by Megan Bannen
“Again.”
This time we say it together like a chanted prayer. “I am going to keep that boy alive.”
“Got it?” he asks.
I nod, and then I throw my arms around his thick middle and tuck my head into his shoulder and squeeze him with all my might.
“All right,” he says gruffly, unwrapping me from his bulk. “I know the ladies have a hard time keeping their hands off me, but this is ridiculous.”
“Yes, my lord. I’m sorry, my lord.”
“Now, you get in there and bring my boy back to me.”
I sniff and dab at my nose with a dirty sleeve. “Yes, my lord. I’ll come back for you. We’ll both come back for you,” I promise him with everything that I am, however little it may be worth.
As I walk away from him, Timur calls after me, “Jinghua.”
It’s the first time I’ve heard him speak my name. It feels like a seedpod ready to burst inside me. I turn back to him. “Yes, my lord?”
“Whatever it is, whatever you’ve done . . . I forgive you.”
By now, I’m bawling. “Thank you, my lord,” I say before I run out of the alley and into the streets of Khanbalik.
33
“WHAT’S A TINY THING LIKE YOU doing out this late at night?” one of the guards at the stable gate asks as I approach.
“She’s looking for the name, same as everyone else,” one of his companions answers for me.
“I know that,” the first guard answers drily. “I was flirting. You should try it sometime. With a girl.” He returns his attention to me. “You wouldn’t happen to know the stranger’s name, would you? Split the reward with a nice fellow like me?”
Some of the other men laugh. I’m so nervous that I wonder if I’m going to do anything other than squawk nonsensically the second I open my mouth.
“Success,” I say, my voice low and breathy.
“She speaks!” the first guard says with a huge smile. He turns his ear toward me and asks, “Now, what was that, sweetheart?”
I clear my throat and feel the sting of bile. “Success,” I repeat.
With that, I have all the guards’ attention. The flirtatious leader makes no bones of looking me over head to toe. “You must be joking.”
I shake my head.
He looks to his colleagues. One of them shrugs. “All right,” he says doubtfully. He takes a set of keys proffered by one of his companions, unlocks the gate, pushes one of the huge doors inward, and says, “After you, my lady.”
Once we’re inside the imperial compound, he leads me to the stables, where he dismisses the stable boys, but not before sending one of them off to retrieve a lamp. Once the lamp is in hand, he takes me to an empty stall and pushes on the back wall to reveal a dark passage.
“I assume you know where you’re going?” he asks.
I nod.
As he hands me the lamp, he leans in and says, “My name’s Bekter. Feel free to put in a good word for me with Chancellor Zhang.”
I take the lamp from him and enter the passageway. “I don’t think a good word from me would take you very far in life,” I tell him as I push the door closed in his face.
The lamplight surrounds me like a bubble in the corridor that stretches fathomlessly before me. There’s just enough light to see a few feet ahead of me and a few feet behind. Beyond the bubble, the darkness slumps heavily against the light. I arrive at a set of stairs leading to an underground tunnel. The temperature drops with each step, and the air grows damp and moldy. My light flickers in the chilly darkness. I find myself on level ground once more, and I walk and walk and walk.
I can feel Weiji behind me even before he speaks.
Jinghua.
I don’t gasp. I’m not surprised or afraid. There’s so little left to fear anymore. I turn around, and there he is dressed in dark silk rather than armor. He wears the black cap that signifies his manhood, and his braid drapes handsomely over his shoulder. He’s all arms and legs, the Weiji I remember, not the ghost he has become.
“Hello, Older Brother,” I say.
He’s so incredibly real. I reach out a hand to touch him, but it passes right through his chest, straight to where his heart would be if he still had a life beating inside him. An illogical sense of disappointment stabs at me. As I pull my hand away, his wound returns. I watch as it splits his body in two. Blood seeps out of the divide, staining his dark silk.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “I’m so sorry.”
