by Megan Bannen
One morning, as I’m taking a bite of a dried date, I catch him watching me as I bring the fruit to my mouth. He’s wearing that glassy-eyed expression that makes my pulse pound in my veins.
“How do you say ‘date’ in Hanyu?” he asks, as if that’s why he’s staring at me, at my mouth. And who knows? Maybe it is.
“‘Zăo,’” I tell him.
“Zăo. Good. Excellent. Thank you.”
He returns his attention to his own breakfast, but I’m reluctant to let him go so easily. I say, “When couples marry, people tell them ‘zăo shēng guì zĭ,’ which means ‘May you give birth to a son.’ “But since ‘zăo’ also means ‘date,’ and ‘huāshēng’ means ‘peanut,’ sometimes people give the couple dates and peanuts as a joke.”
And for a moment, I have him back. He smiles, enjoying the play on words. But then he glances over his shoulder at Timur, and his cool demeanor returns.
It’s stunning how quickly the landscape changes once we exit the Pamirs, from stubbly steppe country to desert once more, all in less than a week’s travel. By the time we arrive at Kashgar, it’s been a month since we left Samarkand—a month of stilted awkwardness between me and Khalaf, punctuated briefly by one night of warmth on the Roof of the World. If I never see the Pamirs again, it will be too soon. Tonight, I will sleep in a nice, warm, dry caravanserai, and I will remember those freezing stone shelters in the mountains with no fondness at all. Whatsoever.
Although, truth be told, I can’t quite expunge the memory of Khalaf’s lying beside me, back-to-back. Or waking with my face pressed into his neck. Or the scent of him. Or the way his entire body felt against mine. Or his voice in the night.
. . . and thou
Beside me singing in the wilderness . . .
He lingers in the caravanserai stables, fussing with his camel’s pack long after the rest of us are finished and ready to head to our sleeping quarters. Maybe I’m delusional, but I could swear he’s avoiding me.
I walk several paces behind Timur and Mazdak on our way to the room with my pack weighing down my arms like a fat baby when I decide to turn back.
“Where are you going?” Timur calls behind me.
“Forgot something.”
I hear him make that throaty protest behind me that forcefully reminds me of my mother. It seems impossible that Timur and my mother could have anything in common, but I suppose to a certain extent parents are parents. He doesn’t want me going near Khalaf, and my mother probably wouldn’t either. But he’s not my mother, and there’s nothing he can do about it.
As I walk back to the stables, it occurs to me that just this single act would have been impossible in my old life. In some ways, I’m freer now than I have ever been.
When I turn the corner, I find Khalaf already walking toward me from the opposite direction. He stops when he sees me, so I’m the one who closes the distance between us.
“Is everything all right?” he asks.
“Yes, my lord, it’s only . . . Have I done something wrong?” His demeanor is still distant. He’s standing right in front of me, and yet I miss him terribly.
“No, of course not.” He doesn’t elaborate. Even his eyes have walled me out.
My throat swells. “Then why are you being like this?” I ask, my voice wavering pathetically.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Like”—I take one arm away from my bundle and flap my hand at him—“this.” I fumble with the sack and catch it up again with both arms.
Khalaf takes the bag from my arms even though he’s carrying a bag of his own. “Jinghua,” he says quietly, “look, I’m sorry. I know I owe you an apology.”
“For what?”
“In the Pamirs, when I . . . when I slept next to you. It wasn’t right. I’m a . . .” He looks around as people pass by us along the hallway, eyeing us with raised eyebrows and curious glances. “I am who I am,” he whispers. “And you . . .”
I burn with anger and humiliation. “And I’m a slave,” I finish for him. “Just say it.”
“No. That isn’t what I meant.” His face twists. I think he might start bawling right here in the hallway.
Good, I think viciously.
My eyes catch a tiny glint of light coming from a darkened doorway right behind Khalaf, the reflection of light on metal.
Any and all indignation I may have felt half a second ago drains out of me faster than lightning streaks across the night sky.
I launch myself at Khalaf. He’s caught off guard, and we both go tumbling to the intricately tiled floor as the blade intended for Khalaf’s back sails over us, clanks against the opposite wall, and clatters on the ground just inches from our tangled feet.
