The Bird and the Blade

by Megan Bannen

A man clears his throat to get my attention. I look up from my work to find Zhang standing between the awning posts. It’s the first time I’ve seen him since I came to Khanbalik to work in the Great Khan’s palace three months ago. He’s dressed in flamboyant violet clothes while I sweat over my work in a cheap uniform, a visual reminder of just how far I have fallen. It feels like a slap to the face.

  I register no emotion on my face before I return to my work. I’ve been a slave for three months, and yet I still have to resist the urge to hide my face. Anyone may see me now if he chooses, Zhang included.

  “They said they only managed to fish one member of the Song royal family out of the river alive,” he says in his typical conversational manner. “I somehow knew it would be you. Clever girl.”

  “I’m not clever,” I say. “Just lucky.” I run the paddle around the pot once, twice, before adding, “Or not.”

  “And the Great Khan didn’t want you in his harem? I thought he might take you for a wife or at least a concubine, a symbol of his dominance over the Song.”

  I pull out the paddle, pick up a sieve off the mat beneath my feet, and begin to remove the dead worms from the vat. My voice is devoid of feeling. “He said that if I’d been part of a peace deal he might have taken me, but since the Mongols had defeated the Song, he had no use for me.”

  “Ah, I see.” Zhang’s tone is inscrutable, ever diplomatic.

  “The Mongols who rescued me were disappointed. They were hoping to get a lot more for me. Turns out I wasn’t worth much.” I dump a dripping load of cocoons onto a tray and dip the sieve into the cauldron again.

  Zhang switches to Mongolian. “Are you learning to speak the language?”

  “Well enough,” I reply, also in Mongolian.

  Zhang nods, hesitates, and then says, “I’ll see what I can do for you, little Jinghua,” before he saunters off.

  The word “princess” is noticeably absent from this statement.

  It’s funny, but until this moment, I didn’t really believe that I was a slave, hadn’t accepted it, as if it were all a bad dream and I would wake up someday back in Lin’an. But now a man whom I once outranked calls me “little.” I can taste the bitterness of the moment on my tongue, like biting into rotten fruit.

  “What?” I call to his broad backside, not bothering to mask my resentment. “No poetry today?”

  He turns. His smile is kind but sad. “Another day, perhaps.” He leaves me to unwind the softened cocoons heaped in the tray.

  In the scullery of the imperial palace, I’m drying a freshly washed platter. It’s a beautiful piece, this enormous porcelain circle, white, hand-painted with dragons and lions and lotus blossoms in blue paint. Unaccountably alone, I allow myself the liberty of tracing the brushstrokes with a work-ruined finger. A year ago, I would have been the one eating off this platter. Now I’m the one cleaning it.

  I’m still tiny, still girlish, but there is a suggestion of womanliness in my body, the way a bud hints at the flower within, although I am no flower. It does me no good now. I’m the bud that will never bloom.

  “I have a job for you” comes a voice from the doorway. It’s Zhang, his hands folded in his sleeves. I haven’t seen him in several months, not since he came to see me while I was softening the silkworm cocoons.

  “I already have a job.” I hold up the platter. “See?”

  “If you succeed in this job, there’s a chance you could go home.”

  I wipe at the platter and tell him, “I don’t have a home anymore.”

  “Lin’an is still there. Your family’s estate is still there.”

  “So I’d be a slave where I used to be a princess? Thanks, but no thanks.”

  But already I’m intrigued, tempted. Even a slave can see the water lilies in the West Lake. Even a slave can watch the fog dissipate over the green hills beyond.

  “You’d be mistress of that estate,” Zhang tells me, his tongue sweet and smooth as honey. “You’d be married to a very powerful man, one very much in favor with the Great Khan.”

  I know I shouldn’t listen to him, but I can’t help myself. I want so desperately to go home, to go back to my old life. I hunger for it. I hold that dream so close it nuzzles me.

  “Rich and married—you’d want for nothing,” Zhang presses unctuously.

