The Bird and the Blade

by Megan Bannen

  Timur nods at me. It’s a question, his way of asking me if I’m all right. I’m not, but I nod anyway. He turns back to survey what’s left as the stunning fact that the old goat just saved my life hits me.

  I’m shaking too hard to stand up, so I get to my hands and knees in time to watch Khalaf chase after the last remaining warrior, who is now fleeing back toward Kashgar. The man turns back, aiming an arrow at Khalaf behind him as his mount thunders forward. Khalaf pulls the bow from the saddle and an arrow from the quiver and takes aim as his legs grip the galloping mare beneath him. He sends the arrow sailing and hits his mark before the other man fires. The last of our assailants falls from his saddle, and his horse races off without him. Khalaf rides out to the fallen soldier, dismounts, pulls out his saber, and drives it into the man’s body.

  I count the dead to be sure: one-two-three-four-five. Exhausted with relief, I fall onto my ass and slump my head onto my knees, trying to get a grip. When I hear a horse galloping straight for me and feel its staccato beat in the ground, my head snaps up.

  Khalaf is heading for us on horseback at full speed. I scramble to my feet, ready to roll out of the way. He pulls up to a stop at the last minute and slides off the horse in one fluid motion, running to me and taking me by the arm again, just as he did before the battle began.

  “Are you all right? Are you hurt?” he asks in a rush of words.

  “I’m not hurt, my lord,” I tell him, overwhelmed by his raw, frantic energy.

  “Jinghua?” His face is next to mine. His eyes bore into me.

  “I believe that was my three to your two,” Timur boasts to Khalaf. “That’ll teach you to doubt your old man.”

  Khalaf shifts his focus from me to his father, and in that instant, his face goes white with rage. Stark fury streams off him like steam as Timur continues to brag, oblivious.

  “I may be three times your age, young mustang, but I can still tear a man from the saddle,” he gloats.

  Khalaf releases me and walks over to his father so slowly, so deliberately, that I think he’s trying to contain the urge to strangle Timur at last. “What is this?” he asks, his soft voice as menacing as cracked ice atop a river.

  “What?” Timur asks defensively.

  “This. This makes no sense. Hulegu Il-Khan already has your throne. Why is he so hell-bent on hunting you down?”

  It’s a great question, but I’m wondering why, after everything that’s happened in the past few hours, Khalaf is still saying “you” rather than “us,” a clear indication that his healthy sense of humility has veered wildly into willful ignorance. My exasperation with him escapes in a throaty huff.

  “Fine. Us,” Khalaf corrects himself, his voice sharp with anger. “Why is Hulegu still hunting us down? Happy now, Jinghua?”

  “Thank you,” I mutter, flustered that he knew exactly what I was thinking. My whole body is shaking. There are so many emotions rattling around inside me right now I feel like I’m going to explode.

  Timur says nothing, his silence as menacing as Khalaf’s fury.

  “What aren’t you telling me?” Khalaf fumes.

  “My lords!” I interrupt, stomping my foot, completely out of patience with the manly chest-beating. “There were ten men after you back in Samarkand, and there are only five here. We have no idea how many are tracking you. Can you please wait to have it out until after we manage to live through the rest of this day? Let’s go!”

  I stare down Khalaf first. He blows out a breath and nods. I turn on Timur.

  “Damn you, girl,” the old goat mutters, but he walks obediently toward the camels.

  21

  KHALAF IS BACK IN HIS TURBAN, and I’m in a makeshift veil because the Taklamakan Desert is a wasteland of sand, sand, and curved, billowing dunes of sand. I have never in my life seen a landscape so monotonous and terrifying. The name Taklamakan actually means You can get in, but you can’t get out. Really, that’s what it means. And we’re in it.

  I’m riding in front of Khalaf on one of the camels, even though we’ve taken two of the enemy’s horses. “I want to keep them as fresh as possible in case we need to move quickly,” Khalaf reasons.

