Silk and Song

by Dana Stabenow

  He waited. There would be more.

  The line of line on the horizon turned from dark blue to pale mauve. “I feel no remorse,” she said, watching it. “I have had no bad dreams. I rubbed him out of this realm with a firm hand, and I didn’t even worry about his blood on my trousers.” She looked down at them, the raw black silk worn but holding up well to the rigors of the Road. “And now there are others to add beneath his name. And there will be more.”

  “And you want to know if you are a monster,” Firas said.

  She swallowed hard. “Yes,” she said in a very small voice.

  “You are not,” he said.

  Her spine seemed to stiffen a little from his matter-of-fact tone. “I want to believe that,” she said.

  “You can,” he said firmly. “Regard this man. He acted to kill your father, not once, but twice, and was successful the second time. Affection and honor both called for his death. More, he professed his intent to harm your own person. You have the right to defend yourself from harm. Thirdly, there is the matter of justice.” He considered. “In the fifth surah, it is written the life for the life, and the eye for the eye, and the nose for the nose, and the ear for the ear, and the tooth for the tooth, and for wounds retaliation.”

  She digested this. Organized faith had not been a part of her raising. She and Jaufre had taken some classes with Father John, a Franciscan friar who had made his way to the khan’s court, who did his stern best to convince them in between Latin lessons that they were born sinners condemned to a fiery hell and that their only recourse was to adopt his faith, confess their every sin both real and imagined, and be redeemed in the eyes of what seemed to them to be a very vengeful and judgmental god. They had, at Wu Li’s instigation, taken other classes with a Confucian scholar who was given to the pipe and who lectured them on the importance of family and education from the interior prospect of a rosy opium dream that admitted gods only as distant, cloudy outlines to be respected but not worshipped.

  This regimen, overall, had been more productive of a healthy skepticism than blind faith. With a sudden shock of realization Johanna now realized that that might have been her father’s purpose all along.

  Whatever Wu Li’s motivation, neither teacher had encouraged them to belief in an afterlife, and a life lived on the Road, at risk of lethal diseases, avaricious raiders, natural disasters and political upheavals, where your best help was an ear attuned to the most recent news, a lively sense of self-preservation and a fast mount, bred less dependence on faith and more on one’s own competence and intelligence and ability to make friends. Doubtless many blameless citizens had fallen to their knees and implored God for salvation that awful day in Talikan. Equally doubtless none of them had received it. She remembered the scene she had watched from the wall and repressed a shudder. No, she could not conceive of a faith that forgave behavior so wicked, so evil.

  But this man, this warrior come so lately into their company, he had proved more than worthy of her respect and trust, and besides, she liked what his god was telling her, so she sat still and listened.

  He turned to look directly at her. “It is written later in that same verse whoso forgoeth vengeance, it shall be expiation for him.” She didn’t like that as much, and Firas raised a hand. “Gently, young miss, gently. Here, I believe the Prophet revealed enough to merit this man’s death. If you had shown mercy and let him live, would he have let you live, unharmed, as well? I think not, as I judge the words out of his own mouth. How many leagues did he pursue you over the trackless wastes of desert and rough trails of mountain? He would not have stopped. He could not.” He sighed. “It was, young miss, truly, you or Gokudo. One would live. The other would not.” He gave a faint smile. “Inshallah.”

  “If God wills?” she said.

  “You are here,” Firas said. “He must have willed it so.”

  She was silent again until the first sliver of gold lit the distant line of desert. She rose to her feet. “The others will be awake and ready for practice.” She hesitated. “Does it show?” she said in a low voice. “On my face?”

  Gravely, he inspected her countenance for traces of rabid killer set loose upon the world. “No,” he said. “It does not.”

  Although, over the next weeks, he decided that perhaps it did show in some subtle ways. Not the act of slicing off Gokudo’s head itself, no, she was not bent or haggard from guilt and certainly showed no signs of grief. But there was an added assurance in her stride, in the lift of her head and the straight set of her shoulders that he had not noticed before. It was as if she had discovered of what she was capable at need, and of surviving it, not easily, but with body and soul intact.