  I could fall back on my principles, the sort that would never allow me to make a deal with a snake like him. But the truth is that I no longer have any principles to speak of, and he knows it.

  “I hate you,” I tell him.

  “I don’t really care.”

  “Why should I trust you?”

  “What else are you going to do?”

  I glower at him for several long, uncomfortable seconds, even as I cave. I lower my eyes and scowl. “What would I have to do?”

  Zhang opens the door to the scullery and gestures for me to follow him.

  “I’ll be whipped if someone catches me outside the kitchens,” I inform him.

  “You let me worry about that. Now be a good little slave and follow me.”

  I curse him under my breath, but he pretends not to hear it.

  Zhang leads me through the corridors of the imperial palace. Once we’re out of the kitchens, my surroundings become dizzyingly rich and unfamiliar: ceilings covered in gold leaf, paintings of the hunt or serene landscapes on every wall, a hall lined with bronze dragon statues, all there to remind me of what I’ve lost. I compare everything I see to my home in Lin’an, and I think with bitter satisfaction that the Mongols’ ostentatious display of their wealth makes the vanished elegance of the Song Dynasty shine brighter, even in death.

  We encounter no one. Zhang eventually takes us to a wing with rooms on either side of a passageway.

  “Guest chambers,” he explains before opening a door and ushering me inside one of the rooms.

  “What are we doing here?”

  “You know of Turandokht’s riddles, of all the suitors who come to Khanbalik to die?”

  “Of course I know about them—suitors just like my brother.”

  I’m boiling with grief and anger, but Zhang blithely ignores the reference to my loss.

  “It was her hope that the riddles and the accompanying death penalty would deter the hordes of princes who insist on flocking to Khanbalik to marry her,” he says. “But it isn’t working. The prince of Kyrghiz asked to try his hand just last month, and now another suitor has beaten the drum this morning to signal his intent.”

  “And what does any of that have to do with a slave girl in Turandokht’s kitchens?” I ask, crossing my arms.

  “You are no longer standing in the kitchens, and you are no ordinary slave girl.” Zhang strolls around the room as if he were taking a walk in a garden rather than skulking around the palace with the help. “Honestly, it’s all worked out infinitely better than I could have imagined. In the end, we did not need the Song alliance to rule all of Zhongguo, and with the Great Khan feeling under the weather these days, I am positively indispensable to my khatun. So you see, I’m not too concerned about all the princes who descend upon Khanbalik for her hand. No, it’s just one man who worries me, the one man my khatun fears most, the one who might actually be able to solve Turandokht’s riddles.”

  He stops strolling and gives me a knowing look.

  “What?” I ask, and then I begin to catch on. “You want me to kill this man?”

  “‘Kill’ is such a distasteful word.”

  “I can’t. I can’t kill anyone.”

  “Then you can’t go home,” Zhang tells me. “And you’ll be a slave all the days of your life.”

  I look down at my work-roughened hands. My skin is dried out from scrubbing dishes. My knuckles are cracked and bleeding.

  “I’m fond of you, little Jinghua,” Zhang says. “You’re very bright, and I had once hoped that you might serve as a companion to my khatun. But now I see how you might serve her in a much larger capacity.”

  A companion to the girl who rejec
ted my brother? Every feeling revolts. “And if I refuse?” I ask.

  “I will have you sold to the nearest slave trader. Do you know what happens to most girls sold into slavery?”

  The threat isn’t lost on me. I’ll end up in a brothel. Or worse. I can feel myself falling into the very possibility, like plunging down that well of grief again and wondering when I’ll hit the bottom, what cold death is waiting for me in the darkness.

  But there’s another part of me that still clings to what I was, who I was, the part that now says, “Yes. I know. I’m not stupid, little Zhang.”

  He arches one eyebrow at me. “Now, now. I can free you once it’s done, and until then, I can make sure you end up in respectable service. But only if you agree to do this one small thing.”

  “Killing a man is no small thing.”

  “Fine, then, this one enormous thing. Do this one enormous thing, and you can be free, and you can go home. You can go back to the life you deserve.”