I’m spread-eagled on top of Khalaf’s torso, but I’m so relieved he’s still alive that I don’t have the decency to be embarrassed. Khalaf raises his head off the floor and stares at the dagger with wide eyes before he turns his attention to the shadowy doorway from whence it came. A man bolts out of the darkness and runs pell-mell down the hall toward the courtyard. Khalaf squirms out from beneath me, snatches up the dagger, gets back on his feet in a blur of motion, and goes sprinting after the assassin.
I’m still trying to sort out why in the name of all that is good and holy Khalaf is running toward his killer rather than away from him as I get to my own feet and pelt down the corridor after them. I’m already ten paces behind Khalaf when I slam into a pair of merchants who dart out of Khalaf’s way as he bullets past them. Now I’ve dropped too far behind to catch up. I leave the two merchants to scold my backside as I dart down an adjacent hallway, hoping to close in on the assassin from the opposite direction.
And do what? I wonder as my lungs ache and my muscles burn. “This is such a bad idea,” I gasp as I take a corner heading to the market stalls that will lead me back toward the courtyard. Even this late in the afternoon, the bazaar is bustling with people, and now I’m pushing and shoving as well as running.
I see Khalaf on the other side of the market, racing toward me, but I don’t see the assassin anywhere. Khalaf and I close the distance between us and stop to look for the man we were chasing as we gasp for air. Nothing. He’s managed to disappear in the market crowds.
“Get somewhere safe before I kill you myself,” I pant at Khalaf.
“Father” is Khalaf’s only reply, and he goes racing off again, this time heading back toward the sleeping quarters.
I whimper, but I follow his lead, sprinting after him. He bursts into our room just a few seconds ahead of me.
“Oh, thank God,” he breathes once he sees that his father is still alive. He closes the door behind me and leans up against it to catch his breath.
“Where the hell have you been?” Timur asks.
“My lord—Father, we need to leave. Now.”
I watch as the reality of our situation weighs down Timur’s eyebrows. “What? They’re here? In fucking Kashgar?”
Khalaf glances at Mazdak and nods at Timur.
“How many?”
“Just one, but he ran and we lost him in the bazaar. We have to assume there are more.”
“Rotting carrion!”
Mazdak chooses this moment to insert himself into the conversation.
“Look, I don’t know what’s going on here, but I don’t want any trouble.”
Timur doesn’t even glance at the man. “We’ll have to kill him,” he says with a jerk of his head in Mazdak’s direction. It takes the camel driver a moment to catch on, but when he does, he makes a mad, scrabbling rush toward the door, tripping over his own feet in the process.
“We are not going to kill him,” Khalaf informs his father, and calls to our panicked companion, “We are not going to kill you.”
Mazdak goes still, and his eyes dart back and forth between father and son. He’s trying to figure out who’s in charge. I think we’re all trying to figure out who’s in charge.
Khalaf strides past his father without a glance and gives the camel
driver a hand up. “We’ll need camels. Can you do that for us, friend?”
“We need speed,” says Timur. “We need horses, not camels.”
“We don’t have horses, and we won’t last more than a couple of days in the Taklamakan Desert without camels.” Khalaf turns back to Mazdak. “The camels?”
The man glances nervously at Timur. “I won’t tell. Whoever you are, I won’t tell anyone.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want any trouble.”
“I know. Thank you. The camels?”
The man’s eyes dart to Timur one more time and then to the door. He turns back to Khalaf and lets out a tension-filled breath. “Two,” he says. “Abbas specified that two would belong to you. That’s all I can do. Really.”
“What?” Timur spits.
“Two.” Khalaf nods in agreement. He places a hand on each of Mazdak’s shoulders and kisses his cheeks. “Thank you.”
We never really had the chance to unpack, so it’s easy enough to gather up our few belongings. Timur, of course, doesn’t lift a finger to help. He turns to stone as he did back in Sarai, a statue dedicated to resentment and cold fury. Five minutes later, we follow Mazdak to the stables, where the camel trader culls out the two camels designated for us. Khalaf kisses the man’s cheeks once more and tells him, “I won’t forget this, Brother.”
