by Megan Bannen
I glance at Timur for an instant, just enough time for the boy who could not possibly be my brother to disappear into the crowd. Irrational disappointment weighs me down, heavier than Timur’s thick arm. “No, my lord,” I answer, squinting into the crowd. “I don’t see your son.”
We head south toward the Great Khan’s palace just because that seems to be the direction in which most people are moving, but my mind keeps drifting to Weiji, who’s been dead for nearly three years. He began haunting my dreams the night I first met Khalaf, but the possibility that I could see my brother’s ghost here in the living world gnaws at me. It wasn’t him, Jinghua, I try to reassure myself, but it feels like a lie. In all honesty, I want it to be him. I want my teasing, obnoxious brother back.
The growling of my stomach distracts me, and since I haven’t been ashamed to beg for months, I pull Timur toward a food cart that wafts of duck-filled heaven. “Try to look pathetic,” I whisper to him. It’s more for the sake of formality. He’s looked effortlessly pathetic for some time now. To the dumpling vendor, I plead, “Sir, could you offer a meager bite to hungry strangers?”
The man snorts. “Why would I give anything away when I can make a full week’s profit at the execution?”
I feel like I’ve swallowed a brick. Timur’s grip stiffens on my arm.
“What execution?” I ask, dreading the answer.
“Another prince tried to answer the khatun’s riddles and couldn’t. Just this morning he beat the drum in the market square to announce that he was mad enough to enter the contest; then he failed just like the rest of them. Turandokht Khatun is having him executed tonight.”
“Who is it?” I ask. By now, Timur’s hand on my arm has become viselike. “The prince to be executed. Where is he from?”
“Balkh? Kerman? Sarai?” The man shrugs. “Who knows and who cares? It’s great for business.” He pushes the cart ahead so that we can no longer keep up. Timur and I come to a halt and let the growing throng of people buffet us like a paper boat on a river.
“Sarai. He said Sarai.” Timur’s voice thickens.
“He also said Balkh or Kerman,” I say, trying to remain calm. “I’m sure it isn’t your son, my lord.”
Timur goes alarmingly silent. My own anxiety is growing by the second. Our combined losses form an army of misery and grief in our wake as we follow the stream of people heading south until we find ourselves packed into a crowd at the northern end of Khanbalik’s market square. At the far edge sits the imperial compound, its roof tiles gleaming in the twilight like the iridescent scales of a fish. Between us and the palace stands a dais with several white taffeta pavilions at its feet, all heavily guarded by the Great Khan’s red-and-black-clad warriors. The gong in the bell tower glints in the torchlight on the southeast corner of the square, while the drum tower looms like a giant sentinel on the southwest corner.
In my mind, I try to picture Khalaf climbing the steps to beat the huge drum over our heads. It’s hard to imagine him doing anything so dramatic as that. Maybe he didn’t.
I hope he didn’t.
A dignitary draped in gold silk steps out of one of the pavilions and puffs his way to the top of the bell tower. Recognition bowls me over. It’s Zhang, a man I’ve known since before I was a slave, back when he came to Lin’an three years ago. I don’t want him to see me as I am now, so I shrink into Timur’s bulk as if the old goat could hide me. I know it’s unlikely that anyone would take notice of one puny girl in a crowd this size, but I feel like a bug just waiting to be squashed by a boot.
The crowd hushes as Zhang unfurls a silk scroll and reads a proclamation.
“As chancellor of the empire, I speak for the Great Khan, the Son of the Eternal Blue Sky. No prince shall be allowed to wed Turandokht Khatun who shall not previously have replied without hesitation to the riddles that she shall put to him. If his answers prove satisfactory, she will consent to his becoming her husband. But if the reverse, he shall forfeit his life for his temerity. This the Great Khan has sworn to the Earth and to the Eternal Blue Sky.”
A simmering wave of anticipation ripples through the crowd. I can feel Timur’s worry streaming off him, matching my own unease.
“The prince of Hormuz has this day beaten the drum, faced the trial, and failed. According to the Great Khan’s sacred oath, let him be put to death!”