I’m hungry. He’s like a kitten yowling at the door to be let in.
“Don’t you think I know that by now?”
The weight of his need—and of Timur’s and Khalaf’s, too, for that matter—pushes down on me so hard, I’m tempted to just lie down right here in this dark corridor and never get up.
“I have nothing left to give you,” I tell Weiji without bothering to mask my frustration. “My whole life is nothing. Can’t you understand that?”
Feed me, he begs.
“I can’t!”
I’m so tired. His eyes go black and hollow as he speaks. His fingers become bony hooks. He’s turning into a ghost to haunt the living right before my eyes.
“So am I,” I tell him, frazzled to the point of breaking. “I can’t help you anymore. I can’t even help myself.”
Yes, you can.
“How?”
He fades until there is nothing left to see in the lamplight, but his voice remains a second longer, echoing in the passage.
You’ll see.
Ten minutes’ walk takes me to a set of stairs leading up, after which I reach the door at the other end of the passage. I put my ear to the panel and hear the scuffing sounds of movement across a wood floor, the splashing of water in a basin, the rustle of fabric.
“My lord?” I whisper.
The sounds of movement continue. What if it’s not Khalaf on the other side? Then again, what do I have to lose at this point? I slide the door open a crack and repeat, “My lord?”
“Who’s there?”
I can barely see him across the room through the gap between the painting and the wall. He’s wound tight like a spring, his eyes sweeping the room in my direction.
“It’s only me, my lord.”
His body straightens. He looks stunned.
“Jinghua?”
I open the door and step out from behind the landscape painting of Lin’an. Khalaf’s eyes go wide. He rushes to me but stops short of touching me. He pulls back the painting and takes in the passageway beyond.
“What—?” he asks. “How did you—?”
“My lord, please, there’s no time for questions. I need you to listen to me.”
“Is my father with you?”
“No, he’s hiding in the city. My lord—”
“You have to leave,” he tells me, his worried face leaning in close, and I can taste the memory of his lips on mine.
“I can’t, not before I speak with you,” I tell him.
“You saved my life tonight. Again. We owe you everything. Everything. I have to get you out of here.”
I grasp at the air with hands that want to grab hold of the boy standing in front of me. “I’m here to get you out, not the other way around. And trust me when I say you owe me nothing.”
He won’t listen, though. “I know it was a gamble, but even if she doesn’t solve my riddle, I’ve at least proven my goodwill and my respect for her mind and abilities.”
“And if she does solve it, she’s going to kill you!” I hiss, trying to keep myself from shouting or shaking him until his brilliant brain rattles in his head.
“Or we’re both free, Turandokht and I.”
“She’s not going to set you free!” I burst, but Khalaf keeps talking over me.
“And now the entire city is on the hunt for anyone who might know me. I’ve put my father in terrible danger, and you. I’m so sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I just—”
“You just didn’t want Turandokht to be condemned to the sam
e fate as your mother. Or me.” I finish for him more brusquely than the situation demands, but there isn’t time to coddle him. He needs to understand his predicament. “And no, you weren’t thinking, but I put myself in danger a long time ago.”
“Jinghua—”
“Stop,” I tell him, holding up my hands. “Just stop. Because I’m not setting one foot outside this room until you hear what I have to say. Do you understand?”
An ember of the princess I was flares and burns inside me. Khalaf nods in mute awe.
“Turandokht will likely have you killed no matter how this plays out. And if she doesn’t, Chancellor Zhang will definitely have you killed. He’ll never let you win. Never.”
“But I’ve already won,” Khalaf argues. “I’m a prince of the realm. Zhang can’t touch me.”
“He can and he will kill you. Your riddle is no riddle at all.”
“I don’t understand.”
“My lord, when I say that he wants you dead, I mean that he’s wanted you dead—specifically you—for a long, long time.”
“That’s ridiculous. How can that be? He probably didn’t even know I existed before today.”
