by Megan Bannen
But I already know that isn’t true, even before I’m finished thinking it. Who am I kidding?
Timur folds his arms. “If you had chosen a tent or a bow back in the Caucasus, we wouldn’t be at the edge of death toting around a third mouth as it is.”
Khalaf draws himself up, squares his shoulders. He looks very regal in the gesture, and it would be an impressive sight if his father were not quite so enormous. “I won’t allow it,” he says.
“What did you just say to me?”
“I said—”
Timur takes one aggressive stomp toward his son, bending down so that he’s nose to nose with Khalaf.
“Am I or am I not your khan?” Timur demands.
Khalaf says nothing. He draws a long breath through his nostrils, but it never reappears. He remains silent with his breath pent up inside him.
“Answer me.”
“Yes, my lord, but—”
“Cancerous lamb’s balls, stop thinking with your rocks and start thinking with your head! The Eternal Blue Sky knows I’ve paid enough tutors to fill it to bursting. That slave is our one and only asset.” He points at me as if he could skewer me with his thick forefinger. “We are going to liquidate that asset, and we are going to buy food and shelter, the need of which you have already so astutely pointed out, so that we can regroup and figure out our next steps. We need money. She is money. Do you understand?”
Khalaf looks to me with damp, wild eyes, as if I could do anything to help him or myself. But the only one who could help either of us is Khalaf. And Khalaf is doing nothing.
“Do you understand, boy?” Timur repeats.
Khalaf’s dignity and poise have melted into anguish. He looks to me and then to Timur and then back to me again, and nowhere can he find an answer that will suit. Shit all over the girl you believe to have saved your life or disrespect your father: it’s a moral dilemma par excellence for a philosophical prince.
He regards his father smoldering above him, inches from his face, and he bows his head. “Yes, my lord,” he says.
Well, what did you expect? I ask myself brutally. Kindness isn’t an eternal font. At some point it has to run dry. Given the circumstances, I have no right to feel hurt or offended, but I do anyway. Khalaf’s defection bruises me badly.
You have nothing left to lose, I urge myself. Just run.
But it’s too late to run, because a stranger is standing at the edge of shade cast by the canopy of the tree. The man smiles with congeniality, although I can’t imagine why. What a scene we must make, all of us ragged and filthy.
The man speaks to Timur in a language I don’t recognize, and Khalaf answers cautiously. Of course he knows whatever language this is. He probably picked it up in his spare time when he wasn’t busy defining financial systems for an entire empire or mapping the trajectory of a comet across the heavens—he’s done that, too.
“So sorry to disturb you,” the man says in accented Mongolian, his teeth glowing in the shadows of the canopy as he walks nearer. He’s an older man, though not as old as Timur. He wears a blue vest over a pale yellow kaftan and a turban around his head like Khalaf. “You’ll have to forgive my intrusion. I didn’t see you there at first, but may I say you have the right idea? There isn’t a decent shade tree in the village, let me tell you, so I always come out here when it gets this hot.”
“You’re welcome to join us, sir, if you don’t mind the company of weary travelers,” Timur says civilly enough, but both he and Khalaf widen their stances, their bodies wound tight for battle just in case. They look remarkably unruffled, united side by side as if they hadn’t been at each other’s throats moments ago.
I imagine that I look like a three-days-dead corpse, but no one’s paying much attention to me anyway. To hell with all of them. My ridiculous hurt feelings have quickly transformed into seething anger and resentment. Let the khan and his bookish son get caught by the il-khan. I’m running the first chance I get.
“You look as if you’ve traveled a great distance,” the man comments, stepping forward. He adds politely, “If you don’t mind my saying.”
“Not at all,” Timur answers stiffly. “Perhaps you can tell us what town this is?”
The man raises his eyebrows. “Certainly. You’ve reached Rasht.”
Timur glances at Khalaf, who shakes his head. I haven’t heard of Rasht either, so I guess that makes three of us who have no idea where we are.
“You must have come a long way if you haven’t heard of it,” the man says.