  “Mm-hmm” is Timur’s doubtful response.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” Khalaf whispers in my ear, so close his lips touch my veil. We rode like this yesterday, but it was different, stiff, formal. Today, Khalaf’s hands on the reins are nearer, his arms closer, his torso pressed fully against my back, like someone has placed me inside a Khalaf envelope. Or maybe this is all just wishful thinking. All I know is that if I have to die, this is how I want to go.

  “I’m fine, my lord,” I tell him. “Really.”

  “I’m sorry. You wouldn’t be in this mess if it weren’t for us.”

  “I’d be dead if it weren’t for you. You don’t need to apologize to me.” I’m more than capable of making my own messes, I add in my mind.

  We’re several tense hours into our journey across the brutal landscape when Timur wonders aloud, “Why am I still in the world?”

  “Father,” Khalaf says warningly, but Timur’s voice drones on, his tone both passive-aggressive and mythic. “Wouldn’t it have been better to have fought my enemy in my own khanate and to have died defending Sarai than to drag out this pathetic half life?”

  I have to admit the man’s got a point.

  “You shouldn’t speak like that,” says Khalaf.

  “I’m sick to death of enduring our misfortunes with patience.”

  “‘Patience,’ you call it?” I chime in. Oddly, Timur is the one who harrumphs with amusement while Khalaf sighs with exasperation behind me.

  “Father, I have faith that God—” he begins.

  “Don’t,” snaps Timur. “You can tolerate the decrees of heaven if you want to. I, for one, have no intention of suffering in silence.”

  As if Timur has ever suffered in silence a day in his life.

  Khalaf’s irritation with his father simmers in his answer. “We’ll find Qaidu, and then maybe our fortunes will change. Maybe God is preparing some relief for us that we can’t foresee.”

  Timur snorts. This time, Khalaf and I sigh in unison.

  When the animals are so exhausted that we can go no farther, we set up camp off the road. Khalaf tries to rub our footprints out of the sand with his saber, but in the light of dusk, it looks like two men, two horses, two camels, one not-exactly-a-slave girl, and a drunk snake have decided to journey north of the main road. By the time he’s finished, he looks so exhausted I want to tuck him into his blanket, lie down behind him, and wrap him up in my spindly arms. The fact that I can’t do that, especially now that I’ve admitted to myself that I’m in love with him, is almost as depressing as the possibility that I might be slaughtered in my sleep tonight.

  We’re out of food and nearly out of water, so there’s no dinner. We’re not lighting a fire. Timur begins to unroll his blanket when Khalaf says, “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “What does it look like?”

  “Oh no. No, no, no. You owe me some answers, and I intend to have them.”

  “I’m tired,” Timur says.

  “Too bad. Why is the il-khan so dead set on hunting you down?”

  “He’s a vindictive, milk-blooded piece of carrion. Abbas said as much.”

  “Abbas? The man who is probably dead right now because of us?” Khalaf lets that remark sink in before adding, “The term ‘vindictive’ implies that a man responds too harshly to the actions of another. What I’d like to know is what exactly did you do to inspire his vindictiveness?”

  “I’ve done nothing wrong,” Timur insists.

  “You need to be more specific. To what ‘nothing’ are you referring?”

  Timur looks off to the sunrise, where pinks and oranges spread across the clouds. His frown registers something other than his usual arrogance, as if some actual human emotion lived in his shrunken goat heart.

  “It involves your mother,” the
old man says, his eyes shifting, looking anywhere but at Khalaf.

  That, apparently, was not what Khalaf was expecting to hear. He visibly recoils as if Timur has punched him in the gut, and here I am wading into this family’s dysfunction with the current growing stronger by the second, threatening to pull me under.

  The old man glances at his son and says, “It’s complicated.”

  “I’m aware of that,” Khalaf answers tightly.

  Timur gives a bitter laugh. “You’re aware of nothing.”

  “You think I don’t know? You think Miran and Jahangir kept that little gem to themselves? You think they didn’t throw it in my face every chance they got?”

  “Khalaf,” Timur murmurs, trying to placate his son.