Here it is: the last moment I’ll possess Khalaf’s good opinion and respect. I’m about to blow it all to hell.
“Your brilliance precedes you. You were the only threat out there, the only one who might be able to solve Turandokht’s riddles. That’s why he sent me. You’re the only thing that stands between him and his beloved khatun.”
“Sent you? Who sent you? Zhang? How could he have sent you?” Khalaf’s perception of the universe hasn’t caught up to reality yet, but I can see his mind whirring behind his eyes, trying to make sense of what I’m telling him. Or maybe he’s doing his best not to make sense of it.
My eyes and nose and lips swell with truth and tears. “I’m not yours,” I tell him. “I’ve never been yours.”
He shakes his head.
“I belong to her.”
“No,” he says. His eyes are enormous.
“I was sent to Sarai to kill you.”
“No.”
“On Zhang’s orders,” I insist.
“That can’t be.”
“And when you went into exile, I had to follow. Don’t you see?” I pull back the silk painting and show him the tunnel again. “How could I know about this? How could I possibly get in here if I’m not exactly who I say I am?”
His face goes shockingly pale. “The tea,” he says. “Back in Sarai, you served me tea.”
“Yes.”
“It was poisoned.”
I hesitate, but I make myself say it. “Yes.”
“Oh my God,” he says, backing away from me. I don’t know if he’s praying or blaspheming, but he keeps repeating it over and over. “Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.”
I drag myself out of my selfish pool of despair and remind myself that I’m here to save him, that the truth will set him free even as it slams my own prison door shut. “I’m telling you that Zhang will make sure she will not accept your rule. I’m telling you that one of the most powerful men in the Yuan and the entire empire has wanted you dead for a long, long time. And I am telling you that if you value your life, you will come with me and escape Khanbalik right now.”
He gazes at me with a face that is a mask of hurt and fury. “Value my life? What do you care? You’ve wanted me dead from the beginning.”
My whole body shrinks in on itself. “That’s not true.”
“I don’t think I know anything about you that’s true.” His eyes are red and brimming.
Now that the truth is out, I feel oddly light, free. I stop cringing, and I stand before him as dignified as Turandokht. “Now you do.”
Khalaf and I stand in silence, divided, as if we had been flesh and a saber had rent us apart like the gaping hole in my brother’s body.
“Then why am I still alive?” he asks, his lovely voice made rough with barely contained rage. He can’t even look at me now. “You could have let me drink that tea back in Sarai before this nightmare even began, but you knocked it out of my hand. You could have left me to the bandits in the Caucasus. You could have let the assassin’s dagger hit its mark in Kashgar. You could have killed me a hundred times over by now. But you didn’t. Why?”
I stare at him. A second ticks by. Two. Three. Five. Seven. He refuses to look at me. What am I supposed to say? I love you? What good would that do? He hates me now.
Finally, I answer, “I told you once before. I can’t kill anyone.”
Timur would have grown still and stony right before my eyes. Khalaf, on the other hand, burns hot. If I tried to touch him now, I think his skin would scald my hand.
“I’m staying,” he says. “I’ve chosen my fate, and I will honor my word. This ungodly night will end eventually. The stars will set, and when the sun rises, I will be either dead or victorious.” He finally looks at me, a hard glare that empties my heart. “Go.”
“My lord—” I plead.
“I am not your lord. I am nothing to you.” I stand before his hatred, powerless and hollowed out. “You promised me that you would take care of my father. I’m holding you to your word. No matter what happens to me, you will take care of him. Promise me that.”
“I promise.”
“Can I trust your promise, or is it just another lie?”
“It’s the truth,” I say, not bothering to wipe my face. The truth is all I can give him now.
“Then go.” He pulls back the painting to reveal the corridor beyond. “And keep your promise well, because no one is sleeping in Khanbalik tonight.”
I step into the corridor.
“My lord?”
“Don’t call me that,” he says through clenched teeth.