“We have,” says Timur. “We were traveling with several other merchants through Circassia when we were attacked by robbers. They left me and my son alive, but they abandoned us in our current state of misfortune. We wandered here without knowing where we were going.”
And me! I want to scream. I’m still alive, too, you stupid egg!
“Dreadful.” The man shakes his head. He certainly seems nice—nicer than the jerks I’m traveling with, at any rate. “You must stay with me until you have recovered your strength.”
“We cannot trespass on your kindness, sir,” Khalaf tells him, but the stranger is so effusive in his sympathy, so cordial in offering hospitality, that it would be prohibitively impolite to refuse his invitation. The man ventures out into the heat to notify his household, and we follow. I still seem to be along for the ride, at least for the time being.
As Timur steps forward to speak with our host, Khalaf drops behind with me, slipping a quince into my hand.
“I won’t let him . . .” But he can’t bring himself to finish.
“Yes, you will,” I say, glaring at him. “You said as much.”
He glances warily at his father’s back. “I’m sorry. I’ll figure something out. I promise.”
“What do you care?” I toss the quince away and watch it roll across the dusty street, even though my stomach screams in protest. I plant my feet on the ground and glare down at them.
It wasn’t my intention, but I have now put Khalaf in a position where he has to choose between dealing with me or following after his precious khan.
“Jinghua,” he pleads, standing between me and the two men, who are walking farther and farther away. I hate the fact that he reminds me of Weiji in this moment, the way my brother always had to navigate a world in which our father would never approve of him. I feel the burning itch to cry scratching at my eyes.
“Son!” Timur barks, calling his loyal dog to his side. Khalaf pauses for a heartbeat before he catches up to his father.
He’s so sure I’ll follow.
He’s a fool.
But if he’s a fool, then so am I. I keep telling myself I have a choice, that I could either do what I crossed a continent to do or I could run. But a familiar voice echoes in my head: You’re a slave now, my dear. You don’t have a choice.
So, in the end, I shuffle after the Kipchaks.
Who’s the loyal dog now? I chide myself.
Stupid Jinghua.
Stupid, stupid Jinghua.
10
THE MAN’S NAME, WE LEARN, IS Abbas. His home is small and spare, but I get the sense that his life is simple rather than impoverished. It can’t be too impoverished, at any rate, since he keeps several slaves. Abbas orders one of them to give me a clean kaftan. Khalaf must have tipped him off that I’m a girl, since it’s a female slave who gives me one of her own plain, black garments. She pinches me when she forks it over, and the memory of who I was puffs itself up like a peacock. I gore her with a glare so fierce that her eyes go wide and she backs away, giving me a wide berth for the rest of the evening.
I do my best to wash weeks of grime off my skin in the small alley behind the house before I slip on the kaftan. Even though wearing clean clothes feels like heaven, it’s not nearly enough to overcome my rancor at my new predicament.
Me. The asset to be liquidated.
I hear Timur’s bluster before I even step across the threshold, which irritates me even more. “An education is all well an
d good, but nothing replaces experience,” he contends, his voice dripping with derision. “You can’t win a war because you read about one in a poem.”
Timur and Khalaf are finely groomed again, and their new kaftans practically glow in the lamplight. I let the dishes speak my bitterness as I serve them. I clatter the teacups and rattle the pot. Khalaf gives me an apologetic glance, but he looks away when I scowl at him.
“And yet poetry, philosophy, the study of the stars, these things give you wisdom,” Abbas answers. He grins madly, enjoying the debate. “The man who is wiser than his opponent will always win the battle.”
“The man who can shoot an arrow with accuracy from a galloping horse will win the battle.”
“That is certainly very helpful.” Abbas chuckles. He turns to Khalaf to ask, “What do you think, sir?”
Khalaf the traitor sits quietly on his cushion, frowning down at the steaming cup in his hands. And here I am serving him his damn tea yet again.
I saved your life, you ingrate, I think at him. You owe me.
“‘Seek knowledge,’” he answers Abbas, “‘for through knowledge doors will be opened to you and never closed.’”
