of square buildings constructed of mud bricks, interspersed with the inevitable neighborhood mosque. On all sides rose the sharp-edged peaks of the Hindu Kush, still clad in a receding layer of winter snow, leavened here and there by tiny patches of green. On closer examination those patches proved to be the smallest of terraced gardens jostling for place with granite outcroppings and small avalanches of broken shale, reclaimed from the mostly vertical landscape with waist-high walls made of loose, readily available rocks. The nearest arable land was far to the north, on the other side of the mountains, and those citizens of Kabul too hungry to wait for the first spring caravans to arrive with fresh fruits and vegetables scrabbled in the hard dirt to grow a few of their own. It was at best a vain effort, thought Jaufre, viewing the scraggly results of one such, but still they tried, toiling up and down the steep trails and stairs to their homes with sacks of water on their bent backs. Here and there a poplar bravely raised a spindly, trembling head.
“There isn’t even a university,” Félicien said, regarding Kabul with manifest disgust.
“There’s a madrasa at the grand mosque, surely,” Jaufre said mildly.
“Teaching religion. What of mathematics and rhetoric and philosophy?”
Jaufre, out of breath from their short climb, didn’t answer.
“Look,” Félicien said, pointing. “There is the caravansary. Such as it is.” He led Jaufre through a cluster of one-story buildings that formed their little neighborhood. Most of the men who lived there were employed in the construction of a new mosque not far away. Religion was the only industry that paid and paid regularly in Kabul. “They can’t dig a well to water their gardens, but they can always find enough money for another mosque,” Félicien said.
The women remained sequestered in their homes while their children too small to work played in the dirt outside their doors. A cloud of dust was already beginning to rise over the city and it wasn’t even noon.
“An unlovely place,” Jaufre said.
“It does not improve on closer inspection,” Félicien said, and then clutched Jaufre’s arm. “Look! Look, Jaufre, look there, you see!”
A cloud of dust, thicker than the one over Kabul, rose at the top of the pass leading into the city, and as they watched the first in a line of camels minced down the trail and approached the northern gate.
“Come, Jaufre!” Félicien said, his face alight with excitement. Jaufre couldn’t blame him. His companions had not slept the winter away as he had and by now were heartily bored with Kabul and environs.
They arrived at the caravansary at the same time as what appeared to be at least half the population of Kabul. When Jaufre saw what was in the caravan’s train, he curled a lip in disgust. “Slavers,” he said.
Félicien eyed him. “It’s not illegal.”
“No, just disgusting. Let’s get something to eat while they sort themselves out.”
Jaufre fended off an offer for ground testicle of sheep—“Guaranteed to rekindle the interest of the most indifferent lover, truly, sahib!”—and found a kebab vendor next to a fountain in an adjacent square. Jaufre, whose appetite had returned with full, pre-injury force, ate three of beef and one of goat’s liver. Félicien had one of chicken. No vegetables, of course, but they found an old man with a fruit cart piled with last year’s apples. They were wrinkled and a little dry but still sweet.
When they returned to the caravansary, the novelty of the first caravan of the year had worn off and the crowd had dispersed, at least until the merchants had offloaded their goods and set up their tents. Jaufre inquired for the havildar, and was introduced to a Gurkha named Rambahadur Raj who wore a kukri as long as his arm in a worn but well-cared-for leather sheath. He was a foot shorter than Jaufre but he stood with an easy assurance that reminded Jaufre of Firas.
“I am Jaufre of Cambaluc, havildar,” Jaufre said, inclining his head in a show of respect. “This is Félicien of the Franks.”
“Salaam, Jaufre of Cambaluc, Félicien of the Franks,” the havildar said, bowing his head less deeply in return. “Let us retire out of the sun and send for tea.”
“That would be welcome,” Jaufre said, not lying.
They settled beneath the awning at the front of the havildar’s yurt and discussed the weather until the tea came on a round tin tray. The havildar brewed the tea with his own hands, poured it into earthenware cups and handed it around with a plate of hard biscuits. He sat back with a sigh, blowing across the top of his cup. “I confess, it is a pleasure to be at rest.”
Jaufre sipped. The tea was hot and heavily sweetened and scalded his throat as it went down. “Has your journey been a long one, then, havildar?”
“As long as necessary, Jaufre of Cambaluc, but certainly more interesting than usual.”
Jaufre raised an eyebrow. “Bandits? Raiders?”
Rambahadur Raj grimaced. “Armies, more like.”
“Kabul talks of armies as well,” Jaufre said. “In particular of a Mongol army, come recently over the mountains from Everything Under the Heavens.”
The havildar nodded. “If rumor is true, this army has a general who regards himself as the living reincarnation of the great Genghis Khan himself.”
/> Shasha had said almost exactly the same thing.
“But you yourself are of Cambaluc,” Rambahadur Raj said. “If rumor is true and he is a Mongol, surely he is known there.”
“He is, if rumor is true,” Jaufre said. “It is said his name is Ogodei. A Baron Ogodei was recently named to the head of a hundred thousand and posted to the West.”
The havildar’s eyebrow went up. “Possibly an attempt to move an overly ambitious lord from the seat of power?”
“Possibly,” Jaufre said, and shrugged. “I don’t pay much attention to politics, but it was said that the late khan was…cautious in the men he chose to hold office near to his person.”
“Not cautious enough,” the havildar said drily.
As the last khan’s tenure had been less than two years, Jaufre could hardly disagree. “As you say.”
“This Ogodei, rumor says that he is bent on conquest,” the havildar said. “That if a city surrenders to him that he will spare it, but that if it does not, he destroys it and kills all of its people, down to the last child.”
Jaufre thought of his last sight of Ogodei, sitting at his ease on a pile of carpets before a yurt very like this one, drinking koumiss and watching with equanimity the death of one of his men by the riding of horses over his body. Next to him Félicien stirred, and he touched the boy’s arm briefly in warning. It would not do to have it known that they knew Ogodei.
Besides, it was glaringly obvious that they didn’t. If rumor did not lie, he had not, in fact, executed Gokudo, and there was no question that he had betrayed them to the sheik. “He is in the north of Persia now, if rumor is true,” he said.
“If rumor is true,” the havildar said, nodding. “But rumor also says that his army moves very fast. Samarkand fell in a matter of days, and is said now to be moving south.”
Where Talikan might, or might not, lie. Jaufre did his best to keep his face without expression. “You will be leaving Kabul soon, then.”
“As soon as the merchants complete their business,” the havildar said grimly.
“Where does your route take you?”
Silk and Song Page 24