  As they neared Baghdad they saw the ruins of the famous canals, pulled apart by Hulegu’s forces sixty-five years before, leaving little but dusty ditches behind.

  “Once canals encircled the city, filled with water from the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers,” Alma said, very much in the manner of a scholar instructing the ignorant. “They were used for irrigation and some were even large enough for transportation. Some had to be crossed on bridges.” She gazed around at the barren and bridgeless landscape, crossed by more dust-filled ditches that seemed to parallel themselves outward from the city growing larger on the horizon. She sounded disappointed. “I don’t see why the Mongols had to destroy them. They could have used them themselves, couldn’t they?”

  “Hulegu was uninterested in occupation, mistress,” Firas said, at his driest.

  Like Ogodei and Talikan, Johanna thought, gazing at what was left of what surely had been a highly advanced system for the delivery and recovery of water. What makes some men build, and others destroy?

  She was unaware that she had said the words out loud until Hayat answered her. “Men will always tear down what they didn’t build themselves.”

  “What a waste,” Johanna said.

  They moved on.

  It was four altogether different travelers from the ones who had escaped the sack of Talikan who trotted beneath the east gate of Baghdad one bright and dusty afternoon. They commanded the best rooms in the best inn nearest the gate and the best stabling for their horses. North Wind attracted much attention, as did the others, the sheik’s racing bloodline having held up well over the leagues. North Wind had acquired a few scars on his legs but he seemed somehow bigger even than he had before, larger in stature, grander in manner, much more imperious in attitude. As long as they were in Baghdad, Johanna spent the hour after each morning’s practice just brushing his coat, which North Wind took very much as his just due. His ego had not noticeably diminished during the long journey, either.

  There were baths nearby and that was their third order of business, after rooms and new clothes for all four of them. Alma and Hayat had to be very nearly forcibly removed from the bathhouse, hot water having been in short supply on the Road. They reassembled at dinner, scrubbed and shining, around a table they had neither to set nor to clear, loaded with dishes not cooked by their own hand over an open fire, nor killed and cleaned by them, either, for that matter. It was a nice change.

  As their attendant brought a tray of sweets and a samovar of hot tea, Johanna sat back and took stock. Firas looked the same as ever, stoic, calm, fit, dangerous. He had taken advantage of the bath barber and his beard was newly trimmed and dark against the white wool of his jellaba.

  Alma and Hayat, by comparison, were vastly changed from the women they had been. Gone was the pale, soft skin and plump forms so desired in the harem, replaced now by golden tanned skin and a fine ripple of muscle and sinew. The elaborate hairstyles had been replaced by single braids in imitation of Johanna’s, the colorful, diaphanous costumes by hardworking linens and wools in creams and browns. Instead of falling instantly into studied poses of languor and invitation, both women sat comfortably erect, alert to what was going on around them. Their first response to a man in their midst would once have been instantly to seduce him. That reaction now was more a cool, measuring glance,
mentally locating weak spots and formulating a plan of attack.

  The word “seductress” did not instantly come to mind. Neither did “victim.” Johanna wondered what they saw when they looked at her.

  “How long do we wish to stay here in Baghdad, young miss?” Firas said, sipping his tea.

  Johanna sipped her own tea and took her time answering. “It’s been a long, hard summer,” she said at last. “Let’s take a few days to soak the dust of the trail completely out of our hair, and to gather the news and tour the souk.” She smiled. “Who knows? We might find something there to interest the merchants of Gaza.”

  Firas stroked his beard. “I see no fault in this plan. The soldier is always better for rest and relaxation between campaigns.”

  “I have inquired after Wu Li’s factor in Baghdad but I am told Basil the Frank no longer resides here,” Johanna said. “Could you ask around—discreetly, of course—for the more honest jewel merchants in the city?”