  “Why me?” And here it is: the crying. The useless, pathetic crying. I loathe myself for crying so easily.

  Zhang steps closer to me and speaks in a kind, paternal way. “Because you’re small enough and plain enough to be invisible. Because you’re clever enough to be inventive and take initiative. And you’re motivated, very deeply motivated.”

  I’m silent for a good long time. Zhang waits patiently for my answer. My eyes glaze over, and I imagine what it means to kill someone, how I even go about that sort of thing, the impossibility of the task.

  “What choice do I have?” I ask.

  “You’re a slave now, my dear,” says Zhang. “You don’t have a choice.”

  I nod helplessly.

  “Excellent.” He crosses in front of me to a large silk-screen painting of misty hills and a lake. I realize with a sickness in my stomach that it’s a picture of Lin’an, of home. He lifts the screen to reveal a door, which he slides open. A dark, cramped passage lies beyond.

  “We use this for purposes of state security. It leads to the stables,” Zhang explains.

  “You mean if you need to assassinate someone and remove his body in the dark of night,” I say coldly.

  “Among other things. My man is waiting on the other side. He’s a merchant headed for Sarai. He knows to take good care of you.”

  “Sarai? Where’s Sarai?” It seems like the room is spinning.

  “In the Kipchak Khanate.”

  “The Kipchak Khanate? That’s on the other end of the empire. How long will it take to get there?”

  “At least six months, I should think.”

  “Six months?” I ask incredulously.

  Zhang smiles. How can he smile at this moment?

  “How do I get back?” I ask.

  “You’ll have a gerege. It’s already in the possession of one of the prince’s friends. He’ll be your contact in Sarai and will escort you back to Khanbalik once your mission is complete.”

  “He doesn’t sound like a very good friend.”

  “No man up to his eyeballs in debt can be counted a good friend,” says Zhang. “Now, when you make it back to Khanbalik—”

  “If I make it back to Khanbalik,” I say.

  “Fine. If you make it back to Khanbalik, you’ll approach the stable gate of the imperial compound, and you will tell the guards, Success. Just that one word. They will then escort you to the door on the other end of this passage. My quarters are located in the corridor just to the east of this one, next to the imperial library. When you find me—”

  “If.”

  “When you find me, our deal will be complete, and I will send you back to Lin’an, where you belong.”

  I nod, cataloging this information, burning it into my brain so that I won’t forget.

  “And who am I supposed to . . . ?” Oh, my mother, I can’t even say the word.

  “One of Timur Khan’s sons, the bookish one. He’s purported to be brilliant, even at his tender age.”

  “If he has noble blood, why shouldn’t he marry Turandokht?” I challenge Zhang as grief for my brother stokes my acrimony. “Why shouldn’t she marry any of them?”

  At first, Zhang shows a rare spark of anger, but then he softens. “You wouldn’t understand, the way you were raised to marry, to obey. My mistress has risen above such expectations. She’s like the ice at the mountain’s peak, the snow on the Roof of the World, where men can’t even light a proper fire. And underneath all that ice is rock. The good of the empire is her only passion. For the most part, she does not require a man to hold her hand and do her business for her. And when she does require a man, well, she has me.”

  I hate him for his arrogance, and I hate myself more for having let him pull aside the red curtain and wriggle his way into my life.

  “And what would your precious khatun say if she knew you had arranged the assassination of a worthy suitor?” I ask him.

  “What makes you think this is anything other than her own order?”

  “You just told me I was clever. Do you really think I don’t see the game you’re playing here? Your dedication to your khatun and the empire only goes as far as it benefits one man: Chancellor Zhang.”

  “Fine,” he says, not bothering to deny it. “This is a matter of public relations. I’m fairly certain my khatun has no intention of marrying, so even if somebody manages to answer the riddles, she’ll have him killed one way or another. That’s all rather . . . messy. Or worse, she might actually marry him. From time to time, she is too honorable for her own good, and where would that leave me?”

  “In the dirt, where you belong,” I answer.