  “You think I don’t remember her?” Khalaf’s voice sounds so pained that my own eyes well up in sympathy. I have no idea what’s going on, and here I am standing knee-deep in Khalaf’s wounds, and maybe Timur’s as well.

  “You asked me a question,” Timur says, the calm one for once. “I’m trying to answer it. Do you want to hear the answer or not?”

  Khalaf nods stiffly.

  “The Great Khan didn’t appreciate the fact that I didn’t show up to his election,” Timur explains. “I didn’t support his claim, nor did I support the coup d’état that took the rightfully elected Great Khan out of commission.”

  “I know all this,” Khalaf interrupts. “What does any of it have to do with our current situation? Or my mother?”

  Timur blows out a gust of air from his lungs. “The Great Khan sent Bibi Hanem to me as a peace offering. I had intended to send her back, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “But then I changed my mind.”

  By now, Khalaf is rubbing like mad at his lip. He stops and says, “What are you saying? Are you trying to tell me you were actually in love with my mother?” When Timur answers with a frown, Khalaf throws up his hands. “Will you just tell me once and for all what’s going on here?”

  “All right. Before the Great Khan sent him to retake control of Persia, Hulegu knew your mother in Khanbalik and was under the impression that she was intended for him. So when the Great Khan sent her to wed me instead, Hulegu wasn’t exactly thrilled.”

  “So he was in love with her?” Khalaf clarifies.

  “I guess that’s what you’d call it. She was an uncommonly beautiful woman, your mother.”

  I sit back on my haunches, taking in this whole exchange in depressed wonder. All the strife of the world, armies battling armies, and hovering behind all of it like a ghost is one failed love story after another.

  “So why now? Why is he attacking you now?”

  “Us,” Timur corrects him. “He’s attacking you, too.”

  “I told you so,” I mutter.

  “I don’t matter in this equation,” Khalaf insists.

  “You, the son of Timur Khan and Bibi Hanem, have always mattered . . . especially since, when I first learned that the Great Khan was dying, I sent a secret emissary to Khanbalik to broker a marriage between you and the Great Khan’s daughter.”

  There’s a long, long pause during which both Khalaf and I gape at Timur. My guts go leaden.

  “You tried to marry me off to Turandokht?” Khalaf says.

  Timur shrugs.

  “I thought you said that was an idiotic idea!”

  “No, I said that it was a fucking idiotic idea. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth a try. And keep your voice down. Sound probably carries for five lĭ out here.”

  Khalaf throws his arms up again. “So what happened to the emissary?”

  Timur scratches at his beard. “Well, it would seem the emissary was intercepted by Il-Khanid spies, because it was shortly thereafter that the il-khan sacked Baghdad and then sent his own emissary to the Kipchak Khanate demanding a tribute he knew we couldn’t pay.”

  “Purposefully drawing us into war,” Khalaf says, rubbing his lip.

  “Because there’s no earthly way Hulegu Il-Khan is going to let the son of Timur Khan and Bibi Hanem become the next Great Khan,” I finish off for him.

  “Smart girl,” Timur says.

  “Oh please, this isn’t about me,” Khalaf snipes at his father. “This is about you. It’s always been about you. You were using me to take over the empire yourself. No wonder Turandokht wants you dead.”

  Timur doesn’t refute it. Khalaf rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands before asking, “Did either of my brothers know about this? Miran? Jahangir?”

  Timur shakes his shaggy head.

  “Did anyone know about this?”

  “The men I sent,” Timur jokes. No one laughs, of course. He clears his throat and adds, “And, er, Qaidu knew. He said would support me as long as it worked. But it didn’t. Obviously.”

  “Qaidu was in on this, too?” Khalaf asks in disbelief.

  Timur nods.

  “Playing it pretty deep, Father,” Khalaf assesses grimly.

  “Aren’t we all?” I add under my breath and start chewing on a dirty fingernail. I can’t believe what a snarling thicket this mess has become.

  “It was a gamble,” Timur admits.

  “If we have nothing to lose, why are we still trying to ally with Qaidu when we could appeal directly to the Great Khan?” Khalaf demands, exasperated.