  Firas inclined his head. “It shall be so, young miss. I myself would like a look at the local armories, and, as you say, to hear the news.” He stopped himself from saying more, but Johanna knew what was in his mind. Ogodei could well be turning his attention westward, and if that were so—and even if it were not—rumors of his approach would be rife in the marketplace. The oasis towns of Persia had for hundreds of years been an attractive target for avaricious warlords bent on plunder and acquisition, and the last time Mongols had arrived on Baghdad’s doorstep it had not ended well for the city.

  “I would like to see Baghdad,” Alma said with a sparkle in her eye.

  “It is not what it was since Hulegu sacked the city,” Firas said.

  “Even to stand in the ashes of the House of Wisdom would be a privilege,” Alma said reverently. Behind Alma’s back, Hayat rolled her eyes.

  “Hayat?” Johanna said.

  “I no longer smell and my clothes are no longer in tatters,” the younger woman said with her dimpled smile. “I don’t know that I have any right to ask for more.”

  And we are alive, her eyes said when she looked at Johanna. Yes, there was that, too.

  While Alma toured the monuments of pre-Mongol yesteryear and communed with the spirits of philosophers past, Hayat in amused if a trifle bored attendance, Johanna plunged into the souk, which was something of a revelation. Until then Kashgar had set her standard for markets, but Baghdad’s market was larger by half and much better organized and maintained. The streets were wide and clean, the booths were of a uniform size and shape, and the signage was large, easy to spot, and marked in pictures instead of words. Sometimes the signs bore actual items, a mortar and pestle for the apothecaries, a stool for the joiners, a scrap of damask for the weavers. The moneychangers were at the center, forming the heart of the market and the hub of the streets, although Johanna raised her eyebrows at the interest rates chalked on boards outside the various booths. There wasn’t much to choose between them, which led her to suspect that rates were settled on well before the market opened in the morning.

  But in the market itself, oh, there were all the goods here she had ever seen before and more, many more that she had not, or certainly not in these amounts. Where she had been used to seeing goods only of the East, now here they were interlarded with goods of the West. A tall, heavyset man with graying blond hair and a taciturn expression held down a corner of the weavers’ market with heaping piles of a heavy wool fabric with a thick nap that would surely protect the wearer from the hardest winter. In the spice market she found a root with no aroma, until it was peeled and grated, when it made her eyes water and induced a fit of sneezing, but was delicious with beef, or so the merchant selling it claimed. In the next stall she was introduced to a green herb that when the leaves were bruised smelled sweet and spicy at once, and when served in a sauce over a bit of lamb made a small explosion in her mouth that rivaled the taste of the curries of India. Every mineral from alum, for the fixing of dyes to zinc, which mixed with copper made brass was displayed for sale. Sandalwood, whose fragrance was so sought after by the ladies of Cambaluc and whose oil was so useful in the treating of wounds. Spices of all kinds from everywhere displayed whole in sacks and in their milled forms on round trays heaped into pyramids of yellow and red and orange and brown, dizzying passersby with their commingled aromas. Drugs and their every component part, wax, camphor, gum arabic, myrrh, and a selection of herbs that would have driven Shasha mad with avarice. Fruits fresh and dried, including grapes both red and white. Precious metals, especially gold and silver, in dust, coins, ingots and bars.

  Her merchant’s nose twitched.

  There were chests made of a medium dark wood whose careful finish displayed a beautiful grain that she was informed resisted the teeth of insects of any kind or amount, a safe repository for her most precious clothes and draperies. She found no paper merchant worthy of the name, however, just a series of stalls selling the same vellum and parchment she had seen in every market after the Pass. One merchant glumly displayed an attempt at something made from wood pulp, and Johanna, amusement held at bay behind an expression of polite interest, wondered what the message would look like that would of necessity have to be written around the bits of wood embedded in it. There were some decent pens, but the ink was nothing like what she was accustomed to, thick, runny and indelible on skin, as she discovered when a drop fell on her hand. It would be days of repeated washings before it would disappear.