  He waves away my resentment. “I act on behalf of the empire. The khan of the Kipchak Khanate is Genghis Khan’s great-grandson, even if his grandfather was illegitimate. Some have the audacity to argue that he has more right to the title Great Khan than the Great Khan himself does. And he’s an ambitious man, more than willing to take advantage of his son. It’s for Turandokht’s own good that we nip this threat in the bud.”

  I could stand here and quibble with Zhang all day, and I wouldn’t be any closer to home.

  “What’s his name?” I sigh.

  “Who? The son? Oh, I don’t recall. Pilaf. Kumar. One of those unpronounceable Turkic names.”

  “You don’t even know his name? How am I supposed to know I have the right person?”

  “You’ll know,” Zhang assures me.

  “But how?”

  Zhang takes me by the shoulders in that repugnant, fatherly way of his. He says, “My dear, he’s the really, really smart one.”

  Part Seven

  The Last Riddle

  The City of Khanbalik, Khanate of the Yuan Dynasty

  Autumn 1281

  31

  TURANDOKHT SAYS,

  “It is a prison of snow, a graceful cage of ice,

  Though pale you burn inside its darkened heart.

  Raging hot, your fire cannot suffice,

  Nor can you prize its icy bars apart.

  “As on the mountain’s peak, so useless is your fire

  That from your flame grows colder still its ring.

  Before you lies a choice: What’s your desire?

  Break free and be slave? Or remain and be king?”

  “Seven minutes.”

  Khalaf doesn’t close his eyes or bow his head as he did before, and I swear that the first minute goes whizzing by in the span of a mere heartbeat.

  “Six minutes,” calls Zhang.

  Rub your lip, I beg Khalaf. Press the heels of your hands to your eyes. Raise your face to your god. Do the things you do when you’re thinking.

  “‘It is a prison of snow, a graceful cage of ice,’” Khalaf repeats breathily, “‘though pale you burn inside its darkened heart . . .’”

  “Five minutes.”

  My heart begins to break, the first fissure snaking its way down my chest. Timur and I have squeezed our palms together. My hand grows numb in his grip, but I don’t care. I feel a tea
r splash against my neck, and it isn’t my own. The mountain is crying.

  “Four minutes.”

  Turandokht doesn’t gloat. She doesn’t move. She watches and waits. If the breeze didn’t buffet the feather of her headdress, I might think she had truly turned to stone.

  You can’t have his life, I seethe at her. He won’t die for you. You can marry him and even love him, so long as he lives.

  “Three minutes.”

  Let him live.

  “You don’t know the answer,” Zhang says triumphantly from the bell tower. “The icy prison where your fire is useless—what is it?”

  I think of Zhang standing at the red curtain, the way he barged into my life and never left it. And I let him.

  This is all my fault, all of it.

  Khalaf concentrates, the skin around his eyes puckering with stress. He breathes in and out, trying to work through it. “‘As on the mountain’s peak, so useless is your fire . . .”

  He’s bursting with life. Every heartbeat, every breath, is as rare and precious as pearls. I think of his back against mine, his warmth wrapping me up on the Roof of the World, his voice like embers in the dark night.

  A book of verses underneath the bough

  A flask of wine, a loaf of bread, and thou

  Beside me singing in the wilderness

  And . . .

  And.

  My eyes widen with understanding.

  His last words to me at the foot of the drum tower, the line he quoted as Turandokht’s men were escorting him away.

  “‘And wilderness is paradise now,’” I finish aloud.

  “Shh!” Timur hisses in my ear.

  I sang beside him in the wilderness, and wilderness is paradise now.

  Did he love me?

  Could he still?

  My heart aches with the possibility, curling around the memory of Khalaf pressed against me in the frigid night in the Pamirs.

  On the Roof the World.

  I gasp, my lungs pushing my panic away in all directions as I remember the words Chancellor Zhang said to me in a darkened room.

  She’s like the ice at the mountain’s peak, the snow on the Roof of the World, where men can’t even light a proper fire.