Timur sighs to the heavens, and, for once, I share the sentiment. The Kipchaks are about to sell me back into slavery, and Khalaf’s quoting poetry. I bite back my tongue so hard it nearly bleeds, I’m that livid.
“Was that Nizami?” Abbas asks. “How does the rest of that verse go?”
It’s as if our host has lit a lamp inside Khalaf. He recites a passage, his voice soft and reverent:
“Seek knowledge, for through knowledge doors will be opened to you and never closed.
He who is unashamed of his learning pulls pearls from the water, rubies from the rock,
While a man who is ashamed of his learning is assigned no knowledge and knows nothing.
To be keen of mind but slack of effort is to sell pottery from a lack of pearls,
While many a dullard, through his being taught, becomes a leader of men.”
Abbas’s smile widens, and he turns to Timur. “That,” he proclaims, his finger pointed upward to his god, “is wisdom.”
Khalaf drops his gaze to his lap, trying to hide his pleased smile. It must be nice for him to be in the presence of a father figure who approves of him for a change. I’d be happy for him if he weren’t about to sell me out to gain the approval of his real father, who doesn’t deserve it. Stupid egg.
“You are very learned for one so young,” says Abbas. “Here, you must speak with my man, Mustapha, who has an excellent mind. Mustapha!”
An Arab slave standing against the wall steps forward and kneels before Abbas.
“Give him a subject, sir,” Abbas tells Khalaf. “Ask him any question. I promise you, his answer will merit your praise.”
The Arab turns his attention to Khalaf and waits for his direction.
“We’ve heard in our travels that the Il-Khanids have overthrown our Kipchak brothers, Mustapha,” Khalaf says casually.
“Indeed, sir,” answers the Arab. His voice is high and light. It belies the largeness of the body beneath his white robe, like a great limestone brick.
“It’s a sort of puzzle, isn’t it, how the Kipchaks might regain their khanate again? I wonder if there is a solution to it.”
Even though I’m angry with him, I can’t help but wish Khalaf would be more careful, that he wouldn’t take such a risk as to speak openly about the Kipchak Khanate. If the Arab suspects anything, he shows no sign of it. He pronounces, “The solution to that problem lies in the Great Khan’s own city, Khanbalik.”
“Khanbalik? Do you think the Great Khan would help the Kipchaks then?”
“No,” answers Mustapha. Abbas laughs good-naturedly.
Khalaf obviously doesn’t find it amusing. “Perhaps you could elucidate?”
“Forgive me, sir,” says the slave. “It is not entirely correct to say that the Great Khan will not help. Rather, he might be coerced into aiding the Kipchaks if one managed to win his daughter.”
Turandokht, once again. Her specter haunts me as regularly as my brother’s ghost, and far more malevolently.
“A man would woo Turandokht Khatun at great risk,” says Abbas. The sound of her name makes me grit my teeth.
“How so, my lord?” asks Khalaf.
Mustapha takes up the tale. “Two years ago, the Great Khan made a contract with the Song Dynasty to marry his only daughter—his only living child—to one of the Song princes. The daughter refused to consent to her father’s wishes. She would neither eat nor drink. She grew quite ill. The Great Khan relented and destroyed the contract, but it wasn’t enough for Turandokht. She demanded that, henceforth, any man wishing to marry her would have to pass a test of wits and, if he was unable to succeed, forfeit his life. If the Great Khan didn’t agree to these terms, she would starve herself to death.”
Mustapha doesn’t mention what happened to the Song Dynasty, but I know. The Song declared war on the Great Khan and the Yuan when Turandokht refused our prince. And now the Song Empire is no more, and the Khanate of the Yuan Dynasty stretches from the Mongol homeland in the north to the farthest reaches of what was once my home in the south. I keep my face as blank as ever while my blood boils in my veins. I’ve lost everything—everything—to Turandokht. Even the sound of her name makes me ball my hands into tight, furious fists.
“Honestly, can you credit that?” Abbas hoots. “The pride of young girls these days!”
“I admit I’m astonished,” Khalaf says. “Did her father consent to this?”