  The silk she found overpriced, even if she had thought their selection was various and adequate, which she did not. Most of it, she was told, came not from Cambaluc but from Merv.

  There were also gemstones from semi-precious to the rarer diamonds, although she saw no rubies as fine as the ones stitched into the hems of her traveling clothes. She found small round beads made of a forest green stone striated from dark to light, suitable for jewelry or embellishing clothing. The color reminded her of certain jades, although it was opaque rather than transparent. They were sold by the pound, sewn carefully into unbleached muslin bags.

  Those beads were available in the stock of only one dealer in the entire Baghdad market, and he knew it. She made him an offer and he reacted in horror. He was a Muslim and told her candidly that he was surprised to see a woman trading like any man, but displayed no dismay at her presence and no reluctance to strike a bargain with her. He ordered tea and they settled down to it. An hour later they had agreed on a price for a tenweight, but discovered a further problem. The merchant would take only bezants, and Johanna had only taels and drachmas. She secured the merchant’s word against a small coin acquired along the Road whose provenance they neither of them recognized but which was indubitably gold, and ranged forth in search of suitable currency.

  Down the way there was a baker peeling fresh rounds of bread from his oven. She stepped up and paid for one in drachmas and received florins in change. She paid extra for a brush of oil infused with garlic and crushed herbs and devoured it on the spot, and waited for the next batch to come out of the oven to buy a second, less because she was still hungry and more because doing so was in some odd way homage to Ahmed, the market baker in Kashgar, and Malala his wife, and Fatima, their daughter and Johanna’s lifelong friend. And Azar, Fatima’s betrothed, who was so carelessly murdered by Gokudo in his attempt to kidnap Johanna on the Terak.

  She felt anger well up inside her again, and willed it away. Gokudo was dead now, at her connivance and by her own hand. He had paid in full for the deaths of Azar and Wu Li.

  Father, she thought with a pang.

  She willed away the tears and plunged back into the crowded byways of the Baghdad marketplace in search of bezants. Bezants, as it happened, were hard to come by in Baghdad, for whatever reason, and her choice was either to go to the money lenders, despite their high fees, or lose her gold coin to the gem merchant. Instead, after some thought, she bought a length of brightly patterned silk that almost looked as if it could have been woven in Chang’an. Elsewhere she foun
d a spool of gilt cord, and returned to the gem merchant in triumph.

  The gem merchant, whose name was Mesut, regarded her purchases with a quizzical expression. “These look not like bezants, young miss,” he said, stroking his beard. “Although I am old and I admit my sight is not what it once was, so I could be mistaken.”

  Encouraged by the twinkle in his eye, she said gravely, “You are correct, effendi, these are not bezants, but I believe you will find what you can do with them even more valuable.” She indicated his stock, which was laid out on flat tables, the beads threaded into strings and the loose stones in wooden trays. “I see you also sell lovely pearls, as from the waters of Cipangu.” She didn’t mention that she herself at been to Cipangu, had dived with the pearl fishers there and could plainly see that his pearls were from another ocean entirely.

  “I do,” said Mesut.”

  “So, I see, does Karim, two booths down the way, and, if this unworthy one may say so without giving offense, his pearls look to be of much the same quality.”

  The twinkle became more pronounced. “One may,” Mesut said. “Karim and I buy from the same wholesaler.”

  She nodded. “I see here also some trade beads, from Nubia, I would judge.”

  He nodded, curious now.

  “But on the next street over Hafizah effendi also has Nubian trade beads, which look very much like your own.”

  “That is so.”

  She shook her head sadly. “And he is selling them at very much the same price.”

  Mesut smiled. “I suppose I could run back and forth between our stalls to make sure my beads are priced at less than his, but I confess the prospect does not appeal to me.” He smacked his substantial belly with both hands, and in spite of herself Johanna grinned.