The prince of Hormuz. Not the prince of the Kipchak Khanate. Not Khalaf. Tears of relief prick at my eyes. “Thank the Eternal Blue Sky,” Timur breathes as he sags against me. It’s an odd sentiment from a Muslim convert, but I’m not going to nitpick.
The funeral procession appears out of the palace gate beginning with a swarm of shamans dancing and jingling and beating on their drums. As they spin back and forth, their many-colored ribbons fly out all around them. The bells and mirrors sewn to the ribbons clink and flash firelight from the torches. They hold their drums high before them, beating them so hard I can feel the reverberation in my chest, mimicking my heartbeat as they make their way down the aisle that cuts through the crowd.
Just behind the shamans, eight slaves carry in a magnificent sedan chair curtained in silk brocade, girded by a unit of the Great Khan’s personal guard. They tote it up a flight of stairs to the dais, where they set down their burden. Two of them pull back the curtains to reveal within a haggard man whose beady eyes are nearly lost in the tired folds of his face. Once, he was fat. Now he is clearly wasting away.
“Is that the Great Khan?” Timur asks me.
“I think so.”
“How does he look?”
“Unwell, my lord.”
Timur clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth, and I know what he’s thinking. If he had made an open play for the throne of the empire, he’d now be in a position to rule the world. Instead, he’s a beggar, as haggard as the Great Khan but a lot poorer. Hindsight is a curse.
I should know.
The crowd kneels before the sickly man on the dais, and I follow suit, yanking Timur down with me. “Fanatics,” he mutters as his knees pop. I know how he must hate bowing before the Great Khan, but I shush him so he doesn’t get us both killed before we manage to find Khalaf.
Lines of the Mongol elite file in and kneel on cushions inside the pavilions. Grim-faced warriors surround another sedan chair held aloft by eight more slaves, as nameless and faceless as I have been. They carry it to the top of the dais, setting it to the right of the Great Khan. When they pull back the curtain, there is an audible gasp from the audience. Like the sun bursting through the thick clouds of winter, Turandokht Khatun steps out.
The pale, pregnant moon crests the top of the city walls and bathes her so that she appears to glow. She wears a long robe of rose silk with cuffs and edgings embroidered in gold thread. The open red-and-gold brocade jacket over the robe shimmers in the moonlight. There is a tall, cylindrical headdress strapped to her head, two feet tall, oxblood red, adorned with gold brooches and a fine peacock feather at the top that billows sinuously in the breeze.
All that finery, and she would be just as breathtaking if she wore no more than rags. The skin that hugs her round cheeks is taut and perfect. Her dark eyes shine with intelligence. Her full lips pout beautifully below her tiny nose. Everything is in proportion, every feature of her face an homage to beauty. She stands erect before the people of Khanbalik, as exquisite as an ornate sword.
This is the girl Khalaf intends to marry. It’s uncharacteristically mercenary of him, but desperation does that to a deposed prince. He needs to save the Kipchak Khanate, so he’s going to try to marry the most powerful woman in the empire. I know this, but looking at Turandokht now, it’s hard to think of my own feelings for Khalaf as anything other than laughable. She’s more than simply lovely. As she towers over her father, there’s no escaping her dazzling self-assurance, the power that practically oozes off her skin. What am I compared to Turandokht? Nothing, that’s what. I have always been nothing in comparison to her. Khalaf isn’t blind. He’ll see
that, too.
“All rise!” Chancellor Zhang calls out, after which people get to their feet, buzzing with excitement. Clearly, something unusual is going on.
“What’s the big deal?” Timur asks as he struggles to his feet. “She’s just a girl.”
Just a girl? I swear, the man never learns. I catch a snippet of conversation from one of our neighbors and translate it from Hanyu into Mongolian for him. “It seems this is the first time Turandokht has personally attended an execution.”
“Very big of her,” Timur comments drily.
“My lord,” I warn him. He grumbles, but he cuts the snide remarks. For now.
Turandokht surveys the assembly before her and waits for the world to go still and silent before she speaks, her alto voice cutting through the air like a bell.
“Today marks the failure of the twentieth prince to prove himself worthy to rule beside me. And yet I continue to hear arguments in favor of my marrying for the peace and security of the empire. Do you not see that my marriage would lead to the antithesis of peace? Should I bear children at great risk to my own life? And what then? None of us is ignorant of such stories of ambition from every kingdom, from every land. We have witnessed what fighting happens between father and son or brother and brother.”