“I know, my lord.” It’s the first time Mazdak has called Khalaf by his title, and the last, I suppose. “I’m heading southeast. You’d do best to take the northern road.”
With that, Mazdak leaves the three of us on our own once again. Well, on our own with two camels. Khalaf walks over to Timur, who refuses to look at him, choosing instead to glare at the stable wall.
“We’ll talk about this later,” Khalaf tells him with a cold edge to his voice. “We need to get moving. I’ll give you a leg up, Father. Jinghua, you can ride with me. We’ll try to travel parallel to the road, but we’ll need to go farther north than that to stay out of sight. We should run into Qaidu’s camp within a couple of weeks, maybe three.”
If the il-khan’s men don’t overtake us remains unsaid, but it hovers in the air like a ghost.
20
THE SUN SETS AND THE MOON rises. We travel for hours in darkness and silence. I keep looking behind us, expecting to see the meager moonlight glinting off our enemies’ helmets.
We don’t stop until Timur dozes off and nearly falls off his camel before jerking awake and grappling for the pommel at the last minute. The camels are half dead with exhaustion anyway. Khalaf takes first watch while his father sleeps. I sit with him since I’m too anxious to sleep. If we’re attacked tonight, I want to be awake and sitting up for whatever good it will do me. We haven’t lit a fire, so I squint into the darkness in the direction of Kashgar and shiver in the frigid night air.
“Go to sleep, Jinghua,” Khalaf tells me. “You need to rest.”
“So do you.”
We’re both speaking to the southwestern horizon, our voices dissipating along the road to Kashgar.
“Mazdak’s an incredible liability now, you know,” I tell him.
“I couldn’t let an innocent man die simply that I might live.”
“Most men would have killed him.”
“I’d like to think that’s not true,” Khalaf says.
“You can think whatever you like.”
“You wouldn’t have killed him either.”
“I’m not a man”—I sigh—“and I’m not very good at killing.”
“Is that so terrible?”
Yes, I think. Very terrible. Aloud, I say, “All this time, you’ve protected your father, like he’s the only one who matters. Why would you assume that Hulegu Il-Khan only cares about him? Why would you assume no one wants to kill you, too?”
“The insignificant third son who likes to discuss philosophy and play with astrolabes?”
“You almost died today. Do you still think you’re not worthy of assassination?”
“No, I thought other people thought I wasn’t worthy of assassination.”
“You underestimated your importance, my lord.” My annoyance with his staggering ignorance flares hot.
“Not true. I think I’m very important,” he says, trying to lighten the mood.
“It’s not funny.” I feel like I’m going to burst, like I’m teetering on some precipice and I’m about to go over the edge. I give him a shove to the shoulder and repeat, “It’s not funny at all.”
“Jinghua.” His tone is remonstrative, and I’m in no mood for it.
“You are the prince of the Kipchak Khanate and Timur Khan’s sole heir—his sole heir, whether you like it or not. I’m sorry you lost your brothers, and I’m sorry they didn’t hold a candle to you. I’m sorry you have to lead when you don’t want to. But you are brilliant and you are charismatic and you are dangerous on the field of battle, among many other threatening attributes. So trust me when I tell you, my lord, that you grossly underestimate the extent to which other people think you are important.”
A dense silence follows my tirade. We stare at each other, our features dulled and flattened in the night, but I can see his mouth gaping at my temerity.
“You would know,” Khalaf replies at last, his voice thick. “You’re the expert on that subject.”
His biting tone makes my eyes sting with hurt. I wasn’t even important before I was a slave, much less now. How could I underestimate that?
We both turn away from each other to face Kashgar again, sitting side by side in the desert grit with me fuming more at myself than at him and him thinking heaven knows what. We watch and wait. The sky begins to lighten to a dull pink to the east. Suddenly, I see Khalaf go tense out of my peripheral vision. He leans forward, intent on the horizon to the southwest.