  “I knew at the time that the Great Khan was dying. I did not know that all the princes trying to marry his daughter were dying as well. Now that I do, I’ve determined that I’m not sending you into a death trap.”

  Khalaf clamps his lips shut. He bows his head and takes a deep, audible breath in and out through his nose. “So now we’re heading into Qaidu’s camp facing God knows what kind of welcome.”

  “Yep.”

  It’s too hot in the Taklamakan to travel during the day, so we stay out of the sun in our tiny tent as we wait for night to fall again. And this is all assuming that any assassins on our tail will be traveling at night as well. I’ve gone outside in the heat, ostensibly to scrub out a cookpot with sand, but I can’t keep my eyes off the horizon behind us. Eventually, Khalaf comes out to find me.

  “I have something for you,” he says.

  My pathetic excuse for a veil is off, and I wipe my sweaty forehead with the back of my arm, leaving a swath of grit in its wake. “You have something for me?”

  Me, the girl whose only possession in the world is a broken chunk of porcelain on a piece of twine around her neck.

  Khalaf holds out a dagger, hilt first. I startle in surprise at the sight of it.

  “I was not expecting that,” I tell him.

  “Go on. Take it.”

  I grasp the hilt in my hand, and he lets go of the blade. It feels awkward and useless in my grip.

  “Oh,” I joke, “do you give daggers to all the girls?”

  Khalaf responds with a baffled look followed by another expression that’s more difficult to read. His earlobes turn pink.

  “Sorry,” I mumble. “Isn’t this the weapon that almost killed you in Kashgar?”

  Khalaf shrugs. “Now it’s the weapon that will protect you.”

  I tighten my grip on the handle. I move the blade through the air—nothing extravagant, but I still feel like an idiot.

  “Thank you for this, my lord,” I tell him, trying to hand it back, “but I’ll never be able to use this thing.”

  He crosses his arms. “You can if you must.”

  “I can’t kill anyone. Trust me.”

  “You need to be able to protect yourself. Think of Samarkand, Kashgar. I should have given you a weapon ages ago.”

  “My lord”—here, he rolls his eyes—“I’m fairly certain that things would be much, much worse for us right now if I had pulled out a knife on the il-khan’s men. I’m more useful hiding than trying to help.”

  “Please”—he sighs—“at least do me the honor of accepting this gift, keeping it on you, and knowing how to use it. Do we have a deal?”

  Now it’s a “gift.” Kh
alaf could hand me a lump of dirt; if he called it a “gift” and presented it to me with that earnest face of his, I’d treasure it all the days of my life.

  “Deal,” I relent.

  “Thank you,” he says, all velvety and genuine, and I know that I’m in way over my head. “Here’s your first lesson.”

  “First? There’s going to be more than one?”

  “Okay, here’s a lesson. If there are more, great. If there aren’t, at least you’ll have a clue as to what you’re doing with a dagger.”

  “I have no clue what I’m doing with a dagger.”

  “Jinghua,” he admonishes, exasperated.

  “Sorry. I’ll be a good student.”

  “Thank you. This weapon is very sharp on both edges. You can swipe it back and forth and cut your opponent. It’ll hurt, but it likely won’t stop him. The blade is short, and you’re small, so you don’t have much leverage. That means you’ll need to develop some skill with it for it to do you any good. Does that make sense?”

  “Yes.”

  “A dagger is for jabbing in close contact, which means you’ll only really use it if you’re desperate. That should make you feel better, right?”

  “That’s supposed to make me feel better?”

  He laughs a little, smiles a little, makes me feel like jelly a little.

  “Right, so . . . it’s best to go for places where your opponent is vulnerable. The eyes are good. The abdomen is also soft, but depending on the size of your opponent, it may be difficult to hit an organ or any arteries. There’s also the . . . uh . . . groin.”

  “Groin. Right,” I say. Shut up, Jinghua! I scream at myself. I’m not sure which of us is more likely to melt of embarrassment on that one. It will probably be a tie.

  “If you want to kill a man—”

  “I definitely don’t want to kill a man, my lord.”