“I hope you’re listening to this,” I mutter at Timur, who harrumphs in response.
“Some of you would have it that the heirs of Genghis Khan’s son Ogodei are the rightful rulers of the empire. You forget how Ogodei stole his sisters’ lands. You forget that he attacked his sisters’ people and sent his men to rape every girl over the age of seven from sunup to sundown before he sold them into slavery.”
I’ve never heard this horror story before, and I glance up at Timur to see if it’s true. He looks uncomfortable. “Ugh!” I hiss at him in disgust. He shushes me.
“Some of you believe that the descendants of Genghis’s son Jochi are the rightful heirs of the empire, but they have colluded with the disgraced line of Ogodei to ruin our peace—your peace. This is how the matter of succession is handled by men.”
I sense Timur’s outrage flaring like a lit rocket behind me. Jochi was his grandfather. “Don’t do anything,” I murmur over my shoulder. “We need to find your son.” Timur exhales audibly, blowing hot air over my head, but he keeps his cool.
“It is the descendants of Genghis’s youngest son, Tolui, who have united Zhongguo, north and south, and brought the Persians back into our fold,” says Turandokht, as ethereal as a goddess from her marble dais. I grit my teeth at her use of the word “Zhongguo,” as if the Yuan Dynasty had the legitimacy and superiority to equal the Song.
“Tolui’s heirs have brought you peace and prosperity,” she continues. “As Tolui’s grandchild, I am not moved to violence, if only men would desist in assaulting my liberty and leave me and my father to the ruling of this empire. Today, I renew my vow to our gods that I will marry no man so unworthy of you, my people.”
I hate that what she’s saying makes sense. I hate the fact that, if Khalaf’s life weren’t at stake or if my brother weren’t dead, I might even be sympathetic toward her. Most of all, I hate how much I envy her—her beauty, her power, her intellect, everything she has that I don’t. My jealousy of her is like a tiger; it could devour me.
She glides to her chair and lowers herself onto the seat, placing a hand on each chair arm like a hunting bird on its perch. “Let the prince of Hormuz pay the price for his pride,” she declares, and it chills me to think she might one day say these same words about Khalaf.
The sound of another shaman’s drum comes from the palace as the gates spit out the prince of Hormuz flanked by six Mongol warriors. He’s painfully young, with delicate lips and large hazel eyes. Behind him come four executioners, two of whom carry a long shroud between them and two who lead four fine horses. Turandokht’s face is devoid of emotion as she nods her head at them. The prince closes his eyes. His lips move in silent prayer as the first two masked men situate him in the center of the shroud. One of them pulls up each end, completely enveloping the boy, while the other sews him inside with an efficient flicking of needle and thread up and around the fabric. Once he is secured inside his shroud, they ease the prince down until he lies on the ground.
“Don’t look, little bird,” Timur murmurs, his beard tickling my ear.
But I watch it all.
The prince of Hormuz screams in agony as the other two masked men lead the horses over the sewn-up heap on the ground to trample the boy’s body. There is the sick percussion of hoof against flesh and bone, and the conflicting cheers and cries of protest as the prince’s body stills at last. Zhang rings the bronze gong beside him to signal the boy’s death with a solemnity he enjoys a little too much.
There is no way I am going to let Khalaf end like this. No earthly way.
2
FOR A FULL HALF HOUR AFTERWARD, Timur and I are stuck, packed in like rice in a rich man’s bowl. “We’ve got to find Khalaf,” he growls. “And when we do, I’m going to strangle the life out of him.”
I give a humorless laugh. “That kind of defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?”
“It’s the difference between stupidity and justice. Don’t quibble with me, girl.”
There’s a commotion near the drum tower, a series of gasps and exclamations. “What is it?” Timur asks, but with very little interest. Really, nothing matters at this point but Khalaf.
Khalaf, whom we have not found.
Being without him these past few weeks has planted a constant, dull longing inside me, so entrenched I can feel it in my spine. You’d think the bustling streets of Khanbalik would alleviate the loneliness, but the ache is more acute here. It’s just so easy to imagine him studying the architecture or trying to identify the trees of the Great Khan’s arboretum.