“Prince,” I say. There is a distinctive lack of subservience in my voice. I can fall apart later. Right now, I need to save his life one last time. He acknowledges me with furious eyes. “You need to barricade this door behind me. Do you understand?”
His whole body betrays his hurt and anger. He trembles visibly. His nostrils flare with ragged breath. His red eyes are about to brim over.
He nods once and closes the door on me.
I wait a long time until, at last, I hear him push a heavy piece of furniture in front of the entrance. As he barricades himself against any potential assassins, myself included, he walls me out of his life.
Forever.
I knew this day would come, no matter how hard I fought against it. But that knowledge doesn’t lessen the blow. I need to return to Timur, but I give myself a moment to press my hands against the door, to let myself feel all the cracks and fissures that have been building up in my heart break open at last.
It’s all I have left now.
34
I FIND TIMUR SEATED IN THE alley where I left him with his back propped up against a dirty hovel. I collapse in a defeated heap next to him.
“You couldn’t find him?” he asks.
“No, I found him.” My words are slurred as if I’m drunk on failure.
“And he wouldn’t come?”
“No.” I let my head fall back against the hard wall behind us.
“You didn’t tell him the truth, did you?”
I turn my head away from Timur.
“Dammit!” he says. “That was a dumbshit thing to do.”
“Thank you, my lord, but I managed to figure that out on my own.”
I feel like crying again, but the tears are all wrung out of me. I look at Timur, the boulder of a man sitting next to me in a filthy alley. We are homeless, landless, nationless beggars, and for my own part, I am lost and broken. I wonder how he’s managing to hold it together, because my own hysteria is screaming inside me. He pats my knee and says, “There’s nothing left to do now, little bird. We’ll just have to wait for morning.”
It would seem that I am not wrung dry. I sag against Timur and weep into his musky chest.
“Now, don’t go losing your head,” he murmu
rs into my greasy hair. “That boy has proven me wrong more than a few times. This may be just another example of his superiority over me.”
His big arms wrap around me and he rocks me like a baby. The dethroned khan of the Kipchak Khanate comforts the slave and would-be assassin on a hard-packed street. Incredible.
“My lord?” I whisper.
“Hmm?” The sound rumbles in his chest. I half expect him to repeat Khalaf’s words: I am not your lord. The fact that he doesn’t turns me into a weeping puddle.
“I’m grateful to be your little bird,” I tell him. It’s a stupid thing to say, but at least it’s sincere.
“Ugh. Stop being so damn sappy,” he says, but he makes it sound affectionate somehow. He rocks me gently until we drift off to sleep.
That’s how the city guards find us three hours later when a dutiful citizen reports two strange people hulking in a stinking alley. A few months ago, Timur would have crushed his first opponent’s face with his enormous fist. He would have knocked the second assailant’s short curved blade from the man’s hand like a child’s toy. He would have been a lion. Now, after weeks crossing the desert with next to nothing to eat, his fight is pathetic, but not as pathetic or ineffectual as my own. At least they bothered to get Timur bound up around the torso. They only tie my wrists together.
“Thanks for the help,” Timur says as the guards frog-march us out into the street to stand before the man who escorted Khalaf away from the foot of the drum tower. If I weren’t mute with terror, I’m sure I’d cough up some kind of pithy comeback.
“That’s them,” the guard says with a nod. “Saw them talking to the stranger right after he beat the drum.”
The guards are merciless in their handling of us as they push us through the throng of people who have gathered in the market square, the place where Turandokht intends to watch Khalaf’s body be trampled by horses.
I’ve made it through this latest ordeal with just a few scratches. Timur, on the other hand, is a mess. Both his eyes are puffy with bruised flesh, and the knuckles of his right hand are split to the bone and bleeding. His hair flies crazily from his head like a lion’s mane as Turandokht’s guards drag us toward our imminent demise. I think I’ve never loved him as much as I do at this moment.