“He took an oath before the Eternal Blue Sky.”
Timur remains remarkably impassive through this conversation, and that, in and of itself, is suspicious.
“What sort of test must one pass?” Khalaf asks.
“A series of riddles.”
“Riddles? Really?”
I want to throttle Khalaf for being intrigued, and I want to throttle myself for caring enough about him to want to throttle him.
“Yes,” Abbas interrupts, “the kind that result in a young man losing his life. Literally. Turandokht has executed at least ten princes to my knowledge for failing her challenge, and if the rumors are true that the Great Khan is gravely ill, who knows how many more will step forward.”
Here, Khalaf looks sharply at his father. I suddenly recall a moment right before I came to Sarai when Chancellor Zhang mentioned something about the Great Khan being “under the weather.” I didn’t think anything of it at the time. Now Zhang’s words make me feel like a game piece strategically placed on a xiàngqí board.
“Mustapha,” Abbas continues, “I praised your great knowledge and wisdom, and here you are filling the boy’s head with dreams of conquering the Ice Queen. Only a man of royal lineage might face that challenge.”
“Forgive me, my lord. It was only that the young gentleman asked how one might save the Kipchak Khanate. And I’m sure you would agree that saving the Kipchak Khanate at this point would require desperate measures.”
Our host grins. “I dislike losing arguments with you, slave.”
“Indeed, my lord.” Mustapha bows before returning to his place behind his master.
Timur slurps his tea while Khalaf rubs his bottom lip and eyes his father sidelong. I suspect we’re thinking the same thing. The Great Khan of the Mongol Empire may be dying, and if a man in a small city like Rasht knows about it, how much did the khan of the Kipchak Khanate know four months ago, when he and his sons decided to go to war?
I guess we all have something to hide.
I stand against the wall, homesick and heartsick, trying to figure out how I’m going to get out of being sold so that somehow, some way, I can leave all this behind me and go back to Lin’an.
Despite the hospitality of our host, Khalaf is so exhausted from our trek through the Caucasus that he falls asleep right there on Abbas’s tasteful rug. The entire process takes about half an hour as the older men talk of trade and war
and past battles. Ever meticulous in matters of formality, Khalaf fights against it, but he slowly sags toward the floor until his eyes close and his lips sag. His beardless face looks startlingly young, his soft lower lip vulnerable.
The innocent, dutiful jerk.
Timur gives his offspring a look of annoyance, and Abbas laughs.
“Let him be,” the host says with a dismissive wave of his hand. Timur grunts his assent, to which Abbas laughs again. “Your son has a gifted mind, sir.”
“My son cares too much for learning,” Timur replies as I pour out another cup of tea for him. His voice sounds gruff, but as he regards his son, his face takes on a different expression, one he would never let Khalaf see: he looks genuinely worried.
“Would you have him soldiering, then? With your forgiveness, he doesn’t seem the type. Does he do well with a bow?”
“He fights beautifully with anything—a bow, a lance, an uurga, even a saber. I’ve never seen a more talented warrior.”
“I see.”
Two thoughts cross my mind simultaneously. One is that Timur, despite all evidence to the contrary up to this point, is fiercely proud of Khalaf. The second is that, as the conversation goes on, Timur is sounding less and less like the merchant he supposedly is. I step on his toes and glower at him as I walk past to call his attention to it, although I can’t fathom why I even care at this point. It does no good anyway. He just ignores me.
Abbas sits back to ruminate before speaking again. “Perhaps it is his reluctance that makes him so.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow you,” Timur says.
“He does not rush into violence. He thinks first. Therefore, if he must act, if he must use force, he does so with wisdom and clarity.”
“Perhaps,” Timur answers doubtfully.
“It is the same with all great men. The man who craves power is the one you cannot trust with it, but the man who is reluctant to lead becomes the greatest ruler of all.”
“A great ruler of men is the one who fosters the most love and obedience.”
Abbas sets his teacup down carefully. “True. But it’s easier to foster love and obedience when ruling is a sacrifice rather than a pleasure.”