“What is it?” I whisper. His hand goes up to silence me, and my whole body goes numb with panic. He watches for a heartbeat more and then leaps to his feet, pulling the saber Abbas gave him out of its sheath with a metallic shink.
I can see them now: five dots to the southwest like a line of black ants.
“Jinghua?” Khalaf says quietly as he watches the dots grow larger by the second. “Go wake my father.”
“Yes, my lord,” I breathe, rising unsteadily to my feet, my fear so acute my whole body hums with it.
He turns to me, grim faced, his eyes bright and burning. “After that, you hide. Do you hear me?”
My mind fills with all the things I want to say to him, each one jostling for priority, among them I’m sorry and I love you more than my life and, above all, Please, don’t die.
Oh.
I’m stupidly, hopelessly, pointlessly in love with the prince of the Kipchak Khanate.
In hindsight, this is obvious, but the realization bowls me over all the same.
“My lord,” I plead, for what I don’t know.
He takes me by the upper arm, his hand dimpling the wool of my sleeve. He leans down so that his face is level with mine, and his eyes meet my eyes straight on. He grasps my arm tighter and gives me a small shake, saying, “You wake him up, and then you hide. You live, Jinghua.”
I nod. He lets me go and turns to face the five men riding hell-bent toward us on galloping mares, so close that I can hear the horses’ hooves and feel them trembling in the earth beneath my feet. I shake Timur awake. I don’t have to say a thing. The old man lunges for his lance.
By the time I turn back around, they’re on us, firing arrows, one of which sails just past my shoulder and lodges in the desert sand. I see Khalaf roll out of the way of another rider as Timur, standing his ground like a madman, hooks his attacker with the lance and yanks the man off his saddle.
I make a run for the camels. Khalaf told me to hide, and given the monotony of the landscape, I don’t have a lot of options. I can die right now, or I can hide behind a camel and wait a little longer to die.
The camel bleats in terror as I peer over its hump. Timur is nearer to me and easier to see. He�
��s got the man he’s already killed in one of his meaty hands, holding the corpse in front of him as a shield. When another warrior shoots at him, the arrow lodges into the dead man’s back with a nauseating thunk. Timur hurls the body at another horseman bearing down on him so that the animal stumbles and falls and sends her rider sailing through the air. When the soldier lands, there’s a crack, and he screeches in agony, his leg bone jutting out from the shredded, bloody flesh of his thigh.
My hands curl into the camel’s hair as I search for Khalaf with my heart pounding so hard it feels like it’s pulsing in my throat. I find him launching himself atop a riderless mare and flying across the desert with his saber out. Another man speeds toward him on his own horse with a bow nocked and ready to fire. This is no bandit; this is a trained Mongol warrior. And while the man’s skill may not match that of Khalaf, he’s fully armored, and Khalaf’s body is as vulnerable as a baby’s.
I stand up and scream as the man releases his arrow.
And misses.
Khalaf is on him now and shouts with effort as he uses the full force of his body to strike the enemy in the neck and throw him off his horse, sending a constellation of blood spurting from the man’s throat.
I’m standing completely defenseless in the middle of a battlefield as one of the il-khan’s men comes toward me on foot with a dagger in his hand, ready to cut me to shreds.
It all comes back to me, that moment my world ended in Lin’an, the way the word “run” pulsed through my entire body as I fled the men who had come to kill me. Terrified, I startle backward and trip over the camel. The man’s shadow covers me. His eyes are cold, calculating.
I kick up at him, but my foot only bangs painfully against his armor. The will to live sends me spinning onto my stomach and scuttling away from my killer like a crab. He easily catches up and turns me onto my back with his toe.
I’m going to die. I’m really going to die this time.
I close my eyes and see Khalaf crouched before me the first time we met, his hand outstretched with an apple on his palm.
Nothing happens.
I open my eyes. The man still stands over me, his arm pulled back, ready to jab the dagger into my heart. But the arm falls. The dagger drops to the desert sand. A metallic point juts out of the hardened leather of the man’s armor, then protrudes farther until several inches of a bloodied lance push past his stomach. The blade withdraws with a slick suck, and as the man falls, he reveals Timur towering behind him, murderous and terrifying.