A tall man nearby shakes his head and says, “Unbelievable. The prince of Hormuz not dead an hour, and there goes another one.”
I jump up, but I still can’t see anything. It’s not until heads move and bodies turn in just such a way that for one instant, I see him—Khalaf—standing at the base of the wooden stairs leading to the top of the drum tower. Dread robs me of breath. My pulse pounds in my ears.
“It’s him,” I tell Timur, my voice floating high, completely unmoored. I grab the old man’s arm and yank him toward the tower as Khalaf ascends the steps.
“Go!” Timur bellows, pushing me forward. I spring ahead to swim through the crowd without him. Angry protests fall in my wake as Timur does his best to follow.
Khalaf reaches for the mallet tethered to the platform.
“Move!” Timur shouts. I’m not sure if he’s yelling at me or the people in my way or both. I’m almost there, close enough to see Khalaf swing back the mallet.
“No!” I scream as I burst through to the front of the crowd just in time for Khalaf to bring the mallet down against the taut skin of the drum. He beats it three times—Boom! Boom! BOOM!—so loud it bounces off the palace walls. My cry outlasts the echo of the last percussion by half a second, long enough for Khalaf to hear me. He turns and looks down.
For the span of several breaths, we stand ten feet apart, he above and I below. We stare at each other as if the rest of the world has disappeared. I’ve crossed deserts and mountains to find him, and now here he is, a thousand times cleaner than I’ve seen him in months, with his hair combed and braided into glossy loops behind his ears in the Mongol style. He’s wearing a robe of pale blue silk rather than his customary plain wool. He may as well be the sun clothed in the sky. Seeing him in the flesh, alive, hones my pent-up loneliness into a point that jabs me hard right underneath the breastbone.
And all I can think to say is “Cān jiàn Diànxià.”
Hello.
A very formal hello.
A crevice of incredulity deepens between his eyebrows before he rushes down the stairs. He takes me by the arms, and I can feel the heat of his hands through the fabric of my threadbare sleeves. It
takes every ounce of decorum I can muster to stop myself from throwing my arms around him and burying my face in his neck. Given what happened the last time we spoke, that would not be a wise move.
“What are you doing here?” he asks, bewildered, as he pulls me away from the crowd to the foot of the tower. “Is my father with you?”
“I’m here,” Timur answers for himself, pushing past the onlookers.
Shouts strike up from the pavilions. Turandokht’s guards are coming for the man who beat the drum.
Khalaf releases me and looks at Timur in horror. “You followed me? What were you thinking? Hulegu Il-Khan’s men were looking for us not fifteen hundred li west of here in Ordos. I barely escaped capture, and I’ve had to stay off the trade routes ever since. It’s taken me ages to get to Khanbalik. I’m certain our enemies must have arrived by now. It’s incredibly dangerous for you here.”
Timur’s face falls into its familiar, stony scowl. So much for family reunions.
The sound of marching footsteps approaches quickly, and the crowd begins to part to make room for a unit of guards coming to take Khalaf away.
“You have to go,” he tells us.
“Like hell,” says Timur. “You’re coming with us.”
“It’s too late for that.”
“I am your lord and khan, and you will do as I say.”
“I’m trying save you,” Khalaf says, his frustration on full display. “And the Kipchak Khanate. And . . . and her.” He turns back to me as the guards arrive.
“What man is it who beat the drum?” one of them asks.
“I did,” Khalaf answers, but he’s still looking at me.
I don’t know what to do. I’m terrified that if he takes his eyes off mine or if I tear mine from his that he’ll be lost to me for good.
“Only men of royal blood may offer for Turandokht Khatun,” the guard says, eyeing Khalaf doubtfully. “Any commoner who beats that drum dies on sight.”
“Then it’s too bad for you that I was born a prince,” Khalaf replies.
Timur curses when he hears his own words coming back to haunt him. There was a time when I would have said that it served him right, but those days are long gone. The guard rolls his eyes and tells his companions, “We’ll let Chancellor Zhang sort this out.” To Khalaf he says, “You will come with us, please.”